Austan Goolsbee

We went out and toured—if you're an Adam Smith fan, the Wealth of Nations that creates economics, there's all this stuff about the pin factory.

Actually, we toured a modern-day pin factory, and they make fasteners and pins, and it was fascinating.

The fast—

The fasteners were fascinating.

And the CEO who took me around is showing me the machines.

And basically, you take a long tube of steel and it kind of grinds it down to be a screw.

It looked like a bunch of the stuff that's in the IKEA furniture where I can't figure out how to put it in and twist it and do things.

They're making those.

They're making those.

It turns out lubrication

which is a petroleum-based product, is super important in their world.

And so he's kind of describing, ooh, yikes, when the price of oil goes up, this lubricant that we need, the price has gone way up, and now we're trying to recycle our own sludge to get the oil out of it.

And if this continues for six more weeks, we're going to have to shut down this thing and that thing.

That

color commentary of what does it mean if the Strait of Hormuz remains shut at this macro level down to the pin factory in Rockford.

And he's like, if the cost of lubricant stays like this for four more weeks, like we're going to have a problem.

There you go.

That's vibes, but it is data too.

You know what I mean?

That's just a fact.