A good 10-minute video on Egypt's economy. -Use public resources and debt to build a massive vanity ghost city, prioritizing this over more utilitarian uses of money. -Have the military compete in all sorts of businesses. Hotels, consumer products, stores, etc. The military has inexpensive forced labor (mandatory military service for most young men) and tax/legal advantages vs the private sector. -Then get hit by things outside of their control while they were already self-weakened (Suez Canal revenue down, due to the Red Sea being unsafe to navigate, periods of high grain prices since they buy most of it from Ukraine/Russia). https://youtu.be/B1yXAfP0AAI

I had a great uncle named Hugh. When he turned 18 in 1943, he decided to enlist in the military and go fight Nazis in WW2. As one does. In early 1944, he found himself as the radioman on a B-17 bomber, as the Americans upped their bombing raids on Berlin. Their bomber was attacked by German pilots, heavily damaged, and the pilot said they gotta parachute out, it's going down. So, Hugh funds himself parachuting over German countryside from a destroyed bomber. Early in the war, it was relatively uncommon for American/British/German pilots to shoot at enemy parachuting pilots. It was considered dishonorable. However, when the Americans/British really upped the bombing over Germany, and the war was increasingly turning against Germany, the German pilots increased their rate of shooting at parachuting American/British pilots. Their cities had been disastrously struck, some of them lost friends/family in the bombings, so they were more likely to just finish off downed enemy pilots. Hugh, as he parachuted down, was terrified at that thought, expecting that the German pilot who destroyed his bomber would finish him off. He watched as the pilot performed a wide arc and come back around, and he's like, "oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit," but then the German pilot flew by him and saluted, and left. Trolled him but let him live, basically. Showed him he could've done it, but didn't. So Hugh lands in a tree in German farmland. He cut the parachute and fell to the ground, fracturing three vertebrae. So he's 19, injured, and realizes he doesn't know shit about geography, but decides he'll try to make his way in the general direction of Switzerland. He spends a week sneaking around the farmland, injured, and eventually gets severely dehydrated. So he sneaks up to a well to get a drink, and comes across a 10-year old German girl, who stares at him wide-eyed since he's a disheveled soldier-looking foreigner. He panics, and has absolutely no idea how Germans greet each other. So he does an enthusiastic Nazi salute and yells "Sieg Heil!" which of course is *not* how most Germans greet each other. The girl screams and runs away, so he's like, "oh shit" and goes to hide in a tool shed. The townsfolk come out and find him, capture him, and turn him over to the authorities. He gets sent to a prisoner of war camp for the next 16 months. Him and his fellow detainees circulated a newsletter within the camp at one point, and formed a music band out of like discarded cans and pots and stuff. Toward the end it got trough, because as Allied forces took more and more land, the outer prison camps would do forced marches where the prisoners would have to walk to a deeper camp, while malnourished, and if they got exhausted and couldn't go on, they'd be shot. So he had to do two of those forced walks, but eventually got rescued by Allied forces. Came back to the US, used his GI bill to go to college, and became a social worker at a hospital. Really quiet, calm guy. Most people didn't know he had this crazy story arc. Anyway, that's the post.

Folks are going to be blown away by how much passion and professionalism Walker and Carla brought to this recording.

My experience on the PDB show in-studio was positive. The whole team was friendly. I limit travel for shows in general, but have no qualms going on in the future. The challenge was that the format of this part of the show is basically news commentary. It’s not an interview; four of us discuss news items as Patrick brings them up. So, sometimes I’m asked to comment on things I have no major interest/edge in talking about. Other times it touches on an economic topic where I have more to say. They had planned to ask about gold and bitcoin, but ended up only asking about gold. I mentioned bitcoin a handful of times but it had a small showing overall.

So I found another uber driver final boss. It’s like the secret boss you unlock after you finish the game. This guy has over 33,000 rides. And he’s also an older gentleman who drives a Corolla. Been driving for Uber nearly since they expanded nationwide.

Hopped on the PBD podcast live this morning to talk markets, energy, and the economy:

One must always tip for good service. We live in a civilized society.

Awful.

-You’ve got to fly somewhere, but the only flight available that day leaves at 6am. You begrudgingly book it anyway. -Then the day before, you get an email from the airline saying “we regret to inform you that your flight has been delayed by two hours” to a far more reasonable 8am.

Yeah.

Never. We shall overcome.