 Talk about entitlements, you know, there is a real crisis right now regarding U.S. debt and the ability of the U.S. government to pay back the debt. The Congress literally has to raise the debt limits so that the government can issue more debt so it can pay back the previous debt. Not only pay expenses, pay entitlements, pay for all the things the government pays for, but also to be able to pay to pay back the debt that expires and to pay interest on the debt. And without issuers of new debt it is almost impossible, with some exceptions of some gimmickry the Treasury might be able to do, but it's impossible really to pay off of the U.S. debt and and you might see the U.S. government actually default on its debt that is not pay its creditors. Never happened in U.S. history. One indication that this is a real threat, that the market at least, markets really believe that this is a real threat, is that the cost of insuring America's debt against the fault skyrocketed. Now you can, using credit default swaps, buy in a sense insurance that if, that pays you if the U.S. defaults on the debt. Now usually these credit defaults props are super cheap because the probability that the U.S. government will actually default on debt is assumed to be close to zero. But right now the price to buy this insurance, to buy these credit default swaps, CDSs, on U.S. Treasury bonds is actually higher than to buy insurance against Greek bonds, Mexican bonds, Brazilian bonds. In other words, the U.S. is more likely to default on its debt, not because the U.S. doesn't have the money to do it, not because the U.S. can issue debt, but because of kind of the political stalemate that we're in, the kind of political jockeying of our system. The probability of the U.S. defaulting on its debt is higher right now than Greece, Mexico, or Brazil. And, you know, this is truly unbelievable. Now, I think Kevin McCarthy is using this as Republicans used it in 2011 or 2012 to try to get a Democratic president to agree to spending cuts. Obama ultimately agreed to that. And in the last six years of the Obama administration, from 2012 until 2010, really, so this was in 2011. From 2011 until 2017, actually saw as a percentage of GDP U.S. spending stabilize and actually go down after the spike of the stimulus package post financial crisis. Kevin McCarthy is trying to do the same thing now with Biden. Biden is resisting. They're playing chicken to see who will give. You know, it's hard to tell. I think ultimately they will cut a deal. I think Biden ultimately will agree to spending cuts, just like Obama did. But we will see. I mean, some of the economists advising Biden are far more committed to big government spending than I think economists were during the Obama era. And Biden's agenda is kind of linked to a lot of spending. So we'll see what happens. But it is interesting. I don't think I ever thought I'd see U.S. credit default swaps selling at a higher price in Greece, Mexico, and Brazil. You know, a world. And by the way, again, Trump is not helping here because Trump is saying entitlements off the table. Kevin McCarthy can't count entitlements. So what is Kevin McCarthy? You have to cut a lot because he can't cut the fence and he can't count entitlements. He has to cut a lot of everything else. And that is a tricky political position. Once you actually look at the details of what's being cut for the Republicans. And it's tricky to get a deal with Biden. But you know, I view this as theater more than anything else. And it's interesting to watch and interesting to see how convoluted all this becomes and how they entangle themselves in this. I don't think at the end a huge amount of damage is done to the U.S. economy one way or the other. However, this is settled. You get value from watching. Show your appreciation. You can do that by going to youronbookshow.com slash support by going to Patreon, subscribe star locals, and just making an appropriate contribution on any one of those channels. Also, if you'd like to see the Iran book show grow, please consider sharing our content. And of course, subscribe, press that little bell button right down there on YouTube so that you get an announcement when we go live. And for those of you who are already subscribers and those of you who are already supporters of the show, thank you. I very much appreciate it.