working toward some e quill libri librium. there's $15 trillion worth of u.s. government debt. approximately $12 trillion is held outside the government itself. every 1% that we increase the interest rate is going to raise the cost of interest payments by $150 billion. so while we're thinking about congress struggling to cut a little bit off the budget deficit, we're going to be adding with three percentage points in interest rates, we're going to be adding $450 billion or $360 billion, you know. is that good? heck, no, it's not good. now, you know, people will say, well, you pay it yourself so it doesn't matter. but we don't pay it to ourselves. we pay half of it to the rest of the world. so that's going to have big repercussions on the balance of payments. we have worked ourselves into a terrible position. you know, we're like the guy who says -- i'm like the guy who says, stop digging. >> okay. okay. i mean, what argument -- we're going to talk about europe in just a moment. because i know you've got strong views on that also. but if you -- you know, if you compare the u.s.