Transcription
The commodity markets are asleep at the wheel on this, and and and and I do think that, uh, Trump is influencing the markets a lot with what he says. He, he keeps reassuring everybody that we're going to take control of the strait, where it's going to be open, and so we're not controlling, we're not going to take control. This is, this is a fool's errand that he's on right now. It, it, it makes a lot of headlines and everything, but it's not going to amount to anything.
>> Hello, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Lyanna Petroa, with a new episode of World Affairs and Context. Today, I'm very pleased to welcome back Dr. Steve Hanky. Dr. Hanky is a prominent American economist, professor at Johns Hopkins University, and senior fellow at the Mises Institute. Dr. Hanky, welcome back.
>> Thank you so much for taking the time to join.
>> Great to be with you.
>> It's great to have you, and I'm absolutely thrilled for this conversation because I know so many people, not just in the United States, but also around the world, are wondering what's going on with the energy markets and what to expect next. About two weeks ago, prior to launching strikes on Iran, Donald Trump said that US emergency storage reserves could run out. And he stated that, uh, these specific strategic reserves, um, that are kept for sudden crisis, would last about four weeks if global shipments stopped. The total inventory of US oil reserves stood at around 319 million barrels, which is the lowest level since April of 1983. Now that Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz after Trump's attacks, what is your assessment of where the energy markets stand today?
>> First, we have to look at the inventories. And as you've summarized, they're, they're, they're reaching the bottom of the barrel everywhere, uh, except perhaps China. Although China's been drawing down their inventories, too. But, but generally speaking, they're at very low levels. So that's, that's the stock. The flow is also, uh, dwindling because we have the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed now, completely closed. So the flow coming out of there has been, uh, disrupted. And also the flow of refined products, that is gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, that, that, that is, those stocks are low, and the flow is also low. So we have low stocks of crude oil, low stocks of refined products, and, and the flows coming into the market are also, uh, petering out. So, not surprisingly, the prices finally have started going up. I, I think the last time I was on, I told you that by, by the end of the summer, we would see more spikes in oil prices and refined product prices, and, and we're seeing, we're starting to see that now. West Texas Intermediate has gone up. Uh, today it's up around $80 a barrel. Brent is higher than that. But that's, that's the story. I mean, if, if inventory, and by the way, they, they, they could go a lot higher. If the flows continue to dwindle and we continue to use up what inventories we have, eventually, you, you do hit the bottom of the barrel with inventories, and you no longer have the inventory cushion to, to cushion price increases, and, and prices will really soar then. So we're, you know, stay, stay long crude, stay long refined products. That's where you want to be. That's where I've been. That's, that's, that's what's going on.
>> And short.
>> On July the 16th, Reuters reported that Yemeni Ansar Allah, or the Houthis, are prepared to close Bab al-Mandab if the Trump administration follows through its threats and does strike Iranian energy infrastructure. Now, for our viewers, I would like to quickly note that the Bab al-Mandab Strait is one of the world's most critical energy choke points. So far, we have been hearing about the state of Hormuz, while Bab al-Mandab is equally important because it links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden with approximately 9 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products and about 8 billion cubic feet of, um, LNG transiting the waterway every single day. So any disruption, um, actually forces tankers to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope, which adds roughly, uh, two weeks to, um, voyages between the Middle East and Europe, and of course, it increases shipping costs, insurance premiums, and global energy prices. Dr. Hanky, walk us through the impact of the closure of Bab al-Mandab on the, how would it impact the price of crude oil that, as you said, has already been going up, and how would it impact the global economy and the US economy too?
>> Well, the, the short answer to that is it would, it would cut, it would cut part of the flow. You always have to think in terms of commodities, stocks and flows, because inventories are very important. So, so we've already gone through the inventory thing. We know where that is. That has nothing to do with the, with the, with the, with the Red Sea and the Houthis and, and, and that particular choke point. That particular choke point is a flow problem. So if, if the flow is cut off, and, and you don't have any more inventories left, the prices go up, and, and, and that will clobber the international economy, and, and the markets are just starting to wake up to this. By the way, what, what you end up with with these low inventories typically is that, I mean, always, not, not typically, always, and we've known this since research that was done by working in the 1930s, that, and that work was on what they call a supply of storage. That, that's, that's the literature, shall we say, in the, in the technical economic field, the supply of storage. What you end up with, you have to look at the spot price, or the, for current delivery of a commodity, and a futures price, and, and when the futures prices are much lower than the spot price, you know, people are willing to pay a premium in the current spot market for current delivery. That means inventories are low, and, and again, spot price above futures price. We know without even looking, without even putting a dipstick in the tank, we know the tank is low. And, and we're seeing that in the markets now for crude oil. The spot price is above the futures price. Inventories are low. That's showing up. All the refined products, it's, it's even steeper. The, the forward curve, the relationship between spot prices and futures prices. We, we call that the markets in what's called backwardation. It's, it's tilted up like that. Normally, it's in contango like this, with a, with a spot price being down here and the futures price being up here. You have, you have what's called a carry market. That's typical. The, the crude market in the last 20 years has only been in backwardation 5% of the time. It's very rarely in, in backwardation because normally everything is normal. We have adequate inventories, and we're in contango. Spot price low, futures price higher. Backwardation is this, spot price up here, futures price down here. And we know when we see that in the market that inventories are low. And, and now the market's starting to price that in. It, by the way, it hadn't been, it, it, it, it was kind of even, even. It went into backwardation when the war started. It went like this, and then it kind of flattened out like that. And I thought the market's got this thing all wrong. The mar, the market's listening to Trump, and Trump is saying that the strait is open, everything is great. Well, everything isn't great. The strait is not open. It's never, never really been open since the war started. Flows started increasing, and now they've petered out to virtually nothing. I mean, yesterday there was only one tanker that went through the strait. So it's, it's closed. And, and, and the Houthis, by the way, could really close down the, the, the Red Sea alternative. Uh, and, and if they do that, then you've got another choke point closed. So, you've got the flows being squeezed and cut off. I might add, by the way, one flow that's been cut off that was another war we have to talk about. You know, there, there's 65 wars going on in the world right now. It's a, almost a record high. So there, there wars going on all over the place. And, and another big war was, is the NATO Ukraine war against Russia. And, and those drone attacks on the refineries in Russia have, have really caused a considerable amount of damage. And Russia used to supply about 8 to 10% of all the refined products that were traded in the world market. That, that's jet fuel, gasoline, and, and, uh, and diesel. And now the, the Russians have cut off exports of diesel because they, they don't have the refining capacity. They need the diesel at home. And they're actually rationing gasoline in, in Russia. You might, you might have even in Moscow, you might have to wait an hour or more to fill your car with gasoline, but that's, that's because of the flow of refined products coming out of Russia has been dramatically reduced. And as I say, I, it's a big deal because before the war, 8 to 10% of the world's tradables and refined products, that, that was coming from Russia. Now Russia is actually importing gasoline and jet fuel. They're actually importing. They're not exporting. So, so that gives you again, a, a squeeze in the system.
>> Um, in general, markets appear surprisingly resilient despite, uh, the escalation in the Middle East and despite Ukraine's attacks on Russian refineries and the impact that it has on the global energy markets. So, is it fair to say that markets so far have been just simply underestimating both geopolitical risks and physical supply shortages? Or is there something else going on that sort of caps that price of oil, both Brent and WTI, West Texas Intermediate, below a certain level?
>> I, I think the commodity markets are asleep at the wheel on this. And, and, and, and I do think that, uh, Trump is influencing the markets a lot with what he says. He, he keeps reassuring everybody that we're going to take control of the strait, where it's going to be open, and so we're not controlling, we're not going to take control. This is, this is a fool's errand that he's on right now. It, it, it makes a lot of headlines and everything, but it's not going to amount to anything because at the end of the day, what, what, what this war, this US-Israeli war against Iran has done, it, it's changed the game. The game was that the strait was open before the war. The US and Israel go to war with Iran, and now Iran is going to permanently control a strait. That, that's, that's, that's what's so we have a before everything free and after Iran exercising control. That, that's, that's what the situation is. So it was, it was something caused by the United States, who, who closed the, the strait. Forget the propaganda. It was a war against Iran that ended up closing the strait and ended up with the strait being in control of the, of the Iranians. So, so it was one of the most stupid things from that point of view.
>> Absolutely. It's, you know, it's as if the war was launched, of course, to benefit Israel's interests because we, Iran has never been a threat to the United States, a national security threat, that is. But it's interesting because now we created the conditions to just keep that war going. We just created another forever war because Iran is not going to give up its leverage, which the Strait of Hormuz presents.
>> Well, that, that's right. And, and, and you have to ask why, why would Trump be engaged now in what, what are in the seventh day of further round-the-clock attacks and bombings and, in, in Iran, the forever kind of aspect of the war? Well, I think he's getting his instructions from Israel, not, not the United States, because the, the bombing that we've been doing the last seven days is, is nonsensical.
>> Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, there, there's no, no, it's, it's a loser's game, but it keeps the war going, which of course Israel wants. And, and you notice Israel is now out of the picture. They're not in the news at all. It's as if they're, you know, angels, you know, nothing's going on. But by the way, now Netanyahu will be coming to Washington to, to see, uh, President Trump in, in the next few days. And, and I think he's giving Trump instructions on, on what to do because there's, there's no logical reason for America to be doing what it's been doing the last few days. I mean, and, and nothing I've seen anyway.
>> Exactly. And, and, um, as we discussed previously, I think this was several weeks ago when, when we were, uh, talking about this, we mentioned that as of early June, so even before the second round of escalations, the United States, or rather, we should say the Trump administration spent close to $130 billion bombing Iran. $130 billion. That was as of June. And now after this new bombing campaign, I think the US population, US taxpayers ought to be asking, why are we paying for this? How much more do we have to foot the bill to serve the interests of a foreign actor? And, and, um, you know, when, when are our interests going to be served? But that, that seems to be, you know, not, not on the agenda, unfortunately. And, and, and we see that, um, members of Congress don't, don't bring that up as well.
>> Well, I, they, they, this, this week they brought it up a, a little bit, a tip of that iceberg, because they, uh, debated, and it ultimately, uh, the proposal to cut off military assistance to Israel was, was defeated. Uh, but, but it was discussed, which is highly unusual. You usually, they don't discuss anything like that, but they did discuss it, and as I say, it was voted down. But the, the bill, by the way, will, will be astronomical when the thing is, when the dust settles, because the, the direct cost, looking at some of the people who research this and, and sharp pencil these estimates of the cost of war and so forth, they're coming in with numbers that are around at least a trillion dollars. So, so it's, you know, forget the, the, the hundred billion is peanuts compared to the, the ultimate cost when you start really counting everything. By the way, the, the, these researchers know how to, how to count beans, and, and they count everything. So the, these costs, these war costs are just enormous, whether it's Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, you, you name it. Because re, remember, you have all kinds of things going in, veterans benefits, and,
>> it's, it's just not the munitions you're burning up today. That's basically all they're counting in the, in the, in the hundred billion thing is, is what the cost of the, of of the munitions has have been and the, and the fuel and so forth. But the, there are other costs, by the way, that aren't even included in the trillion. And, and one thing that is amazing is that the environmentalist, why aren't the environmentalists? They're, they're always raising cane about this thing or that thing. Some pollution here or some poll, some spill here that this, that, and the other thing. These wars are massive environmental damagers. No, no one's talking about that.
>> Yes. Nobody. And, and, uh, I, I don't know why the, why the Greens should be very anti-war. And, and I, you know, but, by the way, if you look at the, the war going on in Ukraine, one of the, one of the biggest supporters of the Greens in Germany, the Greens in Germany are are warmongers. But you ask the question, I thought they were green. I, I thought they were for saving the environment. No, that war is for destroying the environment. All wars are for destroying the environment and causing one hell of a lot of pollution and damage.
>> Absolutely.
>> And it doesn't take a, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out, but have you ever seen anything about that in a newspaper? No.
>> No.
>> No. There's nothing, nothing reported. And, and the reason is all, all these environmental activists who get themselves all riled up about this, that, and the other thing, you name it, they, they don't, they don't make a peep about the war.
>> No, not at all. And, and I'm so glad that you brought up Ukraine because those, the, you know, Western partners, quote unquote, are supplying Zelensky's regime with depleted munitions, with depleted uranium. Well, the shelf life of depleted uranium is, um, I believe it's four and a half billion years. That's the same thing that NATO used in Yugoslavia during its illegal bombing of Yugoslavia. And the aftermath is, is terrible because not only does it impact the most fertile, um, soil in Europe, which happens to be in Ukraine, um, but also it causes increase, uh, in cancer rates and, and all sorts of illnesses for years and years to come. And so nobody, nobody discusses that. Nobody discusses why are we, why are we giving depleted uranium munitions to the regime of Vladimir Zelensky to continue this war while also refusing any diplomacy to take place, um, to end the war? And so that, that is, um, a very tragic, um, very tragic, I think, uh, fact that those Greens and, and nobody else are, uh, bringing up, um, even though we already have, um, some lessons that we could have learned in Yugoslavia, but I suppose that falls on deaf ears.
>> Well, Lena, at least, at least we're bringing it up.
>> Yes. Exactly. And then hopefully our viewers and listeners learn something new and, and, and bring it up in their conversations with their families and friends and, and their network. Um, but Dr. Hanky, many economists now fear that the world is entering another stagflationary period, and I would love to get your thoughts on that as well. Do you believe that today's policymakers are prepared for, let's say, a 1970s-style combination of high inflation and weak growth, or are we entering a completely new scenario where there are other factors and risks that, uh, need to be considered by policymakers?
>> Well, uh, you know, you're getting into a scenario. It, it's very hard to anticipate, you know, stagflation looking ahead like five or 10 years, something like that. Be, and, and, and we get a very mixed picture, by the way, of things that are being thrown around because you have one school of thought indicating that the technological innovations that are with us, for example, AI, just to name one, it will increase productivity, and that means increase the potential growth rate in, for example, of the United States. Right now, the, the potential long-run growth rate in the United States is, let's say, 2.2 to 2.5% real growth on a sustained basis over a long period of time. And, and the argument is by the Silicon Valley crowd, or sometimes I, I call them the Silly Valley crowd. Many, many of them are talking about growth, growth potential zooming up to five or six percent per year. I think it's nonsense. But, but that, that's one scenario that's kind of out there. Now, if you buy that, that scenario indicates what, you're, you're not going to have stagflation. You might have inflation, but you're not going to stagnate. You'd be, the real economy would be growing very rapidly. Let, let me put the thing into perspective. Using a, a monetarist, uh, prism, shall we say, look, looking at the thing as a monetarist, and, and that is, we know that a cap on nominal GDP, that is inflation plus real rate of growth, a cap will be what the rate of growth in the money supply. If the rate of growth in the money supply is, is at Hanky's golden growth rate, 6% per year, a rate consistent with hitting an inflation target of 2%. Then, then the cap is about 6%. So if the inflation is, is 2%, then you've got four percentage points left, and what are you going to do with that? Well, the demand for money is, is a little less than 2% a year. Let's say it's two. Okay, you, then you're left with 2% left over. What, what's that go for? That fuels real growth in the economy. So that's why the growth potential in the United States, it, it's around 2.2, roughly. And, and why is that? Because it, it's the monetary cap on the thing.
>> So, [clears throat] so, so if you, if you have the money supply, going back to your question of stagflation, if you have the money supply, let's say it's growing at about 6%, just, just to illustrate, that, that means that you, you're, you're not going to have stagflation. You'll, you'll have inflation of about 2% and money demand will stay at about 2%. You'll have real growth at about 2%. So that's not stagflation.
>> Um,
>> Why [clears throat] why did we, why did we have stagflation? We had stagflation because, in fact, the growth in the money supply was exceeding that 6% level, and the demand for money was about 2%. And, and you had lots of regulations and red tape coming in that were burdening the economy. So that the real part of the growth and nominal GDP was, was depressed. The real growth was depressed, and it was coming out in inflation. So that's why you had the stagflation. You had real economic growth that was very low in the '70s, but you had inflation that was pretty high. But the overall thing was capped by whatever the growth rate was in the money supply.
>> I see. Um, we know that, uh, the US dollar historically, um, has been strengthened by geopolitical crisis. Um, do you believe that this particular conflict will reinforce dollar dominance, or do you believe that ultimately it will going, it is going to accelerate, um, global efforts to diversify away from it and to create alternative ways to settle trade and to invest?
>> Well, I think generally, I think a lot of this dollarization talk is just nonsense because the, the, the dollar is king and is dominant, and, and if you look at all metrics, add, add everything up together, the, the dollar is becoming more dominant, not, not less, over, over the last few years. I'm, I'm not even talking about the war or, uh, efforts since, since the dollar has been weaponized improperly, in my view, with sanctions, things like that, which I'm, I'm against, but that, that hurts the, the dollar. Uh, but there are other factors that, that are benefit, benefit, its use, and, and if you look at everything, its use has been increasing. The euro's use, as a proportion of total use, has gone down a little bit, and, and the Chinese yuan has come up quite a bit, but the base that the yuan is coming off of is very, very low. So, so the, the yuan is moving up, the dollar's moving up, and the euro is moving down, and some of the other currencies, the yen and British pound, are moving down a little bit, and so that's, that's the story. But what they do, they cherrypick data. They, they look at one aspect of the dollar. For example, the proportion of total reserves that central banks held in the US dollars, it's gone down. And everybody goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're de-dollarizing. We're de-dollarizing." But there are many other things going on. Trade, trade is occurring. And, and, and what, what, what the settlement for most of the trade? It's going up in dollar terms. What's the invoicing in what currency? Well, it's dollars. It's going up.
>> So, I, I, I, I think in, in general, you, you have to remember that there have been very few international currencies. There's always one. There's always one, but there have only been 14 in, in about the last 2,500 years. So, it's hard to knock the king off the throne. It's possible, but it doesn't happen very often. And, and I don't think the dollar is going any place for the time being.
>> Dr. Hanky, uh, earlier in the conversation, we discussed the cost of war, and you said that it's probably close to $1 trillion right now. Well, we also probably need to address the elephant in the room, which is US government debt, because that is an important aspect, and that's also important for people to, um, to factor that in. The US government is already carrying record debt burdens. How dangerous is it to finance a major war while simultaneously facing higher borrowing costs at home and also slowing economic growth?
>> Well, it, it, you are in a danger zone because once the debt held by the public goes over about 90% of GDP. Uh, this, this is the classical big study on this was done by two Harvard professors, uh, Reinhart and Rogoff, and, uh, they, they looked at 800 years of data over the, over internationally, and they, they found that whenever you go over about 90% of GDP being, uh, made up of government debt held by the public, that you, you get into trouble. And, and you get into trouble because over that 90% range, growth slows down. There's a relationship. If you go over that threshold, over that red line, shall we say, growth tends to slow down. So, by the way, this does get back into the stagflation thing because, because if, if that does tamp down real growth, like real growth was tamped down because of excessive regulations in the 1970s, if, if excessive debt does at this time, that would slow down the real part of nominal GDP, and the inflation part of nominal GDP would go up. Right? It,
>> it would all be capped by whatever the growth rate in the money supply, the nominal GDP number, whatever, whatever the growth rate was in the money supply, that would cap the nominal. Okay? But the mix between inflation and real growth might change a little bit because if you have excessive debt, the real growth goes down a little bit, and, and the rest would come out in terms of inflation. So, so that would tilt you, that would bias you, shall we say, towards a stagflation kind of scenario. So that's, that's one aspect of the thing. It is dangerous. And for another reason, and that's the interest on the debt is now about 35% of all individual income tax revenues are taken up to just to pay interest on the debt, just to service the debt. So, it's a, it's a huge amount. And the Congressional Budget Office has forecasted that that will go up to about 50%, 50% of, of all individual income tax payments in, in the near future will, will go towards servicing the debt interest. Now, what, what does that mean? If the interest payments are being made, and, and you're only left with, you know,
>> That's a high rate, by the way. Currently 35% is very high.
>> Very high.
>> And, and that means that you've got the residual that's left of what by supply government goods and services, supply transfer payments, and what have you. It's shrinking, shrinking, shrinking. So th, this is, this is, this is bad news. This is, this is really the cost, if you will, of, of the debt to get your, your handle on the thing. It, it's interest cost sucking away tax revenues that are going into the government, and, and those tax revenues going in can't be used to supply government goods and services or supply transfer payments. And so if the government stops receiving, let's say, adequate tax revenues, and now it has to pay out so much more in interest costs, I'm assuming, and please correct me, that it only has two options left, either cut social spending programs or increase taxes. Um, I've read several months ago, and I, I will link to it in the description below. I've, I read a really interesting study by the Kiel Institute, uh, which, um, documented that war efforts are typically financed by higher taxes, but once a war is over, the government doesn't really lower taxes. Taxes remain relatively high. Um, so Dr. Hanky, what, what is the US government facing here? Will it ultimately have to cut social spending programs or increase taxes? Or does it have an alternative way to keep up its borrowing to keep up with its interest rising interest costs on its national debt, and also with programs such as Social Security, um, you know, Medicare, uh, Medicaid, and, well, Medicaid is state, but Medicare, and, you know, veterans benefits, and, and so many other programs that it has to finance?
>> Well, if you really look at what happens, we, we have this, the question is, well, how do you, how do you control the monster in Washington D.C.? That's, ba, basically what you're asking. And, and the, the US Congress and the White House, they have no capacity or inclination to, to bind their hands and control things. And, and you can see this. We, we have the, the debt limit charade that goes on periodically. Well, the debt limit charade, they don't limit anything. They just raise, they just raise the bar whenever, whenever the, this charade occurs. The other thing is, occasionally there'll be some statutory move like the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act that, that attempts to control government spending and, re, rein in deficit spending. But, but th, those always fail. So if, if you try to do things statutorily, they, they, they don't work. So the only way to do it is really amend the US Constitution and, and put some fiscal responsibility amendment in the Constitution. That's what, that's what I'm working on with the, with the, uh, the fiscal, uh, sustainability foundation, Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation. You can, you can check that out on, on the website we have, and, and, and we, there, there are enough states, by the way, over two-thirds have indicated that they, they do want an amendment, and, and that's been around for a long time, but that Congress has not, uh, done what they're obliged to do, and they have not called a convention. So, so this, this shows you the, the way things work in Washington with statutes that, that doesn't control anything. And, and the states have indicated that they, they would like a convention to consider an amendment that would include or be limited, be limited to fiscal, fiscal responsibility. But the, the Congress hasn't acted, but they're supposed to under the US Constitution. They're supposed to, but they, they just ignore it. So, they're, they're basically breaking the law. There's a lot of that that goes on in Washington D.C., too. They, if they don't like something, they just ignore it. But we're trying to force their hand and, and have a convention. And, and that, that would be the only way that you actually could, I believe, rein in the out of, out of control spending and fiscal activities, fiscal follies, I call them, in Washington D.C. That's the only way you can do it.
>> Dr. Hanky, I think this is a fascinating effort, and I would love to hear more about this. Maybe we can discuss it in our next video.
>> That would be great.
>> That would. Yeah, I think that would be fascinating, and it would bring light to this, and also possible ways out of this, uh, very, uh, unfortunate situation that we're in. Um, Dr. Hanki, thank you.
>> See, one, one, one way actually, uh, you, you can put a link to, uh, David Walker, who's a colleague of mine and the chairman of the Federal Fiscal Sustainability Foundation and, and former US Controller General. We read an article this week in Fortune magazine indicating what a, a constitutional amendment to limit, uh, or reign in the government, a fiscal responsibility amendment might look like. And, and in short, what we're proposing is that you, you would cap the, the level of debt and, and put, put a, put a cap on it. For example, I, I mentioned 90%. You put a 90%. You, you can't go over that. That would be it. So you, you would get rid of the, the debt ceiling charade kind of thing because you would have it written out in the US Constitution, and that would be it. They, they would have to oblige by it.
>> Yeah, that would be, that would be a step in the right direction. Definitely. And, and by the way, we, we have the way we wrote it, it's incentivized. So if they didn't, the members of Congress who were involved, th, those who were passing legislation that went over the limit would not be allowed to run for election again.
>> Oh, I love that. Yes.
>> Yeah. So you always have to incentivize things.
>> Absolutely. Yes. And I think re-election, not, not having a chance to run for re-election would be, uh, probably the strongest incentive that you can, that you can place.
>> Oh, yeah. The way things are running now, there would be a huge turnover.
>> Yeah. Which is, uh, arguably much needed. Very much needed. Dr. Hinky, it's been such a pleasure to connect with you today. Thank you so much for such a fascinating conversation and for helping us make sense of what's going on. And I know that our viewers would love to have you back on the program again soon.
>> Well, thank you for having me, Elena.