So that, that would seem to give w- Wash a little bit more breathing room.

I, I think you're right, Kelly.

And, um, you know, and nothing moves in a straight line, and I don't think we should ever expect it to.

But I think, you know, there's cyclical...

There's still very powerful cyclical and secular inflation impulses in the backdrop here, and those haven't gone away, right? I mean, the huge secular impulse is from de-globalization.

I think everybody will agree that globalization is not going to expand.

Uh, de-globalization is, is in, is, is pretty much in favor these days.

You're not losing money.

[laughs]

I mean, um, uh, look, I think, I think the, the... it's, there's an easy way to think about this, that certainly going to Mars is a, a, a good goal, and there's, there's... it's very sexy and exciting and everything.

But realistically, what does that do for the productivity of the US economy, and how does it make the US economy more productive, and how does it allow us to compete in the, in the global economy right now? And the fact is that we're, US economy is still very dependent on other countries for supplies of various kind, goods of various kinds, and obviously in an era of de-globalization, we want to- Rid ourselves of that dependence.

I don't understand how these big IPOs are alleviating that need-

I'd rather the US have great companies and great assets with which to go and try to conquer.

Yeah.

Well, y- you know, your points are well taken, and I'm not saying that's not important or there's too many negatives there.

It...

Share with us these golden nuggets.

In a woman's brain, everything is connected.

Believe it or not, I was in the chewing gum business, very sticky business.

And we got into it.

It's kind of interesting because we used, it wasn't regular chewing gum.

It was what's called value added gum, where we would take little chiclets and we would put active ingredient in the gum.

And for example, we would put chromium picolinate in the gum.

Tell more about that because I think that that's, and then women on the other side, just share more with that.

And it's really only because of the strong stock market that people have done well.

Well, Kelly, look, the K-shaped economy is a reality, and I get that, and I'm not being cold at all.

Please don't misunderstand what I'm about to say.

But lower rates will not encourage lending to riskier entities if rates come down.

If their cost of funding comes down, they will keep lending rates the same to entities that are riskier.

To automatically assume that rates throughout the economy will come down, that just doesn't make any sense.

We already have credit spreads about the most narrow in my career.

So I don't know if you'd go there, but that you're saying maybe next year is a year to go with more of the boring parts of the market.

Including kings, right?

Exactly.

Lots of English people were, uh, bankrupted paying the taxes, uh, for that, uh, et cetera.

So our Constitution, uh, gives the power to declare war to Congress.

And if you think that's by accident, let me read that James Madison is generally thought of as the number one Framer.

Let me, uh, read you, uh, something he wrote to Thomas Jefferson in April 1798.

"The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it.

Yeah.