 All right, let's see. First up is, yes, Bricks. A lot of talk about Bricks. A lot of, I think, confusion about Bricks. Bricks stands for Brazil, Russia, China, sorry, India, China. It was originally Brick when it was coined in 2001 by an analyst or an analyst of Goldman Sachs in a paper that expressed the potential of Brazil, Russia, India, and China and kind of predicted that these economies had the potential to overtake the West and to overtake kind of the United States and Europe in terms of economic activity and become dominant players. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that they have significant natural resources. China was growing enormously during this period. Russia had just been liberated from communism and seemed to be poised for a significant period of growth, which it experienced and then didn't. And of course, Brazil has the natural resources. Again, it seemed like this was the beginning of an era where they were going to be incredibly successful. And India, of course, today the largest population in the world at the time, second largest after China, again, recently liberalized. India was liberalized in the early 1990s and therefore seemed like this amazing economic growth, a potential economic growth story. A year later in 2000, no, sorry, in 2010, the first summit, the first BRIC summit was held in 2009 during the global financial crisis. And again, it looked like the US was in decline, Europe was in decline, they were in recession. The next few years didn't make that seem any better as Europe went into its own financial crisis with Greece and the whole sovereign debt crisis. And in 2010, so BRICs again seemed like the future, seemed like strong, seemed like they were the economic future of the world. In 2010, South Africa joined the BRIC and it became BRICs. And South Africa did so on the basis of natural resources. And again, what everybody believed was this untapped capacity for economic growth and wealth creation and a relatively educated population and a system of law that was kind of based on a British system of law, property rights. So there was a lot of promise it seemed and there was around South Africa. So BRICs were hailed as kind of the economic future, the economic future. The reason, of course, this is in the news right now is because BRICs are having their 15th summit when it's a tomorrow, it starts tomorrow in Johannesburg, Johannesburg, the city I've been to three times, which is the largest city in South Africa and is holding the summit. The president of South Africa will be there as well, the prime minister of India, Modi, as Lula, the president of Brazil and even Xi. Xi Jinping will be traveling from China. The only BRICs leader who will not be in Johannesburg is Vladimir Putin, who, if he came to Johannesburg, came to South Africa, would actually be arrested. I find this so entertaining. It turns out South Africa is a member of the International Criminal Court and is obliged to act on the arrest warrant that the International Criminal Court has issued against Vladimir Putin. So Putin is home. He sent his foreign minister, Lavrov, who is not yet being indicted yet being indicted by the International Criminal Court, while Putin stays home for this get together in Johannesburg. You know, the last 20-something years have not been that favorable to the BRICs, while it's true that the share of GDP that the BRICs represents have significantly increased from close to, I don't know, close to 8% maybe in 2000 to over 20% today. Indeed, BRICs today represent a greater percentage of global GDP than the European Union does. But that's cheating, right? I mean, that's a bit of a joke because that's basically China. I mean, China is that increase in global GDP in a percent of global GDP. Russia has not increased. Brazil has not increased. South Africa has not increased. India's increased somewhat. So it's a little bit of India, a little bit of India and a lot of China. Indeed, on average, GDP of Brazil, Russia and South Africa has grown less than 1% over the last 10 years, while China and India both grown 6% a year. So there's no BRICs here. There's China and maybe India as growing economies, as significant global players from an economic perspective. And that's it. The rest of the other three members, Brazil, Russia and South Africa, insignificant to global GDP. So this is not a significant challenge. The G7, which are the big seven economies of the west, if you will, represent 40% of global GDP, so still significantly larger than BRICs. And again, BRICs is dominated by China. Of course, the G7 is dominated by the United States. The United States economy has grown significantly faster than Brazil, Russia and South Africa's economies have gone. So the group exists. There's a big move by China. China wants to really establish this as an alternative to the west. The big move by China is to increase membership, increase membership in BRICs and to accept a bunch of other countries. There are 40 different countries that have applied. These are all going to be developing countries. These are not going to be European countries or North American countries, but they are developing countries, potentially Mexico, Argentina or anybody would want to admit Argentina into anything. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, you know, I think I'm looking at a map here and I'm trying to figure out what these countries are, but you've got Libya, Libya, really? Oh, no, not Libya. Sorry, Algeria, not Libya. God, I should know that. Nigeria, which is of course the largest country by population in Africa. So significant countries would like to join BRICs. I think Indonesia, Malaysia, Kazakhstan, just south of Russia. Some countries don't, so China is trying to push this. India doesn't really want more people in here. Russia will do whatever China tells it because Russia is in trouble because of the war. And the consequences here are that, you know, BRICs is just a game. They've got 18 candidates that are possible candidates, 40 that have applied, but 18 that are possible. They might add these members in. It is hard to tell. I think, I guess, you know, I guess you want to know why BRICs have grown so slowly. I mean, primarily because of rotten economic policies. I mean, South Africa is a complete disaster in spite of its huge potential, in spite of the massive amount of natural resources. It is run by a kleptocracy, a complete corrupt regime. It is a one-party state, unfortunately, for the most part. Since Pod Hyde has disappeared, nobody, the ANC has won every single election. The ANC is thoroughly corrupt. And instead of cultivating private property, instead of cultivating business and education, they have been too involved in redistribution of wealth and in their own corruption. And so South Africa is an insignificant economic power, in spite of the fact that it could be. It has all the pieces to make it a dramatic, significant economic player. It just needs free markets. It just needs economic freedom, and it needs to provide the right kind of, that will provide the right kind of incentives to see South Africa grow dramatically. Russia, we all know the story in Russia, Russia is the kleptocracy in the world. It is run by a clique of oligarchs. It has no free markets. It is basically not done anything but emphasize natural resources. So in spite of the fact that Russia has a very educated population, it is not invested in high tech. It is not invested in business. It is basically focused wealth creation on natural resources. And finally, Brazil corrupt and ridiculous economic policies. Bolsonaro had slightly better economic policies than the leftist who have run Brazil for most of the last 20 years, but they're only slightly better. China and India both dramatically liberalized economically over the last 30 years, although China, of course, as we know, was heading in the wrong direction. I mean, quickly, Briggs, a story of the past, though, the reality is that as we talked about on Saturday, China is in decline. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. China is in decline. China's economy is not doing well, and of course, demographically, it is imploding. India is growing. India has this massive economic potential. But again, India is badly managed, badly run, focused on nationalism rather than economic growth, focused on nationalism and mercantilism, and too many mercantilist policies, too many regulatory central government policies to allow India to actually take advantage of, again, the British educational system, the British court system, and a significant proportion of the population, highly educated, a massive amount of people for workforce and as consumers. India is not nowhere near to exploiting all that to become an economic power. Okay, finally, there is talk about Briggs adopting an alternative currency to the dollar. Yeah, that's a joke. It ain't happening. They can't agree on anything, these people. It's a bunch of authoritarian thugs who can't agree with one another on anything. They're all bunch of statists. The idea of adopting a currency to replace the dollar will not be raised at this meeting. The foreign minister of South Africa has stated, so that is not an issue. The idea of de-dollarizing, that is getting off the dollar, will not even be raised in this meeting because they know it's impossible and they know they don't have what it takes to do it. They will talk about increasing trade in local currencies. There'll be a lot of talk about that. They'll declare their independence. They'll declare the evil of the west. They'll declare the evil of Europe and America. But nothing will change because the reality is that nobody actually in the world wants to trade using local currencies. It's too risky. It's too risky. Really, really risky. Why would you want to trade in yuan or rubles or South African rand when you don't know what the value is going to be tomorrow and the potential for crashes and the potential for instability? Who the hell wants to be stuck with a bunch of Brazilian, Brazilian what? God. Whatever the currency is in Brazil. I mean, nobody wants that. So no, trade globally will be in dollars for the foreseeable future and this meeting by the BRICS is not going to change that significantly.