 Debt ceiling, you're hearing a lot about the debt ceiling. Obviously it's in the news. The debt ceiling basically is a cap that is placed on the amount of debt that the United States government can take on. And what happens is that the United States government, as we know, runs deficits constantly, said constantly has to take on more and more and more debt. And in order to fund that debt, it has to take on in order to pay the interest and to pay for all the programs that have to keep on taking more and more and more debt constantly. To do that, you know, every certain period of time, Congress has to go into session and approve raising the debt limit. And they keep raising and raising and every year it's the same thing for years now, for decades now. They've raised the debt limit because Congress keeps spending more and more and more and nobody even thinks about maybe let's reduce deficits so we don't have to take on so much debt. So debt is ever increasing. Well, we're getting to that point where the debt limit has to be increased because government spending is out of control as always. And the amount of debt that the United States government has taken on is very, very high. And the debt limit has to be increased. Now, whenever this happens, it becomes a big negotiating tool when we have divided government between the party that holds the White House and the party that holds the House and Senate to see if you can get as much out of the other party, right, the party that holds the House and Senate or one of the houses and the other party now going to negotiating because Republicans, for example, right now are saying, look, we're not going to renew the debt ceiling unless you accommodate some of our priorities, which is going to let the country go bankrupt. Bankrupt means not paying the debt. You know, if they can't raise more debt, there's no way for the government to pay for the programs. And at some point, because there's so many commitments to the government that it just can't, it doesn't have enough cash in the bank. And it can't get cash from the Federal Reserve. You see, the only way the Federal Reserve can provide cash to the government is if the government issues an IOU to the Federal Reserve. But that IOU means increasing your debt. So they can't get any money. They can't get the hands of money. So what happens is the government cannot pay its debt. And when the government cannot pay its debts, it's basically bankrupt. They have to start shutting down programs. They can't raise well, they can't raise the debt. They can still pay interest on the debt, but then they have to shut down Social Security and have to shut down the military and have to shut down officers within the government. And so what's happening right now is we've already reached a point where the government has a problem issuing debt. So now they're doing accounting tricks. They're moving money around. They're playing all kinds of games to try to drag on, be able to have the cash available to pay for the basic things that the government has to pay for. So they can continue to pay interest on the debt so they don't default on the debt and basically declare bankruptcy. That's what defaulting on the debt is. And they can play these games, but the question is at some point they can't do it anymore. At some point Congress has to raise the debt ceiling. Republicans are insisting that in order to do that, they want spending cuts. This is cool. This is good. They want spending cuts. This is what they did to Obama in 2011. Obama ultimate 2011. Yes, I think it was 2011. Obama ultimately succumbed. And as a consequence of that, the second term of Obama administration actually saw government spending as a percentage of GDP decline or at least stay stable. So you didn't see the crazy spending on the Bush or the crazy spending on the Trump. You actually had reasonable, I mean still crazy, but at least not rising spending because Republicans insisted on this. As soon as they got into power, they gave it up and you saw the spending craze with Trump. Well, now they're trying to pull the same thing with Biden. So far Biden is saying, don't buy it. You guys are not going to let the government go bankrupt. I don't believe you. So they're playing chicken right now. So the Democrats are basically saying, we're not going to give you the spending cuts. Republicans are saying, you don't want spending cuts. Fine. We'll let the government, you know, we'll let the government go bankrupt. Now, just to put in proportion the spending cuts, nothing big, nothing substantial, not really spending cuts, mostly just slowing the growth of increasing spending, suspending less than what was planned, but not actually cutting anything. So this is not a revolution. This is not shrinking government. This is just slowing the growth of government. Democrats are saying, no, Republicans insisting. And right now they're playing chicken. The chicken, the game of chicken has accelerated because it turns out that April tax revenues came in lower than expected. So Americans paid less taxes than the government expected. I didn't, by the way. So I don't know who these Americans are, but I paid more taxes than I expected. Anyway, as a consequence of that, the government has less cash to play around with. It's brought up the chicken date, the date in which the government will stop being able to pay its bills, stop being able to pay salaries to employees, stop being able to write checks for Social Security, and stop being able to pay interest on the debt. That has accelerated now. It's either end of July, which was the more optimistic date. Now it might be early June. Early June is just around the corner. Congress better, there better be some kind of deal between the administration and Republicans. You know, if not, I'm fine with that, too. I don't think it's a bad thing for the United States to not pay interest on its debt for a little while, let the debt holders sweat a little bit. The fact that the United States government is acting and behaving in massively irresponsible ways in terms of in terms of government spending, maybe this, yes, this will evolve government shutdown, among other things. Maybe this will actually increase the pressure on Democrats and Republicans ultimately to reduce spending. Maybe this will increase the pressure on Congress to actually be more responsible. So I'm, I'm cool with actually a shutdown. If, and I think Republicans just stick to it, you have to at some point draw a line in the sand, no more spending. And Republicans have a majority in the House, they should at least use that. It would be nice if they had also majority in the Senate for this kind of thing, but they don't, which is good on other fronts, but bad on this fund. So let's see what happens. It's going to be interesting to watch. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube, so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who already subscribers, and those of you who already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.