Latest / Combat Veteran News / Livestream: Is America Entering a DEBT CRISIS?!

Transcript

Livestream: Is America Entering a DEBT CRISIS?! · Combat Veteran News

• 0:02
  Oh, it's lukewarm though. Yaoza.
• 0:05
  Uh, cuz I got Dutch Brothers coffee and
• 0:07
  you know, I like Dutch Brothers. It's a
• 0:10
  ground coffee. I make it at home. Uh,
• 0:14
  but you know, what's your favorite
• 0:16
  coffee shop where you guys are? We're
• 0:18
  letting people trickle in. So, this is
• 0:19
  this is what we do. We talk about random
• 0:29
  Uh, let's see.
• 0:36
  So,
• 0:39
  the vertical screen,
• 0:45
  huh? It's asking me if I want a vertical
• 0:47
  stream. I'm like, not really. Not really
• 1:04
  actually. Well,
• 1:09
  okay. Where are you guys coming in from?
• 1:15
  Actually,
• 1:23
  here one sec. I'm going to reheat my
• 1:24
  coffee.
• 2:43
  All
• 2:54
  right, I'm back. All right, I'm back.
• 2:58
  Welcome back, guys.
• 3:05
  The DMV. Oh my god, somebody's tuning in
• 3:07
  from the DMV. Bro, bro,
• 3:12
  I just feel bad.
• 3:16
  Sorry you guys got to listen to me sip
• 3:17
  my coffee and coffee.
• 3:21
  There we go.
• 3:25
  Americans are reheating coffee instead
• 3:27
  of making fresh. Listen guys, listen. I
• 3:29
  I don't know if you guys have picked
• 3:31
  this up, but I'm like not a guy who does
• 3:35
  fancy. Uh, you know, I I I'm a
• 3:41
  like
• 3:43
  also I'm a parent, so like what happens
• 3:46
  is I make coffee, I pull up my lips, and
• 3:48
  a child screams with a a manufactured
• 3:52
  crisis. And then I put the coffee down.
• 3:54
  I deal with,
• 3:56
  you know, my brother stole the balloon
• 3:58
  or whatever and we resolve the crisis
• 4:00
  and I go back to my coffee and now it's
• 4:03
  now it's room temperature.
• 4:06
  Coffee will always be better than gum.
• 4:08
  Good choice. Not absolutely not true.
• 4:10
  Factually incorrect. Um, if if I was in
• 4:14
  the army, for example, and I was working
• 4:17
  a a swing shift in a patrol car or I was
• 4:21
  uh on a on a field exercise, um, coffee
• 4:25
  would be incredibly inconvenient.
• 4:28
  M coffee is not fine. We don't need to.
• 4:30
  This is a channel that is that grounds
• 4:32
  ourselves to reality. M coffee is better
• 4:35
  than um trying to make coffee out of
• 4:38
  sand.
• 4:44
  Exactly. Re revitalizing abandoned
• 4:47
  coffee again. This guy has parent. This
• 4:50
  guy has kids, right? Energy gum.
• 4:52
  Exactly. Even Even the military was
• 4:55
  like, "Listen, let's give these guys
• 4:56
  some energy gum." So, if you haven't
• 4:58
  bought your strike gum, what are you
• 4:59
  doing with your life? re I mean, you
• 5:02
  know, I I I I hope
• 5:05
  your life is so chill that you feel no
• 5:09
  need to have energy gum. But for the
• 5:12
  rest of us that have to really get after
• 5:15
  it every day, strike gums for you.
• 5:23
  That's right. Kenneth Maddox gets it. He
• 5:25
  was in the military. Coffee is
• 5:27
  expensive.
• 5:30
  Coffee tastes like dirt. Yeah. Yeah.
• 5:34
  Yeah. Bad coffee tastes like dirt, dude.
• 5:38
  Andrew pudding with the instant coffee.
• 5:40
  I remember they used to do the dip where
• 5:42
  you take a the um little paper napkin
• 5:45
  that could also kind of be used to
• 5:46
  filter. You roll the freeze-dried coffee
• 5:48
  up and you put it in your lip. The old
• 5:50
  Ranger dip. That was revolting cuz
• 5:54
  freeze-dried coffee tastes like metal.
• 5:55
  It tastes like aluminum shavings. But if
• 5:58
  you if you if you use the non-dairy
• 6:00
  creamer and the sugar they give you, it
• 6:01
  it becomes um drinkable.
• 6:08
  My wife said, "Bought a crate last week.
• 6:09
  It was good." And everyone at my work
• 6:10
  liked it, too. I love that. I love when
• 6:14
  I I hear more and more stories like
• 6:16
  that. Like when people give away Strike
• 6:18
  Gum and C other caffeine heads chew it,
• 6:21
  they go, "Damn, this stuff This stuff
• 6:22
  slaps."
• 6:26
  Dang. Coffee tastes like dirt is an
• 6:28
  insult to dirt. That's true. It tastes
• 6:30
  like lowgrade dirt, not the high-grade
• 6:33
  dirt.
• 6:37
  Freeze-dried is better than spray dried.
• 6:39
  Oh yeah, I've heard about the spray
• 6:41
  dried coffee. Oh my god, that sounds
• 6:42
  awful. Sounds awful.
• 6:45
  You know what else is awful, guys?
• 6:48
  America's debt crisis, baby. I know this
• 6:51
  is like clearly not that popular a
• 6:52
  topic. People want things blowing up and
• 6:54
  and and we could do that, but um rest
• 6:57
  assured the debt crisis is things
• 6:59
  blowing up.
• 7:04
  Should we talk about it?
• 7:06
  Should we wait a little bit?
• 7:10
  Let people filter on in.
• 7:14
  Starbucks makes great instant coffee.
• 7:16
  All right. Well, this is news to me.
• 7:20
  Nest Cafe Gold better than Nest Cafe
• 7:22
  Red. I actually heard originally when
• 7:23
  Emma Chamberlain launched her coffee
• 7:25
  that that was her shtick. She wanted to
• 7:27
  make really high quality instant coffee.
• 7:29
  Um
• 7:31
  and you know I I also heard Chamberlain
• 7:34
  Coffee I remember a while ago was facing
• 7:37
  bankruptcy.
• 7:40
  Uh wow look at this. No news at all
• 7:43
  about Chamberlain coffee since 2022.
• 7:48
  Uh 2025 last year March MH's fundraising
• 7:51
  scramble to keep her coffee buzz going.
• 7:54
  Uh
• 7:56
  yeah. Wow. There's been nothing.
• 8:02
  New wave of innovation 2023. What's
• 8:04
  what's going on? Is Chamberlain coffee
• 8:06
  still around?
• 8:08
  This is the real question. Uh let's see.
• 8:10
  I bet I bet a YouTuber has covered it.
• 8:14
  So, Emma doesn't make any money off her
• 8:15
  coffee business 2023. Though, though
• 8:19
  [snorts] Emma Jim loses money selling
• 8:21
  coffee. I want to be clear. Uh
• 8:27
  the
• 8:31
  again, how much sold a million dollars
• 8:32
  in coffee in 30 minutes? All these can
• 8:34
  be true. Um
• 8:37
  profitability challenges.
• 8:40
  I want to point out that the the these
• 8:43
  things can all be true, right? I mean,
• 8:45
  Strike Gum, I didn't take a dime from
• 8:47
  Strike Gum for the first
• 8:51
  three years we were in business because
• 8:53
  everything we made went into ordering
• 8:54
  new product or advertising,
• 8:58
  you know, social media, trying to get
• 9:00
  our and and also like we it took a long
• 9:03
  time for us to find a logistics system
• 9:05
  that worked for us.
• 9:13
  Oh, Acorn, you guys are stealing my
• 9:15
  thunder. Talking about the jet to GDP
• 9:17
  ratio and not just the size, but having
• 9:19
  people that actually want to buy your
• 9:21
  bonds,
• 9:23
  right?
• 9:28
  Oh man, you guys are you guys damn, this
• 9:30
  has truly become a market show, right?
• 9:34
  MT talking about the ratios of GDP to
• 9:37
  debt. Oh man, why am I even making these
• 9:39
  videos if you guys know exactly if you
• 9:41
  guys are already informed consumers of
• 9:44
  macroeconomic data? I mean, it warms my
• 9:47
  heart actually. It's not just the
• 9:48
  coffee.
• 9:53
  I'm like a proud dad for you guys to be
• 9:55
  like, "Guys, is it fiscally
• 9:57
  irresponsible?" You're like, "Yeah, it
• 9:59
  is. It is.
• 10:08
  Yeah.
• 10:12
  Oh, countries dumping US debt is another
• 10:17
  big problem.
• 10:24
  You're going to talk about that, too.
• 10:26
  Okay. Should we just crack into it?
• 10:29
  That's right, MT. because my viewers are
• 10:30
  focused, locked in, cognitively sharp,
• 10:36
  thanks to their high per capita strike
• 10:38
  gum consumption. Okay.
• 10:42
  Okay. We're going to look at one more
• 10:43
  thing, right? We're going to look up
• 10:45
  caffeine consumption per capita
• 10:50
  by country. Actually, we're gonna we're
• 10:51
  going to even have more fun. We're going
• 10:52
  to go we're going to have Gemini do
• 10:54
  this, right?
• 10:56
  We're here for AI. Okay. Uh
• 11:01
  compare
• 11:03
  please plot
• 11:07
  countries
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  capita
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  caffeine consumption
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  against
• 11:19
  worker productivity.
• 11:22
  Okay, let's see.
• 11:24
  So this is what I want. Yeah, exactly.
• 11:26
  We're going to do a caffeine to worker
• 11:28
  productivity ratio. That's that's what
• 11:30
  this is. That's what we're going to do
• 11:31
  here because this is this is what we do.
• 11:35
  Uh while I'm procrastinating actually
• 11:36
  talking about the video, well, I'm
• 11:37
  giving you guys a chance to to to you
• 11:39
  know, pop on in,
• 11:41
  right? Oh, look at this. Shout out to
• 11:43
  Gemini. You know, sometimes AI most of
• 11:45
  the time AI lets me down and then
• 11:47
  sometimes it absolutely doesn't. So,
• 11:49
  this is uh pouring out the workforce
• 11:51
  during the results of more GDP.
• 11:53
  Macronomic data is a bit more nuance.
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  Here's a look at how different countries
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  stack up when comparing coffee
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  consumption against labor productivity
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  measured as GDP per hour worked. Right?
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  And it shows an overalling positive
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  trend. Scandinavian countries are high
• 12:06
  high coffee intake, strong economic
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  output, uh correlation. The real drivers
• 12:11
  again disposable income,
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  uh
• 12:15
  cultural habits,
• 12:18
  right,
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  and breaks. So here, let's take a look.
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  Oh, that's funny. It's literally an
• 12:26
  existing data from freconometrics.
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  Uh,
• 12:31
  okay.
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  So, here we go. This shows low
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  consumption countries with really low
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  GDPs per hour worked. Armenia,
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  Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Russia,
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  Turkey up here at the very top. And it
• 12:46
  says actually what's funny is that is
• 12:49
  that you have some really interesting
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  ones. Norway massively profitable
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  workers skewed by the oil basically
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  because remember oil is basically free
• 13:01
  GDP because it comes out of the ground
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  you sell it and it requires basically no
• 13:06
  work it's a raw material right kind of
• 13:09
  Luxembourg again another example where
• 13:12
  um uh tax havens right having a
• 13:15
  favorable tax code and attracting
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  wealthy investors is a is a is a way to
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  boost GDP without a lot of um worker
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  inputs and that's because
• 13:27
  like it it only it doesn't cost that
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  long to set up a financial sector that
• 13:31
  is favorable to these wealthy companies
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  and a lot of times like a EU company
• 13:36
  will be headquarters in Luxembourg for
• 13:37
  tax and regulatory reasons but they sell
• 13:39
  throughout the EU so a company that does
• 13:41
  90% of it sales in France might still be
• 13:43
  headquartered in Luxembourg and it
• 13:45
  artificially appear to make Luxembourg
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  look more productive than it is even
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  though the salesmen are in France the
• 13:51
  products are and France etc. So Norway,
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  Luxembourg, right? But you can see
• 13:55
  Belgium, Germany, France, Austria.
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  Interestingly enough, USA low on the
• 14:00
  coffee spectrum unusually high actually
• 14:04
  an outlier in terms of coffee
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  consumption per product for
• 14:08
  productivity. And Finland pure coffee
• 14:11
  energy
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  not terribly productive. And again,
• 14:14
  everybody above this line of 50,000 GDP
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  per hour worked is a developed country.
• 14:20
  Okay, UK, Spain, Canada, Switzerland,
• 14:25
  Iceland, Finland. These are very
• 14:26
  productive, right?
• 14:29
  Jorge Ortiz, thanks for the five. I
• 14:31
  don't agree with all your statements,
• 14:32
  but I listen and watch your vids because
• 14:33
  you want the best for us. Uh, that's
• 14:36
  what I want. I don't want you guys to
• 14:37
  like, you know, the world would be a
• 14:38
  more boring place if you just re
• 14:40
  regurgitated what an influencer says.
• 14:43
  And I'm not perfect. I get things wrong
• 14:44
  all the time. Um,
• 14:48
  GG. How does Hydro Quebec work? I have
• 14:50
  no idea what that question even is. I
• 14:52
  don't know what Hydro Quebec is. Um,
• 14:57
  but again, I try really hard to be
• 15:00
  honest and not and and I don't shill for
• 15:04
  a a I don't show for an ideology. I
• 15:06
  don't shill for an entity. Um,
• 15:10
  you know, obviously sponsors flee me
• 15:13
  like it's going out of style. Most of my
• 15:15
  revenue comes from your support on
• 15:17
  combet news and
• 15:20
  YouTube AdSense when you guys watch ads
• 15:22
  and strike sales. That's it. Um, so
• 15:26
  you know, all of it is is about my
• 15:28
  relationship to you guys, not my
• 15:29
  relationship to a corporate sponsor. Um,
• 15:31
  I try really hard to show the evidence
• 15:33
  to break down for you guys why I say and
• 15:35
  believe the things I do, but I get
• 15:37
  things wrong, right? Trust me, if I had
• 15:40
  the ability to completely and
• 15:43
  objectively discern macroeconomic
• 15:45
  reality, I would be a way wealthier
• 15:48
  trader, okay? I would be like some guy
• 15:51
  managing a bajillion dollars in in
• 15:53
  funds, right? Um,
• 16:01
  yeah. Yeah. And there's also like even
• 16:02
  if you agree with my analysis, yeah,
• 16:03
  there's also the subjectivity of like I
• 16:05
  want what's best for America, but like
• 16:07
  my perception of what constitutes best
• 16:10
  might be different from other people's.
• 16:12
  You know, again, I'm I'm a classic like
• 16:17
  um
• 16:19
  like I'm a I'm an old school liberty
• 16:21
  guy. And that means like human
• 16:24
  flourishing, individual rights and
• 16:26
  liberties, giving humans the ability to
• 16:28
  make meaningful choices about how their
• 16:30
  lives are lived, freedom, right? And you
• 16:34
  know, there's a lot of people that don't
• 16:35
  believe that, that don't believe that
• 16:36
  that is conducive to human flourishing.
• 16:38
  Um,
• 16:40
  and and so they too might want what's
• 16:42
  best for America, but their perception
• 16:44
  of what's best is different.
• 16:48
  Uh, okay. Here's here's what I think is
• 16:51
  also kind of interesting. Hong Kong,
• 16:53
  unusually high GDP per capita, unusually
• 16:56
  low coffee consumption. Same with
• 16:58
  Australia, which is interesting because
• 16:59
  I've heard Australian coffee slaps.
• 17:02
  And the UK, well, the UK is a tea
• 17:04
  country, so it's basically like they're
• 17:05
  they're still caffeinating, but you have
• 17:08
  to drink a lot more black tea to offset
• 17:10
  coffee.
• 17:12
  And Japan, Japan is also unique. Uh
• 17:15
  because it's, you see, this is what I
• 17:16
  love. Japanese workers are notorious for
• 17:19
  working really long hours, but that is
• 17:23
  not each hour is not very productive,
• 17:25
  which is fascinating, right? In fact,
• 17:29
  the average Japanese worker produces no
• 17:31
  more economic output than an Italian.
• 17:34
  And if you've ever been to Italy, you
• 17:36
  know the Italians are in no hurry to
• 17:38
  work hard,
• 17:42
  which that should blow your mind.
• 17:45
  Ephraim, thanks for the two. Agree with
• 17:47
  you. 80% you do have a western bias.
• 17:51
  Yeah, I think that's part of the value
• 17:53
  system we talk about and the fact that
• 17:56
  like yes, I absolutely acknowledge I
• 17:58
  cannot consume Russian media because I
• 18:00
  mean I wouldn't want to but but it's
• 18:02
  it's heavily controlled but I can't
• 18:04
  consume media in um other languages uh
• 18:08
  because both I cannot understand it.
• 18:10
  It's literally not comprehensible and
• 18:12
  also I don't have the literacy like the
• 18:15
  media literacy to discern fake from
• 18:17
  real. Like for a long time I thought TVP
• 18:19
  News was a scam site was like a spam fly
• 18:23
  by night site and then somebody told me
• 18:25
  no it's actually a like nationally
• 18:27
  recognized and extremely professional
• 18:29
  news outlet in Poland. That's the kind
• 18:32
  of mistake that I just I just don't know
• 18:33
  how to do and I've been burned. Right.
• 18:34
  There was a time um when the Romanian
• 18:37
  elections when one of the candidates got
• 18:39
  um uh invalidated like got scrapped
• 18:43
  because they were found to have been
• 18:44
  funded almost entirely by Russia, a
• 18:46
  foreign adversary of uh all of Europe.
• 18:50
  Um there was a fake news outlet that
• 18:53
  looked really legit that issued this
• 18:55
  like takedown saying that no, the party
• 18:58
  that had been cancelled wasn't actually
• 19:00
  funded by Russia. and it sounded really
• 19:01
  legit and like they got me. And um and
• 19:05
  again, if I was a native Romanian or or
• 19:07
  deeply involved in Romanian, like the
• 19:09
  Romanian media landscape, I would have
• 19:11
  known right away, hey, this isn't a
• 19:12
  major news outlet. This doesn't do legit
• 19:14
  reporting. This is just fake. So, that's
• 19:17
  that's a bias that like I acknowledge I
• 19:20
  have, you know, um and and there's not a
• 19:23
  ton I can do about it.
• 19:26
  Yeah. This is what I think is
• 19:27
  fascinating though. Like again, some of
• 19:29
  these stats are so interesting where
• 19:30
  Italy, I mean, just an incredibly And
• 19:33
  it's also funny cuz people love to go to
• 19:35
  Japan and be like, "So modern mag lev
• 19:38
  blah blah blah." And you go to Italy and
• 19:40
  you're like, "Damn, this place is
• 19:42
  falling apart." Not not northern Italy.
• 19:45
  Northern Italy is beautiful, but
• 19:46
  southern Italy, you're like, damn, this
• 19:48
  place is like a criminal enterprise
• 19:49
  masquerading as a region. Um, and the
• 19:53
  fact that these guys are equally
• 19:54
  productive countries is fascinating.
• 19:58
  Also that Hong Kong and Trinidad and
• 20:01
  Tobago comparable though again Hong Kong
• 20:04
  special administrative region Trinidad
• 20:06
  and Tobago another kind of Caribbean tax
• 20:09
  haven. Also interesting Korea another
• 20:12
  land of like if incredible work hours
• 20:15
  and not that good a use of them.
• 20:18
  Right. Republic of Korea and Greece also
• 20:21
  one of the notoriously rep by reputation
• 20:24
  lazy workers on earth. just absolutely
• 20:26
  the same productivity. Now I bet this is
• 20:29
  really different in the era of like SKH
• 20:31
  Highix and Samsung. I I wonder when this
• 20:33
  is dated.
• 20:36
  This is the source from Freconomics
• 20:41
  data wrapper.
• 20:45
  Yeah, again they they point out that
• 20:47
  well
• 20:49
  I think accurately point out that some
• 20:50
  of these are just a function of like
• 20:53
  disposable income, cultural acceptance
• 20:55
  of coffee. You know,
• 21:02
  I'm in Romania and I was born here.
• 21:04
  That's cool. Hey, we have a bunch of
• 21:06
  Romanians. Yeah,
• 21:11
  Jimmy Turbo. Okay, there you go. TVP
• 21:14
  being like stridently anti-Russia. I I
• 21:18
  again that's the kind of media literacy
• 21:20
  that like I definitely have here in the
• 21:22
  United States definitely. Um you know
• 21:25
  you talk about Newsmax, you talk about
• 21:27
  the Washington Post, talk about the Wall
• 21:28
  Street Journal, right? They all have
• 21:29
  their own little like flavor. And so
• 21:31
  they're not they're they generally
• 21:34
  report with a pretty high standard most
• 21:36
  of them. Uh but
• 21:39
  you can't necessarily
• 21:42
  like let's see uh
• 21:46
  let's see
• 21:49
  here's the 2026 media bias chart right
• 21:54
  interesting. So, USA Facts, extremely
• 21:58
  reliable, extremely unbiased, which I
• 22:01
  think is fascinating, right? Uh, NPR
• 22:05
  News Now, extremely reliable, extremely
• 22:08
  unbiased. The journal, I love the
• 22:10
  journal. Love it. I think it's really
• 22:12
  good reporting. Um, they are sometimes a
• 22:15
  little bit of an apologist for the
• 22:17
  administration.
• 22:18
  um which is kind of fascinating that
• 22:21
  they actually say they skew left, but I
• 22:23
  I think that's more a function of the
• 22:26
  state of
• 22:28
  um the state of the media landscape that
• 22:31
  um what I think is actually a little bit
• 22:34
  right biasing or a little bit favorable
• 22:36
  to the administration
• 22:38
  looks left right. Air Force Times,
• 22:39
  Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Never heard
• 22:42
  of it. Barons. Uh don't know what UPI
• 22:45
  is. The Weather Channel. Yeah. Okay.
• 22:46
  Listen, the Weather Channel. I love how
• 22:48
  okay this is my favorite. This is if you
• 22:50
  want to know if you want to know that
• 22:54
  this is this is what I mean when bias
• 22:58
  um reality has a bias. When I talk about
• 23:01
  reality has a bias this is what the
• 23:03
  I mean the weather channel is seen as
• 23:06
  leftist. Why? Because they say hey man
• 23:10
  the data shows the climate is changing.
• 23:13
  See, rip current kill I mean I mean look
• 23:15
  at this biased stuff. Ripcurren kills
• 23:18
  six Florida visitors. Zero bias. Zero
• 23:20
  bias. Zero bias. Harvest recovery and
• 23:23
  risk after hurricane Michael. Biasg.
• 23:27
  Why young farmers fa heightened risk
• 23:29
  from climate change. This is seen as a
• 23:31
  negative 10 biasing. Like air pollution
• 23:35
  dangerous catmen do at cost of
• 23:36
  urbanization. Like these are extremely
• 23:40
  right. All right. Utah woman, Mega
• 23:41
  O'Neal died saving friend from ice.
• 23:43
  Planting a garden from seed is easy and
• 23:44
  you can start now. Slightly left of
• 23:47
  center, right?
• 23:49
  So, this is the kind of stuff I point
• 23:50
  out by like being like, "Hey man, the
• 23:52
  climate is changing
• 23:55
  and it's not great for young farmers."
• 23:57
  You're like, "Liberals
• 23:59
  that makes you a lib libtard." You're
• 24:02
  like, "Okay." Right? The FT is left of
• 24:04
  center. Again,
• 24:06
  you can see the reason why there's not
• 24:08
  that many like here. one. This is
• 24:10
  basically the Wall Street Journal. I'm
• 24:11
  pretty sure this is just their
• 24:12
  editorial. Wall Street Journal
• 24:14
  editorials are like pretty unhinged.
• 24:16
  News Nation again, you can see like
• 24:19
  there's just so few there's there's a
• 24:23
  real der of like legitimate reporting
• 24:25
  that sits right of center because it's
• 24:29
  honestly again reality is hard to do.
• 24:32
  Like how can you be a climate skeptic
• 24:34
  and do and and do legitimate data like
• 24:39
  sourced reporting? Do you see what I
• 24:41
  mean?
• 24:49
  Yeah. [laughter]
• 24:50
  Leftist space exploration. I love it.
• 24:53
  Yeah. This is this is the strata where I
• 24:55
  try to consume news like things
• 24:57
  researched appropriately. Foreign
• 24:59
  affairs, right? Again, I love that
• 25:01
  foreign affairs, uh, where's the
• 25:03
  Atlantic? The Atlantic,
• 25:06
  people tend to hate on it because it's
• 25:07
  like become pretty turboenterist.
• 25:10
  NPR, right? FP, Axios.
• 25:14
  Okay, I love this because Axios reports
• 25:16
  all kinds of about the
• 25:17
  administration and they're still deemed
• 25:18
  left of center because of because they
• 25:20
  source their reporting, right? The
• 25:22
  Economist, like I'm sorry, stuff like
• 25:24
  The Economist and Market Watch, these
• 25:25
  guys make their living. They because
• 25:29
  they offer actionable, accurate
• 25:31
  financial news to people whose
• 25:34
  livelihood depends on knowing it and
• 25:37
  they sit are considered left of CB, left
• 25:41
  of CBS, left of AP, left of ABC. This
• 25:43
  shit's changing. Um, and again I I I
• 25:48
  point these things out because like
• 25:51
  again the Economist, Bloomberg, Market
• 25:54
  Watch, these guys are going to lose
• 25:56
  their their their shirt if they offer
• 26:00
  they start offering instead of objective
• 26:03
  fact um about the state of the economy
• 26:06
  and markets. They start offering their
• 26:08
  audience um uh you know Timool grade
• 26:11
  political hot takes. Whoa. Interesting.
• 26:14
  Foreign affairs here, the Atlantic
• 26:16
  considered far left. Okay, interesting.
• 26:18
  I mean, all of these though, to be
• 26:20
  clear, are this is like the center of
• 26:22
  readability. Fox Business, uh, Fox News
• 26:26
  Sunday with Sharon Beam, Fox News
• 26:28
  special report with Brent Bear,
• 26:30
  uh, Christianity Today, The Dispatch
• 26:33
  podcast, right? That's as that's as much
• 26:35
  you get. Boston Herald, Quilllet, and
• 26:37
  now we get into crazy town, right? And
• 26:40
  this is, look, look at this. Fox News
• 26:43
  and RT are considered comparably
• 26:45
  right-wing. New York Post, The Epic
• 26:48
  Times, um,
• 26:51
  The Megan Kelly podcast, uh, Fox and
• 26:53
  Friends considered even more unhinged.
• 26:55
  Ben Shapiro, the all-in pod. Ah, the
• 26:58
  all-in pod and RT. This is so true
• 27:01
  because the all-in guys love uh, they
• 27:04
  carry so much water for the
• 27:05
  administration. I also love the Daily
• 27:06
  Mail here. Daily Mail has one bias which
• 27:08
  is towards crazy stuff. If it's crazy,
• 27:11
  they'll report it with very little like
• 27:15
  they're willing to play fast and loose
• 27:16
  with the truth, but they don't give a
• 27:18
  crap which side it's on. Um, but they
• 27:22
  love scaring boomers. And this is the
• 27:24
  this is the scare boomers section. You
• 27:27
  take something that's vaguely fact
• 27:28
  adjacent and you and you twist it until
• 27:31
  it terrifies boomers. Okay, I know we're
• 27:34
  supposed to be talking about other
• 27:35
  stuff, but listen, this is what we're
• 27:36
  doing. Uh
• 27:39
  uh like let me show you. Average age Fox
• 27:42
  News viewer. The average age of a Fox
• 27:45
  News viewer, buckle up for this one.
• 27:48
  68 years old. 68 years young for Fox
• 27:52
  News. MSNBC 70 years young and CNN 67
• 27:58
  years young. Okay guys, so you got to
• 28:00
  understand this is the this is the this
• 28:04
  is the um make them boomer scared tier.
• 28:09
  Okay, this is the scare scare boomer,
• 28:11
  right? Uh, again, kind of interesting
• 28:15
  that you have Okay, I love that the
• 28:17
  Intercept
• 28:19
  Wild The Intercepts like The Intercepts
• 28:22
  keeps being right,
• 28:24
  but
• 28:26
  yeah, the Intercept is one of those
• 28:27
  outlets that continually is is right
• 28:29
  about things,
• 28:31
  but they keep sounding like conspiracy
• 28:33
  theorists when they report it, right?
• 28:35
  When they're like, "Israel is pushing
• 28:36
  Trump to start a war with Iran." Like if
• 28:39
  you told me that in in January of 25,
• 28:43
  I'd be like, "Intercept, you're so full
• 28:45
  of it." Now I'm like, "Intercept, you
• 28:47
  nailed it. You nailed it."
• 28:50
  Uh, you know, if you were like, "Trump
• 28:52
  inside the Trump administration's
• 28:54
  conspiracy to take over all media,
• 28:56
  right? January of 25 intercept slop,
• 29:00
  right? August of 26, I'm like,
• 29:05
  nailed it. 100% accurate reporting.
• 29:09
  So, wait, where is Okay, PBS NewsHour.
• 29:11
  Wait, where is where's CNN and all this?
• 29:14
  Oh, CNN is here.
• 29:16
  All right. Well, what do I know?
• 29:20
  Okay, so CNN,
• 29:23
  if you ever watch CNN Oh, the website. I
• 29:25
  want to know CNN the channel.
• 29:29
  MS Now, which formerly MSNBC. Yeah, this
• 29:32
  is right. This is the scare the boomers
• 29:33
  tier, right? Scare the boomers. down
• 29:35
  here is juice the algorithm. All right.
• 29:40
  Uh
• 29:42
  Midas touch though, you know, Midas
• 29:44
  touch is pretty
• 29:47
  is is is Cho Trap House. Oh my god.
• 29:49
  Chapo Trap House. Tony Michaels. Yeah,
• 29:52
  this is this is the um the Young Turks.
• 29:56
  Where's Hassan? Is Assan on here? Assan
• 29:58
  doesn't exist. Uh,
• 30:01
  and you can see that just the Trump
• 30:04
  space is like
• 30:06
  Tim Cast, The Charlie Kirk Show, right?
• 30:09
  Uh, uh, Louder with Crowder. I don't
• 30:12
  even know who Mark Leven is. American
• 30:15
  Liberty, Alex Jones, and Before It's
• 30:17
  News.
• 30:19
  I love how even Chapo Trap House doesn't
• 30:22
  compete with Alex Jones lives in a world
• 30:24
  of of literal fiction. I love how it's
• 30:26
  like contains inaccurate or fabricated
• 30:28
  information. Okay. Only the Alex Jones
• 30:31
  show contains things that are so wrong
• 30:33
  you can literally get sued for it. O
• 30:35
  Twitchy the American spectator Hannity
• 30:39
  Newsbusters 20oint USA Zero Hedge Zero
• 30:43
  Hedge.
• 30:44
  Oh man, this is fun. This is This is
• 30:47
  funny. I want to know some of these
• 30:49
  guys. Who are these guys? Pod Save
• 30:50
  America. Okay. I love how Pod Save
• 30:52
  America and the Socialist Alternative
• 30:54
  are considered like adjacent. Like come
• 30:56
  on, guys. This this is
• 31:00
  uh
• 31:01
  okay opinion or why okay opinion pod
• 31:04
  save America I agree contains robust
• 31:06
  amounts of opinion that I won't argue
• 31:08
  with um but to be like
• 31:13
  yeah this feels like a large gap
• 31:18
  is that guy with the annoying voice. Do
• 31:19
  you know how little that narrows it
• 31:21
  down?
• 31:23
  Truth out in these times. Okay.
• 31:26
  uh NPR's code switch. I don't know what
• 31:29
  that is, but I'm fascinated that
• 31:33
  uh that the intercept is considered
• 31:36
  analysis or wide variation reliability
• 31:40
  mix of fact reporting and analysis or
• 31:42
  simple fact reporting. Right?
• 31:45
  Thorough fact reporting or factdense
• 31:47
  analysis. Right? Original fact reporting
• 31:50
  high effort doesn't exist. Doesn't
• 31:53
  exist. There is no original fact
• 31:55
  reporting with high effort, but the best
• 31:58
  you get is USA Facts, which I love USA
• 32:00
  Facts, by the way. Steve Balmer, man,
• 32:04
  talk about a talk about one of one of
• 32:06
  those billionaire projects that I just
• 32:08
  got to say. It's good. You're a rich guy
• 32:10
  and you said, "Listen, I want to put in
• 32:13
  a trust to make sure that people can
• 32:16
  access
• 32:17
  unbiased, objectively researched facts
• 32:20
  about reality."
• 32:21
  Right? Because if you can't understand
• 32:23
  reality, you can't make decisions about
• 32:24
  your world.
• 32:36
  Okay. All right. We've had a fun we had
• 32:38
  a fun jaunt into whatever that whatever
• 32:41
  that was about. Uh but let's let's talk
• 32:45
  about some other stuff. Let's talk
• 32:46
  about, you know, is the USA becoming a
• 32:49
  third third world debt debt laden uh
• 32:53
  failed country? We're we're we're
• 32:55
  working on it.
• 32:59
  Yeah. AI journalism soon. Total slop
• 33:01
  everywhere. Pure slop. Let's talk about
• 33:03
  this.
• 33:12
  Ah, a debt crisis. That's one of those
• 33:14
  things that developing countries ran
• 33:16
  into time and time again in the 90s or
• 33:19
  if you're Argentina every 24 months like
• 33:22
  clockwork. But it doesn't happen to
• 33:24
  developed countries, right? Certainly
• 33:26
  not a global superpower like the United
• 33:29
  States.
• 33:30
  Well, it looks like we're going to have
• 33:33
  to put an asterisk there because
• 33:34
  increasingly it appears that the US may
• 33:37
  actually be facing a debt crisis. But
• 33:39
  the blame, well, it kind of lies with
• 33:43
  everybody. But does the USA still have
• 33:46
  some tools to dig itself out of this
• 33:47
  mess? Maybe. Let's talk about it. So,
• 33:51
  the the news is right here. This is the
• 33:56
  one-year chart for the US 30-year bond.
• 33:59
  This is the 10-year. Okay? This is 10
• 34:02
  years ago. Uh, if you wanted to buy debt
• 34:05
  from the United States, and and and I
• 34:07
  wanna I want to just simplify this,
• 34:10
  don't let your eyes glaze over because I
• 34:11
  talk about 30-year bond yields, all the
• 34:14
  30-year bond yield is is the interest
• 34:16
  rate on the credit card. when the USA
• 34:19
  needs to borrow some money to say fight
• 34:23
  a war in Iran or make up a hole in their
• 34:26
  budget caused by tax breaks for rich
• 34:29
  people um or fund more AI slop data
• 34:32
  centers. Well, in we can either make the
• 34:35
  money through taxes or we can swipe the
• 34:37
  credit card. And when we swipe the
• 34:39
  credit card, the interest changes in
• 34:42
  very almost real time. And so you can
• 34:46
  see that if you want to swipe the credit
• 34:47
  card in 2016, the US was paying about 2%
• 34:52
  interest on that credit card. And you
• 34:54
  can see that throughout the period,
• 34:56
  right, it sort of varied depending on a
• 34:59
  bunch of factors. And oftent times the
• 35:03
  people were eager to loan America money
• 35:05
  because America was seen as an
• 35:06
  unbelievably reliable place to park your
• 35:09
  money, right? A promise that the US
• 35:12
  would a would pay you back in beautiful
• 35:14
  greenbacks was seen as really valuable
• 35:16
  not just for uh your mom buying you a
• 35:19
  savings bond or your grandma buying you
• 35:21
  a savings bond but also if you were
• 35:23
  let's say a Ghana oil company you
• 35:27
  probably want something a little more
• 35:29
  stable than whatever the Ghana's
• 35:32
  currency is. So you said, "Listen, how
• 35:34
  about we take our money and we loan it
• 35:36
  to the United States and they give us a
• 35:38
  nice bond where they promise to pay us a
• 35:40
  little bit of interest and if we ever
• 35:42
  want to sell it, it's pretty easy to
• 35:44
  sell a US bond, right? It's way easier
• 35:46
  than selling Ghana and oil futures or
• 35:48
  whatever." So a lot of c countries
• 35:51
  throughout the world, central banks,
• 35:53
  companies, and more were eager to
• 35:55
  actually have US treasuries. It was just
• 35:58
  a great place to park your money. And
• 36:00
  you can see that even in 2020, people
• 36:03
  were just crawling over themselves to
• 36:06
  loan the US money. They in fact they
• 36:09
  were so eager to do it that they charged
• 36:11
  us only 1.1% interest. And this of
• 36:17
  course was in part because of COVID,
• 36:19
  right? They weren't sure if their
• 36:20
  economies were going to make it, but
• 36:21
  they said, "You know what economy will
• 36:23
  never fail us is the old US of A. Those
• 36:26
  guys won't wear a mask if it's the last
• 36:28
  thing they do." And God help them, if
• 36:31
  anybody can find a way to to to show up
• 36:35
  to work through a pandemic, it's going
• 36:37
  to be America. And to their credit, they
• 36:39
  were right. America came back from the
• 36:41
  pandemic ripping back. Uh and you can
• 36:44
  see that following the pandemic, right?
• 36:47
  You had inflation sort of cresting
• 36:49
  upward. So, you also have to remember
• 36:51
  that the interest rate on these bonds is
• 36:54
  a reflection of two things. how much
• 36:56
  they think the US dollar is going to
• 36:58
  inflate over, in this case, a 30-year
• 37:01
  horizon, and the risk premium, the risk
• 37:04
  they feel that they are incurring by
• 37:07
  loaning America money again. So, for
• 37:10
  example, you would never loan your
• 37:12
  methhead cousin money. And if you did,
• 37:15
  you'd say, "Listen, I'll loan you 10
• 37:16
  bucks, but you have to pay me a hundred
• 37:19
  in the future." Because you'd say, "The
• 37:20
  only way this is worth it is if I 100x
• 37:25
  my return on the 1% chance this dude
• 37:27
  gets a real job. I want to make sure I'm
• 37:30
  rewarded for it." Right? You you assume
• 37:32
  a risk, you demand a higher reward. But
• 37:35
  of course, remember inflation happens
• 37:37
  every year. So, if the US government, if
• 37:40
  you loan them a hundred bucks and they
• 37:41
  pay you a hundred bucks 30 years later,
• 37:43
  well, that's also a problem because that
• 37:45
  $100 is worth a lot less. That's why
• 37:48
  your parents don't understand when you
• 37:49
  explain that, hey man, the average house
• 37:52
  costs more than just like $3,600.
• 37:56
  And that's more of a grandparents
• 37:58
  problem. But
• 38:01
  all of this is really, really, really
• 38:03
  important because you can see that since
• 38:06
  about 2021,
• 38:08
  the United States had a steadily
• 38:11
  increasing interest rate on its debt,
• 38:14
  which means two things, right? you can
• 38:15
  see in 23 and a lot of this is a
• 38:18
  function of inflation right the US
• 38:20
  dollar the US economy has experienced a
• 38:22
  pretty high level of inflation around
• 38:24
  4%.
• 38:25
  But that's a pretty big number compared
• 38:29
  to what it was before which was around
• 38:31
  2%. And you can kind of see we in fact
• 38:33
  we can know because in August in in 2020
• 38:36
  you might remember that basically
• 38:37
  inflation was looking like it was going
• 38:39
  to be 0%. So we can kind of infer that
• 38:41
  when inflation is 0% the market says
• 38:44
  well in the era of peak co we think that
• 38:49
  the US should charge us about 1.2%.
• 38:52
  That's what that's the profit that we
• 38:54
  want to get. That's the risk premium
• 38:56
  that we want for loaning you money
• 38:57
  today. So we can infer actually that
• 39:01
  when we see this steady rise in
• 39:04
  borrowing costs and this steady rise in
• 39:06
  bond yields it [snorts] means a couple
• 39:09
  of things. It means two things. First is
• 39:12
  that the the global marketplace thinks
• 39:16
  that American debt is going to become
• 39:19
  very uh need is going to be some
• 39:23
  combination of two things. It's going to
• 39:25
  be much an environment over 30 years
• 39:28
  with really high inflation, right?
• 39:31
  Really high being three, four, maybe 5%.
• 39:35
  And or it's going to be a more risky
• 39:37
  investment, some combination of those
• 39:39
  two. And they've settled that they've
• 39:41
  said, listen, the price is actually
• 39:43
  going to be about 5.2%.
• 39:46
  Which guys is crazy to go from a country
• 39:49
  who was charging 1.2% just 6 years ago
• 39:52
  to 5%. That mean that's something like a
• 39:55
  3x increase in the interest rate on your
• 39:58
  debt, right? And just like if I was to
• 40:00
  be told, let's say in in 3 years from
• 40:03
  now, a bank said, "Listen, you want to
• 40:06
  buy a house, big dog? Hey, man, you look
• 40:09
  really dangerous to us right now. You
• 40:11
  you were fine. We charged you nothing,
• 40:14
  but now we're charging you three times
• 40:16
  as much to do the same thing." Or better
• 40:18
  yet, if your insurance was to say,
• 40:19
  "Listen, your premiums are going to be
• 40:21
  3xing."
• 40:23
  uh you'd say, "Well, what changed? What
• 40:26
  gives?" And this is where we start to
• 40:29
  talk about a debt crisis, right? Now,
• 40:31
  you may say, "Well, what's the big
• 40:33
  deal?" Because remember the US, this is
• 40:36
  the 10-year US Treasury note, right?
• 40:37
  This is a one-year chart, by the way.
• 40:39
  You can see the 10-year has also been
• 40:41
  trending uncomfortably high, sitting
• 40:44
  around 4.7%.
• 40:47
  This is also kind of weird because right
• 40:50
  if you want to loan the US money on a
• 40:52
  longer term basis it's kind of unusual
• 40:55
  to see this far apart right then look at
• 40:57
  in in we'll use uh April of 2020 as an
• 41:01
  example right a 30-year was 1.3
• 41:04
  and let's see April of 2020 it was.7 so
• 41:11
  it's again the spread is a little bit
• 41:14
  higher But
• 41:17
  why why is it so bad that the markets
• 41:20
  want a higher interest rate from the
• 41:22
  United States? One is that they are
• 41:24
  voting with their feet. They're saying
• 41:25
  we don't really think the US is going to
• 41:27
  get inflation under control. That should
• 41:29
  worry every American. But they're also
• 41:32
  saying that America probably can't get
• 41:35
  its its it there's a risk to America
• 41:39
  that is that it didn't have before. And
• 41:42
  if you think about it, these are
• 41:44
  actually kind of saying the same thing.
• 41:47
  Why is that? Well, we'll break it down
• 41:49
  in just a second, but I want to mention,
• 41:50
  guys, one of the reasons I can cover
• 41:51
  these kinds of topics that are uh
• 41:55
  controversial and also a little bit
• 41:57
  specific is because you guys support me
• 41:59
  at combatnews.com, right? I don't need
• 42:01
  to produce clickbait. I don't need to
• 42:03
  say things that aren't true because I
• 42:05
  don't depend on corporate sponsors. You
• 42:07
  guys keep me doing this every day. So go
• 42:09
  to combatvetnews.com, become a member,
• 42:12
  get access to twice weekly uncensored
• 42:14
  combat footage, a whole archive of
• 42:15
  videos dating back to the start of the
• 42:17
  Ukraine war, shout outs, Q&As's, and
• 42:19
  more. So the link is in the description.
• 42:21
  Also, YouTube has kind of been
• 42:22
  unsubscribing people from my channel.
• 42:24
  Just check and make sure you're
• 42:24
  subscribed. So what is what is the the
• 42:28
  the problem here, right? Why are these
• 42:31
  crises kind of the same? And that's
• 42:33
  because when countries incur debts they
• 42:36
  cannot pay,
• 42:38
  they have a tool that you and I don't
• 42:40
  have, which is the money printer. What
• 42:43
  does that mean? Well, if I want to if I
• 42:48
  have a really high credit card debt, I
• 42:53
  my only options are to cut my spending
• 42:55
  elsewhere, free up money to pay the
• 42:57
  debt, work more hours, earn more money,
• 43:00
  and pay off the debt. But and and a
• 43:03
  country has those same options, but a
• 43:05
  country has a third one, which is
• 43:06
  printing money, right? I cannot go to
• 43:08
  Xerox, go to my my my local FedEx and
• 43:11
  copy my $100 bills and then mail it into
• 43:14
  my uh my provide my my debt holder, my
• 43:17
  credit card company. America can. But
• 43:20
  what happens when you print dollar
• 43:22
  bills? Well, there's more dollars
• 43:25
  chasing fewer goods. Inflation rises.
• 43:28
  The price of those goods rises.
• 43:30
  And so but what also happens a country
• 43:34
  that is whose political system is unable
• 43:38
  to make sound financial decisions which
• 43:40
  is cut spending and raise taxes just
• 43:43
  like a human being if it relies on
• 43:45
  something that feels pretty fraud like
• 43:49
  and again it is not fraudulent for a
• 43:51
  government to print money. It is only
• 43:52
  fraud for me to print money but let's
• 43:56
  say I was to sell
• 43:58
  fake Rolexes instead. I could I could
• 44:01
  buy cheap watches and I could like glue
• 44:03
  the word Rolex onto them, right? And I
• 44:05
  started I started paying my debt by
• 44:07
  committing um this this like sort of
• 44:10
  fraudulent activity, this kind of
• 44:12
  producing fake goods and services,
• 44:14
  right? Uh that would increase your risk
• 44:19
  because, you know, I'm no longer making
• 44:21
  sound decisions, right? I'm engaging in
• 44:23
  a criminal enterprise. I might get
• 44:25
  arrested or people might figure out that
• 44:27
  I'm selling fake Rolexes and that that
• 44:30
  you have to price that risk in. And so
• 44:33
  you're starting to see the US Secretary
• 44:37
  of Treasury and the US Treasury do that
• 44:40
  sort of the fake Rolex scheme,
• 44:43
  because they're starting to well do
• 44:46
  what's called buy bond buybacks.
• 44:50
  This is a big problem because and this
• 44:53
  is what also kind of started this video.
• 44:55
  The US Treasury Department has started
• 44:57
  buying back 30-year bonds, long duration
• 45:00
  bonds. And the reason they are buying
• 45:04
  back these bonds,
• 45:06
  one is because if you
• 45:11
  like the interest rate has to rise
• 45:14
  because we have to find more and more
• 45:16
  people who are willing to loan us money.
• 45:19
  Buying bonds is another word for loaning
• 45:22
  us money. Well, what if the US Treasury
• 45:25
  loans the US government money? What if
• 45:28
  we buy the bonds ourselves? Now, you may
• 45:30
  think to yourself, well, that's like you
• 45:33
  trying to buy your own debt from the
• 45:35
  credit card companies, but how do you do
• 45:37
  that? You do that by getting a loan or
• 45:42
  selling more fake Rolexes. And that's
• 45:44
  the problem here is that we're into the
• 45:46
  scheme where either we are going to end
• 45:49
  up
• 45:51
  yinking from somebody or more likely we
• 45:54
  are selling we are printing money and
• 45:57
  yinking fake Rolexes.
• 45:59
  It's a problem. And this can h this can
• 46:02
  this is not the worst idea. Uh, again,
• 46:06
  it's kind of like calling your mom or
• 46:09
  even like if I sold one fake Rolex on
• 46:11
  Facebook Marketplace. I did it one time.
• 46:14
  I got my 30 grand or I sold a disc. I
• 46:17
  got my six grand or whatever from him
• 46:19
  and I paid off my credit card and I
• 46:20
  never did it again. You can get away
• 46:22
  with it, right? Market might not even
• 46:25
  catch on. People might not even catch
• 46:26
  on. Some dude's happy with his watch. He
• 46:28
  flexes on Instagram. I get my six grand.
• 46:31
  Everybody's happy, right? Everybody gets
• 46:33
  what they wanted. The problem comes in
• 46:35
  when I do it again and again and again
• 46:37
  and again because the more I do it,
• 46:39
  every time I do it, I risk getting
• 46:41
  caught. I risk getting busted, right?
• 46:44
  And that's one of the fears here is that
• 46:47
  the US Treasury is playing this game and
• 46:50
  it's playing this game a lot. It's not
• 46:53
  selling one little Rolex. It's selling a
• 46:56
  lot of fake Rolexes, right? Printed
• 46:58
  money. In fact, again, these 30-year
• 47:02
  Treasury bonds, highest level since
• 47:03
  2007,
• 47:05
  uh fears that the US is going to
• 47:07
  continue its extremely expensive uh war
• 47:10
  with Iran. Uh and it's going to continue
• 47:14
  its unsustainable fiscal path. Higher
• 47:17
  bond yields push up borrowing costs,
• 47:19
  increasing households, companies,
• 47:20
  financial markets, and the federal
• 47:21
  budget alike.
• 47:23
  And let me explain to you guys the the
• 47:24
  math here, right?
• 47:28
  The math is pretty bad. So this is debt
• 47:31
  as a percentage of GDP because you have
• 47:32
  to remember there's one other important
• 47:34
  thing to to remember here and that is
• 47:36
  that debt itself is not a problem. It's
• 47:39
  only a problem if you're spending
• 47:42
  unsustainably.
• 47:43
  And you can actually take debt from
• 47:47
  unsustainable to sustainable by growing
• 47:50
  your income. And that is basically what
• 47:52
  the US has done for a long time. The US
• 47:55
  has found ways to grow its income. So we
• 47:58
  had the internet revolution. We became
• 48:00
  home to some of the most dynamic
• 48:02
  technology companies on planet earth.
• 48:04
  That basically saved the economy from
• 48:07
  being held accountable for its debts. If
• 48:08
  we had grown like a European economy,
• 48:11
  our debt load would be horribly
• 48:14
  unsustainable.
• 48:15
  And same with the AI revolution. You
• 48:17
  basically have to hope that the AI
• 48:19
  revolution indeed is a is a productivity
• 48:22
  revolution for the country. It it has to
• 48:25
  be because there is no other way out of
• 48:27
  this problem. It's the the best analogy
• 48:30
  is like you know my my so my wife is a
• 48:32
  physician in the US and the when she was
• 48:36
  a resident right a resident physician a
• 48:38
  physician a physician going through a a
• 48:41
  training several years of training she
• 48:44
  made just $60,000 and she had massive
• 48:47
  med school debt. Let's say it was
• 48:49
  $100,000. You make 60,000 you owe
• 48:51
  100,000. That's a pretty bad situation.
• 48:54
  and she made the minimum payments on her
• 48:55
  debt every year. But what happened?
• 48:58
  Well, she graduated from her residency
• 49:01
  to a fellowship where she suddenly went
• 49:02
  from making 60,000 to 90,000. $90,000 in
• 49:05
  salary, $100,000 in debt. Not too
• 49:08
  shabby. Then she graduated from her
• 49:11
  fellowship to a res to a to a full-time
• 49:14
  attending. Now she's making, let's say,
• 49:16
  $200,000 a year and $100,000 in debt.
• 49:19
  see how the same debt load by growing
• 49:22
  your income can become go from
• 49:25
  unsustainable to sustainable. And that
• 49:28
  has basically been the story of the
• 49:29
  United States. This is the our our debt
• 49:32
  load relative to our GDP. And you can
• 49:35
  see that in 1974 we had a really healthy
• 49:37
  30%, right? We owed, you know, we had
• 49:41
  the equivalent of making $100,000 and
• 49:43
  owing 30,000. Very sustainable number.
• 49:46
  But things are getting worse. You can
• 49:48
  see here that for most of basically 90s
• 49:52
  right from '92 the Clinton era we had
• 49:54
  about 60% GDP per capita and you can see
• 49:56
  basically we were fine up until the
• 49:59
  financial crisis. What happened during
• 50:01
  the financial crisis? We had to bail out
• 50:03
  the economy. It was a crisis and this
• 50:06
  was the right call. This is why
• 50:07
  government debt markets exist. So we
• 50:10
  bail out the economy pretty hard but
• 50:13
  what happens? Well, by 2013, we hit 100%
• 50:16
  of jet debt to GDP. But then what
• 50:19
  happens? There is no crisis by 2013, but
• 50:22
  we continue to spend and spend and spend
• 50:26
  and spend and spend. And you can see
• 50:28
  that we actually instead of getting our
• 50:30
  spending under control after the crisis,
• 50:32
  we got worse. Then CO happened. Now,
• 50:35
  this is this chart. I want you to take
• 50:36
  this and just ignore this giant spike.
• 50:38
  Why? Because remember during COVID, we
• 50:41
  shut down large parts of the economy.
• 50:43
  So, it's it's uh it's a little bit like
• 50:46
  going on maternity leave, right? Uh you
• 50:49
  know, again, when my wife had kids,
• 50:52
  technically her income dropped to zero.
• 50:54
  So, technically, our mortgage and our
• 50:56
  car payments looked really bad, but they
• 50:59
  weren't actually because things were
• 51:01
  she, you know, she was going to go back
• 51:03
  to work. And when Americans went back to
• 51:04
  work though, there was another problem.
• 51:07
  And as you can see, yeah, it was still
• 51:10
  too high. It was 115% of GDP. And this
• 51:14
  guys, [snorts] this is like loaning your
• 51:17
  neighbor money when you know that
• 51:19
  they're how they make $100,000 a year
• 51:21
  and they have $115,000 of credit cards.
• 51:25
  You loan the money at your own peril.
• 51:27
  And you can see that s in the last three
• 51:29
  years, this has grown worse. In fact,
• 51:33
  again, you could see that basically
• 51:37
  uh thanks to the Iran war, spending is
• 51:40
  now 122%
• 51:43
  of our GDP.
• 51:45
  So,
• 51:47
  and the issue is that you're going the
• 51:49
  the country is going to have to print
• 51:51
  money to manage this. This is how much
• 51:54
  we pay in interest payments on the debt.
• 51:57
  This is just paying the interest on the
• 51:58
  debt, never paying it down.
• 52:01
  And you can see that we spend nearly a
• 52:04
  billion dollars a year. We spend more
• 52:05
  paying the interest on our debt than we
• 52:08
  do on the entire military than we do on
• 52:11
  Medicaid than we do for veterans. Right?
• 52:14
  In fact, we spend more on this than all
• 52:17
  of Medicaid and all forms of income
• 52:20
  security combined, right? SSI and stuff
• 52:23
  like that.
• 52:25
  And
• 52:26
  that is not going to get lower. that is
• 52:30
  going to get much much higher. And by
• 52:32
  the way, these numbers, this growing
• 52:35
  growing interest on the debt, this
• 52:38
  assumes that the that the interest rate
• 52:41
  on the debt remains nice and healthy and
• 52:43
  low. It's not going to. We just said
• 52:47
  this is this assumed that it was like
• 52:50
  3%. Now it's 5%. So this curve by 2036,
• 52:56
  it's not going to be $2 trillion. it's
• 52:58
  going to be like three trillion or more.
• 53:02
  And when you have that
• 53:05
  uh the,
• 53:08
  you know, by 2036, they think it's going
• 53:10
  to be about 5% of our entire economy. $5
• 53:14
  of every hundred produced by our economy
• 53:16
  is going to go directly towards paying
• 53:19
  the interest on our debt. And the fact
• 53:23
  is that markets are aware. They have now
• 53:26
  woken up to the reality that America has
• 53:30
  only two options. One is to not pay this
• 53:33
  debt, right? A real crisis. Uh two is
• 53:38
  going to be print money to pay the debt,
• 53:40
  pushing up inflation. So you either have
• 53:42
  risk or inflation
• 53:45
  stacking together in an unsustainable
• 53:48
  way. Now, how do you fix it? The answer
• 53:51
  is pretty simple. There are two there
• 53:52
  are only two ways to fix it. grow the
• 53:55
  economy at more than 5% a year, which of
• 53:58
  course the economy hasn't grown at 5% a
• 54:00
  year other than COVID for
• 54:04
  30 years. It's not possible for an
• 54:06
  economy of our size to grow 5% a year,
• 54:08
  right? Again, you would you would need
• 54:10
  an that would be like an AI singularity
• 54:12
  basically is the only scenario where we
• 54:14
  grow 5% in a year and we need to sustain
• 54:16
  that over 30 years. The other option,
• 54:20
  right,
• 54:21
  uh is to
• 54:23
  increase taxes and decrease government
• 54:26
  spending. If we can just get government
• 54:28
  spending to stay flat, to not go up
• 54:31
  while the economy grows, we can in
• 54:34
  theory get a handle on the debt. Again,
• 54:38
  it is like paying the interest on the
• 54:40
  debt, not go digging into more credit
• 54:42
  card debt and hoping every year you get
• 54:45
  a little promotion and a little raise
• 54:47
  until eventually you've gotten enough
• 54:49
  promotions and little raises that your
• 54:51
  debt becomes sustainable.
• 54:54
  The problem is that we are not doing
• 54:56
  those things. The problem is we have
• 54:58
  introduced massive tax cuts that not tax
• 55:01
  increases.
• 55:03
  two, we have embarked on more pointless,
• 55:07
  useless wars
• 55:09
  in places like Iran.
• 55:12
  And there's even a another deeper
• 55:15
  problem here. There's one other thing
• 55:17
  that can make this crisis worse. And
• 55:20
  that is if not only do other countries
• 55:22
  stop purchasing American debt, stop
• 55:25
  loaning us money, but they actually
• 55:27
  start demanding payment now. they start
• 55:31
  selling US bonds saying we don't
• 55:33
  actually want to even be we don't want
• 55:36
  to be the person who you pay and that is
• 55:40
  a crisis and that has been something
• 55:42
  that has been going on for months right
• 55:46
  remember every time we bully a country
• 55:49
  like Japan every time we we uh pull a
• 55:53
  Gulf ally into the war every time we try
• 55:56
  to tariff China do you know what they do
• 55:59
  they sell US bonds. And when they do
• 56:02
  that, they push interest costs higher
• 56:04
  and higher and higher. Right? Japan,
• 56:07
  China, the UK, NATO countries have been
• 56:11
  selling US debt, driving the interest
• 56:13
  rate on our debt higher and higher.
• 56:16
  This is a kick in the teeth for the
• 56:20
  United States. And this is ex this is a
• 56:23
  weapon that they can use to harm us. It
• 56:26
  is one of the reasons why the Treasury
• 56:29
  intervened and stabilized the Japanese
• 56:31
  yen. Because you know what the Japanese
• 56:33
  would do if they had to stabilize their
• 56:35
  own currency? Sell US treasuries. Push
• 56:39
  US yields even higher.
• 56:43
  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the
• 56:46
  fundamental the that is the fundamental
• 56:49
  crisis facing the US is that the problem
• 56:53
  is that a a country with strong
• 56:55
  relationships to its allies, our allies
• 56:57
  could help us. They could intervene and
• 56:59
  actually buy US bonds, pushing yields
• 57:01
  lower, stabilizing the US economy.
• 57:03
  Instead, they're doing the opposite.
• 57:05
  They smell weakness and they say the US
• 57:08
  isn't a friend. They've said the US has
• 57:10
  tried to annex NATO territory,
• 57:13
  right? The UK, you know, the US has has
• 57:16
  been making deals with China behind
• 57:17
  Japan's back. Japan says, "Listen, we
• 57:19
  don't have to take this. If the US is
• 57:21
  going to make deals with our enemies or
• 57:24
  become an enemy itself, we're not going
• 57:26
  to help them by loaning them money.
• 57:29
  Instead, we're going to dump our loans
• 57:31
  and we're going to spike the US interest
• 57:33
  rate and we're going to cook the US
• 57:34
  economy.
• 57:41
  All right,
• 57:43
  that was a lot, guys. Thanks for thanks
• 57:45
  for listening to me for that one. Uh, I
• 57:47
  know that was really technical, but I
• 57:49
  think it's pretty important.
• 57:53
  Um,
• 57:54
  and again, it's not a long burning
• 57:56
  thing, right?
• 58:02
  Like this is a you see this is a problem
• 58:03
  that's been a long time in the making.
• 58:11
  Exactly. Andrew Taylor, Canada dumping
• 58:12
  US debt since that 51st state crap. Like
• 58:14
  these countries don't think that because
• 58:16
  they don't have large militaries, they
• 58:18
  don't have weapons they can wield to
• 58:20
  harm the United States.
• 58:25
  And again, it's not even like a weapon.
• 58:26
  It's just like why would we
• 58:30
  depend on an enemy on a country that
• 58:32
  hates us, that doesn't want us, that
• 58:34
  doesn't want to help us,
• 58:38
  you know,
• 58:46
  like again,
• 58:48
  as I
• 58:51
  as I've told some friends, if your
• 58:53
  company hates you and doesn't give a
• 58:55
  about you and it'll screw you in a
• 58:57
  heartbeat. Then don't put yourself in a
• 59:00
  situation where you are utterly
• 59:01
  dependent on their checks because you
• 59:05
  know
• 59:06
  that they'll screw you. You know, it's
• 59:10
  just risk. You know, it's like imagine
• 59:13
  you have a combative relationship with
• 59:14
  your parents, but they pay your rent.
• 59:16
  You're like, dude, you don't want if you
• 59:19
  fight with your mom every week, you
• 59:21
  don't want her paying your rent. That's
• 59:23
  just common sense. And other countries
• 59:25
  have the same thing. They say, "Listen,
• 59:27
  we don't want to sit there and depend
• 59:30
  have our currency stability and our
• 59:31
  ability to defend depend defend our
• 59:33
  currency be dependent on a check from
• 59:36
  the US arriving every month. Like we
• 59:38
  just don't need that,
• 59:51
  right? Japan is like, "Listen, you're
• 59:54
  friends with North Korea now. North
• 59:55
  Korea fires missiles at Japan on a
• 59:58
  monthly basis." The Japanese are like,
• 1:00:01
  "You've got to be high if you think that
• 1:00:04
  we are going to help you." When you said
• 1:00:07
  maybe the North Koreans, have Trump's
• 1:00:09
  friend, North Korea, buy the bonds. Oh,
• 1:00:11
  yeah. He can't because his country is
• 1:00:13
  poor and broke.
• 1:00:18
  Yeah. Yeah, the oligarchs, America's
• 1:00:20
  like billionaire class, the oligarchs of
• 1:00:22
  America and the oligarchs of Russia and
• 1:00:24
  the oligarchs of Europe, they don't care
• 1:00:26
  about these things, right? They are
• 1:00:28
  going to find other sovereign debt to
• 1:00:30
  purchase. They'll purchase Chinese
• 1:00:31
  sovereign debt. They'll purchase EU
• 1:00:33
  bonds. There's lots of things they can
• 1:00:34
  purchase
• 1:00:38
  in some ways. Again, if you diversify
• 1:00:41
  your risks efficiently, remember even if
• 1:00:43
  American companies get cooked and
• 1:00:45
  American economies get cooked,
• 1:00:47
  other countries are perfectly stable,
• 1:00:50
  perfectly investable, and yeah, it'll
• 1:00:53
  make assets in the United States a
• 1:00:55
  steel, right?
• 1:01:08
  Europe's
• 1:01:10
  economy is not weak to the same extent.
• 1:01:13
  Right? Um
• 1:01:17
  EU debt to GDP.
• 1:01:21
  Let's take a look. Let's find out.
• 1:01:24
  So here is the EU debt to GDP ratio. All
• 1:01:27
  right. So yeah, Greece worse. But look,
• 1:01:30
  Greece getting a handle on it. Italy
• 1:01:33
  getting worse. Uh but you can see other
• 1:01:36
  than Greece and Italy, right? Um
• 1:01:40
  basically France, Belgium, Spain,
• 1:01:42
  Portugal, UK, Ukraine, literally
• 1:01:46
  Ukraine, guys, war torn Ukraine is in a
• 1:01:48
  better fiscal situation debt to GDP
• 1:01:50
  ratio- wise than the United States. The
• 1:01:53
  general euro zone 87% debt debt to GDP.
• 1:01:57
  Right?
• 1:02:00
  And you know I I I point these things
• 1:02:02
  out that it's uh you know
• 1:02:06
  like
• 1:02:10
  now obviously it says that the Europeans
• 1:02:12
  are supposed to maintain a debt to GDP
• 1:02:13
  ratio around 60% average is actually 80
• 1:02:16
  but what can you H
• 1:02:32
  people are like h is America collapsing
• 1:02:35
  that's that's stu that's reductive right
• 1:02:37
  Argentina
• 1:02:39
  for example did not collapse in anarchy
• 1:02:40
  but Argentina had debt crisis after debt
• 1:02:42
  crisis
• 1:02:46
  and yeah other countries are also
• 1:02:48
  experiencing kind of sovereign debt
• 1:02:49
  crisis. It's true. Uh but
• 1:02:54
  again, the US
• 1:02:56
  US has less wiggle room because of our
• 1:03:00
  poor policy choices.
• 1:03:05
  I don't look British. My teeth are too
• 1:03:07
  nice. Thank you.
• 1:03:10
  Right. This is not something This is not
• 1:03:12
  going to like destroy the country in two
• 1:03:14
  weeks. Okay.
• 1:03:16
  Um, this is something that is going to
• 1:03:19
  become a multi-year problem. And what I
• 1:03:23
  mean by that is like when you have these
• 1:03:25
  things, you're going to see taxes go up
• 1:03:27
  and you're going to see and when taxes
• 1:03:29
  go up, like you're going to have taxes
• 1:03:32
  increase and you're going to have
• 1:03:32
  benefits get cut. So, we're going to be
• 1:03:35
  social security is going to go get a
• 1:03:37
  little bit the payouts are going to be a
• 1:03:38
  little less. Medicare, Medicaid is going
• 1:03:40
  to be harder to access. You're going to
• 1:03:43
  see um if we're lucky, US defense
• 1:03:46
  spending get reduced. You're going to
• 1:03:48
  see a bunch of these things, these
• 1:03:51
  services get sort of curtailed.
• 1:03:54
  Uh
• 1:03:56
  and you're going to see taxes increase.
• 1:03:58
  That's what a fiscally responsible
• 1:04:00
  country would do. But because um rich
• 1:04:04
  like like really rich billionaires
• 1:04:06
  refuse to suffer even the tiniest tax
• 1:04:10
  increase. Um, instead the US is going to
• 1:04:12
  have to print money. And printing money
• 1:04:14
  like in the short term can juice your
• 1:04:16
  GDP, but you're gonna have inflation get
• 1:04:17
  out of control. And what happens when
• 1:04:19
  you sit there and have inflation get out
• 1:04:22
  of control is that uh poor people get
• 1:04:26
  eaten alive because remember poor people
• 1:04:29
  by definition spend their entire
• 1:04:31
  paycheck and then some. That's what
• 1:04:33
  being poor is, right? Uh and so they are
• 1:04:37
  victims of inflation.
• 1:04:39
  But you know who wins in an inflationary
• 1:04:41
  economy in the short term is asset
• 1:04:44
  holders. People that own businesses. So
• 1:04:47
  if you own shares of stock, you want
• 1:04:50
  inflation, right?
• 1:04:52
  Generally, it's not great. But again,
• 1:04:56
  because eventually it eats itself
• 1:04:58
  because
• 1:04:59
  unsustainable inflation makes it really
• 1:05:02
  hard for consumers to spend.
• 1:05:06
  Platinum, thanks for the five. Do you
• 1:05:07
  think Bernie Sanders style policy of
• 1:05:08
  taxing billion oligarchs would help this
• 1:05:10
  debt issue?
• 1:05:11
  A short answer is is yes. I mean, maybe
• 1:05:14
  not Bernie Sanders specifically. Um, I
• 1:05:17
  think a wealth tax is really hard. Um, I
• 1:05:21
  think what you need is an is a really
• 1:05:22
  airtight estate tax. Like you make a lot
• 1:05:26
  of money, right? Do we tax them while
• 1:05:29
  they're alive? You say no. Just tax them
• 1:05:30
  when they're dead, right? You made a
• 1:05:33
  billion dollars. you hit it in a bunch
• 1:05:35
  of like unced assets or whatever, right?
• 1:05:38
  It's too hard to assess it every year,
• 1:05:40
  but when you die, your estate has to go
• 1:05:42
  through probate anyway. So, they say,
• 1:05:44
  "Listen, everything you control is
• 1:05:48
  assessed for value and before it's
• 1:05:51
  dispersed to your heirs. Your heirs have
• 1:05:54
  to pay not stepped up basis, they have
• 1:05:56
  to pay their capital gains, right? You
• 1:05:58
  reach the finish line. You made it.
• 1:06:00
  You're Jeff Bezos, right?" So they say,
• 1:06:03
  "Listen, you died. Jeff Bezos has, I
• 1:06:06
  don't know, he has, let's say, three
• 1:06:07
  kids." They go, "Listen,
• 1:06:09
  everything's going to the kids, right?
• 1:06:11
  You guys got to sort among yourselves.
• 1:06:13
  Who's getting a house and a million
• 1:06:16
  shares of stock? Who's getting uh two
• 1:06:18
  houses, but 500,000 shares of stock?"
• 1:06:20
  Like, well, it does. They say it doesn't
• 1:06:22
  matter. But you, but the tax man has to
• 1:06:25
  get its part. That's it. You just wait
• 1:06:28
  till they die because again you earned
• 1:06:32
  it. Your kids Bezos kids didn't earn
• 1:06:34
  that
• 1:06:38
  So,
• 1:06:41
  and Tim Jefferson, the no ethical way to
• 1:06:43
  be a billionaire. As I point out, I have
• 1:06:45
  no qualms with the existence of
• 1:06:46
  billionaires. When inflation's high
• 1:06:48
  enough, we'll all be billionaires. Um,
• 1:06:50
  you know, you whoever made that cancer,
• 1:06:52
  whoever whoever like owned the the
• 1:06:57
  company that made that melanoma drug
• 1:06:58
  that came out, right? Personalized
• 1:07:00
  vaccine just wipes melanoma, one of the
• 1:07:02
  most deadly cancers on Earth. Cuts so
• 1:07:05
  many lives short. I I'll give you the
• 1:07:08
  billionth dollar myself.
• 1:07:11
  But but you got to recognize that when
• 1:07:15
  you're when when you are done on this
• 1:07:17
  earth, you can't take the money with
• 1:07:19
  you. Your heirs are going to get a lot.
• 1:07:22
  You you know, again, let them all get a
• 1:07:23
  million bucks tax-free. That's a pretty
• 1:07:26
  good inheritance. And then we say,
• 1:07:28
  listen, they get the rest, but they just
• 1:07:30
  pay normal regular taxes on it. The same
• 1:07:32
  36% that the rest of us have to pay,
• 1:07:35
  right? just pay your taxes.
• 1:07:40
  And again, my gripe, yeah, my gripe is
• 1:07:44
  the fact that you get your billion
• 1:07:45
  dollars and you don't recognize the
• 1:07:48
  contributions. Again, like, okay, you
• 1:07:51
  didn't single-handedly in in your office
• 1:07:54
  make a melanoma vaccine, right? Who did
• 1:07:57
  it? Well, a probably a few hundred
• 1:08:01
  scientists,
• 1:08:02
  probably a few thousand scientists were
• 1:08:04
  honest. some of whom did the groundwork
• 1:08:06
  research with US taxpayer funded re
• 1:08:08
  grant research, right? All those studies
• 1:08:11
  that that they relied on to sort of
• 1:08:13
  build it out, those are funded largely
• 1:08:15
  by the US taxpayer, right? National
• 1:08:17
  Science Foundation, National Institute
• 1:08:18
  of Health grants. So, you owe them. But
• 1:08:21
  a lot of those scientists, researchers,
• 1:08:24
  clinicians, right? All those clinical
• 1:08:26
  sites, a lot of them were trained at US
• 1:08:28
  public schools. So, you owe them. You
• 1:08:32
  drive to work, right? you went took your
• 1:08:35
  company public because of the SEC
• 1:08:36
  regulations ensured that your investors
• 1:08:38
  felt safe investing their money with
• 1:08:40
  your company because it was overseen by
• 1:08:42
  the SEC. Like you just you have to pay
• 1:08:45
  it back at the end. Grow it as much as
• 1:08:48
  you want, but you got to pay it back at
• 1:08:50
  the end.
• 1:08:52
  Right.
• 1:08:55
  Right. Tim Jeffson. Exactly. You can't
• 1:08:56
  do enough work to earn a billion
• 1:08:57
  dollars.
• 1:08:59
  You can you can
• 1:09:02
  like it can only come with the backs of
• 1:09:03
  others. I totally believe that
• 1:09:06
  and you know
• 1:09:09
  like
• 1:09:12
  the you can't do it by yourself. You got
• 1:09:16
  to find ways to bring you have to like
• 1:09:18
  bring others up with you. I don't think
• 1:09:20
  it's it's a it's a zero sum game.
• 1:09:23
  But again, you can't take a billion
• 1:09:25
  dollars and then hoard it like a dragon,
• 1:09:28
  right? You got to acknowledge you got to
• 1:09:30
  give it back. I think there should be
• 1:09:31
  more incentives. For example, like share
• 1:09:34
  buyback should be illegal.
• 1:09:36
  It's it's illegal price manipulation,
• 1:09:38
  right? It's like if I bought every
• 1:09:41
  single copy of a rare Pokemon card and
• 1:09:44
  then I charged a gorge and then I said,
• 1:09:45
  "Oh, technically
• 1:09:47
  I'm like I it would be a scam." For
• 1:09:50
  example, if again I bought let's say
• 1:09:52
  every Rolex from a certain model making
• 1:09:55
  year. I bought them all. There was only
• 1:09:57
  one out there. And by doing that I
• 1:10:01
  inflated the price of Rolex is through
• 1:10:03
  the roof. Right? Then I say listen
• 1:10:06
  technically I own 20 billion of Rolexes
• 1:10:10
  because I bought them all and by making
• 1:10:12
  them rare they 10xed in value. Now I
• 1:10:14
  could never sell them because that would
• 1:10:18
  crash the price again. So, as long as I
• 1:10:21
  don't sell them, I can go to a bank and
• 1:10:22
  say, "Hey, technically I'm sitting on a
• 1:10:24
  billion dollars of Rolexes." I don't
• 1:10:25
  know if you knew this. And a bank can
• 1:10:26
  loan me money against it. But have I
• 1:10:29
  defrauded the bank? Yeah, I kind of
• 1:10:30
  have. I've committed fraud because I
• 1:10:33
  know I don't really have a billion
• 1:10:34
  dollars in Rolexes because the act of
• 1:10:37
  selling them drops the price. Do you see
• 1:10:38
  what I mean? But somehow if a
• 1:10:41
  corporation does it through through
• 1:10:43
  share buybacks, it's fine. They
• 1:10:46
  artificially inflate the price of their
• 1:10:47
  share. Not because market conditions or
• 1:10:50
  market forecasts have changed,
• 1:10:52
  but because it's an easy way to return
• 1:10:55
  value to shareholders. If you want to
• 1:10:56
  return value to shareholders, you cut
• 1:10:57
  them a dividend. You say, "You own 1% of
• 1:11:00
  the company. Here is 1% of the company's
• 1:11:02
  profits." You're that's what it means to
• 1:11:04
  own a company. And
• 1:11:08
  the
• 1:11:09
  and what also happens though is that if
• 1:11:11
  you have a bunch of profits
• 1:11:14
  and and you want to increase share
• 1:11:15
  price, what you do is you invest in
• 1:11:18
  building better stuff. You make the next
• 1:11:19
  round of cancer vaccine. You pay your
• 1:11:22
  people more. You invest in them. You
• 1:11:24
  train them. You build better facilities.
• 1:11:26
  You productively deploy that capital.
• 1:11:29
  But because it's always more productive
• 1:11:31
  to buy it back, right? What you end up
• 1:11:34
  with is like Boeing, you end up building
• 1:11:35
  planes that crash out of the
• 1:11:37
  sky. You pay your workers dog wages
• 1:11:40
  and they do a dog job in exchange
• 1:11:42
  for it. And you buy back shares. You
• 1:11:45
  juice the price of your share price to
• 1:11:47
  make it look like you've you've created
• 1:11:49
  a more productive company. Just like me
• 1:11:51
  hoarding Rolexes would would create the
• 1:11:54
  perception
• 1:11:57
  of me being fabulously wealthy when I'm
• 1:12:00
  really not.
• 1:12:03
  a strike Rolex. Yeah, listen, I'm
• 1:12:05
  actually not a watch guy, but I I read
• 1:12:07
  an article that there's like a whole
• 1:12:08
  subreddit dedicated to fake Rolexes.
• 1:12:11
  Like ultra high-end fake Rolex.
• 1:12:15
  Yeah, super bus. Also, I have a gripe
• 1:12:17
  with like you should be able to be at a
• 1:12:18
  billion dollars, but your vote your
• 1:12:21
  ability to influence the political
• 1:12:22
  system should be
• 1:12:25
  should be limited should be ex should be
• 1:12:28
  no greater than the average American.
• 1:12:32
  Like like the fact that Elon Musk was so
• 1:12:36
  rich and wrote such a big check to
• 1:12:38
  Donald Trump that he was allowed to go
• 1:12:40
  into government and just delete agencies
• 1:12:42
  he didn't like. My dude,
• 1:12:47
  Elon doesn't have that authority. The
• 1:12:49
  people who create and delete agencies
• 1:12:51
  are America's representatives, the
• 1:12:54
  people we elect. If Elon wants them
• 1:12:56
  deleted, then he can go and he can vote
• 1:12:59
  in Texas for anyone he wants. He can run
• 1:13:03
  for office. He can vote. And if he gets
• 1:13:05
  outvoted, that's his problem.
• 1:13:18
  The US is a pay to- win organization.
• 1:13:20
  Yeah, total pay to win, bro. Pay to win,
• 1:13:23
  bro.
• 1:13:29
  If you have a net worth of a billion,
• 1:13:30
  you shouldn't be allowed to vote.
• 1:13:31
  Honestly, no, no, no, no, no. I'm a
• 1:13:33
  believer in equality, right? Like,
• 1:13:36
  whatever you're worth, you just
• 1:13:38
  shouldn't be allowed to donate more than
• 1:13:39
  the average American can. I think that
• 1:13:42
  $5,000 should be a hard limit on all
• 1:13:46
  political contributions. Money isn't
• 1:13:48
  speech. You're allowed to say anything
• 1:13:50
  you want. You're allowed to put out any
• 1:13:51
  content you want. You can make it nice,
• 1:13:54
  right? Yeah. Elon can hire a production
• 1:13:56
  company to make the coolest looking
• 1:13:58
  YouTube videos where he can talk about
• 1:14:00
  how white people are oppressed in South
• 1:14:02
  Africa, that the real problem is
• 1:14:04
  migrants, that the EU is going to become
• 1:14:06
  a Muslim country. He can say all that.
• 1:14:08
  He's allowed to say all those things.
• 1:14:10
  But,
• 1:14:12
  you know, you can't you can't allow him
• 1:14:14
  to buy candidates, to buy elections, to
• 1:14:17
  again, Elon spent $250 million plus
• 1:14:22
  whatever he used to buy Twitter cuz he
• 1:14:24
  he definitely rigged Twitter to shill
• 1:14:27
  right-wing right-wing talking points.
• 1:14:32
  And like
• 1:14:34
  again, you just shouldn't be able to do
• 1:14:36
  it. You should be speech should be
• 1:14:38
  speech. The Europeans run their
• 1:14:39
  elections that way. And it doesn't mean
• 1:14:41
  that like they're immune to money, but
• 1:14:43
  it's so much less so. It's so much less
• 1:14:46
  so.
• 1:14:49
  All right, guys. You want to talk about
• 1:14:52
  Muldova?
• 1:14:56
  Buckle up, nerds, cuz things are getting
• 1:14:58
  weird in Muldova.
• 1:15:00
  No, sorry, Romania. Romania. Romania.
• 1:15:03
  Romania.
• 1:15:06
  How's Roblox doing? Wamp wamp.
• 1:15:17
  Okay, let's talk about it because this
• 1:15:19
  is this is pretty wonky.
• 1:15:29
  All right, let me pull this up.
• 1:15:34
  All right.
• 1:15:40
  Vladimir Putin's Russia has done more
• 1:15:43
  than just threatened NATO countries. As
• 1:15:46
  of yesterday afternoon, they also have
• 1:15:49
  begun attacking these countries oil
• 1:15:53
  infrastructure. Now, we're going to take
• 1:15:55
  a look at just what exactly Russia was
• 1:15:57
  attempting to do, what their real
• 1:15:59
  strategy is, and is NATO finally kind of
• 1:16:03
  starting to wake up to it, maybe. Take a
• 1:16:06
  look. So, this is social media footage
• 1:16:08
  coming out of Romania. And as you can
• 1:16:11
  see, there is a Romanian F16, and you
• 1:16:14
  see it's shooting at the water. This is
• 1:16:16
  filmed at an oil platform in the Black
• 1:16:19
  Sea, a Romanian oil platform. And you
• 1:16:22
  might ask yourself, what's this F-16
• 1:16:24
  doing? Blast in the water. The answer
• 1:16:26
  is, you just kind of saw it there. A
• 1:16:28
  Russian naval drone
• 1:16:31
  came dangerously close. I mean, this
• 1:16:33
  appears to be within minutes of striking
• 1:16:36
  a Romanian oil platform before it was
• 1:16:39
  taken out by this F-16. And this is a
• 1:16:43
  reflection a of a huge escalation
• 1:16:46
  because
• 1:16:48
  Russia has obviously targeted NATO
• 1:16:51
  infrastructure. They've targeted NATO
• 1:16:53
  oil infrastructure before. But what they
• 1:16:55
  have done is created a fig leaf of
• 1:16:58
  plausible deniability because they would
• 1:17:00
  hack Ukrainian drones and send the
• 1:17:02
  Ukrainian drones into the Baltic state
• 1:17:04
  oil infrastructure. But now the Russians
• 1:17:08
  are like, "Listen, NATO didn't do
• 1:17:11
  dick when we attack them with Ukrainian
• 1:17:13
  drones. Let's see if we can attack them
• 1:17:16
  with literal Russian combat drones and
• 1:17:18
  see what happens. So, a Romanian F-16
• 1:17:20
  fighter had to be deployed and took out
• 1:17:23
  an explosives filled naval drone near
• 1:17:26
  the Neptune Deep Gas project on
• 1:17:27
  Thursday. Now, Bucharest literally came
• 1:17:29
  out and said, "Russia did this. Russia
• 1:17:31
  sent this drone at us." And while
• 1:17:35
  obviously a single drone seems very
• 1:17:38
  unlikely to actually reach this platform
• 1:17:40
  and deal a significant amount of damage,
• 1:17:43
  the point was not for this drone to
• 1:17:46
  actually reach it. But the point was
• 1:17:47
  that it absolutely was carrying
• 1:17:50
  explosives. Did not originate from
• 1:17:52
  Ukraine. That's actually one of the
• 1:17:53
  reasons it got as close as it did.
• 1:17:54
  Reportedly, the Romanians wanted to make
• 1:17:56
  sure it wasn't a Ukrainian naval drone
• 1:17:58
  that could simply be turned around. And
• 1:18:02
  of course in classic strongly worded
• 1:18:04
  statement European fashion the Romanian
• 1:18:06
  president said quote I strongly condemn
• 1:18:08
  the escalation of such irresponsible
• 1:18:09
  incidents on the part of the Russian
• 1:18:10
  Federation. But as we know one of the
• 1:18:12
  fundamental problems with Europeans and
• 1:18:14
  to a lesser extent even the Biden
• 1:18:16
  administration was that Vladimir Putin
• 1:18:18
  is the one leading all escalations and
• 1:18:20
  the Europeans are always just catching
• 1:18:21
  up. The Europeans refused to actually
• 1:18:23
  take action here. But there might
• 1:18:25
  actually be a strategic reason. The
• 1:18:27
  drone was spotted about 6:30 a.m. local
• 1:18:29
  time by a commercial vessel several
• 1:18:31
  hundred meters away from the Neptune
• 1:18:32
  Deep Gas project, right 80 miles east of
• 1:18:35
  the Black Sea port city of Constant.
• 1:18:38
  Right. F-16s were scrambled to intercept
• 1:18:40
  it. One fighter subsequently destroyed
• 1:18:41
  the drone.
• 1:18:43
  And by the way, this project which
• 1:18:45
  expected to begin gas production in 2027
• 1:18:48
  involved hundreds of workers. And this
• 1:18:50
  is important for a couple of reasons.
• 1:18:52
  One is that Romanian oil infrastructure
• 1:18:55
  is pretty critically important, right?
• 1:18:57
  Uh and the Romanians are obviously have
• 1:19:02
  very limited access to the Black Sea,
• 1:19:05
  but you can see that a lot of Romanian
• 1:19:10
  uh you know fuel power generation right
• 1:19:13
  comes from Russia overland. The fact
• 1:19:16
  that Romania has any tool to get its own
• 1:19:19
  fossil fuels out of the ground would be
• 1:19:22
  a huge blow to Russia. It would reduce
• 1:19:24
  Romanian dependence on Russian fossil
• 1:19:28
  fuels. So, Russia doesn't like it at
• 1:19:31
  baseline, but this is also meant as a
• 1:19:33
  provocation. This is meant to do a
• 1:19:35
  couple things. First, it's meant to test
• 1:19:37
  NATO and to sort of humiliate NATO if
• 1:19:40
  this drone was even allowed to strike
• 1:19:41
  the oil platform. It's unlikely it would
• 1:19:43
  destroy it, but it would make NATO look
• 1:19:46
  impotent and weak. And the fact is it
• 1:19:48
  almost succeeded. You also had, you
• 1:19:51
  know, the fact that, you know, I commend
• 1:19:52
  the fact that Romania was like, "We're
• 1:19:54
  going to blow this thing up." And more
• 1:19:56
  importantly that Romania actually
• 1:19:57
  released some of this footage on social
• 1:19:59
  media showing them actually blowing up
• 1:20:01
  the drone. I think that's not
• 1:20:03
  insignificant. It shows that Russia,
• 1:20:05
  Russia, and Russian drones are no longer
• 1:20:07
  granted free reign over NATO territory.
• 1:20:10
  This is this seems like common sense. It
• 1:20:13
  is not. Uh lots and lots of countries
• 1:20:16
  lots and lot including the United States
• 1:20:18
  uh simply passively permit uh drones to
• 1:20:21
  fly over sensitive military
• 1:20:23
  installations and critical
• 1:20:24
  infrastructure. Again, this is like
• 1:20:27
  established fact. And
• 1:20:30
  you know, I would love it if the
• 1:20:32
  Romanians said, "You did this and now
• 1:20:35
  you're going to pay a price." But it
• 1:20:37
  seems unlikely that the Romanians are
• 1:20:39
  actually going to try to hit back at
• 1:20:40
  Russia. Um though they may do so in ways
• 1:20:43
  that might be more clandestined, right?
• 1:20:45
  You might see, for example, Romanian or
• 1:20:47
  a you might see a a prominent
• 1:20:49
  assassination of a Russian general that
• 1:20:51
  maybe
• 1:20:53
  maybe through some kind of signal not
• 1:20:54
  available to the public indicates the
• 1:20:57
  Romanians actually chipped in. Um, you
• 1:21:01
  may also see Romania provide an
• 1:21:03
  additional aid package to Ukraine or
• 1:21:04
  provide Ukraine with specific military
• 1:21:06
  capabilities that are badly needed
• 1:21:09
  but also I think there was a Russian
• 1:21:11
  strategy here that's a little bit deeper
• 1:21:13
  than just let's mess with NATO. And that
• 1:21:16
  is in part one of Vladimir Putin's key
• 1:21:19
  talking points in this war has been that
• 1:21:22
  in fact the reason Russia is largely
• 1:21:25
  losing is because Russia is actually at
• 1:21:28
  war with all of NATO. Right? Uh foreign
• 1:21:31
  volunteers in Ukraine are reframed often
• 1:21:34
  as mercenaries or um uh NATO soldiers.
• 1:21:38
  And this again these these lies right
• 1:21:42
  NATO assistance to Ukraine is reframed
• 1:21:45
  as being NATO as a belligerent. Uh all
• 1:21:48
  of this is really really important for
• 1:21:51
  the Russian internal propaganda world.
• 1:21:53
  Vladimir Putin needs this because
• 1:21:55
  otherwise he looks weak. Simply losing
• 1:21:58
  to the Ukrainian armed forces makes him
• 1:22:00
  look incredibly weak. And remember he's
• 1:22:02
  a strong man. It's right there in the
• 1:22:04
  name. If you are a strong man, then you
• 1:22:07
  remove freedoms in exchange for safety.
• 1:22:09
  But if you can't defeat an enemy, you're
• 1:22:12
  not a strong man. You're just a a weak
• 1:22:15
  dictator who is controlling, right? And
• 1:22:18
  so
• 1:22:20
  the strategy here for Putin may actually
• 1:22:23
  be to try to provoke a NATO response,
• 1:22:26
  right? and of course his own uh internal
• 1:22:29
  Russian propaganda machine may go and
• 1:22:32
  say listen look the Romanians did this
• 1:22:35
  this
• 1:22:37
  the Romanians responded in this
• 1:22:39
  aggressive way as you can clearly see
• 1:22:41
  and therefore this is proof that we are
• 1:22:43
  at war with NATO that would both be a
• 1:22:45
  propaganda victory for Putin right
• 1:22:47
  validating his narrative but more
• 1:22:49
  importantly it would be fuel for Putin
• 1:22:52
  to launch a general mobilization of
• 1:22:55
  Russia
• 1:22:56
  after his elections. We have discussed
• 1:22:59
  at length here on this channel that that
• 1:23:00
  is a core part of the plan is to scale
• 1:23:03
  up this is to unlock the
• 1:23:08
  uh hack for lack of a better word of
• 1:23:12
  Russian manpower by creating a
• 1:23:14
  mobilization. That would be a mandatory
• 1:23:15
  conscription of all Russian men. And
• 1:23:18
  that would be unbelievably valuable for
• 1:23:20
  Putin because it would one solve his
• 1:23:22
  manpower issues once and for all. to
• 1:23:25
  reduce the amount he has to pay these
• 1:23:27
  people. He can pay them conscript wages,
• 1:23:29
  not the hundreds of thousands of dollars
• 1:23:32
  that he has to pay them currently. Uh
• 1:23:34
  and so the Romania
• 1:23:38
  probably is being more careful about
• 1:23:40
  their response because they want to
• 1:23:42
  respond in a way that will uh that will
• 1:23:46
  check Putin's right make Putin think
• 1:23:48
  twice in the future but also won't
• 1:23:51
  provide him the propaganda victory he
• 1:23:54
  wants that he can take to his people and
• 1:23:56
  say see we are at war with NATO not just
• 1:23:59
  we didn't we didn't just invade our
• 1:24:01
  neighbor we actually went to war with
• 1:24:02
  all of NATO
• 1:24:04
  And that's necessary because Putin is
• 1:24:06
  really running pretty light on options.
• 1:24:08
  In fact, the only technique that is
• 1:24:10
  really working for him is massive
• 1:24:12
  bombardment of Ukrainian civilian
• 1:24:14
  infrastructure, right? Uh last night,
• 1:24:17
  Keev was subjected to a massive missile
• 1:24:20
  and drone strike. And because of the
• 1:24:23
  lack of air defense systems, uh 13
• 1:24:26
  Ukrainian Ukrainians were killed and
• 1:24:28
  another 33 were injured. A hospital was
• 1:24:30
  hit, a school was hit, residential
• 1:24:32
  apartment buildings were hit. And this
• 1:24:35
  is again damages included residential
• 1:24:39
  buildings, a children's hospital, a
• 1:24:40
  school. This is all that
• 1:24:44
  Putin can rely on at this point.
• 1:24:45
  Relatively inaccurate missile strikes,
• 1:24:48
  uh relatively inaccurate uh drone
• 1:24:51
  strikes, and
• 1:24:54
  and that's the only thing that is
• 1:24:55
  currently working for him. I mean, you
• 1:24:57
  can see that his stunning advances or
• 1:25:00
  whatever have ground to something that
• 1:25:02
  looks pretty much like a halt, right?
• 1:25:04
  You can see that the in a typical day,
• 1:25:08
  you see no real strategy to Russian
• 1:25:11
  advances. Uh you can see that this in
• 1:25:13
  this little like purported Russian
• 1:25:16
  advance is about one kilometer, right?
• 1:25:19
  throughout the entire front line, you're
• 1:25:20
  talking about an astronomically small
• 1:25:23
  amount of change
• 1:25:25
  taking place and Russia is is suffering
• 1:25:30
  significant losses in exchange for this,
• 1:25:33
  right? When you look at the ca daily
• 1:25:35
  casualty numbers, it's fairly apparent,
• 1:25:38
  right, that the uh losses again with the
• 1:25:43
  costs to Russia uh are massive, right?
• 1:25:46
  You can see that basically starting in
• 1:25:48
  about uh May of this year, Russia has
• 1:25:50
  lost an average of 14 nearly 1500 uh
• 1:25:55
  service members in a typical day. That
• 1:26:00
  is an unsustainable amount. Okay. And
• 1:26:03
  when you're talking about the fact that
• 1:26:04
  to make that one kilometer of gain,
• 1:26:07
  Russia burned 1480
• 1:26:10
  lives, right? pro probably about half of
• 1:26:13
  those are deaths and about the other
• 1:26:15
  half are seriously wounded.
• 1:26:17
  You realize that that escalation is
• 1:26:21
  actually the only option available to
• 1:26:22
  Putin at this point because he
• 1:26:27
  is going steadily broke, right?
• 1:26:31
  and
• 1:26:33
  he is really struggling uh to
• 1:26:39
  just kind of make anything else happen.
• 1:26:42
  He doesn't have the manpower, right?
• 1:26:43
  Russians have woken up to how
• 1:26:46
  signing up for the Russian military is
• 1:26:47
  largely a one-way trip. They his economy
• 1:26:52
  is failing, his tax base is failing. The
• 1:26:54
  only thing he has going for him is the
• 1:26:56
  fact that his missile strikes are very
• 1:26:58
  effective and the fact that the Iran war
• 1:27:01
  has pushed oil prices higher, meaning
• 1:27:03
  the oil that he can export is basically
• 1:27:08
  sustaining his economy. But, and this is
• 1:27:11
  also important, right? US the US is
• 1:27:14
  having a a what feels like a a debt
• 1:27:17
  crisis in terms of the yield on its
• 1:27:21
  debt. But
• 1:27:23
  the Russian bond market is infinitely
• 1:27:25
  worse. Russia isn't isn't in danger of
• 1:27:28
  having a debt crisis. It is having a
• 1:27:29
  debt crisis with a 15%
• 1:27:33
  rate on its debt. This is on par with
• 1:27:36
  the most the the the most impoverished
• 1:27:41
  developing unreliable countries on
• 1:27:43
  planet Earth. So, in some ways, what you
• 1:27:47
  have is a situation where
• 1:27:50
  Putin wants to bait NATO into doing
• 1:27:54
  something, but that something has to be
• 1:27:58
  compelling, clickable to the average
• 1:28:00
  Russian.
• 1:28:05
  All right.
• 1:28:19
  All
• 1:28:31
  right. I saw somebody gave me a super
• 1:28:33
  chat. Uh, thanks Ace Camps. I think once
• 1:28:35
  Ukraine develops an alternative to the
• 1:28:37
  pack, more countries will rely less on
• 1:28:39
  the US. It's only a matter of time.
• 1:28:41
  100%. 100%. And here's the problem with
• 1:28:43
  the free market, right? the
• 1:28:44
  military-industrial complex. They love
• 1:28:46
  to tell you how great the free market
• 1:28:48
  is, how important it is to operate a
• 1:28:49
  free market. But you know what a feature
• 1:28:52
  is of a free market versus say a Russian
• 1:28:55
  controlled market. In a free market,
• 1:28:58
  people can firms can enter the market.
• 1:29:02
  You competition and right now who
• 1:29:05
  competes who is the competition for a
• 1:29:08
  ballistic missile interceptor? No one.
• 1:29:11
  So
• 1:29:13
  again, you got to have a a you got to
• 1:29:17
  have some competition. And I welcome
• 1:29:19
  competition because ironically enough,
• 1:29:22
  as soon as there was even a hint of
• 1:29:24
  competition in the ballistic missile
• 1:29:26
  interceptor market, suddenly,
• 1:29:27
  miraculously, Loheed Martin goes, "Oh,
• 1:29:29
  actually, we we we we can make a cheap
• 1:29:30
  one. We we can make one cheaper. We can
• 1:29:32
  make it cheaper. It's called a PAC 3 AC
• 1:29:35
  or something." They're like, "It's
• 1:29:36
  cheaper. It's it's going to cost way
• 1:29:37
  less." And the Ukrainians are like,
• 1:29:40
  "Bro, as long as we can survive 18
• 1:29:42
  months, we'll have it even cheaper than
• 1:29:44
  that."
• 1:29:47
  Yeah. It's not a free market if there's
• 1:29:48
  competition. That's that's the bottom
• 1:29:50
  line.
• 1:29:51
  There's there's some places where the
• 1:29:53
  free market produces uh does not produce
• 1:29:55
  competition. It's called a natural
• 1:29:56
  monopoly. Uh an example would be the
• 1:30:00
  Hoover Dam, right? Like you can't
• 1:30:01
  compete. There can't be like 10 dams on
• 1:30:04
  the Hoover Dam. Uh what's another
• 1:30:07
  natural monopoly? Uh water distribution,
• 1:30:10
  right? Like like you're not going to
• 1:30:12
  have 10 companies that put water pipes
• 1:30:14
  into your house and you pick one. Um it
• 1:30:16
  just doesn't really work that way. Uh
• 1:30:18
  let's see if we can find other uh
• 1:30:20
  examples of natural monopolies.
• 1:30:26
  Uh tap water and sewers, electrical
• 1:30:28
  goods, railways, right? Link steel track
• 1:30:30
  buying land building stations. High
• 1:30:32
  setup cost. the second track can't
• 1:30:33
  easily duplicate natural gas delivery.
• 1:30:36
  Uh usually when this these happen, what
• 1:30:40
  most what almost all economies have
• 1:30:41
  figured out is either you regulate the
• 1:30:43
  out of it and you turn it into a
• 1:30:46
  utility where you say, "Yeah, you can be
• 1:30:47
  a for-profit company, but you're
• 1:30:49
  required to meet a bunch of legal
• 1:30:51
  requirements like you have to make sure
• 1:30:53
  everybody can get a telephone. You have
• 1:30:54
  to make sure you're not you're give
• 1:30:55
  charging everyone the same price." Blah
• 1:30:57
  blah blah blah blah blah blah, right?
• 1:31:11
  Right. A single company or monopoly or a
• 1:31:14
  small number of companies oligopy will
• 1:31:15
  serve all the market's customers.
• 1:31:17
  Industries with capital costs
• 1:31:18
  predominate creating large economies of
• 1:31:20
  scale include public utilities like
• 1:31:21
  water services, electricity,
• 1:31:22
  telecommunications and mail. Natural
• 1:31:24
  monopolies were recognized as potential
• 1:31:26
  sources of market failure as early as
• 1:31:28
  the 19th century. John Stewart Mill
• 1:31:29
  advocate government regulation to make
• 1:31:31
  them into a public good.
• 1:31:47
  Yeah. All the free market chills in
• 1:31:48
  shambles when you're like, "Hey man,
• 1:31:50
  real economists acknowledge there's
• 1:31:53
  difference." All right. Do you guys want
• 1:31:54
  to do some live reactions, some
• 1:31:57
  breakdowns of uh
• 1:32:00
  of some combat footage.
• 1:32:03
  Correct answer is yeah. yeah.
• 1:32:05
  Let's do it.
• 1:32:11
  The International Legion for the Defense
• 1:32:12
  of Ukraine is one of the prestige units
• 1:32:17
  in the Ukrainian armed forces. And
• 1:32:18
  actually, it's not even a unit. It's a
• 1:32:21
  feeder foreign volunteers to get placed
• 1:32:24
  with a variety of Ukrainian units. So
• 1:32:27
  combat footage from these guys shows
• 1:32:30
  just how effective foreign volunteers
• 1:32:33
  can be, particularly in a war where a
• 1:32:36
  lot than the average fighting man is
• 1:32:40
  less motivated, less trained, less
• 1:32:42
  physically capable than it was at the
• 1:32:44
  start of the war. So let's take a look.
• 1:32:46
  This is combat footage from uh the DIU
• 1:32:50
  of Ukraine.
• 1:32:58
  Okay. So, I want to point out what I
• 1:33:00
  think is really interesting is that
• 1:33:02
  you've got these MRAPs. And what's
• 1:33:04
  fascinating to me is that when a lot of
• 1:33:06
  people, particularly uh certain folks in
• 1:33:10
  the White House say, "We've spent too
• 1:33:11
  much money on Ukraine." And this is uh
• 1:33:14
  one often times they just make up a
• 1:33:16
  number that has no basis in reality. The
• 1:33:18
  president does this. He says 300
• 1:33:20
  billion. The reality is that that number
• 1:33:22
  is the most generous interpretation is
• 1:33:25
  maybe 180 billion about 60 billion a
• 1:33:28
  year for 3 years. But but and this is a
• 1:33:31
  big asterisk a lot of the stuff we sent
• 1:33:33
  to the Ukrainians is not things that we
• 1:33:36
  bought. They are things like this MRAP
• 1:33:40
  that we bought in the uh global war on
• 1:33:43
  terror era, the wars of Iraq and
• 1:33:45
  Afghanistan. We bought these MRAPs
• 1:33:47
  because they saved the lives of US
• 1:33:49
  troops when they were rolling over IEDs.
• 1:33:52
  But what we realized is over the 20
• 1:33:54
  years of war, MR wraps got a lot better,
• 1:33:58
  right? They went from big, heavy,
• 1:34:00
  probably too heavy of an armored vehicle
• 1:34:02
  to lightweight almost pseudo rock
• 1:34:04
  crawlers uh that I used in uh 2010
• 1:34:08
  called MATVs. And the MATV design
• 1:34:10
  actually got better and better over
• 1:34:12
  time.
• 1:34:13
  Now,
• 1:34:14
  what did we do with all those those
• 1:34:16
  those old models? And by the way, the
• 1:34:18
  MATV is being replaced by the JLTV,
• 1:34:21
  which takes all the design uh uh
• 1:34:24
  improvements that we learned from 20
• 1:34:26
  years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and
• 1:34:28
  puts them into a a more nimble, lighter
• 1:34:30
  weight, more agile vehicle. But what do
• 1:34:32
  you do when you have all this old
• 1:34:35
  Well, our answer is, well, the
• 1:34:37
  Ukrainians can probably use it. And what
• 1:34:38
  the Ukrainians have found is, yeah, the
• 1:34:41
  MATV, the MRAP, that rocks. And so
• 1:34:45
  we just gave them our old stuff. And
• 1:34:48
  yes, when we say we gave them a billion
• 1:34:50
  dollars of vehicles, what we mean is we
• 1:34:53
  gave them vehicles that we had already
• 1:34:54
  paid for and used and that we were
• 1:34:57
  retiring. And we said, well, you know,
• 1:35:00
  now that we gave them away, let's order
• 1:35:02
  some more of the new fangled JLTVs.
• 1:35:06
  So here's the Ukrainians putting this
• 1:35:07
  stuff to use. Oh, actually it's a
• 1:35:08
  Humvee. It's not even that. It's a
• 1:35:09
  Humvee that they've put a cage around,
• 1:35:11
  right? So, literally two generations old
• 1:35:13
  stuff that was getting retire already
• 1:35:16
  probably due for retirement,
• 1:35:22
  right? Humvees like this. This was
• 1:35:25
  something that would have been used in
• 1:35:26
  Iraq 20 years ago, like in 2006 Iraq.
• 1:35:30
  Even then, you were starting to get rid
• 1:35:31
  of Humvees and replace them with MR
• 1:35:33
  wraps. So you can see the Ukrainians are
• 1:35:35
  happy to take this off our hands and the
• 1:35:37
  US government is happy to uh you know
• 1:35:40
  purchase its soldiers brand spanking new
• 1:35:43
  JLTVs.
• 1:35:53
  >> All right. Assignment clear position and
• 1:35:55
  if possible capture enemy personnel.
• 1:36:14
  So, we are in great luck with this fog.
• 1:36:16
  That is a fact because in Ukraine and
• 1:36:19
  and this video, let's see, let me give
• 1:36:21
  you a date. It dropped. It dropped uh
• 1:36:23
  two months ago. So, I think it's really
• 1:36:25
  likely that this is probably kind of
• 1:36:28
  based on their their gear and stuff.
• 1:36:30
  This is probably taking place uh
• 1:36:31
  sometime in the early spring. And so
• 1:36:34
  when you have very foggy conditions, it
• 1:36:37
  can that is the time where both Ukraine
• 1:36:39
  and Russia do a lot of movement of
• 1:36:41
  ground troops. For Ukraine, it often
• 1:36:43
  means that's their chance to rotate
• 1:36:44
  people out, get fresh people into
• 1:36:46
  positions, to conduct resupply, to kazak
• 1:36:49
  wounded. And that's because it's very
• 1:36:52
  hard to conduct drone reconnaissance
• 1:36:54
  uh when there's dense fog. It's hard to
• 1:36:57
  identify movement, right? The drones
• 1:36:58
  have to sit very high up and they can't
• 1:37:01
  see through the fog. They have to get
• 1:37:02
  really low, but if you're really low,
• 1:37:04
  you can't see anything. So, the fog
• 1:37:06
  obviously is a chance for these units to
• 1:37:09
  infiltrate.
• 1:37:19
  Let's just listen for drones a little
• 1:37:21
  bit.
• 1:37:25
  >> So, they reportedly have to try to
• 1:37:27
  establish if there even is a P, right?
• 1:37:30
  Because ideally they say, "Listen, the
• 1:37:32
  Russians have captured our guy." And the
• 1:37:34
  strategy would probably be to surround
• 1:37:36
  the bunker and say, "Listen, you're
• 1:37:37
  surrounded. You've got one of our guys.
• 1:37:39
  Just come out. We'll take you prisoner.
• 1:37:41
  We won't kill you. We won't grenade you.
• 1:37:43
  You technically have a hostage. just
• 1:37:44
  come on out and we'll exchange you and
• 1:37:47
  we'll keep you in decent conditions.
• 1:37:55
  You may be like, "What's with the weird
• 1:37:56
  blurring?" That's because this is
• 1:37:57
  probably a position. Um, and they don't
• 1:38:00
  want it to be identified. They also
• 1:38:03
  often blur the horizon. Um, this is even
• 1:38:06
  some of the footage that I've taken,
• 1:38:07
  they blur the horizon. They they asked
• 1:38:11
  me to blur the horizon or not shoot the
• 1:38:12
  horizon at all.
• 1:38:24
  So, this looks like based on again kind
• 1:38:25
  of the outfits, it looks like it could
• 1:38:27
  be um like March or April, maybe a
• 1:38:32
  little before then. Uh or it could be
• 1:38:34
  like a um October
• 1:39:00
  So guys, I just want to take a sec uh to
• 1:39:02
  mention one, we're currently working on
• 1:39:05
  getting together a fundraiser for some
• 1:39:06
  of these units, but if you look at the
• 1:39:08
  source video, they almost always linked
• 1:39:10
  to fundraising and these units oftent
• 1:39:12
  times 25 30 40 even 50% of their combat
• 1:39:16
  power comes from fundraising and if you
• 1:39:18
  appreciate the fact that I can do these
• 1:39:20
  breakdowns and make these this content
• 1:39:23
  every day I would really appreciate it
• 1:39:25
  if you become a member of my site combat
• 1:39:27
  newsws.com this is my Patreon equivalent
• 1:39:30
  allows me to do this and not have to
• 1:39:32
  take money from corporate sponsors um it
• 1:39:35
  keeps me uh able to do this seven days a
• 1:39:39
  So, if you can, any one of these tiers
• 1:39:41
  is going to get you access to the
• 1:39:43
  members only videos, the Q&As's, and
• 1:39:45
  higher tiers get you more and more
• 1:39:47
  prestige shout shoutouts at the end of
• 1:39:48
  videos. Also, do me a favor, just check
• 1:39:51
  and make sure that you're still
• 1:39:52
  subscribed. YouTube has been
• 1:39:53
  unsubscribing people from my channel.
• 1:39:55
  Um, and again, just just take a peek and
• 1:39:57
  make sure. And if you haven't, do
• 1:40:00
  subscribe. I want to point out this is
• 1:40:01
  another probably US donation. This is an
• 1:40:04
  M68 close combat optic. But what's
• 1:40:07
  interesting is that it's battery
• 1:40:08
  powered. And one of the things that you
• 1:40:11
  see in Ukraine combat now is that um
• 1:40:15
  dynamic units, assault units,
• 1:40:16
  reconnaissance units, those guys have
• 1:40:18
  these optics because they really are
• 1:40:20
  very very effective for winning
• 1:40:22
  gunfights. But if you are in position,
• 1:40:24
  if you're an infantryman living in a
• 1:40:26
  position, you likely do not have the
• 1:40:29
  ability to sustain batteries to keep
• 1:40:32
  your optics functional, right? So oftent
• 1:40:36
  times you will see regular infantry
• 1:40:38
  running iron sight optics while assault
• 1:40:41
  troops or more uh technically skilled
• 1:40:43
  troops are going to run um uh battery
• 1:40:47
  powered optics.
• 1:40:49
  One of the things US military did is
• 1:40:50
  actually purchase what called the ACOGs.
• 1:40:52
  And ACOGs are special because they rely
• 1:40:54
  on a tiny tiny little piece of
• 1:40:57
  radioactive material to produce a uh to
• 1:41:01
  basically function as a battery i.e. an
• 1:41:04
  ACOG, right, will maintain that
• 1:41:06
  holographic site, but it'll be projected
• 1:41:08
  for like 200 straight years. Is it great
• 1:41:12
  to have a radioactive site? It's
• 1:41:13
  probably not great. I wouldn't recommend
• 1:41:15
  you lick your ACOG, but that is
• 1:41:18
  something that the US military really
• 1:41:20
  invested in. Um, was creating these,
• 1:41:22
  again, these ACOGs, these long-term uh
• 1:41:25
  uh holographic sites for exactly this
• 1:41:27
  reason because you don't want to get cut
• 1:41:28
  off. Nothing would be worse than you
• 1:41:30
  say, hey, you get cut off. If you get
• 1:41:31
  stuck in a position for 2 weeks and you
• 1:41:34
  run out of batteries and suddenly you
• 1:41:36
  have no way to accurately aim your rifle
• 1:41:38
  in a gunfight.
• 1:41:56
  Mavic.
• 1:41:59
  He said Mavic. Mavic. Mavic. hammock.
• 1:42:01
  Um, that is a reconnaissance drone. You
• 1:42:03
  can see it's trying to hunt. It's trying
• 1:42:05
  to identify targets. It's kind of hard
• 1:42:07
  to do in these foggy conditions.
• 1:42:11
  [sighs and gasps]
• 1:42:20
  You can see how just narrow the strip of
• 1:42:22
  land is. This is what makes these
• 1:42:23
  assault operations so hard, right?
• 1:42:25
  There's a It's literally just like a
• 1:42:27
  strip of land. But you can also see that
• 1:42:29
  if you were trying to fly an attack
• 1:42:30
  drone in here, it would actually be kind
• 1:42:32
  of tough
• 1:42:34
  because it would be so likely to hit
• 1:42:35
  some of these. But you can also see in
• 1:42:38
  the fall, it's much easier to spot
• 1:42:40
  infantry moving
• 1:42:43
  the bum.
• 1:42:57
  All
• 1:42:58
  >> [panting]
• 1:43:09
  [panting]
• 1:43:10
  >> right, this is kind of terrifying cuz
• 1:43:11
  remember they can't toss a grenade in.
• 1:43:14
  Uh they have to tell the Russians are
• 1:43:16
  out here cuz remember the Russians can
• 1:43:17
  also just say f you and then get on the
• 1:43:19
  radio and call a drone team or an
• 1:43:22
  artillery strike onto their own
• 1:43:23
  position. They are in a bunker. They are
• 1:43:26
  relatively safe. The guys outside are
• 1:43:30
  not so safe.
• 1:43:47
  [panting and sighs]
• 1:44:00
  This feels terrifying. I literally am
• 1:44:02
  like feeling the fear along with them of
• 1:44:03
  just like approaching this thing. It
• 1:44:05
  could be abandoned. There could be no
• 1:44:06
  one in here. They could be lying in
• 1:44:08
  ambush ready to throw a grenade at a
• 1:44:10
  moment's notice. They could have simply
• 1:44:13
  called an artillery. Like, it's it's
• 1:44:15
  terrifying. You The unknown is so
• 1:44:17
  terrifying. And this is one of the
• 1:44:18
  things they don't tell you about uh
• 1:44:21
  combat is that the
• 1:44:25
  the tension when you don't know what's
• 1:44:27
  about to happen to you is
• 1:44:31
  so so so stressful. So stressful.
• 1:44:36
  And it's like again you don't you can't
• 1:44:39
  hurry. You can't run into the thing
• 1:44:42
  that's going to happen. So you just have
• 1:44:44
  to sit in it. Eddie.
• 1:44:52
  [sighs]
• 1:45:17
  Okay, never mind. They tossed a grenade
• 1:45:18
  in and you kind of see you can actually
• 1:45:20
  get the contours of the position, but
• 1:45:22
  that's a pretty well concealed position.
• 1:45:23
  Yeah, the entrance is right there. The
• 1:45:24
  the the the
• 1:45:27
  um trench is clearly here, but they toss
• 1:45:29
  it in. And you can see that right here
• 1:45:30
  is where the bunker is, or at least the
• 1:45:32
  first part of the bunker. And this is
• 1:45:34
  really concealed.
• 1:45:43
  >> [sighs]
• 1:45:53
  >> Okay. I wonder what this is. I wonder if
• 1:45:55
  this is a This looks like it could be
• 1:45:56
  almost like a drone antenna.
• 1:46:04
  over there.
• 1:46:19
  Looks like maybe he tried to throw a
• 1:46:21
  grenade, but it it it was he thought it
• 1:46:22
  might have been an entrance, but it was
• 1:46:23
  too shallow.
• 1:46:31
  Prepping grenade.
• 1:46:36
  Looks like they're trying to grenade the
• 1:46:37
  entrance again. I think that's another
• 1:46:38
  entrance.
• 1:46:56
  trying to get it as far as possible.
• 1:47:01
  [laughter]
• 1:47:01
  >> Just as far as possible in the entrance.
• 1:47:04
  >> Again, one of the things that's crazy
• 1:47:05
  and got to be even more terrifying is
• 1:47:07
  the language barrier. So you have
• 1:47:08
  basically it sounds like there is one
• 1:47:10
  English speaker and there's a bunch of
• 1:47:11
  guys who speak Ukrainian and you have
• 1:47:14
  limited sense of what's happening and
• 1:47:17
  you rely on one dude to translate for
• 1:47:20
  you. And even more scary is like what
• 1:47:23
  happens if he gets hit like how are your
• 1:47:26
  teammates going to communicate with you?
• 1:47:28
  And there's a question that you might
• 1:47:30
  have of like well why not send in a
• 1:47:32
  ground drone? And that's a great point.
• 1:47:34
  One, ground drones are in extreme short
• 1:47:37
  supply. Two, they think there might be a
• 1:47:40
  friendly in here, so they want to give
• 1:47:41
  him a chance to surrender, right? And
• 1:47:44
  just simply blowing the thing up with a
• 1:47:45
  ground drone would not facilitate that.
• 1:47:48
  But the ground drones almost always,
• 1:47:51
  when I was in Ukraine in December, the
• 1:47:53
  the the rule that ground drone
• 1:47:54
  commanders told us was that they get
• 1:47:56
  about 10 requests for every one ground
• 1:47:59
  drone and team available. And so you
• 1:48:02
  would have 10 units say, "Hey man, we
• 1:48:04
  have a wounded guy right now. We got to
• 1:48:07
  get him out. We need you to move your
• 1:48:09
  get your drone here and evac him." And
• 1:48:11
  the ground drone teams would say, "Well,
• 1:48:13
  which do we pick?" And oftent times they
• 1:48:15
  would pick the one that was most likely
• 1:48:17
  to succeed because sometimes, well, the
• 1:48:20
  chances are just too too poor. Uh or the
• 1:48:24
  one that they can they can reasonably
• 1:48:26
  execute on, right? There might be
• 1:48:27
  missions that are more difficult, the
• 1:48:28
  ones that have the best chance of of of
• 1:48:30
  winning. And even then, ground drones
• 1:48:33
  are very attred. They experience a lot
• 1:48:35
  of attrition. But the answer is, would
• 1:48:38
  it be better if a ground drone did this?
• 1:48:39
  Absolutely. But there aren't that many
• 1:48:41
  ground drones,
• 1:48:43
  >> right? Just like it'd be better to have
• 1:48:45
  a vampire fly and crack this thing up
• 1:48:47
  from the sky. But vampires are in short
• 1:48:49
  supply. And again, they can't fly in
• 1:48:51
  these conditions.
• 1:48:53
  >> One, two, three.
• 1:48:58
  >> Okay. Well, we have no signal to
• 1:49:02
  Okay, grenades. But clearing.
• 1:49:20
  Okay, come closer. Nothing
• 1:49:23
  covering.
• 1:49:27
  [panting]
• 1:49:29
  >> Okay.
• 1:49:29
  >> I don't see anything. Okay. Get as far
• 1:49:33
  as possible safely and then drop a
• 1:49:35
  grenade inside.
• 1:49:36
  >> Okay.
• 1:49:37
  >> I see a light. Is that yours?
• 1:49:38
  >> Yeah, it's mine.
• 1:49:39
  >> Okay. Lighting the entrance.
• 1:49:41
  >> Okay. This is so scary.
• 1:49:43
  >> I'm going to need you to get on this
• 1:49:44
  side. Okay. Uh
• 1:49:45
  >> yeah. The the thing goes to the right.
• 1:49:48
  >> Okay.
• 1:49:54
  Once you drop it in there, we'll run
• 1:49:57
  back.
• 1:49:58
  >> Okay,
• 1:49:59
  >> this is so scary. This is like This is
• 1:50:01
  like some tunnel rat in Vietnam I
• 1:50:02
  mean, this is basically us watching what
• 1:50:05
  it's like to be a tunnel rat in Vietnam.
• 1:50:08
  >> I need I need some light. I need some
• 1:50:09
  light in a barrel. I need some light in
• 1:50:10
  a barrel.
• 1:50:16
  Okay.
• 1:50:26
  Yep.
• 1:50:32
  >> Okay.
• 1:50:33
  >> If you can
• 1:50:34
  >> just push onto my left.
• 1:50:41
  You can see
• 1:50:46
  This is one of the things that's really
• 1:50:47
  different and I find it kind of
• 1:50:48
  fascinating about military culture is
• 1:50:50
  that there in the 2010s there was an
• 1:50:54
  absolute obsession among military
• 1:50:56
  afficionados and like mill adjacent guys
• 1:50:58
  for room clearing. People used to go
• 1:51:01
  ham for room clearing. Why?
• 1:51:04
  Because it was really technical. It was
• 1:51:06
  really hard and it looked really cool.
• 1:51:08
  When you were like running into a room,
• 1:51:09
  you're like, "God down. Corner clear.
• 1:51:11
  Corner clear." Here's the thing. Room
• 1:51:14
  clearing is unique to
• 1:51:16
  counterinsurgencies. Why? Because in a
• 1:51:20
  counterinsurgency, there are in it's an
• 1:51:23
  environment in which civilians and
• 1:51:25
  combatants are intermixed. So, you could
• 1:51:27
  not clear a building or clear a room
• 1:51:29
  with a grenade as these guys do because
• 1:51:31
  there's no reasonable chance that there
• 1:51:33
  is a civilian. There just isn't. and
• 1:51:38
  the
• 1:51:40
  the like
• 1:51:42
  the need for these, right? Again, a SWAT
• 1:51:45
  team has to have tactics to do this kind
• 1:51:48
  of room clearing because they have to
• 1:51:49
  enter environments where there could be
• 1:51:51
  civilians, there could be shooters,
• 1:51:52
  there could be no civilians, there could
• 1:51:54
  be all civilians. They have to be able
• 1:51:56
  to to
• 1:51:58
  make those kind of decisions,
• 1:52:00
  split-second decisions immediately.
• 1:52:02
  That's just not true here. And you can
• 1:52:04
  see that the tactics are vastly
• 1:52:05
  different. You basically are like, "Get
• 1:52:07
  in, grenade everything, shoot
• 1:52:08
  everything, and then push a little, and
• 1:52:10
  then grenade more, and shoot more."
• 1:52:13
  Reloading. Yep.
• 1:52:24
  >> Try to get the away.
• 1:52:27
  [sighs and gasps]
• 1:52:37
  107 played around. You're still
• 1:52:38
  conducting
• 1:52:41
  450.
• 1:52:43
  >> That's interesting. They're speaking on
• 1:52:45
  the radio in English, which is even more
• 1:52:47
  curious.
• 1:52:48
  I mean, I I I think there are English
• 1:52:50
  speaking units and battalions inside of
• 1:52:52
  of um international. Like, so the way it
• 1:52:56
  kind of works now is that usually you'll
• 1:52:57
  have something like a brigades sized
• 1:52:59
  element. you'll have like ASOV and then
• 1:53:01
  within it they'll have usually a
• 1:53:02
  battalion of international volunteers.
• 1:53:03
  Sometimes you'll have as little as like
• 1:53:05
  a company of volunteers and those
• 1:53:07
  companies will oftentimes just pick a
• 1:53:09
  language. They'll say, "Okay, these guys
• 1:53:10
  are all Colombians. They all speak
• 1:53:12
  Spanish. Everybody speaks Spanish." And
• 1:53:13
  there'll be one dude or a few dudes at
• 1:53:15
  the headquarters level who speak
• 1:53:18
  Ukrainian, who speak both, and they can
• 1:53:19
  liaz. Um, but generally again, you'll
• 1:53:24
  have smaller units like this that'll
• 1:53:27
  have be like, "Hey, English is just the
• 1:53:28
  language of combat." It's possible cuz
• 1:53:31
  they were they may have sent a Ukrainian
• 1:53:33
  fire team with them to talk to the
• 1:53:35
  Russians in Russian.
• 1:53:38
  There's a they it looks like they
• 1:53:40
  blockaded it or something. Let me see
• 1:53:44
  much.
• 1:53:46
  [sighs]
• 1:53:46
  >> Let's get this out as well.
• 1:53:56
  Okay. I think it means they're covering
• 1:53:58
  the sky. So, one of the things I think
• 1:53:59
  is kind of interesting is that I've
• 1:54:00
  heard mixed things. I've heard some
• 1:54:02
  people say that shotguns are really
• 1:54:05
  effective against FPV drones and
• 1:54:07
  especially against slower moving, bigger
• 1:54:08
  fiber optics. I've also heard and sort
• 1:54:11
  of seen that rifles are now still the
• 1:54:13
  preferred weapon because shotguns will
• 1:54:16
  detonate these FPVs dangerously close to
• 1:54:19
  the operator and that they'll still be
• 1:54:21
  they'll detonate so close that they
• 1:54:23
  remain lethal, right? It could also just
• 1:54:26
  be we're literally controlling this guy.
• 1:54:28
  We're just watching it.
• 1:54:30
  But just to the side here,
• 1:54:34
  you know, cover [sighs] me.
• 1:54:38
  Give me the light.
• 1:54:43
  >> Prep to run away.
• 1:54:44
  >> Okay.
• 1:54:44
  >> Prep to run away. Step back. Step.
• 1:54:47
  >> Step back. I will need to run away as
• 1:54:49
  much as possible.
• 1:54:49
  >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
• 1:54:57
  Now I need to go through it. Okay.
• 1:55:02
  your back.
• 1:55:04
  >> I need some light, brother.
• 1:55:06
  >> This is so scary
• 1:55:09
  because you can see the light like the
• 1:55:11
  flashlight is is actually getting
• 1:55:13
  blocked by the the smoke and soot. So,
• 1:55:16
  the more you have to toss these
• 1:55:17
  grenades, the less the visibility is.
• 1:55:19
  It's scary. Prefire a little bit.
• 1:55:24
  Wait until the dust comes off.
• 1:55:26
  [panting]
• 1:55:27
  Got it.
• 1:55:31
  I see something on the floor.
• 1:55:33
  >> Uhhuh.
• 1:55:34
  >> Function.
• 1:55:36
  >> You're not function.
• 1:55:37
  >> Ignoring you.
• 1:55:40
  >> I'm up.
• 1:55:42
  >> Let me fire to the here. You keep firing
• 1:55:45
  to the left.
• 1:55:45
  >> But he's good. He's communicating a lot
• 1:55:47
  of these things to his battle buddy who
• 1:55:48
  he's clearing with. That is again a
• 1:55:50
  staple of clearing type operations. He's
• 1:55:52
  saying, "Listen, don't don't relax.
• 1:55:54
  Don't do something else. My weapon isn't
• 1:55:56
  working." But you notice that he shows
• 1:55:58
  he's up by firing.
• 1:56:01
  >> Keep advancing slowly. One shot at a
• 1:56:03
  time. Keep advancing. Keep advancing.
• 1:56:05
  Keep advancing further. Further.
• 1:56:09
  Okay. I cannot clear anymore to the
• 1:56:11
  right. Just move yourself there. And
• 1:56:12
  I'll be holding this. And you prepare
• 1:56:14
  the entire room.
• 1:56:15
  >> Oh, I'm empty.
• 1:56:21
  [panting and sighs]
• 1:56:24
  >> I see movement in there. There's some
• 1:56:26
  movement.
• 1:56:26
  >> Yep. [panting]
• 1:56:28
  [sighs]
• 1:56:32
  >> My god, this is so scary.
• 1:56:35
  >> The bed. Reload.
• 1:56:36
  >> I'll cover you. [panting]
• 1:56:45
  Stop. Stop.
• 1:56:51
  Back. Back.
• 1:56:55
  Stay.
• 1:56:57
  Come back.
• 1:57:13
  I mean, they say they're surrendering.
• 1:57:14
  You can see their entrances have
• 1:57:16
  collapsed, but it's kind of wild. They
• 1:57:18
  knew this was happening, but I guess
• 1:57:19
  they just waited till the Ukrainians
• 1:57:21
  were like right there.
• 1:57:35
  shirt.
• 1:57:39
  Take it off.
• 1:57:45
  Giving yelling commands in English to
• 1:57:46
  him. Not that helpful.
• 1:58:00
  You got to you got to remember you got
• 1:58:02
  to remember it. These guys have just
• 1:58:03
  been grenaded like several times in a
• 1:58:05
  tiny enclosed area. There's a pretty
• 1:58:07
  decent chance that they are concussed,
• 1:58:10
  that they are um that their ears have
• 1:58:13
  been eardrums have been blown out. So
• 1:58:16
  you're like, why are they yelling? Why
• 1:58:17
  are they moving so slow? That's all
• 1:58:19
  things you would expect from someone
• 1:58:20
  who's got a concussion. But also, if
• 1:58:22
  you're being taken prisoner by people
• 1:58:25
  who are watching for you to commit
• 1:58:28
  what's called perity. Perity is when you
• 1:58:30
  pretend to surrender, but then you throw
• 1:58:32
  a grenade. That you you you use
• 1:58:34
  surrendering as a tactic to ambush your
• 1:58:36
  adversary. Um, so what you want to do in
• 1:58:40
  that situation is move very slowly. You
• 1:58:44
  don't want to It's It'd be like me being
• 1:58:46
  like, I surrender. Oh, here's my ID.
• 1:58:48
  Right, that's a good way to get shot.
• 1:58:50
  Instead, you're going to go, okay, okay,
• 1:58:52
  I'm reaching for my ID now. I'm reaching
• 1:58:54
  for my ID. You know, you listen to one
• 1:58:56
  person like like that's just a a
• 1:58:58
  survival tactic.
• 1:59:10
  [clears throat]
• 1:59:12
  Check him out.
• 1:59:18
  So, you can see this is looks like it's
• 1:59:20
  maybe in their position. They've got
• 1:59:21
  these guys secured, but you can see
• 1:59:23
  they've got all this stuff here. They've
• 1:59:24
  got a a desk. They got a computer
• 1:59:27
  monitor. They have what looks like maybe
• 1:59:30
  cameras or drone feeds or even like some
• 1:59:32
  kind of stationary camera maybe
• 1:59:33
  observing the area around them. You can
• 1:59:36
  see how established this position is.
• 1:59:37
  This is a really established position.
• 1:59:38
  And I think this is really common where
• 1:59:40
  you get these units who are like in
• 1:59:42
  position, right? They're sort of
• 1:59:44
  pre-positioned and they say, "Hey, you
• 1:59:45
  guys, you got to go out and you got to
• 1:59:46
  clear these guys. You got to take them
• 1:59:47
  back." The wild part is these Russians
• 1:59:49
  may be here for um for a week, 10 days.
• 1:59:54
  I mean, it can take a long time to
• 1:59:56
  evacuate them and there's no special
• 1:59:57
  hurry because these guys are okay.
• 1:59:58
  They're not hurt.
• 2:00:17
  >> [snorts]
• 2:00:19
  >> call sign Max was killed by the Russians
• 2:00:21
  and buried inside the position. After
• 2:00:22
  learning this from the PS, the group
• 2:00:23
  returned and recovered his body and
• 2:00:24
  evacuated him.
• 2:00:31
  All
• 2:00:38
  right, that was literally crazy. Uh, so
• 2:00:42
  yeah,
• 2:00:44
  what's the moral of the story? I don't
• 2:00:46
  even know. Uh, take your time. Take your
• 2:00:50
  time. There's never a hurry. And, uh,
• 2:00:53
  you know, um, the danger and tension is
• 2:00:57
  real.
• 2:00:59
  All right, guys.
• 2:01:01
  That
• 2:01:03
  uh
• 2:01:06
  was that wild or what? Those guys are
• 2:01:08
  those those are some intense dudes.
• 2:01:10
  Okay, that has to be so intense to be
• 2:01:12
  like the odd man out speaking English in
• 2:01:14
  your unit. Absolutely unreal. Got to be
• 2:01:17
  so offputting, right?
• 2:01:31
  That was nuts. That was nuts, Mike
• 2:01:33
  Buchcci. That is so right. Yeah. The
• 2:01:35
  moral of the story is war is hell. Don't
• 2:01:38
  don't fight a war if you don't have to,
• 2:01:40
  lads. Uh that's that's that's the moral
• 2:01:42
  of that story. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's
• 2:01:45
  the best moral we got. Um
• 2:01:49
  anyway, I'm uh I think I'm going to call
• 2:01:52
  it there. Um I really appreciate you
• 2:01:54
  guys.
• 2:01:56
  Uh
• 2:01:59
  yeah, and
• 2:02:03
  yeah, really appreciate you guys. Uh,
• 2:02:05
  hit subscribe, check to make sure you're
• 2:02:06
  still subscribed, and I'm going to fix
• 2:02:08
  this stuff up. And I'll catch you guys
• 2:02:09
  in the