 I'm gonna show a segment with this showing a video from Beaumont, which I assume was watched by millions and millions of people. Millions and millions of people. So, it tells you a lot about the culture and the world in which we live, where she can go and say what she says and she's unopposed really. And this is what's really popular. This is what's really popular. Okay, let's jump in. I think we can do this. Yeah, there we go. And yeah, just background, quickly. Inflation is soaring. We saw the number today, 9.1%, which again, understates it because they don't measure inflation today the same as they did in the 70s. Larry Summers, not exactly a free market guy, but an economist nonetheless. Larry Summers has done the calculation that if you calculate the way they did in the 70s, the inflation we have right now is higher than it was in the 1970s. So we have a peak inflation maybe in the history of the United States, we're very close to it. Inflation is unbelievably destructive. The causes of inflation, people are confused about, partially because there's a lot of things going on, but they usually are. There were a lot of things going on in the 1970s. Inflation is not a simple straightforward phenomena. Never has been. And we're talking here about, let me be very, very clear because there's so much confusion about the term inflation. We're talking here about price inflation. Prices broadly going up. Prices broadly going up. That's inflation. Deflation prices broadly going down. You can have inflation of the money supply. That is a different type of inflation that usually causes prices broadly going up. It doesn't have to and doesn't always. That's part of the confusion. All right, so we're gonna talk about here. And this would be a good opportunity to talk about inflation, explain inflation a little bit. It's explained some of the myths. And then we'll talk about the comment Biden made before flying to the Middle East to gravel to the Saudis. We'll talk about what he said about gas prices. All right, so this is, that's Crystal on the right there. She's the star of the show. She's like, her performance on Bill Ma was like, whoa, this is amazing. It went viral. She was like, unbelievable, right? How good the left thinks she was. Not just left. People thought she did. Well, part of this inflationary problem is because we put too much money into the economy. There's way too much government spending and that's why we have inflation. So that's a large part of that. That is basic economics. That is not basic economics. It is kind of basic economics. And now she's gonna say some stuff that is half true now, but it is basic economics. It's more basic economics than anything else, although what she has to add now is true. And this thing called a pandemic. We had a supply chain crisis. And oh, by the way, there's a war in Ukraine. It's played a role. So here we go. So she's bringing up supply chain crisis and she's bringing up the war in Ukraine, which has been much of the Biden and the left's line. This inflation is a supply chain crisis. It's transitory because the supply chain crisis will go away. I mean, transitory for how long? Really? What are you talking about? So inflation is often stimulated by supply chain crisis. It happened in the 70s with the ol' embargo and the late 70s with the fall of the Shah of Iran. Often these shocks stimulate inflation, but they don't stimulate inflation and avoid it because there's supply shocks all the time. They only stimulate inflation when there's also government spending a lot of money and handing it out. In the 1960s and 70s, it was over the Vietnam War and the beginning of the war on poverty and the beginning of Medicare and Medicaid and the government just exploding in terms of spending. So when you get this combination of a lot of government spending, a lot of deficits, no stopping the deficits in sight and together with that, a supply shock, that is bad news for inflation. That's when you get a spike in inflation. And yes, we've had all of that. So far, she's right. All these things played a role. The worst playing a role in terms of jacking up oil prices. Now, we'll get to Biden's role in that. They bring this up and you'll see how she handles that. All right, let's take a look. To ask like the only reason we have problems now is because people got a little bit of money in their bank account, that's just not honest. A little bit of money, a little bit of money. $6 trillion of stimulus under Trump and Biden is not a little bit of money. That's a lot of money. A lot of money. It wasn't just people, small businesses. It was across the board. You, a little bit of money. They got more than we spent in World War II. So you don't act like, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Don't act like, you said don't act. Don't act like we had to react to the pandemic exactly the way we did. We had to spend $6 trillion on the forever flow. But how about the trillions that the Federal Reserve shot at Wall Street? For some reason, people don't get upset about that. Yeah, she's right. And again, this is, and they don't know what to say about this. Yes, the Federal Reserve was bailing everybody out. It was spending trillions of dollars bailing everybody out. Bailing out, you know, a zombie company is bailing out. I don't know that they really bailed out Wall Street. She says stuff here that just doesn't make any sense. But they were buying bonds. They were heavily infusing money into the market. Now what's interesting is the Federal Reserve, when it did that, just that, in 2008, we didn't get inflation because ultimately all that money, all that money in a sense came back through reserves that the banks held. It wasn't actually circulating in the economy, increasing demand. But when you do that and you add on top of it a layer of just what Ben Enki called helicopter money, of just giving people money, demand goes up. And demand goes up when supply is constrained because of supply chain problems, because by the way, you didn't allow people to go to work, that creates inflation. Now, she's not gonna explain all that because she wants to claim that ending people money is a good thing. And that it's Wall Street, bailing out Wall Street, that's the real evil. Of course, what does bailing out Wall Street means? It means bailing out companies. And what does bailing out companies actually means? It means they can afford not to lay off people and that's to a large extent why it was done. So there wouldn't be mass layoffs to help ordinary folk. It's always done to help ordinary folk, right? But she's not gonna go there. She's not gonna go there. How about what you said? And not fuel the trillions of dollars the Federal Reserve shot at Wall Street to backstop the stock market and the bond market. No one gets upset about that even though that was a massive factor in inflation. I don't know what you're talking about. When we shot at Wall Street, when are we talking about? We're talking about buying assets, buying stocks, buying bonds. Federal Reserve just as a side note, the Federal Reserve did not buy stocks. The Federal Reserve is banned for now from buying stocks that does not buy stocks. She's just wrong on that. They bought bonds and they bought corporate bonds. They bought corporate bonds of a kind they've never bought in the past, including high yield bonds, which they've never done in the past. It was the first time ever in March, which is a dangerous, horrific, awful precedent, very, very dangerous, but they did not buy stocks. Bonds buying treasury bills so that they expand the balance sheet. They bought treasury bills. Why did they buy treasury bills? They bought treasury bills because the government was spending so much money. It was borrowing money to spend. Who was they borrowing from? From the Federal Reserve was pinning up money to do that. This is during the crisis, the coronavirus crisis. When the stock market crashed, that is what the Fed did. They went into action. They shot two hundred dollars. But the stock market didn't crash during... Come on, Bill, Bill really shouldn't be doing this. He doesn't know enough about the world. The stock market did crash in March, Bill. Have you forgotten? Yes, it recovered very quickly, but it was devastating the crash in March. It was massive. So, you know, these arguments about the stock market didn't crash. Well, they did crash. It's crashing now. It crashed and the Fed came in. And whoever this guy is, I don't know who this guy is, he's supposed to be an expert on economics and he doesn't know the market crashed in March of 2020, really? And they can't tell her, this is what happened. This is why they did what they did. They didn't buy stocks. You know, they can't address the concrete. This is why you've got to have some expertise. You've got to know what you're talking about if you go on these shows and you do these things. You actually have to know something. And in backstop, that's what happened. It crashed. She's right. It is what happened. Have you never heard about it? No, it crashed. Go back and look at it. I think it fell up a cliff. When? The Treasury bond market stopped functioning and essentially the burdenary action is never taken in history. I don't remember that. But maybe the first week of the pandemic. Somehow nobody gets upset about the rich people who got tons of money and tons of support. Way more than working class people did. Sure they do. But oh my God, people were able to feed their kids and they had a little bit of money in their bank accounts. It was the worst thing in the world. No. That is one small part of the inflation story. And it is by the way, not the only thing that we can deal with to get out of this mess. Well, gas prices. Is it a small part, Jamie? Gas prices, we can largely attribute to an administration that's been waging war on the fossil fuel industry. That's ridiculous. They drill more than everybody. That's the top of the point. The US production. Oh, no, no, no. The US production is up. US production is up from where? It will be at record levels next year. Okay, well. The fossil fuel companies themselves. So here's US production. Let's see if I can find this. US production. So again, she's partly right. And this is why they're so weak. They're really not, they're not at her level. And this is why the left wins because she's just more convincing. If you look here, this is US production since 1920. And you can see it peaked just before COVID. This is February 2020, where it peaks. And then it collapses during COVID. And since then it's been steadily going up even under Biden, supposedly. It's been steadily going up slowly. Slowly, you know, in big swings because a lot of uncertainty about COVID. And it could be that next year it'll be above the 2020 number. Doesn't look like it from this graph, but maybe it's certainly possible that it could be there. So she's not completely mistaken. Of course, she would like, I mean, where she's being hypocritical, is she would like this to slow down dramatically. She's an anti-fossil fuel, you know, nutcase. And she would like Kudall production to slow down even more than Biden would. But, you know, here we are. And, you know, the guy who said it's Biden's attitude is right because of the next point that she is going to make. And let's go to that, go back. Yeah, but I want me to be in the lower window. Not there, I want there, there we go. So let's listen to her. Oops, clicking on the wrong button. There we go. Selfs are flushed with cash, but will not invest in new drilling because they would rather give it to their shareholder. Why will they not invest in new drilling? I mean, that's straightforward. Come on, guys, that's simple. They won't invest in new drilling because she, Kristal, and the Biden administration, Kristal and the Biden administration are demonizing oil and gas. And therefore, oil and gas is why there is no future, that the government is gonna limit their ability to sell. Why would you invest? Why would you invest when you investors, BlackRock and others, are following ESG, promoted by Kristal and the Biden administration, that is basically telling them, we're not gonna support you, we're not gonna support management, we're not gonna support the corporate plan if you're gonna drill more. If you're gonna drill more, we're just not gonna support you. So, all right. That's the truth. So. So that's her appearance on Bill Maher. And a few things. One you can tell from that is what the left wants to do is find a way to blame inflation on the rich. And the last thing they wanna do, the thing that scares them the most is blaming inflation on government spending because they believe government spending is unlimited. They believe you can spend all you want and government spending has no way impact. Of course, by the way, one of the things that really pisses me off and the left does this with so the libertarians, some libertarians is they view the Federal Reserve as if it's not part of the government. Right? The Federal Reserve is the government. When they say, yeah, but the Federal Reserve bailed out the rich. Well, that's the government bailing out the rich. That's your government doing it. And if Biden had been president during March of 2020 would the Federal Reserve not have bailed out quote the rich? Of course they would have. So, you know, they treat it as this evil separate institution. You know how you know that the Federal Reserve is a government entity and not a private entity like some people claim? Who gets the profits? When the Federal Reserve makes a profit, who gets the money? Quote shareholders, the so-called private owners. Who gets the profits from the Federal Reserve operations? The Treasury does. And who's gonna pay to run the Federal Reserve when the Federal Reserve starts taking losses? And later this year, it's likely that the Federal Reserve will start losing money. The Treasury, the US Treasury. So A, it can be independent of politics and B, it's owned, operated, run by the Federal government. It's not some separate entity. It's supposed to be independent, but it can't be. It's a political entity. So the left is trying to blame the Fed. I'm fine with blaming the Fed. But they're trying to blame the rich. They're trying to blame corporate America. They're trying to blame anybody except government spending. So Biden, before he left for Israel, and Israel's just a stop in the way to dance with the princes in Saudi Arabia. But Biden, before he left, said, he said that, I think he tweeted, that his appeal to gas station owners to lower the price. Really guys, you're making enough profits. You can lower the price, lower the price of gasoline. Just, you know, do the right thing. Now who owns gas stations? A significant majority of gas stations in the United States are owned by individuals or by small businesses. Maybe a small business that owns a few gas stations. Do you know what the margin is on a gallon of gasoline that you pump into your car to the gas station? It's maybe a few cents, maybe. There are often times, because our competitive of the business is, that the gas station is actually giving you gas at a loss. How do gas stations make money then? How can they sell gas at a loss? You know what the profit center is at a gas station? The profit center at a gas station is the convenience store. It's not the gas, it's the convenience store. That's why they really want you to come inside. They really want you to sell, to buy some cigarettes, or buy some chips, or buy a soda, or buy something, because that's where they make their money. And even there, it's not like these are products that have super high profit margins, right? They have higher profit margins than the gasoline. And yet Biden, in his ignorance, you think you have advisors who know this stuff. This is not rocket science. This is pretty straightforward. This has been discussed over and over again many years, many decades, there's been talk about this. Somebody, they talked about nobody monitoring Trump's tweets. Not only Biden writes the tweets, but whoever's writing the tweets, God, somebody should monitor them for basic truth, well, not even truth, but absurdity. I mean, I understand going after gas companies to be, I mean, what he was saying was most gas stations are owned by these big companies. Just not true, not true, not true. Yeah, stuff at gas stations is always expensive in any country, because again, that's where they make the profit motive and they figure, they captured you, because once you're filling up gas and you walk in there and they've got all that tempting chocolate or whatever drinks or whatever, or you're on a road trip, you need something to drink or you need some coffee or you need a sandwich. Yeah, it's gonna cost you a lot of money to get it, but that's where they make the money. The gas is cheap. The only people really making money profits really, are the people who sell oil because the cost of drilling oil does not change that much. But they can sell it at a much higher price because of, I mean, even the refiners, and the refiners in the United States because the capacity is so constrained, they're making a nice profit. But again, that's unusual. Usually they don't make much money. Usually margins are very low. And this is true by the way of the drillers as well, because Saudi oil is so cheap to produce. Saudi Arabia can make a profit at 30, 40 bucks a barrel. American oil producers need oil to be significantly higher than that to make a profit. So it truly is astounding. Oilers being, by the way, at 100 bucks a gallon before in the past, we didn't get inflation. So oil is not the cause of inflation. It exacerbates, but it's not the cause of. Inflation is a mismatch over the entire economy of supply and demand. Where demand exceeds supply either because one of three reasons, because there's too much demand, because there's too much money, a significant increase in the amount of money people hold, one cause of inflation, or the amount of money has stayed constant, but for some reason, the number of goods are shrunk. Some external event has caused the number of goods to shrink, supply chain problems. So same demand, less supply, more money chasing fewer goods, prices will go up. And three, both things happen at the same time. And in the United States, what happened over the last two years is both things happen at the same time. You got massive increases in demand, $6 trillion of money handed to people who then spend it, have been spending it, are spending it, and at the same time. Because you didn't allow people to go to work, shrinking in supply, a disruption of supply chains, not just in the United States across the world, because everywhere in the world, particularly in China, they didn't let people go to work. And now you've got both hitting at the same time. And the same thing again, some extent happened in the 1970s. You got massive amount of government printing money, particularly after we go off the gold standard. But even before that, government running huge deficits, spending money like crazy, and at the same time, a shock to the global economy with the oil embargo, the shrunk supply. And you got both of those. This time, it's bigger because the supply shock is bigger. It's not just gasoline, it's not just oil. It's everything because of what governments did during COVID. So on both sides of this, of the government's response, they caused inflation by not allowing people to work the shrunk supply, by giving people money, they increased demand. And that's, that is inflationary. Thank you for listening or watching the Iran Book Show. If you'd like to support the show, we make it as easy as possible for you to trade with me. You get value from listening, you get value from watching, show your appreciation. You can do that by going to iranbrookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making a appropriate contribution on any one of those, any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran Book Show grow, please consider sharing our content and of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.