TRIGGERnometry - We’re Already in Recession - Jim Rickards

Episode Date: April 6, 2025

Jim Rickards is an American lawyer, investment banker, and author known for his expertise in finance and economics. Get Jim's book "Money GPT" - https://amzn.eu/d/hCW3eE5 Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 Introduction 09:49 What's Going On With Tariffs? 18:59 Won't Forcing Manufacturer's Back To The US Cause More Inflation? 31:51 Could Antagonising China With Tariffs Push Them To Invade Taiwan? 34:24 Ukraine Debate 48:42 Will the US and Israel Solve The Iran Problem? 59:07 Is The US About To Bounce Back Economically? 01:10:38 How To End The War In Ukraine 01:21:29 Climate Change Policy Effect On Oil Prices 01:31:25 Isn't Debt Going To Keep Increasing? 01:34:59 What's The Thing We're Not Talking About That We Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We probably are in a recession. So for Lehman, what is going on? And do you agree with tariffs? Look, Trump's putting all these tariffs on. It's the best economic policy you can think of. It's extremely good for the U.S. But this is really going to be bad for Vietnam and China and Malaysia. And I say, yeah, that's their problem.

Our job is to make America great again. Why didn't Biden talk to Putin for three years? They wanted the word. They honestly wanted the word. We provoked the word. IP vanish protects every device you own. Your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected.

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Good. Welcome back. Great to be with you. Yeah, it's great to have you on the show again. Interesting economic times, which is usually when we always love having you on the show, because, you know, a lot of people, particularly in this city in New York, were very excited about the last election, Donald Trump, coming into office because they thought he would be great for the economy and great for business. And that may be true. But a lot of people are also, some, sensing that that might not be true and feeling like we're about to go into a recession, a global recession, perhaps. What's your read on everything? We probably are in a recession. The thing is, you know, the official scorecube. This is for the United States, not the world.

A world recession is rare, by the way. Usually, you know, one sector, you know, Europe or the United States or Asia could be in a recession. Others might be doing better trying to pull the world economy out a bit. But a global recession, they do happen, but they're quite rare. But just with reference with regards to the United States, there's this, The National Bureau of Economic Research, it's a bunch of egghead economists up in Cambridge. They're the official, unofficial scorekeepers. They tell you when you have recession, when you're out of it, et cetera, and that's widely accepted.

The problem is they usually tell you you've entered a recession about six months after it's over, so you can't really rely on them. So you have to look at a lot of other metrics, predictive analytics and so forth, too, if you want to either predict it or just kind of know it in real time. So you're saying the U.S. may already be in a recession. What are the markers? What are the markers? Well, there are a lot of them. But one is, you know, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta has a tracker. It's called GDP now. It's actually pretty good. Some of these statistical methods, certainly the ones on Wall Street aren't worth our time. But the Atlanta Fed is a pretty good tracker. It went from round numbers kind of positive 2.4% for the first quarter of 2025 to negative 2.7% in a matter of days. And it looks like an Acapulco cliff dive.

It went straight down. And they said, well, the reason is because of Trump's tariff proposals. And, you know, he puts them on and takes them off. No one really knows. But because of that, there was a surge of imports. People were trying to actually get stuff into the United States before their tariffs hit. And, of course, imports increased the trade deficit, which decreases GDP. And that was the explanation for that.

Probably something to that. But there's just a lot else going on. We're not quite at the stage of mass layoffs, but hiring. hit a wall about six months ago a little bit longer where they just stopped. Basically, people weren't hiring anymore. Firing people is the last thing you do. By the time you get to the layoff stage and see unemployment going up, that's a sign. That's a lagging indicator. You're probably already in the recession because it's so hard to find people, train them, you know, get them going. It's the last thing you want to do. So you'll, you know, cut out the laundry bill,

you know, turn it on the electricity, negotiate the way. You'll do a lot else before you lay people off. When you start doing that, we're getting close to that point now. There's been some big layoffs announced recently. So that's another indicator that we're probably already in it. But hiring, new hiring stopped, as I say, six months ago. There's some technical indicators, not to get too down on the weeds, but the yield curve is the shape of the yield curve is one of the best economic forecasting tools out there. So about a year and a half ago.

Can you stop, Jim, what does that mean? just because there's a lot of people who are listening to this, who are economically illiterate. And they don't know what that is. Well, fortunately, this is an easy one. So the yield curve is just, you know, a typical curve. So the Y axis, the vertical axis are interest rates, and the X axis, the horizontal axis are maturities.

So the U.S. Treasury, people say, you know, government securities, well, okay, but there's a one month bill, a three-month bill, a one year, a two-year note, a five-year note, all the way out to a 30-year bond. So that's the X-ex. So the y-axis are interest rates. Every one of those has a different interest rate. They can be close or there could be a spread.

And all you do is you plot those interest rates. So what's a normal yield curve? A normal yield curve is upwardly sloping from left to right. And that makes sense. You know, longer maturity, if I'm going to lend to you overnight, I might want one rate if we're going to lend you for 10 years and say, well, a lot could happen to 10 years. So I'm going to want a higher rate.

So an upwardly sloping yield curve is normal. But periodically, it's not highly a high level. and it's not that unusual, a little bit unusual. You get a downward sloping yield curve, where the longer maturities have lower interest rates. What does that tell you? Well, the Treasury market, that's the big money. I used to work for a primary dealer.

We were one of the ones authorized to deal directly with the Fed. They're only about 20 banks with that status. So you talk to the Fed every day. A downward sloping yield curve, again, the big money kind of sets this, the market sets this, tells you that a recession is coming. And how do you draw that inference?

Well, let's say short-term interest rates are 4%, and longer-term interest rates are 3%, or actually the actual numbers now are closer to 5 and 4. But you say, well, I'll take a 4% coupon, 4% yield of maturity in a 10-year-note, because that's going to look really sweet a couple years from now when interest rates are 1.5. When the recession kicks in and interest rate collapse,

that high coupon is going to look very attractive, number one. Number two, bond math 101 is kind of counterintuitive. But when interest rates go down, prices go up. And when interest rates go up, prices go down. So if you believe recession is coming and interest rates are coming down, you'll lock in the higher coupon now. And when interest rates do come down, you'll have capital gains on that note. So it's a really attractive trade.

But meanwhile, back here at the short end of the curve, 30-day bills or three-month bills or six-month bills or whatever, that really is much more subject to Federal Reserve control. It's about the only thing they control, this idea that the Fed can control long-term rates by manipulating short-term rates because this is just the value of a strip of short-term rates. That's all nonsense. That's a theory. You can do the math, but that's all nonsense.

So the point being, when you have a downward sloping yield curve, that's a sign that the recession is coming, people are bidding for those intermediate term securities are pushing the rate down a little bit, but it's going to look real good and when they're... Hold on, Jim, one second. Sorry. Is that a sign that recession is coming or is it a sign that people think a recession is coming? Well, people, but the people are the biggest institutions in the world.

This curve is set by sovereign wealth funds, endowments, pension funds, insurance companies. The players in that market, it's not that they're infallible, but they are... It's a basically distillation of all the big money in the world kind of saying something to you. So you should kind of just kind of... The math is simple.

The yoke curve is simple to look at, but you have to know what it means. And so the downward sloping yokeur, which did start about a year and a half ago, said that the recession is coming. Now, what's happened in the meantime? The yoke curve has flattened. It's actually what's called a bare flattener

where short-term rates came down a lot. Long-term rates came down a little bit, but now it's kind of flat, and it's actually getting back to a normal shape. does that tell you? It tells you the recessions here. Now, the recessions here, you know, short-term rates should come down a lot and they have. And this idea that the Fed is, you know, they do have an influence, so I don't want to dismiss them entirely, but I'll come close. The Fed is not leading the market. The Fed is following the market. The best short-term rate

indicators are one-month treasury bill. There's something called the secured overnight financing rate. It's kind of replaced LIBORs. a clunky form of LIBOR. But both of those rates, the screwed overnight funding and the one-month bill, are lower than the Fed funds target rate. So what that tells you is that the market is sensing exactly what I'm describing. Those rates are going down. So whether, you know, the Fed's going to, you know, whether they cut or pause at a given meeting, you know, I watch it and it's pretty easy to forecast, but it sort of doesn't matter. I'm going to say as the Fed's irrelevant, the market's taking interest rates where they need to go.

So now that the curve is going from inverted, where the intermediate term rates are lower, that's the signal. Now it's flattened as getting into a normal shape, but all the rates are coming down. That's the signal that the recession is here. By the way, this idea will stimulate the economy with lower rates. That's nonsense. It doesn't stimulate anything. Low rates are associated with recession, depression, and financial panic.

That's when you get low rates, three pretty bad things. In a robust growing economy, rates will be higher. Now I'm not saying sky high, maybe 4%, 5%, but what that tells you is that a borrower expects a higher return. If I think I can get 10% on my investment or more, I'll happily borrow it 4% or 5%. There's also competition for funds. The banks actually love that environment.

They have positive spread. So the robust economy, you'll see interest rates of, you know, 3, 4, 5%, sometimes a little more in a 6%. In a sick economy, recession or depression, you'll see rates of 1% to zero, which is where we're heading. And, Jim, there's been a lot of talk about tariffs. Trump has, you know, said he's going to put tariffs on the Chinese products, or rather increased tariffs on Chinese imports. Correct.

He's also gone in against the Canadians. I mean, I can't understand why. So for Lehman, what is going on? And do you agree with tariffs? Well, I always tell people who are doing their first overseas trips are just planning on going abroad. So if you want to go to a company that's a country that's most like America, go to Australia. I consider Canada a pretty exotic country. I live there for a couple of years. So there are some significant differences between Canada and the U.S.

Look, Trump's putting all these tariffs on. It's the best economic policy you can think of. It's extremely good for the U.S. I get in this debate all the time. I'll expand on that a little bit, but when I have this debate, and I explain to people that my tariffs are good, they say, for the United States, they go, well, yeah, Jim, yeah, but this is really going to be bad for Vietnam and China and Malaysia.

And I say, yeah, that's their problem. Our job is to make America great again. Tell President Xi to make China great again if he wants to let him figure out policies that actually work other than over-borrowing, real estate boom, and corruption, skimming, and a lot else. So our job is to take care of America and, you know, Kirstormer can make the UK great again.

That's a highly questionable statement, but yes. But that's all fair. So looking at from the American perspective, what we're saying is a return to something called the American system. It was invented by Alexander Hamilton of 1790. You know, his problem was first Treasury secretary. We had revolutionary war debt

and state debt that had kind of hung over from for the creation of the United States. And one of the first issues facing Congress is what do we do about all this debt? And so Congress said, well, that's easy. We'll just default as the American way. And Hamilton said, no, we'll borrow more, use that money to pay off the old debt,

and then we'll just keep borrowing and just roll over the debt. And that was the creation of the government's securities market. It's been going strong for 230 years. You can call it Ponzi, but it works. But then you had to finance the government as well. And that's where terrorists come in. We had tariffs on to start.

Alexander Hamilton and George Washington took a field trip out to Passack, New Jersey, to show Washington these waterfalls. And they were like, this is perfect. This can, you know, you had water wheels and looms and powering industry. And so we need tariffs to protect us from primarily England because they were the leaders in that technology at the time. From 1790 to 1962, the United States grew economically, geographically, telegraphically, telephone, telegraph, railroads, steam. I'm saying we invented every one of those things, but we certainly applied them and invented quite a few of them.

The greatest invention of all time economically was indoor plumbing. 50% of humanity spent 70% of their time fetching water for 5,000 years. All of a sudden, women were free to do more productive things. So it's a little more powerful than the Internet. But my point is that whole regime, and there were very strong advocates, starting, as I mentioned with Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, Henry Clay, who was not president, but was a powerful senator, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge,

Dwight Eisenhower, all the way through. They all advocated tariffs. Now, the rap on tariffs, the Democrats ran this in the 2024 presidential campaign. And unfortunately, it kind of stuck. So you have to explain it to people. They go, well, tariffs are a sales tax on the American people. That was their statement. So you have a certain good, a certain price, and you put a 20% tariff on it.

The price is going to go up 20%. Sales tax on the American people and inflationary. Both of those statements are wrong. Here's why. in a tariff transaction, you have three parties. Could be more, but at least three. You have the producer exporter in China, Vietnam, et cetera. You have the importer, who's a wholesale or distributor,

and then you have the consumer. So, yeah, we are going to put 20% tariffs on things. That is going to raise the price, at least initially. Who actually pays the tariff? Well, it's the importer. The person who takes the goods off the ship at the poor Los Angeles, has got a right-out check to the Treasury for 20% of the value of those goods. but who pays it economically?

It is split between the producer and the importer, or it's completely pushed back the supply chain to the producer. So the importer says, hey, I just pay 20% more. You need to lower your price 20% so that when you, or whatever the number is, so that when you throw on the tariff, it comes out about the same. Or the importer will eat it in the form of reduced margins or profits. the original exporter, the producer will eat it in terms of reduced profits or margins.

The one party that does not eat the tariff is the consumer. There is no price increase. And why is that? Well, first of all, that's actually, that's what the economic data shows. But more to the point, if Walmart or Costco or Target or Best Buy could raise prices 20%, why wouldn't they just do it? I mean, why do you need tariffs to do that? Of course you wouldn't raise prices.

The reason they can't is because the consumer can't pay it. The consumer's tapped out. You know, credit card lines are used up. Mortgage rates have been high. Hiring is dried up. There are a lot of, you know, and inflation generally, we're still, you know, the thing about the Biden inflation, they say, well, inflation went down from, it was 9.1% in June 2020. It's about 3% today, you know, give or take, it's bouncing around a little bit.

They say, well, inflation has come down. Yeah, but the 9% never went away. That 9% increase is still there. The 3% increase is still there. Prices are still going up. When the financial television talking heads say, you know, inflation is coming down, people think prices are coming down. Prices aren't coming down.

Inflation is going up at a slower level, but it's still going up. And we're building on top of the 9% that we had in 2022, which is the highest since the early 1980s. So given all those price increases, which are now embedded in the other headwinds I described, people can't afford to pay higher prices. Like I say, if they could, they would have been charged that already. So in other words, the tariff does not fall on the consumer. It falls on the producer or the reporter or it's split between them in some fashion.

So the idea that it's inflationary is not true, and the idea that it is a sales tax on consumers is not true. It could affect margins further up the supply chain, but not at the consumer level. But what else do tariffs do? you basically create a wall you create high paying jobs in the United States Trump has said to everyone China Malaysia, Vietnam I don't know picking on them

could be French wine well not French wine it's not a good example but the German manufacturer manufacturers etc. say hey you can sell whatever you want to the American people no problem but build it here put your plant in the United States because you got to

instead of paying the tariffs if you're the producer going back to what I just said the producer bears it well if you don't want to bear jump over the tariff hole put your plant in the United States. Taiwan Semiconductor is spending upwards of $100 billion, building new fabrication plants for semiconductors in the United States. Apple just announced $500 billion of investment in the United States. Now, they're a U.S. company, but they've been investing mainly in China and Malaysia and elsewhere around the world. So Honda announced her building a major car

manufacturing plant in the United States. I love my friends, you know, in the upscale zip codes that are driving Mercedes. I got a nice German car. I said, no, it's not. It's made in South Carolina. I stick to outies because they actually are made in Germany. So more and more of these cars are built the United States. What we're seeing is stage two. This is Lighthizer 2.0. Robert Lighthizer was the Deputy U.S. Trade Representative to Ronald Reagan. He did this to the Japanese car industry in the early 80s. He saved the U.S. car industry. And the Japanese finally said, okay, we hear you, because you threw huge tariffs on them. We hear you, we'll put our plants in the United States, and they're here. Now, Volkswagen's crying, because they just build a huge factory in Mexico

for the Audi Q5, which is one of their best-selling vehicles. And they're like, wait a second, what about, well, USMCA is the successor to NAFTA. What about those tariffs? And Trump's same. We don't care. We're going to we negotiate. We're putting tariffs on that. You should have put your plan in the United States. Vokeswai. You should have thought of that. But the door's open. You can invest here. Now, what else does it? But Jim, sorry to interrupt. And this is really interesting, because only a week ago we had Liam Halligan, who you know, making many of the exact opposite points of what you're saying. But we respect you both. And both really interesting people with interesting perspectives. Wouldn't, if you force,

manufacturers to make things in America. I don't see how that wouldn't be inflationary because you have to pay people higher salaries here. So yes, you're getting higher paying jobs into the US, but you're also pushing up the price of the things that those people make, aren't you? Do you have at least $50,000 in your 401k or another retirement account? If so, listen up. Gold just exploded past $2,800 an ounce, shattering all records. This isn't just another headline. It's part of what experts called the Great Wealth Shift. largest transfer of money from the middle class to the elites in history. Here's what's really happening. While inflation devours your savings, the wealthy are converting their dollars into gold.

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or go to TriggerGold.com and grab Augustus-free gold IRA guide. That's Triggergold.com. Listen, there's no denying it. The shift is accelerating. The question is, will you be ready? First of all, the salary has to be put in the context of productivity. U.S. workers are very productive. When you give them the capital, when you give them the investment,

these factories are very productive. So, and as far as the higher salaries are concerned, the way they Chinese make money is they sell, I need to be vulgar, but they sell crap. I mean, they sell stuff that falls apart before you open the clamshell box. I would, and, you know, when you factor in transportation costs, energy costs, the salary differential is not as great

as it once was. I'm not talking. So, you know, if it's $15, $20, an hour, maybe $40 an hour in certain industries. That's a globally competitive rate. The people who are not competitive today are the Germans for, we can talk about that, but for other reasons. And there are only a handful of countries that really have that kind of manufacturing capability.

But you lower your distribution costs, you lower your transportation costs, you're going to lower your energy costs because drill baby drill. And U.S. labor is productive. So the notion that you got to pay is it's not like Chinese auto workers are making $2 an hour, and our auto workers are making $40 an hour. I mean, something like that, not quite as extreme, might have been true in the early 80s. It's not true today. I mean, Liam's working in a world of theory, but all these theories are badly flawed.

And again, I go back to the fact that this whole tariff idea scheme that I just outlined was how the United States operated from 1790. 90 onward. Let me probe some more. Actually, the argument I just put you, it wasn't one of Liam's arguments. Liam's argument, I think there were two things, but one of them primarily was what happens when you slap down tariff, some people, some of them will absorb it, but with the Chinese, they're not going to be prepared to be bossed about in this way.

They're going to retaliate, and that's bad for everybody because now you've gone from a mutually beneficial relationship to a zero-sum game. Well, this is the myth of free trade. Even David Ricardo knew the free trade. There was no such thing. The problem of free trade is they, you know, I had a really high grade point average in college, but I struggled a little bit with economics. And I always wonder why.

I was like, I was just not bright enough, you know. And it was only later that I realized everything I was taught was garbage. The reason I didn't get it was because it was all wrong. So one of the, one of the miss is free trade. So what they teach you is, you know, England is very good at shearing wool and textiles and Portugal is very good at growing grapes and making wine. It makes no sense to grow grapes in England. It makes no sense to start a textile industry of Portugal.

So why don't it was in England make the textiles, Portugal make the wine, and just trade. Everybody's doing what they do best, and that's the theory of free trade. You can write those equations. It's pretty simple. that's a completely abstract artificial construct so what what does the real world look like the idea is it's called comparative advantage what i just described the idea is like tom brady shouldn't mow his own lawn he could probably mow his lawn better than any landscaper in town but it's not the thing he does best he should be you know in the broadcast booth now and let the landscape and mow the lawn it's better

better for everybody. That's comparative advantage. The problem is, and Ricardo actually recognized this, he said that the factors of production were static in that example, but in the real world, the factors of production are not static. They're completely portable. So who's the most sophisticated largest, best semiconductor producer in the world today? It's Taiwan semiconductor in Taiwan. Okay. That industry started in the late 1970s. What was Taiwan's comparative advantage in semiconductors in 1979. Zero. Their comparative advantage was tuna fish and rice. So they created it. They created it out of thin air. They said, we're going to do this. They put, they started with state sponsorship, but they grew out of that very quickly. The companies went public. They were

very relaxed about, you know, if you were the hot programmer, developer in a time on semiconductor, and you wanted to spin out and start your own company, they would say, yeah, I'll give you the money. I'll give you the capital, you know, create a network of those firms. You know, maybe people were studying in Stanford or MIT, but they got back to Taiwan. But that's the problem in China. They send their scholars abroad and they don't all come back. But in Taiwan, in many cases, they did. And now they're the leading semiconductor producer in the world.

My point is they created the comparative advantage. Now, same problem with China. And there was a time. It's not as true today, but the labor was cheaper. So that was a comparative advantage. But the capital is completely portable. So you take the cheap labor that's there and the capital, which is portable, which went to China, now they basically created comparative advantage out of thin air.

So the idea that's natural and static is false. And then you get into, you know, we're talking about U.S. tariffs. So guess what? As you know, the rest of the world is very high tariffs on all of our stuff. And then, you know, the other factors are energy, which tends to be a world price. Can I just stop you there, Jim? because there is the other aspect of it that I really want you to address. That is, we are in quite an antagonistic relationship with China at the moment.

Correct. So that being the case, do we really want to slap these terrorists on or increase these tariffs by a significant amount? Right. And that will be seen as an antagonistic gesture to China, which will then put China on more of a kind of war footing, which means that they will then look covered. as we already know they're doing it at Taiwan, but think to themselves, you know what?

What is our relationship right with America? It's not great as it is. This is the moment to strike. I mean, that's a lot of people's concerns, aren't there? Yes, you do hear that argument, but let me just... I'll come back to that point, but let me just separate them for a second. If China's annoyed or mift or upset or whatever, who cares? I mean, that's not, again, that's not our job. Yeah, we've got to be attentive to China and we don't want to antagonize them needlessly, but if they have a sense of, you know, we're being antagonistic to them, who cares? So they buy their soybeans from Brazil. You know what happened in 2018 when Trump

put tariffs on China? China said, okay, we're not buying any more soybeans from the United States. We're buying them from Brazil. It was a huge disruption in the supply chain. It was one of the factors that fed into some of the high, some of the inflation in 2022. A lot of it was government spending, but it wasn't that the tariffs were the sales taxes we described, it was that the supply chain was disruptive, which is also that had to do with COVID. But China shifted their soybean purchases to Brazil on long-term contracts because, I mean, the logistics behind that are, you know, the acreage, the port facilities, the transportation facilities. These people want long, they want five-year contracts. They don't want, you know, a six-month deal, et cetera. So what are the United

States do? We sold our soybeans in the Netherlands. I mean, it's a big world. So, Yeah, we ship, we found another buyer. China found another seller, but we found another buyer. We're growing just as many soybeans, but we're selling them to Europe. And if China wants some, they can come and get it. My point is a lot of these threats, there's a lot less there than meets the eye. And I'm not saying, by the way, when I talk about tariffs, I'm not saying global trade is going to go to zero,

or it's the new Great Depression or although it was tied to one of my books. But it's not that there's no trade, And even if we have all this U.S. manufacturing, which I described, we're still going to need inputs from abroad. And these things can also be negotiated. Trump's kind of, you know, acting with a pretty blunt instrument at the moment. And if no one wants to deal with them, it'll stay that way. But the door is open for talks.

And, you know, certainly U.S.-Canadian car industry, they ought to figure out a way to solve that. But how do you solve it when Canada's been free-riding for all these years? So I don't really The thing is Francis You have to have the attitude you don't care It's like China's myth too bad That's your problem

Figure it out Why isn't China reorientous economy To consumption from investment Half of which is wasted by the way I spent a lot of time in China I mean I've been to these ghost cities You know you go to one of them It's you know

I like I say I got mud on my boots But I got mud on my Italian loafers But I did go out to the construction sites And I said, oh, and I actually had a couple Communist Party chaperones. They were my hosts, you know. So they said, look at this. We have a high-rise hotel.

We have a country club. We have a conference center. We have apartment buildings. We have mixed-use office building, shops and everything. It's a, there's an airport nearby. It's a highway exit, et cetera. I said, yeah, but it's all empty. I mean, everything you said was true.

I saw it. I was there. And there was more going up, but it was all empty. You know, sometimes when you're, I was to say collecting information, you have to sort of have a, you know, you operate under a story, so to speak. And my story was I was there as a potential investor. And, you know, they pictured me as a big tenant, you know, although they don't realize hedge funds don't have a lot of employees necessarily. But as I was going through all this, they were really putting on a hard sell. but I looked down on the horizon,

there were two more ghost cities on the horizon. You could see them in the distance. They were building a whole string of them. Technically, that's GDP. I mean, there's real steel, real glass, real copper, real construction, 20,000 jobs through two years. That's all real. But when you're done,

if you apply generally accepted accounting principles, you'd write it off. You'd say that's where zero. I think Pricewaterhouse would make you write it down to zero. So my point being, the investment's real, But if you subtract the lost value, your GDP is grossly overstated. Even China have been coming down from 10% to 5%, which is about what they say, it's probably closer to two, two and a half when you adjust for the kind of waste I'm talking about.

And then maybe less than that. So China may already be in a recession. They lie about it, so we don't really know. But again, you have to have to have a little bit of an attitude of, you know, who cares? Well, come back to France's point, though, because his point was about you can do that. They're going to have a Taiwan, yeah. The most likely scenario for Taiwan rejoining the mainland China would be that one of the, the Kuomantang, the Taiwanese political party, makes it a goal when wins an election and opens negotiations with China. I mean, I'm not saying that that's not my forecast,

but I will say that's the most likely path, that the Kulentang would actually caused that to happen from the Taiwanese side. But you notice they have not been winning elections lately. Chinese invasion, it would be messy. I was in the chat. We were doing some more financial war gaming scenarios. I learned to keep my mouth shut about actually military logistics, but I was sitting next to a three-star general.

And we were using financial indicators to, as a predictive analytic tool, to see if China would invade Taiwan. So we had a whole list of factors. And I said this, General, I said, well, General, this all works. It's artificial intelligence, actually. We built systems like this. But, I mean, wouldn't you see it coming? Wouldn't you see like a million people going down

and getting on the boats and stuff like that coming over to invade Taiwan? Why do you need these indicators? He said, oh, you see it, but they do it four times a year. And it was they practiced the invasion continually. So the real artist, when is it real? He said they practice the invasion about four times a year, and they all do exactly what I said. We just don't know when it's going to be real or not.

And that's that I said, okay, I'll keep out of military planning. But isn't Trump's job? And I understand, and I understand the bullish nature, and I understand the top dog mentality. I get all of that. And America perfectly placed to make those kind of moves. But isn't, aren't we also ignoring Jim the other? other element of this, which is diplomatic, which is America is a policeman of the world. America is the strong man of the world. And part of being a strong man isn't just about being

robust, isn't just about taking on bullies. It's also finding the most appropriate way of doing this. And if by isolating China, we're being needlessly antagonistic. Well, it's not needless. We're trying to grow the US economy, create high. paying jobs. Actually, we build our defensive posture. Now, you know, during the Cold War, you know, we always say, well, the U.S. has fallen behind. Russia has more missiles or this or that. And the way to shut down that argument was just to say to, you know, look, it or well, who would you rather be? And you say, well, like I said, rather be the United States. And that's still true. But because of this world historic blunder in Ukraine with, you know, between 700,000, you know,

100,000 and a million dead Ukrainians basically wiped out a large part of a generation financed by the United States, by the Biden administration, and with all the weapons that we provided them. We've learned two lessons. I'll get back to China, but this idea that with the policemen of the world, we have that potential, but not anymore. I think the cops off the beat were focused more on diplomacy. I mean, diplomacy is the alternative to war. If you had better diplomats, you wouldn't have to be the policeman of the world. You would just work things out with, and, you know, Trump, Putin, are actually talking to each other. Why didn't Biden talk to Putin for three years?

They wanted the war. They wanted the war. We provoked the war, beginning of 2008 with the Bucharest Declaration by George Bush, George W. Bush, that Ukraine must join NATO. In 2014, you had MI6 CIA, you know, Kudatea, do it. elected government. Okay, the guy was a little pro-Russian, but he was elected, and he was overthrown. We put a U.S. puppet in place, you know, Victoria Nuland, the warmonger was out handing out cookies in Milan Square. That was all orchestrated by the United States. That was a coup d'etat. You know, they did that.

Yeah, sorry, you and I have talked about this before. What happened in Ukraine in 2014 is exactly what happened in this country in 1776. You had a revolution. It was supported by outside act as as every revolution history is. Well, I beg the difference, it was not a revolution. It was a, it was presented as a color revolution. It was actually a coup d'etat sponsored by, well, the American Revolution sponsored by the French. They spent so much money, they had their own revolution

because they ran out of money. Well, that's the French problem. The French were a big help during the American Revolution. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'll grant that. Okay, so we should support the neo-Nazis in Kiev. Is that our goal? Look, there are.

I spoke into the head of the U.S. German Marshall Foundation, basically it's a U.S. German NGO, and she was in all this happy talk about what we're doing in Ukraine. I asked her about the neo-Nazis, and she said, she'll have taken aback, but then she said, well, we've been told not to flirt with them. Those are her exact words. Look, there is, in, they're there.

No one's denying that they're there because... Okay, well, that's a good story. By the way, fighting for democracy? Hold on, no, no, Jim, hold on. You've got to let me answer what you're saying. saying. So President Zelensky, a Jewish man, is not a neo-Nazi. The people around him are not neo-Nazis. Yes, they are. No, they're not. Okay. Who close to Zelensky is a neonati? Well, Zaluzni, for starters. Zaluzni is not a neo-Nazi? Yes, he is. There is their, that is

their sympathy, their, banderites from, this goes back to the 1940s, we're re-fighting the battle of Kursk. There were neo-Nazis. There were Nazis in Ukraine. It wasn't even Ukraine at the time. There were some Ukrainian and nationalists who were absolutely evil, anti-Semitic and Nazis, but they're not in charge of Ukraine. They are a small force within Ukraine, but they're not in charge of Ukraine.

And Zalusni is not a Nazi. Come on, man. He sympathizes with that element in Ukraine. He doesn't have much choice. And by the way, Zelensky's term, leave aside the original election, his term expired in May 2024. He's been a military dictator ever since. No, again.

Hold on. term expired in May 2020. Yes, because this is what countries, when they're at war, they declare martial law. In the UK, was Churchill a dictator during the war? Well, in the U.S. We didn't have an election for 10 years. Well, we had an election in the United States in 1862 and 1864. In the middle of the Civil War, one of the greatest...

I know, but Ukraine is in Europe. It's not in America. European countries have always declared martial law and suspended elections in times of war. It's a standard thing to do. He's going to have an election when the war was over. That's why President Trump sent people to try and get other people to, instigate an election. And also, are you crazy? We're not having this.

Okay, well, he won't have an election when the war is ever. Yeah, he will. Come. Sorry. Let me finish my sentence. Sorry. He won't have an election when the war is ever because he won't be around. So that's, his days are numbered. And it's not clear that there'll be much left to Ukraine other than a landlocked

Trump state. So we'll see what happens. But my point was a little different, which, okay, fair enough, we may disagree on that. I have to say. I spent a lot of time thinking about a lot of problems, and I solve a lot of them, but some of them I can't solve. One of the ones I absolutely cannot solve.

I'm learning, trying to absorb as much as I can, is why the U.K., in particular, France is sort of a tagline, but why the U.K. is so committed to extending the war, you know, killing more Ukrainians, fighting the Russians, the Russophobia in the U.K., I don't understand it. There's no more natural alliance in the world than Russia and Germany, for example. Russia has, they have a lot of technology, of course, but massive natural resources, agriculture resources, etc. Germany doesn't have much land. That's why they always went looking for it at everyone else's expense.

But great technology, highly educated workforce and so forth. But the German economy is deindustrializing. It's almost in a state of collapse. I did take delivery on a new Audi recently, and I always read this. time you mentioned that, Jim. Well, but I have a footnote, which is I'm very careful about the specs, and I saw that the engine was made in Hungary. Now I'm okay with that. The Hungarians are also well-educated and productive and so forth. But I said, why is a Bavarian auto company outsourcing the engines

to Hungary? And the answer is energy costs. So Anglo-Merckel spent 14 years shutting down every coal-fired energy plant in Germany, closed all but two nuclear power. plants and then Germany acquiesce while our friends at MI6 and CIA blew up the Nord Stream pipeline. So the reason they're outsourcing to Hungary is Hungary has much lower energy costs. So why it's sort of industrial suicide. It is. It's because Europeans have gone insane on this net zero thing. Correct.

That's why. We're at a point where we actually need more CO2 emissions. It's plant food. We're going to kill all the plants to starve ourselves of death that we don't keep it. up the CO2. But come back to your point was... But I don't understand why the UK are such rabid war mongers about this. They wouldn't see it like that, Jim.

They would see that Putin presents an existential threat to Europe and obviously to Ukraine. It's an illegal invasion. He has a habit of doing these types of things. Also, as well, he has poisoned UK citizens on UK soil. He's a hostile actor. He's a hostile actor.

And he presents, they would perceive it, and I perceive it, he presents a very real existential threat. There are people in Lithuania, Estonia and other countries as well who are getting very nervous whilst looking at what Putin is doing. That's why Europe's concerned about it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He basically came to the rescue of the Russian-speaking population in Dombos in the eastern part of Ukraine. By the way, I... Jim, my family are Russian-speaking Ukrainians. None of them support what's happened, and they're all pro-Ukrainian. This is a very one-dimensional way of looking at this.

I would argue. There are many people, like my family mostly is in the south of Ukraine, quite close to the front line. This idea that if you're Russian-speaking Ukraine, that means... means you support Russia or you needed protection. Zelensky is a Russian-speaking Ukrainian. I understand that this is an argument. I think in Europe we see these things very differently because we're a little bit closer physically as well. Now, having said that, I mean, I think there's been also, we just had Boris Johnson on the show, for example. Oh, I was just going to bring him up, please. Right. So there's this idea that Boris Johnson went to the Ukrainians and prevented

them from signing a peace deal, right? And I was going to challenge Boris Johnson on this very thing, right? So I went and I looked at that claim where it came from. And it was a bunch of publications mostly on the right, which is fine with a lot of our guests are on the right. And they referenced an interview with Ukraine's lead negotiator, David Haramia, I think, or Rakhmi, his name is, right? I went and listened to that interview. He says the exact opposite of what these people are claiming. So there is a lot of stuff lying about, that's not the same. say that all the people pro-Ukraine are telling the truth all the time. But I think that we've got ourselves into these very two polarized narratives when I think actually the truth is, um, NATO expansion

is not something that Russia likes. I think we can all agree on that. And to that extent, you could argue that they will provoke. The counter argument to that, which no one ever puts, and I think it's worth discussing is, if NATO hadn't expanded eastwards, where would Putin's control over Eastern Europe be now? Would it still be where it? or would it be further west? And my argument is, of course, it would be further west because every time that Russia can expand westwards and it's strong, that's what it does.

Historically, that's why all these countries in Europe are concerned, because we know our own history. Why is the EU basically voided what would otherwise be a legitimate election in Romania? That I have no idea about. Well, again, it's another example of Europe's, you know, pretending to support democracy when, in fact, they support autocracy

or anything that the leading, it was Carly Jerjesco, it was the leading candidate in Romania who was, I don't want to say pro-Russian, but he was certainly against the war and willing to work with Putin, or with, you know, Russian Federation, but Putin's in charge,

as is the Slovak Republic, Hungary, Orban, certainly has an open line there. So you're not seeing Russia invade Eastern Europe. What you're seeing is Eastern Europe, come to their census about working with other powers and actually trying to get peace. But that's not true in Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, right? Those countries are very concerned. I mean, Finland and Sweden have joined NATO. That's how the concern they are. Yeah, yeah. Well, look, maybe we're just agree to disagree. What the thing is that we could

carry on for hours. Let's come back to economics. But I would do, sorry, I want to come back to Francis's point, which is about the U.S. being the world's policemen, so we're kind of off-duty, capable of that. But here's what Ukraine has revealed, the war in Ukraine has revealed, leaving aside causes and all that stuff. Our stuff doesn't work. Patriot missiles, Patriot missile batteries cannot shoot down a hypersonic missile. We cannot shoot down a Russianic missile.

A cruise missile, yes, they would go about 5,600 miles an hour, but these missiles are going 10,000 miles a hour. Yeah, the ballistic missiles are. So the Russians have blown up seven Patriot missiles. missile batteries using hypersonic missiles that there are a billion dollars apiece. Okay, so there's $7 billion out the window and you have no air defense. Bradley fighting vehicles, remember the famous offensive in 2023? We never know if it was spring, summer, winter, fall, because the Ukrainians kept walking,

but they launched this major offensive. Bradley fighting vehicles were left burning on the battlefield. The Challenger tanks, which are from the UK, the Leopard tanks, which are from Germany, the Abrams tanks from the United States, were all left burning on the battlefield. The United States actually called Ukraine and said, please don't use our Abrams tanks. It's very bad for sales. They were actually left in the rear echelons

because every time they attacked, the Russians blew them up. Our High Mars artillery's precision-guided artillery. It doesn't work because, well, they shoot them, but they go in cornfields because the Russians figured out how to jam the GPS, so they send them off course. I could list a lot of other systems,

but my point is, A, every one of these systems has failed. The Russians have no desire to go west of the Knape River, unless maybe the Ukrainians keep fighting, but if they wanted to, there'd be nothing to stop them. I'm not saying they will. I think they have no intention of that. I think that's just wrong. But if they did, there'd be nothing to stop them. NATO is a paper-michet alliance.

Now, 155-millimeter shells, there aren't any. We're out of them. We've taken down our reserves, and they said, Europe, you talk about Europe, a couple of years ago, they said, well, we're going to make a million shelves a year. They couldn't make any. They deindustrialized. You can't get this, you can create a plant to make 155 millimeter shells. It takes two or three years to get the plant going. The idea that they were delivering them, they actually authorized contacts to go around to illegal arms dealers around the world and try to scrounge up some shelves. Seriously, and they found some

that were like, I mean, a couple hundred thousand, I think in Saudi Arabia, that were, because the Czechs are very good at this, and they kind of got the nod. But they were like 30 years old. Nobody knew if they actually worked or not. We're out of 155 millimeter shells. And the U.S. isn't much better. The U.S. has a little productive capability.

So my point being, all of our premier, you know, advertise all of these magic solutions, not one of them worked. And not only did they fail and allow the Russians to do what they've done, but it makes no sense to rebuild these things to make more of them. We need completely, we need tens or hundreds of billions in R&D, completely new systems.

Yes. And by the way, this would be very good for the U.S. economy. This will all be domestic. But so the reason I'm talking about with the U.S. being the policemen in the world isn't just, you know, military interventions or supporting Ukraine. You have Iran at the moment. Iran is effectively sponsoring terrorism throughout the Middle East. Right.

You know, let's be honest. The war in guards, as awful it is, is a glorified proxy war. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then you've got, and then you're hearing that they're building military capabilities, nuclear capabilities. Right, right.

And you go, this is absolutely terrifying. This is terrifying with a nation that is genocidal when it comes to Jewish people and the land of Israel. Right. And you go, who else is able to step in and ensure that these things don't happen other than the United States? What, the French? the Germans, the Italians, the British.

We're all on our ass, Jim. You missed one, Israelis. The U.S. and the Israelis working together. Yeah. We've already denuded Iran of their air defenses. Look, it's a big country, physically, about a little less than 80 million people. Obviously, they have the oil revenue,

so I'm not saying that Iran is some kind of pushover. But there's a lot less there than ECA. Their regime is extremely unpopular with their people. The average Iranian is, you know, decently well educated or highly educated, you know, cosmopolitan. They've got a deep history and strong culture. They would love nothing more than to be, you know, not say Western, but part of the West. In other words, but they've got a leadership that is in the Middle Ages. And by the way, everything you said was exactly right, Francis.

And who financed it, the United States? Obama and Biden gave Iran 10. of billions of dollars, actually more than that, closer to $100 billion, left gold and pallets of currency on the runway. And by the third, they had to go to the Central Bank of the Netherlands to get euros because they couldn't give them dollars because they were kicked out of the dollar system. So when we gave them billions of dollars in cash on pallets, they were euros. But they put them to good use, financing the Hootis and Hezbollah and Hamas, you know, not as

much on the West Bank, but that was the whole, you know, Shia, you know, the Shiite. crescent. And by the way, one thing we haven't talked much about, that is, let's go back to Samuel Huntington, is because we're so secularized, people don't understand the importance of religion in everything we're talking about. Now, and this is a huge factor in Ukraine, getting back to Ukraine for a second, but regardless of political sympathies, the eastern half is Russian Orthodox. They look to the patriarch in Moscow, and the western half is more Catholic, and they look to the Pope and Rome. That's been going on for a thousand years.

But my point is there's no more natural solution than a peaceful division of the country, and even if it were still a separate country, an eastern and western Ukraine, one looking to the east, one looking to the west. And the people who did this, I was in the Slovak Republic. I was in Bratislava,

and I was a guest of one of the members of parliament. And he took me onto the floor of the Slovak Republic Parliament and has spent a lot of time with him. And I said, what they did was amazing because they, Czechoslovakia, which just as put together thing, they realized themselves internally that this wasn't a good fit, that splitting the country down the middle,

breaking into two republics, made a lot of sense. The people supported it. It was done through negotiations. It was done peacefully with referenda. There were no riots. There was no color revolution. There was no minor square, and there was no war. So a solution like that,

But going to your point, Francis, that's an example of, oh, it's internal, so not diplomacy in the strict sense, but diplomacy, negotiation, and good faith in action. And that's what Trump's trying to do. We finally have some diplomats. We had, you know, telling us up. But let me push back on that idea, Jim, because I agree with you, for the most part. And even with people like Putin, and even people like, gee, to assert, you know, those types of people you can negotiate. Iranian leaders are nutters, to put it mildly. Correct.

They're absolutely off their rocker, mental, completely insane, ideologues, Islamists. How much can you actually negotiate with somebody who is that insane, to put it bluntly? Well, they may not be open to negotiations for the reason you mentioned, but they do pay attention to financial sanctions. Now, we, Obama started. of financial war against Iran, not shooting, but financial with sanctions and so forth, in late 2007, early 2012. His goal was to get to this joint comprehensive memorandum for the JCPOA, which was joint comprehensive points of agreement, I think it is, but be it as it may, this nuclear deal

basically slow down the nuclear enrichment process in Iran. they did it. And, you know, they kicked them out of Swift. That's rare, but they did it. They cut off some oil exports. You know, obviously no loans or aid. Europe was helping us with that. And they got the Iranians to the table, and they negotiated this JCPOA. So I met with a Treasury official, Deputy Secretary, sorry, Deputy Assistant Secretary, who was in charge of this. And I said, nice job. I said, why did you stop? You were winning the financial war. Why didn't you dial up the pressure a little bit?

And they said, well, our goal was to get them to the table, and we did. And I said, yeah, and you negotiated a really, you know, a poor agreement. But when Trump came in, and then that was it, then we started giving them money once they signed that. Well, actually, it was never signed, actually. And experts have looked at the Persian and the U.S. versions of it and got expert translators, and they don't match. they don't match. So we didn't agree to anything, but we acted like we did. But when Trump got in, he instituted what was called the maximum pressure campaign. And that worked. No more gifts, no more pallets of money, no more gold, no more, you know, it was maximum pressure and the oil

exports were greatly affected and there was no money coming in. They were out of the banking system. And I did some work for the intelligence community and all this. My point being, it worked. And then Iran was not, I wouldn't say tottering, but there was, it was certainly, they were feeling the pressure. And what you didn't have was the kind of terror and wars and attack from Gaza and other things you've seen coming out of the Middle East. So who gets in next? But Biden, we're not talking about the 2020 election, although you haven't heard the last of that. But Biden gets in and again, turns on all the spickets, takes off all the sanctions, you know, reinstates their access to banking, oil exports go up, and we give them more money.

We release more frozen assets. So what happens next? The Middle East blows up. And so Trump's back, and what he's saying to Iran is, I'm going to do maximum sanctions, 2-0, but I'll give you a chance to talk first. And that's where we are right now. The door is open. I agree with you. They don't seem to get it.

By the way, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is basically, a criminal business enterprise. It does have military capability, it has terrorist capability, no doubt about it. But they basically have taken over about 40% of the Iranian economy and they just skim and they, I don't know where all their mansions are,

probably in Dubai, but they are, it's an utterly corrupt, whoever is not a theocratic extremist is a corrupt government official, not counting the everyday people in Iran. But the Israeli attacks last year did destroy most of the Iranian air defenses. The Iranians were a surprise. You know, the Russians can keep sending them S-400s or whatever, but we keep blowing them up.

So let me just interrupt you there, Jim, because what you're saying is very, obviously, is very interesting. We had Tony Abbott, former Prime Minister of Australia on the show a few weeks back, and he said its common knowledge among security forces, Iran is a few months away from being able to create nuclear weapons. That's true. Just to be fair, you didn't say security forces. He said if you talk to people who know.

Yeah. Yeah. Just for clarification. Now, if you listen to what people whose business it is to know as much as we can about this, if you listen to them, they seem convinced. that Iran is, it's more a matter of months than years. Months. Months.

So we are months away from the Ayatollah, potentially, like, maybe from... Unless something can be said or done that interrupt. interrupts their obvious march towards it. Now that is, that's terrifying, isn't it? And that really does mean that we need to take this incredibly serious. Well, it is true, based on my best information, but I'll say AB is very plugged in. So that's true. But it has been true for several years, meaning they have six months to go, but they stop the

clock. And so the clock's not ticking. Now, could they reactivate it? Yes. And could they have something in six months do a test? Yes. But they haven't. Why not? Because if they go down that road, they will be attacked. So they know that much. Jim, I want to come back to economics, because it's an interesting detail into geopolitics. And I think it's interesting to have a disagreement and discussion about those things. But actually, if someone's tuned into this going, I want to understand where the economy is going. We started with two interesting things. We're in a recession, probably. You said Trump's tariff's policy is the best policy in the world. Correct. Does that mean the U.S. is about to actually bounce back and have a good economic few years?

Not quite. No, it's a great question. The kind of expanding economy, first of all, everything I described would take a year to two years to really show us a effects in the best of circumstances. You know, I say high-paying U.S. jobs, yes. Foreign investment in the U.S., yes. But Honda's not going to build that plant in two months. It's going to take two years. Same thing with time on.

These things are going to take one or two years, even longer. I mean, semiconductor fabs are, they're like incredible laboratories. I mean, they've got to be built very slowly and very carefully because of, you know, particles and pollution and all. So this stuff will take years. But it'll happen. So I have a very positive outlook for 2026 and beyond. But 2025, we've got a hangover from Biden's Inflation Reduction Act.

Well, it was really Pelosi's Inflation Reduction Act, which was not only misnamed. That was the Green News scam in disguise. The Inflation Reduction Act, so-called, which increased inflation, by the way, was the Green News scam. And they gave John Podesta a $900 billion slush fund. and basically allow them to allocate it. Now, if you look at the line items that the money went to, they sound good. You know, we're going to help whirl people buy,

you know, put solar cells or solar modules on the roofs, and we're going to do this and going to do that. What they actually do is nothing. They hire their friends. They buy jets. They buy fancy office buildings, office suites. They travel around. They go to conferences.

They inflate their payrolls and they give money to the Democrats. That's where the money actually goes. And that's all being demonstrated, thanks to people knew it, but Elon Musk has got the, I hate to use cliches, but he's got the receipts. I mean, they can actually show all that. The Greener's scam has been a front for basically a massive multi-10 trillion dollar beyond wealth transfer from north to south.

Well, if you're in the south, why wouldn't you want that? If you're the middleman, why wouldn't you want that? So it's a graft, it's a scam, but people are waking up, not only waking up to it, I mean, the scientific evidence is very clear that no one, other than plant food, which is a good thing, no one quite knows what CO2 does. It's a trace gas. It's like a fraction of 1% of the molecules in the air. And, you know, it's mostly oxygen and hydrogen, a few other things.

So it's a trace gas. There's no evidence that CO2 causes warming. The evidence is the opposite. If there's warming, and there are a million reasons why that could be happening, it tends to release more CO2. So when you see, you know, this is the first thing you learn in statistics. You know, CO2 is going up. Temperatures are going up.

Oh, this must cause it. Well, no, it's actually the other way around warming. If it's happening, and that's debatable, it could cause a release of CO2. We probably need more CO2, as I explain. having said that. So the science, I mean, if he said, what causes climate change? I mean, they've given up on global warming. We just had the coldest winter in 40 years. But what causes climate change? We have a pretty good idea. It's solar cycles, volcanoes, ocean currents, subduction, a few other contributing factors that we can't control. No one thinks

that you can control the sun. Maybe I'll gore. But the point is there are things that we cannot control the evidence is clear in the third century BC you had the Roman warm period this is a big help to Hannibal getting over the Alps with his elephants around 1,000 AD you had the medieval warming period this is how the Vikings they only got to Canada there's some evidence they went up to the St. Lawrence River to some extent but they had farms in Greenland they were you know growing crops and livestock and the thriving community etc. Then it all went away. That's because it was actually I don't want to say warm, it's not tropical, but relatively mild in Greenland in 1,000 AD. Then from roughly the mid-14th century to the mid-19th century with some peaks and valleys was the so-called little ice age. In the 17th century they had ice fares. The Thames was frozen solid. You didn't need bridges. You could walk across the Thames on the ice and they had these fairs where you put up your booth and

you know, wares and everything on the river because it was frozen solid. This is, you know, Hans Berenker and the Silver Skates. Those canals in Holland, I've been to Eutrak, a number of times, haven't been in Amsterdam, but Eutrak has these lovely canals. They were all frozen solid. And then the thought began in the late 19th century, and maybe it's been warming a little bit since. The best measurement of water levels, actually, you know, we're here in New York down at the battery. there's a measurement, a gauge that's been monitored and recorded since the late 19th century,

around 1890, give or take a few years, shows that the oceans are rising at a rate of seven inches per 100 years, subject to reverse because these things tend to reverse over time. So seven inches in 100 years, it's not going to get Anderson Cooper's feet wet anytime soon. My point being, climate does change. The evidence is clear, and none of it had anything. to do with CO2 automobiles or emissions, etc. And yet, somehow that became a $900 billion slush fund for the Democratic Party. So that's all over. Some of the money's out the door. They're trying to get some of it back. A lot of this has been wasted. But to your point, Constantine,

that's the hangover. The inflation that we saw in 2022 and lingering, even today, it's not as high, but it's still there, was because of this pumping too much money into an economy that couldn't absorb it, and that is a cause of inflation. It's nothing with the Fed or money printing. That's all nonsense. It does have to do with fiscal policy and, you know, huge budget deficits. We had a, coming into Biden, we had a baseline deficit, like the deficit that's just there.

If he kept everything the same, a trillion dollars a year, which is a big number. But today, it's beyond $2 trillion a year. even if you cut a trillion out, which is, you know, good luck, they're trying. But even if you cut a trillion out, which is almost impossible, you'd still have a trillion dollar deficit left over. But we're trying to, by this Implation Reduction Act, I mean, there's new studies coming out showing that the impact of it will add $6 trillion to the deficit over a period of about 20 years.

And was it the way they scoring is a term of art, but the Congress has to say, score a piece of legislation to figure out how you're going to pay for it, et cetera. But they have a horizon. It's five years or seven years, depending on what the OMB wants. But it doesn't mean the law goes away in seven years. It just means that we're only going to count seven years. But as long as it's on the books, it goes on forever. And this new study from the Kato Institute shows that that actual cost is going to be, you know, in the tens of trillions of dollars. So can we get that amended or rescinded somehow? Let's see. But that's, you got to get rid of that inflation hangover. The tariffs will cause some supply chain disrupt.

They won't cause inflation, but they will cause some supply chain disruption. That's a bit of a headwind for the economy. These government layoffs haven't, you know, terminations, whatever you want to call them, haven't shown up in the unemployment figures yet. They will, but that's probably coming this summer because, you know, you get laid up and you get severance or you get a notice period or whatever, so you can't actually apply for unemployment until a little further down the road. So that's somewhat delayed. But that's coming. So we're going to see unemployment go up. We're going to see interest rates come down, but not for good reasons. There's something to cheer about, as I said, it's more sign of recession than there's no stimulus from it. That's

nonsense. So now, this was not orchestrated, but it's happening. Biden did what he did. Trump's got to get out of it. That's going to involve some short-term pain. But it's not gratuitous. The best example, best analog really, was Ronald Reagan. So Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. In 81, 82, we had the worst recession since the Great Depression. Now, we've had a worse one since, but at the time, that was the worst recession. Unemployment was over 10%. Inflation. Remember, my first mortgage was 13%.

I told my mother, she cried because her first mortgage was 2%. But I explained to my mother, I said, Mom, it's okay because my mortgage is 13%, but inflation is 15%. So it's actually negative 2 in real terms. I'm not sure my mother was whipping on that, but I said my real rate of interest is negative two. And I was in a 50% tax bracket at the time, and it was fully tax deductible.

So I got seven and a half, six and a half points back from Uncle Sam. So my real rate was negative eight. So borrowing money of 13% was smart in a world of 15% inflation and a 50% tax benefit. Today, the opposite of all that is true. So but Reagan got through that recession. then from 1983 to 1986, three years, it was, sorry, 83, 84, 85, up to 1986,

we had 16% real growth, real, not nominal. And he won re-election in 1984 with one of the greatest landslides in history because the economy was on that path. So when you have a real recession, you can come out of it gangbusters. I mean, it may be the case that the most of the U.S., U.S. is mature.

economy, the most we can grow in real terms, maybe three and a half percent. That's true over a long period of time, but for short periods where you're coming out of a recession, you can grow a four or five because there's a lot of access capacity that gets used up. Now, the most important thing for anyone trying to analyze the U.S. economy, you've got to look at Scott Besson's 333 plan. There was some talk about it in late December, during the transition, and then it kind of fell off, the radar screen, but this is what they're doing. It's one of the things they're doing. And what he meant by that is get the deficit to 3% of GDP, get real growth of 3% or more, and pump 3 million barrels a day more than we're currently pumping. So that's the 333 plan.

Now, what's the meaning of that? The oil speaks for itself, but obviously lower oil prices. By the way, I was in a debate with, I was talking to Peter Navarro, who's now the trade in the manufacturing czar for the White House. And I think we were talking about the war in Ukraine. I said, I said, Peter, you want to end the war in Ukraine, get oil prices down to $30. That will stop. The weapons won't stop Putin.

The money won't stop Putin, but $30 oil will stop him in his track. So he'll be at the table before you know it. I goes, ah, so that may be. That's definitely true. That is definitely. I know we've disagreed about Ukraine. Well, actually, if you look at the entire boom in the Russian economy under Vladimir Putin, it's basically been one thing, which is oil prices

have gone up, energy prices have gone up. Well, that's how they finessed it, and then they put the economy in a war footing. Yeah, there's a lot to the Russian economy, but Putin will be at the table in a heartbeat at $30 oil. So why have we done that, Jim? Because Biden won at the war. That's the point. Trump wants to end the war.

Trump's funny that way. He likes to end wars and stay bonds. In Europe, we have this net zero obsession. Yeah, and that's keeping oil prices high. Well, absolutely, because, well, you know this better than that. We have industrial energy prices in the UK are four times what they are in the US. And that is because we refuse to produce our own energy

and then we put all sorts of difficulties and tariffs and rates and whatever. This is just madness. So what I don't understand is why don't Europeans? Europeans do not want this war. Absolutely do not want this war. Why haven't we just started making our own energy and... I actually blow up the

Nord Stream pipeline. Well, I believe, my view on that is that the Americans blew it up because it's good for them so that they can export their energy to Europe. Well, I think the,

obviously the Americans as the Brits blew it up to basically keep Germany from, you know, keep Germany in line, basically. Yeah, it keeps them dependent on U.S. energy. But Biden did everything

possible to keep the price of oil high. Shut down the T-Stone Excell pipeline. It took millions about millions of acres of federal land off the table.

in terms of exploration for oil and natural gas. And then they, that, I know, is it Karin, Jean-Pierre, whatever name was she say, well, there are like 5,000 leases that were just given out. They're all dry holes. I mean, yeah, they got the leases and they drilled. There's nothing there. I said, okay, let's go over to the next place.

Sorry, off limits. It's a national park. So some people might be watching this, and there will be a lot of people who watch our show that I agree with you about Ukraine, which is totally, you know, people are right to have different opinions. Let's explore the argument that you're making so that people have at least heard it.

Why did Biden won the war? Because they wanted to topple Putin. The Ukraine is a, the million dead, million dead Ukrainians is a world historic tragedy. Of course. Completely unnecessary. It's a war that never should have happened. Having said that, we sponsored it, the UK, Europe sponsored it

because we wanted to topple Putin. But if you topple Putin, you're probably going to get someone worse. Of course. So why do they want to topple Putin? Because they don't know anything about Russian history. They don't understand Russia. They don't, you know, the people, constantly, we're all kind of captives to our own upbringing

in the academic sense. And what I mean by that is, you know, I did graduate work in economics and international relations during the 1970s, the absolute height of the Cold War. And I had a certain view of things. But the policymakers in the Biden administration talking about George Kent,

George Kent, Fiona Hill, Victoria Newland, and Tony Blank and Jake Sullivan and the whole warmonger, last. Their formative years were in the 1990s. What was going on in the 1990s? You had Boris Yelsohn, who was a complete drunk. And so, you know, the Soviet Union formally dissolved on Christmas Day, 1991. You now have the Russian Federation. Gorbachev steps aside. Yeltsin comes in. And it was like Chicago in the 1920s. It was gang warfare, machine guns in the streets of Moscow. But the U.S. advisor came in and said,

we'll show you how to build a stock exchange. We'll show you how to privatize. They did privatize these companies, and they handed out the shares to everyday Russians. And what the oligarchs did, they set up card tables in the lobbies of apartment buildings. And when people come home from work, like, hey, I'll buy your shares.

Like, yeah, thanks, here. Here's some Rupils to give me the shares. And they aggregated these shares, but there could have been multiple factions with, you know, 20% each or 30% each. And then they just got the machine guns out and they killed each other. I've been to Moscow.

I've seen all these oligarch limo entourages and so forth. I was in one that was with my, my Sherpa, my translator. I don't speak Russian, but I've been there. And these three black SUVs with tinted glass pull up at the hotel all in a row. And he goes, hold on a second. Watch this. There's some oligarch here, you know. So the first car and the second car, all the doors open,

all these security guys get out there, form a security perimeter. You know, you can see they got. guns under their jackets, everyone's looking around, and this will be great, let's see who it is. And the door opens, and two nine-year-old girls and party dresses came out, but they were the daughters of all the girls. He only do a birthday party.

But Americans who were coming of age, meaning 20-something, 30-something, let's say 20-something, getting their graduate degrees in their Georgetown, you know, ticket punched and all that stuff, looked at that and said, Russia is a pushover. They're falling apart, weak leadership, huge wealth, we can basically dictate what happens there, we can carve it up.

It was an imperial ambition based on a perception of Russian weakness. The problem was that Putin came along and restored Russian pride. By the way, Putin's support does not come from the oligarchs. He hates the oligarchs. And they hate him. But what he did, I forget the guys, honestly, Berzovsky, the Ucos had. Kodokovsky. Kornikovsky, sorry, put him in jail for, you know, trumped up,

But the message to the other oligarchs that say, you can keep your money, you can keep your companies, but keep out of politics. And they got the message and they stayed out of politics. Putin's support is from the military, the intelligence services, everyday Russians and the church. He built bridges to the Russian. Well, the head of the Russian church is also a former KGB agent, so that was easy. Okay, well, the point is his base of support is solid, his popularity ratings, actually true. They're in the 80%. I wouldn't go that far, but he's popular in Russia.

Okay. So my point being, the warmonger class, the people who started this war and provoked this war, came up at a time when Russia looked like easy pickings. Putin pulled the rug out from under them. They hate Putin. They want to go back to a broken-up Russian Federation, seven or eight different countries, easy to manipulate. They're profoundly disappointed that the not. 90s, the party, their point of view, the party of the 90s didn't carry on in the 21st century. Putin ended the party. They hate Putin. So that's where they're coming from. So therefore, they provoke this

war, again, starting in 2008. Minsk won, Angler-Mirical said, we never intended on keeping our promises. She said that publicly. And, you know, again, Maidan, we may disagree. And my view, that was, well, not view. There's good evidence. So that was a coup d'etat. And then a couple months later, Putin took Crimea. And then they, you know, they basically, there was talked about Georgia joining NATO.

And in August 2008, Putin invaded Georgia. So what part of an invasion did the West not understand? We were crossing the red lines. But he said, okay, I'll take Crimea, I'll take Georgia, your move. And so there came a time when the West should have said, okay, he's serious. By the Putin doesn't bluff. And whatever you think of him, he does not bluff. He's very, his two sports are chess and martial arts.

And he's very thoughtful. He gives things a lot of, good listener, gives things a lot of consideration. And when he says something, he means it. So that's the other Western fallacy. He's bluffing. He'll never do it, you know. So we've got Russia all wrong, but it was a class of, you know, public intellectuals and scholars and so forth who grew up at a time when Russia looked like a pushover,

and they never got over it. I suppose there one counter argument. to that, Jim, is, wouldn't that class have learned from the disaster that was Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., particularly Iraq, where we had this grandiose idea that we were going to come in, we were going to overthrow Saddam, it was all going to be the land of milk and honey, democracies, blah, blah, blah, and it's turned into a hellhole and millions of people have died, and it's been a tragedy. Correct. Well, great question, and the answer is, no, they haven't learned. We wouldn't have had the war in Ukraine if they had learned anything from Iraq.

We wouldn't have had, you know, the situation in the Middle East today if they had learned anything from, oh, Iraq was a good object lesson. So the answer is great question. They should have, but they didn't. But it kind of, we get, you know, we get set in our ways, you know. But I say they're formative years where time when we won the first Gulf War. I mean, people were killed, but with relative ease, as wars go, I've been to Kuwait a number of times. They love Americans.

They always say thank you when you get off the plane. So, no, that was a time, and they are warmongers. They are, you know, the neocons. And they believe in a kind of U.S. imperialism. It's not just the policeman of the world, it's the dictator of the world, if you want to put it that way. But anyway, getting back to oil, Biden did everything possible to keep the price of oil

as high as possible for two reasons. One, they wanted to make solar modules and other substitutes, you know, the windmills and solar modules and all this stuff, more affordable. not, never will be, but on a relative basis, they became a little bit more affordably subsidizing Tesla's. I lived in a town where a lot of people had Tesla's, and every time I saw one, I wanted to pull them over and asked for my $7,000 back because I'm a taxpayer, and this guy got a $7,000 subsidy. So, but again, I mentioned Keystone Pipeline, Federal Oil and Gas Drilling,

cutting off drilling in the Gulf of America, and so they did everything possible to keep oil high basically to keep the war going. And again, if you want to stop the war, get the price of oil down to 30, which is... Wait, that doesn't make sense to me. Maybe I'm a misunderstanding, but I understand you think they wanted war in order to get rid of Putin,

but making oil more expensive gives Putin more money. If you wanted to overthrow Putin, you would collapse oil price, wouldn't you? Yeah, but they didn't. Well, that was because of the greener scam. I mean, the high price of oil was because of the greenews scam. They wanted gas at the punt to be $10. It didn't get there, but it got pretty close in California.

But isn't that deeply unpopular with the American people? They don't care about the American people. They care about winning elections. Yeah, and they learn the hard way that they're never going to win another election if they keep going. But here's the thing, Constantine. Ideologs are ideologues. The root of ideologue is idea. They have an idea, and they're having an idea.

head and they're impervious to facts. They're impervious. You just advance a good argument. Francis, you've advanced some good arguments. Hopefully I have. But my point is ideologues are impervious to logic and facts. They just have an idea. And if you believe in the green new scan, if you think that, and by the way, it was it was a grip, some people were getting rich over it. But if you thought CO2 was warming the planet, which it's not, and if you thought that you had to go to net zero and substitute solar modules. I mean, I built the largest solar module array in New England, non-commercial. So there are towns and industries that are bigger ones, but I have the biggest privately owned solar array in New England. And it produces 7.5 kilowatt hours. And it powers my

house very nicely, so long as it's not snowing. You know, then you get into batteries. You don't run off of solar power. You run off of batteries and all that. I cleared three acres to do it. Some guy was arguing with me. He said, you don't need three acres for nine towers, which is what I have. I said, well, you don't in Arizona, but you're doing New England. We have trees, and you don't want the trees falling on your towers. But my point being, so I built that, and I know how much of course.

I know how it works. I know what the shortcomings are. But that's still run one house. And I didn't do it for environmental reasons. I did it to be robust from a power grid failure, which is a completely separate issue. So I had my own reasons. But my point is I know a little bit about it. And I know that it doesn't work at night.

It doesn't work in bad weather. Batteries are very expensive. And the idea that you can power cities or factories on these things is nonsense. They're trying. They're spending the money on it. But it's a complete waste. But my point is high oil prices were crucial to doing that. I don't know whether they ever made.

So they didn't fan, to your point, gusting. They didn't think Putin was going to get the money. Yeah, the oil prices were that high. But the other side of that coin was cut off his oil exports, blooded industrial pipeline, you know, shut down, bears transler boots, et cetera, did others to join in the boycott. And Russia wouldn't actually get the money.

They did. The boycott never were Europeans. They're still buying oil. I mean, that's the crazy part. There's still guests. There's still Russian natural gas going through Ukrainian pipelines to Central Europe. and Ukraine gets a toll charge for that,

and Russia's getting the money. So it's like Western Europe is paying Russia to fight in Ukraine, and Ukrainians are collecting money from the Russian pipeline to fight the Russians. I mean, we're financing both sides of the war. But the fact remains, get oil down, and Putin will come to the table if he hasn't already. But we're going to do that, and that's coming,

and that's very beneficial for the U.S. economy. That's another reason to be bullish in the long run, despite the short-run adjustment. But getting back to 333 for a minute, the deficit is 3% of GDP or less and real growth to 3% or more. What's the significance of that? We can talk for economics for hours.

I love doing it, but there's only one number that really matters. It's the debt to GDP ratio. Everything else is either derivative of that or it's driven by that. That's the most powerful exponential. And that's terrible right now. Correct.

So there's been very great research by Ken Rogoff at Harvard, Carmen Meinhardt, and they've not only collaborated on books and papers, but they've done their own. You give Carmen and Reinhardt, enormous credit. But what they showed is that up to a 90% debt to GDP ratio, there is a Keynesian multiplier, people mock it, but it's real. It doesn't mean you're investing productively, but you borrow a dollar, you spend a dollar, and you get more than a dollar of GDP. You might get a dollar 50, you get a dollar 25.

But like every, not every, but like many phenomena, it's subject to diminishing marginal returns. So what's the critical threshold, as physicists would say, well, it's about 90% debt to GDP. And by the way, this is why Maastricht and Merkel assist on 60%, because they didn't want to get close to 90. So as you get closer to 90, borrow a dollar, spend a dollar, $1.50, $120, $110, $10, $90% debt to GDP. Now you borrow a dollar, you spend a dollar, and you get $0.90 cents of GDP, and then progressively less. So you're right. The United States is at about 125% highest in history, higher than the end of World War II. At least we won the war.

Now we're not winning anything. Who's at our lunch table? Greece, Lebanon, you know, those are the other, Japan's, they're in a world of their own, but that's about closer to 300% debt to GDP. But a quick sidebar, I had a discussion with Sakhi Kabarasan.

He was known in the 1980s as Mr. Yen. He was a deputy assistant finance minister. His job was to manage the currency. I said, I said, Sakki Kbaran, I mean, your debt to GDP is like 300%. You know, you've been in a depression since 1990. You've had nine separate technical recessions,

but all within the confines of one 30 year plus, remember the last decade? It'll announce like in the fourth lost decade. You've been in depression for like almost 40 years. And he said, but Rickerson, you're missing something. So what's that? It goes, our population is declining. So our per capita GDP figures look much better

than our aggregate GDP figures. And I knew what he meant. And I said, oh, well, you're absolutely right. I mean, you go to Ginzel the lights are on. So I said, so where this ends up, there's one person left in Japan, and she owns the whole country. He didn't think it was too funny. But that's the reducto out of absurd and where Japan's going, but leaving that aside. So what's Trump going to do about the Japanese?

What Trump's going to do? Now, Americans like bang the table about paying off the national debt. It's never going to happen. We haven't paid off the national debt since Andrew Jackson, 1836. was the last time the U.S. was debt-free, where you don't have to pay it off. What you do have to do is roll it over, which is the genius of Alexander Hamilton.

He figured that out. So what makes it sustainable? Interest rates cannot get too high, and the dollar cannot collapse. Because this plays out in the foreign exchange markets. Everyone is focused on interest rates. Okay, fair enough, but you've got to look at the foreign exchange markets as well. And by the way, if you want to put a thermometer in the patient's mouth, look at the dollar price of gold.

the dollar price of gold because everyone's like strong dollars. I mean, it's been down a little bit the last couple of months, but for a year and a half, the dollar was hitting new all-time highs, you know, DXY, Bloomberg Index and so forth. Well, against the euro, yeah, against yen, Swiss francs and pound sterling, yes, but they're all passengers in the same lifeboat. They're all going to sink or swim together. You're comparing currencies to currencies when you use those indices. what's the one yardstick, the one metric where you can gauge the value of the dollar

without using another currency? The answer is gold. And with the dollar, you know, it used to be, it wasn't that long ago. It took $2,000 to get an ounce of gold. Now it takes $3,000. Well, that's a one-third collapse in the value of the dollar if you're using gold as your yardstick, which I do. But so all you have to do, you're not going to pay off the debt.

The debt's going to grow. The debt's going to get bigger. But this, you know, $36 trillion, it's a big scary number, but it doesn't matter. Come back to that ratio. If you see that ratio going from 125 to 120, 115, 110, and it was heading in the right direction, that's a sign of improving health. That's a sign of sustainability. The market will continue to roll over the debt.

So the math, at least for me, it was fifth grade math. I'm not sure what ATC these days, but what you need to do? you need to grow the economy faster than the debt's growing. But here's the key. When we do this ratio, you're in nominal space. I'm a big hawk on you. You've got to be real, take out inflation. Let's talk real numbers.

But this is one where it's nominal. If I owe you a dollar, I owe you a dollar. It's interesting if it's worth 90 cents or a buck 25, but it's a nominal number. So if you have 3% real growth, which is what Besson wants, but inflation is 2% or 3%, which it is, you're going to have five and a half, six percent nominal growth. So if you get the deficit to 3 percent of GDP and nominal growth is, nominal growth is five or six percent, three real, three plus two, five or six real, guess what's happening? The ratio is shrinking.

In other words, the economy, the nominal economy is growing faster than the nominal debt. That means the ratio is going down and we're getting healthier. And that's his goal. Except that's what Trump's going to do. That's interesting, Jim. But this is probably a very stupid question, so feel free to clarify. But if you also at the same time have a giant budget deficit, your debt is also going up at the same time. It doesn't matter.

No, it matters what you're spending it on. You can be wasting it. So I agree with that. I'd love to see the deficit come down, but it doesn't matter. What does matter, is the deficit growing more slowly than the economy? Yes. The deficit is what? Well.

How quickly is the deficit grow? Well, let's step back for a second. Let's not, maybe I'm confused. We have to separate deficit and debt. Yes. The deficit's the annual, it adds to the debt. Yes. That's why I brought it up. I'm talking about the debt to GDP. But let's just say there's a large deficit. But debt to GDP, sorry, I'm just trying to get clarity on what I'm saying. Debt to GDP is dependent on debt, and debt is going to increase if you have a budget deficit. Correct. And we will have, you're right. And we will have deficits and the debt will increase. Yes. But that doesn't matter as long. as the nominal economy is growing faster than the debt. Yeah, okay.

That means the fraction is going down. Yeah, no, that I understand. And we're heading in the right direction. By the way, we did this already. In 1945, at the end of World War II, the debt to GDP ratio was 120%. The highest in US history up till that time, it's higher today. 120%. In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was sworn and it was 30%.

How did we get from 120% to 30%? Well, the debt didn't go down. The debt grew enormously. We had deficits, not every year, but most. of those years. You grew the economy. We grew the economy faster than the debt. And that was the key. And we kept inflation under control. So what struck me about them? I studied that. I looked at debt, look at the death cycles throughout U.S. history. By the way, the idea that Hamilton borrowed money that's been going up ever since is not true. The U.S. debt and the debt to GDP ratio,

which is the key, is more of a sign where it goes up and down and up and down. When does it go up? a war. When does it go down in times of peace? There was one exception to that, which was the Bush and Obama administration, and Obama in particular, that's when it skyrocketed it and there was no war. Now, we did have the war in Iraq in 2003, and the war in terror, if you want to count that, but not exactly Vietnam and World War II or Korea. But the point is, we would run up the debt and we'd win the war, and then after the war, we'd bring it down again. This was the first time after I would, and Reagan took the radio, ratio from 30% to 50%.

He was a big spender. But 50 is still manageable, but again, we won the Cold War. So we got something for it. But since Santa's just been going straight up. But what struck me about that post-World War II episode going for 120% to 30%? It was bipartisan. It was Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and you had Republicans, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford. So it was not a political issue. It was an American issue. And they both parties, over decades, worked together to accomplish it.

We could do that again. Scott Besson is trying to move us in that direction. So that's where the 3-33 comes in. Keep deficits at 3% of GDP, grow the economy at 3% or more, and $3 million barrels of oil will lower the price of oil. That's what they're doing. That's a winning strategy. But I don't really see the payoff until 2026 and be.

on. At 2025, we got the Biden hangover and we have to get through it. Jim, great to have you back. We're going to go to Substack and ask you questions from our supporters. Before we do, we always end with the same question, which is what's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Before Jim answers a final question at the end of the interview, make sure to head over to our Substack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see this. What does Jim make of Trump's desire to economically subjugate Canada. What in your opinion are the safest investments in the current economic climate? Why is it quantitative easing in the US and the UK, but printing money in Zimbabwe and

via my Germany? Well, I don't think anyone, we touched on this briefly, but I don't think anyone's talking enough about religion, and I'm not proselytizing, I'm not preaching religion, I'm just saying that to ignore the cultural value and the cultural impact and the behavioral impact, a religion on people's lives all over the world. I just returned from two weeks in India. Hard to find a good Catholic there. There's some, but... You need to go to go with you. But 200 million Muslims, more than Pakistan, which was the original Islamic State, but there are more Muslims in India, more than any other country in the world, except Indonesia,

which is somewhat more, but... Well, 220 million. And approximately one billion Hindus, very large, well actually not so large Buddhist population, but they're well six Jains. And everybody gets along. I mean I know in the past, I understand the history, I've said it closely, but it's a very, very peaceful country, but there's not even,

the notion of a separation of church and state kind of doesn't exist because religion is so much a part of what everybody does every day. You care about your religion, but you don't think about it as like something I do on Sunday or one day away. Yeah, you go to the temple, et cetera. But it infuses the culture, the population. And one of the reasons that they're so adamant about not giving the states too much power,

the history of India is just fractured. I mean, 1947 was the first time it was ever United Kingdom. Even under the Mogul Wampers, there were Hindu leaders in the South and so forth. We talked about Ukraine. We talked about the Slovak Republic. We talked about Putin and the church. It's a, you know, Samuel Huntington said, and this is the early 90s, he said, take a map of the world, put transparency on it, and draw lines.

Every place is bloodshed. And Northern Ireland at the time, but fortunately not true today, but Middle East, obviously, but there were these, there was killing all over the world along these lines. He said, now take another transparency and draw the dividing lines among the major religions and put one over the other and you'll discover they're the same, that the explanatory power of religion in terms of where the world is fighting is extremely powerful, and yet we don't talk about. So I would say that's one for the next time.

Does Jim believe Trump is actively promoting cryptocurrency? If yes, what is Trump's motivation?