Episode Transcript
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hello.
Welcome to the call like I see it podcast.
I'm James Keyes, and in this episode of call it like I see it, we're gonna take a look at the apparent disconnect between what the numbers are telling us and what economists are telling us about the economy and how it's doing, which, you know, is that it's doing pretty well. And the negative view of the economy that's reflected in both in recent polling and then just general consumer sentiment that we see people talking about the economy and so forth. And later on, we're going to react to new evidence that has been discovered that confirms, or at least that is purported to confirm that the Vikings were traveling back and forth to the Americas at least 500 years or for, in the period 500 years before Columbus came to the Americas.
Joining me today is a man who has all the inside info, whether it be on the economy or the Vikings. Tunde Ogun, Lana Tunde, are you ready to give us some of what you heard through the grapevine?
[00:01:15] Speaker B: No.
You know what kind of violation that is? In my professional life?
[00:01:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I guess that was quite a setup I did.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. You set me up as an attorney. You shouldn't be doing that.
And for the audience, entrapment. Yeah. I have securities licenses for investigations. So, yeah. Inside information and sharing it is not.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Something you don't want to hear your name and those two, those words in your name at all.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: I wish I had all the inside information. You think I'd be, I'd be working. I do anything right now. I mean, you know, if you bought bitcoin at $10 and cashed out at 66,000, have been done with it, this whole thing.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: So, yeah, so we're recording this on November 20, 2023. And I want to jump right into the discussion. Tunde economists are saying that our economy is booming, or at least very well, doing very well, at least, you know, with the indicators they're looking at. But the public seems to not agree and they seem to be down by and large on their economic prospects and yet just the direction the economy's going. So looking at, you know, just the numbers that we're seeing and just the economy itself, you know, what do you see? You know, is this, are we looking at something that's good or are we looking at something that's bad?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: You're looking at something that's something. How about that?
Because it's a good point to ask it that way. And preparing for today, I kind of realized that if you look at any, if you just let's say, the last hundred, 120 years of, let's say, from 1900 to now of us economic history. I mean, we could take different slices out and you could probably go, if you had a time machine, go back and ask people how they felt. And you're never going to find a time when 100% of the people you ask say everything is great. And this is the best economic condition I've ever felt. You're going to find times where people definitely, probably en masse, feel that it's a lot worse. I could think of periods that are well known, like the Great Depression or more recently, the great financial crisis, back zero eight through 2010 period.
But even when we look back historically, when there were times of boom, the roaring twenties, for example, is a well known era of boom, the 1990s during the tech.com phase. And then we could even say we've just up until last year, and the market correction of 2022, which means a downturn of more than 10%, we had the longest bull market in us history. And we can maybe look at the pandemic as an artificial blip because that wasn't really a business cycle downturn for that short period. That was the pandemic.
But you're looking from about 2010, 2011 to 2022, we had an unprecedented run in economic growth. And so we can all acknowledge, because we all just lived through that period, that not everybody experienced the economy the same way, even though many people were doing a lot better. And we'll talk about that in terms of the increase in some of the shares of wealth and whole who shared in that. We all know and acknowledge there were a lot of, you know, from the 99 percenter thing, and they occupy Wall street in that time of the great financial crisis, all the way till recently, the debates about minimum wage and labor strikes and all that stuff. So again, this is where I say the economy is complex. As the world gets bigger, there's more people and more wealth sloshing around. It gets more complex. And so, yeah, I think the economic data right now looks pretty healthy, but in general, and we'll break that down. But, yeah, we can't assume that everybody's feeling it the same way.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Yeah, no, actually, I look at it in two different ways, and it's kind of piggybacks on what you said. There's two different conversations that are being had.
Is the economy healthy? Is there activity? Is there a lot of activity going on? That's kind of what the numbers are measuring, because that activity is opportunity. That's opportunity. When things shut down, when there's no economic activity. When you're looking at a depression or something like a great depression or something like that, or a great financial crisis, what's really happening there is that there's no, money's not changing hands anymore. Like there's not a lot of economic activity. So there's not a lot of opportunity for growth. There's not a lot of opportunity for people to do well. And so when the economists are measuring it, they're saying, okay, do we have the kind of economy right now where there's a lot going on? People are spending money, businesses are building things, you know, and paying wages to do so. They're providing services and collecting money to do so and all this other stuff. And so there's all this activity that's going on. So that is, in the economist's mind a very promising situation. Like, yes, that's what we want to foster from an economic standpoint is a lot of activity. And, but from the individual standpoint or just consumers in general, they're looking at, okay, how is my life going in terms of my day to day meet, what I'm spending money on me, my paychecks coming in, my expenditures going out and so forth. And so those things that's not measured based on just activity like how much, how many people bought an iPhone last month is not going to necessarily impact or determine how my household budget was last month, you know, and so it's a different measure. And so with things like the economy, I would say objectively is doing well. The numbers that we've come up with to measure that, I could take issue with some. I could take issue with, you know, GDP or, you know, different things. But by and large, what they're trying to measure and how we've correlated that to how that is what the governmental and regulatory systems are trying to foster. That thing is going pretty well right now. It's not perfect. It always can be better. Again, I could take issue with it, but it's going pretty well right now. But there are other factors that are going on, inflation, most notably that from a monthly household budget standpoint are really weighing down on people. Even though, and we'll talk, we can talk about, you know, how from a relative standpoint, things may be better than they were a year ago or two years ago from a household standpoint. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they absolutely are relative to a five year kind of period, you know, so to me, that's really what we see here is just kind of the different, what the economists are measuring is different than what the consumers are feeling and reacting to, so to speak.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's good.
A couple of things you said just to piggyback on. I mean, one is what you're kind of, as you're talking, it's laying out, and I wrote down here, just a business cycle, right. That you have these, these ups and downs over time through the cycle. And what people are feeling is people seem to feel like this cycle is, is, is heading on the downswing, which it appears to be in many ways, again, which we'll get into with some of the stats, even though that on the top line, a lot of that, those stats look pretty good. And like you said, when such a big economy, especially where you have different pockets of, let's say, wealth and resources throughout a vast country, you can have it where the numbers look good, so to speak. But not everybody, again, like we're saying, is sharing it. And as you're talking, I thought that's inevitable almost.
[00:08:28] Speaker A: That's inevitable.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Especially as you pointed out before, even in a boom time, everybody, or 90% of people aren't going to report like, oh, yeah, this is the best economy, this is the best times ever. You know, like, it's just not, it's not really going to happen.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: Well, and I think you point to something very interesting, which is, you know, the system. Right. Like the idea that we live in. I mean, you made a good point the way you described this, which is money changing hands. I wrote it down, creates an opportunity for activity.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:56] Speaker B: So, and there's another term we've used in different conversations, meaning the velocity of money. How fast does money move through the society? And what you don't want is money getting stuck in certain places. But that ability for the money to move and the opportunity doesn't necessarily, you know, just because we say the opportunity for money to move is good for the economy, it doesn't mean that the money is directed. And we're not saying that the money is being directed in a certain area. It's just the ability for it not to stick and move.
[00:09:27] Speaker A: Well, it's really that the alternative is so bad, the money getting stuck, which typically in a capitalist society, the money has a tendency to get stuck if it's not by force of regulation or tax or whatever brought back down. If the money gets stuck, we know that's bad. And so it's not that money moving solves everything. It's just without money moving, the absence of money moving creates a really big problem. But I'll throw in one other thing. Real quick, though, and that is that the, that the economy has been doing well, we can objectively say that that's true, because what the Fed has been doing with the interest rates is indicative of that. The Fed has been trying to slow down the economy for a few cycles now by raising interest rates. They're saying things are too hot right now. You've had a lot of colorful analogies with this, but they're trying to slow it down. They're trying to, oh, this is too much. And now the economy overheating like that is what was creating the inflation. That plus some external factors. But nonetheless, the Fed has been trying to slow down the economy for all this time by raising the interest rates. So we know what are they trying. They wouldn't be doing that if the economy was already moving too slow. And again, that's on the macro level, that is moving too slow. But again, how that's felt on an individual level is not going to necessarily line up. Apples to apples.
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Yeah, and that's a good point you bring up, because again, going back to the idea of business cycles, and this is where the general public could probably use a little better understanding of just economics, like in this way. And it's funny, because I remember being a freshman in college, and I didn't really like macroeconomics 101 when I had to take it as like one of the general classes they forced you to at the time. But since then, I found it obviously very, very important to have a basic understanding. And I've come to find it interesting because it's really a reflection in a sense of kind of the collective psychology of the society. You know, how things like supply and demand, when you're talking about markets, let's say like a stock market, greed and fear. So it again lends itself to this idea that the current form of kind of regulated capitalism that societies have kind of created over the last few centuries seems to be an area that can allow for human freedom movement, things like that, in a much better way than monarchies, dictatorships, other forms of economic experiments like communism, things like that. So even though it's imperfect, this seems to be a way, again, that human societies can ebb and flow. And I think, to your point, this is what's not understood well, is the central bank being kind of adjacent to the government apparatus, but not controlled 100% by the government. And I'll get into that in a second, because the ability for the central bank to use interest rates like a lever, that one, like you said before, when there's no movement of money like what happened during the crash of 2008 through 2010. Remember, real estate's down 50%. Banks were cutting credit lines. No one had money. I mean, if we remember those of us that live in large metropolitan areas, you go to restaurants, they'd be empty. And so the government at the time, the Federal Reserve, the only, the main lever they had besides stimulus and all that, which is a separate conversation, is just to say, let's slam interest rates to zero. Because that does two things. It allows money to move a lot quicker, because when you think about interest being the cost to borrow money. So if you reduce the cost to borrow money, money can flow freer more because money's cheaper.
[00:13:05] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:05] Speaker B: And then what happens, too, is it creates a psychological disincentive to hoard cash, because, again, these are things where history is important. We've learned these lessons already through the last 200 years, through bank panics in the late 18 hundreds, all the way to the great depression, when we had, remember, what was called the run on the banks, people got so scared that from an emotional standpoint, it's like a squirrel hoarding nuts for the winter. People take their cash and just hoard it. That doesn't do the system any good, because to your point, James, the money's not moving. So in order to make it unattractive for people to take their money and hoard it in the bank, interest rates had to be pushed to zero, because no one wants to make zero. So it became more attractive to say, let me. You know what? Maybe I'll go speculate on that condo that's down 40% from where it was three years ago. And maybe if, at least if I can get a tenant in there, I can get some income from that. Let me go speculate on that stock that's paying three or 4% in an annual dividend because my checking account's paying zero.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: You. I mean, in the word you could use speculate, but the other words you could use is invest. You know, I mean, let me put this. Let me put this money into a restaurant to open up so that when things get better, like, it encourages people to take a less risk averse approach, which is just holding, putting your money in the bank, and a more risk, you know, a more risk tolerant approach, where you're saying, let me put the money here, where if things go bad, I could lose it. But if things just go okay, I can make more of a return than I would just sitting there with a 0% interest growth.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:14:30] Speaker A: But I want to keep it.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: So it's really about the end.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:14:34] Speaker B: Let me just finish it off. That it worked. And so the remedy for that has been in the last two years, raising interest rates to cool the economy down because it worked hard.
[00:14:44] Speaker A: After a decade of that, it worked in a sense. But then they also, to some would argue they kept the lever open too long, you know, like, actually, but the pandemic affected that as well. You know, at the time the pandemic hit, they couldn't raise the rates then. So, but, so it's complicated in that sense. But I do want to get, you know, like we, we, a lot has been made about inflation and how that has been a big part of people's perception of the economy. And just very simply put, if a gallon of milk was $2 before, and then now you show up and it's $3, that's something that, you know, from a consumer standpoint, consumers broadly will feel that, you know, cause you're, obviously, it's not just milk. It's everything is going to be more expensive, will feel that on a week to week basis, and that will affect their perception of how things are because whether they're made, even if they're making more money, if they're not making more to keep up with the cost increases for the things that they're buying, whether it be, again, consumer goods or whether it be energy prices and so forth, then they're going to feel like they're falling behind just due to inflation, period. And so I want to look at that and just other factors beyond inflation. And tell me, what do you think are the key things that are driving this negative perception of the economy?
And again, now we were talking before about the absolute, the actual economy. Now I want to look at the perception of it. So what are the factors you think that are driving the negative perception of the economy that, like I said, or like we were just saying, is it necessarily 100% tied one to one to actually how the economy is performing?
[00:16:14] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I think it's a couple, two main tracks. I see. One is the reality that we just lived through, which was, you know, I would say the global shutdown in 2020 was unprecedented only in the sense that the whole world, we had the global technology and the global connection that the world actually was able to shut down. At the same time, for the first time, 8 billion humans and all the businesses that move stuff around, unlike, let's say, the 14 or 15 hundreds. When we had the plague in Europe, Europe was shut down, but China was fine and the Aztecs were fine. So it's just that this was a time in world history where we could all shut down at once. And we all know the story that screwed up supply chains. And then it caused a couple things like you just mentioned, very, you know, you got into it right before we got on this section, which is it kind of forced the Federal Reserve to have to put interest rates back to zero after it had started, like you said, tightening a bit and going the direction to take the foot off the gas pedal of low rates.
This reversed that course. So it created another potential for an asset bubble after the initial scary part of the shutdown. And then the other thing is the stimuluses. I mean, we really did, in an economy, our economy has output in the form of GDP of around 25 trillion a year, 24 trillion. And in one year we printed about, you know, or gave about 7 trillion to the system in cash CARES Act, PPP, all that. And so that has, that did have a real effect, cause inflation, you know, in certain respects. And then I just think if you.
[00:17:57] Speaker A: Just inject that much money into the system, it's going to create the effect there's gonna be more money rolling around. So generally speaking, if you put that much money in, there's more money going around. Your money buys less, just as a matter of supply and demand, so to speak. There's more money, so your money buys less.
[00:18:13] Speaker B: And that's, that's where the basic understanding, like I mentioned, of the kind of macroeconomics of supply and demand come in.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Just, Rob, I did want to comment on actually, just real quick. I'll kick it back. But the reason why it's good for, and this isn't for everybody, but for more people than less people to try to understand some of these basics is because we participate in governance. And so it's helpful if you, you can evaluate what candidates are selling. Again, not everybody's going to do that. Many people are just going to go for their gut, but people who are inclined to and have the capability to, it's good to kind of get a basic understanding of these things because if you're going, if this is government, other people by the people, for the people, that there's an obligation to the people as well that comes with that. But go ahead.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Yeah, no, it's a great point because I kind of, it'll help us segue into maybe the next part of this conversation, which is I wasn't going there, but where I'm going is going to potentially get us there, which is, it's a good reminder that we live within a system.
And when I talk about the interest rates. And when I mentioned earlier about the benefit of having a central bank for the country that is not overseen directly by politicians, to have leadership that is chosen and all that that does not coincide with elections for politicians is very helpful.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: They're not beholden. They're not beholden to the politicians necessarily.
[00:19:31] Speaker B: Because if you think about it, nobody wants to be on the watch when there's a rising rate environment. Right? Like, I'm sure the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, is. You know, he knows that a lot of people aren't happy with him right now. I'm sure the president, United States today, would prefer that rates weren't going up under his watch, because as the leader of the country, he'll most likely be the one that the population blames for this, for the.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: But as we're discussing of the higher rate environment, the effects of the higher rate environment, they're going to blame the president.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Correct.
[00:20:03] Speaker A: So he wouldn't do that to himself normally, even if that was needed.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: And that's what I mean, like, but if you look in other systems, like in China, for example, where, you know, we. I mean, now, I think Americans understand the chinese economy isn't what we might have thought 1015 years ago because they've done it.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: Growth.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Like they've been on this 20 year kick of wanting to grow their economy or showing the rest of us, let's put it that way. That they're growing the numbers.
Yeah. That they're growing their economy by 10% a year. And so they haven't allowed their business cycle to actually have a full cycle. They haven't had a recession. They haven't really raised their own interest rates in decades. And so what that's done, and many people that paid attention to China a little more detail has created a lot of imbalances internally to the point where, I mean, a few years ago on 60 minutes, we saw they have cities, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of real estate that are just empty. And they have a youth unemployment, I believe, of 40% people under 30 years old. I mean, there's a lot of problems in China's economy. And one of the reasons is because they have a dictatorship, and when you're in charge, you don't want to look bad. And they can, you know, the dictator controls the central bank. So by allowing our financial and economic system to run parallel to our political class but not be controlled by it, is what has created and allowed the United States to really prosper over, you know, many decades and is why we became the world's largest and leading economy. One of the reasons.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, it was, that's a lesson that was learned. And I'm so glad that you pointed out, you know, like when you said it's a lesson we've learned. And the key piece on there is it's what we as a society have learned because we've saw how, like the US, you've pointed out in previous shows how the US used to have banking crises every 20 or 30 years, you know, and so these are things collectively as a society we learned. But this not necessarily all things that we presently alive walk around with all the time, like, oh, yeah, of course, this is why we do that. Just things that you have to learn. But in terms of the perception, I think that, well, one, the inflation piece is an important piece because inflation was much higher a year ago and it has been high, but it's come down. But when inflation comes down, that doesn't mean that the prices go back to what they were before. So that's just one. The inflation, the remnants of the super high inflation that we had a year ago are still with us in the terms of higher prices. So as long as those prices are higher, then people are going to feel they're going to be mad about the economy, so to speak. They're going to be like, yo, I used to pay $2 for this. Now I pay $3 for this. I used to go to the grocery store and spend dollar 80. Now I go to the grocery store and spend dollar 120. And it's like, well, you know, of course you're going to be down on the economy if that's the case, particularly if your paycheck didn't keep up with that bump. I think there's some other things going on, though, and I want to kick it back to you, get some of your thoughts. But one of the things that I think actually drives this is the, in addition to the inflation is just how we talk about the economy. I think that from the perception standpoint, the way we talk about the economy, it's always focusing on the disaster around the corner. And so I think that kind of conditions people to always be looking for the disaster around the corner and saying, oh, well, things like my whole life it's always been presented in the economy that things are about to get bad, you know, and it, whether that actually happens or not, you're always on the precipice. And I think part of the reason for that is just that that is a message that gets in you. I've said this in many a show that how the media is a business. And, you know, the news media in particular is a business. And so they do craft their messages in ways that they think are going to get our attention. Now, some people do this in more sinister ways than others, but all of them are trying to keep our attention. And so a message.
If you see a new, an advertisement for the news, join us next. The economy's going great. Everybody's doing great. People aren't going to be as interested to tune in and watch that as they are. Join us next. We're going to talk about how the economy is two steps away from falling off a cliff. That's like, oh, my God, I got to turn that on. And so that always going to be presented to us like this in a news media that is competing for attention, I think that is a big part of it as well. In addition to, like I said, the inflation piece is always going to be tied to this. But I think there's other pieces, and I know you have a couple that you wanted to throw out there as well.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: Yeah, no, so there's a couple of things because it's a great point you make about the perception versus reality of a lot of the way we see the economy reflected to us from our media. So you're right. If we have a media that's already set up for outrage and catastrophe and basically wanting us to constantly rubberneck like it's an accident on the highway because.
[00:24:50] Speaker A: They need detention, because they need to sell it.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: And like we've talked about with other discussions in our culture, right, like, they do it. In politics, they do it. There's a lot of ways that the media tries to contain our eyeballs and our attention. And you're right, with the economy, it's no different. It's the constant. I mean, if I look at my news feed on my iPad, I mean, honestly, if I just, if I could put it on the screen right now, we'll probably see 10% of the articles that say the stock market's gonna drop by 60%, another 10% that says it's gonna drop by 20%, another 10%, and there'll be a few that say the market could boom over the next six months or something, but most of it will skew negative. To try and get people positive will.
[00:25:29] Speaker A: Say, click here, we'll show you how to take advantage. Or something like that.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Exactly. There's always some.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Some attention. Get.
[00:25:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And so that's.
[00:25:37] Speaker A: I wanna make it real quick, just when we say the media, most of the media is set up to get our attention. And that's the point. Like, like movies and, you know, sports. And we're talking about news media in particular, where that kind of perverts the system a little bit when that's where they're the information gathering and reporting apparatus, if they're stuck on attention. And their metric, only metric is attention, where it creates this effect. But go ahead.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I think part of it is because we're so glued to our screens now and images are so important for us. And just the way people talk and the way that all these screens come on and it's the stock market and it's down and they know what colors to use, the red and all this. And we're kind of like deers in a headlight where we're trapped. And so, and I think that makes people a little bit more, you know, they're kind of at the whims of the headlines and how they feel about the economy versus like we're talking, looking at a macro look and say, okay, over the last decade, everybody's done. Not everybody, but the majority of the society has advanced and done well. And so one of the areas that I think, like we often talk in different conversations, cultural stuff, historical stuff, that a lot of things are not a zero sum game, but in certain economic conditions and examples, there are zero sum instances where you gotta make a decision. And again, you made a good point bringing up earlier about the period of the pandemic. And let's go back there for everybody listening or watching us right now, because we all lived through this. It was only three years ago. So remember March of 2020, the world was told to shut down. Remember by June and July, I remember we were losing in the United States 12 million, 8 million jobs a week. Remember that? And I mean, I really thought that we could see another Great depression there where you could see 40, 50% of Americans unemployed.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Years long, key piece, not a couple of months, but years long, you know.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Recession, money wasn't moving, remember? That's your point, right? There was no velocity. Everything. Remember, container ships were stuck off the coasts with oil and oil for the first time hit negative, $40 a barrel. The first time in history oil went negative because the markets saw at the moment there was going to be no use for oil. They couldn't even deliver it because no one was going to pay for it because they didn't want to get the guys off the ship. Maybe they had Covid. So we had a very disruptive time. So, again, the zero sum part where I'm getting at is there was choices by our leadership at the time between administration, between the fed, all that, where we could have done nothing and done this. The example was 1929. After that crash, the Federal Reserve did not print money. And we saw what, like you said, we saw a decade of really tough economic situation that unfortunately took World War Two, really, to get us out of that.
So then that had its own consequences. But so, so the other, the other choice was, okay, well, then we got to do what worked in the great financial crisis is slam rates to zero and print a bunch of money. Yeah, that has its own consequences. That's really my point in bringing this up, which is now we're living through those consequences. I don't know which one would have been worse. Maybe people would prefer to have 50% unemployment and a decades long depression versus trading GameStop and bitcoin during 2021, when it was fun and all the money was sloshing around. I don't know what people would prefer.
[00:29:07] Speaker A: From what we've seen, it's either going to be the asset bubbles and the inflation, or it's going to be the decade or 510 years long of depression. It's going to be one of those two, basically. And if the government's going to, the government either chooses action or inaction, and the action is kind of the keynesian. When the private sector shuts down, the government sprint spends, makes it an easy money environment and prints a bunch of money versus. And then what they're supposed to do is when that crisis is over, they're supposed to then stop, raise tax rates.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: And raise the, that's what we didn't do since 1980.
Well, the point, we just keep trimming it.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: Supposed to do that part, and they learned that doing that part will get them voted out.
[00:29:47] Speaker B: No. And so, but, but it's, but it's a good point. That's why I say, like, that's an example where we did have a choice. The system, our leadership could have said, okay, you know what? We got too many deficits. We got, we got, you know, the deficits are out of control. All that. Let's use this as a time for austerity, like we, like we told the people in Greece to do back when the European Union was having issues, and let's do that in America, and everyone's gonna hurt. And we didn't, we said, okay, let's not do that, and let's make sure people can eat and that, you know, PPP loans, businesses can pay employees, all that kind of stuff. But you know what's interesting, as we talk here, I realize both have the risk of creating populism and populist revolts. So had you done the depression route, we would have had the 1930s, again, where you did get populist movements and the rise of Mussolini and the Nazis in Germany and all that. And now, if you do it this way, creates inflation. I just saw that this was this week past weekend. In recent days, the Argentinians voted in a populist leader because they have. Think about, I mean, again, I don't want to compare, because we have inflation that we're not used to. So that's what hurts. But we're not, we're lucky we're not in their condition. They had 143% inflation over the last year. Wow. So inflation from the asset bubbles can lead to populism, as well as depressions and unemployment, you know, mass unemployment. So that's the whole point of the system, is to kind of keep things within the equilibrium. And that's where the business cycles are important, to let them play out, because if not, if you're gonna have a democracy, it's gonna be destroyed by the populism. The only way to not do it in the control, not have the business cycles play out and control everything is go into China model, which is ultimate authoritarianism. And in order to control the population, when they get upset, you just need to shut them down. So again, none of this is like, there's never a perfect way to deal with this kind of big society.
[00:31:43] Speaker A: The way you illustrate it is really good in the sense that, you know, for a free and open society, what you need to do is keep the business cycle kind of within. If my screen is the meeting, you got to keep it within. The ups and downs have to stay in this, inside the screen and not go too high or not go too low, because once you do that, then you're at risk of these other things, these other types of public, I should say public dissatisfaction, leading to the popularity of leaders that are offering easy solutions that typically don't involve maintaining a free and fair society, you know, and so which takes you down a whole nother path. But the other thing I wanted to mention, actually, this is a different kind of track than what you were on, but I think it plays a role here. One I'll say briefly, and. But the two things I'm going to say are different, but they overlap in some sense, only in the sense that they deal with politics. And that is one you have. We have in the United States, there's, you know, it's the free press. So free press doesn't always mean everybody's not biased. It just means that you can get out there and say kind of what you want to say within reason, as we've learned with, like, the dominion lawsuits and so forth. But partisan media, where we have that, like, overly partisan media, like, there's media out there that, whose goal, if they're not in power, if their desired partisans aren't in power, then they want to make people feel like the country's on the wrong track, like that's the goal so that they can win the next election. And if they're purporting to be news media at the same time, then they're going to always be selling a message when they're not in power, when, you know, their, their desire, people aren't in power of negativity. So that's going to affect people. But I, that, I can leave that at that. The other piece I wanted to say, which isn't about really partisan media but more about a bigger thing of leadership, is Joe Biden. You know, like, and for, like, I have no issue with Joe Biden. I think Joe Biden's, you know, from a merit standpoint, is a pretty good president, but I think he's a poor president from the standpoint of kind of the emotional evoking, like an emotional pride and making people feel good about America, which is a part of his job as president. He's supposed to make, give people the warm and fuzzies about their country. You know, ask not JFK, ask not what you, which country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Like, Ronald Reagan was good at this, too. Like, there's been a lot of presidents and that are good at this part. FDR was good at this part where just making people feel good to be a part of this thing. And so whether it's his age or whether he's just not an overly charismatic guy, that's something that he doesn't really bring to the table. Even though, like I said, on the merits, the things that he's done, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's, that was a pretty good move. That was a pretty good move. But he's, you know, people aren't waking up with looking at Joe Biden pictures like, oh, man, that's the guy. We just have all we with him. Anything is possible. And so because of that, I think that that plays a role into how people think of the economy. Like, they see this old guy up there? And then he's not just old, but he kind of acts old and is like, oh, man, if anything happens, he won't be able to solve it. And even though he might be able to. And remember, there's this thing called confirmation bias. Once you look at him a certain way, once a person looks at him a certain way and says, oh, he's not capable, or, he doesn't make me feel good, he doesn't give me warm and fuzzies about my country, then you're going to view things in a way that confirms that thought. And so that's not his fault, necessarily. You know, like, again, on the merits, he seems to do okay. But I think that plays a role into if people aren't getting the warm and fuzzies about their country and just where they are, I think that can play a role in also how they view the performance of their country.
[00:35:06] Speaker B: So you're saying, if only he didn't fall off that bike.
[00:35:12] Speaker A: Hey, man, whatever he needs more speech writers or whatever. Like, he just. So he needs to put more effort, if he's capable of it, put more effort into making people feel good about their country and what's going on. I mean, and that's just. That is a part of it. And a lot of time, the brainiacs don't account for that. You know, like, they're just like, oh, no, we got to deliver these numbers, and we had to do this and that. It's like, well, no. Part of this is just making people feel good about, you know. About what?
[00:35:35] Speaker B: That sounds complicated.
Whether actually he should just stay up his bike.
[00:35:39] Speaker A: Well, the thing about it is you can make people feel good about what's going on, whether things are really good or not. You know, it's just kind of. It's a feeling thing, you know? So.
[00:35:46] Speaker B: But you know what we'll do? Remember that movie edge of tomorrow with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt?
[00:35:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: And they had those suits, mechno suit. We can put Biden in one of those and have him walk around looking like a big badass. Then maybe that'll make it better.
[00:36:01] Speaker A: He should get his own iron man suit and just fly around and make it.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Then he won't fall off. Then he won't fall off bikes, and people won't think he's incompetent. But anyway, now. But. But it's. But I think you're right. I mean, clearly, I even read one of the studies in preparing for today, and it'll be in the show notes where that is very true. They said that voters do tend to think that when their parties in power, the economy is a bit better, whether the stats are true or not. I found it interesting that.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: Well, that's on the person point. The partisan point is.
[00:36:32] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: First point I made, no, but what.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: I found interesting is republican voters, they found are two and a half times more to feel that way when their party's empowered. Democratic voters are.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:44] Speaker B: And I thought, but I thought about it. It's not necessarily, I think, only a phenomenon amongst republican voters. I think because in Uni's lifetime, you know, and probably prior to that, Republicans were seen more as the business party.
They were the ones that were supposed to be better stewards of the economy. So I think that even Democrats fall for that meme as well. In a sense, when Republicans are in power a lot. I mean, think about it, when Trump was in office just the last, you know, president, administration, I mean, I knew people that were Democrats, they would say, yeah, yeah, the economy's doing great. And whether it was or not, you know, it's just people get caught up into certain narratives and so, and so.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: But to, I mean, Trump's credit, I mean, like, there's a lot of negative you can say about Trump. A lot of negative I can say about Trump. But he did focus a lot on trying to make people feel like things are great.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:37:33] Speaker A: You know, he talks all the time about like, oh, things are great. You know, this is it. And so that kind of stuff matters. And that does work to focus your energy on that.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: He did a good job. You're right. It's a very good point. You make. He did a great job of making people feel a certain way when he was in charge. And what's interesting is he's very powerful man in that way because as an ex president, he's making people feel a certain way now because he's still very popular. And so I think that's where we go back to, like you're saying about the system being healthy, the system needing to be in an equilibrium.
This is where an unprecedented waters too, because every prior president, prior to Mister Trump has either been totally silent and let their, the next person just work without the distraction or like we saw in the recent, you know, in our lifetime between, let's say, the Clintons and the Bush family or the Bushes and the Obamas have been publicly kind of supportive of, of the next person in line. And so it's interesting because many of the people making the economic decisions, remember this is the beauty of us and this is the danger to our system really is trying to make it about the people. Like one man at the top. That's the beauty of the american system, is that it's about the system. Remember, just like other aspects of our system, like the Justice Department, the FBI director that's currently there was selected by the former president, not this president. Same with the Fed chair, Mister Powell. The chairman of the Federal Reserve was appointed by Donald Trump, not by Joe Biden. And many of the people, like on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the congressional, sorry, not Senate judiciary. The Finance committees and the congressional committees were there before Mister Biden was president. So again, the system is the one that needs to be healthy and not about these individuals, because individuals come and go. That's why our system's been around for 250 years.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: But, and I mean that's, people's do tend to focus more on the individuals, you know, by and large, I mean, that's kind of just the human nature of it. We're to, it is to our detriment, you know, and then to your point, most of the, at least in our lifetime, the leadership haven't made it about themselves. Like, that's a different thing about Trump, one that I would consider a negative than make it, he makes it about himself and the system gets lost into that, you know, and so, you know, it's just, you know, it's where we are right now. You know, I do want to, like, just briefly, you know, I want to get to our second topic, but just I wanted to ask you, you know, like in your mind, you know, if you could sum it up, like, what do you think the numbers really do say about the economy? Like what, when, you know, like when you see what's happening, you know, you look at the sentiment, but you also look at what's actually happening. You know, what's your big takeaway?
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah, now there's a few. So I'm going to look at some notes here. I mean, one is two weeks ago, economic data came out and the economy was growing at a rate of 4.9% annually. So that is very good.
[00:40:35] Speaker A: One point on that, by the way. This is like the economy is growing by four plus percent. That's notable because what we're doing, you know, you mentioned zero sum before the economy, and by and large doesn't have to be a zero sum game. And in fact, the point of the kind of economy that we run is that it's constantly growing. And that's the number you just gave basically, is that the economy is still growing and so we want to keep growing the pie. And now, and when I get to my point, I'll talk about what we want to do with that pie. But, you know, we do want to keep growing the pie, and we're successfully doing that, so that means something's going right.
[00:41:08] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think a lot more people are in positions of prosperity with I think, and we don't realize that. So we have a record number of millionaires in this country right now. We have a record number of mortgages that are paid off. Almost 40% of all mortgages or homes don't have mortgages, which is a record in the United States history. The amount of people that own stock. I think this is where it gets a little bit into the psychology part, because I saw an interesting stat. But from 1989 to now, the percentage of people that own stocks in the United States has more than doubled. So what happens is, again, out of sight, out of mind, when your house went down by 50%, or if you, let's say you had an investment property that was a rental property, if it went down by 50%, between zero eight and 2010, people weren't thinking about selling those if they were producing income. One reason is because you didn't have to watch the value of that, of the property fall on tv every day, that might have made you more nervous and anxious. And I think that now that we have the smartphones where we can buy stocks and bitcoin and all this stuff, and when the markets do what it did last year like this, the stock markets were down between 20 and 33%, depending on the index. You look at more people than 30, 40 years ago just have that in their face, and they're watching their own money go down, and that just doesn't feel good. So I think there's some of that psychology that's just real minimum, because it's.
[00:42:38] Speaker A: Not necessarily going down straight. They're watching their money fluctuate.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:42:42] Speaker A: Like they're seeing it go up and down. Up and down.
[00:42:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:44] Speaker A: When it goes up, or I say when it goes down, you feel it a little more viscerally than when it goes up. You know, like it sticks with you more when it goes down.
[00:42:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's a conversation I've been having with people recently, which is, as of right now, the market hit a high back in late December of 21, and here we are in November of 23. So we're about to be two years where the market has not been able to recover. So you're right, James. It feels like for a lot of people with 401 ks, fidelity and e trade accounts and all that just, I'm not doing anything. My money's treading water. And it feels, because remember, as humans, it's easy to compare what happened recently off of the heels of a decade where it felt like every year generally your money went up a bit, right? You can look at your statements and people were positive when you turned on CNBC and Bloomberg, they were largest people.
[00:43:33] Speaker A: Are negative market in history.
[00:43:35] Speaker B: So I think that has a big effect on people's psychology and feelings.
And I'll hand it back here. And this is a whole other conversation, but the stock market is what's called a leading indicator. So the stock market is already forecasting troubles ahead, which makes it feel a bit disconnected because like I said, the GDP right now and the economic numbers seem very good. So people kind of say, well, if I'm seeing all these stats, how come my portfolio is down? And that, again, creates a bit of a dissonance and distrust that people have just with all this stuff. Like, well, you keep telling me it's good, but everything, when I open my account, it doesn't feel good.
[00:44:13] Speaker A: So we'll sum up your point then, is that it's complicated. It's complicated like the economy itself. I mean, and you can imagine if you're just in the United States, you're.
[00:44:22] Speaker B: Three, I want to be told it's easy and simple.
[00:44:25] Speaker A: So the numbers try to boil it down, but the numbers are, they're not going to capture everything. And to me, I think the numbers give us a picture that indicates that at broad strokes what we're trying to accomplish is being accomplished. So that's a positive. But I do think at all times there needs to be more effort being made in order to make sure that the spoils are being distributed throughout society in a way that makes sense. And that's something, that's the other piece about this, is that if the economy's booming but the spoils are all being concentrated at or near the top, then you are going to have large numbers of people that just aren't. They're like, no, this is not, I'm, you know, living, I'm down to mere sustenance, you know, like just, you know, like nothing's different from me from five years or ten years ago. All this booming stuff, some of that is the nature of, okay, well, let's figure out how to get involved in all the stuff that's moving. But some of it is just the system does need to bring everybody along with it, you know, like and that's the beauty of different parts of the american history. When you had like fifties and sixties and you create this large middle class and so forth, that's not something that happens organically. There has to be effort and regulation that does that. But that creates for a better and more just society, as we've observed, and allows us to avoid some of the social and political kind of upheavals that tend to get societies when things, like I said, when they get too high or too concentrated or get too low and too, too desperate. So, but I do want to get us to our second topic today. The second topic, something you shot over my way, which was very interesting, and I didn't think it was news. I was like, oh, what? I remember learning about this. And that's just that the Vikings are, you know, are thought to have made it to the Americas in the years, you know, or decades or centuries leading up to when Columbus came. But apparently that was, from what I understand now, that was, that was kind of legend or kind of, you know, word of mouth type of things. It hadn't been confirmed, but now it's been confirmed in terms of looking at some of the wood that was being used in, you know, in Greenland or Iceland and so forth by the Vikings and that they were making the jump all the way over. So what was your reaction to seeing this? I mean, because this we so much, you know, is, you know, of kind of our modern myth is about Columbus sailing the ocean blue. And, you know, it's particularly in the west, you know, in terms of what he did and then opening up the west to kind of connect with the rest of the world, so to speak.
But, you know, so what was your thought on this kind of, you know, this revelation.
[00:46:52] Speaker B: To me, I was actually really fascinated with this. Like you said, it's not the first I've heard that Vikings and certain Europeans had made it to North America prior to Columbus, but it was a good reminder. And then, like you said, that's one thing I find fascinating. Quick digression, which is the continued acceleration in technology, is allowing scientists, archaeologists, to really discover a lot more. So, like you're saying the ability to break down the DNA of certain species of timber is how they're able to now see, okay, this, this timber really actually originated in North America. So how to get over here. Yeah, somebody.
Yeah, correct. Yeah, exactly. And, and they can also find evidence that they were harvesting them, farming them, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, to me, I think we're going to continue to learn more as scientific technology improves and just the ability to discover these cool things about human history. And so the other thing that it reminded me was history is written by the winner.
And, you know, unfortunately for the Vikings, at some point their power dissipated and they were no longer, you know, the big dogs on the european continent. So their story got lost to history. And it's. And it's. I find it very interesting because it's a very rich story. And so one of the things that I think it made me realize in thinking about it is because we have so many conversations in the United States now about history, right. And whose history can be told. And we have. Now we live in a state where they have banned certain books in schools and they have made it, I don't say illegal, but, you know, teachers are getting fired for teaching certain aspects of our history as a country. And some of the reasons given are.
[00:48:43] Speaker A: That, well, no, there's a point. A point to add to there. The books are being banned not because they're not accurate. You know, they are historically accurate. That's not being contended. It's just about the way it makes people feel correct.
[00:48:53] Speaker B: And so that's what I was going to get at is because they don't want to have certain kids, the perception that certain kids might get offended by hearing. And I thought about, you know, where. About those poor viking kids that didn't get their ancestors story told in the 1617 hundreds in Europe and all that. And, you know, and that's really what. Then I'll pass it back in reading, and I got some stuff to share, which I found pretty fascinating.
It was a good reminder that Europeans are not a monolith, you know, again, we in this country reduce a lot of things. I won't say us in this country. I'm sure everybody does this. We reduce things. Right? Like, a lot of people think Africa is one country just full of black people or that, you know, Asia just has China there, and there's, like, they don't think about Taiwan. Whether one country or other cultures.
[00:49:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Not whether one country. Just a monolith, though. Like, they wouldn't necessarily know. Oh, there you have the eastern Africans. You're looking like Ethiopians versus, like, a nigerian, a western, like.
[00:49:45] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:49:45] Speaker A: And how different they are, you know, so to speak.
[00:49:47] Speaker B: Yeah. And reading and getting reminded about the Vikings and that history was like, wow, man, Europe had such a rich and diverse cultural scene before, you know, the spread of Christianity and all that. And it just really fascinating all the different pockets and then how sophisticated the Vikings really were. So, to me, it was very interesting.
[00:50:07] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, to me, the big takeaway was because there's also been reports and studies into whether, like, Africans made it to South America or Central America or whether Polynesians made it on the Pacific coast, on the other side, just different cultures that had contact with the Americas. But what I think Columbus does still remain a kind of a turning point. And the. The. What I would say for an obvious reason, which is that when Columbus came, it was a decision to not just interact a little bit and then go about your merry way. It was like, hey, we just need to make this ours, you know? And so I think the Viking, this. This Vikings evidence that they were in the Americas doesn't up in that part at all, because they were. They didn't decide, hey, you know, let's go make quip this area in Quebec, because they have these trees, let's go make it ours. You know, let's go kill the people that are there or subjugate them, and then, you know, make it ours. So some of it is just the nature of that culture. You know, the culture that Columbus was a part of, which was about, you know, spreading the religion, you know, or at least under the guise of spreading the religion, growing the treasury of, you know, the Spanish, you know, or whatever, are all the, you know, competing european powers versus the Vikings, you know, were in more of an exploration mode. I'm sure that, you know, the Vikings, their story about the Vikings and, you know, kind of the things they did when they'd show up sometimes, but it wasn't a sense of, we need to control this other area, so we need to go and change it, so to speak, so that piece about it stands out like that. If we would have found out that the Vikings sent raiding parties and settlements and, like, that would, to me, would be a bigger. That would upend more of the understanding we have at present than this. But I do find it interesting, though, and when I learned about this in the past or just, you know, that this was a thing or there possibly was a thing, the thing that stood out to me, just looking at the map, is that it seems like it would be much easier for the Vikings to get to the Americas because they're hopping. There's Iceland, there's Greenland, and then when we get to Greenland, you're not that far. There's not that much water now. There's more ice up there. The sea is probably treacherous, but open sea, with the kind of technology they had, open sea was tough already anyway.
They didn't have radar stuff like that, looking at where a storm was, hey, let's go around this storm. Or, like they were just going out there on a wing and a prayer, so to speak, or I guess, on a, you know, and then the shipping of prayer. So, you know, like, there's still that risk anyway, you know, like. But ultimately, I think that it's always good to have a better and more broad understanding of history. So, I mean, I'm all in favor of it, but it didn't to me, upend as much as, you know, like, I would. I would think that it could be seen as upending our present understanding.
[00:52:46] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think it would be nice if we continue to explore this type of history. I mean, I found just reading about the Vikings fascinating. I mean, number one is they only were seems like around for about 300 years in terms of their real power. So the fact that they're still remembered throughout history says a lot. Like you said, understanding the scandinavian coastline, you know, those areas of Sweden, Denmark, all that. I mean, that's some serious seas. So to be able to navigate those kind of seas and that type of ocean, again, these aren't because they lost in history.
Others wrote about them, and of course, the people they were invading didn't like them. That's why we think of them as barbarians and all this stuff. But clearly they had a very sophisticated culture and the ability, I mean, if you can build ships and you can have people that can spend time, you know, navigating and learning how to do all that, that means someone's got to feed them, someone's got to clothe them, which means then you have to have a robust farming and agricultural situation going on. You gotta have a lot of trade and supply chains, meaning you have then relationships with your neighbors. So they were a very advanced society. And I learned, actually, a bit instead, I'll just give some of the nerdy stuff here. One is, they served as mercenaries for the byzantine empire, which was the empire that kind of took over after the Romans.
And I had no idea of some of the extent to which they went east. I knew about, like you said, we kind of knew about this stuff. With North America, archaeological evidence that Vikings reached Baghdad, the center of the islamic empire, and the Norse regularly traded with. I didn't know that seal fat was used as a boat sealant. So, remember, seals don't live in the Middle east. So how did the Turks, the Greeks, the Egyptians get the supplies to make their own ships? And that's what I mean, this is global trade, or we talked about in the first part that, you know, the world was shut down in 2020. It was the first time we could shut it down. But it's not. This global trade thing is older than I think a lot of people want to really believe. And so it's just, to me, fascinating that the Vikings were in the Middle east and these other parts of the world. And they were also, I learned a lot here. They estimate that 1.25 million european slaves were transported from Europe over a 200 year period, from about the 10th century to the 12th century to the Middle east. So slave trading was huge way that the Vikings made money and traded with the Arabs. And that goes back to a whole other part of history. Whereas if you look at this now, it's a bit of speculation here because it's been speculated that if you look at hieroglyphs from ancient Egypt and all that a few thousand years ago, most of people are our complexion or darker. You know, they're more darker skin, and there's a lot of assimilation. If you had over a million Europeans brought to the Middle East a thousand years ago, that that mixing was real. And that's why if you look at places like Iran, Afghanistan, even some Palestinians and Lebanese, they have blue eyes, they have green eyes. You know, there's a lot of european traces within a lot of Middle eastern people today. And that's all from the Vikings being a big part of bringing more Europeans through slavery. And it was chattel slavery, like we think of in America. And that's why it's interesting for us as Americans, we can't comprehend white Europeans as slaves in the same way that Africans were. But that's what Europeans were doing to everybody, not just Africans.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: Well, I mean, that was, you know, it was the time, you know, it was the time period that it was, you know, like. And that's the.
Before you had, like, I mean, you had the Vikings, and they were doing their thing, so to speak. You know, a lot of the continental, the lower part of the continent was still kind of in a dark age kind of mode. They, you know, that was considered, like the Romans considered those, you know, those types of people, the. The barbarians, so to speak. But, I mean, I agree with you that the viking history is fascinating. I mean, again, that's stuff that I remember, like, just even learning in, you know, elementary school, middle school and all that, just like the. The things that. The tribulations and trials and the adventures of Eric the Red and Leif Erikson, who was the Ericsson, was apparently Eric the red son. And. But I mean, that's the. I think the thing we learn about them the most at that time, and that's why, to me, this is very believable, is the idea that they were a very seafaring people. And you talk about agriculture. From what I recall that with that, it was a lot of aquaculture, you know, like, from where they were and as far as how they fed.
[00:57:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:22] Speaker A: So ultimately, though, like, it creating more kind of perspective in history is always helpful in terms of understanding both, you know, like, what happened and then what we're dealing with now. And it's helpful a lot of times when you're looking at some of the challenges that we have now as far as to look at. Okay, well, with this, all of this stuff isn't new. It may be on a different scale, but it's not totally new. So looking at the Vikings and their exploration and they're going places and how they interacted with other societies, there may be things we can learn from that because we still have, while the world interacts, particularly through the Internet and then with airplanes and stuff, you can get around a lot more. There's still a lot we can do better in terms of these interactions, you know, to add from an economic and trade standpoint, which is where a lot of these interactions happen to continue to grow the pie, you know, worldwide so that more people can live, you know, live and live good lives, you know, so to speak. So I think that their approach is something, as we learn more about it may be something that we can, you know, adopt parts of, and you'll kind of make our own commercial and trade approach better as we cross different cultures. So.
[00:58:26] Speaker B: But from that, the last thing for me was, oh, I was just gonna say real quick that I learned that the Vikings actually were mostly slavic. Again, learning that all really mixed up. Yeah. There was a lot of migration from eastern Europe into Scandinavia before the 10th century. So a lot of that, you know, interesting. But you know what I was gonna say to finish this off, maybe what happened to the Vikings if that Eric the red fell off his bike?
[00:58:59] Speaker A: I mean, he lost it. He couldn't inspire the people anymore, so. But, no, I think we can wrap it up.
[00:59:06] Speaker B: I think we should. Yeah.
[00:59:08] Speaker A: But we appreciate everybody, for joining us on this episode of call. Like I see it. Subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think. Send it to a friend.
[00:59:15] Speaker B: Till next time, I'm James Keys Tune, Dave and Lana.
[00:59:19] Speaker A: All right, we'll talk to you next time.
