5/4/26: Israel Uses Gaza Strategy In Lebanon, Epstein Suicide Note, China Screw You To US Sanctions

26:06I know you had it on the show, and we appreciate you coming on. But my point is like those diehard Biden guys, they look like idiots. And when Biden, especially around the debate and that time period, we're like, bro, what are you doing? Like they had no – their audience, like a lot of – even their own like blue, you know, Democrat audience was like, hey, guys, like you're really defending Biden a lot here. Like I'm sorry. Like I just don't agree. So it's just – it's a tale as old as time. Yeah. I think in political coverage. He also lost a couple of his biggest, most prominent personalities. Yeah.

26:33Candace obviously left in very, you know, contentious circumstances. You had Brett Cooper. He also, you know, went independent and now – He fired her too. I haven't followed that closely, but it seems like she's tried to reposition herself somewhat and have, you know, more of an independent approach in terms of her views on Israel. And she's got this very young audience. She herself is very young, so she would have more finger on the pulse there, etc. So that also shows the limits of what you could do because there's no reason, putting aside whatever personal or ideological conflicts, once you're as big as Candace Owens, there's just no reason to stay.

27:09Why would you not do your own thing and make your own money and set your own terms and not have to deal with a boss? Why would you not do that? But to your point, Sagar, about how the college kids or the CRT curricula isn't selling the way it used to. There's actually a point Tucker made in his interview at the New York Times. I don't know if you listened to the whole interview, but he said, listen, I think the only thing people are going to really focus on is economics because it's getting that dire. You know, whether it's AI, obviously with the Iran war, affordability crisis, that that is where the energy is going to be.

27:39And if you aren't focused on that, then people are not going to be interested in what you have to say. And I think he's probably right about that. It's just so obvious. I don't think it takes a genius really to figure it out. I mean, at the end of the day, the cultural stuff is what gets your base animated. And then you get the swing voters and others to come on your side when you convince them that things are going to be better for you. Right. I mean, is it the culture issues? This sounds too dismissive. I'm not saying they're not important, but it's almost like a luxury to get to focus on those sorts of debates.

28:07Because, I mean, if you're just trying to make it through month to month and, like, survive and keep the lights on, of course that's going to be your number one concern. Totally, yeah. That's why the culture war, the most culture wars that we had in my lifetime was in the 90s because shit was fine. Like, everything was mostly fine. Now, a lot of people will get mad, but that's the truth, okay? Like, most of the time, why do you think Lewinsky was such a big scandal? Okay, when the Dow and the S &P are up so high and we're living in the unipolar moment, that's only in this very unique moment in time.

28:41Could anybody even pretend to give a shit, you know, with about Ken Starr and Lewinsky and the wall-to-wall coverage? When things are really dire, yeah, nobody wants to hear it. Like, whenever we're talking about, you know, some of these 2022 controversies. I mean, imagine even trying to seriously talk about that right now. We barely have time for like vitally important stories because we're in the middle of a global realignment war happening in not only in the Middle East, which is spiking gas to existential levels for American households. That's all anybody is going to want. Imagine covering like the racial makeup of the Little Mermaid remake at this point.

29:19That's true. Yeah, that's true. You can see in our own coverage. And I'm telling you as a person, this is a person who, like, I'm not saying I don't care about this stuff. But again, I care a lot more about the price of gas and about the ability of my fellow citizens to, like, not die from starvation or something like that than I do about those things. Those are just fights for another day, I think, at the current moment. But if that's all you've got in your quiver, it ain't going to be good for you going forward. And by the way, there's three more years of this shit. So let's see how much that – let's see how that works out for said crew.

29:53All right, speaking of important stories, which we haven't been able to cover as much as we'd like to, let's go to AppC. You're building your career, your routine, your future. But this summer, that's for you. This season, escape into stories that feel like golden hour, rooftop drinks, and the kind of love that sneaks up on you when you least suspect it. Sourcebook's Summer of Romance brings together the rom-coms everyone's talking about. From Laugh Out Loud favorites by Lucy Score and Megan Quinn, to binge-worthy reads you'll want to finish in one sitting. Find your next summer read at Sourcebooks.com.

30:26That's Sourcebooks.com. Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen, or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comforts of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own, but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes and tours you can book right from the Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears. Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in.

31:04Redfin has over 2 ,200 agents with local expertise. And Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win, not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. this could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com. Protect your pet with insurance from PetsBest. Plans start from less than a dollar a day. Visit petsbest.com. Pet insurance products offered and administered by PetsBest Insurance Services LLC are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company or Independence American Insurance Company.

31:43For terms and conditions, visit www.petsbest.com backslash policy. Products are underwritten by American Pet Insurance Company, Independence American Insurance Company, or MS Transverse Insurance Company, and administered by Pets Best Insurance Services, LLC. One dollar a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets age zero to 10. Turning now to Jeffrey Epstein, shocking piece of news that we've now learned after some seven years. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. Jeffrey Epstein's possible suicide note was hidden from public view. Interesting, huh?

32:15So you've had the release of all of these different Epstein files. You've had all this testimony, OIG reports from the Department of Justice. It's been so many years now, seven years almost to the day since Epstein allegedly killed himself, let's just say died in federal custody. And in all that time period, we did not know this basic fact. A suicide note purportedly written by Epstein in his jail cell has been kept secret now, locked up in a New York courthouse. A cellmate said he discovered the note in July 2019 after Epstein was found unresponsive with a strip of cloth around his neck. Epstein survived that incident, but weeks later was found dead in the jail.

32:56The note was eventually sealed by a federal judge as a part of the cellmate's own criminal case. That means investigators scrutinizing his death lacked what would have been a key piece of evidence. On Thursday, the Times petitioned a judge to unseal the note, which said it was, quote, Time to say goodbye, the cellmate recalled. While the cellmate mentioned that note on a podcast last year, the scrawled message has remained hidden from public view, even at a time of unprecedented transparency. And since December, the Justice Department has released all of these pages, millions of pages of documents.

33:32The Times has not seen the note. They can't find it in the Epstein files. The DOJ said the agency had not even seen it. But a cryptic two-page chronology in the records, and this was credit again to the Times for finding this, became tangled up, the chronology says that the lawyers authenticated the note, though it does not explain how. If it was written by Epstein, the message would provide insights into his state of mind in the weeks before he died hanging from a bunk bed. And the DOJ said that in response to a federal law, they underwent an exhausted effort to collect all the records in that possession.

34:03So basically, as of right now, it's not coming out. It's sealed up in this particular case. This guy is now currently serving four life sentences and he's pursuing an appeal. As long as that's an appeal, it's going to remain sealed. He, like we said, I mean, he claims it was just a scrawled note. Time to say, I mean, maybe, I don't know. By the way, you know, guy serving four life sentences in a cell with Epstein. Okay. Sounds like somebody with, you know. It's a very important detail. So this guy is a former cop who was convicted of drug trafficking and murder of four different people. That's why his sentence is so extensive.

34:39So why was he put, why was he Epstein's cellmate to begin with is question number one. Number two, it's very, I have a lot of questions about this story. It's eyebrow reason. He's the one who found the note and they claim, oh, we verified, we confirmed. It was totally Epstein's handwriting. Can you see it? No, you can't see it, but just take our word for it. So I don't know. But interesting reporting from the Times here at the existence of this. You know, if if it was released, of course, you could have independent analysis that was done, handwriting confirmation to see whether or not this note was legitimate.

35:14Obviously, the content of this alleged suicide note, you know, if he truly did pen a suicide note saying, hey, I'm out of here and thanks for the good times or whatever it is that this note contains. Obviously, that would be very significant in terms of helping to affirm or rebut some of the conspiracies around the the death of Jeffrey Epstein. So anyway, a lot of questions remain on that one. At the same time, this is crazy. Put D2 up on the screen. Apparently, Republicans are split on the idea of clemency for Ghislaine Maxwell. So you've got Republicans on this House panel who are trying to sell this bill of goods that, oh, will grant her clemency.

35:55Will have Trump grant her clemency. And then she will testify and she will hand in all of the perpetrators and it will help us with our investigation. I mean, of course, the victims are. Of course, this is a disgusting idea. Of course, it's an insane idea because you're going to trust this lady. She is one of the greatest criminals here in all of this, enabled all of this abuse. And you're going to set her free? I mean, it is crazy that she's the only one who's in prison. But at least one person is in prison serving jail time for these horrific crimes that were committed. So in any case, this is the latest line that they're trying to sell of like, oh, it's actually going to be good for the victims if we let Ghislaine Maxwell off the hook here.

36:38Crazy. Yeah, look, I don't really know what's going on. I do know that the House committee continues some of this work specifically. And by the way, there's been some other Epstein reports, which we, again, haven't had as much time to. Look, nothing here is too crazy, but they just show, for example, there is still, quote, accountability and other people who have been disgraced by the Epstein affair. It's just that none of them who are being removed or resigning are in our government. Let's go to the next one, please, and put this up here on the screen. This is just from two days ago. Bard's college's president is going to retire after scrutiny of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

37:15Leon Botstein, who is president of Bard College for half a century, will retire at the end of June. He didn't mention Epstein except saying he had waited to his announced retirement publicly until the completion of an independent review of his relationship. Now, to be clear, he was not accused of wrongdoing or anything with Epstein. but he was among, quote, a long list of prominent and notable men who maintained friendly relationship with him for years. Despite his status as a convicted sex offender, the actual Epstein files show that they had met on multiple occasions, sometimes Epstein arriving at Bard by helicopter, and the president had also suggested Epstein be a guest at the 2013 graduation ceremonies that they meet for an opera performance.

38:03In addition, he reached out to him weeks after the Miami Herald reporting, saying, quote, I want you to know I hope you're holding up as well as can be expected and separately referred to his friendship in at least two emails. Epstein steered$150 ,000 to him in 2016, which the president previously said he donated to the college and had also previously denied having any personal relationship with the man. So if Bard College apparently has more independence and of a review than anybody in the United States government. Yes. Makes a lot of sense. It makes a lot of sense. And then finally, big shout out to our friend Pablo Torre, who did a new Epstein revelation on his podcast.

38:46We just wanted to play a little bit of a clip to give him a shout out. Let's take a listen. This one involves Harvard University. What we started with was this 2003 quote about Epstein from Professor Martin Novak, as read by PTFO correspondent Dhruv Patel, the managing editor of my old college newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. He is one of the most pleasant philanthropists to deal with, Novak says. Unlike many people who support science, he supports science without any conditions. There are not any disadvantages to associating with him. And then we unearthed proof of the Jeffrey E. Epstein Fund for Women's Athletics, which was specially earmarked for the women's rugby team.

39:26And it had a Harvard Shield and the word Veritas across the top of this confidential document. Although, according to multiple former rugby players we talked to, the team was never informed that the money came from Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, they were told to keep the fund quiet. What we then showed was how Harvard's 2020 report concerning Jeffrey E. Epstein's connections to Harvard University was presented to the public as this thorough self-investigation spanning 250 ,000 pages of documents. And yet, it did not discuss the Jeffrey E. Epstein Fund for Women's Athletics or the president of Harvard who personally solicited it.

40:09Lawrence H. Summers. Larry Summers was the ex-Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, who was so close to Epstein that Epstein was calling himself Summers' wingman as recently as 2018. In fact, Summers rode on Epstein's plane in 2004, ahead of the creation of the Jeffrey E. Epstein Fund for Women's Athletics. And then Summers spent part of his own honeymoon on Epstein Island the next year, in 2005. And if you're wondering what a Harvard spokesperson told us in response to a detailed list of questions, they declined comment. But did point out that Epstein's$25 ,000 fund for women's athletics became part of a larger donation Harvard eventually made, after that 2020 self-report, to two organizations supporting victims of human trafficking and sexual assault.

41:02Meanwhile, a spokesman for Larry Summers has since told us that Summers was, in fact, interviewed as part of Harvard's 2020 self-investigation, and that Summers' fundraising as Harvard president was done, quote, with the full involvement of the development office and the university's legal, financial, and due diligence functions, end quote. And further, all such fundraising happened, quote, prior to Epstein's 2006 arrest, end quote. Nice work there by Pablo. They did a good job compiling it all together, just furthering more of what we know. These elite universities, their cozy little relationships, all these college presidents, how he was always getting together.

41:42Now we have a suicide note. So let's see. Let's see. Let's just say let's see what it says. We pass it a piece of legislation. Let's put it to bed. Let's release it to the public. And then we can all decide for ourselves what exactly he was trying to say. All right. We got Richard Wolff standing by. Professor, let's get to it. You're building your career, your routine, your future. But this summer, that's for you. This season, escape into stories that feel like golden hour, rooftop drinks, and the kind of love that sneaks up on you when you least suspect it. Sourcebooks Summer of Romance brings together the rom-coms everyone's talking about.

42:17From Laugh Out Loud favorites by Lucy Score and Megan Quinn to binge-worthy reads you'll want to finish in one sitting. Find your next summer read at Sourcebooks.com. That's Sourcebooks.com. Let's talk about modern home shopping. It's sort of become a fun side hobby, right? Scrolling listings at night, dreaming about kitchens you've never seen, or backyards you haven't even stepped foot in. All from the comforts of pretty much anywhere. Redfin knows a lot of people like you want to own, but are stuck in this browsing mode loop. That's where Redfin flips the script. With listings that update within minutes, and tours you can book right from the Redfin app, you can see your dream home the moment it appears.

42:59Now, liking a listing is easy, but actually landing it, that's where Redfin comes in. Redfin has over 2 ,200 agents with local expertise. And Redfin agents close twice as many deals as other agents. That means they want to help you win, not just window shop. Redfin is built to help you go from just looking to wait. This could actually be home. So become the newest neighbor on the block. Visit redfin.com to start finding and start owning. That's redfin.com.

43:54One dollar a day premium based on 2024 average new policyholder data for accident and illness plans, pets age zero to 10. Joining us now to talk about the global economic impacts from the Iran war is Professor Richard Wolff. He is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He's also co-founder of Democracy at Work and host of their syndicated show Economic Update. Great to see you, Rick. Good to see you, sir. Thank you very much, both of you. It's a pleasure to be back. Yeah, of course. So I wanted to start with this specific news item and then we can sort of broaden out.

44:27But this seems very noteworthy from China. We can put E1 up on the screen. This is from our friends over at DropSite. They say China invokes blocking statute for the first time. China's Ministry of Commerce has for the first time activated its 2021 blocking rules, ordering all Chinese firms and individuals not to comply with U.S. sanctions, targeting five independent Chinese oil refineries accused of purchasing Iranian crude. Beijing called the U.S. measure imposed under two executive orders an unjustified and improper use of extraterritorial law. The move puts multinational companies operating in both markets in direct legal conflict.

45:03Compliance with U.S. sanctions now risks violating Chinese law and vice versa. Global banks and firms with dollar exposure face secondary sanctions risk if they continue dealing with the affected refineries. So help us understand, if you could, the significance of this action from the Chinese. Well, my judgment is it's very significant. It marks a change in the way that the Chinese are approaching what has been the American foreign policy now for quite some years. I would summarize, describe that policy as very provocative interferences in a way previous American governments have not felt entitled to do.

45:47The Trump administration prides itself on doing what previous governments didn't do. I mean, the war in Iran is a grosser example of all of that. And what the Chinese have done until now is tiptoe around it, make believe they didn't know about it, urge their banks and others to find evasive ways of getting around it. Now, that is most of the time enough. Sanctions are a very crude instrument. We have been applying sanctions as a nation, and the United States does that more than any other country on earth. Nobody else is even close. We have been applying sanctions, as folks know, on Cuba, on North Korea, on Russia, for years and years and years.

46:42And they have found very quickly ways around it. And so they can pretend not to notice and get around it, and no more feathers get ruffled. What the Chinese just did in the clip that you just showed us was to say, if you allow me to paraphrase our president, no more Mr. Nice Guy. We are not going to, you know, tiptoe around you. We are simply saying to the world, no more. we, the Chinese government, will not permit our banks to be threatened in this way, to be inconvenienced, to be—it costs a little to get around sanctions. It's not that it's free, it's a nuisance. But we're not going to allow that anymore, and we're serving notice on the whole world that this is no longer our problem.

47:39We are not alone. The Chinese are going to figure out how to dance around Mr. Trump. We're throwing down a kind of gauntlet, if you will, saying no. This raises enormous questions because now the next issue is how seriously will the Chinese government pursue any Chinese or other entity that conforms to what the United States wants and thereby violates what the Chinese just did. So we'll see. And, you know, it's another one of these little, not so little maneuvers around the chessboard. And we all wonder who's going to yell uncle first. Right now, I have to tell you, though, as an American economist born, worked here all my life, and I'm glad about that, that this is embarrassing.

48:43This is not the way international trade ought to be conducted. It looks to the whole world, my colleagues around the world, including many that are very friendly to the United States. It really looks like a country that can't compete in the old ways, having to do it in these ways. When you look at it that way, then the sympathy begins to move towards China as being the victim of this change. They're all worried that they will be the next victim of the change. It's shifting the whole world balance in ways that if I were a policymaker would worry me. Professor, let's zoom out more. You just spoke there about China.

49:32But what does this mean generally? You were talking there about the international trading system, U.S. dollar hegemony, like the basis of the American empire has really rested on its economic might, not just to compel countries, but to do business with a lot of these countries. When you combine this with the current Iran situation and the level of damage U.S. consumers are taking. For example, let's put the gas price up here now on the screen. We currently have it at$4.45 a gallon at the national average, over$6 a gallon in the state of California. So we're punishing our own domestic economy. We're also doing, kind of like you said, embarrassing ourselves on the international front.

50:13Some sort of new order will emerge from this. What's that going to look like? And how's that going to affect us all? Well, things are going very, very fast, and they're going downhill for the dollar. I don't want to be misunderstood. The dollar is still the most important global currency, but it is nowhere near as powerful, as dominant as it once was. So comforting yourself by saying, well, over 50 % of the central banks of the world keep their reserve to back up their own currency in dollars, true enough, but it used to be 80%. And that is a sea change in terms of what is counted as secure. You know, we just crossed a milestone a few days ago when our national debt exceeds our GDP.

51:06That's a usual warning sign. But to whom is it a warning? To the people who lend to the United States. Countries, companies, banks, Americans, foreigners, they all now have to ask a question, is this declining role of the dollar something that ought to make me either stop lending to the United States the way we've been doing for the last 30 years, or lend but demand much higher interest payments to compensate for the rising risk of the number one debtor country in the world. And now let me add to that Iran. The Gulf countries, the half dozen countries out there, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, all of that, they have taken a shellacking in this war.

52:03Americans don't perhaps grasp it, but the Iranians have been extraordinarily successful, far beyond anything that any of us foresaw in damaging American bases in those countries, damaging gas and oil facilities in those countries. Those are all key players in what's called the petrodollar system. The fact that for many years, oil was priced in dollars, requiring everybody anywhere in the world to have dollars. Wonderful for our country, because everybody has to get their hands on dollars. And if they have dollars and hold them, the nicest way to hold them is to lend them to the American government, because you get interest when you hold your dollar that way.

52:54Well, let me just give you a footnote as a strategist. If the United States had had to fight the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else with money taxed from the American people to pay for the war, the opposition to those wars would have been greater than anything we can imagine for obvious reasons. Instead, the whole world lent us the money with which we could fight those wars without taxing our people. We could use the borrowed money. And if you want to really understand the craziness of this, the Chinese, who are major lenders to the United States, because they sell us so much stuff and get so many dollars that they then hold as treasury securities that the Chinese government on the other side of every one of those wars was helping the U.S.

53:56pay for the war against which the Chinese were fighting. But the craziness of our global economic system makes those things happen. And right now, they are happening to diminish the standing of the dollar. And while it hasn't yet hit us, it will. And if you want a taste of where it's going, then you just have to look at Europe. Europe is a kind of basket case now of where we are going. We're not yet there. We have advantages in this country. The Europeans don't have, but the Europeans, this morning's headlines all over Great Britain, are that the cost of living is literally out of control. It's as if you showed those statistics you had in front of us a few moments ago, but it covered many, many more commodities than gasoline.

54:52And it together was really hurting the standard of living of the mass of the British people. So let's talk a little bit about who is going to cry uncle here, because right now the Iran war is predominantly being engaged as economic warfare. There are some indications this morning we may be going back to hot kinetic warfare. But as of right now, it's predominantly economic warfare. You can put this next element up on the screen. This is gas prices. This is the way most Americans will interact with the war. This is from a little while ago. Now the gas price is up a little bit more. It's at$4.46 for the national average.

55:30And so the bet from Trump is that if they can enforce this blockade against Iran, that's going to curtail their oil exports, that their economy is really going to struggle. They've been fed this line that their oil wells are going to explode and they're going to run out of storage capacity very quickly. And then it's going to be a big problem for the Iranians and that the U.S., although consumers don't want to pay these prices at the pump, will be able to withstand the economic pressure longer and that it will be less of a problem for the U.S. to deal with than the Iranians. What can you tell us about your assessment of those dynamics?

56:05Well, you know, it's a little bit like a problem I had teaching mathematics. The odds are that there's an immense array of possible outcomes. I mean, the more we use our imaginations, we human beings, the more we can foresee it could go this way, it could go that way. And all of that's true. But the job of the brain is to try to focus in on one of the most likely, because you can't prepare for everything and you have to make choices. And so you do. And we live in a country whose leadership, I'm talking now about the Trump people, has been systematically hostile to other forms of energy and systematically favoring oil, fossil fuels, gas, all of that.

56:58The problem is, when you do that and you then give to places like Iran a weapon they didn't have before, you really can't be claiming surprise if they use the weapon. They knew, like everybody did, that a quarter of the world's oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz. They can't possibly fight the United States on a military basis. They're an infinitely poorer country, not to mention smaller and all the rest. So they either have to come up with some other kind of weapon, or they're not going to be able to pull off anything in this situation. They'll have to do what Mr. Trump says. They figured it out.

57:49He emphasizes oil and gas, and they can control effectively the price of that. And so what we're seeing is the screaming of all those in America who thought they had a big friend in Mr. Trump because he tilted in their direction, their kind of energy, their commodity, the gas-burning automobile that uses it and so forth, not imagining, failure of imagination, what kind of vulnerability goes with that? And they have now learned. And then what is Mr. Trump going to do? He can't deny that he favored the very energy source that is now being priced out of everybody's range. He's going to tell a story about something that might happen in the future to turn a shortage of oil into a glut.

58:47Is that possible? Yes. Is that likely? No. No, and if you had, you know, half of a brain really working at this, you wouldn't take that chance. You wouldn't lopsidedly go to one in the hopes that it would self-correct. And let me warn you, if you're going to play that game, here's something to worry about. A few days ago, the United Arab Emirates, fourth largest source of oil that we have on this planet, withdrew from OPEC, stopped working as it has for decades with the Saudi Arabian-run cartel of that part of the world's oil. Now, long story short, why? Because they don't like being held back.

59:39They have a lot of oil. They don't pull it up. They don't sell it because Saudi Arabia holds back oil from what we could have to drive up the price because they sell that. They're just doing what every monopolist ever did in the history of the world. Nothing new, nothing strange, nothing exceptional. And by the way, with the active support of the United States, which of course doesn't say that to its own people because otherwise you're upset at high gas prices would go to Washington rather than to foreigners upon whom it can be locked. What does the United Arab Emirates want? It wants to bring up the roughly one and a half to two million barrels of oil per day that it could bring up but hasn't been because it has to repair the damage Iran has done to their oil facilities, to the American bases there.

1:00:40The damage of the missiles from Iran is very significant, as it is in Israel. And we can keep pretending that it isn't the case, but the world is too small for that. You can find it out if you do a little bit of effort. So here's my story. United Arab Emirates will succeed, and they won't be the only one. And we might very well see the glut. That clip you just showed, implies. But that's not altogether good news either, because then the price of oil will collapse. And if it does,$30,$25 a barrel instead of what we see now, then all of the fracking in the Midwest of this country will stop and they'll all be out of business.

1:01:31And if you think that's not a problem, you're making a mistake because all of that depends on bank loans. They will not be able to repay them. And then our banks will be in the problem. We keep using up every angle we can in this ad hoc government by Mr. Trump. And it's going to come sooner or later. he won't be able to patch it here here and here and then it'll blow but it could blow anywhere but at this point the mistake was ever in my judgment to overdo the dependence on on fossil fuel what is that about the whole world is going in the other direction we we're not the top dog anymore. We don't run the world economy.

1:02:26That's a fantasy of the second half of the 20th century. That's not what we have anymore. I regret it. You regret it. We all, as Americans, are having to live with what I just said, and that's hard. My heart, really, it goes out to people, but denying it is not a rational way of coping with this. Then what you do is you get the fantasy of the British, if I can be so unfriendly. You know, they know that their empire is gone. They're just playing at it. That's why they have a king and why he visits and all the rest of it. I don't want to be mean. We don't do that to our credit, but there's a denial here that the British can no longer, or the French, or they know it's over.

1:03:16We still think we are, and we therefore make decisions on an assumption basis that then comes back and whacks us. And that's what we're experiencing now. Well said, sir. We appreciate your time and your analysis. You're always dropping knowledge bombs. All right. I hope so. I hope you find it interesting. And I appreciate that. And I speak for many of my friends, all the work that you do on your program. Thank you. That's extremely kind. That means a lot to us. Great to see you. Thank you guys so much for watching. We appreciate it. We will see you all tomorrow. And we're about to do the AMA.

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