Iran Nuclear Destroyed?; Big Beautiful Bil; Powell; Economy; Vaccines; Rare Earth | Yaron Brook Show
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If you work in healthcare, you rely on your training, focus, and team to make decisions. You rely on your mind. But how often do you listen to your heart? Do you want to work in a universal healthcare system that puts people first?

Do you want to live in a welcoming community and care for others in a place that cares about you? If so, follow your heart to British Columbia, Canada. Opportunities await at bchealthcareers.ca. A message from the government of British Columbia. The radical fundamental principles of freedom, rational self-interest, and individual rights. This is the Yaron Brook Show. All right, everybody. Welcome to Yaron Brook Show on this...

Thursday, June 26th. I hope everybody's having a great... I hope if you're in the East Coast, you're surviving the heat wave. I hear it's pretty, pretty brutal. All right. Let's see. Let's just jump in. You know, there is a lot of news and a lot of conflicting information and a lot of back and forth and a lot of egos involved here.

around the question of did the United States actually destroy the nuclear program of the Iranians? And what does that mean to destroy the nuclear program of the Iranians? I mean, there are a few questions related here. One is, in a couple of sites, there were large arrays of centrifuges that are used in order to spin and purify, I guess, the uranium ore.

And were those centrifuges destroyed? That is question number one. Difficult to replace, easy to kind of get out of whack, should be easy to knock them out of function. But were they destroyed? Many of them were buried very, very deep underground in Fordow. Second question, was the uranium that was already refined to 60%, where is that? About 700 kilograms.

what would that be? You know, 1,500, 1,600 pounds, something like that, of uranium, enough to build 10 bombs. If it was further refined to 95%, to do that, you need those centrifuges. Where are the 700 kilograms? Are they buried under Fodor? Are they buried under Nantaz? Are they buried in Estefan? Or were they moved to a secret location? And indeed,

That's the third question. Does Iran have a secret location that neither the U.S. nor the Israel know of where they have centrifuges and they can keep on refining the uranium or start over? So that's three. And then four, do the Iranians have the capabilities to start the program over no matter what the answers are to the first three questions?

Can they start it over and how long will that take? In other words, for how long have we, has Israel and the United States set back the Iranian nuclear program? Now, Khamenei today broadcast his message to people declaring a victory over both Israel and the United States.

And was very clear that the Iranian nuclear program has barely been scratched. Barely been scratched. Neocon says you're going to have to enrich the uranium to 90%. Okay, 90%, 95%. Okay, the principle still stands. Thank you, Neocon. So how many are saying, didn't even scratch it. It's all there. Now, we know that's not true. That is clearly. Istafan was clearly destroyed.

Nantaz is almost certainly destroyed. It's deep underground, but not that deep, not like Fodor. And two bunker-busting bombs were dropped on Nantaz. But before that, Israel pounded the place, just pounded the place, so that it's pretty confident that that one is gone. The real question surrounds Fodor. In addition—

There were rumors, you know, so with regard to where is the uranium, there were rumors. There were trucks and vehicles at Fordo that kind of were used to move the 700 kilograms of uranium out of there.

Now, they've been conflicting evidence, conflicting messaging, right? So out of the military intelligence leaked to the CNN came the story that, yeah, we didn't do that much. Photos probably pretty intact. Maybe we've pushed the Iranians back a few months, right?

The Israelis probably pushed it back a few years. But then again, it depends on who you talk to from Israel. Different parts of Israel, parts of the kind of intelligence community are giving different messages. In the United States, Hegseth was out today saying, oh, no, it's all being destroyed. Trump is saying it's all being destroyed. And Trump is bringing out because his ego is at stake here.

Everybody to come and say it, you know, so Tulsi has come up and said it's all been destroyed. She's very good in the intelligence industry.

And the head of the CIA, Ratcliffe, has said it's all been destroyed. So it's all gone. It's finished. And the 700-key go-gram all buried in Foto. And the problem is—and then the Europeans said it's somewhere in between, probably set it back somewhat. And the administration is basically taking the position of it's been set back decades. Even the Israelis are not quite that assured.

So here's my assessment for what it's worth. Not much, I think, ultimately, because we don't really know. And this is the thing. Fog of war. We don't know. We don't have boots on the ground. But, you know, I think that this is what I think all three nuclear facilities that Iran had were thoroughly destroyed. I think the centrifuges are gone. They're not operational. There's nothing to save them.

With regard to the uranium, the material, now Trump is claiming, here's what Trump says, this is in a tweet, the cars and small trucks at the site with those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts, nothing was taken out of facility would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move. And I think all of that is accurate, right? So it turns out that the air shafts

where the U.S. Air Force was trying to thread the MOPS, the bunker busters, were sealed with concrete. So what actually happened is the first bunker buster would go through to just destroy the concrete that was there, and then they threaded the second one in the hole that the first one ran. And the accuracy is stunning because you've got

Six holes, 12 missiles went in into six holes. But it's not surprising. I mean, that's the tech. That's the precision tech that both the United States and Israel have. And it's completely not surprising that they're that accurate. But it is impressive. It should blow your mind that they can do that. So I'm pretty sure that that is right. And I told you at the time,

It would seem really strange to me that the Iranians could evacuate 700 kilograms of uranium and have long rows of trucks doing this. And the Israeli intelligence would not know. And the Israeli pilots flying above would not know. And Israel must have had drones above there that were keeping track of everything and flying.

They have intelligence on the ground. We know that, right? The Mossad was there. And maybe they had special forces in Iran. So, by the way, they're now saying they didn't, that they were in a neighboring country, maybe Azerbaijan, maybe Iraq, who knows. I still wouldn't be surprised if special forces were in Iran and maybe they're denying it for a variety of, I don't know, reasons of security. What did I... So...

Yeah. Okay. So I think the three facilities were gone. I think there's a good chance the 700 kilograms are buried in Fordor. If they're not buried in Fordor, then I really don't know where they are. And I don't think maybe nobody knows where they are. Maybe the Iranians know where they are. I did present a completely random arbitrary hypothesis last time that Israel stole it all. But, you know, that's neither here nor there because it's based on zero evidence. And...

So yeah, 700 kilogram of uranium, probably, probably gone. No centrifuges, no bases. Now, do they have a secret base somewhere with centrifuges even deeper than Frodo? Very unlikely that given, again, the level of intelligence these really have, the amount of

aerial photography basically done from satellite satellite photography done of Iran of every inch of Iran over the last few years looking for nuclear weapon sites it would really be surprising if there was a whole big operation that was done and undiscovered and

You know, Israel probably monitors every sale of every component of every centrifuge that it was ever made, transported to Iran. If there are extra centrifuges, you'd expect Israelis to know Israeli intelligence. So I'd be very surprised if there's another base. And so and then do they have the capacity to just bootstrap this from the ground up?

and restart this. And the answer is, really, I don't, I really don't see it. Basically, all of their top scientists, 15 plus, were killed by the Israelis. I'm sure there are more scientists. I'm sure that their work can be recreated, but that takes time and effort.

As I told you yesterday, Iran is struggling economically. To start up this program would be very expensive and would be hard. And there's no indication that Russia is going to give them money. I mean, Russia has none. North Koreans are dirt poor. I mean, China could. But does really China want to support the Iranians resurrecting a nuclear program? Probably not. I just don't see it. So...

I just don't think that China, that Iran can resurrect a nuclear program. I mean, maybe over decades, but in the short run, with one caveat, which we'll get to in a minute, I mean, Trump might give it to them in a silver platter in a minute, but I just don't see it. They don't have the money. Their regime is, you know, hanging by a thread, I think. I think even a lot of the military are going to be very hesitant to

to jump into spending a huge amount of money on a nuclear program. Israel and the United States have now credibly threatened to stop them in the future if they try. Why do that? You know, maybe the military is now thinking maybe we should invest in better weapons systems so we can actually fight a conventional war without it. You know, lots of reasons to think that's not the path that they're going to go. It's just too damning and...

Too expensive, too difficult, and they don't have the people, and they'd have to start from scratch. Now, maybe they can recover some of that uranium, but again, they still need the centrifuges. They could try to buy some nukes. They could just buy some nukes. And that's, I guess, possible. It's surprising that hasn't happened already. It's surprising that wasn't their primary route that they went, trying to convince Pakistan to provide them with nukes.

you know, a nuke or North Korea, and maybe they'll try that route to get a finished product. This is something I'm sure the American and Israeli intelligence services are going to be all over in the next few years, monitoring this and trying to make sure it doesn't happen. So that is where I think this is at. How far back is this set them up? Back, who knows? Nobody knows.

But I expect it's decades. I expect it's the it's the I think Trump's right on this. But again, we don't know because everything's so political and bombast and egos involved. And it would be great if we just had somebody objective who could say what was really going on. Maybe the Israelis, but even the Israelis, you know, have a lot at stake here politically. But they also the Israelis are much more likely to underplay it.

To say, yeah, we've retarded this by years rather than decades because they want to keep the Israeli people and the Israeli military on edge. They don't want to make the mistakes of the past with Hamas of being too sanguine about the threat. They want to stay on their tiptoes. So they have an incentive not to say decades. So years to decades is definitely the case. And I now think that Iran will probably not get a nuclear bomb, right?

anytime soon again unless they can buy one and unless they get a massive infusion of money um of money in which brings me to this breaking story oh well i thought i had the breaking story maybe it's it's disappeared on me um yeah i mean i just say that the trumpeter station is going all out uh all out in terms of um

Trying to convince the world. So they're showing videos, they're doing presentations. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is spending a lot of time in front of the press showing them videos and how these bombs work and how deep they go and what they can do. And, you know, he stated that 15 years went into working on the bombing plan for the Fordow nuclear facility.

um he said the phds uh worked on classified gbu 57 bunker busting bomb program were the biggest users of supercomputers in the united states uh and he basically said that the gbus 57s dropped from b2s on fordow functioned as designed by the usa force in other words they destroyed the place and nothing is left there uh nothing usable is left um

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Do you want to live in a welcoming community and care for others in a place that cares about you? If so, follow your heart to British Columbia, Canada. Opportunities await at bchealthcareers.ca. A message from the government of British Columbia. All right. It's just a few other... I'll get to the newsroom you run in a minute. I, for some reason, am lost. Let me just find this. I can resurrect the story from my head, but...

All right. So here's some of the breaking news. So the U.S. is saying that the Abraham Accords are going to be expanded, that countries are going to sign peace agreements with Israel under the Abraham Accords. One of the first countries to do that, they are claiming, and this is literally breaking as of this hour, that Syria will be one of the countries that will be joining the Abraham Accords.

This is going to be really interesting given the background of this current Syrian regime with its origins in ISIS, origins in fundamentalist Islamist ideology. For them to sign a peace deal with Israel makes me pretty uncomfortable.

This is also a regime that has tried to go after minorities in Syria, the Shiite minority that supported Assad, but also the Druze who are very aligned with Israel. So this would be huge, weird, suspect. And I'm really curious what my Druze friends think of this. They are quite skeptical of this Syrian regime.

and whether they're buying into the fact that this would be part of a real peace deal. But a peace deal with Syria, if real, would basically secure Israel's northern border or northeastern border. And then I think next is, I think the obvious one is a peace deal with Lebanon. You know, a Lebanese TV host yesterday basically said, this is about Hezbollah, he said to Hezbollah,

Quote, leave us and take your weapons, your drones, your rockets, your mouthpieces, your flags, your supreme leader, your Iran and your resistance with you. Now, just to be clear, nobody would have the balls to do that, you know, if Iran was still as powerful as it has been. So finally,

Finally, you know, the fact that somebody in Lebanese television has the courage to say that suggests that they feel fairly safe about actually saying it. That is, they feel Hezbollah is so weak that they can actually do that. Yeah. Okay. According to this news story, there are actually only two holes here.

They're not six holes. The other holes are vents. There are only two holes. Basically, the first MOAP, the first bunker buster, was used to remove the concrete cover. And the remaining five all went through the same hole. That's called precision bombing. All through exactly the same hole. So you can imagine...

The first one exploding and, you know, reaching a certain depth. And the second one, you know, going in and only starting to burrow through, you know, from that new established depth. And then another one from a further established depth. I mean, the whole place is, I mean, there's no way.

There's no way this facility survived this. So now if this is true, and I think it probably is, this is what Secretary Pete Hexeth said, and I think he showed satellite photos and stuff, and I think it's true. If this is true, then yeah, photo is finished. There's nothing left in photo, which is quite something. Let's see. So...

Here's the room I'm having right now, which is interesting. And that is that... Where did I see this? I've got to find where I saw this. Just hold on one second. I know it's here somewhere because it had some of the numbers. Let's see. Yeah, I can't find it. Anyway, there was a story...

that the U.S. is going to meet with Iran next week in order to negotiate a deal, and that in order to lure Iran into a deal, the United States is willing to lift all sanctions on Iran, release $30 billion of, I don't know what that $30 billion consists of, I guess, frozen assets and maybe some aid to Iran,

or maybe it's just guaranteed for trade. And then the question really is, what does the U.S. get in return? Remember, this is a, you know, no matter what you do here, no matter what they sign, no matter what deal is in force, we're talking about a regime dedicated to Islamism, dedicated to the worst form of Islam, dedicated to militant Sharia, militant jihadism,

Is this a regime that is this regime where you're going to trust them? Is this regime where you want them to suddenly get rich and have a ton of money and and be successful? And then what what do they what do they do with that? Maybe they don't build nuclear weapons, but are they funding terrorism around the world? Yeah.

It's hard to exactly understand where this goes, if this is true, if they're going to give them that much. I mean, I understand if there would have been regime change, if they were striving for regime change, changing the regime and then saying, the new regime will get $30 billion and open up trade and we'll do all this stuff. That would be great. But to give this to the mullahs, I don't know. It just strikes me as...

You know, managing to achieve some, you know, not defeat, but negative outcome in spite of actually having won and actually after defeating them and actually having done something dramatic, you know, then you're awarding, you're awarding Iran. It's just the whole thing seems weird. So, you know, we will see. Now,

Right now, let's see. I mean, there's a bunch on the diplomatic site that is going on. Supposedly, according to one of the Israeli newspapers, there is a renewed diplomacy between Netanyahu and Trump to try to basically redo the Middle East, right? The idea is to wind down the Gaza war within two weeks.

after which four Arab countries, according to this newspaper, including UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, will assume control over Gaza. Hamas leaders will be exiled and the hostages will be released. Gazans who wish to emigrate will be absorbed in a number of countries. Syria, Saudi Arabia, and maybe Lebanon...

In addition, Arab and Muslim countries will recognize Israel and establish official relations with it. This will be the end of warfare with Israel. Three, Israel will express willingness for a future solution to the conflict with the Palestinians under the concept of two states conditional on reforms in the Palestinian Authority.

That sounds dubious to me. But of course, Israel has always expressed that even with its peace deal with Egypt and with Jordan, and then nothing happens. But maybe with Hamas out and maybe with this complete annihilation of Iran, there's a chance for a two-state solution. I've never been on principle against the two-state solution. And then four, the U.S. will recognize Israeli sovereignty in parts of Judea and Samaria. That's the West Bank.

And I guess there'll be some – for this two-state solution to work, there'd have to be some land exchange between the Palestinians and Israel in order to give them a larger piece of land. So all of that seems to be happening. You get peace in Gaza. You get peace in the Middle East generally.

You potentially completely isolate Iran by getting Saudi Arabia, Syria and all these other countries. You know, it would be great if Lebanon joined this. And then basically in every border Israel has, it has a peaceful relationship with her. As I as I told you, I think on the first day of the attack, the Israeli attack on on on Iran is a game changer. That is incredible.

Israel's defeating Iran so thoroughly, systematically. Basically, Israel's showing Iran to be a paper, not even a paper tiger, just a paper. Israel showing the willingness to crush its enemies, doing such a thorough, systematic, unequivocal job. It had the potential and maybe now a reality. We'll see if all this plays out. We're still waiting.

has the potential and the reality to completely reshape the Middle East. Hello, it is Ryan. And we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino. Chumba Casino has all your favorite social casino-style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses. So sign up now at chumbacasino.com.

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And if this comes through, if you get a release of hostages, Hamas exiled and Arab countries taking responsibility for Gaza,

If you get Syria and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, maybe Iraq. Somebody's asking about Iraq. Maybe Iraq. I don't know. Iraq is a bigger stretch, but Syria, then maybe Iraq if it's Syria. I mean, Iraq has a lot of Shiite who are still maybe loyal to Iran, but maybe they saw this defeat. They saw exactly what happened and

Now that it's changed their minds, right? Defeat changes you. Crushing defeat really changes you. Maybe all of that, maybe all of that, and you've got a completely, completely restructured Middle East. I really hope that the consequences of this do not involve bailing out the Iranian regime, not this regime, any other regime, not this regime. So...

It's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting. But winning, winning and being forceful about it and really going after it has unbelievably, unbelievable positive consequences, positive consequences. You know, I'm scanning Twitter while I'm talking to you because there's, you know, breaking news. So here's

Here's the latest from the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. Now, I'm told that in spite of the handle Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, this does not represent the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. But the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire has done nothing to distance themselves from this account. And so this is what the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. I've got two Libertarian Party of New Hampshire tweets today. Let me find the other one.

Yes, the other one, you know, this Libertarian New Hampshire did a poll yesterday, I think, yesterday. Which regime is more evil, modern-day Israel or Nazi Germany? Which regime is more evil, modern-day Israel or Nazi Germany? This is on the Twitter account of Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. Guess who won? Guess who won? Modern-day Israel got 62% of the vote. Nazi Germany got 38% of the vote.

So according to people who follow and who engage with the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, modern-day Israel is more evil than Nazi Germany. And some people wrote in the comments, you know, I'm going to give the Nazis the edge, but it's close. So a lot of people thought...

Yeah, the Nazis are more evil, but it's close. It's not that much more. So you've got to believe that of the people who participated in this poll, I don't know, 70, 80, 90% of them thought modern day Israel is fundamentally, essentially, thoroughly evil. Anyway, now I see, you know, where's that tweet? Did I make it disappear? It's behind here somewhere. I know it's hiding. Yeah.

Well, maybe I managed to delete it. I'm not doing well today with this logistics of all these pages. I'm not sure what is going on. But anyway, they were reporting on a story that basically said that Israel was planning a false flag terrorist attack against the United States, like 9-11, of course, and that Iranians warned the U.S. and prevented it from happening.

And the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire was retweeting this and making a big deal out of this. The Israelis were going to do a 9-11 and blame it on, I guess, some Muslims or some force of that nature. Libertarians. Libertarians. You got to hate them. And I know not all libertarians. But, you know...

You know, if somebody was writing garbage like this, saying objectivists of New Hampshire, I would be going out of my way to condemn them. I would be going out of the way to saying these people are not objectivists and not representing us. They shouldn't use that term. It really is disgusting. Stop it. And, you know, I have not seen libertarians go out of their way to condemn the New Hampshire libertarian Twitter page.

And arguing and claiming and advocating that it does not actually represent libertarians. So until that happens, they're going to be roped in a little bit, roped in again. So.

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Do you want to live in a welcoming community and care for others in a place that cares about you? If so, follow your heart to British Columbia, Canada. Opportunities await at bchealthcareers.ca. A message from the government of British Columbia. It's, it's, yeah, I mean, it's a pretty crazy movement. It's a pretty crazy movement. All right, let's see. Okay.

Oh, here is the story I was going to read you earlier. Here, I'll read it to you. The Trump administration is reportedly discussing the possibility of providing Iran access to as much as $30 billion to build a civilian energy-producing nuclear program.

as well as through easing sanctions and freeing up billions of dollars in restricted Iranian funds as part of a plan to de-escalate tensions with Iran and bring them back to the negotiating table for a future nuclear deal with the United States.

Some details were hashed out in a secret hours-long meeting between U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and several Gulf nations at the White House last Friday, the day before U.S. military strikes against Iran. Two sources familiar with the meeting told CNN. So they have it. So that is just to lure them into the meeting. That's not even the end result. And we don't know what a future nuclear deal even looks like.

And if you support a civilian energy producing nuclear program, how do you guarantee it stays civilian? How do you secure that? What kind of guarantees do you demand? So it seems a little early to jump out just handing it over. But Witkoff is a dealmaker. He's quick. He wants to get stuff done. He wants to get stuff done.

All right. People are repeating the story about a deal in Gaza and all of that. So we've got two weeks. We'll see. We'll see if it's if it's happening. We'll see if it happens. All right. All right. Let's see. Let's go on. We've got a lot of, I don't know, economic news, economic news here. So let's cover this. All right. So the big, beautiful bill.

is still being, you know, it passed Congress and it is now in the process of being, you know, a Senate version of it. And then it goes and the House and Senate version get reconciled by committee of senators and House members. And then they all have to vote on it again. And the thing about the big, beautiful bill is that it is a it is a reconciliation, a budget reconciliation bill.

which is a type of bill. This is Senate rules, which are kind of weird, but Senate rules that basically say a reconciliation bill can pass the Senate with less than 60 votes. Pretty much everything else needs 60 votes. But you can pass a reconciliation bill, i.e. a budget bill, and this was really done in order to make it possible for budgets to get passed and the government not be stuck with our money because you can get 60 votes.

Now, because you want to make sure that this is a budget bill and that you don't include in it a bunch of things that are not just budget and you don't include them in it because you can pass stuff with less than 60 votes, there's something called the Byrd Rule. The Byrd Rule was named after Senator Robert Byrd, a Democrat from West Virginia. And it's a procedural constraint that prohibits non-budgetary provisions –

from being tacked onto a reconciliation bill. So there is an office, right? There is an office called the Senate Parliamentarian, which is supposed to be non-partisan. It is appointed by the majority leader, in this case a Republican, a majority leader, to assist in basically determining whether the amendments, measures, motions, the stuff in the big beautiful bill...

qualifies as budgetary and therefore appropriate to pass as a reconciliation bill, as a budget reconciliation bill. And this happens every year. This is standard practice, right? So anyway, the parliamentarian over the last few days has let the Republicans know that there are a number of provisions within the big, beautiful bill that fail the Byrd rule and cannot be included in

in the spending and tax bill that's under consideration. Now, the Republicans could fight this, but it looks like they're choosing not to, at least for now, because this is kind of Senate procedure and they don't want to completely upend the Senate. Anyway, among the things that the parliamentarian has identified are

Other provisions barring certain non-citizens from receiving benefits under SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Requiring the U.S. Postal Office to sell its electric vehicles, not budgetary, it's claiming. Reducing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding to zero. That one hurts.

Because of all the things in the big, beautiful bill, that one was closest to my heart. There's a special place in hell for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And driving its budget to zero would be a beautiful thing. Now, I'm not sure why that is not a budgetary issue. Maybe there's something in the original bill that formed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Oh, I know why.

I know why. Because the reality is that Congress does not determine the budget of the CFPB. It's one of the things that makes it so evil. Congress doesn't determine spending for the CFPB. The Federal Reserve does. And Congress doesn't have authority over the Federal Reserve, and that's why that can't be included. And then the other thing that she ruled as not qualifying is the federal government's –

the provisions that Mike Lee added to sell public land. Again, I don't see how that is not a budgetary issue, but this is what the parliamentarian said. Now, also, yesterday, she identified a number of provisions,

In the Medicaid and in the health care realm. So, for example, a provision barring federal subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, she says, from applying to help plans that cover abortion services. So she said that is not permissible. And then she made further cuts to Medicaid and Medicare reforms to date.

So all of those provisions therefore cannot go into the big, beautiful bill on the Senate side. Now, remember, the big, beautiful bill is worse than sausage making. It's a bill filled with goodies to you and goodies over there and goodies over here and goodies there and just this mishmash of goodies. And you've got dozens and dozens and dozens of special interest groups involved.

various special interest groups who are, you know, trying to influence what goes into it and pushing here and pushing their pressure groups. You know, this bill is a classic of kind of the consequence of a mixed economy that I ran talked about many, many, many times in her essays. So the bill is full of pork, full of giveaways, full of

special provisions for particular senators, particular congressmen and so on. So now you've taken a bunch of stuff out and those people are going to feel like they didn't get what they were promised. And why should they vote for this bill? And they're going to demand other things. And the Senate's promised Trump that they would pass this by July 4th. This is looking highly unlikely at this point. But it is the bill itself is a

unmitigated disaster. It is, as I said, a sausage of special of pressure groups giving all kinds of things. Alex Epstein, I haven't talked to him, but I've been following him on Twitter, is furious about the Senate version of the bill. I mean, again, Alex only focuses on energy. I'm sure he's furious about other stuff as well. But energy is where his focus is.

And in energy, he says the House bill is much, much, much better. The House bill basically eliminates most of the subsidies for windmill and solar by the end of Trump's term. So if a Democrat comes, they would literally have to pass new legislations to get subsidies. The Senate bill extends that beyond Trump's term and cuts a lot less. And as a consequence,

Any Congress, let's say there's a Democrat who's elected next, and there's a Congress, they could extend it indefinitely at that point without passing new legislation. So it's ridiculous. This is what Alex writes. Here's everything you need to know about the fake compromise that some senators asked me to comment on. Senate finances...

The Senate finances proposal would lead to the wind farms getting 60 percent of current wind subsidies on Trump's 94th birthday. How old is he now? He's what? He just turned 79 or 80. So this is 15 years from now. They'd still get 60 percent of the current wind subsidies. The compromise, he says, will lead to them getting 100 percent. So the original proposal would have them get 60 percent on Trump's 94th birthday, which

The compromise would lead them to getting 100 percent. So, I mean, Alex is, I think, in D.C. right now going from from senator to senator, making the argument to to completely get rid of rid of all these all these subsidies, get them rid. Now, he'd like to get them rid of them today.

But then people say, oh, but projects are being started and people depend on it and my constituency wants it. So he got the House to at least phase them all out. So by the end, in three and a half years, they're gone or mostly gone, not all gone, mostly gone. And now the Republicans in the Senate are reversing all of that. And he is fighting them on it, fighting them. And he can't. And here's the irony of all of this. Republicans are outraged.

Outrage. The New York would derelict a socialist mayor. But Republicans who have the House, the Senate, and the White House, and who have the ability to pass a budget bill with just 51 votes in the Senate, are proposing a bill that dramatically expands deficits, proposing a bill that grows, significantly grows, government like a good socialist would.

Proposing a bill that expands subsidies to farmers like a good socialist would. Proposing a bill that really cuts almost nothing, grows government's power, expands it significantly, particularly in the realm of, I don't know, a

the ICE and so-called immigrant enforcement. I can just imagine, if you think about ICE right now, imagine ICE with a budget 10 times bigger. They'll be rolling up to Starbucks in tanks, arresting people, Home Depots in tanks. And you can go on. What about ethanol mandates, expanding Medicare? It just, there's no end to it, right? And we basically got two political parties who the only thing they really disagree about

is who should get the goodies and how much of the goodies should they get? It's, you know, this bill is such a disgrace, cutting nothing, eliminating nothing. And again, they have reforming, no fundamental reforms, no fundamentally budget, you know, dramatic cuts. Remember what Doge, remember Doge? Remember Doge? Remember, it's like five years ago.

It feels like five years ago, we talked about Doge. Doge is like, whoa, ancient history. Now, they were going to cut $2 trillion, and then $1 trillion, and then $300 billion, and then $150 billion. And now it's basically, no, no, we're going to increase government spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. Increase government spending. Doge. Doge. Remember Doge? And what did I tell you when Doge was first formed and you guys were all cynical and skeptical, or many of you?

Where are all the people who thought Doge was going to be huge and successful? Why aren't they here saying, Yaron, we're sorry. You were right. You were right. We were wrong. I mean, they never come back, right? You notice that? Or maybe they're here. They just will never admit that they were wrong.

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Do you want to live in a welcoming community and care for others in a place that cares about you? If so, follow your heart to British Columbia, Canada. Opportunities await at bchealthcareers.ca. A message from the government of British Columbia. Adam wants to know where his doge check is. He was promised a doge check. $5,000, I think, for everybody. Big, beautiful bill is a disaster. It's a disgrace.

And it's more statism, more socialism, if you want to call that, more fascism, if you want to call it that. Whatever it is, it's just bigger government, bigger, more interventionist, more government in your face. By the way, just because we're on the topic of big government in your face doesn't

Josh Hawley, you know, is arguing. You know, here's his tweet. A total of four companies, only four companies, control a whopping 80% of the entire beef processing industry. That's a modern-day monopoly. The winner here, the monopolist, like Tyson Foods, the loser, farmer and grocery shoppers. And I talked about antitrust and monopolies in my corporation course that I did for Peterson Academy. Four companies having 80%.

Is a monopoly? I mean, five companies owning 90%. Is that a monopoly as well? 10 companies owning 100%. Is that a monopoly? Two companies owning 60%. Is that a monopoly? I mean, what does it even mean? What does the word mean? I mean, basically, a modern monopoly is anything Senator Hawley thinks it is. Oh, maybe Senator Warren, because Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley on these kind of issues are inseparable.

The socialist Elizabeth Warren and the fascist Josh Hawley agree completely on economics. Very little difference between them. I mean, none of the four companies hold more than 50% of the market. None of them can control prices. Nobody's accusing them of forming a cartel and setting prices. Then you could really go after them with antitrust. There's no evidence of that. A monopoly? I mean...

Four companies are unbelievably competitive. I mean, in the United States, Samsung and Apple control probably 80% of the smartphone market in the United States. Probably two companies, 80%. Are they not competing with one another? Is that a monopoly? And Samsung's a foreign country, company, company. It's almost as big as a country, but it's a... I mean, monopoly means whatever politicians want it to mean when they're pissed off at businesses.

when they want to rein them in, or they want to make a point to the populists out there, the people complaining constantly about high prices of this or that. It's a completely arbitrary concept. It means nothing today as used by our politicians. Again, it means whatever they want to feel like it meaning at the time. Ayn Rand, of course, talked about the lack of objectivity when it came to defining monopolies a long, long time ago, and she was 100% right.

All right, continuing the theme of the economy. One of Donald Trump's biggest campaign things right now that he's talking about nonstop is that he wants Jerome Powell out. He wants Jerome Powell, the head of the Federal Reserve, out. Jerome Powell is not doing what Trump wants him to do, which is lower interest rates. Trump wants interest rates lowered. He is of the school of

that says, you know, the most you want low interest rates, interest rates are good, low interest rates are good. I don't know what the right interest rate is. You know, it's a thankless job to be the head of the Federal Reserve, and nobody should do it because they shouldn't be a Federal Reserve. What is the right interest rate? I don't know. And nobody does. Neither does John Paul, and certainly Donald Trump doesn't know.

But Trump wants lower interest rates because he knows the lower interest rates would help spur economic growth. And he needs that in order to be able to boast that he's got a great economy going. Right now, economy is not doing very well. GDP, they just they just released first quarter GDP numbers. You know, remember, it came in at negative point two percent annualized, which everybody said, OK, so, you know, nothing. Now they've you know how they rejig the numbers after a few months later.

because they get more data and stuff. And right now, they've recalibrated, they've re-estimated it at half a percent. So the economy shrunk by half a percent in the first quarter. Well, not by half a percent, half a percent annualized, so less than that on a quarterly basis. And the economy is expected to be pretty weak this quarter. And generally, the economy seems...

Not recession, but weak. And employment is strong or OK, but the economy is not growing very fast if it's growing at all. Again, the GDP numbers of half a percent shrinkage. Trump wants to juice it up. And one way to juice it up is to decrease interest rates. And he has been threatening Powell. And there's a big debate about Fed independence. The Federal Reserve is supposed to be independent.

of a government it's supposed to set interest rates based on quote science now we all know that there is no science to determine central planning but uh independent of political motivation federal reserves in the past have always been influenced by politics to some extent or another it's very rare for example for the federal reserve to increase interest rates during a presidential election year it they're usually decreasing them to help the incumbent but uh

Trump wants him out and he wants a new chairman of the Fed. And Powell still has at least a year in as part of his his, you know, his contract. Trump would have a hard time firing him. It would probably go to Supreme Court where he has the authority to fire him or not without he could impeach him. They could impeach him. But there's no basis for that.

So they're struggling. They're struggling around how to get rid of him. Well, one thing they're suggesting doing is Trump is considering right now appointing a a naming, not appointing, naming the next Fed chairman. That is letting everybody know who the next Fed chairman is going to be and thus creating kind of a shadow candidate.

a Federal Reserve chairman who would then provide even more incentive on Powell either to resign or to do what this alternative Fed chairman would do, which is cut interest rates. Now, a few things to note here. It's important to note that the Fed actually doesn't control interest rates that much. It really today controls one interest rate. It can control the others, but it's very difficult for it.

The interest rate that the Fed controls today is the interest it pays on bank reserves. Banks hold reserves at the Fed, and the Fed pays them an interest on that. It controls that interest. It could raise it or lower it. Now, while it's true that interest rates generally are correlated, they don't have to be positively correlated. They don't have to be. That is, for example, if the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates on deposits a lot,

And the market deems that potentially inflationary. Why inflationary? Because by lowering interest rates on deposits, reduces the incentive for banks to hold deposits, they then take those deposits and circulate them, not increasing the money supply.

They make loans and the money starts going through the economy, which increases demand for goods and potentially is inflationary. Now, put aside the economic science behind it. If the markets believe that's inflationary, then they could raise the long-term rate, like the 10-year rate or the 30-year rate. Indeed, the 10-year and the 30-year rate right now are fairly high given inflation.

the kind of economy we have. We have a very slow economy. It's not growing very much, as I said a minute ago. And yet we have 10-year at 4.2, 4.3. We've got the 30-year at close to 5. High interest rates, relatively speaking. And as a consequence, mortgage rates are fairly high at between 6% and 7%, or 6.5% and 7%. It's not clear if the Fed lowers interest rates a lot

that the 10-year and therefore mortgage rates, mortgage rates are tied to the 10-year, and the 30-year would come down. And of course, businesses don't loan, don't borrow money. Businesses is how low interest rates fuel economic growth. They don't borrow money at the short-term rate at which the Fed pays deposits on reserves. They borrow at the 10-year.

And that rate is determined by markets. And it's been very high. If you remember when all the tariff uncertainty was there, still is, but when it was at its peak, the 10-year bond went up to 4.6 and the 30-year bond was over 5. And tariffs seem to have settled down. And there's rumors that, you know, Trump is not going to be as tough as he said he would. And as a consequence of that, rates have come down a little bit. But they are moving constantly without the Fed doing anything.

So you have to remember, these are not directly, not 100% correlated. They don't have to move in tandem. It really does depend. Fed controls one interest rate. Anyway, and all indications are that, you know, markets believe interest rates, at least the 10-year, 30-year should be relatively high. Now, we will figure, we will find out what's happening. We'll see if Trump actually nominates.

nominates a new Fed chairman without appointing him because he'd only be able to nominate him while Powell is still in office. We'll just see how the markets respond to all that. Powell is likely to cut interest rates in the next meeting of the Federal Reserve, I think in July, by I think a small amount. I don't think it'll be a big cut, but he will probably cut. In particular, if Trump extends the 10% tariff rate

instead of raising it on a lot of countries. If Trump basically says, okay, we're going to give you more chance to negotiate and extends it, and that happens on July 9th, we'll find out what Trump is doing, then I think Powell will reduce interest rates maybe by more, maybe by 50 basis points. Otherwise, I think it would be only by 25 basis points. Powell is worried about the inflationary or the price effects of tariffs.

He's got a lot of juggling a lot of balls, including kind of just the uncertainty of the wackiness of Trump's economic policies. In the meantime, just again, from an economic perspective, a broadly economy perspective, the economy is not growing, really. It shrunk in the first quarter. It's probably at zero or close to zero in this quarter. The dollar is going down. The 10-year is still high. The 30-year is pretty high.

It's expensive to borrow money. It's expensive for you to buy a house to borrow money. It's expensive for businesses to borrow money. And it's expensive and it's expensive for the government to borrow money. And of course, that fuels the deficit even more is the interest payments on the debt. So a lot is tied up, always has been. A lot is tied up with where interest rates are going to be, not just the interest rate the Fed controls, but all the interest rates.

And the first, the dollar is declining. Dollar continues to decline. I saw today it was down vis-a-vis the euro and the pound sterling, and I think against the yen. The dollar's lost 10.5% of its value compared to an index year to date. That's a lot. 10.5% is a lot in, what, six months? And it's going to be interesting to see where the dollar goes in the future. Of course, the dollar declining,

makes imports more expensive on top of the tariffs, right? So it makes imports even more expensive than just a 10% tariff. Now you've got the fact that the dollar is cheap. It does make exports cheaper. So you'd expect right now a decline in imports and a rise in exports because, you know, other people can buy more dollars with their currency to be able to buy American goods. And yet,

In May, imports fell. You'd expect that tariffs and a cheap dollar. But exports actually fell more. Indeed, the trade deficit in May grew to 96.6 billion, which was up 11% from April. Both imports and exports fell in May, but exports fell quite a bit more. So

The whole tariff strategy was supposed to shrink the trade deficit. Not that I think that's a good thing, but that's what Trump thinks is a good thing. And it didn't happen.

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Do you want to live in a welcoming community and care for others in a place that cares about you? If so, follow your heart to British Columbia, Canada. Opportunities await at bchealthcareers.ca. A message from the government of British Columbia. It didn't actually happen. So we're getting cheaper dollar, relatively high interest rates, declining exports. It doesn't look good for the U.S. economy the way we're heading right now.

All right. What did I want to? Oh, it was right there, I guess. All right. That is a little bit on the economy. John Powell, the Federal Reserve. Let's quickly talk about vaccines. You know, I don't have a lot to say here, but other than RFK is is is is basically living up to his reputation. The guy's an anti-vax.

The new vaccine advisory group is dominated by anti-vax pseudoscientists and people who have very little experience in the field. It is that that's what comprises the group. RFK is withdrawing support for vaccination programs globally. You know, of all the things that you want to cut in terms of government spending,

I'm all for cutting this ultimately. But of all the things you cut, cutting programs that vaccinated kids around the world, you know, without reforming Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security and anything else where the bulk of the spending is, it strikes me as just cruel and stupid. In this case, it's not done for budgetary reasons. It's all about withdrawing the U.S. government's sanction of vaccination. The consequence of this is probably going to be

plummeting vaccination rates around the country and really around the world, an increase in these kind of childhood diseases for no reason, misery and ultimately death of a lot of children. RFK will have blood on his hands. What he's doing is, in my view, particularly when it comes to the U.S., you know, we'll see what happens, but it's tantamount to committing murder if he goes through with all of this. Now, hopefully at least,

vaccines will remain in the domain of parents and doctors to be able to make a decision about. Hopefully, there won't be incentives for doctors not to recommend vaccines, but they might be. And of course, what suddenly is going to happen is you're going to see very few new vaccines, very few new vaccines.

You could generally argue that the certain things that Trump has done that are pretty good, bombing the Iranian nuclear facility is a good thing. But there's a sense in which that's all wiped out by just the nomination or the appointment of RFK to head up health and human services. It's just, it wipes it out completely. The guy's a leftist, anti-science quack. And he's an unbelievably destructive force

in this country. And, and if this is part of Trump's legacy or part of Trump's, this administration, and it's, it's truly, truly, truly horrific. Um, all right, let's, uh, close that. Oh, vaccines. Yeah, quickly. Um, and then I'll, I actually got a, a crazy one, crazy, uh, tweets and then one, one good news tweet. Ooh, I did this. I did this. Oh yeah. Okay. Well,

Just an interesting story. Like China, China, the Chinese government has sold companies in the rare earth industry. You know, this is an industry China dominates and the rest of the world would like to get into, particularly the refining side of the business. There are deposits in a lot of places around the world, but almost nobody can refine rare earths. So China has sold companies in its rare earth industries to give the government lists of employees with technical expertise.

In order so they ensure they don't divulge trade secrets to foreigners. Employees in these industries are going to be monitored. It's going to be very difficult for them to travel abroad. And they're going to be they're going to do everything they can that they don't reveal secrets on actually how to how to replicate what China has done. I mean, rare earths are required.

required for, you know, drones, turbines, jet fighters, automobiles. I mean, it's everywhere in every battery. Some of the experts, the senior people in the rare earth field have actually had their passports taken away from them to ensure that they don't leave the country. So China, very worried about this industry, trying to preserve it, trying to make sure that the West doesn't catch up.

Ryan Seacrest here.

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If you work in healthcare, you rely on your training, focus, and team to make decisions. You rely on your mind. But how often do you listen to your heart? Do you want to work in a universal healthcare system that puts people first?

Do you want to live in a welcoming community and care for others in a place that cares about you? If so, follow your heart to British Columbia, Canada. Opportunities await at bchealthcareers.ca. A message from the Government of British Columbia.

Kind of a trade deal. It's not really a trade deal, but kind of a trade deal with China is to get those rare earth materials flowing again because China closed the spigot and it hurt. It hurt very fast, very quick, and it hurts in places you don't want to hurt. Okay, finally, a crazy tweet. This one from New York Young Republican Club. And this is funny because a long time ago,

I think on a number of occasions, maybe two or three, I spoke at the New York Young Republicans Club. This is a different world. Anyway, this is what they wrote today. A call to action from the New York Young Republican Club. The radical Zohan Mamdani cannot be allowed to destroy our beloved city of New York. Cannot be allowed. The Communist Control Act lets President Trump revoke Mamdani's citizenship.

and promptly deport him. The time for action is now. Stephen Miller, real Tom Homan, New York is counting on you. Tell with elections, you know, if you're deemed by the New York Republican Club to be a communist, then there should be a bill, you know, I guess the Communist Control Act, maybe it already exists,

And you should just be able to revoke people's citizenship and just deport them immediately. Don't have to prove that they were members of the Communist Party or anything like that. Because their views are abhorrent to the New York Young Republicans Club, they should be deported from this country. That is Republicans. So much for freedom. So much for freedom of speech, political freedom.

This is how it goes. This is how we descend. I say this a lot, but this is how we descend into authoritarianism. We start taking away the citizenship of people who win elections because we don't like that they won the election. We don't like their views. We don't like their opinions. All right. Finally, did you know that in Argentina there was a day, June 27th, tomorrow,

which was a day of the public employee. It was a day to celebrate the bureaucracy. And indeed, it was a holiday for public employees. Public employees took the day off. Nobody else did. But public employees took the day off. I mean, Ann, who's always eager to whitewash the Republican Party, says, oh, it's just a bluster of youth.

It used to be that the blust of youth among young Republicans was free markets. Now the blust of youth among young Republicans is basically fascism. If that's not indicative, and this is why they used to invite me, now they would never invite me, because it used to be blust of youth that, oh, let's talk about Ayn Rand. Let's talk about free markets. And now the blust of youth is, let's, you know, eviscerate the First Amendment and

and let's deport our political opposition. If that's unindicative of a direction, I don't know what is. Anyway, this public employee holiday tomorrow in Argentina, just for public employees to celebrate the bureaucracy. Anyway, that holiday is, as of today, no more. It has been eliminated. Javier Millet has signed an executive order

saying that there shall be no public sector holiday. The executive order says that public sector workers should not enjoy privileges unavailable to private sector employees, that the holiday is funded by taxpayers, and therefore is illegitimate. Although this executive order will probably face legal challenges, you know, again, this aligns Millet with

his promises, and with his general attitude towards production, productivity, and bureaucracy. So thumbs up to Millay again. And there you go. Those are the kind of executive orders I like. Would love to see some executive orders like that coming out of the Trump administration rather than the horrors that we see today. All right. We have a few super chats. We are kind of behind, guys. We've just made it.

Just squeezed in, just squeezed in to, you know, to the, you know, the target for the first hour, $250. But we do have a second hour goal. And if we go two hours, you know, the show is funded through Super Chat, among other things.

and what do you call it, Super Chat and stickers. And we need to make our goals because we need to fund the show. We need to keep it going. So we need another 2.50 between now and 5 p.m. East Coast time. We're probably not going to go three hours today, not a lot of questions, but we need to try to at least get there and make this month a good month. And don't forget to like the show. If you're a subscriber...

If you're not a subscriber, please subscribe. Consider subscribing. Subscribe. Just subscribe. You'll get notified when shows are on and you can jump on any live shows you want. So please consider subscribing to the Iran Brook Show. It doesn't cost anything to be a subscriber. All right. Let's see. In addition...

Yeah, I definitely want you to send super chats. Super chats with big dollars attached to it. Or small dollars. Whatever you can afford or whatever you see the value. Whatever value you see in the show. Value for value. Trade. It's a trade. You get value from the show. You're listening. Reciprocate. All right. Thank you, John. John just did a sticker in reciprocation, I guess. I appreciate it. I think we got a few other stickers. I'm not sure. But I think we got a few other stickers. Mike...

Marielle Lean, Esoteric Dichotomy. Thank you all for the stickers. And John just did one. All right. Alex Epstein is a sponsor of this show. I talked about Alex before. To follow what he's doing, Senate and everywhere else, follow him on Twitter. But also subscribe to Substack. AlexEpstein.substack.com. Well-written podcast.

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Barbara, thank you. Really, really appreciate the support. We're slowly chipping away at that goal. Keep it coming, guys. Let's see. David, David has done two $50 questions. Thank you, David. First one, is the increase in productivity inflationary or deflationary? Increasing productivity in and of itself is certainly not inflationary. And it results in prices going down.

Now, you know, and it results in the price level going down. And in that sense, by the way most people use, by the way, people, most people refer to inflation as the general price level changes in the general price level. The general price level going down is deflation. And if you if you have an increase in productivity without an increase in the money supply. And how do you define money supply deflation?

is an interesting question that we've talked about in the past when I've done shows on money, and not a simple one at all to define what the money supply is. But if you have no increase in the money supply, but you have an increase in productivity, in a sense, you could think of it as you have more goods...

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And live the Chumba life. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW group void where prohibited by law. 21 plus terms and conditions apply. If you work in healthcare, you rely on your training, focus, and team to make decisions. You rely on your mind. But how often do you listen to your heart? Do you want to work in a universal healthcare system that puts people first?

Do you want to live in a welcoming community and care for others in a place that cares about you? If so, follow your heart to British Columbia, Canada. Opportunities await at bchealthcareers.ca. A message from the government of British Columbia. With the same amount of money, then prices will go down. In the late 19th century, when money was gold and it was relatively easy to figure out what the money supply is,

then the gold stock did not grow as fast as productivity. Productivity grew much faster than gold. And as a consequence, prices overall went down. So it causes the price level to go down. So in that sense, you can view it as deflationary. So...

Yeah, it can be inflationary. Productivity cannot increase prices. Increased productivity does not increase prices. Cannot. David also asks, I know you're skeptical of the Abraham Accords, but wouldn't the peace deal be a positive development like peace with Egypt in the 70s? Wouldn't Trump merit the Nobel Peace Prize? Well, I don't think anybody merits the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize is...

is a loser's prize. It's a horrible prize. It's a prize that if Donald Trump gets it, he gets to share it with Obama for doing nothing. He gets to share it with Yasser Arafat for killing a lot of Israelis. He gets to share it with Henry Kissinger for establishing a peace deal between North and South Korea just before North Korea basically annihilated and took over South Korea. What does it mean? Who cares? It's a stupid deal.

And nobody should strive to have a Nobel Prize in peace. The Nobel Peace Prize is, you know, it's almost a mark of shame given who you're sharing it with. And the only reason Trump wants it is for vanity. So, yeah, sure, give it to him. I don't care. But, yeah, I mean, look.

If the Abraham Accords are expanded, I think that's a good thing for Israel. There's no question. It doesn't guarantee, I think, very long-term peace. But I think it does guarantee peace in the medium to short term, and that's incredibly worthwhile. That is, it'll give Israel a couple of decades of goodness and peace. And, you know, that is incredibly valuable.

Oh, did I say Korea? I meant Vietnam. So if I said North and South Korea, I meant North and South Vietnam, right? Sorry, misspoke. Thank you, Christian, for correcting me. So I think the Abraham Accords are fine. I just am not excited about them because I think that any deal signed with a bunch of authoritarians and religious authoritarians on top of that is...

You know, not that valuable if you think about the very long term. Those regimes can change. They can flip. They can change their minds. They can be revolutions. But it's better than nothing. It's better than being at war, certainly, and it's better than having nothing. So, yeah, I'm giving it a thumbs up. And if there's a deal with Syria that's real, the Syrians actually opened an embassy in Israel and start treating Israel as a regular country,

Yeah, I mean, before that, I mean, I'd be worried because of the Islamist nature of the Syrians, but okay. I think Lebanon, I'm more excited about because Lebanon is a secular country. If you can get rid of Hezbollah...

And and then the rest, you know, Saudi Arabia, I think would be good. And Iraq is a long shot, but that would be amazing. And yeah, I mean, if the whole Arab world basically recognizes Israel, it's a huge it's a huge deal. It's a huge deal. So I just, you know, as huge of it. And I said, this is what would happen. I said this, that this would happen.

When I talked about on the first day of the war, when I talked about Israel's success, I said, if Israel's successful, this is the consequence. And it changes the Middle East and it's the biggest geopolitical event. Now, it isn't as successful as I would have liked it. That is, it didn't achieve what I think is the main strategic goal of the war, which was regime change. But it did a lot. And among many things, what it did was clarify that Israel...

would never lose, is not going away, and should not be messed with. And this is what you call peace through strength. This is true peace through strength, is if Israel can sign a peace deal with these countries. And look, if Israel does this, Netanyahu is a hero. He becomes...

You know, he wins, you know, the next election without a question, particularly if he if he if he drives the election quickly. Oh, he's everybody except me will forgive him for all his sins. I'm not big on forgiveness. But, you know, everybody out there will forgive him for all the sins.

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The Arab world is is there a move towards secularization? Is there a move towards the West? What happens in the West? Now, my claim is if the regime in Iran really falls or if it's made impotent, then you'll see Islamism become less of a threat in the West as well. And that by time for the West.

And the West is less likely to disappear. It weakens everybody. It weakens the Russians. It weakens all the bad guys in the world are weakened. If you weaken dramatically, significantly weaken Iran, particularly if you overthrow their regime. I'm not into forgiveness because I judge people by their actions and good actions don't wipe out bad actions, particularly when those people refuse to acknowledge the bad actions. So you can't get forgiveness from me without saying you're sorry.

So the first act to get forgiveness is generally in life. The first act to achieve forgiveness is to apologize, to recognize the fact that you did wrong and to say you're sorry, to recognize what was bad and then to do good. But if you just do good and you don't recognize what you did in the past, then OK, I recognize you did good.

But it doesn't wipe out what you did, the bad that you did until you thoroughly, systematically recognize it and apologize and are willing to pay the price for it. A murderer that then goes around, I don't know, that becomes productive or whatever, it doesn't wipe out the fact that he murdered. Now, if he serves time, if he really recompense or whatever, murder is a big deal. But so is creating the environment that made October 7th possible.

So is not doing what Israel just did, you know, years before and preventing October 7th. So, you know, lots. Objectivist, objectivism has no problem with forgiveness as long as there's recognition of fault, apology, then you can move on. Ilya, Ilya, Ilya. Hi, Iran. You mentioned before that

How you complained to the school's board about environmentalism in your children's curriculum. How did you discover that? And how, as a parent, should one track their children's curriculum? I didn't complain to the board. I complained to the head teacher at the school. So how did I discover it? It was in the—this was in, I don't know, second grade or something, first grade, whatever—

I can't remember. It was a long, long, long, long time ago. But I think it was just in the reading that the kids did. And it was in what the kids told you. And what are you reading? What did you study in school today? What is your homework? I mean, parents should be very involved. You should track your kid's curriculum, particularly when it comes to these kind of topics. But also in math and reading, are they learning the C-Sci method in reading? And if so, pull them out.

Are they learning some crazy new math methodology? Is their social sciences part dominated by environmentalism or whatever? You should know these things. You should keep track and you should know stuff. And if there's something particularly offensive, you can't go on everything, but particularly offensive,

Raise your voice. It might not change anything, but at least express your disfavor. Most teachers are pleasers. They want to please their parents. They're not ideologues. Some are, but most are not ideologues. They're pleasers. So, you know, go to them and say, I find this unacceptable, or this is false, this is wrong. Or you might believe this, but a lot of parents don't.

And a lot of times, an honest teacher will say, oh, okay, I didn't realize that there were some parents who felt like this and we'll change the curriculum. In this case, they stopped subscribing to the publication that had this stuff. It was simpler for them just to stop subscribing than to weed out the stories that might offend or might not offend, which was fine with me. Right.

Now, I'm sure that didn't prevent lots of other stuff being said in class that I would have found offensive, but you can only do so much. But I very much encourage all parents to very, very tightly regulate in the world in which we live what your child is learning and in cases, complain to the teacher, but also provide an alternative viewpoint, provide alternative reading material.

provide, you know, alternative documentaries or whatever to show the kids that what they're learning in school is not necessarily true. And in many cases is damn not true. And if they're not learning phonics, then teach them phonics or get a private tutor to teach them phonics or whatever. You know, you don't want your kid not being able to read or not be able to do math because the teachers are so terrible at what they're doing.

And I'm not saying all teachers are like that. I'm just saying some are. And again, a lot of them do it because this is what they were taught. They don't know. They don't know. And then, of course, homeschooling is an option, a serious option you should consider. Wes, thank you for the $50 sticker. Really, really appreciate that. That has gone a significant way to helping us out here in terms of making our goal. We're still about 150 short.

So we've got about a half an hour to make it or maybe less because, oh, there's a lot of $2 and $5 questions. So maybe half an hour to make it. So please consider doing that. David also asked, thank you, David. Very generous today. If production is the main engine of economic growth, it's not an if. It is the main engine of economic growth. Why does the Fed put so much stock in CCI reports? What's a CCI report? Consumption?

What's a CCI report? I'm going to Google it. Consumer confidence. I mean, you don't know that the Fed actually puts a lot of stock into it. We don't know what models the Fed is using. The Fed is using very complex econometric models that use a lot of factors. And I don't know how much they pay attention to consumer confidence numbers. But look, the Fed is wrong. The Fed is wrong.

And the Fed is the Fed screws up all the time. I mean, Trump wants to get rid of Jerome Powell. I kind of agree with him. I don't like Jerome Powell. I just think for the wrong reasons. I mean, Jerome Powell was responsible for the inflation. He didn't see it coming. He responded very slowly. The inflation of the early 2000s, 2020s. So Jerome Powell is terrible. So, you know, the Fed is wrong.

Now, you could make an argument that every consumer is a producer because they have a job, they work, and their sentiment is primarily ultimately determined by what they see at their work. If people are being laid off, if work is slow, that would result in them thinking, yeah, maybe the economy is slowing because production is slowing, and I as a consumer will consume less.

So it's not clear to me what consumer sentiment is measuring. And it could very well be that it is measuring production at the level of the worker and how the worker sees production happening at the shop floor. And they might have a view that things are slowing down. So it could be that consumer confidence is actually measuring production. Generally, it's very, very difficult to measure production

aggregate economic data. It's very difficult to know, you know, what the money supply is. Alex says, China does not dominate rare earth. They subsidize theirs to the extent required to keep all other players from finding economic returns. They have done this stupidly with magnets too. I mean, maybe that's true. I'm not sure that's true. And I'm certainly not convinced that's true. But maybe that's true. But even if that's true, that doesn't change the fact that they dominate rare earth. That is, it means that

that they've driven their competitors out of business, and they now produce close to 90% of all the air rare earth materials in the world because they are the ones who refine rare earths. So they dominate it. They dominate it, you might say, by non-market mechanisms, but it doesn't change their domination.

Now, to assume that they, you know, are not dominating it also because they have scale, also because they have better tech, I think underestimates the Chinese. And I think that's wrong. The Chinese probably have the best foundries in the world for rare earth, you know, and maybe they're subsidized, maybe they're not, but they have the best and they have the most.

And then the question is...

♪♪

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Very few countries. Now, there is some effort in the United States to start foundries. There's some entrepreneurs, there's some startups trying to find foundries that can compete with the Chinese in spite of the subsidies. There are other countries that are trying to do the same thing. But

Mining is not the problem. The problem is primarily the refining. And of course, we have environmental regulations that make it very, very expensive to refine rare earths in the United States because there's potential for pollution and all kinds of other stuff. So it's much more expensive to build a plant here than there, even independent of any subsidies. But they still dominate. The cause of that domination, we could debate, but they dominate.

They have a massive market share that allows them to basically, if they want politically, not export to the United States, and the United States just doesn't get it. Ilya, I've been thinking about RAND's Attila and the Witch Doctor framework, and it hit me that Khomeini has both. Isn't that the kind of left-right merger you're warning about in the United States where faith and force unite? Well...

It doesn't have to unite in one man, right? It unites in the ideas. He definitely has both, but every dictator has both. You know, Khomeini is a spiritual leader and a political leader. That's unusual. Usually the political leader has a spiritual leader to his side. It's not clear if Hitler wasn't also both.

And if Mussolini wasn't both, both the ideologue, the spiritual leader and the guy with the fist. So, yeah, all dictatorships of that. So, yes, the left-right merger is not a merger of faith and force because both left and right have faith and force. It's not like the right is faith and the left is force. Both are both faith and force.

If you think about the left, their faith is different. It's not maybe Christianity, but it's still faith. So what I talk about when the merger of left and right is, it's an ideological merger that allows both people who consider themselves on the left and people who consider themselves on the right to vote initially and support the future dictator who gives something to both, manages to appease both sides.

In Iran, you know, Khomeini is mostly the witch doctor. You could argue the revolutionary god is the force part. But he is the political leader. So he does integrate them both, even though he really is...

It's rare that you get the guy who's mostly the spiritual leader also being the political leader. It's usually the political leader, mostly the political leader doing a little bit of the spiritual stuff. And Khomeini is the other way around. That's typical in a theocracy. It's typical in a theocracy. Which Dr. Anatella refers to an essay by Ayn Rand. Just a brilliant, brilliant essay that gives us a historical scope and explains so much about the world today.

It's for the new intellectual. It's in the book called For the New Intellectual. And it's the lead essay in that book. And it's just a must read. It's brilliant. Just a sweeping, sweeping kind of history of the world from Ayn Rand's perspective of what moves the world, what shapes history.

Christian, thank you. Christian, 50 euro question. I was so happy when Trump took out Fordo. I thanked him for preventing a nuclear holocaust and was shocked only two days after by his rant against Israel. He drives me nuts. I take Bibi any day over Trump, but who is your favorite Israeli politician? Look, I don't know. I don't really have a favorite Israeli politician. As I've said many, many times, I despise Bibi.

And that really hasn't changed. He did the right thing here. Good for him. That's great. But it doesn't wipe out 25 years of holding on to power no matter what, 25 years of appeasing Hamas and of ultimately appeasing Iran.

So in getting us to this point, but, you know, the one war does not eradicate everything else. And his political behavior has been terrible. His appeasement of the religious right in Israel has been horrible. So Bibi has been a net negative for Israel. There's no no question in my mind.

Who is better? I don't know. I mean, I have I like Naftali Bennett. I like his views. He's he's another Israeli politician who's read Atlas Shrugged. But I think Naftali Bennett would would liberate the Israeli economy more. I think Bibi didn't do is liberate the economy as prime minister. So I'm not a fan of Bibi's. That doesn't mean I have somebody else in line. I'm also not intimately familiar with.

with Israeli politicians. I don't live there. I don't follow Israeli politics very closely. It doesn't interest me that much. They're all a bunch of... I don't like politicians generally, and Israeli politicians are no exception to that. So I don't necessarily have an alternative, although, again, I think Bennett would be better, but I don't know who else, and I generally don't like politicians. And I'm not...

crazy about Bennett. That is, he's done me late, right? I don't know if Bennett would be significantly better. I don't know if Bennett would be that good. I just don't know. Until they, because politicians are liars until they actually get there. Until they actually, you know, governing, you can't tell what they actually will do. By the way,

You know, he really had the rant against Israel. And then a day later, he's like best friends with Bibi Netanyahu and telling the Israelis that they shouldn't try Netanyahu for corruption, that they really need to give him a pardon. They need to get rid of it and threatening to place sanctions on Israel.

The prosecutors who are prosecuting Netanyahu, getting involved in Israeli politics for Netanyahu. So, you know, he's an emotionalist and he sways from one minute to the next in terms of his emotional impulses. Michael, it looks like there are some major tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill. There are no major tax cuts. There are...

They extend the existing tax cuts that were passed in 2017. So without the big, beautiful bill, taxes would go up back to what they were before 2017. But there's no new major tax cuts. There are tax cuts on tips. There are tax cuts on overtime. There are tax cuts on some tax cuts on Social Security benefits for some people. There are a few other benefits.

you know, specialized tax cuts to appease particular pressure groups. But these are all terrible tax cuts. They only make the tax system more complex. And I'm against tax cuts that make the system more complex. I'm for tax cuts that simplify taxes or

uh for tax reform that simplifies taxes the big beautiful bill is a mess it's a it's a disaster it doesn't do anything good and the tax cuts are not the kind of tax cuts the result in increased productivity they're the kind of tax cuts the results in redistribution of wealth that's all so nothing good about this bill really

Neal Kahn, EU stats now confirm Hungary is now the poorest and most corrupt EU country, yet the new right sees it as a model no better than socialist left. Yeah, exactly. And I've said this for years. Hungary has sustained whatever economic growth they've had off of the back of EU subsidies. They love to hate the EU. Orbán loves to hate the EU and yet, you know, couldn't survive without EU subsidies.

I think the measure they used in terms of Hungary being the poorest is consumption, something about levels of consumption. I don't know if it's the best measure, but it certainly is one measure. There's no question Hungary is poor. Is it poorer than Bulgaria or Romania?

You know, I don't know, probably not really, ultimately, but it's poor. And it's it's and again, to the extent that it isn't poor or to the extent that it's not as poor as those other countries, it's because it's been getting subsidies from the EU, i.e. from the Germans for longer than the other countries.

Daniel, if Iran is able to rebuild, I don't expect they would be excited of buying Russian again. Do you think China would sell them weapons? Yeah, I think China would sell them weapons. I don't see why not. Chinese weapons are certainly better than Russian. How much better is hard to tell, but they're certainly better than Russians. Better tech, much better tech than the Russians. But...

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how all of this evolves in the next few months and next few years. Michael, we'll push back the tariffs another three months. Will Trump push back the tariffs another three months? Will they keep being pushed back until Supreme Court ends up throwing them out? I think he will. I mean, the latest is that he will have two different categories. One category is countries that are negotiating tariffs.

have expressed an interest in negotiating and have started negotiating maybe, and those tariffs will be pushed out for three months. Now remember, pushing out means 10%. 10% is still a high tariff, much higher than it was, two and a half times what it was. That's still a tax increase on you, not of 10% because you don't do all your consumption of foreign goods, but 10% of anything you buy, that's not made in the US. So that'll be pushed out for those countries. And in countries that he decides...

have not been nice and have not come to the negotiating table, their tariffs will go up dramatically. And then they will probably come to the negotiating table then, and then he'll reduce it to 10%, like he did with China. And I don't know if the Supreme Court will throw the tariffs out. And if they do, they'll throw whatever amount based on one provision, and he'll just reinstitute them based on another law. And you'll have to re-sue the whole thing, re-litigate the whole thing if you want to try to get them to stop.

Micah, could Alex Epstein make the big beautiful bill worth it? Gas prices are way down. I think Alex has a lot to do with this. No, I don't think Alex has. I mean, with all due respect, Alex, I don't think Alex has anything to do with the fact that gas prices are way down. Gas prices are way down because there's plenty of supply and the world economy, in particularly the United States, has slowed down a little bit. So demand is

down from expectations and supply is up. The Saudis opened up the spigots. That has nothing to do with Alex. Alex might have something to do with future supply, that is with more oil coming to market in the future, but none coming to market right now. Could he make the big beautiful bill worth it? You know, I don't know. Probably not, but he would make the big beautiful bill better.

significantly better. Now, will he succeed? I don't know. Right now, he's not succeeding. Will he succeed? Ultimately, I have no way of saying. And I haven't talked to Alex recently, so I don't know how it's going. I don't want to bother him. I figure he's swamped with what he's doing in D.C. Michael, did you see Tucker Carlson versus Ted Cruz in Iran? Disgusting. Tucker is doing everything he possibly can to sabotage the good for being the good. Tucker is...

Really, the worst of the worst right now. He really is awful. I really don't think, except for Know Your Enemy reasons, I don't think anybody should watch him. I don't think you should sanction him in any kind of way. And if you subscribe to his channel, you should unsubscribe. He is really beneath contempt.

I've seen reports that the Mossad is still in Iran attacking the government. Have you any knowledge about this? No, and I haven't seen any attacks. I'm sure they're still in Iran. There's no question they're still in Iran and they'll stay there forever. But have they launched any attacks? That I've not heard. So I don't know anything one way or the other. Michael.

Do a lot of good people, particularly objectivists, engage in rationalizations for giving up and detaching from the world? Are they necessarily wrong? Well, anytime it's a rationalization, you're necessarily wrong. That is, rationalization is detached from reality. That's why it's a rationalization, not just being rational.

Could there be rational reasons to detach from the world? Probably. So, you know, it depends on who you are, what you do, what your values are, you know, what your estimate of the current present situation is and what your estimate is of the future. But it has to be rational. For it to be legit, it has to be rational. So, you know, I think different people can come to different rational conclusions about the state of the world and their place in it.

But again, rationalization is a negative. It means you're not being rational. Michael, is there an implicit determinism in the MAGA movement? They have victims that get things done to them rather than autonomous agents who do things in the world. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think there is an implicit determinism. In almost every set of false ideas, there's an implicit determinism, which is interesting philosophically. But yeah, I

So there's conspiracy theories. Things happen. Things happen to them. And there are bigger powers in the world shaping things. They are just being manipulated. We're all just being manipulated. And what we need is a power in the world that actually has agency, like Trump, to challenge the other powers in the world that are shaping the world in our favor in some way.

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Thank you. Thank you, Michael. Really appreciate it. Jacob, has there been any change to China's eagerness to invade Taiwan given the war? NATO found a way to praise them enough to secure support. Can Taiwan do it too? Maybe. Hard to tell. But, you know, in terms of China, well, I mean, I think China's definitely been deterred by this war.

I think that China, primarily about what Israel did, China looks at that and says, you know, are we underestimating American technology? Are we underestimating the American military? If Israel did this, you know, is America as good as Israel? Could they do this? Are we good enough to stop them? We're not Iran, that's for sure. But are we good enough to stop them? What would it cost to invade Taiwan? So I definitely think

I think both Ukraine and Israel have basically caused China to rethink, and I'm sure they're thinking strategy, thinking strategy, looking at these wars and how they were fought. Bradley, have you read the Campuchico's? Yes, of course. I think it's her most important essay as it describes how the mind learns to put social acceptance above everything.

Well, the mind under coercion learns that, yes. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's maybe one of her greatest essays, maybe her greatest essay. It's incredibly powerful, very emotionally moving, and it's really, really, really, you know, a breakthrough, you know, in terms of human development, in terms of how humans are developing psychologically, philosophically. So, yeah, I agree. Whether it's the greatest essay of hers, it's one of, no question.

Roland said, just finished packing for my trip to Boston. See you there. I look forward to it. Esoteric Dichotomy says, S&P 500 hit record high today, though. Yes, I mean, the reality is the S&P 500 is driven by big tech. Big tech, people are incredibly confident about big tech, and that is reflected in a very high P.E. ratio, and it's reflected in record highs. But if you look at small bit, if you look at...

If you look at Russell 2000, the Russell 2000 is still negative for the year. And so it's still tough. A lot of businesses are struggling. The big tech companies, the big seven, whatever you want to call it, are thriving right now in the stock market. And that's driving it up. Whether that is reflective of the economy as a whole, it's very hard to tell.

Jay says, Yaron, did you consider the New Hampshire Libertarian poll might have been rolled and is not representative? No, not really, because if you follow the New Hampshire Libertarianism accounts and you look at the comments underneath it, it's completely consistent with the views of the people who follow that account. And I don't know how many, you know, if we check how many people actually follow New Hampshire Libertarians in age...

You know, it's 93.4 thousand people. So it's about 100,000 people, let's say, rounded up. 90,000 people follow that account. I think it's definitely representative of many of those people. I mean, just look at the commentary under the racist, fascist, and definitely anti-Semitic

tweets, and then you can see exactly who the people that comment and follow them are. So there's no reason to try to whitewash this. These people are real. And this phenomena of real anti-Semitism, I mean, how would Tucker Carlson answer that question?

How would Candace Owen? We know how Candace Owen would answer that question. And you look at Candace Owen, she has millions of followers. Tucker Carlson has even more followers than that. I mean, there's no reason to downplay the extent of anti-Semitism on the right, the extent of hatred of Israel on the right.

It's real. It's there. You can see it in these leading intellectuals and in some of these Twitter accounts. Now, it's probably true that everybody who follows New Hampshire Libertarians is also following Candace Owen. But OK, but, you know, that's millions of people following Candace Owen. That's a big deal. Matthew Stroud, what is your best definition of inflation as you use it? Is it simply a change in the dollar I hold versus what I can buy with it?

Well, I mean, yes, the inflation basically is the devaluation of your money. That is, it's the process by which your money becomes less valuable. And the process in which it becomes less valuable is that it's the number of dollars is inflated. That is, the money supply grows. The problem is that we do not have a good measure of money supply. We just don't have it.

So, you know, you have to find proxies for it. So you can use M2, you can use M3, and you can, you know, but they don't work very well. The correlations are not really there. It's very difficult to figure out what's going on because of the way, the complexity created in our monetary system. And, you know, CPI, the consumer prices, is one good thing.

You know, one good reflection of prices going up and your purchasing power declining. And obviously, when the CPI goes up a lot, that means the monetary base is being inflated. So CPI is a sign of inflation. It is not inflation itself. The inflation itself is the debasing of the currency. How do you know that a currency is being debased? One of the ways you know that is prices uniformly. The price level in the economy, not relative prices.

Tariffs only change relative prices. That's why tariffs are not inflationary. Supply shocks change relative prices. That's why they're not inflationary. Inflation is the price level going up. And that only happens when you have a, I mean, either...

when you have an increase in the monetary base. And the question is, how do you measure that increase in the monetary base? And economists struggle to do that. And I haven't seen anybody who suggested a measure that actually works when you actually look at history. Rajiv, so how much harm can a mayor, Mamdani, really do to New York City and Jews living there? Even a terrorist attack will be whitewashed by the Jewish-hating Mamdani.

How much harm can he do? A lot. I mean, he can reduce the number of police on the streets, which will increase crime. He can destroy the small businesses that provide groceries to New Yorkers. He can get people unemployed. I mean, he can really do a lot of harm to the city. He can make it very difficult to rent. He can cause a sharp deterioration in the quality of life.

of rental housing in New York City. He can make the city a lot less livable. Now, he has limited powers. And once he gets into politics, he'll discover that he's got lots of pressure groups he has to appease. So he might not live up to all the evil programs that he's proposing, but he certainly can, in theory, do a lot of damage.

Alex, why did Israel or the U.S. not target the Iranian nuclear power plant at Bushir, which is supplied by Russia but now operated domestically? Well, because it's supposedly civilian. And notice Israel or America did not touch the civilian infrastructure of Iran. They didn't blow up power stations. I mean, Israel did a little bit, but very little.

Iran, Tehran still had electricity. They didn't go after the oil and they didn't touch the civilian infrastructure with a hope supposedly of not alienating the civilian population, maybe. I think ultimately it's a mistake. That's just me. But they didn't. Now, and there's also a risk of nuclear radiation. And also there are large numbers of Russians who,

at the power plant and they didn't want to kill Russians. So all those factors, but it is civilian and they can't, they don't have the centrifuges there to produce a nuclear bomb level material. So it's not a threat. So Pekask, if you had to sell objectivist ideas to a Democrat audience, how would you do it? What would be most appealing about objectivism to them?

I mean, it depends which, but, you know, in an old-style democratic audience, the appeal has to be the reason. Reason is science and the support for reason is science and enlightenment ideas to the extent that there's still people there who respect that. So there is still a remnant on the left of people who believe that they love reason, they're anti-faith, they're anti-emotionalism, and that's what you have to appeal to on the left.

Those people who still respect reason. Rafael, hi, Iran. I will be in Seoul in August. Any good recommendations for the city? Any objectivists over there? Thank you. There are objectivists over there, some who listen to the show. So in the chat, you might want to put something or somebody might respond to you from the question. If you email me, I can send you potentially a...

uh, you know, an email of somebody in Seoul is great food, really good restaurants. Um, but I don't really have that many recommendations. You go to bookstone, pick up a copy of equal is unfair in, uh, in Korean. If you want, um, that means you won't be in Lisbon when I'm there, I guess. I don't know how much of August you're going to be in Seoul, but I will be in Lisbon basically the first three weeks in August. All right. Um,

Email me. Hector, is economics complicated or is complicated because government gets involved? I think economics is complicated and economics has to explain government getting involved, right? So it's not like economics is a field that studies, I don't know, some form of purity where government isn't involved. The reality is that it studies that and as part of that, it's complicated. Now, is economics

The functioning of the economy in laissez-faire complicated? No, I don't think it is. But it's still complex. There's a lot going on. And it requires understanding. Under a mixed economy, it's very complicated as a science, trying to understand what happens and trying to predict the future.

All right, guys. Thank you. Really, really appreciate all the super chatters. Don't forget to subscribe if you're not a subscriber. Don't forget to like the show before you leave. It really, really, really helps the algorithm. And I would really, really appreciate that. And if you want to support the show on a regular basis, trade with me and then go to patreon.com. Put in your on book show for $10 a month. You can get the podcast ad free with no ads.

But of course, you can also do 100, 250, 500 a month and really become a major supporter of the show. 250, you get a half hour with me every three months. 500 bucks, you get a half an hour with me every month. So maybe that's worthwhile or not. First week of August, I'm in Lisbon, Rafael says. We'll try some talks, podcasts for you if you want. Podcasts would be good. And maybe you can hook me up with a guy. Maybe you can ask the guy in Porto.

If he's interested in having me again, and I'd be willing to go out to Porto, even when you're not there, but sometime go out to Porto in August to do his podcast if he's interested. So if you could ask him about that, that would be great. And I'm happy to do podcasts in Lisbon as well. All right, great. Thank you, Rafael. We'll be in touch.

Thank you, guys. And I will see you guys tomorrow. Tomorrow, the show will be later, 4.30 p.m. East Coast time. 4.30 p.m. East Coast time. If I'll say yes, he is interested. So maybe put me and him together or something so I can start. Maybe we can arrange a debate, but I can start working on dates. And I'm happy to do a debate as well. All right. Thanks, guys. I will see you all tomorrow. Bye, everybody.

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