 The radical, fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Iran Book Show. All right everybody, welcome to Iran Book Show on this beautiful Tuesday. Well, it's really noon over here, but I know for most of you it's very early. I appreciate you getting up early in the morning. Chandler has his coffee, that is good, and everybody's sitting there hopefully sipping a cup of coffee. While we do the show, Robert says, thanks for the support, Robert. Robert says, good morning, fans of Iran. I'm jealous of the West Coast listeners since the show's a great way to start the day and they get to listen at 8 a.m. Yeah, absolutely. I get to, you know, start planning the show at 8 a.m., so there you go. All right, everyone, we got another full day of news. There's a ton happening in the world. I only, I don't know if I had a whole list made up of stuff. I think I'm going to start though off, not kind of in the order we have it in. We'll get to that in a minute. Just a quick reminder, we do use the super chat for the morning shows. You can ask me questions, pretty much about everything. News-related stuff is preferred since this is a news-related show in the morning. But you can ask about anything. We have a target of $250. We try to make it every day so that we can keep on track and make these shows worthwhile for me to keep doing. All right, let's jump right in and let's start with what I think is the most important news item of the morning, although markets don't know exactly what to make of it all. And that is the inflation number. The consumer price inflation number came out today and was significantly below expectations of economists and others. It came out, the expectation was that month of a month, the basket of goods that is the CPI, which is just a basket of goods and it's a whole equation of how to calculate it and how to weight the different products within it and how to take into account the idea of quality increases and so on. So it's not a simple formula. It's a complicated formula that the Fed has adopted. Anyway, the CPI, which was rising at significant levels, it was rising at 0.6% a month and last month I think it was, it rose at 0.4% a month. You can extrapolate that over a year and see what that is, it compounds, it's a significant increase. Well, it only rose 0.1% in November, so that is significantly below expectations. The expectation was 0.3% in November. That is, at least for now, a good sign with regard to inflation. It probably signifies that inflation is slowing. Inflation has been slowing since it peaked in June and it's been slowing since then. It kind of had a little surprise uptick in September, but then in October, November it's been significantly slowing. This has a vast implication to our standard of living and our quality of life. It has vast implications, the cost of everything that we consume. But it also has big implications in terms of what the Fed will do next. That is, the Fed has been increasing the short-term interest rate at 75 basis points. That is 0.75% every time it meets, last time was last month. It is expected to increase interest rates today is Tuesday. Tomorrow, when it meets tomorrow, it's starting its meeting today, it meets over two days and it will meet tomorrow. But it will probably only increase it by 50 basis points because of this inflation number going down. The raising the interest rates is supposed to slow the economy, which is supposed to slow consumption. That is slow demand, which encourages people to keep their money in the bank and not actually go out and spend it. Which is supposed to slow inflation, right? So now that inflation is slowing, maybe increase in interest rates will slow down. Those increase in interest rates clearly hamper economic growth. They make the cost of everything more expensive in terms of debt. It's tricky economically because they do make things more expensive. At the same time as they're raising interest rates, everything becomes more expensive. But it also reduces demand. So what plays a bigger factor? There's also the expectation of inflation that companies and individuals have. If you expect inflation, then you demand wage increases. If you expect inflation, you raise prices in anticipation of inflation, even before the inflation actually happens. So there are a lot of moving parts to the whole inflation numbers. Not only is the Fed increasing interest rates, but the Fed is also selling some of the bonds that it had accumulated. Really, since the financial crisis all the way through COVID, all the way through really April this year, it's been selling some of those. By selling bonds, what happens is they get money. So you give them money, you get a piece of paper called the bond, and that money is basically burnt. That money disappears, it goes away. So that's how they're shrinking slowly the amount of money in the economy, the amount of money in people's hands. Again, in an attempt to reduce demand and reduce inflation. All these things are going on. And that's why its economic prediction is so difficult. And of course the actual theory of economics today is so primitive, so that only adds to the fact that economic prediction is so difficult. So it's important that inflation is lower than expected. It's important for your expectations about the cost of your living into the future. It's also important in terms of what the Fed will do. The higher the interest rates, the more aggressive the Fed is with the interest rates, the more likely there is to be a recession, the more likely it is that the recession be deep. I still expect a recession next year. I've been expecting a recession next year all year, so I haven't changed my mind about it. But clearly the more aggressive the Fed becomes, the deeper that recession will be. So again, expect a recession, plan for a recession. Worst case scenario doesn't happen, but you're in a good position. Planning for a recession means save and be open to looking for new work and everything else. Wes, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Same Adam and the same for Mike. Mike, thank you guys for contributing to the show. Really appreciate it. Let's see. Adam has a $50 question that is related, so I'm going to jump in with this. He says deflation plus GDP going to zero equals recession. What do you mean by deflation? We don't have deflation. Fed won't cut till inflation is way lower than 7%. Carefully chasing equities here. Corporate profits are going to be way down for three, six months. They seem to be ignored by the market. Yeah, but this is the problem. Inflation is 7% looking backwards. That is the last 12 months inflation. But if you take 0.1% prices rising this month and let's assume that's what it's going to be for the next year, then forward-looking inflation, which is what really matters, not backward, is history. Forward-looking inflation is 0.1 to the 12th minus 1. So whatever that number is, it's just over 2%, maybe. It's around 2%. So it's a lot lower. It's within its range. Now, the fact that it's 0.1 this month doesn't guarantee that it'll be 0.1 next month and it could be 0.5 next month. Who knows? But it won't be 1.2 because that doesn't take into account the compounding effects. It'll be 1.5 or 1.4. I don't know. You do the compounding. I can do compounding in my head. So it's going to be higher. So we're heading towards recession. There's no question about disinflation. Yes, disinflation, you're right, not deflation. But inflation is not 7%. The Fed will raise interest rates. I don't know what inflation will be next month. But again, it's on a path to be significant lower. If you take out energy and food, the reason they do this is energy and food are very volatile. Energy was way down in November. Food was way up in November. But overall, because energy is so important, it was all, you know, it overall was lower. The core inflation, like the core CPI, which excludes energy and food, was up 0.2. So overall, energy and food had a downward pressure on inflation, even though food went up a lot, energy went down and had a bigger impact. Anyway, we're going to see when inflation lands up. Of course, the fact that inflation is coming down does not mean that it will stay down. It doesn't mean that it can't jump up. In the 1970s, it certainly went up and down through a period. But we'll see. It does look like the Fed, by raising interest rates, is committed to lowering inflation. So anyway, we will see. I don't know what you guys are doing in the calculation stuff, but at 12 minus 1 is 0.012, 1.2%. I'm not going to bother with the compounding right now. So energy prices fell, food prices rose, shelter prices are rising, but that's primarily because they rose in the past and rents are adjusting. I think overall that is pretty stable. Anyway, we will see. Wages are increasing, have been increasing quite a bit. And, you know, we'll see how it all plays out in terms of inflation. I do think that we are, I agree with Adam, we are heading towards a recession. It's interesting to note markets, markets, God, I don't have it opened with me, but markets initially responded to the lower inflation number very positively. Since they've cooled off a little bit, they're still positive overall, but a lot less than initially. They've gone up and now they've come down. They're still above zero for the day. NASDAQ needs up 2% for the day, which is very good. So markets overall view this as a very positive indication. Generally, higher interest rates are bad for asset prices, bad for stocks, bad for real estate, bad for any income-generating asset. So if inflation is lower, interest rates will go up less in the future than anticipated, so asset prices should rise, all else held constant. All right, let's see. That was inflation. Let's go. Okay, so SBF got arrested yesterday in the Bahamas. He's been indicted now in the United States, so the United States will probably ask the Bahamas to extradite him to the U.S. He is indicted on charges of fraud. The charges are quite extensive, and I think they will be kind of a work in progress. I think you'll see that the charges are going to be... Where is that? I had that. There it is. The charges will adjust as they study more and they discover more, but so far he's violated anti-fraud provisions of the Security Act of 33 and 34, and they're seeking junctures on him for future security law violations that will prohibit him from participating in issuance purchase off or sale of any securities except for his own personal account, but that's just an injunction. That's not... If he's prosecuted for fraud, he will spend time in jail, and he's found guilty, of course, of fraud. He will spend real time in jail. In spite of his Democratic Party connections, he will be in jail. He's charged with orchestrating a scheme to defraud equity investors in FTX trading, diverting FTX customer funds to crypto trading from Alameda Research, which we talked about when we talked about FTX, while raising more than $1 billion from investors. So the real crime was not so much a diversion of FTX customers. It was the fact that when he raised the money from investing, investors, he did not disclose that that was going on. So the fraud is towards the investors that invested in FTX, $1.8 billion, while he was... Well, he didn't disclose any of that. Reading from the SEC document, he alleged that Sam Beckman-Fried built a house of cards and a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto. So he lied to investors, that's fraud. It's going to be very, very difficult. This is objectively, this is not just some SEC crazy regulation. This is real stuff. So he was first arrested by Bahamian authorities at the request of the U.S. authorities. And it's interesting, this happened just hours, just before he was going to go and testify in front of Congress. He was going to do a Zoom, I guess, with Congress and testify in front of Congress. So this has prevented him from testifying in Congress. I think that's what the SEC wanted. They did not want him testifying in Congress and present a whole song and dance about this. They wanted him behind bars. Let's see. So SEC's move forward, we'll follow this case. We'll be following for a while. Just as an aside, Binance, which we talked about when we talked about FTX, Binance is indeed the largest crypto exchange in the world, significantly larger than FTX, run by a guy named CZ. They all go by CZ, but it's CZ. They all go by the initials. Anyway, Binance, which was supposedly the safest, the biggest, is seeing net outflows of money out of the exchange. People withdrawing this. They have stopped trading in one significant crypto, one of the so-called stablecoins. I say so-called because many of them have not turned out to be very stable. It's going to be interesting. Binance is a much, much bigger player than FTX. It's hard to see what happens to crypto if Binance really collapses. I'm not saying it will. I talked about Binance just a few days ago on this show, maybe yesterday, saying that it might be shaky, that shakiness has resulted in people taking money out. All of that is problematic. All of that is a challenge. So crypto, it's not over yet. What's interesting, though, is Bitcoin is way up today. Bitcoin is now an asset that is completely correlated, financialized, that's completely correlated with the NASDAQ. When the NASDAQ goes up, Bitcoin goes up. The NASDAQ comes down, Bitcoin comes down. But what also happens is Bitcoin comes down when bad stuff happens in crypto. So Bitcoin has a double whammy on the downside and only one upside. But it's interesting to me how correlated Bitcoin is. Bitcoin went up because inflation numbers are down, which suggests it's not a hedge against inflation. It's exact opposite. But it's fascinating. A lot of what the crypto bros have been telling us about crypto and which I've been objecting to for the longest time. I hate to say I was right again, but I've been right at least so far about the way crypto behaves. All right. So SBF arrest and we might see more trouble in crypto land with the potential of some issues with Binance. All right. A really interesting story coming out of the EU, European Union. It turns out, shockingly, that there is real corruption in the EU. And it turns out unsurprisingly that some of that corruption is centered around the country hosting the World Cup today, Qatar. I mean, it's pretty well acknowledged that Qatar probably almost certainly bribed FIFA in order to get to have the World Cup in Qatar. Everybody, it's like a known thing and FIFA has gone through a bunch of restructuring and a bunch, I think some criminal prosecutions around this. And Qatar, of course, is now hosting the World Cup. We'll have the first semifinals in a little while. Argentina will play Croatia, I for one, and Rudy for Argentina. That hasn't really helped the countries that I have. That I've rooted for. But anyway, Martin, thank you for the support. Really appreciate it. Anyway, it turns out Qatar has been bribing European Union officials with large sums of cash in an attempt to influence European Union policy vis-a-vis Qatar. The whole thing is weird and we still don't know exactly what policy is exactly involved. We just know over the late last week and over the weekend, there being both allegations. But there's also been, I think, there was a second raid yesterday. And a number of people are now suspected of receiving a large cash gift from the Qataris. Exactly what policy, again, I don't know. But I think the Qataris have been involved more recently in the European Union or European countries buying natural gas from them. But I can't imagine that's the issue. It must be something else. Maybe it has to do with the World Cup, I don't know. But that's still a work in progress. As more information comes out, we will find out. Eva Kali, who was a member of the European Parliament, but also, I think, was she the vice president of the European Union? Anyway, a vice president of the European Union has been accused of receiving cash gifts. In Eva Kali, who is from Greece, they have found 600,000 euros in cash in a private home and another 150,000 euros in cash at a Brussels hotel, at a Kali's apartment. More in a hotel. And this is all Belgian police, awaiting different members of the European Parliament's offices, hotels, residences. It looks like this corruption goes beyond just this one vice president of the European Union, that it's a number of them. The vice president has resigned, but others are being, you know, others are probably involved. And the investigation, let's say, is ongoing, and capturing more and more people. So we know politics is a game of corruption. Often the corruption is subtle. Gigs after you leave politics, tit for tat, you know, Hunter Biden kind of stuff, or what do you call it, Trump Jr. getting $4 billion from the Saudis in order to launch his private equity fund, where he has no experience in private equity. Things like that, that's the kind of corruption we kind of expect, and it's the kind of corruption that happens, I think, every single day, every single day in both American and I'm sure European politics. The kind of corruption we don't expect, but that happens periodically in the West, is the corruption where somebody hands you a suitcase that's full of cash. This is that kind of corruption. It's going to be super interesting to watch this and to track this and to see how deep this goes and how extensive it is and is it limited to Qatar and how deep are the Belgian police willing to go to uncover the full extent of the corruption. It's also going to be interesting. Okay, let's see. All right, so an update on the Chip Wars. This is a topic I've done a show on, a show I particularly liked. I did, I don't know about you guys, but it's something I want to track and we're going to track because I think it's going to be important. It's going to be important for geopolitics. It's going to be important for U.S.-China relations, but I also think it's going to be super important for the global economy and for economic growth. As you know, the Biden administration has put on very strict export restrictions on chips to China. It's probably the most meaningful action vis-à-vis trade, vis-à-vis China than any U.S. administration has done since the opening up of China. Much more meaningful than what Trump did. It turns out, of course, that the U.S. is just one player, of course, but the U.S. is trying to make this more comprehensive to get all its allies involved in this restriction and to try to make it impossible for the Chinese to get, to buy, and to produce the most advanced chips in the world. And in order to do that, the U.S. is lobbying Japan and Netherlands to restrict the sale of chip-making tools, equipment. It looks like Japan and Netherlands have agreed, in principle, to join the U.S. in cracking down and exporting semiconductor equipment machinery to China. So this is a big deal. It really, really restricts, because if you take U.S., Japan, and Netherlands, I mean, the Netherlands have 90 percent of the market in advanced, what do you call it? Oh, God. ASML, you know, in the largest semiconductor company, you know, they are the ones that make it possible to make these more advanced chips. They control their market. Japan controls all the other aspects of the market. China is now lobbying the South Koreans. They're trying to establish a relationship there, because the South Koreans are the other. South Korea and Taiwan are the other two countries in which there are companies that produce advanced semiconductors. It's going to be interesting to see what happens with those two companies and the companies within them and whether they succumb to Chinese requests or whether they join this coalition to try to restrict China. But even if they succumb to, even if South Korea, let's say, succumbs to this, South Korea doesn't have, without ASML, basically China cannot produce the most advanced chips in the world. And it would take them well over a decade, maybe two to three decades, to actually build equipment that ASML produces right now or to mimic it or to copy it. ASML doesn't do this alone. ASML has this incredibly advanced supply chain in relation to companies in Germany and companies in the U.S., companies that I don't think would work with China. China would have to replicate the entire supply chain. I don't think it could do it. Maybe not even in 20 or 30 decades, 20 or 30 years. I don't think it's possible for them to do it. They'd basically be shut out of the advanced, the most advanced chip manufacturing. Vladimir, really thank you for the support. Noel, thank you for the support. We're really, really close to achieving our goal, so I think there's a good chance we will today. So anyway, we'll see how all this plays out. I'm going to keep monitoring this and keep updating you because I do think this is one of the most interesting and one of the most important stories out there that is probably going to be under-reported because it's kind of boring and not interested. Chips, who cares about chips? Right, let's see, what did I want to cover? Two more stories quickly. A quick one is just because we're talking about China, China COVID, I know everybody's bored by this, but quick update because I think this is super interesting. Good news for China, for a change. I mean, really good news. Not only is China reducing its zero COVID policies and opening up and letting people travel and not lugging down whole cities or whole neighborhoods and doing that, which is, wow, what a big change and proof that the protest had an impact and a huge, I think, loss for Xi in terms of reputation. He succumbed to the protest and gave them what they want, but they announced that as of tomorrow, maybe as of today, given the time difference, they are suspending the use of the app, the phone app that tracked where you were and tracked your travel. I mean, this is huge for the Chinese, a huge victory for privacy, a huge victory for less government involvement in their lives, a huge slap move away from the social credit scoring, tracking every single thing you did, everything you went. This is a major, major move. It's surprising to me that this has happened, but it turns out that the Chinese don't like this. They don't like to be tracked. They don't like the government to have this kind of data on them. And it was part of the demonstrations. They've resisted. They've made their voice heard. And the government has listened to them. Now, I don't know if this will have broader implications of whether the Chinese government is willing now to listen more and to open up more and after the years of clamping down, since I think 2019, 2018, of clamping down, will they start opening things up? Will they start liberating their economy again and opening it up to greater speech and greater entrepreneurial ability to start companies and so on? I don't know. I doubt it, but it will be really, really cool. It will be really, really cool if that actually happened. Okay. Let's see. Oh, one final story. Quick story. Another good news. Item boom. You may have a boom in the supersonic manufacturer, supersonic jets. There was an issue with boom about engines for the jets. The jet looks like it's approaching the ability to produce, but it doesn't have engines. Engines are crucial, of course. And boom is promised to run the engines on some minimal carbon, whatever footprint. And a few months ago, the assumption was that Royce would be working with boom. I think they had some kind of deal with boom to work on engines. Royce walked away from that deal, or they had designed some prototype, but weren't interested in designing the actual engine and building them. I think boom today will be announcing a new engine manufacturer. I don't think it's any big company. I think it's some consortium of three different companies that are not as big and well-known. But it's great news that boom, without an engine, there was no plane, that boom is moving forward with some kind of solution to engines. So I think that is exciting and good. All right. We are $50 short of the Super Chat target. Hopefully we can reach that target. I have five questions. So in the time that it takes me to answer these five questions, hopefully somebody can step in with a $50 or a number of people. We have 120 people listening live. They could all do 50 cents and we would be there. So $2 from the people willing to do $2 each, and we get there easily. All right. Let's do one on topic. Awesome video says, interest rates need to be set very high. So debt is punished and saved as a rewarded. Debt is placed at wishes above reality, save as due the opposite. A debt-based economy will always fail. I mean, we disagree about that. I have no problem with debt. I only have my main problem is government debt. I have no problem with private individuals and corporations taking on debt. What I think is bad is the Federal Reserve's policy of zero interest rates, which made debt super cheap, which encouraged people to take on debt, but that I primarily blame the Federal Reserve for doing that, the central authorities. Government debt is out of control. It has risen over the last 20 years by unbelievable amounts, really amounts that are unbelievable. I don't think anybody 20 years ago would have believed they'd be this high today. That is a real problem and interest rates being high would cause government debt to explode even more because the only way to pay back, the only way they pay regular payments on this debt is by taking on more debt. That is government policy. So we're in a spiral of greater and greater government debt. That spiral of greater and greater government debt is what is going to, I think to a large extent, kill this economy. It's going to create stagnation and ultimately it could create the circumstances to have a real depression or recession. But it's government debt. That is the problem. And how we get rid of that, we need surpluses. We need the government to start running surpluses. We need to get our economy going. We need to deregulate in mass. We need a lot of important things. All right, let's see. I don't think debt has placed wishes above reality. I have a mortgage. I'm a debtor. I didn't place wishes above reality. I fixed in a rate for 30 years. I think I came out ahead and I bought a place that I could never afford if I had to pay cash for it. So no, I think if you manage your debt properly, debt is a good thing. Savings, there's no automatic reason why savers should get a high interest rates. Savings should get, depending on the risk they're willing to take, they should get a return on their money. The problem is that the Federal Reserve has manipulated interest rates to be artificially low. It doesn't help to manipulate the interest rates to be artificially high. What really needs to happen is the Federal Reserve needs to get out of the business of manipulating interest rates and let the market dictate interest rates. Adam says that is good artificially low rates of bad, push people out of the risk curve for yield. Yes, that's, I agree with Adam completely. All right, let's say J.J. Jigby's. J.J. Jigby's. Put your previous show. You don't like blazing saddle because you love westerns, but you like love and death, even though it makes fun of Tolstoy. Why is it okay to satire one piece but not westerns? Don't respect Tolstoy. There's a sense in which I don't respect Tolstoy. I respect him on some things. I don't respect, he's a naturalist storyteller. And as such, I think a lot of his story is boring. It's not that interesting. I think what Woody Allen does very effectively is make fun of that. I think blazing saddles is purposefully making fun of heroes, purposefully making fun of the West and everything the West stood for, if you will. And, you know, I find that offensive, particularly the making fun of heroes, right? And, you know, in making fun of a whole genre that produced heroic, positive things. Tolstoy is no heroes. He's making fun of the boredom and the pseudo-intellectuality of Tolstoy, which I think is legitimate to make fun of. I think Mel Brooks makes fun of something that's not legitimate to make fun of, which is heroes and heroic action. It's standing up against evil. Whoops. Martin says, I'm in Zagreb since a few days, hoping for a good summer final game today, next year. Croatia will join the Schengen area and adopt a hero. Yeah, I'm excited for Croatia. I think that's good for Croatia. Two countries didn't make it into the Schengen. Bulgaria and... I can't remember who the other country was. Because, you know, I'm not sure exactly, because suppose they were allowing too many illegal immigrants to cross or something like that. I mean, by that standard, you would kick out Italy from the Schengen. But it's good that Croatia made it, and that's Romania. Thank you, Romania and Bulgaria. It's good that Croatia made it. I think being on the Euro and being part of the Schengen will do wonders for Croatia. I think it'll be good for them. I still don't hope they win today. All right, Scott asks, is Moscow an Iron Man hero? No. Are there better examples? I mean, I'm sure there are better examples. I'm sure there are lots of entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere in America today who are less political, less whim-driven. You know, I've demonstrated his whim and lack of objectivity in past shows, less conspiracy theory willing, appeasing than Elon Musk is, and yes, real builders. I also think you have to remember that I don't think you can ignore the fact that Elon Musk built his two main companies on the backs of, you know, government involvement. I've done shows on why Elon Musk is a hero. He's come down, in my opinion, in appearance since he took over Twitter. He has great flair. He has a personality. He's clearly shaking things up. I think, ultimately, there's a good chance Twitter will be a much better service at the end of it. But he's also exhibiting childish behavior that I don't think any Vinran's characters, any Vinran's heroes would have. He's exhibiting troll behavior which I don't think any of Vinran's characters would have. And Tesla is a company built on mythology, which is the catastrophic nature of climate change and government subsidies, and I think we can't forget that. So I love certain things about Elon Musk, and I don't love certain things about Elon Musk, but to compare it to an Iron Man hero, no, he's no Ellis White who would burn down his oil wells rather than accept government subsidies or government involvement in his affairs. Yeah, he's a creator. He's a good businessman. He's good at what he does. There's no question about that, but you wanted Iron Man Hero. Not an Iron Man Hero. He's a hero, maybe. Not an Iron Man Hero. And I've talked about him being heroic, and I've talked about him not being heroic. All right, let's see. Andrew, this could probably be a whole show segment, but what do you think should be the general approach to the federal government and private lenders to giving aid to Puerto Rico given its track record of debt? I guess I don't quite understand. I mean, I think private lenders should suffer the consequences of their debt. I think Puerto Rico should have been allowed, and it was, in a sense, allowed to go bankrupt. So Puerto Rico should be allowed to go bankrupt, and those private debt holders should have taken a huge hit. I think the federal government is not really lending money to Puerto Rico. It's giving money to Puerto Rico as long as Puerto Rico is part of the United States, and as long as the government is bailing out everybody, and it's a net giver to Mississippi, it's a giver to most red states, then why wouldn't it be a net giver to Puerto Rico? Puerto Rico is part of the U.S. So private investors should think twice about buying Puerto Rican debt. Government is going to give Puerto Rico money as long as it gives everybody else money. Now, is Puerto Rico more corrupt than other states? Yeah, so it's fine to put more strings attached to it, but as long as Puerto Rico is a part of the U.S., it needs to be treated like every other part of the U.S. In terms of other heroes, I'd say Steve Jobs was definitely a hero. Again, flawed, but a hero. Maybe Hank Redan was also flawed before he became fully fledged. I think somebody like Jeff Bezos is a hero, and I don't see what's negative about Jeff Bezos. As long as you can say, okay, he might support the wrong political candidates, by whose standard? Wrong, and he might be wrong politically, but we don't know who Redan voted for. We don't know who Dagny voted for. Do we think Redan and Dagny would vote for Trump? So I think there are a lot of, I think there are a lot of, there's nothing about Bezos' scale-wine at zero. And I think there are a lot of people out there who are heroic in their business practices and what they've done for I think most businessmen out there, even the ones who happen to be leftists are heroes for being great businessmen. Okay, Frank says, it's been 23 years since the infamous battle in Seattle. Now that all those troublemaking teens are older, do you think they still hate capitalism? I think many of them probably do. I mean, they were fringe then, and some of them probably stayed fringe. Of course what's happened to the battle in Seattle is that's become mainstream. That is, it's hard to differentiate the attitude towards globalization that the leftist anarchists in Seattle had 23 years ago and Donald Trump's administration and Biden's administration, the left and the right have basically become anti-globalization and they've all gravitated towards the nuts in the battle in Seattle. Frank, I think you're right. I think Robert Murdoch is much more like Gane Weynand. He's, that's him. To ignore Bezos building Amazon is bizarre. And to focus in on something that he has no real involvement on, certainly on a day-to-day basis, just happens to own, but is left alone, they're watching a post as his defining characteristic is bizarre. It just shows you how, you know, how unobjective, non-objective people are. No, Bezos, 99.9% of his career is Amazon. To judge him in the 0.01 is ridiculous. But Murdoch is all about the news media and he is 100%. He is 100% Gail Weynand. Now, some of the model for Gane Weynand was somebody like William Randolph-Holst, but today Murdoch clearly represents that. All right. Adam Kappel says, Bitcoin higher beta but directionally correlated and down 70% yet to date. I hope your warning, help other objectivists keep their dollars so that they can donate to YBS. Let's hope. Let's hope. I don't know how many people actually listen to my financial advice. I'm not sure how much I want them to. All right. General warnings. No financial advice. I never get financial advice. I still kind of like Elon. So do I. But he has cringe views on Russia. I agree completely on how to activate peace that really lowered my opinion of him, especially given that, you know, Russia's evil, he makes Russia's evil look legitimate. I agree with you completely. I forgot about that quote, but that is my primary thing that really shocked me and disappointed me about Elon. And I can no longer view him as, you know, as heroic as I did before because of that. His views on Russia, which is horrible. They show the influence of people like Jordan Peterson. They go, they show the influence of the new right. I worry about Elon having drifted into that new right atmosphere. And, you know, in that sense, just as bad as the new left and very, very destructive. So I hope I'm wrong. I hope Elon Musk is not. But yes, that is a major point against Elon Musk. All right, everybody. Thank you. We're a little over today, 45 minutes, but I hope you enjoyed the show. I'll be back tomorrow. Same time. We'll have a show tonight, 7 p.m. Eastern time. I'm not yet sure on the topic, but we will have a show tonight, 7 p.m. Eastern time. And I will see you there and I will see you tomorrow. It's great to see 126 people watching live. I think that's the largest audience we've had at one of these. Hopefully we can build on that and keep you coming. Tomorrow, 12, no, 11 a.m. East Coast time will be the next news roundup. Bye, everybody.