 finance, energy and war. So Biden today banned the importation of oil and gas from Russia. So Americans cannot buy oil and gas from Russia. Again, I'm skeptical about all these things. I mean, if you're going to have a ban, why don't you ban all goods? Why are you selective? Why don't we just embargo Russia? No goods in, no goods out. You can export, you can import and just shut down trade with Russia. I think that is the right approach. If you're going to use trade in this way against what you perceive now as an enemy, then you will boggle the enemy. It's okay to trade for Russian dolls, but it's not okay to trade for oil. No, it's not okay to supply money to the enemy. And trade is supplying money to the enemy, and therefore you shouldn't do it. So really, what we should do is have a complete embargo on it. Mr. Book got a message of hope and optimism from Ukrainian friend watching the show now. Also, the show, keep up the good work, man. Yeah, I mean, I've said this on the previous shows. I'll say it again. If there's somebody from Ukraine listening, I'll definitely say this. Look, Ukrainians are being amazing in this conflict. They are odd guns. They are odd manned. They are not a people really prepared or have experienced with war. They were invaded in 2014, but that went very quickly. There wasn't much of a war there. And Ukraine have done phenomenally well. I don't know if they trained well or prepared well for this. I don't know if it's just a spirit, but they have rallied to the cause. And the president has been truly amazing. I've said this before, I think, to the most impressive politician on the planet right now. I can't think of anybody else, even in competition. He is truly amazing. He's rallied his people. He's put pressure on Western governments to help them out. Mostly, he's been effective in doing that. And Ukrainians are holding them back, right? Ruk Solana says she's in Ukraine but currently in Georgia. I'm hoping to be in Georgia at the end of April, early May. So I've got scheduled talks on April 30th and May 2nd in Georgia, in Tbilisi. So maybe I'll meet you there. That'd be great. And I think the Ukrainian people have really showed up and good for them. Again, they've got less equipment but better equipment. They're using Western equipment rather than Russian equipment, although they're still flying Russian planes and doing quite well there. So overall, I think this is a good step. I think if the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians that are fighting should be proud of what they're doing. They're holding this Russian bear. They're fighting for their own freedom. Hopefully if they can win this or hopefully one day when the Russians leave, Ukraine can become more, even more of a free country. I mean, the real upside for Ukraine is to use this as an opportunity to really rethink what it means to be a free country and reinvigorate whatever freedom, liberty movement they have. And whatever the fate coming out of this, they will come out of this, whether it's this year, next year, five years, 10 years, 20 years to come out of it stronger and more committed to freedom and liberty than ever before. So hopefully that's part of the lesson they learned and it can become. I mean, as I've told you before, Atlas Shrug was the best-selling book in Ukraine in 20, I think it's 2014-15 or around 2015. I think there are some amazing people there and who knows what the upside is if they're truly free. Look, Solana says Georgia has a pro-Russian government. I know it's super sad, particularly considering where Georgia was 20 years ago, how free it was, how pro-capitalist it was. It was maybe the most pro-capitalist government in the world and that is all gone and lost. And I'll be in Georgia to try to inspire more activism towards capitalism. All right, James asks, what is the long-term impact of private companies punishing Russian citizens because of the war? Do you think it will create resentment of the West? Also, how does this help China long-term? China buys 20% of oil from Russia. Okay, a few things. I was going to talk about this in terms of energy, but in terms of the companies, I mean, I think it's a short-term hit to the bottom line. Russia was a market. As I said, Pepsi, it was a third of the market, third largest market they had. It's certainly going to take a short-term hit. But I think that long-term, these kind of things could prevent China from taking Taiwan because China doesn't want this. They don't want private Western companies to cut them off because China would be devastated if that happened. China has much better understanding of the benefits of trade than do the Russians. And China is looking at this and saying, God, the West is really serious about these sanctions, about limiting trade, about these companies leaving. We don't want Apple to leave China because we invaded Taiwan or something like that. And you've got to imagine that Apple today is working through contingency plans of what if they had to leave China? What would happen? I really do think of all the activities these private companies are doing might be the thing that ultimately motivates the Chinese maybe a little bit to behave more than anything else the US government could do because they don't want to lose touch with these American companies, which are the real source of benefit they get from the West. So the companies will take a short-term hit to the bottom line, long-term who knows because who knows what will happen in Russia. Yes, this will definitely build resentment to the West on the part of the Russians and maybe in the part of some Chinese. But I think China has no options. It's not like they have other brands that can easily replace the Americans, although in some cases they have replaced them, but in others it will be different. And so they'll take up a financial hit short-term. I think long-term it might be hopeful because other regimes will think twice about doing this kind of stuff and that'll prevent them from getting in these situations. And I think these companies benefit in the goodwill they generate in the Western Europe and in the United States and much of the rest of the world. So I definitely think they gain goodwill and maybe some revenue as a result. I'm much more likely to go and interact with the company that is with a company that just took up a stand than with other companies. So let's talk about oil. Let's talk about oil. So as you know, Biden just make it illegal to import oil. Oil prices are going up because people are worried about shortages or becoming the supply of oil and therefore prices are going up when you restrict supply or when people expect supply to be restricted prices go up. I don't know that this action by Biden will actually affect the supply of oil because think about it this way. Since Russia doesn't sell its oil to the U.S. so what does it do? Oil markets are international markets so that oil will be sold somewhere else. India, for example, has already said that it is willing to buy Russian oil. Now it's going to be more complicated to get it to India than it is to get it to the United States. India won't, for example, finance the shipping. They won't accept delivery at the ports in Russia. They'll only accept delivery at the ports in India. China might take more Russian oil although again Russian oil is heavy oil. You need particular refineries to deal with it. It's not clear that China can take more Russian oil than it already takes. India, I think, has a refining capacity to take more Russian oil. I've seen countries like Malaysia say that they intend to continue trading with Russia. Potentially they would buy the oil. So because oil markets are international, if the United States stops buying that doesn't really affect the flow of oil. We get oil from somewhere else. Now where do we get the heavy oil that Russia provided that Canada could provide but we don't have the Keystone pipeline Venezuela used to provide but we're not trading with Venezuela? Well, it turns out that we might be talking to Venezuela. Todd says the U.S. Open Dialogue with Venezuela, how distasteful do you find that? Very distasteful. I think it's horrible. I don't know if Mexico has the same kind of heavy oil as comes from maybe. I just don't know. Todd, thank you. Wow. That is fantastic. Todd says my firm unnamed has departed from Russia. I am proud of that decision. See, it motivates employees too. So Todd just put $200 behind that. So thank you, Todd. That's very, very generous and that gets us very close to $600 today, which is terrific. What were we talking about? Yes, so Venezuela. I think it's horrible that we're doing that. Venezuela is an evil regime destructive to its own people. I don't think we should be trading with Venezuela. In our hemisphere, we have every interest to replace that regime, but it looks like oil rules and we will be talking to them. James says, what is the impact of getting off of Venezuela? They are an ally of Russia. Yes, they are. What stops us from getting off of Canada or using more oil in the United States? Canada oil, it's a matter of transportation. We don't have the Keystone pipeline, so we don't have a pipeline going down south from Canada. We can use trail train cars, but that's a much more expensive, cumbersome, messy way to transport oil. We're probably doing that as we speak. We'll probably import as much oil as we can from Canada through train cars, I think is the main mechanism. We could go for more oil in the United States. The oil in the United States is a different kind of oil. It's a lighter oil. I just wanted to point this out. Before you get to US oil, which I want to focus on, so the oil market is an international market. The Russian oil is going to sell in world markets, but what's interesting is that if you look at Russian crude right now, as compared to American crude or Saudi crude or anybody else's crude, it is selling at a significant discount. The reason it's selling at a discount is that Russia right now is trying to sell the oil. They'll sell it to anybody who's willing to. Putin is not benefiting as much from the increase in oil prices as one would expect because he has to sell it at a discount for anybody to buy it, because the Indians are not going to buy it at market prices like anybody else's. They'll only buy it because there's some political risk and some other risks. They'll only buy it at discounts and they'll only buy it, as I said, once it arrives at a port in India. It's not easy for Russia to deal with this, but it's not like suddenly they can't sell all this oil and their revenue goes to zero. No, they just sell it to other parties and maybe they get a lower price for it, but they're still going to sell oil. Again, this is the same problem with embargo on oil from Iran. All markets are global markets. As long as somebody will buy their oil, they will sell that oil and India will buy less American oil and buy more Russian oil or less Australian oil and more Russian oil, whatever, but the oil will be sold. Everything that's pumped up, demand will be met. In other words, all the demand that's out there will be met. It's not as Biden said, oh, we're hitting them where it really hurts, not really. We're making life a little bit more miserable for them, but this is not some dramatic thing. Revenue for more right now is skyrocketing for Saudi Arabia for US producers and skyrocketing, so they're making huge profits right now, huge profits. This will be an amazing year for them because they're pumping out oil, they're selling it at the highest prices we've seen in 14 years. Travis said Saudi Arabian oil revenue up 150% over a few years ago, absolutely, because prices are up more than 150%. Now, why don't US producers start producing more? Well, first, because it's not clear the demand is there. So producing more would lower prices, but it's not clear how much more demand the world economy has, particularly if things slow down in the world economy. But second, drilling all requires a lot of money. It requires financing. It's risky. Not every, in spite of how sophisticated our technology is, not every oil rig pays off. American oil companies have a lot of licenses now from the government, but they need funding to drill. And they need to be convinced that if they drill and start producing that production won't be taxed or won't be shut down in a year or two. If they're going to make an investment today, they need some confidence about the future. And they don't have that confidence. And this is where Biden and the Biden administration is particularly bad. This is one area where the Trump administration was good, not necessarily Trump, but the Trump administration was good. They basically were very pro oil and gas and coal, and they allowed them and they gave them confidence that at least while that administration was in power, they would have, they would be able to profit off of the oil rigs that they drilled. The Biden administration is doing the opposite. Its regulatory agencies are currently writing new regulations to regulate the oil business. The Federal Reserve is being asked to start regulating financial institutions and the other bank regulators, all the different regulators of financial institutions and then many of them, six, seven different ones. They're all now being asked to consider climate change and how they regulate banks, which is a whole show I will do at some point because it's a dumbest idea in history. And part of this will entail banks not being allowed or limited in how much they can lend money or they can finance oil drilling. So people, I met a guy who's raising capital in order to finance oil drilling to replace the banks, but that is, it's going to take time. It's more expensive capital. And again, because of ESG, environment, society, environment, no, wait a second, ESG, environment, society governance. This is the leftist way of taking over corporate America. All companies are just not motivated and are not incentivized to drill. They don't know what's going to happen next year. They don't know what these new regulations are going to say. And they're basically telling Biden administration, you want us to drill? We'll drill. You have to freeze all new regulations. You have to not promise not to penalize us later for the drilling we're doing right now. And it's real suicide, economic suicide, what the Biden administration is doing. But of course, we knew this. They've manned all these agencies with a bunch of nutty environmentalists are managing the energy industries in finance. If you listen to some of the nominees of the Federal Reserve talking about the systemic risk of climate change and how they're going to try to get the Fed and financial regulators to reduce climate change risk, the systemic risk involved in finance, it's complete nonsense. And these people don't know what they're talking about and it's an authoritarian takeover of both banks and of, you know, and it's a takeover of our banks as if they're not taking over already, they're already taking over. But and it's a complete anti oil and gas agenda. And oil and gas companies are saying legitimately, well, we're not interested. What's interesting is, is we're seeing that a lot of the environmentalist movement, a lot of the anti oil and gas movement, a lot of the climate change movement in Western Europe and in the United States has been funded by the Russians. It's amazing how much money the Russians are poured into environmentalist groups to try to prevent them from fracking in the UK, fracking in Germany, fracking in Ukraine, fracking in Western Europe where there's a lot of natural gas. And of course, in the United States, the Russians have been funding environmental, the environmentalists heavily in order to discourage the local developer of energy. So they could be the primary, they want Western Europe to be completely dependent dependent on this. So this is again ties into the whole Russian propaganda thing. They're very good at this. Thank you. I very much appreciate it.