 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, uh, what is it, it's May 22nd. It's even more good. Sound, sound, or this, that sounds a little better. Okay, maybe that's better. All right, everybody, welcome again to The Iran Book Show. Uh, thanks for joining us, and, uh, we, that doesn't sound right either. Anyway, we'll get back into the groove of things, um, uh, very, uh, very quickly here. Uh, I've been gone for the last few months. I know a few shows, uh, you know, uh, people have gotten out of the habit, the regular habit of, uh, listening to, uh, to the, to the, to the regular show, but we're gonna get back to that because as you can see, I'm home for a little while. I'm gonna be gone again, but hopefully, um, this trip, uh, which is just to Texas, I'll be able to, um, we'll be able to keep up the regular stream of shows. That is the, uh, that is definitely gonna be the intent. All right, um, uh, this week is gonna be, there gonna be a lot of shows just to give you a heads up, um, tonight, there will be a show, 8 p.m. east coast time. Uh, tomorrow we'll have, uh, every day we'll have the news show in the morning or in the early afternoon, like today, uh, and then, uh, I expected Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday, we will have shows in the evening on Thursday. I'll have Aaron Smith from the Ironman Institute, uh, here for an interview, uh, and then, uh, we'll have a show on, on, uh, Saturday, Sunday. We'll do a members only show. Those of you interested in becoming members and joining that show, you can become a member right here on YouTube, um, five bucks a month or something like that gets you in. This members only show will be a, a, in a sense, Rome part three. It'll be focused on a deep analysis with photos of some of the artworks I saw in Rome. So it'll be Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini, and Vermeer, Vermeer from, from Amsterdam, which I saw a few days ago. So that will be on Sunday, uh, afternoon, probably three PM Eastern time. All right. So that's quickly. All right. Let's jump in the news. You probably heard, because it's all over the media and the Russians are gloating like hell and, uh, and, and the Russian trolls are repeating the gloating over and over and over again. So we're getting a lot of, uh, a lot of, uh, a lot of this news, uh, that, uh, Russia has, uh, basically taken control over Bakhmut, that they have one, one, one, one, in quotes, the battle of Bakhmut, um, God, where it was going to start. First, it's taken them 10 months. This is a tiny little town. It's taken them 10 months. They've had to completely and utterly flatten this place, turn it into dust and it's taken them 10 months. By some estimates, uh, they have suffered anywhere between 50 to 100,000 casualties, not deaths, but death plus injured millions, millions of rounds of ammunition of, of, um, um, uh, what do you call it, uh, shells of, uh, artillery shells. This has been the costliest battle, maybe in, in history, given that Bakhmut has no, and I said this months ago, no military significance, no strategic significance. It doesn't matter. The Ukrainians have used it basically to drain Russian resources, to kill Russians. There were days in which a thousand Russians were dying in a day. Now this has been very costly to Ukrainians, no doubt, but it was, it seems like it made sense the Ukrainian, uh, military command. This is astounding, um, that, uh, that it took them this long. It is astounding, uh, that, uh, they're making such a big deal out of this. It is, um, it is truly, uh, you know, an example of a complete dysfunction of the Russian regime from Putin on down. Uh, most of the fighting in Bakhmut was, was organized and run and commanded by a, uh, a private contractor, the Wagner group. They claimed to be handing over the Bakhmut positions to the rest. Even the head of the, of the Wagner group says, not to exactly why we took Bakhmut, I'm not sure exactly what strategic values it says for anything, but here it is. You know, we were signed this by the Russian military, so we did it in 10 months, 10 months, the second largest military force in the world. Anyway, uh, a massive, uh, massive fail on the side, uh, on the part of Russia. Uh, and, um, and, and now we'll see what the next step is. And I think the next step is probably going to be some kind of offensive, um, by, uh, Ukraine. But what is interesting is, is, uh, I think earlier today or yesterday, depending on the time zone, I guess, maybe yesterday. Um, yesterday it appears that Ukraine invaded Russia. Um, in, uh, in, uh, Eastern Ukraine on the board of Russia, you don't see this in much of the media covering this, but it does appear that Ukrainian forces or local anti-Russian Russians in T-72s and some American equipment, maybe, I, you know, who knows. Um, there is, uh, fighting going on in, uh, Bogrod, I think that's how it's pronounced, uh, Bogrod, something like that, which is in the Western part of, um, uh, of Russia. So while, uh, uh, you know, they claim it's partisans, Russian partisans, but clearly supported by the Ukrainians, and it might be Ukrainian troops, it's hard to tell. Um, but it, it, it's very difficult to get any information out of there. Clearly Ukraine doesn't want to tell us anything about what's going on there. But the reality is that there's literally fighting going on in Russia, in Western Russia. Um, the, the, and this is, um, for the first time in this war, uh, I'm not sure, uh, how Biden and the rest of the West feels about this, because they have cautioned the Ukrainians not to use American weapons on Russian soil. So Ukraine is probably not going to claim a responsibility. Thank you. It's Belgorod, Belgorod. Um, so who knows what exactly is going on? I certainly don't have no, uh, uh, superior intelligence with regard to this, but, um, we will find out, I think, in the days and weeks to come. It's on YouTube, it's on Twitter, uh, it's on a bunch of different places. But again, it's hard to tell, and you have to be very careful on anything that appears on Twitter and on YouTube, because it could very well be, uh, propaganda or Spahn, or just ignorant or a lot of different things. And, um, I'm reading a lot about Russia and China's propaganda machines, uh, on social media and it's, whoa, and, and they're sophisticated and they're good. Um, so it's, it's not clear where this is coming from. Military bloggers, Russian military bloggers, pro Russian military bloggers are actually blogging about this. So it, it, it's going on. It's happening. There's no question. Something is happening in Belgorod, much more important than Bakhmut. Mainstream media is staying away from it because they don't know any, they don't know enough to tell us about it. Um, but it's, um, it's interesting, fascinating. It's a twist on the story as the Russians are celebrating in one place, the Ukrainians, uh, uh, in their homeland. So, um, we will see, we will see. Really interesting development, really something to watch. And, uh, I'm looking forward to, uh, keeping up the speed on the story as, uh, as it develops and as we get more information, uh, about it. Um, all right. So, uh, other than that, uh, you know, there's nothing much going on other than, uh, fighting continues in Ukraine and, but there's no, uh, um, you know, there's no big changes, uh, on the ground or in strategy again, with exception of Belgorod, this, uh, this, um, uh, fighting in Belgorod and the meaning it has, it, it certainly appeared like Ukrainian troops crossed the Russian border. So, but we don't know that for a fact yet. All right. Let's see. Yes. China, uh, I've talked about this quite a bit, uh, but, but it keeps popping up in my news feed. And I think it's a, it's a basically a massive story, um, that we should watch, particularly as we continue to hear the hysteria and panic and, and concern and, and about, you know, China's this rising power and the danger it poses to the United States and so on. I mean, it is. There is a danger. There really is a danger, but we really have to, um, uh, you know, we have to really think through what that danger is and, and, uh, what the prospects, what, what, how to deal with that danger. But the reality is that China is in trouble. It's in trouble economically. It's in trouble short-term. It's in trouble medium-term. It's in trouble long-term. And, and, and the many manifestations for this trouble that China is in. And this is why, uh, and, and by the way, and I've done, I did a show about this a few weeks ago. America is in much better condition than people think it is. Russia, China is in much worse condition than people think it is. Generally, people have a, a, which is interesting, but people in the media, but people more broadly, Americans will broadly have a view of authoritarians as somehow powerful. And I think we know, or many of us know, that authoritarians are weak by the very nature of their system. They are weak. Uh, we're seeing that in Ukraine. We're seeing that in, in the pathetic performance of the Russian military in Ukraine and, and in the trouble, uh, Putin and, uh, and his military having, but you're also seeing that in China with, uh, uh, the, the economic problems that they're having. They basically being going through a crisis in the real estate market that has been going on for few years now, and that a slow economic growth significantly, uh, you know, diverted resources away from growth and, um, and they are trying to kind of, uh, unwind the, the, the challenges and the crises that is going on around real estate in China. The next, the next crisis that is already happening, um, is, um, is local government debt, uh, in, in China for many, many years, encouraged local and provincial governments to, they gave them a GDP, uh, target and they encouraged them to achieve that target. Well, one way, one way you can achieve a GDP target, uh, this is true in the United States as well. This is, this is true, is by the government just spending money, the government borrowing money and spending it. Um, and you saw this, uh, you see this, for example, in the fact that during World War II, American GDP went up significantly, um, and, you know, that, that it increases GDP significantly. Um, the, the, and of course at the same time, World War II reduced the, um, you know, the actual standard of living quality of life for Americans dramatically, dramatically. So GDP can go up and quality and standard of living can go down. War is a good example because GDP is going up because the government is spending the money. Government spending is part of GDP. So one of the things that setting GDP goes to local governments achieves is the private sector can get you the GDP you want. What you then do is you borrow money and you stop building stuff, building real estate, uh, some of these real estate companies were part of this scheme to juice up GDP in order to achieve that, right? Um, and, you know, and then, um, to juice up GDP. And then of course what the government can do is also build, build infrastructure itself. So local governments in China have built massive amounts of infrastructure. And indeed China has some of the most amazing infrastructure in the world. It has fantastic highways, ice speed trains. It also has just the most stunningly beautiful bridges you will see anywhere in the world spanning some, you know, just, just mind-defying abysses and, and all kinds of stuff. Some of them that actually are useful to get you from point A to B, some of them for tourists, all kinds of things. They just poured billions and billions of dollars into these projects and that gooses up, it increases GDP, but it's, it's, it's not productive. It's a, it's a debt asset. You build it. Yes, it can be used, but is it, but it's far from the best use of the money. And now you have the debt that you have to pay off. By some estimate, China has 23 trillion dollars, trillion, the T, of local debt that is just getting worse. And that there's really no way to pay for. And you add that, of course, to zero COVID, which shut down so many of local economies there. And, and that has the, you know, I don't think the Chinese economy is still recovered from fully. So you've got economic ballet and you've got massive quantities of debt that cannot be paid for. That is going to result in much slower economic growth. That's going to result in, in the government having to print money or the government have to reallocate productive resources to paying off the debt. It's, it's not good. You've got large sections of, of China that has a debt of over 200% of their local, of their local income, which is massive. And this is all municipal government provincial kind of debt. Right. A lot of these states and cities created different kind of financing companies. What is it? What do they call them? Public private partnerships. And of course, the public private partnerships have also accumulated massive amounts of debt in building all this infrastructure. So this, this challenge that China is going to face is going to continue to be a drag on its economy for years, if not decades into the future. One of the poorest provinces in China, you know, is one of the ones that have the most debt and is facing a literal debt crisis. Guizhou, something like that. This is in southwest China. It's a beautiful place with mountains and, you know, canyons and valleys and beautiful, beautiful geography. And they built on the most stunning architecture in terms of infrastructure. And the, but where does it all lead to? They're poor. They don't need the infrastructure. Right. The infrastructure is, is, you know, it's the, the whipped cream and the cake, but they don't have a cake. They have, just in this one state, they have 110 state-backed entities known as local government financing vehicles that have outstanding bonds, which again, they, they put out to build bridges, highways, tunnels. And they have $388 billion in outstanding debt, as of the end of last year, which is 1.3 times the gross domestic product last year. That's just these state-backed entities. And, you know, the, the, the Chinese federal government is federal. It's not federal. The government, central government is stepping in to help these provinces out, but it is a major, major mass. And, you know, there's, there's masses of hidden debt. Now the, granted, the United States has the hidden debt as well. The hidden debt in the United States is the unfunded liabilities, right? Of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which put U.S. unfunded liabilities of probably $100 trillion. So, you know, you've got, the United States is in deep, deep trouble, but the United States is an economy that can maybe get us out of it, maybe. China does not. China's low-hanging food economically is already being done. The, the big move up, the big sustained productivity gain, the big increases in wealth and, and production have already happened. It's not clear what the next step is going to be, how China goes from where China goes from where it is today, from an economic perspective. Now, as a, as an illustration of the fact that I think the leadership in China knows they're in trouble, knows they're in trouble because the economy is struggling, because they've got real structural economic problems, because they have, they saw those demonstrations at the end of zero COVID. Do you remember those demonstrations? We did a couple of shows on them, a few shows on them, where people stood up to the, to the, to the government. The leadership of Xi has been questioned by the Chinese people. And Xi knows this. And Xi feels challenged by it. And what do dictators who feel challenged by the people do? Well, they take a page in China, they take a page out of Mao Zedong. And what they do is they launch campaigns of political indoctrination. And Xi, over the last three months, has launched such a campaign. It's, you know, the, the, the idea is to rejuvenate the Chinese nation. And this is, this is Xi, this is, this is a quote from Xi and, and God, this, this is so spooky, right? This is what he says, in order to rejuvenate the Chinese nation. Quote, the entire party must unify its thinking, unify its will and unify its actions. The entire party must unify its thinking, unify its will and unify its actions. I mean, have you ever thought of anything more collective, collectivistic, right? Everything needs to be one. We need to unify everything. There's no independent thinking here. There's no new thinking. Everything has to follow the guidance of the party. And what is the party? The party is Xi. The party is Xi. And in order to do that, he has launched a massive campaign, a reeducation campaign, just like Mao did in the 1960s, in the 1970s, well, late 60s. You know, so, you know, this is an indoctrination campaign, which, which has multiple phases. The first is what they call investigation and research. This is again from Mao Tse-tung. He's, he's basically telling the local leaders saying to them, you guys are responsible for any failure and problem that we have. You guys need to figure solutions for this. And to figure solutionals, I want you to go out and speak to the peasants and go and experience reality and gain some empirical information. But really, so he's telling them, it's your fault, go fix this. So the directive urges officials to quote, seek truth from facts. That sounds good across broad areas. You know, economic security, environmental protection, and efforts to shape a more egalitarian China through quote, common prosperity. This is echoes Mao's 1961 campaign again, to go out and investigate and research, investigate and research was led to sending all the leadership, the intellectuals from the cities to, to the countryside in order for them to investigate and research, right? Let's see. So the second phase of this campaign is a themed education program that is supposed to infuse all parts of the party, which is millions and millions and millions of people with Xi Jinping's thought. Remember Mao's red book, Mao had a red book, she has a red book equivalent of a red book. And you're supposed to study it, you're supposed to repeat it, you're supposed to memorize it, you're supposed to be able to know and follow everything Xi Jinping says and does. And what he says and does is the truth. It is the unity, the unity of the party. It is the unity of its thinking. It is the unity of its will. It is the unity of its action, Xi Jinping. So now when dictators do stuff like this, Mao did this after his campaign to industrialize the country generated anywhere between 20 to 50 million deaths of salvation. Whenever dictators do something like this, it's a sign of weakness. It's a sign that they're trying to cover up their own failures and their own inadequacies and they're trying to show up ideological support. And finally, as an infestation, I think of all of this. I think it was last week, a comedian in Beijing mentioned his name is Li Haoshi. I'm mispronouncing these, I apologize. But Li mentioned that he had adopted two stray dogs and he was watching them chase a squirrel. He said the scene made him think of a phrase used by the People's Liberation Army that roughly translates to fight well, win the battle, according to Reuters. That's two stray dogs chase a squirrel. It's fight well, win the battle. Fight well, win the battle is a phrase that Xi Jinping uses a lot in terms of rallying his soldiers. And Li Haoshi, she made a joke about this, comparing it to two stray dogs chasing a squirrel. Audience laughed. But one of the audience members actually complained to the local authorities. As a consequence of that complaint, the company, the company that hired Li, the Xie cultural media firm in Shanghai, suspended Li from doing any more concerts, his account, Li's account on Chinese social media site, Waibu, has been suspended right even after he posted an apology saying he felt deeply guilty and regretful. And a subsidiary of the firm that hired him has been fined $1.91 million for telling a joke about the People's Liberation Army. And what the authorities have basically said is we will never allow any company or individual to use the Chinese capital, Beijing, as a stage to wantonly slander the glorious image of the PLA. Free speech. Free speech. Now this is what censorship looks like. This is what a regime that will not tolerate any dissent, will not tolerate any questions. This is a regime that wants to shut down all opposition. Looks like this is not a regime that is confident in itself, in its ability. And this is not a regime, I think, that we need to be afraid of. This is a regime we need to think about how to strategically handle and defeat if it ever comes to actual conflict. But this is not a regime that you start out from the perspective of fear. All right, so that's China. Ooh, I have a bunch of other stories still. All right, we're going to make these pretty quick, I think, all three of them pretty quick. I don't have much to say about the debt ceiling crisis, debt ceiling. I mean, you all know this issue about the debt ceiling rate. I mean, at some point, the government runs out of money because we run deficits, which require the government to constantly borrow money in order to fund itself. You know, to fund itself, which means pay, so security pay. There is no social security trust fund. There's no fund. There's paper. So to pay social security, to pay government employees, to pay the bureaucrats, to pay the regulators, to pay all the stuff that we need to pay, the government needs money. And the government only source of money other than taxes is to borrow that money. And, you know, so the government borrows money, the debt ceiling is basically a cap on the ability of the government to borrow that money. Congress traditionally increases the debt ceiling whenever it reaches the debt ceiling. It always does because we run deficits always constantly. And so they'll constantly raise, Congress constantly raises the debt ceiling because the government can keep functioning by raising the debt. The reason people talk about default is that at some point, once you don't pay employees and you don't pay the bureaucrats and you don't pay social security and Medicare, I guess, you start not having the money to pay interest on the debt. You can't pay back the debt that you owe because there's just no cash. And, and that's the situation that the United States government could find itself in. Now, some people say can't the government just print money? No, because the government technically doesn't print money. The Federal Reserve prints the money. And then what it does is it, the government, the government then issues bonds, which the Federal Reserve, among other people, buy. And that's how new money enters into the economy. So the Federal Reserve just printing more money. It doesn't hand that money to the Treasury without the Treasury issues IOUs the Federal Reserve. That's how the system works. Those IOUs count toward the debt, the debt ceiling. So there's a, you know, they're meeting, they'll be, you know, they're negotiating. There will be a compromise, I'm pretty sure. Maybe it will take a government shutdown in order to get to that compromise, but they will ultimately be a compromise. The Republicans have one tool to force the Democrats to do what they want them to do. And that is that they have the House. And the Democrats need the House to pass the debt ceiling, to increase the debt ceiling. And Republicans say, no, we're not going to increase the debt ceiling unless you do XYZ. It's a game of chicken. In the end, they'll come to some compromise. And in the meantime, all this hysteria about recession, the end of the economy, the end of the world, if Congress doesn't increase the debt ceiling. Yes, there's an economic cost to it, but it's relatively minor. Much of the hysteria around us has more to do with, you know, the powers to be wanting a deal. And therefore, you know, riling us up so that we put pressure on our politicians to get a deal. But in terms of actual significant long-term economic impact, I think it's very minor, indeed. It depends how long it goes, right? I mean, if the U.S. really defaults on its debt and doesn't pay its debt and things like that, yeah, that could have all kinds of disruptive effects in the world. But again, far less than what people are hyperventilating about. There's a lot of hyperventilation going on. All right, migrant crisis, I just want to give you one small, just to think about, right? And so, we're not going to get into all this discussion of immigration here, but here's the thought experiment. So, right, so all these people are coming into the United States. They're all coming in and they are applying for asylum. We don't have enough courts to deal with whether they should get asylum or not. So they all have to stay in the United States until they can get asylum or not if they don't get asylum, who shipped them out of the country. So, thousands, hundreds of thousands of people come in, apply for asylum, and they don't try to sneak in. They come in, they tell the Board of Patrol, here we are, we're applying for asylum, right? And the Board of Patrol then has to house them and feed them. And as the house them feed them until they go in front of a judge, you need to determine whether they can get asylum or not. So, A, you've got a legal system that is way behind, way way behind, right? So, these people are coming here, they don't have exactly a status. And as a consequence of not having a status, this is the paragraph from this Wall Street Journal article that I want you to contemplate. So, just think about this. So, they're being sent to all kinds of places, Denver and New York has a bunch of them and of course, Texas and Florida and they're all over the country, Arizona, California. And local governments now have to pay thousands and feed them and so on. And this is huge cost. I mean, we're talking about massive cost, border cities like El Paso, the shelter is overflowing, it's really difficult for the local budgets. California has spent a total $1.2 billion on a program to temporarily shelter and assist migrant arrivers. It was initially launched for $25 million in 2019. It's up to $1.2 billion for $29 million. Why? Well, here's the only paragraph worth reading in the entire story about the migrant crisis and the funding crisis and how to pay for them. This is the sentence, right? New arrivals, I'm quoting the Wall Street Journal. New arrivals won't be able to legally work until several months to more than a year after they have filed an asylum application in immigration court. New arrivals won't be able to legally work until several months to more than a year after they have filed an asylum application in immigration court. Not because they know jobs, there's plenty of jobs, but because they won't have legal status to work. So deny them work, give them hope that they can get asylum and of course, you're going to get millions of people trying to get into this country. It's the same reason why all the Muslim Americans after the Syrian civil war tried to get to Germany and Sweden because Germany and Sweden gave them a 3,000 euro check housing and took care of them and didn't allow them to work for over a year. I mean, it's a free lunch. Well, it's somebody's expense at American taxpayer expense and it's wrong, but is anybody proposing don't feed them, don't clothe them, but tell them they can go get a job? Anybody proposing that? No, that's off the table. The problem with the migrant crisis, the entire problem with the migrant crisis is a broken system of legal immigration. It's not a matter of building a wall, it's not a matter of putting troops on the border. It is a matter of fixing the legal immigration system in the United States and not providing monetary incentives for people to come and get a check. It's simple incentive one on one. This is not hard economics. If they come, let them work. If they're here and we're not kicking them out, let them work. If they come and they don't have a job and they can't find a job, kick them out. Can't just be homeless. I mean, the argument the cities have is, oh, if we don't take care of them, they'll be homeless. Of course they won't. You're not letting them to work, allow them to work. God, solutions to the world are so simple and yet. All right, EU and big tech. Oh, God. All right. So the European Union has found this amazing thing, you know, amazing way to raise revenues for the European Union. It's a way to redistribute wealth and it's just fantastic. All they have to do is they have to, you know, go after an American company, figure out that they've done something wrong. Well, before that, let me let me do phase one. Phase one is pass cumbersome arbitrary impossible to actually fulfill rules and laws with regard to big American companies. And then when the big American companies fail to live to follow the ridiculous impossible to follow laws and regulations, find them. And this has been amazing. I mean, just to give you a couple of examples in 2021, the European data protection board. I mean, Europe has a European data protection board, don't you? Europeans out there feel so much safer because you have a government run data protection board organized by the you know, the upper ups, the bureaucrats. Anyway, they find Amazon for quote, breaches, breaches of the regulations, 746 million euros in 2021. Now they, but they're going after everybody. We don't want to sing a lot of Amazon, they're going after everybody that, you know, so now they're going after, they went after Facebook and they've just find Facebook. I mean, 1.2 billion euro over the transfer of European data to the United States. This is like TikTok transferring data to China. Maybe we should find them 1.2 billion dollars and that'll solve the problem. You know, they've gone after Apple, they've gone after Google, they've gone after and this is great. What an amazing cash cow. We just find all these American companies that we write laws that you can't live up to, you can't abide by, and then we find them. It's just so much better. Yeah, but don't forget, you've got the European data protection board, bunch of bureaucrats, making sure that your data is safe and sound. All right, let's see. I mean, I have to tell you this one funny story, all right, and then I'll go to the super chats. By the way, if you want to ask a super chat, I'm asking at this point to do $20 or more, we've got a bunch of $5 super chats. We've got to get the dollar amounts up on the shows, the amount raised on the show. So please consider doing $20 instead of the $5 questions. So from now on, $20 or more. Here's the last little nugget, right? This is from the New York Times. It's a real funny story. And I know I'm not supposed to use New York Times stories, but sometimes they actually do the news, and nobody else actually, and very few other people actually do. So sometimes you can actually learn something. Anyway, this is about 30 tons of explosive chemicals, ammonium nitrate, which can be used as fertilizer or explosives. They've gone missing. They were loaded up into a rail car, 30 tons into a rail car. The rail car was sealed, sealed, all the valves, everything was sealed. And then two weeks later, we're talking about 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate. And then when they arrived at their destination, so this was, they were sealed in Wyoming, they arrived in California. And when they arrived in California, the tank was empty. There was nothing there. And what's truly amazing and reminds one of Houdini, the seals were unbroken. They were intact. So nobody had taken the fluid out, not at least not from where it was put in. I think it's fluid, ammonium nitrate. The assumption is that during the two-week journey, this train car developed a leak, and 60,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate slowly leaked out of this train car all across the West from Wyoming to California. So if you're looking for some fertilizer or explosive, it's powder, David says. So it's powder. So if you're looking for some ammonium nitrate, you need some, I know, but for whatever, you just follow the train track and you can probably scoop it up along the way. 60,000, 60,000 empty, empty, just disappeared, gone. Anyway, that's the hypothesis that it leaked. They're looking for the leak right now. I thought that was a funny story of somebody's immense incompetence. I don't know who. All right, let's see. Remo from Amsterdam, Remo says, John Cochran recently said that it is a myth that low interest rates leads to extra risk taking by bankers. What other external factors do you then also need to lead to extra risk taking by banks at low interest rates? Well, there was no evidence that low interest rates over the last 12 years has actually led to bankers taking on extra risk. Indeed, they haven't. The risk quote that they took is that after COVID, when they got massive quantities of deposits into their bank because of all the stimulus, that they took that cash and they bought a safe asset, which are government bonds. They took all these deposits, they bought government bonds. Now, typically you would say, well, that's not risky. But the problem is that because of the zero interest rate environment, they bought longer term government bonds, not super long, not 30 years, but maybe five years, maybe two years. And with the increases of interest rates, the value of those government bonds, if they're not held to maturity, if they're held to maturity, you just get your money back. But if they're not held to maturity, if you have to sell them in between, the value of those securities has gone down a lot. But that, I mean, nobody, including the regulators, considered in 2021 the idea of banks buying two, five, 10 year government bonds to be a risky investment on the contrary. Indeed, God Frank and most bank regulations incentivize bankers to buy government bonds. So there is no excess risk. There was no excess risk taking among bankers during the zero interest rate environment period. When interest rates go up, the value of assets goes down. I've told you this many, many, many times. That's just the reality. There's no way around that. And some of these banks that had bought these bond portfolios and for a variety of reasons had to sell them, primarily because people were drawing a lot of money out of their accounts for a variety of reasons, landed up losing a lot of money. Okay, sometimes you lose money. But there's no massive risk taking by banks. Not in the same way as there was in the 1980s by the SNLs where they went out and purchased knowingly, purchased high risk assets to try to get massive returns on them to save them from bankruptcy. So I agree with John that low interest rates lead to extra risk taking by banks by themselves. If you want to think about what would lead to extra risk taking, deposit insurance would lead to it. Deposit insurance generally leads to moral hazard, which is an incentive to take risk under certain circumstances, not always, but under certain circumstances. What else? Yeah, I mean, taking on a lot of losses for some reason, and trying desperately to regain them with deposit insurance leads you to take on a lot of risk. But banks have over the last 12 years been amazingly cautious in their risk taking and their loans and in what they've done. I mean, it really is pretty amazing, you know, and what's happening right now in the banking space is a result of the increase in interest rates, but more of that a result of just people losing it. I mean, there's massive inefficiency in the pricing of banks right now that has. Now, maybe if there's a recession, things, the pricing makes sense, but just the bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank should not have justified, and first of all, probably should not have justified what is going on in the banking space over the last three months. It just doesn't make any sense. It's panic, and it's sentiment more than reality. Because if you actually look, the risks are there, but they were always there. They were there last year as well. They're there from having long duration assets in a rising interest rate environment. Everybody should have known this way back then. It's a question of, in what way did that risk manifest itself? How does it actually hurt the bank? It only hurts the bank if there's a bank run and Silicon Valley Bank was unique in the reasons for the bank run on it. I think that that grammar holds. Thank you, Remo. Ian, and by the way, you know, we can talk more about the bank crises and how they happen and what happened here. So I'm open to more questions about this, and particularly if somebody wants to sponsor a longer show about this, I'm happy to do that. Remind you that sponsorship of longer shows is $1,000 to sponsor a show on the topic of your choosing. We have an original clever idea about how to choose a topic, about a topic for that. I'll talk about it tonight on the show, I hope if I remember. Ian says, any thoughts on Tim Scott backed by Larry Ellison's money running for Republican presidential nomination nation? I mean, I'm very much for it. Again, my biggest worry is that you fragment the opposition to Trump. But generally, I think Tim Scott, I think Nikki Haley are the two best candidates out there. I've said what I've said, and I will continue to say what I dislike about Trump, and I'll talk about that. One of the long shows, because there's an interesting evolution of what's going on right now with the Santas versus Trump. I don't like the Santas. I think the Santas, in some respects, is worse than Trump. In other respects, bad, I mean some respects worse. So any alternative, and particularly an alternative from somebody who I think is, you know, is not crazy and is not, you know, is a reasonable guy. And I think Tim Scott seems to be a reasonable guy. It is good. It's good. Although, to a large extent, given what's going on with abortion, I think the Republican Party is just nuts right now. I mean, what they're trying to do with abortion is so evil, so evil, I'll call it what it is, so evil, that how do you vote for a Republican? How do you vote for a Republican? I mean, how do you vote Democrat? When they're doing evil stuff, but what they're doing with abortion is so evil, particularly with abortion pill, there's just, I don't know how you vote for any of these candidates. JD says, thank you for your excellent shows on the Renaissance. Odd Rome is despite the omnipresent religion, one of the most life-affirming places I know. And it sounds like you had an amazing trip. Yes, an amazing trip. Rome is super vibrant and active and a big city. I prefer Florence because of the size. I find Florence easily manageable. You can walk everywhere. Rome is a lot of taxes, lots of taxes. But it's an amazing city. And the Renaissance and the Baroque everywhere, those were the peaks of Italian culture, if you will, is that period. And that really centers on Florence Rome and that axis of Florence and Rome. And in that sense, those are amazing cities. As I said, I will be doing a show on Sunday for members only. So if you're not a member, you can become a member by clicking on the join button down here somewhere, right on the YouTube thing, and become a member. I'll be doing a show that is more specific about Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Benini, and Vermeer. But it's interesting because Vermeer and Benini are working at the same time, approximately. So it's Caravaggio, I think. So that'll be a lot of fun. If you're interested in art, I'll show paintings. I'll show photographs that my wife took on the trip. I'll do a little bit of analysis and comparisons thrown in with some history. So it should be a fun show. Members only on Sunday. Sunday. And I'll talk about the differences between Michelangelo, Benini, Caravaggio, Vermeer, and the different eras and the different areas. And anyway, I think it'll be fun. So hopefully you guys can join me. And if you're interested in art, if you're interested in the Renaissance, if you're interested in Italy, that's the show to join. So all you have to do is become a member. There's a member's join button somewhere down there. So please click it and join at, you know, just five bucks a month or something like that. And if you're already subscribed elsewhere, then just add this. Again, you can add it at $5. Just add it. Don't dump the other subscription, please. You know, YouTube is not the most generous in terms of the amount of money that comes to me relative to Patreon. Those are much better places. But it does have this membership feature does allow me to do these membership only shows. So I do like it. But in terms of financially, it's not, it's not really that good. All right, we're only $17 short of our goal of 250, although we really need to stop beating the goal to do some catch up this month. So hopefully somebody will ask a $20 question and we'll get past the goal. Michael says, what do you think about comedian skits? Will be about a fully objective of society? Will there be anything to be made fun of? Sure. I mean, there's lots of stuff to be made fun of. Evil, bad, you know, incompetence. There's lots of things to be made fun of. I think, but I think to be popular, to be successful, people will have to know what objective is. They'd have to know what kind of world that entails. So we're talking about decades, decades before that is something that is prevalent. There are objective as comedians today who do objective as jokes that are quite funny, if you're interested. All right, $17, we have 100 people watching do the math. Liam says, do delusional people know that delusional on some level is delusion equivalent to evasion? I mean, it depends, right? I mean, people can be delusional for real, you know, psychiatric reasons for they've taken a drug. They, you know, so not all delusion is a consequence of evasion. It could be a consequence of some real misfiring or real killing balance inside your brain. If you're schizophrenic, do you know you're schizophrenic? I mean, so I don't know that that's a psychological question. But I think for a normal person who holds a delusional view and who's an adult with some experience in life, I think at some level, they know that they're evading that it's a result of evasion and they know it. Shush up. Ukraine started offensive in Russia property. Yeah, I mentioned that. Thanks for pointing that out. And we think, you know, it's likely that that is actually going to happen. Rimo says, please, please, please do a Thursday interview with John Allison. Thanks, Rimo. I will, John's been a little under the weather recently, but hopefully he's better. I will contact him and we'll try to do a show with John. But that'll be that would be a lot of fun, actually. Thanks, Rimo. And Rimo has gotten us over the target. So thank you guys. Thank you to all the superchatters. I wanted to thank somebody specifically West, West at $50 earlier. Thank you, West. And I know Gail and Katherine and Alex and Ryan have all contributed also without asking a Marilyn and Steven have all contributed without asking a question. So thank you all. James asks, how do you maintain positivity and a growth mindset in irrational world? Well, you focus on your own life, you focus on your own values, you focus on what's and what's important to you. And in what and I've talked about this many times on the show, you focus on what is accessible to you, what you can change, what you can have an impact on you and you worry less about things that are outside of your control and that you that you can't you know, that you can't if you can't control it, there's only a limited amount of worry that you should have about it. You should really focus on staying positive on the things that you can control. Michael says, his objective is in the intellectualization of common sense. I don't like anything about that phrasing. Common sense is is a cop out what is what I mean, to a large extent common sense is like basic logic, reasonable illness. It's so much more than common sense, right? And intellectualization sounds like rationalization. No, objectivism is a philosophy. A philosophy consistent with common sense, if you will, but a philosophy. It's not an inter like intellectualization. It's a system of thought consistent maybe with common sense, but common sense is like a teeny piece of it. And it's not consistent because a lot of times people do things in common sense that are not rational at all. And if you're just going to redefine common sense as rational, that's me nails. I clock young says the debate was released between Craig Biddle and Stephen Hicks. In the debate, Craig stated that a right treats objectivism like a dogma and that position is holding back the movement. Craig doesn't know what he's talking about. Craig is is anyway, Craig doesn't know what he's talking about. And if anybody wants to present a piece of evidence to suggest that I know an institute treats objectivism like dogma, that I treat objectivism like dogma, present that evidence. Craig said has zero cognitive value in my mind or I think should have in anybody's mind. So you should place no value to it. I have for a variety of reasons. I think you know, I very little respect for Craig Biddle. So saying that objectivism, that a right treats anything as anything from Craig, who cares what Craig has to say. Ryan says happy, but they run. I hope you had a wonderful vacation. Oh, thanks, Ryan. Really appreciate that. I did. It was an excellent vacation. Long, but excellent. Stephen says, will China's debt problems destabilize other parts of the world perhaps by calling in loans they made to other unstable countries? It possibly could. And you know, those loans are already being called in and they're ready. They already made massive failures across the world from the loans that China gave in on bad terms. And it's not like China gave them in bad terms on purpose because they would gain the asset because the asset costs money to maintain and they're discovering that. So China's just in a bad situation across the board. Does it have bad implications? Yes. I mean, it has bad implications for everywhere, including us, right? Look, I believe in win-win, win-win. And China's failure is bad for America. China's inability to pay its debt is bad for America. Much better for us is a vibrant and free Chinese economy that is producing and creating and innovating and trading with us. I think the economic failure and economic destruction in China hurts America, it hurts the world. And I think it pushes China to potentially be more aggressive from a foreign policy perspective. Catherine says, what's reasoning for not allowing immigrants to work? Oh, well, because they're not really immigrants because they're only here seeking asylum because they compete with local labor because, because it's, you know, if they start working here, then it'll be hard to kick them out. If they start working here and then they don't get the asylum visa, then it'll be destructive for the economy. I mean, a million reasons. If they work, you know, do they get all the rights the workers get? They have a social security, do we do then provide them with a social security number and social security, but they're not really legally here. It's just a, yeah, I mean, it's just, I can think of a million bureaucratic reasons why not to let them work. Just pay them off. It's free money, right? It's just, it's just, it's just tax payer money. Nobody's going to miss it. I mean, tax payer money, all money, the money we pay in, those of us who actually pay taxes. But it's, on the Rome show, you sounded a bit Marxist when you talked about Vatican and Pope wealth by saying it was all in the backs of the poor people. Really, Frank? God, feudalism, all aristocrats and suddenly the church is all in poor people's back. That's how Marxist, that's reality. And Marx didn't, Marx agreed and he was right. It's applying that to the capitalism that is Marxism. But of course feudalism is all in the backs of the poor people, all in the backs of people who actually work. The feudal's don't do any work. They want like CEOs of corporations. They want like entrepreneurs. They want like innovators. They want businessmen. And the church was not. Now granted, the church provided them with some spiritual comfort. Yeah, by lying to them. So the church is like a million times worse than the aristocrats exploited the poor. The church was exploiting the poor with a promise of some bizarre afterlife that I think most popes realize doesn't exist. To some God that I think most popes realize doesn't exist. They got paid how? Where did the money come from? From taxes. From forced taxes. Yeah, they got paid. But they were, they got paid, they got taxed and then they got paid. So if you look at the amount of money, how poor these societies were, how poor these societies were, and the amount of money spent on these churches, the amount of money spent on these cathedrals, the amount of money spent on the gold all over the place and on the sculptures and on the paintings and all this stuff, the money money spent on skilled labor. Where did that money come from? Where does the church have money? The church produces nothing theoretically. So it has to come from the backs of somebody, the aristocrats, the poor, whoever has something for the church to take. So absolutely 100% exploitation and horrific. On the one hand, wow, it's beautiful. On the other hand, you have to realize and you have to conceive of okay, but where did it come from? How did they get this wealth? All right guys, thank you, really appreciate all the support, appreciate all the questions. Thanks for being here. These daily shows will continue this week. I will also see you tonight at 8 p.m. to be determined what the topic will be for a regular Yuran Book Show show. Thanks for getting us to the target. Really appreciate that, the support. And I will see you tonight. Those of you who want to support the show on a monthly basis, you can do so on yuranbrookshow.com slash support on Patreon and on patreon.com. Just put it in your Yuran Book Show. I will see you all tonight.