Carol Roth

If you look back historically, as he points out, in many recessions, they have been an underpinning factor.

I think that the one area where I would take issue and I would say, like you said, Niall Ferguson is brilliant.

He is a historian, but I don't think he is an economic historian.

And so he's got his toolkit that he's showing off, but where he may not be as well versed.

is in what fiscally the U.S.

looked like in the time periods he was looking at, like the 1970s versus today.

And the U.S.

looks absolutely nothing today like it did back then, right, in terms of the mix of goods and services in the economy today.

in terms of the overall national debt.

I mean, the national debt back then was like half a trillion dollars.

The debt to GDP was like 30% versus 120% today.

Deficits were like 1% to 2% of GDP versus 6% today.

uh... and then one of the really big thing is that we were in that creditor to the world that were the biggest debt debtor to the world so the entire uh... fiscal underpinning in different which means we have to kind of look at not only you know what happened to our economy but the decision that would be made by the administration uh... which you know were kind of tenuous anyway could those get accelerated and what would that mean so i think

In terms of his recession prediction, if you look at what many economists are thinking right now, this definitely increases the possibility.

I think that 25% to 30% is kind of where most folks are in terms of, which is obviously not the majority likelihood of what happens.

I think personally, and this may not be... Oh, go ahead.

Stagflation.

We can come back to it if you want.

Okay, so we make, are we mainly light, sweet, crude products?

Which is what we get from the Middle East.