crazy.

It can grow even despite serious mistakes.

But an expanding GDP, or my personal area, a strong stock market, doesn't by itself vindicate policies of any given administration.

So what I always look at first is, is do we have an environment now where DC is making it easier to invest or produce or hire? And on that score, it's a very mixed record.

There's certainly been constructive efforts in deregulation, energy development and tax certainty, but the enthusiasm for tariffs runs directly against all of that.

And if there's one area that I was hoping for considerably more progress, spending and fiscal discipline.

the fiscal 2026 deficit was about $2 trillion.

And I want to go back to you actually, Pete, because kind of I was thinking like, I mean, isn't he kind of like calling to like, chaff his own shareholders with these policy proposals?

So why don't you jump in here and what you'd add about what do we mean by affordability and maybe some of the challenges or the ways that we try to track affordability you know, rising prices or affordability or lack of affordability over time?

So, first, I think that we face some of the classic measurement problems in economics that we face when we come into this area.

There's an economist named Zvi Grelitsch, who spent a lot of time trying to track difficult areas of measurement.

He spent his career on it.

But I would start with the following.

I agree with everything that Anne said.

Something is affordable.

Yeah, Pete, what comes to mind? What do you want to add?

okay i guess well what economic indicators do you typically look at then and and why why like why are they important to to people like me because i don't pay attention to sure economic indicators like you probably do

You know, it changes over time.

I would say the ones that I follow most regularly and the ones that are most important right now are, of course, the inflation rate, right? Because we've been fighting a war against inflation really since 2021.

We seem to have had it licked, but it's recently come back.

Some of that is inflation.

Some of that is what's called a relative price change because of oil.

But that's, you know, that's a very important one that affects all Americans.

what what happens then to our dollar and and why does that make gold such a such an important investment i've been saying for so long like people should diversify and this is my advice and financial advisor yeah but you know why Why is gold and silver such an important potential savings to hedge against the potential long-term scenarios where we don't pay off the debt and the debt continues to rise? Why is it a good investment for your retirement strategy?

Tell us some signals or trends you're seeing that support those questions, if you can.

Yeah, there are definitely some signs of strain in the economy, in our financial system.

So first of all, I'm sure you guys know government debt is as high as it's ever been, approaching $40 trillion.

It's now the same size as the actual economy.

And what that does is basically that limits how easily policymakers can respond to disasters or downturns that might crop up in the future.

um and at the same time you know interest rates have moved up they were held at zero levels for years by the fed now they're adjusting we now have just yesterday we have 30-day yields at five percent which is uh you know that i mean that's traditionally that's not a high level but in the context last 20 years it's actually quite high and you know we've seen periodic stress in banks and funding markets we saw the collapse of silicon valley bank just two years ago and you know that that doesn't none of that means that the economy is about to break But what it does mean is that it's more sensitive to shocks.

And so when you combine all of that, higher debt, changing policy, new head of the Fed, all that stuff, what it means is that the markets are reacting more quickly and sharply than they did in prior periods.

I was just actually going to say, Mick, to add to that, I was going to say, what would them mining in outer space do for all this? Because you've got people talking about mining the meteors and different planets with the space programs.