article before the senate. >> donald trump warrants impeachment and trial, removal from office and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the united states. >> so help you god. >> the following day, senators were sworn in as jurors in the trial. republican kentucky senator rand paul discussed -- a point of order to dismiss the impeachment as unconstitutional. >> a point of order that this proceeding, which would try a private citizen, not a president or civil officer, violates the constitution and is not in order. >> the motion was tabled in a 55-45 senate vote. afterward, the senate adjourned until tuesday, february 9, marking the start of the senate impeachment trial. watch the senate impeachment trial live at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span two, stream live at

c-span.org, or listen on the c-span radio app. host: we are back with public radio full disclosure host roben farzad, who is here to help us decipher all the news we've heard this week about gamestop and read it in the stock market and hedge funds and making this make sense to us. guest: good morning. host: let's set the scene. tell us what happened with gamestop, reddit and the stock market. guest: revenge of the nerds is the easy way to call it. you have a group of diehard renegade retail investors. a lot of them use the app robinhood. the honor of gamestop. gamestop is a struggling mall

retailer that sells video games, comic books and other things. the stock has been assailed by short-sellers, these hedge fund investors that can go in and borrow a stock and that it will fall and put pressure on the stock. kind of a feeding wolf pack mentality. these guys meanwhile want to defend the alamo. they say we can ruin their lives. we can make their mischief painful and difficult by banding together and buying gamestop stock. not for any fundamental reason. not that anybody is driving to the multibyte videogames of this company is out of the woods in any measure. long story short, when that happened in these people engage in that self-fulfilling prophecy, the stock is up 15 fold in less than a month. that really hurt the

short-sellers out there. they are getting the sensitive vindication and the little man won over the wall street fatcats in the country is fascinated. host: for those of us who read peter lynch's "beating the street" in the -- and decided the stock market is not for us, what exactly is shortselling? why is it effective? it seems like it would not make sense to bet for a company to fail, which means the stock would go down. what is the hedge fund part of this? explain how believing in a company, even though it's not a great company, would hurt the hedge fund. guest: suppose the hedge fund is skeptical. go back to enron in 2001. i hedge fund short-sellers was notoriously skeptical.

financials don't seem to make sense. every time i asked more and more about the dynamics and particulars, they footnote the financials even more. they move stuff off the balance sheet. i have a thesis this is a scam, that something is decidedly un-kosher. someone looking at lehman brothers in 2007 saying their exposure to real estate and the bad debts is worse. there is a lot to this massive iceberg. i don't believe it should be a $100 stock. i believe it is worth less than that, maybe worthless. what you are able to do as a skeptic, and you have to be a hedge fund a lot of times. there are requirements are having lipid assets and financial sophistication or investors with enough of a risk tolerance. you can go say let me borrow the shares. hook me up with $10 million of

enron stock. since i'm borrowing them, i'm going to take them and go out and sell them in the open market, get the $10 million of proceeds myself. in the future, fight over those shares back to the brokerage firm. i'm betting if they fall from $100 to two dollars, when i have been vindicated, i can go back and close the short position by buying all the shares back. hi pocket the difference between $100 and two dollars. the difficulty with that is let's say you buy a stock. the most you can lose is what you put into the stock. i by $1000 of the stock, that's all i can lose if it goes to zero. the short-sellers can just keep losing money if they are wrong. tesla. there was no shortage of short-sellers two or three years ago. we think it is a scam. he's not going to make money on cars.

i don't trust his financials. the problem is when they were shown to be wrong and tesla is turning a profit and suddenly added to the s&p 500 index, all the skeptics have to cram back into the room and by the stock back to cover themselves. that causes this buying frenzy. this unnatural thing. tesla has now become those valuable carmaker in the world. a large part of that is the short squeeze. these guys on the wall street bets reddit forum can cause that. we can cause the tipping point by going and in a mischievous way buying the stock in making their lives difficult enforcing this game of chicken for the hedge funds don't know if they stick around long enough. i can't lose millions of dollars on this. what you are seeing is a short squeeze. is esoteric.

we buy indexes or mutual funds. he's a kind of drips in the lake of the ocean what happens but it is fascinating to see animal spirit back in retail investment the life we have not seen in 20 years. host: let's talk about robinhood. there has been a fear -- furor of them blocking trades. guest: robinhood is an app. it has not been covered a lot on wall street. the collapse of the trading. he used this he adds on tv. gigabyte 50 years, sometimes you have to pay $150 to trade a stock. there are 70 brokerage firms and

apps like robinhood who will offer free trades. they have taken out the friction. you don't have to second-guess if i go out there and speculate if i have to pay $10 here or $20 there. they come out, robinhood, under pressure and restricted people from investing in the stocks, these speculative things. the wall street bets community is targeting gamestop at amc. that caused a huge pushback from investors saying you are allowing the hedge fund short-sellers to go in there and pressure it and we are trying to do something to counter them. we have skin in the game and risking money. that is not fair. i think a lot of people are chiming and saying, are these guys supporting market manipulation? people are deciding fundamentals be damned.

i like the concept of gamestop at amc and blackberry, nokia, blockbuster video. i would to go out there and defend their honor. is that market minute relation? that's an open debate. these small investors, this pack of -- there are many metaphors. this swarm of fish, whatever he want to call it, they are fronting their own money. they are on the line. this is a really fiery debate that will spill over into next week and the rest of the year. host: let me provide viewers and followers they can join in on this conversation. if you want to talk about what's going on in the stock market and the economy, we will open up the regular lines for this conversation. democrats, you can call in at (202) 748-8000. republicans, your line will be (202) 748-8001.

independents, you can call at (202) 748-8002. keep in mind you can always text us at (202) 748-8003. we are always reading on social media, twitter and on facebook. like we said earlier, this is an esoteric conversation going on that seems to be affecting only a small segment of wall street and the small bettors -- small investors on robinhood and similar apps. are there any concerns this could cause a stock market crash or even bring the economy down? or is this just a flash in the pan? guest: there is worry this could cause more volatility. they could cause you to think twice if you see strange echo chamber movements and individual

stocks. -- in individual stocks. differ holding the broad index, it should be muted because these companies are tiny players. if you are diversified, your protected. you cannot trust the information flow coming out. the worry is a band of retail investors could come up with a prophecy, whatever it is, and self fulfilled it. that's a dangerous amount of power. the small investor has this power. you can band together. this unionization sticking it to the big you will hedge fund in the lore of what these people are saying. it is not like the little rascal gang collecting $.25. these are people fronting thousands of dollars. it's a high-stakes game of chicken. there are investors -- there was a piece in the wall street

journal. they devil just for giggles -- dabble just for giggles. that's dangerous. people will get burned. there is room for manipulation, for things -- you look at gamestop. suddenly a company with billions and billions more of market valuation than it had a month ago for no fundamental reason other than this battle between small retail investors and short-sellers. could it turn real? could gamestop make enough paper money on these small investments to go out and sell a ton of stock and by itself another reality? that is when this gets meta. so much of this seems stranger than fiction. i could not have predicted it even weeks ago.

host: does this make a difference for a company that is still open like gamestop, like blackberry? we saw a similar jump in hertz stock last year after they declared bankruptcy. does it make an actual difference ideology the audi to these companies who stocks are being that around like this? guest: if it lasts long enough in the market capitalization is sustainable in the bank takes it seriously enough to allow the company to come in and do a secondary offering. then again, sell more stock or something like that, what are you going to put into the prospectus or the offering statement? well, we are so blessed we are suddenly worth $5 million more than -- $5 billion more than we were a month ago. please buy the stock. there's not much to hang your hat on.

you take apple for example, 1997. maybe it was 60 days away from bankruptcy. it had really kind of innovative is way out of morass and over 25 years become the most valuable company on the planet. tesla gets out of its short squeeze and something worth a lot. added to the standard & poor's 500 index. institutional investors can come in. they can parlay that and sell that to investment bank and say let's do a bond offering on this. let's do a secondary stock offering. i don't know if a shell company or gamestop suddenly comes out, i don't know how you pitch that. we have this ragtag group of investors that likes us and sell stocks into that momentum. that is speculation. the longer it does last, the executives do bank money because they are pegged to the stock.

it would be so fascinating if the reddit community could sustain this for so long it creates a company. i for example love rc cola. on the last person in the united states who seeks out rc cola. could i create a movement where i have rc cola separately traded from its parent company? we run up the stock and sell stock and build a marketing budget and flood the place with rc cola and suddenly give pepsi and coke a run for their money? that's a tall order but it might be for a great screenplay fodder. host: i remember rc cola. my grandfather paid me in moon pies and rc cola. guest: love them. host: the same question came in from one of our social media followers. i will put it in his words. we have a social media followers saying, "he mentioned market minute relation in

regards to the reddit community. how is there behavior different from hedge funds who push the stock price down?" guest: hedge funds are working on it. this is a fair criticism. hedge funds are not allowed to engage -- no one is allowed to engage in a pump and dump scheme to put out false reports and make things up. there are bears reports that have been vindicated. i front of enron, lehman brothers. there are dozens more that have failed. they fell on their face. one hedge fund came out in 2012, 2013, and said chipotle's days are counted. you cannot charge seven dollars for a burrito when taco bell is coming after you. i was like this guy has never been to a chipotle or recently at taco bell. he was wrong and lost money. that's the price tag attached to it. your skin is in the game if the

stock goes up. they are also regulated. they can't go out to do these schemes where they pump something or dump something and do the opposite. it's a higher stakes more regulated game. i see the argument of an apples to apples comparison. the question is, are you seeing anything that says i think these hedge funds, their thesis is wrong and i believe there is much more in the way of fundamentals at gamestop? if we buy the stock we will be vindicated? that is fair game if you going out there and saying let's attack for attacks sake and make of this narrative or fiction, i think the sec could be all over that. host: speaking of regulation, we have a story from axios. senate banking chairman says he will hold a hearing on the

current state of the stock market in response to the events of this week. "it's time for the sec and congress to make the economy work for everyone,. not just wall street." what can congress do and should they be getting involved with reddit and robinhood shortselling? is that something congress to get involved in? guest: i don't know. there are regulations. fair disclosure. you have to come out and offer -- you can't get anybody first dibs material information. it has to be released in one fell swoop. what are they going to regulate? free speech issue. a bunch of people on a reddit community want to risk their own money and take on a group of adult investors who are out there with a riskier than usual

behavior in shortselling. as long as there isn't misrepresentation or calling a broker in boca raton to pump this and have mom-and-pop investors on the other side of the trade, i don't see what congress can do. congress wants to have its say and call hearings and say we have to get down to the bottom of it, they try to do it with a flash crash in 2010, markets will market. what can i say? host: let's let viewers take part in the conversation. veronica calling from tampa, florida on the democratic line. good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to say i never look at this station. i don't. tiktok. i have learned so much about the stock market. these millennials are basically

telling amc is going to the moon. i spent $2000 this week. i never did anything like this before. if you go on tiktok, you listen to these kids and they are telling you -- tesla, the guy that owns tesla, debbie says don't put money on that, that's it. got money. it is not a game but that is what is pushing this. that is what is driving this right now. tiktok. there are millions of people spending money because these kids are telling you how to do it. host: she brings up a great point. elon musk and others are now getting involved in this. what effect does their statement have on this whole market manipulation/reddit/hedge fund controversy.

guest: market influencers. elon musk infamously got himself in trouble by saying -- he effectively secured an acquisition price for tesla at $420. it turned out the sec came after him and sanction him. you can't just do that as a ceo. millions of people are following you, you have to be careful what you say. material information. it's a fascinating conversation. there is a group of skeptics that say they are sophisticated hedge funds and institutional investors who trade by the fraction of the second enter paid a lot of money to follow global markets 24/7 and look at the dimensionality, things you cannot even imagine. trades. there is absolutely no way in the world retail investor can

compete with them, the algorithms they have programmed. if there is a rush nac $2000 going this -- and they see $2000 going to $6,000, that the dopamine hit. heartz saw its stock bumped up because of a robinhood-centric echo chamber. the company is not solvent but suddenly there is funny money left on the sideline. same thing with amc theaters. how does it make money? people coming in and blowing $12 on a coconut popcorn. that is not -- coke and a popcorn. that is not happening right now. if wall street bets on reddit is defending the honor of the stock, you have to ask yourself

twice, three times, four times as a person coming to that game late, to my going to be the one holding the bucket when these guys leave and something else happens? suppose there is a market shock next week and all this echo chambering gets flushed out of the room. in my going to be the one who bought the stock at $20 and he goes down to five dollars when everyone has exited rapidly? that is one of the huge perils of speculation. go back and see if any people got burned like this in 2001. 1999, 2000, 2001. the last time we had an of retail investors piling into a late bull market trade. host: we have got a bunch of people throwing red historical market crashes. people talk about dutch tulip bulbs. they talk about work edges and this follower on twitter says

this is rather similar to 1929 when all sorts of stock thieves and shocks pumped worthless stocks up until the end, which did not end well. does it look like those situations where you have the tulip bulb bubble in the mortgage bubble and the tech bubble? will we see a bubble that could burst and affect the economy? guest: it could happen but what is the line that the market can remain irrational longer that you can remain solvent. was it alan greenspan he warned about irrational movement in 1996? the tech market. the dotcom bubble peak in 2000, then it fell 80 plus percent over the next two years. this can happen for a long time.

let's not forget about the backdrop. we are still in a financial crisis. the fed -- money is super easy and cheap. the fed is buying all sorts of debt and supporting the financial markets, which have had an enormous run. it makes this magical thinking possible. i want to quote from the great jason zweig. this is a remarkable moment. it's as if a bunch of cows potatoes watching a lakers basketball game on tv barged onto the court and proceeded to block lebron james and mercilessly dunk on anthony davis. that's an amazing feeling to have. i don't know how long it will last. host: it's quebec to the phones and talk to william from feeding hills, massachusetts. good morning. caller: good morning. this story goes back almost a

year. if you go on youtube, a guy name roaring kitty. he's been buying gamestop for over a year. six month ago, he put out a thesis saying they will be able run on gamestop -- bull run on gamestop. his idol but 9% of gamestop. then in october, kramer on cnbc says that is a mistake. cohen doubles out and now owns 12%. he keeps putting it youtube videos as part of wall street bets. he watches youtube videos. roaring kitty is amazing. hello?

if you keep looking at it, they gets more interesting. he's happy when i got to 20. then it gets to $60. then he puts at a big youtube video. he's all happy. that is when it took off. host: i think the person the caller was talking about is profiled in one of the papers this morning. this individual investor, roaring kitty. talk about how individual investors are moving these markets. guest: there is real paper value on it. i'm looking at the 52-week range on gamestop. when the market crashed it hit three dollars a few weeks ago to open the year. the stock was at $18 or so. he closed at $325. the market value is $23 billion. you are not talking about a couple of hundreds of thousands of dollars of market cap on a

stock among friends. at some point the physics, the gravity of fundamentals have to reassert themselves. if we get past this and the malls open up again and you look at the viability of this company, and also e-commerce is exploding. how competitive is gamestop against amazon or -- i'm not a simile with the sector as other people but suppose you were making the same argument with blockbuster. when netflix was ruling the world. blockbuster will come out and really defend against netflix. can we really see the streaming revolution ahead of us with netflix and disney plus at hbo max and everything? it is interesting, the extent to which these investors -- i will not call them a bunch of kids in pajamas and their parents basements with mountain dew and

extreme doritos. and there is significant sway here to be able to move a company from a piddling market capitalization to $23 billion. host: the profile i saw about roaring kitty was in the new york times yesterday. i will read a couple of paragraphs. "over the next few years, he began tweeting about gamestop, making youtube and tiktok videos about his investment. he started livestream his financial ideas. other users began following his every move and piling into gamestop. "if he is in, we are in," one user wrote on tuesday. roaring kitty, who is keith gill, a former financial educator in massachusetts has now become a central figure in

this week's stock market frenzy. inspired by him in a small crew of individual investors together at him and they put themselves against sophisticated hedge funds and upending wall street's norms in the process.' keith gill is not someone who does know anything about the stock market. he was a former financial educator. he seems to know a little bit about what he is doing here. for those of us who don't know anything about the stock market, is this something we should stay away from and sit back and watch? would you say people with money to spare should jump in? guest: i am skeptical because i'm an agnostic. the best you can do is to keep costs down and keep trading down, buy the index to ride the market return over the long haul. commissions have gone away in

the market has never been as democratized and access is never as easy as possible. you can invest $50 in an index. there are all the services that cater to mom-and-pop out there. it is not just the province of high net worth investors anymore. i'm skeptical of a person to the game coming on and saying i found my muse in this roaring kitty or whatever form on twitter or facebook or snapchat. i will take that gospel and put money behind it. what makes you so smart you can be vindicated by that? there are many super wealthy people that have paid a lot of money to track the market 24/7 globally, every aspect of trade, scrutinize them. they pay $25,000 a year for bloomberg terminals. the odds are so stacked against

you as the newbie investor. can it be different this time? maybe. maybe this is a true revolution in changing of the guard but history suggest that will not be the case. host: we have an argument from a social media follower that you can respond to. this person tweets, "i'm in favor of capitalism and the free market, but this needs regulation. many small investors are going to lose lots of money and will never invest in equities again. that is not good for our economy." he's worried when the crash happens, that will run people away from the stock market and keep them from investing when the crash eventually happens and they lose their money. do you agree? guest: it has happened before. the retail investor was flushed out of the room and the early off after a time at the beginning of the century.

people were talking about the stocks of the day. aol, yahoo!, cisco, qualcomm. we cared about earnings and watching cnbc and waiting for tiktok and the minute to minute post. think about how much has changed since. news by the second. you can get it over twitter, facebook. social media has democratized the soapbox. you used to have to get our financial tv or get quoted in the newspaper to get published. now anybody with access to reddit or twitter or anybody who has a smart phone can post a video on insta. they can build a following and enough people believe it, that is something the sec will have to consider. this has real-world implications. i go back to the fact companies that were afterthoughts a few weeks ago added tens of billions of dollars of market capitalization.

that could all disappear again just as quickly as it materialized. if individual investors get caught in the crossfire and you lose a generation of them -- there were many people who swore off the market for good after 2002 and 2008, much to their detriment because the markets ran up again. they did not use situation to diversify or buy a sober portfolio of index funds or etf's. many people are now wondering, should i get back into the mix? fomo. fear of missing out. that's an aspect. maybe it is much more indicative of a proxy stock market than a normal stock market. host: let's go back to the phone lines and talk to orlando from georgia. democratic line. i think i lost orlando. chris is calling from

alexandria, virginia on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning, jesse. good morning, roben. i was working on my taxes and had your show on. i thought i would chime in. it is kind of ironic that we are talking about market manipulation and looking at the private sector. the really bad actor is allowing this kind of shenanigans to go on is the federal reserve. the european central bank and other central banks making money cheap and allowed this kind of stuff to happen. i got out of the stock market years ago, except for my 401(k). i don't dabble in it anymore. i think one of the other areas in the economy on the rise is crypto. with the dollar becoming as

cheap and getting into the gutter as it is i think we will see more bitcoin purchases and increasing the price of other alt coins that will change the economy. you factor in senators like schumer crying for yet more and more bailout money because people can't take care of themselves -- i'm not saying that is anyone's fault, but people are getting into the mindset that we will go to the government hat in hand and the government will keep printing money. eventually -- i don't know if we are to the point of no return for the dollar will collapse. i think we will see a flight of capital into crypto where that kind of manipulation can't happen. host: cryptocurrency. what do you think? guest: i wish somebody could

explain crypto to me in 30 seconds or less. back when we were having thanksgiving dinner they would be the crypto friend with a life-changing meaning of life observation to share with you. talking about bitcoin and a theory him --etheruium, if you have something that is meaningless and the federal reserve keep printing it and saying we are at maximum. cleaning congress and the white house to take over and right now this 1.9 trillion seven this package. there is even a nickname for the stimulus check holiday stimi. gamestop is becoming synonymous

with certain actions in the market. i do wonder if this will be the vindication of bitcoin versus the dollar, which has been in some ways debated by this activity. that is a controversial thing. i don't know if bitcoin is a pure hedge against the debasement of the u.s. dollar and printing money as it is billed to be. other saying you should be in swiss francs four precious metals. talk to one of these gold funds out there. this is the kind of thing you think would make a perfect case for gold. property speculators say you should get a mortgage for 2.5%. the best hedge against inflation is real property and real estate. it's really a meaning of life question. you have thousands of different theories and philosophies about it. host: i just a member of the story in the new york times from a couple of weeks back where this guy, stephan thomas, he had

to guess is to figure out the password that is worth $220 million of his bitcoin. apparently you can't recover the money if you forget your password to the account. that is enough for me to stay with it right there. i can't always remember my keys are. guest: i'm looking for that first series of garbage pail kids i misplaced in 1987. host: i remember those. mike calling from bethesda, maryland on the democratic line. good morning. caller: great show, guys. i have a quick story and a question. when i first saw -- i'm a professional day trader. when i saw gamestop popped, i tried to short the things and there were no shares to short. i did a quick search and saw

kitty was involved. i went long twice and must admit close to 200% in several hundred seconds of holding. what a deal. here is my question. i saw last night that robinhood put a restriction on going lot on amd, d as in dog. why is that? why would there be a restriction on amd? a bona fide big company. guest: i am not familiar and i don't know the rhyme or reason in this policymaking. it is a brokerage firm and you have the qualification if you have the risk appetite and the demonstrated risk into liquid assets to be able to do whatever you want to do.

robinhood also has to raise cash. the market maker, the middleman. do you have all this volume and you are suddenly in the spotlight and you need to buttress your own balance sheet. they have thousands of different reasons. i would pay attention not just a robinhood but what is happening at schwab, ameritrade, e*trade. a lot have been consolidated. order flow has been consolidated. we have seen a spike, especially in tech stocks that have run up tremendously. people have been homebound for the last year. a spike in trading volume. i would look at information these companies reveal. robinhood is in the spotlight but not the only game in town. host: ron from michigan on the independent line. caller: my portfolio consists of

10 stocks. of the 10, they are doing well except for maybe one which is a medical stock and understandable. the thing i want to know is i happen to -- first of all, i'm a day trader to some extent. i don't stick to the tv, to my screen all day long. i went in the other day and was up almost $11,000. i tried to sell and i was blocked out. everything came crashing right back down. i am into nokia for about three poi -- i have made almost 100% on the stock. i find it difficult to understand why i could not buy more of the shares the other day, except for the volatility of the market at the time. my question is simple.

this is for political reasons and you might know what to answer or for legal reasons. i have about $6,000 sitting on the sideline. i'm being told -- i do my due diligence. i don't just buy a company on a whim. i buy it on the basis that it's a good buy. should i wait until the smoke clears or should i try to get back in on the basis of what happens going forward? host: what you think? guest: i'm not qualified. send me the money. what you want me to say? host: you will take $6,000 in bitcoin, right? guest: susan william bloomberg always asks sophisticated investors if you have $10,000, what would you do with it? there are so many different schools of thought.

people would say stick a chunk of it into savings. stick a chunk of it and to paying down debt. put a bit of it in a diversified portfolio. if you have some left over that you would like to use for your funny money -- people forget what it's like to take cash out of an atm and have cash and spend it at places. yes, in times of animal spirits, the fear of missing out is so overwhelming. you are hearing stories of people making extra money. thinking about that $6,000, it should be $90,000. is just as easy for that $6,000 to turn into $3000 or $2000. there are more sober risk-adjusted ways even though nobody wants to hear that. it's like a teacher telling you to drink milk and do your homework and stay in school. it is not what you want to hear but maybe what you need to hear. host: one last caller. stephanie calling from long beach california on the

independent line. caller: good morning. this is a phenomena on social media. it gets online and everybody looks at it. the cable companies pick it up. soon enough everybody is talking about it. it's almost impossible to really pick stocks. if you want to be smart, pay off your credit cards. that's the most expensive think you got going. you cannot compete with the big guys. they can trade millions of shares in a nanosecond. i know a person does not have the same insight or information. it changes on a quarter of a .4 million shares ended so fast. we can't do that. if you want to do this for conversational value and you have six month of mortgage payment in the bank and credit cards paid off, go have fun.

host: go ahead and respond. guest: there are people that for animal spirits to keep your arteries clear, put some money aside if you have the means to speculate and gamble. that is what it is. i would not go out there saying there is money to be made on tiktok. i'm not so sure about that. they are very few free lunches out there. keep your costs low. keep diversification high. don't look at it often. when you have extra cash, pay down debt. put into the market into diversified indexes. set it and forget it. over the long haul markets tend to go up. if you're lucky, you will beat inflation and look back and say thankfully i missed out on that bubble, on that bubble, but i'm doing well in retirement. this is a long game. host: we would like to thank

roben farzad of public radio's full disclosure for being with us this morning and walking just through these complicated topics. i will take your unwanted bitcoin off your hands if you have money to just throw around, right? guest: and you can send me an rc cola.

mr. thune: i ask unanimous consent that the quorum call be lifted. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. thune: mr. president, last friday we observed the 40th anniversary of roe v. wade, the supreme court decision that legalized abortion through all nine months of pregnancy. it's a somber day every year as we contemplate the millions of lives lost to abortion since the roe v. wadeec