regard to the economy. the outlook and everything else. president biden is arguably correct in and incorrect at the same time with regard to that statement. first of all, as you and i both know, economies move in cycles. they expand and contract. it is not something to be feared but it is just the cyclicality of it. it is a refresh things. and things move in this kind of circular format. so the economy could grow and develop and evolve. so recessions always happen. so it is inevitable. whether it is inevitable in the sext several months or during his watch as president of the united states, he expect, it is not inevitable and the reason why is this kind of notion of where the economic data is pointing to right now and it brings up this idea when it comes to the outlook and the data, there are two different ways of looking at the economy. there is hard economic data which is the absolute numbers, the counting, the gdps, the retail sales and what not, the inflation numbers, and then ther
v protection. it will take a while for that to happen. both of those countries are additive to nato right now, both of those countries would add significant impact to nato. i ve never been one to add some of these countries we ve added. unfortunately in the past only 22 out of the 30 nato nations actually spend the 2% of their gdps so nato has had problems. vladimir putin didn t think nato would get its stuff together in order to respond the way it has. in this case it s different, finland with 5 million people, terrific military, no border disputes, a democracy, this he would be in nato tomorrow and be additive. finland has a well-trained military that knows how to fight. i want to go back to ukraine for a second and talk about what s been happening in the black sea, these battles that have been going on around snake island. what s the significance of that? russian black sea fleet about 40 combat vehicles and ships, they clearly have control over that area, there s international w
trillion. 40 times the size of putin s economy now, if he s even at $1 trillion, given how much he s been pummelling the last weeks. you have ukrainians fighting for democracy, fighting for their country, fighting for their very survival. i just i don t i don t know how long i guess my question to you, how long do you think vladimir putin can afford fighting this expensive war against not only the ukrainians resolve, but against allies with gdps of $40 trillion a year, 40 times as large as russia s? you know, when you re vladimir putin, you just engage in more repression of your own people, more censorship, and more thievery. that s why he is talking in part about seizing the assets of companies that have left. and he can t back down.
all right. apple just hit a major milestone. for a time, it was worth more than $3 trillion. chief business correspondent christine romans joining us now. romans, $3 trillion, which i am told is a lot of money. yeah. it is the most valuable company in the public company in the history of the world. $3 billion. how about them apples? i pulled out an apple pun. it is the world s first $3 trillion, bigger than walmart, disney, coke, exxonmobil, and the eight other giant companies you see there combined. apple is still worth more. imagine, if apple were a country, it would be the fifth biggest. only the u.s., china, japan, and germany have gdps larger than apple s value as a company.
illusion? what are seeing two totally different things here. he is seeing people drawn to the united states because our borders are open or however he characterized it because we you know, there s an incentive for people to come. what many other it are seeing is the fact that the gdps are very low in those countries, people are fleeing violence, even in the mexico border towns they are violent places. there was a state department advisory places for one of the towns near the border, i want to say matamoras but i may be getting that wrong. it is rough there, too. this question that people ought to just try to get to the united states, what that ignores is the dire conditions people are facing in that northern triangle. so what we need rather than one-off solutions and talking about building walls, is a comprehensive hemisphere-wide solution that looks at the pull factors and the push factors that are driving this border crisis. but until you address what is going on in guatemala or el