E136 Hacking the pod, Threads launches, Fed minutes, immigration debate, balloon farce, heart health

27:41And so I think we have a whole new generation that, like, it's so native to the way that they interact with the world. And, you know, to be honest, I was sitting there this morning prepping for the pod. And I had a brilliant conversation with chat GPT about what happened with rates and inflation, et cetera, in 2000, 2001, 2002 is interactive. I was using my voice. I wasn't typing anything. I thought it was terrific, way better than the experience I would have on Google. So again, I think we're early in the evolution of this, but you know, I think that, you know, for my kids, this is completely native.

28:16Yeah, I mean, I think for kids, it's amazing. I just don't think kids will have 20, 30, 40 bucks amongst the spend on this. I mean, they, some kids will. But that, that'll just further exacerbate the divide of the kids that can versus the kids that can't. But I don't think that that's what's going to create. Evaluation framework for a multi -decade billion dollar company. If you want to see a well -used education product, you know, Cheg's got something probably, you know, that's probably as good. And that's a three or four billion dollar market cap company last time I checked. Yeah well Brad you mentioned you were doing a little research for the pod talking about rates obviously that was in anticipation of the discussion on the federal reserve meeting minutes that came out a couple days ago I'll read a few excerpts from the published minutes where obviously the the federal reserve meets to discuss overnight rates whether to raise rates and and their outlook for rates, driven in part by current economic data, including their view on inflation, their view on economic activity, et cetera.

29:24Reading from the notes directly, participants agreed that inflation was unacceptable high and noted that the data, including the CPI for May, indicated that declines in inflation had been slower than they had expected. Participants observed that although core goods inflation had moderated since the middle of last year, it had slowed less rapidly than expected in recent months, The spike data and reports from business contacts indicating that supply chain constraints had continued to ease. In their discussion on the household sector, they noted that consumer spending so far this year has been stronger than expected.

29:57And that aggregate household wealth remained high as equity and home prices had not declined much from the recent highs. And a few participants mentioned that while overall the household sector still retain much of the excess savings it had accumulated during the pandemic. There were signs of consumers were facing increasingly tighter budgets, given high inflation, especially for low -income households, despite savings. So Brad, maybe you can give us your quick read on the minutes. And they did say that they're not raising rates, but they do expect two more 25 basis point rate hikes later this year.

30:26Maybe you can tell us what market data is indicating, is that actually the case? And is the Fed not giving a clean reading on economic activity and inflation as it's being published in other places than what the Fed is currently reading? Well, I mean, I think the most interesting thing here, perhaps the most non -consensus thing here is the Fed kind of seems to be orchestrating a pretty soft landing, right? Nobody wants to hear it. The market fought it for the first half of the year. The NASDAQ was just up 39 % in the first half and most people didn't participate. So everybody wants to talk this down and say that inflation is still out of control.

31:03Chema has been talking about inflation higher for longer, but notice he doesn't say that's a problem or the economy therefore is going to crash. Just like inflation is going to be a little stickier on the way down. Rates are going to be a little bit higher for longer. I think when you look at this in totality, the reason they hit pause is because they've come a long way quickly. They know that things are starting to trend in the right direction. So their own forecast for CPI is that it comes down a lot by the end of the year. Goldman Sachs is now at 3 .3%. I know we have readings like true inflation that say the inflation today is actually lower than that, but you don't even need to get to the debate between true inflation and CPI.

31:45They're both trending a lot lower. But we got a really interesting reading this morning because like, why do we want to raise rates? Well, we want to cool off the economy. And so everybody's looking for that indication that the economy is cooling. The leading indicator for this is jobs. So we had a really hot ADP jobs report this morning, right? Over 450 ,000 new jobs created and everybody got nervous. The 10 year shot up to over 4 % the market turned down at the start of the day. And then we got the Joltz report. Now Larry Summers has described Joltz as a much more of that job openings, okay?

32:23So this is more of a leading indicator like how many of the job openings are we consuming? And that actually came in better than expected. So what it suggested is that more people took jobs than we had anticipated. And remember, Joltz peaked closer to 12 million and now we're at about 9 .8 million. And so when I look at that, you know, and then look at the jobs report, ADP jobs report, over half of the new jobs created were in hospitality and leisure. So think about what was happening a year ago. Airlines were trying to hire people, restaurants were trying to hire people, hotels were trying to hire people, and nobody took the job for two reasons.

33:03Number one, they were afraid of COVID, but number two, they were getting stimme checks from the government, they didn't need to work. Now what we see is people are starting to take jobs, those show up as higher employment numbers in ADP, but in lower jolts, right? So fewer job openings. To me again, that probably speaks to a healthy trend in the economy. But clearly, the economy is not crashing. We had a lot of people who said that the economy was going to hit the skids in Q1 or Q2 of this year due to these higher rates. The economy's incredibly resilient. But if I had to describe the rate trajectory, the Fed has said, We may have two more rate hikes that's basically priced in and if you look at real rates So this is the the interest rate that really acts as the break on the economy So this is effectively the 10 year versus future expected inflation It's now at one of the highest levels we've had since 2008 2009 back closing in on 2 % So you know it seems to me that the feds got its foot pretty strong on the break it's job owning the economy, saying we'll do more if we have to.

34:15But the things that they're looking at, job openings are coming down, inflation is coming down. So I don't know. I think you have to leave open the possibility that the fat part of the distribution curve looks like a softer landing than most people want to admit. Yeah. So, Jimov, Gerstner is predicting a soft landing. Do you agree? I mean, you've said we're going to see rates stay high for a very long period of time. Yeah, I mean, I think I've said this for the last few weeks. So I'll just say it again, but I think that it's there's no hard landing right that's the hard landing was sort of the drunken miller thing that that I think that you know I said I think it was a few weeks ago it's very difficult to see a hard landing when China stimulates just because of their natural gravitational pull in the world economy and you know we can talk about that again because it just looks like China's in super super super super trouble.

35:08Meanwhile, I sent this little image to you and Freeberg, you may just want to throw it up here just to look at. But when you look at inflation, we've done the best job of the developed nations in getting this thing under control. So I think now it's just about making sure that we adequately contract the money supply and making sure that we have bullets in the chamber in case things get bad. What do I mean? When you look at this chart, the thing that I think about is I'm glad rates are almost at 6 % why? Because when you look at the UK, Italy, Germany, most of the Euro area of France, Japan, and then China, it's not existing, but China has a different issue.

35:52The reality is that a pretty bad set of economic circumstances could actually touch the Western developed nations. if you start to see some of these countries rip rates higher to like 7, 8, 9%. The UK, it seems like, I don't know what you guys think. It's definitely going to the 7. And it could go to 8. I mean, it could be a very bad situation for the UK. There are in a lot of trouble. And so I think it's important that the federal reserve have tools. So by continuing to constrict the money supply, have rates that are relatively elevated, maybe a quarter or two longer than they need to. it gives them a lot of positive optionality if they need to step in if something bad really happens.

36:36And so I generally think they've done a very good job. And I think, go ahead. Tim, I have not to interrupt your point. What's really interesting is the symmetry with what happened in 2000. So I think we had all agreed that the last time we saw the zaniness that we saw in 2021 in the Zerp environment was probably like 1999 2000 era. Well, in 2000, remember, we had the huge asset bubble and the fed raised rates from 5 .5 to 6 % in 2000, okay, and the first half of 2000 and they were saying that they're gonna stay high for long and Remember in 2001 we entered a recession and we ended 2001 with rates all the way down at 1 .75 % Those are the bullets in the chamber that you're talking about that then pulled us out of the recession And some people blame them that they caused that recession.

37:31But when you look back from that... Oh, in this case, it looks like... Yeah, in this case, it looks like the recession is really not a bar making. But we may actually have a soft lending, but the economy could actually contract. Because when you look at these Western economies turning over, it's not a good situation. I think the Eurozone, quite honestly, is probably a quarter into a recession already. So, you know, we have six or seven of the really important countries, probably in a recession. The UK in really big trouble, the US relatively keeping things in a pretty good place, China economically, I don't know where the demand is going to come from.

38:12You know, on the same time that their internal demand is imploding, they're creating all these export controls that I think are not going to actually help them solve the problem because it just accelerates Western economy's desire to deliver from China. So the whole setup, I think, is very complicated one, but the US looks really good, frankly. Yeah, look, I don't think we're out of the woods quite yet. So Druckin Miller, by the way, said that he was predicting a hard landing in the second half of the year. We're just starting the second half of the year. So he still got six months to be proven correct.

38:48I find his analysis compelling or I did it at the time I heard it. But think about our situation. We still have an inverted yield curve. It's the most inverted it's been. I think this is the longest it's been inverted. Now the Fed is signaling that we're gonna get two or three more quarter point rate hikes. So it's about to become even more inverted. And what that does is it puts incredible pressure on the banking system because the whole banking business model is to borrow short, which is from depositors and lend long. And if short rates are higher than long rates, that whole business model doesn't work.

39:22So either they can't engage in lending activities, meaning there's a credit crunch or deposits to leave the system. And that's happening too. So any business out there that's dependent on credit, the real estate industry or auto industry, I mean, any industry that depends on loans and credit, they're going to continue to be hammered by this. So, I mean, to your point, Zach, I'll just read the minute commentary on this. The meeting did include a discussion on the stress on the banking sector and economic activity in general because of decreased lending participants generally noted that banking stress has had receded and conditions in the banking sector were much improved since March.

40:03participants generally continue to judge that a tightening in credit conditions spurred by banking sector stress earlier in the year would likely wave further on economic activity, but the extent remained uncertain. So obviously a wait and see and that they mentioned the credit conditions have not appeared to have tightened significantly beyond what will be expected in response to the monetary policy actions taken since early last year. So at this point saying it's a wait and see does not seem to have overstretched in terms of credit tightening at this stage, but it's Yeah, I mean so here's the thing is that the Fed engaged in an Extraordinary intervention a few months ago to save the banking system with the Bank term funding program right where they basically said to all the banks that if you have US treasuries, and I think it also applied to mortgage back securities as well.

40:54We will, we will basically take all of those assets and give you par value. We'll give you a hundred cents on the dollar in exchange for, I guess you have to pay, you the bank would have to pay the, the one year, I think it was the, what, the 12 month interest rate with like 10, 10 basic points or something like that. So if you're sitting on bonds that have gone down 20 or 30 % value, you can go get all that money back by you're presenting to the Fed. And then you just have to, you know, you have to then take the hundred cents on the dollar you get and make sure you loan it out at higher than the one you're interest rate, which is around I guess 5%.

41:37Which you can still do in residential, right? Because mortgages are still something like they're over 7%. So the Fed has provided a lot of liquidity to the banks through this BTFP. It hasn't helped the commercial real estate guys, I don't think. That's why they're still, I think, huge problems in the commercial real estate sector. But the Fed did engage in a huge intervention to save the banking system and they may not be done with that yet. So I just wonder, you know, I just wonder if the, if you didn't have all these distortions, what would the real estate of the economy be? You know, another one on the fiscal side, on this one, the fiscal side was the whole Biden's energy bill, which is supposed to be 350 billion.

42:23But as our energy investor friends are saying, it's probably going to be more like a trillion when they added all up. No, but that's honestly, hold on. Those guys are being hyperbolic and they're just stupid and wrong because I know which friends they are and I know them to be mostly stupid and mostly wrong most of the time. Look, the good thing to know about my god, I'm going to get a text after this. Yeah, you should because He doesn't know the fuck he's talking about. And he keeps saying. But there's a lot of stimulus is the point. Whether it's half a billion, sorry, half a trillion or a trillion.

42:52He's just talking his book. But where can I just go back to where you're fundamentally right and where I think both of us can be in unison on this, which is there is a looming credit crisis in the United States. And we've talked about this before. I tweeted something a few weeks ago, but the debt wall that corporate America is about to hit is pretty meaningful. And to your point, David, a lot of these companies will have to threaten it all because if rates don't go down materially in the next 18 to 24 months, these folks are going to be paying rates that they cannot bear. And they'll probably go into still breach a covenant of some of the debt.

43:35So, you know, one thing that's important here is that there's some very strict guidelines and covenants that debt issuers sign up for. And one of them is, you know, how much debt can I have as a percentage or as a multiple of my EBITDA? And so that's the way that bondholders govern the risk that you don't overborrow. Now, the problem is if you have a ratings, you know, an earnings recession and or rates go up, you can get one of these two things to go wrong and all of a sudden and now you have seven or eight times your EBITDA and you're in a very, very bad state. So I do think that that's possible, but at the same time, I don't think that that's a calamity that touches the entire economy.

44:14I think there are a whole portfolio of over -lovered companies in real estate, and there's a whole portfolio of over -lovered companies in private equity. Those folks will have to get recapped. And that will probably cost trillions of dollars of capital impairment, but I do think that that can relatively be done without impairing the economy. Relarch. I'll make a prediction right now. My prediction is the federal government is going to help to monetize that debt, and they're going to help to support that commercial real estate sector through some sort of structured lending program. Why do you think that?

44:46Why do you think that? Because of the donors, because I think that there's a significant amount of capital that gets donated to a legal entity. So you think there's going to be a tarp for like program for real estate private equity? A real estate private equity? I think there's going to be tarp. No, you think there's going to be a tarp -like program for real estate assets and for private. I'll take the other side of that. Yeah, I'll say real estate assets. I don't know about the private equity assets, but I think for the real estate asset, just because so much of it is held. That's bet. I'll tell you I'll tell you 1000 to the SPCA.

45:13Yeah, I'll do that. Wait, what's the time frame? Maybe you do tell me you want to open it? No, we'll do it until the Fed starts, no, until the Fed starts producing rates. So once the Fed does their first rate cut, that's the end of our bet. Oh, wow, that's an easy one. I'm in for 25. No, you can take a hundred. I take a hundred. For the S .K. for myself. For the S .K. for a second. Can I just take the action for myself? I'm doing it for the dogs. I'm doing it for the dogs. Yeah. You know, Friedberg on that. Sorry. Let me just tell you why. Sorry. In addition to the significant donor dollars that come from real estate to politicians, campaigns.

45:53But so much of those assets, that so many of those assets are held in life insurance companies on banks, balance sheets. I mean, you guys may have seen this report this week that because of the rise in interest rates, there are several insurance companies that now may be technically insolvent according to DOI, Department of Insurance Regs, in their respective states. Because the impairment on the bond portfolio has declined as caused them to now not have enough capital reserves to pay out the claims they have. So the same, I think ultimately will come true. once you have to do a market to market on all these real estate assets, that there's a significant number of those real estate assets that are held in pension funds, that are held in life insurance companies, that are held as securities in large pools of capital that are meant to support people's long -term needs.

46:38And the government isn't going to let the federal government isn't going to let that just get written down and have people's future pensions or insurance claims get hampered. So that's why I think there's going to be a moment or two where there's going to be some step in in some structure program to support this, this data. I just don't think it's ad draconian rates are not that high. Yeah. We're still talking about a 10 year that's flirting with 4%. And the fact that I'm just talking about commercial real estate, because there's also a demand problem, right? Yeah. I know. But the other side of this is the trend again, there is no doubt over supply and a problem, particularly in a place like San Francisco, we're going to see some blowups because nobody he wants to enter a long -term lease in a city that's under siege.

47:24I understand that. But the fact is that the market is telling you that rates are going to start going down, right? The Fed's going to come in, battle until the edge, right? And then the Fed's going to come down a little bit. Why is that? Because if they have two more quarter point rate increases, now you have restrictive rates at something like 200 basis points. That's higher than the Fed once. That's the foot really hard on the break. So it's not like the market's crazy and thinking that we're going to have a couple of rate cuts next year. I just told you, in 2000, we went from 6 % to 2001, ending the at 1 .75 % and the Fed was doing the exact same jaw boning in the summer of 2000.

48:07So they do evolve rate policy based upon what's happening in the economy. All of the things are rolling over, CPI is rolling over, Jolt is rolling over, et cetera. So again, I just don't see the heightened concern. I think to the bank issue, Sachs, to me, that was the much scarier concern. Druck and Miller actually pulled forward his hard landing expectation to queue two of this year as a result of the bank crisis, and now has pushed it back out to queue four of this year. I think if we had another black swan like banks or something that I can't foresee today, then that could certainly be the thing that would be the catalyst to toss us into a hard landing.

48:54Barring that, I think that... By the way, you know, you distribution of probabilities, the fat part of the curve is that we have a softish medium, you know, sort of landing here. I think you're right. I think you're right. And by the way, like if the UK had not left Europe, Then the whole contagion of Europe could be one of those Black Swan events that we would all be talking about as theoretically possible. But it looks like the UK is probably going to, it's really bad, I think. Britain is now the only major economy where inflation is still rising. The OECD said Tuesday that you're in your inflation and the G7 fell to 4 .6 % in May down from from 5 % in April.

49:39So inflation is tempering a bit, but UK consumer prices rose to 7 .9 % in May, which is up from 7 .8 % in April. So in acceleration in the UK, it seems like it's a pretty nasty spiral problem. This is where the benefit of being part of a larger economy really pays dividends, right? Obviously there's a lot to do with language and currency. And there's a whole bunch of issues rolled up up into why the UK left the European Union. But my gosh, one of the real obvious advantages is you're smoothing out the variants, right? And smoothing out variants is really valuable. So if you think about like all of these economies in Europe, like PMs in a hedge fund, right, Brad, you can, you know, you know this.

50:29It's like you sometimes some guy crushes it, you know, look how millennium or SAC or Citadel makes the real money. It's by smoothing out variants and that's a great thing about being part of an economic union like the EU offers. And in the absence of that, in times like this, it really exposes the weaknesses of a small subscale economic system, which unfortunately the UK has. Right. The Europe is going into a session too. I mean, Germany has huge problems that again stems from the cutoff of cheap rushing gas enemies in the EU. They're going into recession as well. So it's not just. But now with the same levels of inflation, my point is like, you know, it's one thing for an economy to start to receive.

51:16But here it's you don't have the benefit of balance sheet borrowing of the scale of the EU, nor do you have the disinflation of the EU. And I think that's problematic. much more for the UK than it is for any individual country in Europe. That's just my point. That's all. Can I, can I, you know, one just philosophical thought, you know, because if we rewind the clock to the beginning of the year, you know, there was absolute consensus in the markets, right? And you can go back and look at all the headlines. Mike Wilson's consensus was that we were going to have a hard landing in Q1. hedge funds, long -only funds had their exposures super low.

51:54Everybody had post -traumatic stress from last year. It is a sure strategy to lose a lot of money or not make money. If you're trying to always call the market as though you know, you have no idea, right? Q1 and Q2, sure there was a possibility we could have a hard landing, right? And the bank crisis made that look as those possibility. What we try to do is look at that distribution of possibilities. It's a distribution curve. And so I put up on the on the screen here what the markets implied Fed fund rate changes are from today. So what the market is betting on, which from my perspective is better than any one of us trying to forecast, right, what's going to happen with future rate increases, it's saying, yeah, we're going to go from 5 .08 % today to something like peaking at 5 .45 % in November of this year.

52:50And then at some point beyond November, could be December, could be Q1 of next year, right? We'll see a enough turning over of CPI, enough turning over of Jolts, that now we'll say the balance of risk has shifted to being too punitive on the economy. So we're going to real back in one of those rate increases. Okay. And I think that, you know, so Friedberg just to clarify on the bet we just made, which I'm excited about, you have to have this tarp, you know, commercial real estate rescue program before they real back one of those rate increases, which the markets telling you could be as early as December.

53:27Yeah. But I encourage everybody who listens, you know, like don't listen, you know, it's not like go all in because Dr. Kim Miller says hard landing or don't go all in soft landing because we say soft landing, our net exposure has come down over the course of the year at Altimeter because we've moved, the markets have moved up a lot. They're pricing in more of a soft landing today. So the idea is to have high exposures when the world's panicked and then to reel in your exposures a little bit, but never be all or none. I mean, the fascination with calling the big short, the big hard landing, soft landing, it's just a sure way not to make much money.

54:05Today, there was a red hot US jobs report, Brad. US job openings dropped below 10 million in May. But the labor market remains piping hot. Like I said, you know, the market, I think is, you know, it's reading way too much. I mean, it's one of the even a, I mean, we'll get the official jobs numbers out of the, out of the federal government tomorrow. This was an ADP report, which are, have been not particularly good. But I already explained there's a rationale look peel behind the G the ADP report 250 ,000 of the 400, you know, 1000 on jobs that were created were in hospitality and leisure. I mean, these were desperately needed because we have a peak summer travel season going on.

54:51So you have hotels that hire a bunch of people those show up in the ADP job numbers, right? But the great news is the Jolt's job openings go down. And you know, summers was complaining last year that Joltz wasn't going down fast enough. He also said something that was really interesting. When Joltz, he said when Joltz goes down by over 10%, so think we've had a move from 12 million to 9 .8 million. He said when Joltz goes down by over 10%, we have a reduction or an increase in the unemployment rate by two and a half percent in the subsequent 12 months. So, Joltz is a leading indicator. You got to reel in those job openings and then you start seeing unemployment bump up.

55:35So, with the tight economy, you know, the Fed's foot on rates, some of the contraction that SACS has been pointing out. And then we start to see these early indicators, there's in Joltz, I mean, people need the job, clearly, or they wouldn't have taken them. Their STEMI has run out. All of these things are, are what the Fed is trying to manufacture. So I don't look at that jobs number. In fact, we were doing just the opposite, in the market this morning, to what the market was giving us. I don't think that was a very good read through it all. Okay, I wanna talk a little bit about jobs. The Florida State Senate Bill 1718 went into effect on July 1st.

56:16This bill now requires that any company with more than 25 employees use the e -verify system to verify the legal immigration status of their workers of their employees. And this will create a real impact on businesses that employ more than 800 ,000 illegal immigrants in the state of Florida to do a lot of work and a lot of labor. It's unclear how many of those 800 ,000 illegal immigrants that are working in Florida today are working at a firm with more than 25 employees, but the impact is gonna range from the construction industry to farm labor and a lot of other manual labor sectors. It is state that has 2 .3 % unemployment.

57:05DeSantis has made this, you know, an important speaking topic when he's spoken publicly, he did quite a bit of press around the passage of this bill as a way to counter Biden's quote open immigration policy. Sex, I know that you've talked about the Santas in the past. Do you have a read on the impact that this immigration policy will have? Do you agree with it? Would love your thoughts. I mean, I don't think this is a jobs bill. This is an immigration bill. Or it's an immigration issue. And look, I don't know what the impact on Florida is going to be from this. I don't trust a single story that's out of it.

57:44I guess there's just a story in the Wall Street Journal about it. I mean, this feels like a campaign story. So I want to see more stories before I reach the termination on what the impact's going to be. But politically, do I think this is smart? Yeah, because the border is the number one issue in the country right now. I don't think you guys are as clued in to like how on fire the country is about what's going on at the border. And our fundraiser, RFK, talked about the border because he went there. There's a bunch of really good clips online. I don't care who you are. You can't listen to that accounting.

58:22It's just an accounting, right? So anybody could do it. So it doesn't matter what your political perspective is on RFK. Anybody who listens to that accounting can't be anything but shocked. How shocked? What he described is what what Arv case described is he went to the the border at Yuma and there are literally holes in the wall You know from Trump's wall and literally the building materials to finish the wall and plug those holes are sitting there on the ground And the Biden administration refuses to use them and to plug the hole because they don't want to give any credit to Trump presumably I mean literally that's how petty it is or it's actually their policy.

59:04They actually like having an open border So something like seven million illegals have come in through the Southern border since Biden's been in office. And they're not from Central America. It turns out these folks are from Eastern Europe and Africa predominantly, many men at military age. And it's an entire business that's run by the cartels. And as he describes it, it's really just plainly shocking. If one of our enemies wanted to get thousands of sleeper agents into the country, it would have been very easy for them to do this. Okay. Can I just think about that first? Yeah. Can I pivot away from the border policy question to one of labor?

59:49We obviously, as evidenced by the jobs report from ADP this morning, remain in a very tight labor market in the US. And we as a group often talk about H1Bs and the importance of allowing educated immigrants into this country to meet our knowledge workforce needs. But there obviously is a pretty sizable manual labor workforce need in this country. And a very tight labor market to fulfill that need, ranging from construction where we have, you know, deep and significant aspirations as a country to improve infrastructure, to farm labor where we have, you know, the largest agricultural export market in the world.

1:00:25And many of these industries rely on low -cost labor for those businesses to meet their economic objective, to be able to be profitable. And we simply may not have enough of a labor force of legal immigrants or legal citizens or residents of the U .S. to meet those obligations. What is the answer, SACS? Is it that we are supposed to take anyone that's illegal in the country and make it impossible for them to work here? And is that not going to have a very adverse effect on these important segments of our economy that today rely on that labor force that is here illegally? And I'm asking the important.

1:01:02I think I'm not stating it. I'm asking the important. I get what you're saying. I think we can start to resolve that issue when you solve the border crisis. The problem is the average American doesn't want to hear anything about, you know, quote unquote, comprehensive solutions to the border crisis or immigration or whether there I'm not talking about politics. I'm just talking about your personal point of view. My personal point of view is we need to seal the borders so we stop having this problem. Okay, but we're not gonna have to work. What about the labor? Yeah, let me, I'll take a crack out of three, Bert.

1:01:34Okay, I'm just trying to diagnose the difference between the border policy question and the real economic question. I know the California Ag sector very well. There's an important migrant visa that the entire farming economy depends on in the California. And these are illegal immigrants that are legally allowed to work in the farming sector and it allows farms to be able to do the work they need to do because there is absolutely no labor to do that work without this immigrant population. And there's other elements of this that are critical across the economy. Sorry Brad, go ahead. So why can't we have a common sense migrant you know worker program, worker visa, you know predicated on that right?

1:02:14The problem is I think where where most people are in agreement, that if you have a relatively secure border, then you design good policies. We should have a policy for people wanna come and work and earn some money. And we have job openings in this country, and then return home, right? Or go through a normal process to get in line to citizenship, but the problem is people cutting the line, skipping the system, and given the social safety nets that states on the border have lined up and we as a nation have lined up, that's just unsustainable in a world where we're already whatever, $35 trillion in debt.

1:02:57So I think these things can coexist. You can treat labor humanely. You can create a safe harbor for labor to come to the country. But that doesn't mean that you should just have holes in the wall and anybody who wants to come here can come here in whatever capacity they want. Chimoff, assuming that the border is closed and we fix that problem, what do you think the right solution is to the millions of illegal immigrants that are residing in the country? I'll answer that, but let me ask you a question. Do you think we should seal the border? Yeah, for sure. And why do you think we should seal the border?

1:03:31So that we have a system that we can use to manage the flow of labor and decide what's appropriate for our country and we can actually have a conversation about what qualify someone to come across the border and to immigrate into the US. I totally agree with you. Yeah, I agree. I think that's the right way. But saying that, you assume that the border was sealed, what would you do about, you know, low school immigration? That's kind of like asking other than that, how is the play Mrs. Lincoln? I mean, this is the here on fire political issue is that we can't get the border sealed. That you've had 7 million plus, us, illegals come across it during the Biden administration.

1:04:10And the administration obviously doesn't have the will to do anything about it. So you're kind of assuming away the central issue. This is the issue, one of the main main issues I got Trump elect in 2016 was building the wall. No, but I think we're we're all saying this hasn't gone away. We need to seal the border. We're all saying that, right? Does anybody think we should can seal the border? No, I agree. Yeah, I think we are. But I think that And I'll say some why that doesn't happen when everyone in the country agrees that should happen. You're just about everybody. But I do think that there's a low -scale labor market need that's not met in this country.

1:04:43There isn't a public restaurant company that doesn't talk about the challenges that they're having with labor. They cannot fill the jobs that they have. All right. If you want to talk about that issue, I want to flag a report that was presented to Congress. And this is about 15 years old, it's back in 2007 by Heritage. But I don't think the numbers have changed much in the interim. in fact they probably gotten worse. The point that this researcher made is that if you look at the cost of low -skill immigration, the average low -skill immigrant household receives approximately $30 ,000 in direct benefits from the government.

1:05:20By contrast, these households only pay about $10 ,000 in taxes. So even though those low -skill immigrant households, let's assume that they're working and do contribute to the economy in the way that you're saying. There's still a $20 ,000 gap between what they contribute and what they receive from the government. And that is a big problem for the country. My guess is that the counter -argument would be that more than $20 ,000 of economic benefit accrues to the businesses that employ that labor because they can now be profitable, they can now get the work done that they need to do. They can grow their revenue.

1:06:01They can expand their footprint. They can service their customers. All the things that otherwise they might not be able to do without having access to that. I think that's a big assumption. I think that's a big assumption. One of the problems with the system that we have is that there's a lot of government benefits. And so if you want to have a more open immigration policy, that's sort of inconsistent with the idea of having is super generous. No, I think I think there are three distinct things. One is is it open or closed and second, if it's closed, what are the qualification criteria and how many and I think that's totally reasonable.

1:06:36The third is what government benefits are provided and you could reduce the government benefits if it's too costly. You could improve the qualification criteria and increase the number of folks that are coming in. I know this may sound crazy but I think that tying together immigration and jobs is like the best way to ensure that nothing actually happens on immigration. Right. And what I mean by that is that when you go to a restaurant, for example, and the service has decayed because they can't get enough staff, right? You don't walk out of that restaurant thinking, well, we need comprehensive immigration reform.

1:07:15You say thumbs down on Yelp, I'm never going back here again. And so unfortunately if it's that, if it's service sector jobs in particular, by the way, there is no closed loop way where you actually tie these two issues together. And so the issue becomes stranded, which is what it has, which is why I think what Brad said in SACSET is right, which is there's an order of operations here where the American and people probably want an immigration system that says something like, here's a point -based approach, right? Where we try to attract the world's best, think about it like a draft, right? And we wanna attract the world's best athletes to come play on our team, team America, team USA.

1:08:02We have all of the capabilities to do that, but before we do that, we have to kind of close the border. And I think that that's the only way it's ever gonna get done. And meanwhile, the problem with the job thing is a bit of red herring towards immigration because people just don't tie the two things together practically speaking. Well, I was going to say one final point on this is that when you admit lots of low -skill immigration or labor into the country, you're creating wage pressure for Americans at the lowest end of the totem pole. And that is why they are so resistant to it. This is why average working class Americans are very upset about the border.

1:08:39or it's also a security issue. And there's drugs pouring across as well, the fentanyl crisis that we see. But it creates a lot of wage pressure for Americans who are at the lowest end of the latter. I mean, what's wrong with this pain them a little bit more? So here's some statistics for you guys. The total population of unauthorized immigrants in the US peaked in 2007 as decline slightly since. California felt it first from 2010 to 2018, the unauthorized immigrant population in the state, declined by 10 % to 2 .6 million, mostly impacting the farm economy. So the state California State reports that from 2010 to 2020, the average number of workers hired by California farms for crop production declined to 150 ,000 from 170 ,000.

1:09:26I talk with a lot of people in the farm economy as you guys know. And this is an endemic problem in California agriculture is that the lack of a labor force that allows the farms to be profitable is really impacting folks' ability to operate and to grow. And that ultimately translates into consumer price and so on. So there are huge consequences as to having effectively an open border policy that go beyond just farms or vineyards not being able to hire enough cheap labor. I mean, look at what's going on in France right now. Yeah. You've basically got riots. You've got a a civil war going on, there's a large unassuminated poor immigrant population in that country.

1:10:06That's where open borders gets you, that's the end result. So there are huge consequences to allowing in huge numbers of low school immigrants, especially illegal ones. I don't think there's a lot, this is where we get to, last week we had the Canada H1B announcement about their Technomatic Visa program and I sent it to two members of Congress. I sent a tweet that I sent out. Sorry, just recap for us what happened, Brett. Okay, so in Canada last week, the government announced an aggressive push to recruit technology workers from around the world to Canada. So they made it easier for tech workers to get what they are calling a digital nomad visa.

1:10:51So you can now go and work in Canada if you have a job offer. And then they also, in kind of a gangster move, said, if you already have an H1B visa in the United States, and it's starting to run out, just bring you and your family to Canada and work from here, right? So it was like we've been talking about. We need H1B visa reform. We need to recruit the world's best and brightest and artificial intelligence, et cetera, to the United States. And they were, you know, they were doing it quite aggressively. Now, the point is, I sent that to two members of Congress, a Democrat member of the House, a Republican member of the Senate.

1:11:28And I got back nearly identical answers from both of them. They said no chance that happens here, get on arrival, because nothing's going to move until we have a comprehensive immigration policy in this country. And then I said, well, why isn't that happening? They said elections, right? Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome. The problem is all four of us agree. We should have, you know, we should have sealed borders, but at the same time, immigration is what makes this country great. We want to treat people humanely. We need my group workers like this is not that hard a problem to solve in this country, but there's not even a conversation.

1:12:07The first that is Washington DC on this topic is there's not even an honest conversation or attempt to get to a solution here. So with a presidential election, you know, less than, you know, if you're in a half away, we're just back to the same old tribal war that we've had before. Now I understand, Sachs point is like listen, nothing happens until we have close borders and maybe sequentially that's what we have to do. But it doesn't stop there. I think we all agree that what makes this country special is that we, you know, Fourth of July, you know, we throw open the doors and we welcome, you know, a folks from around the world to contribute to this great experiment.

1:12:51Some of them are on a path to citizenship and some of them are not. What doesn't sit right with anybody is breaking the rules and skipping the line. I understand the desperation and the motivation of some people to do that. But that is not ever going to be a system that works for the majority. So it sounds like it wasn't happening. Well, it's the right right right text. Yes, the way I interpret listen when you say that we can't do anything until we have comprehensive immigration reform. By the way, I heard future Democratic nominee Gavin Newsom say the same thing on Hannity. What the party in power is doing is holding the country hostage and saying that we're not going to close the border.

1:13:33We're going to use the the border as a bargaining chip until you give us the immigration package that we want. But that really shouldn't be allowed because really it's the obligation of the federal government to have a secure border. That's not something you trade. That's something that we should already have. Well, it's what we pay for. That's what we pay for. So that when they talk about comprehensive immigration reform, that's basically what they're saying is we're not going to give you a secure border until you give us enough policies that we want. Just to give you guys the and Freeberg and Sachs are immigrants, but you guys got your citizenship through your parents.

1:14:11I actually did the process myself as an TN visa holder who then went to an H1B to I think went to EB1. So, you know, I've had to go through this and I've literally had to wait in line. And you can't describe to you the anxiety you have when you know your visa is running out, you're waiting for a customs and integration to basically give you the meeting so that they can actually approve or tell you that your H1B is approved or your EB -1 is approved. And you go to this website, it's our campaign. You refresh it every day. You do it for six months, straight every day, a few times a day. You go into the forums where all these other immigrants are talking about how frustrated they are and how scared they are.

1:14:59but we all stood in line. And I think what people don't understand who think that this other border should be totally open is the anxiety that those of us who actually played by the rules went through for months. And in some cases, if you come from countries like India and China, years. Right, by the way, why are you saying? And that's not fair. What you're saying is exactly why the Hispanic population, the Hispanic citizens of the United States are increasingly voting Republican, because they have gone through the process, they have suffered the rigmarole, and they don't wanna see an open border policy that isn't fair and doesn't feel right.

1:15:41You know, we're first generation Americans, and I remember when my parents went through the process, I think my dad got a green card based on being a doctor before we came here, and then after five years became citizens, it seemed a lot more orderly back then, by the way. Totally. The process just seemed to work. I've seen all the statistics showing the insane percentage of Silicon Valley startups that had at least one immigrant co -founder. It's something like 40 to 50 percent of unicorn of unicorn companies in Silicon Valley have at least one co -founder whose first generation American or an immigrant.

1:16:15So I understand full well the benefits to the country and our economy by being able to have immigrants come to America, but generally speaking, those are high -skill immigrants. And we should be able to have that as a feature of our system without having an open border. And the problem is all these things get conflated right now. And I think what's happening is it shouldn't be so hard to get extensions to H1Bs. It is really crazy that we're giving Canada this opportunity and that we're potentially driving out really talented high school workers. But the problem right now is that the southern border is such a mess that the average American does want to hear anything about H1Bs or they don't hear about any of it.

1:16:58They're just like I would encourage people to listen to that RFK clip where he describes, you know, and he's one of the rare presidential candidates that has taken the time and gone down there. And he just describes it for a plainly so irrespective of what you think of him. Listen to it because it's pretty factual and it's very scary. This seems to me to be of such significant strategic national interests, similar to the national debt that there really should be a commission of centrist folks, you know, appointed by whatever president, this president, the next president, that tries to craft something we can pass, break it down into two or three bills.

1:17:42But you know, this is really undermining our ability to compete in the world and we need to solve this problem. And I think we've been discussing this, you know, for as long as, you know, we've been in Silicon Valley, but certainly it's become an incredible problem in the age of AI, etc. and having the tit for tat of what's going on, these news articles shipping off illegal immigrants to Martha's Vineyard. You know, I happen to be on Martha's Vineyard right now. I think they sent 49 folks here, Venezuela, most of them Central American. And I'll tell you, this island is made better because it has a tremendous number of Portuguese and Central American workers who are active members of the community, go to the school here, et cetera.

1:18:33So maybe that is part of the solution, SACS, that when we do have people want to immigrate to this country, the burden is not just on the border states, but the folks have an opportunity to locate anywhere in the country. Well, yeah, and what happened with the Martha's Vendure thing is I have seen some articles like the New York Times says articles saying how I wonder if it's all worked out. But when it first happened, the people living in Martha's Vineyard were up in arms, and there were a bunch of angry press conferences, and they were almost hysterical that the San Francisco's sent them there.

1:19:09But what that did is it exposed their hypocrisy because there's a lot of people in the country who are just fine with having an open border when they don't think it affects them. Totally. But when it does affect them, then all of a sudden, they're holding press conferences denouncing it. So I think what - So I think it never works. Tid for tat number works. You can have me at Tid. You don't need that. Well, can we speak in? By the way, sorry, wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, lightning down. Who left the cocaine in the white house? What's the answer, Tim? I actually don't think it was Hunter Biden.

1:19:39I think it was probably like some young kid who has working like long hours and was like, I need a little upper here to stay up and was like, I need a bump and some of the kid brought some nose candy to me. Well, how stupid is this kid? And by the way, they said that there's no security for it. It was in a it was in a cubby. It was in a cubby. He put it in the cubby. Whoever did it, which is which is so stupid. Why would you take it off your off your person? Yeah. I mean, it's clearly clearly a conservative reporter who's knuck in there to frame honor. And by the way, it was in the cubby where you're supposed to put your cell phone when you go into classified meetings.

1:20:16Sacks. Have you been to the White House lately? No. Have you had any of you guys been in the Oval Office? I have. Yeah. I'll tell you a very funny story about my my meeting in the, it was in the Rose of Altroom where I had a fighting meeting where it was like me and Dreson, me and Dreson, I can't remember who else was, this was like years ago, a decade ago, this was during Obama's administration. And something like we were meeting with like, I don't know, the chairman of the joint chiefs and all these big muckety mucks. And I remember the military guys because there was four of them. And at the time it was there was like oh my god no this was right when the first Ukraine thing was going on.

1:20:59Okay so what was that? Saks 2014 maybe? 2013 2014. The first you can't you Ukraine thing of it. Anyways. Oh yeah 2014. Yeah. 2014. Okay so we're there and they're talking about we're talking about new technologies whatever And I said, guys, I mean, this is insane. Like, why are you guys not dropping, you know, small sats so that you can get internet service into places like the Ukraine so that people can get the message up, whatever's happening. And I said, these things are really small. Like, you can bring them anywhere. And I said, you know, I got a smuggled one in here right now. What have you guys says?

1:21:39No, we've been watching you since you got it. It was so very funny. I thought it was hilarious. We'll speak of political forces. Here we go. Red meat. No, it's not red meat. I mean, I want to do just do a quick recap on the whole Chinese spy balloon thing. I actually think there's a serious statement here about how our political system works. But do you want to tee this up, free burger? Or do you want me to go? No, go for it. Yeah, lead in. Yeah, go for it. All right. So basically, you guys remember a few months ago that we had this whole Chinese spy balloon thing that went on for a week. I mean, we had 24 seven wall -to -wall cable and use coverage of this thing.

1:22:22And the administration was accused of being soft on China and allowing this spy balloon to traverse across the United States and people were posting photos and videos about mine. Yeah, then finally the White House deployed some F -16s to shoot down some $16 hobbyist balloons with $400 ,000 sidewinder missiles to show that they were really tough. Anyway, it was this whole farce. Now it turns out that the Pentagon just released a statement. So Pentagon Press Secretary Brigadier General Pat Reiter said the balloon not only did not transmit data back to China and never collected any. And he said, we're aware that it had intelligence collection capabilities, but it has been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States.

1:23:13So if it wasn't collecting any data, it wasn't transmitting back to China. And then I've also heard that it didn't contain any special equipment at all. It just I've read article saying that was just standard equipment that you could buy. How is it still a spy balloon? Yeah. And remember they got worked up about this thing that turned out to be a big Chinese was it actually Chinese? I think it was Chinese. With American technology. So now all the reporting. Yeah, like now all the reporting is covering the fact that it had, quote, American technology on it. Like, Saks's point is you could just buy the stuff off the shelves.

1:23:50And if you guys remember around the time that it was discovered, we talked about this, But it wasn't widely covered in the media that there was an upgrade to the domestic radar system where they increased the resolution and the frequency of capture of these radar images. So they were starting to pick up more fine -tuned smaller objects that were otherwise being missed, including things like little, you know, whether balloons or, you know, stuff that otherwise wasn't getting paid attention to. And that this balloon may have been the sort of thing that could have been a blip and ignored in the prior system, but then when they upgraded the system it became a thing.

1:24:25And to SACS' point, which interesting is how it got spun into a domestic threat by the Chinese. Well, we had this debate on the pod months ago where I was like, look, this cannot be true. It makes no sense. I mean, the Chinese have spice out of lights. So if they wanted to spy on us, they would just be imaging from space. So then people started speculating, well, this, this Bible and must have new kinds of equipment, you know, new sensors or sound maybe they're trying to collect Sound patterns make recordings. So in other words, over farmland over northern Canada and farmland and yeah Interesting stuff to pick up there.

1:25:06Instead of recognizing that the story was completely far fetched They had to invent a narrative about why it made sense And then, you know, if you basically raise any questions whatsoever about this narrative, you were looked on as if you were like Chinese spokesman like a spy or something. This Pentagon statement came right after Tony Blinken's visit to China, right? He just got back from China. And there was a lot of closed -door meetings and then they gave the usual hoopla about what was discussed. And there was nothing new that was introduced in the public statement about what was discussed behind the closed doors.

1:25:41But do you think that maybe there was something that was negotiated behind closed doors where they said our this balloon was not a domestic threat you guys made it out to be you need to make a statement to correct the record. Yes, I actually think that's exactly what happened is we know Blinken went to China. He had seven hours of meeting meetings the read out from those meetings said that they were very candid conversations. That's usually diplomatic code for a row of five. Yes, exactly. And I think the Chinese were very upset that the story was relentlessly pumped for days and days that they were spying on America.

1:26:16And I think they demanded a correction. And I think that that is exactly what the Pentagon did is they put out this press release, they put out this statement. But the way that the media covered it, it's like the back page correction of a front page story. I mean, this Chinese spy balloon story went on for days and days and days and the correction gets no coverage. Now, look, it's also possible that somehow the statement is not true now. I mean, look, either they were hoaxing us then or they're hoaxing us now because the statement they're saying now is incompatible with what they were saying three months ago.

1:26:49But I believe the statement now and not what they're saying three months ago because it just makes a lot more sense. But, you know, remember a few months ago, we had, you know, mids on Twitter. Here, let's just. I just want to become a thing. It's on to remember remember when mids on Twitter, you know, when I invented that I came up with that. My take was Aaron balloon major provocation could incite war blown up pipeline referring to Nord Stream, which also got blown up around that time. Not a provocation can ever incite war get it straight. And then the mids on Twitter were, you know, he was in real.

1:27:30And he learned a new vocabulary word. But in his view, Aaron was not a strong enough word to describe this unprecedented national security threat. By the way, for those of you listening, the mid that responded to SACs was Jason Calakatus, formerly of the All -in -Pot. Oh, so funny. So funny. So it goes on. So farcical are political system is, because here's what I think actually happened, And is that the story just picked up steam because it's too good not to, right? So cable news starts picking it up. And everyone's always trying to pump up the threat that China represents because our central global competitor now.

1:28:09And the White House, I think, very early on had a decision to make, which is, do you try and fight the story or do you just roll with it? And I think they just decided to roll with it because they would be seen as being soft on China if they try to fight it and say it wasn't true. And so then you had this whole farce of them shooting down all these balloons and so forth. This is the whole course and trajectory right now of the United States, Democrats and Republicans, both sides of the aisle have this vested belief that we are on a collision course with China and whoever kind of steps it up first ends up having the better footing.

1:28:49And so every opportunity that exists, whether it's on chips or Taiwan or human rights or the the spy balloon is going to be levered and amplified in some way to paint China as this conflicting force against the United States in some way. And it's not going to get toned down anytime soon. Clearly this is part of a continuous escalation cycle that may take years, may take a decade or two, but ultimately there's going to be point where this all comes to a head. And it's really unfortunate to see that rather than have this, you know, deeply cooperative relationship. And sorry, you think this thing with China is going to come to a head.

1:29:31At some point, I think we're just going to continue to escalate the technical. I'll take the other side of that too. What do you think it's going to be peace and prosperity forever? No, I mean, I think I've talked about this a little bit, but I think China has just got so many internal issues. They're not going to be fighting wars. Oh, they're not going to. No, look, I mean, my point is more around the orientation of the politicians. And the orientation is we have this escalating force in China. And we need to kind of be ahead of the game. I think the electric. I'm not sure who's doing that. I don't.

1:30:03Well, I think the point freeberg's making is that the domestic politics, the politics inside the United States leads to a cycle of Republicans, Democrats constantly trying to one up each other in terms of who's or hawkish towards China. Right, exactly. That's why things going on. Regardless of what happens on the Chinese side. And by the way, I mean, their domestic politics probably have the same tendencies. I'm sure that G's got hardliners and hawks around him who don't want to back down. And so, I think in a few years from now, we won't be talking about this. We talked about Japan for eight, nine years.

1:30:43We were worried. They were the and they turned out not to be, and we all moved on. Yeah, it's a good data point. So yeah, I mean, you're referring to a period, I think, it was like the 1980s where Japan was seen as a giant. Yeah, 80 to the 80. Yeah, but it was never seen as a security threat to the United States. And China is a different kind of geopolitical competitor, right? There's a very vigorous security competition. They've been nuclear arsenal. They've been nuclear arsenal. They've more people. But we have military bases in Japan. it was it's it's a client in the United States. It was never a security threat to the United States.

1:31:16That was resolved. No, I think that that's fair. I just think that dollars tend to leave these things and I think that in the next five to six years, five to 10 years, we're not going to be talking about China the same way we are today. Okay, prediction made will come back on episode 81247. Brad do our outro. I got to find three hours. I'm flying all day. I'm fun. Have a great time. Brad's going to do a quick science corner for us. And then we're going to wrap Brad. Go ahead. Well, you know, one of the things I love about this pause, we cover everything from science to politics and and Chimath last year, you know, in his biohacking series, told us all to get pre -new vote scans, which I did, which is interesting.

1:32:01And I think I don't know, Timoth, maybe 10 people have sent you notes and said, Hey, you helped me discover a tumor, you know, really amazing. Well, so this year and I did that, you know, this year you've been talking a lot about heart flow. So I said to my general practitioner at my annual checkup, hey, I want to do this heart flow. And she said, oh, you don't need to do a heart flow. Your LDLs, all your stuff looks really good. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You have a female GP. Huh. She's fantastic. Fantastic. Stanford educated really terrific. I don't care where she went. Who does the prostate test?

1:32:35He does? Hey, listen, it's in the perks that come along. Checking the PSA is in the video. I mean, nobody's here, you have it really? I do, I do. That's a level of intimacy I didn't expect from you. Wow. And so, you know, but what I found interesting is when I suggested I get the heart flow, she said, oh, you don't need it, et cetera. Your LDL's are low, you're very fit. And she said, but on second, you know, maybe you could go get this calcium score test, right? I didn't know anything about this, but I did a little quick research. It turns out a big JAMA study in 2017, over 50 % of men and women over the age of 40, carry plaque.

1:33:16Blacks in number one killer, it's a source of heart disease and heart attacks. And as Chema has been talking about, there's a prophylactic called statin, which is basically like a supplement, very little downside, no long term downside effects, but it immediately starts cutting down the amount of fatty cells and and plaque that's carried in your blood. So I thought it was interesting. I went and I had Chema as you know the coronary calcium scan. It takes five minutes. It costs between $100 and $400. The fact that we don't have every person taking this over 40 is crazy. And frontline doctors should all be prescribing it, but particularly if there's family history.

1:33:55So, but did you also do a contrast CT with heart Yeah, so I started with the calcium score 150 box over at Stanford took five minutes and you know, it told me You know, which wasn't terribly surprising. I was one of the 50 % that did carry some level of calcium So it was called a non -zero score and then what they suggested is because you have a non -zero score You get this you know, Chim off you told me go do the contrast CT which then will image what this looks like actually in your arteries. So this past week in Boston, I did the contrast CT. Again, this took 10 minutes, not invasive, like, you know, it's just they run you into it.

1:34:36Well, no, invasive because you have to put the dye. No, so they put, yes, so a tiny bit, I suppose they shoot a little dye into you, but you know, didn't feel like anything. I was in and out of the place in 40 minutes. And what it found is, you know, fortunately, that very little of this calcium had turned into what they call stenosis, any narrow enough of the arteries, okay? But then it gave you just a very clear picture that if you are one of the 50 % who carry plaque over the age of 40, you should be on a prophylactic statin. So, as Chimap nose, I signed up to 10 milligrams of crest star, which I'm taking daily has had zero, you know, zero adverse consequences.

1:35:22And in two or three months, they'll test the amount of, you know, we'll revisit this calcium score. But when I talked to the head of cardiology, what was so interesting is that every one of his friends over the age of 40, he has them do this calcium coronary scan. It's so cheap and if they're zero on their calcium reading that that's the end of the line But if they have a non -zero reading then he'll do the the CT coronary scan, which is again very cheap More expensive than the calcium test but very cheap and when you think about the cost of the patients in this country Right in our healthcare system due to heart disease and when you think about the needless lives cut short I was shocked how easy all of this was and how empowered I feel by the data and how fortunate I feel that I'm actually taking a supplement.

1:36:13I call it a supplement instead of statins because I think statin has some spooky name. It sounds to me like a better supplement than any vitamins I can take. And it's reducing the LDLs or these fatties in your blood. And I'll keep you posted, but I was very grateful. And as you know, I posted it in our thread. And I think all the besties, we saw responses out of a bunch of folks in the thread this week are going to go get their calcium, you know, coronary scan. And I think it should be common sense on the front lines for people over 40, particularly if there's any family history, go get this calcium test done this summer while you have a little extra time.

1:36:51There you have it folks. 100 to 400 dollars could save your life. calcium, coronary scan, Brad Gerstner, thanks so much for Science Corner this week. This has been great. How did you I love it. I got to go boys. I really love you guys. Okay, good. Stuff your face with some truffles. No, no truffles until the fall. All right. Bye. Bye. Love you guys. This is our place. What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee?

1:37:30What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? What's going on, Lee? Oh man, I'm not the actual meat, me, I'm the actual... We should all just get a room and just have one big hug, George, because you're all... It's like this, like, sexual tension that we just need to release some out there. What, your, the beef, what, your, your, your beef? Beef, beef, what? We need to get my, these aren't bad. I'm going all in!

1:38:15I'm going all in! you