Transcription
David, how are you?
Mario? Very good. Thanks for hosting me. Good to see you.
Pleasure is mine. So, you um you host some of the smartest people in finance and crypto. Um so, I'm actually excited.
Yeah, you've been on my show once before. You're one of them.
Yeah. Long time ago. Yeah. And I think it's the early days when you started the show.
Yeah, that's right. We met at an event. Um, yeah.
I I I want to kind of if you could aggregate um all the things you've learned from these guests because I'm trying to kind of piece it all together to understand what is really happening in the global economy. The state of the dollar, a lot of people are talking about de-dollarization, uh the the repercussions of the war in Iran, the closure of the strait. People are worried that energy prices, which are already extremely high, could get get a lot worse. I saw one of your guests, guess guests was Professor Hank I think, Steve Hank, who was on my show a few times as well, and he's very worried. He's very, very concerned about where things are heading. And obviously, in the last few days, crypto's collapsed, and you've had Scott Melker, Raner, and others on the show.
So I'd love to get your thoughts on, maybe the state of affairs, how worried should we be, or how worried are you speaking to all those people?
So, uh, I think most people, doesn't matter what walk of walk of life or in, should be worried to some extent. Now, you asked me what is the state of affairs for the global economy. There's no one global economy. It's very different economies depending on where you're at. Uh, we can break that down later. I think the biggest worry for me is how higher inflation expectations that are now embedded because of the Iran war are going to impact the long end of the yield curve, which is to say the 10-year and the 30-year bond yields are going to go up. I was just logging on Twitter X just a couple minutes ago. Grant Cardone posted, um, if the 10-year yield goes to, if the 10-year Treasury hits 6%, the entire planet has a 1930 depression. Now, that's his view, but a lot of large financial institutions share that view as well, although not as dramatic. They wouldn't quote it as dramatic as Grant said it. HSBC calls this the danger zone, above 4 and a half percent of the 10-year yield, and we're now in the danger zone. Now, at this at this level, borrowing at all levels becomes a lot more expensive. And then you're probably thinking, well, yeah, but look at the 1990s. Look at the late 80s. The 10-year was in double digits territory, and you know, people weren't being bankrupt left and right. Yes, but I'll I'll say to this, the 10-year yield has climbed from zero, pretty much 0% just a couple years ago. So, the speed and the momentum to which it's moved is having people is getting people worried. The impact of the Iran war um can be felt across every single sector in the world. Um, I just talked about one of them. Uh, the biggest change for monetary policy in the US is a change of um the change in the expectations for where the Fed funds rate is going to go. And Kevin Walsh, who is now going to be the next Fed chair, was brought in by the Trump administration to be more compliant with the expectation of lower interest rates. It appears that the markets don't think that's going to happen. If you take a look at where the um CME Fed watch tool prediction for where the Fed funds rate is going to go before the Iran war, it was pretty much um flat, no change until later this summer, and then maybe a few uh one or two cuts by the end of the year. Now, not only are there no cuts priced in for the rest of 2026, uh, there's now a close to 45, depending on the day, 45, 48% chance of one rate hike by the order of 25 basis points towards the end of 2026. I'll stop here and then I'll let you ask questions about any specific areas.
Yeah, to the 10-year Treasury yield. Um, so you talked about that that being double digits in the 1980s and 90s, and you're saying this time it's it's more concerning even though it's far from those numbers. The danger zone is that 4.5%. First is because of how quickly that yield is rising. Correct. It's the pace of change.
Yes. And also the level of debt.
Exactly. Nominal and also as a percentage of GDP basis is much higher than it was a few decades ago, as you're as you're aware. And so, um, one could argue that even though the interest rate was much higher before, uh, the total interest cost was lower as a percentage of your total disposable income. The total interest expenses on interest on debt in the US has surpassed 1 trillion and is expected to climb to uh almost double by the end of the decade, according to, according to uh the Congressional Budget Office. I actually had the director of the Congressional Budget Office on talking about their debt projections. Um, let me pull up that number exactly so I can get you the exact number, but it's expected to rise considerably from 1 trillion um towards 2036.
That's insane, man.
Yeah. The how vulnerable the economy is.
Interest expenses on debt in the US, as you're probably aware, is has already surpassed military spending. Barring Trump's, you know, he wants to expand it to 1.5 trillion, but that hasn't been passed yet. But interest expenses alone are higher than mil defense spending. It's going to be higher than pretty much all the um non-discretionary uh spending from the US. Uh and and and and the question is what's going to happen? How does that impact? This is the topic that I've exploring on my show. Yes, interest expenses are rising. Yes, the national debt is rising. How does that impact the regular person? I don't work in the government. You don't work in the government. Why should we care? Well, we care in a number of ways. First of all, the government needs to close the deficit by either reducing spending or raising revenues, which is to say higher taxes. Now, if you're somebody like Professor Hanki, who's on the show, he'll believe that it's very much impossible, almost impossible for the government to cut spending at this point. Now, let's suppose they keep spending relatively constant, if not increase spending. So, what does that mean? They have to either raise taxes or let inflation inflate away the debt. Inflation is just another form of taxation when you think about it because it means that we're we're spending less money on the volume of goods that we can consume. And so either way, living costs are going to be more expensive if the deficit continues to widen and if the interest expense continues to go up. And interest expenses will go up in one of two ways. One, the debt rises, or the interest level, the interest rate rises. Right now, both are happening at the same time at a pace that's unprecedented. So that's probably the thing that worries me the most, more so than the fact that the strait of, strait of Hormuz is closed. And by the way, you've reported this, I'm sure, on your own um platform. The Iranians have now suspended talks with the Americans and now they're saying it could be permanently closed pending further notice. And just earlier today, uh, Iran and the US began a new round of strikes. And so the question is, what happens when the strait of Iran, strait of Hormuz is permanently closed? Well, higher inflation expectations will be embedded into the economy. Oil prices will be high. But the economy today is a lot less sensitive to higher oil prices than it was in the late 70s and early 80s. That's a consensus view of guests and economists on my show. In the 70s and 80s, we had a larger percentage of our total spending on gasoline. um more industries, heavy industries relied on fossil fuels as a as a base load power and as a as a um uh fixed cost, shall we say. Now, most of the stock index, as you know, is heavily weighted towards the S&P. And so margin contraction within tech companies is minimal uh because of the higher gas prices. Whereas maybe 30 years ago, you would have seen margin contraction across the S&P 500. That's less so the case today. And you're seeing evidence of that by the fact that the S&P is at all-time highs, barring yesterday's sell-off. So higher oil prices impact the economy in a less direct way, I think, than where interest rates and Fed monetary policy are going to go is my conclusion. At least in the West. In the on the East, I just came back from a trip in Asia. Rice prices are going up. Prices consumed by billions of people. Fertilizer prices are going up globally. um most of as East Asia and uh and China in particular import their oil from the Gulf countries, and that's not the case in the US where the US is the world's largest oil producer. So what does this mean? Well, you'll recall that starting in, well, right after the Iran war broke out, shortly after the state of uh the the nation of Philippines declared a national state of emergency because they expected oil to run out in a few weeks. I have to follow up on that. I don't think they've run out of oil, but that was, you know, I I think they had reserves and I think a host of countries actually released their reserves to alleviate some of these crises. But had that not happened, you would have seen countries in Southeast Asia literally running out of oil. And so it impacts uh the world disproportionately and it impacts markets disproportionately. There's an argument one of my guests was making earlier on the show, and he's not the only one. There's a few guests making that argument that the US always knew, and usually it's economists or traders, commodity traders that make these um that have these theories that the US knew Iran would close the strait of Hormuz all along, which everyone knew is going to happen. Like for me, that would be weird if the US did not know that's going to happen. And while in absolute terms, the closure of the strait of Hormuz is bad, net net bad for the US economy and the global economy, in relative terms, the US is benefiting as a as a net exporter of natural gas and of um as the biggest oil producer. Could this be true relative to the rest of the world? Is the US economy doing better off from the closure of the Hormuz strait, or just as bad, if not worse?
Well, let's look at the countries benefiting from from this directly. The US, like you said, uh is producing oil. Russia is benefiting from this. Uh sanctions have been lifted from Russia to alleviate some of the stress that would come from the strait of Hormuz closure. Is the US doing better than the rest of the world? Um, I can't answer that for the rest of the world. I can certainly answer that from the Canadian perspective. It's doing a lot better than Canada, for example. Uh, Canada is the only G7 country that is now in a technical recession. The government has not used that word. I find it very interesting that the CBC, which is owned partly by the government and funded by the government, has not been shy to literally just call it a technical recession. It's two quarters of contracting real GDP, um, this quarter and the quarter prior. This is the only G7 country that's in the state. Now, why is that? Canada has one of the largest natural gas and oil reserves in the world. Um, Canada has one of the largest reserves of precious metals and critical minerals. So, what what happened? Well, none of this is being extracted at a pace that's necessary to sustain the deficit in oil. And so the Canadian government, although resource-rich, is only resource-rich on paper. And I've had this discussion with many of my guests. What needs to be done? What needs to be done to to meet the demand of critical minerals? I'm going a little off topic. I'll go back to your question, but what needs to be done?
What what needs to be done to to meet the demand of critical minerals uh from the AI buildout and other things, the electrification of the world? Copper was just named a critical mineral last year by the United States government, and um, and a host of other minerals, critical minerals has been uh blocked for export by China. Recently, they've pulled back on that a little bit because the tariff, the pre-war has deescalated somewhat, but uh Canada and much of the United States is in a unique position to be very rich in minerals in the ground, but they've relied on Chinese refineries and importing their raw materials from overseas for too long, and you can't just turn a mine on overnight. This needs to be addressed now because it takes 10 to 15 years to start a mine and start operations. So, uh, going back to your question, um, Canada is not doing as well as the US. The US is doing better than uh European countries. Growth is higher in the US than most in the EU. Um, and I would say that the US is more resilient to the higher oil prices than in Asia because the US has the ability to at least produce their own oil and be less reliant on the Gulf countries, whereas um Asian countries not so much.
China.
To China. Yeah, I'd love to get a comparison to China. China has spent the last decade preparing for, I I don't want to say this particular crisis, but a scenario like this. Think about their entire model of producing cars. They've rewritten the rules of what a car should be. And they've redefined the car industry. They have the world's largest production by volume of electric cars. Why? Because they realized a long time ago they can't compete with the West and the Germans and the Japanese on combustion engine sales. So, they've rewritten the rules on what the consumer should want from a car, which is to say high-tech, cheap electric vehicles. Nobody on the planet now does it better. What does this mean? It means as a country, they're starting to become less reliant on oil. Had they not done this 10-15 years ago, the country would be hit a lot harder than they're already being hit now. I've talked to a guest on my show, Sean Ryan, who's currently in Shanghai, who does consulting for clients on Chinese policies. And I asked him, "What is the scene now in Shanghai, um, where you're living in, and um, how are people feeling about the Iran war?" This was a couple year, this was a couple weeks ago. He said, "Gas prices haven't really changed all that much. Um, the government has able to, I guess, manage the price somewhat, and sentiment isn't really that that weak." Now, I I don't know. I haven't been to China, so I can't verify this firsthand. I was just doing a tour of Asia. I was in Taiwan for vacation, Singapore, and Bali. And um, it it it doesn't look like the economies have been hit, uh, on the surface at least, that hard. Everyone's out, everyone's shopping, everyone's out of restaurants. So, uh, China is is starting to become strategically more independent of the Gulf countries when it comes to oil imports. But keep in mind, they still do import most of their oil. And in fact, uh, the Iranians have imported have exported most of their oil to China. China was their number one buyer of oil. Um, this is why uh the Trump-Xi meeting that was covered all over the media a couple weeks ago was so important because people were speculating, well, is China going to help uh uh Iran? Sorry. Uh, is China going to help Iran? First of all, but more so, is China going to help the US end the war? Um, no, I I correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any resolutions have been made. But what was important to me is that Xi came out verbalizing that yes, we're on the same page. Iran should never have nuclear weapons. And um, at least they've agreed on that.
They've No, they haven't agreed on that. They've agreed on that, but they've always agreed on that. Iran agreed on that. David, Iran says, "We agree. We don't want to have nuclear weapons." This is nothing came out of that meeting. It was just mind-boggling to watch. Um, I want to go back to the bond yields.
Um, yeah.
This is so this is not my area of expertise, and it's yours. Um, I remember when I spoke to Senator Rand Paul, and that conf was ages ago. It's like six months ago, if not longer, maybe even almost a year ago, eight months ago. And we were talking about because we were talking about the big beautiful bill, and how, you know, how America's debt is by far the biggest threat to American hegemony, the American economy, you know, the US as a whole. And I used a quote from like two decades ago where the national security advisor said that explicitly said, "Our biggest threat is not terrorism. It's not another country. It's our debt." And that was 20 years ago, 15 years ago, when it was a lot less than what what it is now. Significantly less. I don't have the numbers in front of me. Um, can you dig into this further, and what Grant Cardone, I think, posted today or yesterday? How dangerous is it? Because America's got massive debt, and it's paying that debt, and the higher that interest is, the more it's going to pay on that debt. Can you explain it further on because it's just weird to a lot of people on the outside.
On why this isn't a national emergency right now, and all all that the country talks about rather than focusing on Iran and Russia and China, just focus on the freaking debt. It just seems for people like me.
It's not a national emergency because the US is in a unique position to be the world reserve currency, which grants them the privilege to basically print their way out of any debt situation or any debt crisis. I don't think the US is going to have a sovereign default crisis. There may be failed treasury auctions in the worst-case scenario, which is to say, um, treasury auctions that happen regularly may have lower volume. The end result is that bond yields will go up. And when that happens, um, like I mentioned earlier, borrowing costs will go up for not just investors, but also the corporate level and the consumer level. That means mortgages will go up, your credit card, uh, debt, which usually follows the 10-year. Everything follows the 10-year, that will go up. um, discretionary spending will go down because you'll be able to afford less things, and liquidity eventually will dry up if debt gets too expensive. I was just, I just pulled this up as you're asking the question. This is from the Congressional Budget Office. Deficits are large by historical standards. This is the government's own words, not mine. The deficit totals $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2026. It grows to 3.1 trillion by 2036. Relative to the size of the economy, the deficit is 5.8% of GDP in 2026. It increases to 6.7% by 2036. Debt held by the public rises from 101% of GDP in 2026 to 120% in 2036. This is well above the previous record of 106% just after World War II. So, the US is entering a truly unprecedented era. Never before in the history of the United States has debt been this high. You ask me what will happen. The answer is I literally don't know because there's no historical precedent for the debt reaching this kind of level in the United States. Well, I can only speculate as to what will happen, which is higher bond yields, um, higher uh tighter fiscal policies, hopefully to bring down this debt, which means less government spending in the public sector. Um, and and if they're not going to be able to do that, which they probably won't, higher taxes for everybody. I'm not, I'm not talking about billionaires. I'm talking about higher taxes for everybody. Um, higher interest rates and higher inflation expectations built in because money supply that's going to come from the Federal Reserve, no doubt monetizing some of this debt, which means they're buying back some of this debt. Um, and that comes at the expense of price stability. Whenever you monetize the debt, you create money supply. The M2 supply rises. And if you're a monetary like Professor Hanky, who believes that the CPI is correlated to the money supply, then you're going to believe that inflation is going to be stickier. Um, and when you have higher inflation and higher borrowing costs, in layman's terms, how does that impact our lives? It means we're all going to be much poorer. Mario, it means our wages are not going to be able to keep up with inflation, and I'm not going to be able to buy as much stuff because my credit card payments are going to go up, just because the interest on my credit cards is going to go up. Let's suppose I clear all my debt. Sure, I can do that. But is that actually what's happening? No. Savings rate has now fallen to 2.6%. I just checked it the other day. Has fallen to 2.6% in the United States. 2.6% is the lowest it's been since a few years ago, I believe 2022. On top of that, delinquencies on credit cards are rising, and the number of days late on credit cards is now the highest it's been since COVID. So people are taking on more debt, and we're in a position where interest rates are going to climb higher. So yes, I think I think people are going to have less money to spend, is is the um conclusion from this particular rising debt situation. Does that mean that markets are going to crash? Not necessarily. Uh, what what has happened uh is that the stock market is now concentrated within the AI bubble. I don't want to, sorry, I use that word bubble, that was maybe a 40 and slip. The AI concentration of stocks. Now, it's not just the US, by the way. It's all over the world. Do you know what the two top stock indices year to date are? Mario, take a guess.
I won't guess.
Okay. So the number one, Korea KOSPI index, up 90%. And number two, Taiwan, up 60% year-to-date from the beginning of the year to July, well, June. So 90 something percent and 60 something percent, Korea and Taiwan. Why? Korea is mostly Samsung and a few other chaebol companies, so the conglomerates. Taiwan is driven solely by one stock, which is Taiwan Semiconductor, that's up a lot, and that's now at 42 to 44, depending on the day, 42 to 44% of the entire Taiwan stock index. Any in any one given day. So 40% of Taiwan stock index is one stock. Taiwan, a country, if you want to call it a country, of under 25 million people, has now the fifth largest stock exchange by market cap in the world. It just beat India, a country of a billion people. So, no, I don't think the stock markets are going to fall just because people have less money to spend. Those are completely two separate universes. Are we just seeing a massive centralization of wealth within a very, very small number of tech companies?
Yes. Yes. I think you've summed it up very well. If you go to, um, and I encourage everyone to do this, you can check this yourself. Go on the um Federal Reserve website. If you if you search up Federal Reserve wealth by wealth gap, um, let me show you something very interesting if I can. Federal Reserve uh wealth by wealth gap. So what this shows is the distribution of household wealth in the United States. I'm not sure if I'm able to share my screen. Um, but if I am, uh, you send it to my producer, she'll show it. Also, can you show it? Does it give you the option to show it?
Um, are you seeing it now? No, at least I can.
There it is. Perfect. Yeah.
Okay. This is a chart I've shown a couple times on my own show. Distribution of household wealth in the US since 1989. So, the top 0.1% have gotten wealthier. Uh, the top 99.9, top 90 to 99% control 63 trillion of wealth. The 99 to 99.9%, the green, have gotten wealthier. And the bottom 50% have stayed flat, relatively speaking, definitely not beating inflation. Now, interestingly, if you overlay this with the stock market, there's a very close correlation. What does this tell us? That the concentration of wealth lies with people who own assets, particularly assets with the stock market. So, as market prices move up, so does wealth in the highest concentration bracket, the highest wealth bracket. And these people have been driving spending across the US. The economy is not going to collapse, uh, unless the stock market collapses first, is the consensus view on on my show from my guests. I and I'm starting to believe that as well. Um, if we have the wealthy people continuing to spend money, um, there's still going to be demand for discretionary spending, um, leisure, hospitality. If you take a look at the latest jobs numbers, um, it's showing that. You'll recall the latest jobs numbers, the expectation was 90,000 jobs. Um, I I can't quote the exact number off the top of my head, but it was over a 100,000 added on Friday. Non-farm payrolls numbers. It blew Wall Street consensus completely out of the water. I'll just stop sharing the screen for now. So what happened there? It wasn't just governments adding jobs, by the way. It was jobs added in hospitality, in leisure, uh, across the private sector as well. Um, job expectations, uh, sorry, jobs being added high at a higher pace than what consensus expected means that the Federal Reserve is more likely to raise rates than lower rates, which is why on Friday you saw the S&P 500 drop by 2 and a half percent, and the NASDAQ dropped by more than 3 and a half percent. Bitcoin's also down 6%. Now, I know you want to talk about Bitcoin, um, but risk assets all fell together. Gold also fell on the day. This is an era, um, we've seen this before where good news for economic data probably means bad news for the market. It just means a more hawkish Fed. So going back to your question, yes, wealth is being concentrated more and more, and to those who have owned just a few stocks, they've become more wealthy than they've ever been in the past, um, from holding the market. And the market more and more is becoming just a basket of a few stocks, more so than just a more so than a diversified vehicle for a basket of diversified stocks. Um, this is concerning for investors because when you're buying the S&P or the NASDAQ, you're no longer just buying 500 stocks. You're mostly just buying a few. But this is not really news, Mario. You've known this as well as I, as well as I do. This has happened for a number of years now. Ever since the AI AI boom started, I think late 2022, the MAG 7 have carried uh the entire index. I would just want to point something else, one more thing before I pass it back to you. Uh, the Russell 2000, which is a small caps index, that's been starting to outperform the S&P in the last, um, six months or so. The S&P is up about 12% year-to-date. The Russell 2000 is up about 15 last I checked. Uh, the midcap as well, the midcap index is also slightly outperforming the S&P year-to-date. We're starting to see a bit of a rotation away from tech stocks, and that's the consensus view amongst hedge fund managers on my show right now. I've asked them, hey, what are you doing? Are you buying the SpaceX IPO? Um, are you buying the, are you buying the um, you know, uh, the Anthropic IPO? Thomas Hayes, hedge fund manager, great guy. You should have him on your show as well. He, he, he, he, um, he runs a hedge fund and he also a podcast called Hedge Fund Tips. He said he, he told a story. He said, hey, my housekeeper's husband asked me, should I buy the SpaceX IPO? And you know, when your housekeeper's husband is asking you this question, first of all, means everybody's in on it. He says, no, you're exit liquidity. I'm not going to get in on this. He said, number one, you're going to be exit liquidity for the venture capitalists who got in before. You're not going to be early. You're going to be late. And number two, uh, this, this is probably one of the most expensive IPOs in the history of IPOs. And whether or not you believe Elon Musk is going to put people on Mars is irrelevant to the fact that this is a very, very expensive company at current valuation. So he said no, there's going to be a lot of hype. There's going to be a correction. He's going to stay away from it. And in fact, he's rotating out of tech into some of these other less hyped sectors, um, in the S&P. Um, you know how Ray Dalio has been talking about for years how centralization of wealth and that disparity between the poor and the rich could, you know, it threatens the the stability in the US. And that's something he's been warning about for a very long time. And we've seen that gap kind of increase and increase. And he's given historical examples when that gap between the rich and the poor, the the the larger it gets, the the higher the risk for internal unrest. Is that something that worries you as well? Seeing that gap, seeing that centralization of wealth within these companies, and seeing how the average consumer is struggling so much, you've given all these metrics from the amount of savings to the amount of debt they have to to the inflation going up. Does that worry you?
Absolutely it does. I'm trying to think about this um from the perspective of somebody who's just, you know, living, not just somebody who's not somebody who's running a finance show. Um, how does this impact me, the regular person? I, it's very difficult to, it's more difficult now to get ahead than it was during our parents' generation, and it's going to become even more difficult for our children. Mario, I think that is the future that we're living in. Professor Hanky, whom you've talked to, told a story on my show when he was in university. Right after university, you know what he did with the savings? First of all, he said he worked three jobs while in university, part-time jobs. And with the savings from his three jobs, you know what he did? He bought an apartment complex. Not one apartment. He bought an apartment complex. First thing he did after university. I don't know many people my age that can afford an apartment in Vancouver, let alone an apartment complex. The standard of living is going to be a lot lower now than it was 30 years ago if people don't find ways to either grow their wealth through investments or start a business. Um, for the average person, it's going to be a lot tougher. I, uh, yeah, and that's something that not just scares me, but bothers me a lot because I know a lot of really hardworking friends who um, are going to have to live in a world with higher inflation, higher and more restrictive government policies for for businesses. And I, what this, what the wealth gap is going to do, I fear, is going to introduce a lot more socialist policies um across the western world, which in my opinion is going to actually put the burden of paying down this debt on the middle class rather than the wealthy, who are probably going to leave.
Yeah. It's not even adding the risks of artificial intelligence that what that would do to the ability of generate wealth or just be productive as a whole. And then you get into UBI. It's a whole different discussion. But it's a pretty worrying future, and we're just doing things that accelerate it. Looking at the Iran war and the repercussions of this war as an example of that. But you've done an incredible job summarizing it, man. I really, really enjoyed this. I'd love to have you back on the show. You're really good at explaining things and um, highly recommend people check out your show because you do a great job explaining things, but also getting the most out of your guests. So appreciate you coming on, man.
Thanks, Mario. Appreciate you and big fan of your work. So thank you.
Thank you, David. Um, all right guys, on this sober note, uh, with an incredible guest who I'm sure is going to become a regular, um, just really good at explaining things that many or that I would consider complex. Um, I'll be going live again with Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Aguilar in 17 minutes. I think this could be my last show for the day to talk about the um, uh, the more concerning news of the the the bombshell that the uh, uh, US Defense Intelligence Agency issuing an assessment that Israel is now a critical threat to US security. Israeli counter-intelligence. So, we were talking before about that clause that was passing within the um, what is the legislation called? The National Defense Authorization Act, that merges the US and Israeli military. Well, now, um, the Israeli counter-intelligence is being labeled as a critical threat. Remember, Israel is America's closest ally, which is having its military merge with the American military, has been receiving aid from the US for decades, is now a critical threat. Good luck making sense of this. I'll see you guys in 15.