 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 Thursday, August 3rd, for another news roundup. Joining me a little later than usual. But, you know, there'll be some fluctuations somewhere between 12 and 2. Every weekday we will have a news roundup and we continue that through the month of August. So, again, thanks for joining me. All right, we've got a lot to talk about today. There's a bunch of stuff going on. And nothing major other than Trump is being indicted today. I guess he's appearing in court. Maybe it's already happened. Maybe it's about to happen. I don't know. Well, we talked about that yesterday. So I figure I wasn't going to talk about it. I wasn't going to talk about it too much today. But so, yeah, so why is that? Oops, I don't know why these volumes are too low. Let me just adjust for the podcast. One, two, there we go. So I'm not going to talk about Trump today. We talked about yesterday. I did want to talk about this. We talked about yesterday about the downgrade of U.S. government bonds from AAA to AA+. Which I said yesterday is not that big of a deal and probably not going to affect markets that much. And nobody really takes rating agencies that seriously. And it probably won't raise interest rates that much, although interest rates do seem to be rising. But I think that has more to do with economic news than anything else. So the 10-year bond is just over 4%. So Bill Ackerman came out today and said it's heading to 5% or the 30-year bond is. So he's short a lot of bonds. We'll see if he's right. I mean, that'll be really interesting if that happens. That basically means that he expects, he's anticipating inflation is not over. That inflation is still going to rise significantly. So we'll see if that plays out. But what I wanted to say about the downgrade was, I stand by the thing I said yesterday, but there was one real benefit to the downgrade and really thinking about this today. I hope other rating agencies decide to downgrade the U.S. government bonds as well, because I think this benefit is quite substantial. The big benefit of the downgrade is that people are paying attention. For the first time in years, I think, people are actually talking about the government deficit. For the first time in years, people are actually discussing long-term economic challenges that the United States faces. For the first time in years, people are talking about, well, maybe we are spending too much money. Maybe there are some structural problems in, you know, in our economy. So I think what the downgrade has done more than anything else, it is educating or at least focusing people's attention on the real economic challenges that the United States faces long-term that are all centered around government spending, massive government deficits, and everything else. From that perspective, good news. I mean, I've seen economists speak up about this. I've seen former Treasury Secretary suddenly come out and talk about this when they were Treasury Secretaries. They certainly didn't. I've seen it commenting on a variety of different news platforms. This is good stuff. Let's talk about it. And I don't think anything is going to get done anytime soon. I don't have my hopes high generally. But, again, it's better to have awareness of these challenges than no awareness. Not a single presidential candidate is talking about it or hasn't been talking about it. And it's not on anybody's agenda at all in terms of the future. So, yeah, one good thing about the downgrade is it gets people's attention, maybe focused on something that's actually important and away from all the nonsense that people seem to be focused on and people seem to be to specialize on focusing on. And talking about nonsense, Taylor Swift. I mean, I think Taylor Swift is, like, bigger than anything. She's probably bigger than Trump. I mean, if Taylor Swift ran for president, she'd beat Biden and Trump, I think. I mean, she's huge right now as a cultural phenomena. She is everywhere and she's filling out stadiums. She's maybe the most successful pop artist of our era. I mean, I think I know she is. I don't know anything about her other than that. I don't listen to her music. I have no idea if she's deserving of that title, but that is the title she has. So, people love her. Anyway, the state of California has decided to use Taylor Swift in its campaign. And now we have several officials in the state of California asking Taylor Swift to cancel her performances in California to postpone her Los Angeles shows in a show of solidarity with the labor unions that are striking in California. In this particular case, the labor union is the labor union for the, this is Unite Here Local 11, which is a union that is, what is it, cleaners and others of hotel rooms, right? So these housekeepers. So hotel housekeepers and other workers, right? So the idea is that Taylor Swift should cancel all the concerts for the sake of hotel housekeepers strike. No relationship to her. And significant political politicians all over California are encouraging her to do that. Right now, I can't pronounce her name. But anyway, this Democrat who is going to be running for governor in 2026 has announced that she stands with the union and she's asking Taylor Swift to stop. I mean, that's fine. They can do what they want. I do find it entertaining, though, and a little funny and silly. But it might be that the only thing that can actually alienate Californians from the Democratic Party is if the Democratic Party goes up against Taylor Swift. So, you know, Democrats are risking here. It's a big risk. I think Taylor Swift is like super popular. What are you doing? You're going to cancel a concert. You know what that Swift fans will do to you if you cancel a concert? Crazy. All right, enough of the silliness. China. A ton of stuff about China. But first and most interestingly, I think ultimately is Chinese become a central issue in the Republican campaign in the primary. There is a ongoing competition between the different candidates to appear to be as anti-China as possible. Again, everybody has learned from the 2016 campaign and really from the 2020 campaign. But from the 2016 campaign, they've learned that the way to get voters out, the way to motivate the base, is to blame all our problems on the other. And China is great. I mean, it worked for Trump in 2016. And you could argue that one of the problems Trump had in 2020 is he couldn't blame all the problems on China because he was president. And if all the problems were caused by China, why didn't he do anything about it? So the China issue kind of disappeared on Trump and he couldn't use it in 2020. And you could argue that's one of the reasons he lost. And I think generally, if you look at his 2020 campaign and compared to 2016, it's very different. Because in 2016, he could run as an outsider, as a fearmonger, as a blame the other for all the problems that we have in the world, immigrants, China, Obama, elites. But in 2020, it was like he couldn't really blame everybody else for the problems because he'd just been president. And if all these other things are responsible, why didn't he do anything about it? So who was it, the squash freedom in Hong Kong, the Chinese? And who is it that didn't do anything, didn't respond, didn't make a major speech on it, didn't invite the Hong Kongers to come to the United States, didn't sanction the Chinese in any kind of significant way. Donald Trump, when he was president, didn't do anything about Hong Kong. It wasn't an issue. He didn't care about it. He's never raised it. He's never, I mean, quite the contrary, Donald Trump has spent the last year really during his presidency as well, complimenting Xi. So Trump is no foe of China. But it's a great talking point on the campaign. And Ron DeSantis has picked us up. And in his speech, Ron DeSantis gave, yesterday I guess, yesterday or the day before yesterday, on the US economy and his plan for the US economy. We've talked about this a little bit. And his, you know, his move to make the US economy strong and everything else. Ron DeSantis mentioned China 11 times in a 20 minute speech. So every two minutes China was mentioned. I mean, that's nuts. Of course, everything that is a problem China is to blame. And the easiest solution is, oh, we'll bring all the jobs back from China. We'll kick them out of there. We'll trade organization. We'll do all these things, all BS, all nonsense. And when he becomes president, he wouldn't, even if he did become president, which he won't, he can't do any of that. He won't do any of that. I mean, he would destroy the US economy if he did all that. And they're all competing. I mean, unfortunately, Nikki Haley is part of this as well. You have to deal with China. But come on, you have to be an adult about dealing with China. You have to realize the costs and benefits. And you have to be able to think about how to deal with it over the long run. The best thing you can do about China right now, the number one thing to weaken China and strengthen the United States, offer visas to Chinese who want to, with engineering degrees and science degrees, who want to leave China and move to the United States, offer them permanent residency automatically. That would weaken China. And that would massive brain drain. I mean, China would have to impose, build a wall around China to prevent people believing that would expose the true authoritarian nature of the Chinese, even to Chinese people. And who knows what kind of, what consequence that would have. But that would be a bold move. I wonder if any Republican candidate, do you think one of the Republican candidates would propose that? Maybe somebody, I don't know, maybe somebody with intelligence? Like, I don't know. I don't know who that would be. But that, that would be a way to combat China. Instead, they propose these ridiculous, these ridiculous ideas that have nothing to do with it. And they blame all America's problems, not on Washington, not on themselves, not on government spending, not on regulations, not on controls. They blame it on China. And they promise, like they have been promising for 30 years, they promise we'll bring back manufacturing jobs, we'll resurrect the rest built, we'll bring back steel jobs, we'll bring back this. I mean, in this sense, the Democrats and Republicans exactly the same. They can't do any of that. They shouldn't do any of that. The US economy is not a manufacturing economy. It will never be again. Instead, they should say, we'll do away with regulations, we'll lower the cost of doing business. And whatever industries win out, great. And maybe the United States should be one big service economy. If you count service as designing chips, coding, writing software, doing AI, all those are service jobs. And let other people do the manufacturing. The better at it, cheaper at it, more productive at it, more efficient at it. But no, God forbid you leave it up to the market. We are wiser than the market, say the Republicans and say the Democrats. We know what kind of jobs the United States needs. And we will make sure that those jobs come back to America. We will engage in industrial planning, say the Republicans and the Democrats, all the same. All right, just on China again, just some of the authoritarian nature of China. China is set to limit teenage use of smartphones. So China is doing again what I think Americans would like to do, but don't have the balls to actually do it luckily. And they are cracking down on technology addiction among children by restricting legally by the government how much time children can spend with technology. This is going to be through the country's Internet Watchdog, the cyberspace administration of China, and smart phones, smart devices will all have tracking devices, and there will be a minor mode, and that mode will limit what young people can do, and it would make anybody who is under 18, for example, won't be able to access the Internet between 10pm and 6am, but also during the day it will limit the time they actually spend on it. So there you go, this is authoritarianism 101, this is the kind of micro-managing of our lives, and this is of course what many Democrats and Republicans would love to have the power to do in the United States. Okay, one more story about China, this one more focused on China weakness. Cheesing Ping is one of his big initiatives has been to transform the People's Liberation Army, the Chinese military. He spent a lot of his political capital on doing that, integrating it, creating much more of a military force like the United States has that can fight in both sea and land in an integrated technology forward way. One of these prime focuses has been the creation of something called the Rocket Force, think about Rocket Band, but Rocket Force, which is the custodian of China's nuclear arsenal. It has a new way of missiles, launch silos, and it really is an attempt by Chinese to match American superiority in nuclear technology and deter America through a large nuclear arsenal. Just this week, Xi has had to fire the two top commanders of the Rocket Force, people he appointed, and bring in outsiders with no experience with regard to nuclear missiles. It's the biggest upheaval in the military in over five years. At the same time, I don't know if you've been reading the story about the disappearance of China's foreign secretary, his foreign minister just disappeared, Qin Gang, who disappeared and then finally was replaced in June without any explanation. Nobody knows where he am. Anywhere, all this, the shakeup and the rocket forces and the shakeup within the foreign ministry, all raising the specter of corruption and disloyalty to Xi, and maybe some complications and slow down in China's efforts to really boost its military. One of the reasons I don't expect China to invade Taiwan is I think they know they are way behind the United States in military capabilities. The United States not only has better technology, it has better trained forces, but it also, these forces are tested, they fought wars. China has not in a very long time. And it's, again, motivated soldiers. You've got a whole list of reasons why authoritarian regimes do not do well ultimately in wars. All right, let's see. Okay, just a quick one on the demographics of millionaires, kind of interesting. So two phenomenons that are interesting. One is where the millionaires in the world going, where they're leaving and where they're going. So it turns out that the biggest loser in terms of millionaire movement is the United Kingdom. Since Brexit, really since over 2022, but really since Brexit, millionaires have been leaving London. Some of those are Russian oligarchs, obviously who can't stay being kicked out. But many of them just, Brexit has made it too cumbersome for them to be stationed in England and therefore they are moving to other places. So where are they moving to? Where a millionaires in the world going? Well, the number one destination of millionaires, a lot of hedge fund guys, a lot of private equity, a lot of people who can work remotely are moving to the United Arab Emirates, Dubai and other Emirates, 4,000 new millionaires move to Dubai in 2022. Dubai or sorry, UAE. UAE has become a playground of the gazillionaires. This is where they go. Every need they have is catered to. They can get anything. It's beautiful. It's also unbelievably sad. It's got a whole subsection of society, which are all immigrants, which are almost treated as slave labor. UAE also has the way it treats its own women. If you're a foreign woman, you're okay, but it's own women. It's just a primitive society playing at being Western. So 4,000 millionaires have moved to UAE just in 2022. Same year, 2,800 moved to Singapore. That I can kind of understand. 2,200 moved to Switzerland. And this is NetFlow. This is people who left and people who came in. So this is net increase. The United States saw an increase of 1,500 millionaires in terms of people coming in. Not people becoming millionaires in America, but people coming in to America and people leaving America. More people came to America as millionaires that left in spite of the fact that the United States is the most horrible and declining and oppressive place in the world right now based on Republicans. Saudi Arabia saw 600 millionaires going. I have no idea who those people are. Why anybody would go to Saudi Arabia is beyond me. But maybe there are some other countries who are millionaires. Maybe for them it's no big deal for Muslims to move. So US is a net gainer, but UAE, God, 4,000 in Singapore, Switzerland, United States is the fourth net gainer. What's also interesting is in the United States, what do you think millionaires, most millionaires are created? What economy in the United States is creating the most millionaires in the United States? Which state in the United States is creating the most millionaires? Texas? That would be I think a lot of people's guess. It would be Texas. But indeed, Texas I think is maybe number three. I don't actually have a list of all the states, but I can tell you the number one and number two are. Number one is by far California. It's not even close. California has 3,200 individuals that have $50 million in income or more. We're not talking about wealth. We're talking about income. $50 million in income, annual income or more. What's interesting here is that that number has increased since 2019. And these are numbers as of 2021. So I don't know what the numbers are in 2022. We haven't got those numbers yet. But in 2019, over the two years, the number of Californians making $50 million of income or more, $50 million, has more than doubled, 158%, almost tripled. So in 2019, you had 1,231 people in California making $50 million or more. Today in 2021, it was 3,182. Now, if you understand the California economy, that's not surprising. Most of these are tech. Most of them have stock options. Stock market did very, very well. 2020, 2021, particularly tech, and they made a fortune. My guess is that 2022 so decline in those numbers, but still those numbers are unbelievable. In total, in California, you have 288,000 people, 288,000 people or 0.7% of the residents report over $1 million in income in 2021. Income, not wealth. It's a lot of money to make in one year, a million dollars. That is a lot of money. How come you guys are not in that category? How come I'm not in that category? A million dollars in income 2021. That's a lot of money. That's California. The second next state in which you have that kind of millionaires is New York with 80,000 people or 0.4% of the population making a million dollars a year or more. That's pretty amazing. And this is why California remains attractive to entrepreneurs. It remains attractive because it's still the wealth creating engine of this country. You might want to denounce it and the reality is millionaires are not leaving California. Millionaires are staying in California because if you're a gazillionaire, if you have a lot of money, California is, yeah, you pay a lot of taxes. But California is a phenomenal place to live if you have that kind of money. They don't have security. Look at the crime rates. California is one of the safest, pretty much every neighborhood in California with maybe a few exceptions are some of the safest places in the entire country. You guys are completely, well, not you guys. Scott is completely delusional about these things. And it's all driven by politics. So the politics of California that he doesn't like that they must be crying. Millionaires must be leaving. It must be all inertia. It can be actual wealth creation. Yeah. Yes, the reality is that California look at the crime statistics. Yeah. Businesses. People are leaving downtown San Francisco because of the homeless people. Yeah, but it's, you know, if you live in San Jose, you live in Santa Clara, you live in Montview, you live in Palo Alto, you live in Saratoga, you live in Southern California and Orange County. Crime? Crime? Almost doesn't exist. And most of these millionaires, most of these gazillionaires don't live in San Francisco. And if they do live in San Francisco, they don't live in downtown. They live in the beautiful part of San Francisco that has a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Some of the best views in the world and in neighborhoods that are really safe. Yeah. Don't don't live in downtown San Francisco. Not a good idea. Even though even in downtown San Francisco, not downtown, but like south the mission where a lot of high tech guys live, you know, you don't own a store because they steal stuff. But in terms of safety, I don't think the crime statistics in terms of murder or violent crime are that high as compared to other cities in the U.S. All right. It's just like the same perspective of people have people have this perception in New York as a super violent place. No, New York is like has the same level of violence as midtown America. It has the same level of violence as what you would think of of suburbia and, you know, red states and it has lower violence than many cities in Texas. New York actually has quite low levels of both violence in terms of robbery, murder and violent crimes. That's just the numbers. Not my preference. Just the numbers. All right. Yeah. Some good news. All right. Cancer. Two, two, two, two stories on cancer that are really exciting. One is, so now artificial intelligence can detect breast cancer in mammograms as effectively as experienced radiologists according to a new study. Right. So the emerging technology, AI screening of breast cancer is has the potential of cutting radiologists workload by about half and allowing radiologists to focus on the more complicated questionable kind of where you need a lot of experience. And when you need kind of their particular skill, you know, focus on those cases. This was a an analysis of a long-term trial. It included 80,000 women in Sweden. It was published in Tuesday at the journal Lancet oncology. And the AI actually identified 20% more cases of breast cancer than the standard reading by two radiologists. And it's, it's fantastic. I mean, this, this is exactly the promise of AI. This is the kind of increases in quality of life. And, you know, and it truly is truly is stunning and amazing. So, yeah, yeah. And by the way, this is the kind of technology that is really going to change our lives and make the world a better place to live and improve quality of life dramatically. So yay for artificial intelligence. I'm wondering, and I need to look, maybe I need to look more carefully at the study because I didn't notice this. But I wonder if it also is better at, at false positives because one of the great problems with mammograms is lots of false positives. It looks like it's something, but then when you look carefully, it's not. And I wonder if AI is better at eliminating the false positives and that would also be huge in terms of reducing stress and fear and challenges for women. So let's hope that it does that as well. Finally, there is now a drug in development. It just passed. It was just done. Well, not these, it hasn't, it's in phase one clinical trials. We don't have the results yet, but we do have results from pre clinical trials. This is basically in the test tube and on animals. Anyway, they released this drug. I think Bree says it's AOH 1996. Yes. AOH are the, are the, are the initials of a young girl who died from a rare form of cancer in 1996 who inspired, I think, the researchers who are doing this work. So the drug's name carries her, her name, AOH was, was her name. What's interesting about this drug is that it targets a specific protein and a specific process by which proteins are made that only cancer cells, only cancer cells engage in. Now this has been known for a long time and it's been known for a long time that it's somehow you could target that. And you could produce a drug that just targeted that. It would be able to differentiate between healthy cells and cancer cells because only the cancer cells do this. But forever it's been thought as too difficult, too complicated, didn't have a path in, didn't know how to do it. Anyway, now they have it. It looks like, right? We haven't done human trials yet. So until we do human trials, you don't know. But it certainly looks like we made, scientists have made dramatic progress in achieving this. They're calling it the cancer killer drug because it targets just cancer cells and any cancer cells. So this is multiple cancers. So this is the one thing that most cancers, if not all cancers, share is the production of this one protein. So that this drug you injected into a human being and it will go around your body and basically kill all the cancer cells. And leave all other cells alone. And this is of course massive because right now we have lots of chemotherapy that kills cancer cells. And Scott you're being an idiot if I could say so. Real idiot. But if you could actually take this cancer, the problem with chemo is that it doesn't target the cancer cells exclusively. The problem with chemo is that it will also attack regular cells. The problem with chemo is that when the chemo goes in, yes it kills the cancer cells but it also kills a lot of cells around it. And that's why you have all these horrible side effects that people who go through cancer treatment suffer from. So yeah, I mean this is a major breakthrough. I'm excited by it. This replaces, as Frank says, the scorch and burn method and this becomes a much more targeted effort. So let's hope this is true because this would be completely revolutionized and change the lives of millions of people, billions of people. If we had a real cure for cancer, which what this drug might be, we'll see. All right. I had one more story but I might, I'll just save that. I'll save that for, regarding Russia, I'll save that for tomorrow. Thanks everybody. Scott said, go to this. Yeah, but you deserved it. RIMO says, oh wow, I didn't even notice and we've blown through the target and we don't have, we have like four questions. So if you still want to ask a question, ask a question. Happy to answer them at any dollar amount. But let's start with RIMO. RIMO says, this is for the show, oh, from last night about PE, great topic, great show, keep it up. Yeah, I mean, and sadly, you know, to really do private equity justice, you would need a whole series because you know, I'd like to have pulled up like data on private equity returns and how well pension funds have done as compared to private public markets. And I'd also would have liked to, to give some case studies and actually go through a deal, which I think would have been fun. And I think everybody would have found interesting. I, you know, there's so much that this topic deserves. I think private equity is an important feature of a marketplace. And yet, you know, so I gave it, I talked about it, at least you know what it is and how basically it functions. Although, again, we could get into a lot more details on it. But yeah, I mean, I love hostile takeovers. I love leverage buyouts. I love private equity. I'm not saying that are people who distorted and perverted and do bad things with it. But for the most part, it is an important tool in the arsenal of markets. And, and, you know, it deserves a lot more focus. I used to teach this when I taught finance and ethics, we used to do a whole thing on hostile takeovers and Michael Milken on, on what happened in the 1980s. Of course, I was teaching in the 1990s, but you could update that. And it is, it is truly a fascinating area because it includes so much of what we study in finance, how you analyze a firm, how you decide how much to buy it for. Somebody said, oh, somebody in the comments said, what was it? Strategic sales, they pay a lot of money and it's much healthier and it's much better. It's just not true, right? If a strategic buyer wanted to pay more money, they would. And, and the private equity fund wouldn't be able to buy it. Strategic deals tend to be less profitable and ultimately less good for the company than private equity deals. Because mergers are really, really, really hard for cultural reasons, for leadership reasons, to bring a new company into an existing company. Most mergers fail. Most mergers are not ultimately successes. So, no, I mean, there's so much in that world of finance, in that world of reality, what actually happens out there that is fascinating and interesting. And yeah, you know, maybe we'll do more topics like that in the future because there's so many misconceptions. There's so much lack of understanding about how finance works and how mergers and acquisitions work and how markets work and how markets value things. And who's, oh, the other thing that I didn't really talk about is one of the, a lot of the articles now that because they're going to increase regulations and private equity. I mean, the Biden administration is all about regulate, regulate, regulate. So one of the things they keep taking, talking about is how expensive it is, it's so expensive to invest in private equity. Well, first of all, if it's so expensive, why does anybody do it? And who does it? Wealthy individuals, insurance companies and pension plans are very sophisticated investors. So why do they do it if it's so expensive? Well, obviously, it's worth it. Obviously, the returns that they get on the investment after you take out the costs, the fees and the carry are still worth it. So how does the government decide what's too expensive? And why does the government decide what's too expensive for sophisticated investors investing in private equity, but they don't decide what's too expensive? I don't know, in your mortgage firm, in your broker's firm or in how much the iPhone cost, too expensive, maybe we need price controls on iPhones. It just, I mean, insanity, the stupidity, the arrogance of these people. I mean, this is the mentality of central planners and it is so dangerous and so corrupt and you can see it in China, so horrible. And it leads directly to, it leads to authoritarianism, inevitably. Thank you, Remo, really appreciate the support. And I'm glad you liked the show yesterday. John says, thank you for reviewing Puss in Boots. John wrote along his own review of the, on the comment section underneath the videos if you're interested in John's review. He disagrees with me, which is great. Underneath the Puss in Boots, the video I did yesterday, he has his review. I encourage you to read it because it's interesting. Your Honor, it was great. I really enjoyed it. And by the way, John, I agree with you. There's no question there's a certain element of second-handedness in the first part of, like in Puss in Boots, the hero. But there's also a certain, you know, I don't know, fun element to it. There's also a certain heroism and just a certain love of life that he exhibits, that I fear is lost by then. And maybe I'm wrong, but that's my sense. All right, and then he says, hey, with this hundred, can I also request a song? Yes, of course you can. It's called Dead. Oh God, it's not a good name. By They Might Be Giants. That sounds familiar. I know they might be Giants. I think I listened to them something of theirs years ago. They might be Giants. Yes. And one of my favorite bands, they have a lot of songs that they write from a unique point of view. Yeah, let me, let me, I see that the song one is, well, it's more affordable, but it's also one you guys really, really like. So I guess, whoops, that didn't work. Sorry. All right, there we go. So I guess we'll keep it for now and see what happens. So thank you, John. Thanks for the support. Thanks to the $100. And yes, I will review the song Dead. Michael says, is Vivek too intellectual to win the Republican primary? No, I don't think so. I think he's, I think there's a lot of issues with him. But I don't think it's that he's too intellectual. I think that he's too pandering. I mean, Vivek is pandering. He's pandering to the Trump supporters by supporting Trump all out. He's pandering to stuff about stuff he knows is wrong, like what he said the other day. He was asked about whether he thought that the 9-11 might have been an inside job. And what he said was he didn't say no. He said instead, I don't think the government has told us everything that they know about what happened in 9-11, which is true. I agree with that. But this is a question about inside job. So it left the impression that he was, he agreed with the idea that it was an inside job. That's lazy. And later he had to put up a tweet that explained his position. Know what I meant was that we haven't heard about Saudi involvement and who knew in the Saudi government about it. And the American government hasn't told us about that. And if he'd answered that, I would have said, yeah, Vivek, good for you. But that's not how he answered the question. So he panders too much to people asking him the questions. He panders too much to the audience in front of him. He's pandering too much to what he thinks Trump voters want him to say. He knows better on a lot of issues. And yet he says things that he knows, I think, that he knows are not true because he thinks that a win him an election or a chance that I don't think he'll be a VP choice. I think the problem Vivek has is it doesn't come across yet, but he's an entrepreneur. He's actually created wealth as compared to some other rich guys running for president. That's a problem. And you know, given who he's trying to attract, he doesn't have the right skin color. Sorry, but I think that's the reality. But we'll see. I mean, maybe maybe he'll do better than I expect. But I don't think it's it's intellectuality because if anything, what Vivek is doing is suppressing his internality during this campaign and what is happening is that he what is true is that he's super articulate, super charismatic. He should be the leading candidate and can put him up at stage versus what's his name, DeSantis and Vivek run circles around him. DeSantis is flat, has no emotion, can't really communicate. Well, Vivek is quick, sharp, you know, exciting. And it was just about skill. Vivek would would would be, you know, would would be second to Trump right now. But it's not. There's a lot of other factors. And, you know, but he is he is unfortunately he just panned us to everybody. And he's got to develop a spine, not just a spine to attack what everybody expects him to attack, but actually to stand up to his own base to stand up and advocate for the truth in the face of Republicans. And if he can do that, then he's not a true leader. And that's his problem. All right. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you, Shelly. Thank you, Mary, Aline, Mary, Aline. I keep every remember I get you wrong. You too can support your own book show show value for value by if you're listening live right now by using a sticker or asking a question. And and if you are not listening live, if you're listening on a podcast or listening to the YouTube show afterwards, you can support the show on Patreon. I am on Patreon. Somebody wrote me today. They just they just started being a donor on Patreon and said a contributing on Patreon. And they said, I didn't know you on Patreon. I just, you know, I mean, listening to you for a long, long time. And I didn't know your page. Yes, I'm on Patreon. You can support me on Patreon. It's easy. It's fun. It's exciting. Anyway, please support me on Patreon, particularly if you can afford, if you can afford it and don't do it if you can afford it. And, you know, view it as a trade as a value for value. You're paying for something that you're getting for free now. It you can do anything from $2 to $25 a month to $500 a month in $500 a month. You know, is what makes those those contributors make a big difference to the continuation of the show. All right, Colin says, new book, The Visionaries, Arant Brevoir, Rand Weil, and the Power Philosophy in Dark Times. The author was interviewed on a daily podcast that's worth checking out. I did. I've read a review of the book. I haven't read the book yet, but I've read a review of the book. It sounds like he completely doesn't get Ayn Rand, you know, again, but it is good to see Ayn Rand being presented, being put in, you know, these other women are not at her level, but at least being put in with women who, you know, Bouveray and Arant are certainly women who are considered giants of the 20th century by popular culture. So it's good to see Rand in the same title as them. It's a great opportunity for people to be exposed, you know, to Ayn Rand a little bit, even though he in the book seems to misrepresent it quite a bit. So yeah, I mean, I think it's exciting. It's exciting to see Ayn Rand mentioned in the culture. A new book, Fox, all this other stuff is going on. There will be more, I promise, much more to come. Charlie, if you were dropped in Venice Circle 1400s, late middle ages and tasked to be a financier, how well would you, would you? Silly question, but I'd love to see how you'd go about it as a thought exercise. You mean with the knowledge that I have today, with the knowledge that I have of what happens in Venice? Look, I mean, the thing is to finance those things that you know are going to take off. Trade, trade is a big part. Now 1400 is not the greatest period. It's not the greatest period because the fact is that not that much wealth is created between 1400, 1500, 1600, 1700. I mean, wealth only starts getting really created on a scale where you can really become wealthy, you know, hugely wealthy in the 1700s. But, you know, I would go around, go about financing and encouraging more trade. Trade is incredibly valuable for the Italians of this era, and particularly for Florence of the time. It's what the bankers of the time did. You have to be very careful as a banker in the 1400s because you don't want to be accused of usury by the church. The other thing is to realize which areas in Europe are going to flourish. And you want to be investing in Italy. You want to be investing in the Netherlands. You want to be investing in those economies because those economies where the most wealth is going to be produced, you want to start investing in England, although England only really starts booming a little bit after that, but certainly you can make some long-term investments into England. You want to be investing in businesses that engage in trade, but also businesses that are starting to take advantage of the beginnings of the scientific revolution. So you'd really have to think about what are the tools that would be created that businesses could be built. And you could change history. Since you know where things are heading, you could really change it. Part of the issue is things like innovations like the printing press. Well, if you'd invested in the guy who invented the printing press, you wouldn't have made a lot of money, but some of the publishers succeeded quite well. And you could figure out, if you could figure out down the road, what are the feeder industries that make the economy ultimately grow, those are the kind of industries you want to be invested in. It's not easy. Anyway, let's see. Thanks, Shelley. James asks, can you comment on the holding company versus private equity? I think a lot of people forget that Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company. Buffett and Munger both hate private equity. How much is it reviewing a 10-minute clip? I mean, if you want me to review a 10-minute clip, I don't know. I mean, 10-minute clip turns out to be a whole show. I don't know. Make me an offer. What can I say? I don't know. I'd be happy to look at a 10-minute clip and review it. And so make me an offer. But look, Buffett is wrong on lots of things. Lots of things. Remember, Buffett's a Democrat. He believes in Democratic kind of economic policy. And he's wrong on private equity. Buffett likes boring economy. Buffett likes lots of government spending. Buffett likes slow, steady growth. And capitalism is much more dynamic than that. And private equity is incredibly dynamic. And some of the people in private equity have gotten returns on the investment that match what bottom Buffett has managed to do, just not over as many years as he has done. But so the fact that Buffett is against it means nothing to me. We disagree on a lot of different things regarding the economy, regarding even business. But look, a holding company is just a particular form of structure. In Juan Buffett's case, he has created a holding company and then he buys a bunch of companies that are subsidiaries in a sense of that holding company. I don't particularly think that is a particularly efficient way of managing a business. I think in many respects what Buffett does different than private equity is he buys companies that are already growing. He buys companies that are already succeeding. He doesn't do a lot of replacing management. He doesn't do a lot of changing strategy and things like that. That's one strategy you can engage with. My suspicion is that one Buffett leaves this earth, this holding company will not be very successful. I think what made the Buffett holding company successful, Berkshire Hathaway, is Buffett's unique genius and it's not replicable. It's unique. It's just like the guy who ran GE for many years and ran it so successfully. You can't replicate that. Nobody else could run GE that successfully. Actually, it's not replicable. Conglomerates like a GE, like Berkshire Hathaway, rarely succeed in the world. So Berkshire Hathaway is a holding company. Lots of subsidiaries, lots of companies underneath it. The question is, do you know enough about all these subsidiary industries to be able to be a good investor in all of them? Jack Walsh was the GE guy. Thank you. And it's rare that anybody can actually do that and run them all successfully. Buffett has done it. Jack Walsh did it. A few others have done it in history, but that's about it. Private equity. The private equity owners don't pretend to be experts. They value particular companies. They are agents of change. They're not agents of the status quo. And they come in and they shake things up. And what they do is they hire experts in shaking companies up to run the companies that they have. They don't pretend to be the CEOs. They don't pretend that they can manage them all. They hire people who are specialists at this. And it's a model that's worked phenomenally well. So I'd say a holding company, the way Buffett views it, is much more about investing in the status quo, investing in success that already exists. Private equity is a lot about shaking things up and squeezing value or creating value where it wasn't there before. And creating more value out of the assets and putting them to the best, most effective use. Thank you, James. Frank, please talk about when you ran the art frame store. Why? What would I? I mean, I didn't run an art frame store. I invested in an art frame store. There was literally my wife and a couple of friends of mine all ran it. I'm not sure what perspective you want on it, but we opened it up during the session in California in 1993, late three, maybe early 1994. And we had beautiful, beautiful artwork, all reproductions, and magnificent framing, magnificent frames, and great framework. And the whole idea was to introduce people to great art and to encourage people to buy it. And people didn't buy it. And a lot of it had to do with the recession. A lot of it had to do with people's taste in art. They didn't like great art. And then they ended up coming into the frame store and asking for junk to be framed. I mean, horrible stuff that I didn't even consider, we didn't even consider art. And this friend of mine who was doing the framing, she started hating it because she ended up having to frame all this garbage. Instead of beautiful stuff. The whole point of the store is to do beauty. Other times people would come into the store and say, wow, this is amazing. I love it. But my wife slash husband, they won't like it or this is amazing. This is wonderful. But wow, I couldn't hang that up in my home. I mean, it takes a certain level of courage and vulnerability, willingness to be vulnerable, to put your art on display for the world to see. This is why most people hang on the walls, pictures of flowers, or just blobs of paint, or, I don't know, scenery, but lame scenery. Because it doesn't say anything. Nobody's going to be offended by it. Nobody's going to challenge them. Nobody's going to say, whoa, you like that. It's neutral. It's bland. And most people are bland. But most people are afraid that even if they're not bland, they're afraid to project whatever bold, artistic sense of life tastes they have. They don't want their neighbors to know. They don't want their friends to know. So they don't want to say anything. They want to be safe. And safe art is boring, and really bad art is boring, or non-art is boring. So I landed up closing the store after nine months. We weren't making money. We were losing money. And nobody was having fun. The whole point was to have fun and make money. I landed up with, I was making at the time, I think I was making $64,000 a year as a university professor. And I landed up at the end with the store closed with $50,000 of credit card debt. Which took me years to pay off, but I ultimately did. But hey, do I regret it? No, not at all. It was fun. It was interesting. I learned something. It was enjoyable. It was fun to do business with friends. I never understood this idea of don't go into business with your friends. Who else would you go business with? Only people are going to business with their friends. I would never go into business with a stranger. That would be weird. Anyway, yeah. So you manage. You figure out how to pay off your debts. You figure out how to live in a way that's appropriate. And you figure out how to manage your finances in a way that it doesn't kill you. But you got to take risks in life. And you got to go for it. You got to do things that you think will be enjoyable and fun and interesting and maybe make you money. And sometimes you will fail. Maybe often you will fail. And you have to just accept that, learn from it, embrace it, figure out what you did wrong, what you did right. Or sometimes it's just like, yeah, it failed. On I go. But never give up on it. Never stop taking risks. Never stop venturing out there and trying new things. Again, it's like a boring art. Don't make your life a boring life. Thanks, Frank. All right. Thank you, everybody. We did great on the contribution. The fundraising side, that is fantastic. I will see you all tonight. Augustina is going to be with me. We're going to talk about immigration. You can come and ask all your tough questions on immigration. Again, we'll have a $650 goal. We have to make it this time. We didn't make it yesterday. So please join us. Please ask questions. Please challenge us on immigration. A lot of interesting questions. A lot of tough questions. Just today I read a new study on immigration, which was interesting. I'll talk about that with Eugenia. So come on over and tonight, 8 p.m., Augustina is wonderful. And we will talk everything you ever wanted to know about immigration. But we're afraid to ask and we'll have fun.