1410: Jim Cramer says, “Print Money,” Protect Yourself From Coronavirus (COVID-19), China Lifestyle Update

Yeah, I still feel like I'm on the path for sure and there's a lot more wealth that I want to grow and things I want to do. But I'll tell you, it's when I think back to where we were and what both of us, my wife and I both have done to be where we are today, it almost like if you'd have told me this is where we were headed 10 years ago or what I would have told you you were nuts. Because I could not, I couldn't have imagined we'd ever be able to buy real estate again or that I'd ever want to, you know. And here we are with several properties later and we're still, we're still chugging along.

Welcome to the Creating Wealth. Welcome to the show with Jason Hartman. You're about to learn a new slant on investing, some exciting techniques and fresh new approaches to the world's most historically proven asset class that will enable you to create more wealth and freedom than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who's actually been there and done it. He's a successful investor, lender, developer and entrepreneur who's owned properties in 11 states, had hundreds of tenants, and been involved in thousands of real estate transactions. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to your financial Independence Day. You really can do it. And now, here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

Welcome to episode 1410. 1410. As we are in an amazing world, a scary world, and the Keynesians are rearing their head saying that it's time for the government to just start printing money. Well, the government and the Federal Reserve, their unholy alliance, and it looks like either or both of those agencies will be getting into the business of buying stocks. Yes, that's way beyond the original idea of the plunge protection team. This is a new era in which we are witnessing, we are witnessing history. It is absolutely crazy what's going on right now. And we are obviously on the verge of some big changes in the economy. A recession will inevitably come out of this, which is 2/4 of flat or declining GDP if the government does not provide stimulus. But there is no question in my mind at least that the government will provide massive amounts of stimulus. And you're hearing it from every quarter and that's coming. So we'll see if they can keep us out of a recession or not. But no matter what, even if we do end up in a recession and say it's a Bad one. Say we're in a recession for three years and you lock in on these ultra cheap mortgage rates and if those rates go down even more, which it begs the question, how much can they possibly go down? Rates are so low already. I mean, are we going to get to the point where you go to the bank and you say how much is a 30 year mortgage? And they say zero, it's free. You can just have the money for free for three decades. Well, we're already there. I know it may not be free on the face price, but it's certainly free when you look at taxes and inflation and arguably you're getting paid to borrow today. And as we go through the next three decades, the next 30 years, as you are a long term investor, you play the long game. I don't think anyone would argue, I mean, I can't imagine any economist doubting that there will be very significant inflation during that next 30 year period. As we see all of this stimulus, all of this money printing. I mean, listen to this clip with Jim Cramer on CNBC as he talks about how the government needs to just bail us out, bail us out. And you know, it's. Well, it is what it is. So here we go. Avoid that chapter that we had early.

On during the crisis, Jim, where there.

Was a stigma and asking for help.

And admitting that you needed help.

Right. So we have to get rid of that now. Fortunately, the rates are so low. We can do this. We could be the strongest country on earth if we use the federal government's balance sheet. Not necessarily the Federal Reserve, but the actual federal government. Everyone owes the government at all time, everyone in this country, individuals, corporations, that has to be suspended right now so they have more money. Are these radical actions you so not.

Just delay the April 15 tax filing deadline but just say no taxes. You don't have to pay any taxes.

Can you imagine they are, can they be done smoothly? Absolutely. Are we going to sit here and let so many companies go bankrupt because of an illness? I think that is stupid. This is the time for radical action and the action can be done by the federal government. Once we settle that out and stop worrying about money, we can worry about health simultaneously. Right now we can't do both. I see a number of companies in the S&P 500 that could easily go bankrupt in the next four weeks.

We.

Does that make any sense at all? No. We do not want to reformulate any corporation, let alone the large corporations, because they cannot get paid. How do you make an airplane with so many suppliers when the suppliers. This is, of course, the largest export we have. When people at the suppliers, of course, get sick, the federal government could tide us over here. I don't want everything closed. I want everything to work smoothly. And the only way to work smoothly is to take advantage of what the rates are and for the federal government to borrow as much as possible and then give it to us. This can be.

The federal government should just borrow, borrow, borrow, finance more debt and then just give us the money. Okay, well, certainly that will work in the short term. There's no question about that. By the way, of course, this is a 10th episode show and we'll get to our 10th show guest here in a few minutes. But this will be Quite a different 10th episode show than you're used to. 10th episode is where we talk about something of general interest. So we'll get to that in a moment.

Returned after we get healthy. Do we want to come in here every day and see which CEO is taken down by this illness? How many workers are taken down? No. What we have to do is be able to say, you know what? No matter what, the country will keep running because money is not a necessity at this time.

We've seen any signs at all from our leaders in Washington and this administration that they believe the problem is as significant as you think it is.

Absolutely not. They know nothing.

They know nothing.

Here comes a rant.

We know more than they do, and that's not acceptable either. I want the federal government to know more than me. All right, I hear you. I knew more than they did in 2007, and I know more than they do now. And it is disappointing. Perhaps they should talk to more leaders and leaders can be more candid.

Jim Cramer. There you go. Always humble.

That's his brand, you know, Humble guy. Humble guy.

But yeah, certainly there will be bailouts, there will be stimulus, and that means money printing. That means qe. That means what? It means, you know the drill, folks. We went through this during the Great Recession and. And it's coming again. So that is going to materialize ultimately in inflationary pressures. It's gotta work its way through the system. But the interesting thing about this president, and I think this is really great for us common folk, is that, you know, he is like this. And listen, I'm not being political here, okay? I'm just being factual, all right? Based on rhetoric and on actions. This president, okay, love him or hate him, is the champion of the middle and really the lower middle class, okay? The blue collar worker, the small business owner, which, contrary to The Obama administration's belief that, you know, small business owners are like these big evil rich people, which, you know, most of them certainly aren't. They're, they're just struggling people who happen to own a business rather than have a job. And, and sometimes that business is a lot less profitable than a job and they work much harder at it than a job. So this myth of business owners, they're not all banksters on Wall street, okay? They're not all big tech companies. And by the way, one of the great silver linings of many that will come out of this is that you will start to see the bogus companies be weeded out of the system. These bogus tech companies with these extremely ridiculous burn rates that have had these IPOs where they've basically just ripped people off and they've engaged in massive amounts of financial engineering and people have just speculated maybe their life savings away, hopefully they won't be too hurt. But I, I think it's kind of inevitable. But we're going to see a lot of this fluff come out of the system and ultimately that's got to happen, okay? Because these companies are just built on a house of cards, many of them. And you know who I'm talking about. I'm not even going to bother naming names, but these ridiculous high flying companies that you know, have never made a dime should not be where they are. A real business, like I've always said is a real business earns a profit. That is a real business, okay? Fake businesses, well, they engage in financial engineering and rather than actually earning revenue, they just go out and raise more money. That's a fake business, okay? Real businesses make good old fashioned revenue. How do we make money? We earn it, as the old commercial used to say. And before we get to our 10th show topic, just a quick word here from one of our listeners.

Hey Jason, Johnny from Arlington. Just calling to see how your stock portfolio is doing. Looking at the figures right now and it looks like everything's down 8 to 9%. Hope your 401k is doing well.

He's obviously joking, of course, I'm just kidding.

I'm really glad that you encouraged myself.

And many others to invest in real estate and never have I been so.

Happy to see the boringness of investing in single family homes pay off so well.

Thanks. Thanks Johnny for the great comment and always appreciate your comments and from other listeners. So if you have any questions or comments for the show, jasonhartman.com Ask or feel free to leave us a message and reach out to us at 1-800-HARTMAN 1-800-HARTMAN. You can always catch us by phone as well. And if all our investment counselors are busy, just leave a message and we'll get back to you. But that is a good point. Listen, income property is not perfect. There is no perfect investment. However, compared to what is always the question. And you know, if we go into a recession, I think we're going to get through this pretty well. Incredibly cheap debt and with history as our guide, looking back at the Great recession, just over 10 years ago, rents held up surprisingly well. Really just a surprising amount of strength of rents in linear markets. And the unknown here, of course, is the government's role, the central banker's role. And I'm not just talking about the Federal Reserve in the US I'm talking about central banks all over the world and governments all over the world. It's going to be stimulus, stimulus, stimulus. It's going to be money flowing into the system. It's going to be printing, printing, printing. And when the government spends, when the government prints, what does it do? It ultimately circles back into inflationary pressure where when things start to recover, as they always do, then we start to see the problem that leads to classic inflationary pressures. A large amount of currency, dollars or whatever currency, chasing a limited supply of goods and services. And as we've been reviewing on the past couple of shows this week, that supply, demand shock, just wait until we get to that inflection point where supply. And this is a prediction. Right. We don't know exactly how this will play out, but we certainly have clues to it now where we have limited supply and constrained supply due to the coronavirus problem. And we're starting to see that now as supply chains are affected, right. And then as that demand curve ramps up, wow, that's when things go really, really crazy and income property investors just benefit through the whole thing. It's just an amazingly durable multidimensional asset class. So our 10th episode show is usually a positive motivational topic or something that you can use to be more successful in life. Today that is not the case. Well, it is something you can use to be more successful in life, but it's not all roses by any means. We have Gary back from China from Shenzhen to talk about what is going on there in a longer format. So let's hear a little more from him. We heard just a short intro from him on Monday's episode, but now we're going to go into more depth as to China and the global economy. So here we go.

I want to welcome my friend from China, Gary Helmbacher, back again to talk a little bit more about what's going on in China. Some things on the world economy, some thoughts on supply chains, hospital bed shortages and why COVID 19 is a big deal. It is not the same as the flu. I see people posting a lot of very misleading stuff on social media and asking things like what's the big deal? So what, the flu kills so many people a year and they put the number. This is not the same. That's what you've got to realize. This is not the same thing. We're going to talk a little bit about that. Knowing that neither of us are medical experts, we're just both researchers and I'm a reporter and of course Gary is acting as a reporter too in this instance. Gary, welcome back from Shenzhen, China. Thank you for joining us again.

Hi Jason, good to talk.

So you know there are kind of four major reasons that coronavirus is a big deal and it needs to be respected by more than other epidemics, if you will, more than the common flu. This is a different kind of strain. It's asymptomatic, We've all heard that. So that means you can be contagious for up to 14 days not even knowing you're sick. So you're not going to self quarantine. It lives outside the body for much longer, it has a much higher complication rate and it is much more deadly to older people. Let's dive into those four things Gary, and why don't you start with the asymptomatic component.

Hi Jason. Yes, they've talked about and while I am not a medical expert, as you know, I'm trained engineer and I'm a test engineer. So I know how to acquire data and analyze data. And the information I'm providing from you has come from long hours of reading true first source code science reports. Because I've been self quarantined for six weeks, I have a lot of time to do research. So it's asymptomatic for long periods of time. That A makes it very hard to trace where it came from and B, because it is so infectious you can infect numbers of people even into the dozens without even knowing you're sick, you're infectious while sick.

Oh maybe much more than dozens, but it doesn't have to be a lot more than dozens given just the multiplier math and the exponential math of humans coming into contact with one another. And you know, I'll tell you folks, there are many silver linings that will come out of this one, hopefully, is that people will learn how to wash their hands properly and they'll stop shaking hands. Gary, you. You and I have talked about how the biggest killer in history is the humble little mosquito. And I would argue that maybe the second biggest one, or at least if not a killer but an illness carrier, is the handshake. You know, we haven't talked about that before, but what do you think about that?

A lot of the recommendations, people are probably thinking about elaborate procedures, but someone asked the doctor and they how can you be around sick people all day and not get sick? And I don't shake my hand out. Well, that. But also we wash our hands frequently. And if you want to know what to do, you sing Happy Birthday twice while you're washing your hands. Most people don't wash anywhere near long enough. So soap and water Happy Birthday twice. And also we don't know it, but we touch our face about 2,000 times a day.

Right. That's crazy.

And that does it. So washing your hands don't touch your face. Those are. And as you said, don't shake hands. No kiss on the cheek. You can't be doing that.

Yeah. So listeners, learn how to wash your hands properly. Remember that the soap and water cannot disinfect what it doesn't touch. If it doesn't touch that part of your hand, the nail bed, between the fingers, et cetera, it's not doing anything. Most people just put their hands under the faucet really quickly. And like Gary said, you got to be able to sing Happy Birthday twice. That's how long you need to wash your hands. Clean your phone. Your phone is incredibly dirty. It is a scary germ carrier. Stop giving your phone to other people to take a picture of you. Things like that. Don't let other people touch your phone. Maybe we sound like we're being a little paranoid, but one little safety step may prevent a literally a short lifetime of regret. You don't want to take a risk here. But also when people talk, Gary, we can't even see that little droplets are coming out of their mouth. And they go for about six feet. It's almost impossible to stay six feet away from everybody. But what this does say is that in addition to the idea of wearing a mask, and I haven't been wearing a mask yet, they do say that one of the benefits of wearing a mask is most people don't know how to wear them. They don't put them on properly. They touch the wrong part of the mask and it Becomes ineffective. But the one thing the mask does do is it makes people get out of the habit of touching their face. The mask will help them avoid touching their face. It'll help break that habit or help them realize how often they're doing it. But the other part is the eye protection.

Right?

You in Shenzhen, you and your wife? Yeah.

Right. Go ahead.

The masks are required in China, so we wear them. We wear them anyways. And you need to put them on correctly. As you said, you need the metal band up. You need to crush the metal band around your nose.

Right. So it conforms so it fits around your nose.

Correct. You need to make as good a seal as you can. But if you're not careful, you may touch your face more. But most of the people in America, the higher up medical officials are trying to say don't buy masks because they're not needed. But there is a shortage of masks for medical professionals. Yes, buying them does help. There's a study, we could dig it up at any rate. They help. They help. Especially if you're sick, they help. But even if you're not, if they're worn properly and you don't keep touching your mask and your face to adjust the mask, they do work. But everything we're talking about, I want to emphasize. There is no silver bullet. My friend was bragging how he used hand sanitizer a couple times while he was in a tight closed space with a lot of people. And you're nuts. I've given you a layered systematic approach. And that layered systematic approach. Wash the hands, don't touch the face. Properly adjusted mask, put on the correct way safety glasses. But the biggest one is social distancing, which for somebody my age and I'm almost 69 years old, self isolation, just don't go out at all. If you can afford it and you're over 60, you should not be going out at all. That is the best thing. All these masks and eyeglasses are only for the emergency times. You have to go outside to receive packages or buy food. That's it.

So Gary, we want to cover four things. Then we want to talk about the end economic impact. So asymptomatic for a long time, very contagious because it's asymptomatic. Lives outside the body for a long time. The complication rate extremely high. But you jumped to older people and you're 69 years old and this is really scary. If you were to contract coronavirus, you're saying that would be a 7% chance that, that it could Kill you?

Approximately, yeah. That's a one. You know, for people that don't know percent, that's about a one in 13 chance of dying. So in other words, if I walk across the street the 13th time, I'm going to get run over by a car. I'm going to hide under my bed. So. And this is all on a website called worldometer.com but nobody under the age of nine has died. Up to your fourth, your chances of dying are still higher than the flu, but not by much. But once you hit 60, as an example, 60 to 69, they estimate 3.6%, but that jumps to 8% between 69 and 70, by the time you're 80, 14%. That is a one in seven chance of dying. If you're in the hospital, you have a 1 in 7 chance of never coming out of that hospital again. Those are really bad odds.

Yeah, those are very bad odds. This is different. This isn't like the flu. Now, what's interesting is I've been studying this, of course, the past couple of weeks, but I've also been studying history, and most specifically the Spanish flu, which happened just over a hundred years ago. And what was interesting about that is they estimate it killed 50 to 100 million people, and about 675,000 of those were in the United States. It attacked healthy people between ages of 20 and 40. The people that should have a very strong immune system and be not susceptible to this kind of thing, which was different than the COVID 19 threat.

Right.

Well, the Spanish Flu, by the way, was only called the Spanish Flu because Spain was neutral. It should have really been called the Haskell County, Kansas flu because it really started.

That's where it started. Yeah, I saw that.

I know that was.

But nobody wanted to admit it. And as you said, the death toll, to put that in perspective, the Spanish flu, I call it the flu pandemic of 1918, killed more Americans than the casualties of World War I and World War II combined.

Wow, that's amazing.

Yeah. And it attacked. What happened. There's something called a cytokine storm where your immune system goes a bit crazy. It's kind of like having a war and your lungs become a battleground and.

The lungs lose, and the lungs to fight the infection, they fill with fluid. And basically people would drown in their lungs. Would drown because they were.

Doctor?

Yeah.

The immune system was killing so many cells, it actually killed the lungs, which killed the patient. So what happened is the people with the healthiest immune systems had the most overreaction, and they're the ones that died.

Right. Wow, that's just crazy.

Like you said, 100 million, by the way, to put that in perspective, there was only 1.5 billion people at the time. So that that may have killed darn near 2% of the world or what is that, 1% of the world's population?

Big numbers.

Yeah. Unbelievable. Okay, so let's jump to the economy here in a moment. But I did want to talk about one more health thing before we go to the economy and the economic aspect. And that's the idea that this lives outside of the body for a long time. And it seems to like that. Northern climates, in moist climates. Fortunately, where I am in Florida, the tissues of our noses fight infection better. When you get on a plane or if you're in a dry climate, it doesn't work as well because the moisture disappears from our nose. So there are things we can do to offset that using a saline solution or saline gel. But Gary, just talk about, you mentioned New York and Seattle specifically. And then the lives outside the body component.

There are some intriguing data. No scientific studies, but the data shows that besides Hong Kong and Singapore having very well developed healthcare systems, so do South Korea and Japan. South Korea has been absolutely slammed, yet Hong Kong and Singapore are barely over 100 cases. Not deaths, over 100 cases.

So very small number for them.

Yeah. If you look at the world map, the thoughts are the warmth helps deteriorate the virus, humidity helps deteriorate the virus, plus the nose, as you said, the sun has UVA and UVB components.

So two benefits about the sun. So number one, well, the UVA and the UVB break down the virus, but also it increases vitamin D production in the body.

Right.

Well, that's number four. Number one and two are the heat and humidity degrade the virus.

Okay.

Heat and humidity degrade the virus. It likes cold and dry, so heat and humidity is not ideal for the virus. Number three is the sun with the UVA and uvb, which breaks down the virus. But the sun, if you have short sleeve shirts on, actually makes vitamin D2. So, and these are scientific studies, if anybody wanted, there are studies that show that vitamin D, and you can't get vitamin D2 any other way than the sun, but you can buy vitamin D3, which is about as good. I know we have a short time. I recommend your users get vitamin D3, 800 to 2,000 international units a day. And that has been scientifically proven to lessen the chances of any viral infection.

Okay, good. Now it lives outside the body. We got to switch gears to the economy. But the real scary part about this is that it can live on surfaces. It can live on clothing. You and your wife, when you do go out, which is rare now in Shenzhen, you have outside clothing and inside clothing. And when you come back in, you shower and, and you change into your indoor clothing. How big is the concern about this living on surfaces, living on clothing?

Well, there are a number of studies, and most of the studies show five to six days on hard surfaces. But there's one or two studies that say nine days on hard surfaces. So in addition to having our outdoor clothes and our indoor clothes, before we take those clothes off, you could shake viruses that you'd breathe. So we, with the outdoor clothes on, we give ourselves a light misting of alcohol spray. Close your eyes, hold your breath. We spray ourselves down with a mist of alcohol. Then we take those clothes off, Then we go take a shower. Then we put on the indoor clothes.

This is unbelievable. It's like you're living in a clean room. This is crazy.

And with all that, like I said, there's no silver bullet. There's a layered protection, and all it does is reduce the risk. The only way you could really save it is stay in the house. Except there's, you know, we live in an apartment. There's people. Our balcony is six feet away from the one below us and the one above us. So the Princess Cruise Lines had a common air conditioning system, and 28 or 29% of the people on that ship got infected.

Yeah, yeah.

While they were in quarantine, cruise line.

Stock is just plummeting. I think we're going to see a lot of crews line bankruptcies, you know, in the not too distant future here. It's very sad what's going on there. Okay. The economy, you believe China, just anecdotally, from looking at pollution photos, air pollution photos, you can tell how much the economy is doing by the pollution rate. You know, that literally is a litmus test, a barometer for how much production is going on in the economy. When the economy is booming, there's more pollution because there's simply more production. And you can also tell by looking out on the streets from your apartment in China and seeing how much activity, looking on mass transit, you know, how many people are going to work. A lot of people have been told to work out of the house, but you can't do that if you're in manufacturing. You need to show up at the plant. And you believe that the Chinese economy, the workshop of the world, is running at a point, about 50% capacity now.

Right.

That's some of what I've read and some of what I see. Different provinces may be different. We haven't had, as I said, infections in weeks. I know of two factories, one large that has thousands of workers and another one that has hundreds. The one with thousands has been working three weeks with no infection running through the place. And the one with hundreds has worked successfully for two weeks without any infections. And we happen to know some people at Foxconn and they're also working evidently without problems. So all that's good people are. Everybody last week was waiting to see what would happen. You know, you dip your toe in the water. I think this week you're going to see another step up again with economic activity.

So in other words, moving back in the right direction. Right?

Correct. We're coming back up to speed is my feeling.

Okay.

A lot of people are still working at home, but they're getting work done. We're working at home and we're getting work done.

And you say that because China, I mean, there are some efficiencies about having a one party government. China's not really communist, that's kind of a misnomer. But a one party government that has a lot of power, which the government there does. It's efficient. So you believe they've really broken the back of the contagion, Right?

Yes. It can be efficient. And I've lived here almost 10 years and it has been efficient. Yeah, they absolutely. This thing was more or less out of control by January. It had everyone's attention. They had their normal spring festival. It's like this huge four hour New year show. There were subtle hints that the show had been scaled back. January 25th, New Year's Day. The hammer dropped. Everybody quarantined. Everybody had to have a mask on to go outside. Many villages took the whatever you want to call it, the law or action in their own hands. They actually bulldozed dirt over roads in and out of the towns. Everybody did the smart thing. Everybody was.

So they bulldozed dirt over roads so people couldn't use those roads. Right. They quarantined the towns.

Correct. No one in, no one out. And these are villages that are probably a lot of farming. So they were mostly self sufficient. We were self quarantining before a lot of the edicts in Shenzhen. Everybody I know was talking to each other. Everybody has WeChat here. Everybody has phones. Everybody's talking. Everybody. What are you doing? What are you doing? We were all doing all these things. Before the government edicts ever came down, they just lended a force to it for the few people that were kind of psychopaths out there being irresponsible. And they ended up in quarantine center, jail, whatever. Just like in Italy right now, by the way, three month jail sentence if you try to break the quarantine.

Wow. That's just. I mean, Italy has quarantined a quarter of its country of its entire population. It's absolutely crazy.

Wow.

I mean, wow.

China at its worst, I mean, they had quarantined 700 million, but it never really left Hubei province. It never really got out of. And okay, 55 million people is a lot, but there's 1.4 billion. That's 3 or 4% of the whole country. So China was able to send that just. You don't want your hospital systems overwhelmed because we talked about the case. The complication rate is very high, 15%. If those 15% can't get on a ventilator and can't get oxygen, that 15% complication rate no longer becomes a 2% death rate, it becomes a 15% death rate. And almost certainly that's what happened in Wuhan, because the death rate, nobody has final numbers yet, but the death rate outside of Hubei province is 0.6%, which is still 10 times the flu, by the way. Still 10 times the flu, but way better odds, unless you're old. So you don't want your hospital systems. You have to use the extreme quarantine measures to shut it down, and then you gradually open things up again and then you don't overrun your hospital system, and then you make it and you're good.

All right.

Yeah. Okay. So China plays a big part in the world economy in the sense that it provides a lot of lower level components for manufacturers that need those components to finish the entire widget, that economic widget. Right. Tell us about some of these. You're thinking on some of the economic supply chain around the globe and China's part in it. Whatever you want to say about that.

I'll go with direct knowledge. We're a very small company here. We have less than a dozen people.

So you're an engineering company with offices in Southern California, in Shenzhen, and I believe you had an office in Ireland, right? Do you still have that?

Yeah, Ireland, uk, America and China.

So you're in four countries. Got it. Okay.

And we make test equipment, which would basically be capital equipment used for manufacturing electronic goods. That's our business. A few of my factories, not my factories, but we have machines so we know people there. We have friendly relations with those people. So one of those factories as an example, makes the control boards for white goods, washing machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators for brands everybody would recognize all over the world. They manufacture a number of circuit boards for a very well known company that makes printers, office supplies, and they make dozens of other products that are mostly circuit board oriented, that are lower level parts of an upper level assembly for all companies all over the world. And as an example, if they're not working, the final assembly of washing machines, dryers, refrigerators in America and Europe is going to stop because they don't have a key part. We have another company that's smaller. It makes a very small, I'm sure, low cost component that goes into a motion controller that could end up in hospital beds, aircraft, industrial equipment, very simple board. But if that company doesn't have it, it can't make its motion control devices that end up in potentially dozens of other customers. So I saw the number. China's like 28 or 29% of world manufacturing output, which is pretty amazing in itself. But it makes most of the components that go into these other assemblies. So I know for a fact there's already three auto companies that had shut down because they were lacking components out of China. That was just in the news. Nothing proprietary.

Yeah, very interesting. Gary, sum it up for us. We've got a run. But this has been very interesting. This is a black swan event and it's going to be fascinating to see how this all pans out as spring hits the northern hemisphere. Let's hope that immune systems strengthen and the impact isn't that bad. Any closing thoughts on this?

Yeah, final thought. I still have a position in real estate in America. I do have a business there. I have essentially no leverage, so I can take a huge hit. So I know everybody likes leverage, but people need some savings for a rainy day. That's my feeling.

My point is just save that money outside of the property. We've had this discussion a million zillion times. We don't need to get into it.

I would have.

I love the leverage.

I'm at the age I am. I don't need leverage, I need income. But you're right, if you're younger, keep the money outside. Make sure you probably have enough to pay at least three months of expenses would be my feeling.

Yeah, I agree with you. At least 4% of the property value for each property you buy or 4% of your portfolio value in cash. Yeah, absolutely.

And especially if you're in the northern latitudes of America. Keep an eye on the daily figures. The virus at the moment is doubling about every six days in America just like it has anywhere everywhere else. Once that hits into the thousands next week, if severe quarantines aren't going to be imposed, you really need to think about maybe having 30 days of food on hand, or at least some rice and beans, because you might not want to go out. You'll probably be able to go out and the supply lines will probably stay there, but you're not going to want to go out. You're going to want to be outside of crowds, especially if you're over 60.

Yeah, good advice. All right, Gary, thank you so much. Be safe, be well, and we will talk to you soon.

Great, Jason. Thanks a lot, everyone. Same thing. Be safe there. Take it easy, keep an eye on the numbers.

Thank you so much for listening. Please be sure to subscribe so that you don't miss any episodes. Be sure to check out the show's specific website and our general website, hartmanmedia.com for appropriate disclaimers and terms of service. Remember that guest opinions are their own, and if you require specific legal or tax advice or advice in any other specialized area, please consult an appropriate professional. And we also very much appreciate you reviewing the show. Please go to iTunes or Stitcher Radio or whatever platform you're using and write a review for the show. We would very much appreciate that. And be sure to make it official and subscribe so you do not miss any episodes. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode.