civilians out of some of these cities. but it s not like a negotiation. on the defense side, i think we should all welcome the fact that the europeans want to step up more, but i don t think we should worry about them doing that significantly out side of the nato context. there just isn t the money or the capacity to do that. yeah. this is more i think talk. there are some implications for defense industrial policy and, you know, getting into details. but in the long run, this is good. i do want to, before we go, some reporting just in the last couple days, inside russia putin s lies are really taking a hold. the population there is not turning on him. in fact, they re doubling down. they believe it. quite the opposite. if we trust it, the most i understand independent polling in russia, putin s popularity is going up. again, the intelligence community talks about putin not
hopes that people had that now that lebanon has a government, somehow the worst had been gotten through. no, in fact, yesterday was a reminder that things can get even worse than they already are. it s important to stress that given the economic situation, not only in lebanon, but throughout the middle east, there just isn t the money to fund a civil war. you don t have the you have syria and iraq which are much more profitable proxy states, so to speak, than lebanon which is a relatively small country. so even though people were shocked by some of the images yesterday of children hiding under their desks in school, of people huddling in their corridors trying to hide from stray bullets, a scene that many people lived through during the civil war, the feeling is we re not at the edge of a civil war
was truly in a crisis. we re no longer in a crisis. if we re in a crisis, it s likely to be the crisis of inflation driven by government spending. we need infrastructure. it s one of the things that we cannot do for ourselves. republicans want to have a infrastructure bill. we just want it to be about infrastructure. neil: just sounds to me, senator, this isn t going to happen. the president leaving aside his difficulty trying to woo republicans, he s having a devil of a time with democrats. you think it will happen? it should happen. one of the things we talked about under the entire obama administration and every six months in the trump administration, the next thing we were going to get to was infrastructure. the country needs better roads, better bridges. we can compete more effectively if we can connect more effectively. we need that to happen. the option that the democrats
prices. would you? no, i absolutely would not. if i had your wallet perhaps i would get three or four of them. but neil: listen to you. you know what? i got to tell you, there s a pent up demand with the a.a.a. has projected there s about 37 million people traveling, 34 million of those folks being driving. the interesting part is, we ve talked about the fact that gas has gone up. 47% of travelers have said the gas prices will impact their plans. that s an interesting thing to know. what we got to keep in mind is folks want to celebrate summer. certainly the start of summer. i can appreciate that. we need to open up the country so people can enjoy life again. neil: i m going to buy the pananini. it s up to six people. i think i can down it myself. crystal, let me get your take on this. the backdrop of this and we can
inflation, watch monetary and fiscal policy. it s a little bubble in housing right now. unlike 08 and 09, there was bad mortgage underwriting. some suburbs look frothy. look very frothy. brian monahan said the standards for underwriting mortgages have certainly changed over the last 15 years and he says the amount of leverage that the consumer level is different than when things collapsed in the housing market in 2008 and 2009. neil, you re right. we ll hear from the ceos again round two tomorrow as they appear before the house financial services committee like you say in some of that video there. they will do so once again virtually. a lot of topics and follow up to get to tomorrow, neil. yeah, anything like the senate, should be a pay per view thing.