Ah, she's brilliant. Miss, I finally got plans out the group chat. We get it. Four votes for a festival,

three for a city break. It's hard to adhere to everyone's needs. There's Betty with her oversized

tent. Sarah and her six foot eight boyfriend.

All right.

Roger Junior and his dog, Roger Senior.

And don't get us started on Mel.

But, like a marriage counselor, she's the one keeping things together.

All aboard Miss I finally got plans out the group chat. Keep everyone's plans alive when you

travel with us. P, and O'Ferees, I on the world. I'm John Bachelor. I welcome Michael Bernstom of the

Hoover Institution to help me understand a new article by Andre Kalesnikov at Foreign Affairs

that gives me chronology and analysis of the late Soviet economy that failed and the Putin economy now in war in Ukraine

that is also failing in similar fashion according to Mr Kalesnikov but I begin with a joke that is

Breshnef era this would be the 1970s in particular one day a group of people were walking in a military parade next to Leonide Bresnaff and the security worried about it.

Who are these people in baggy formal suits and an aid ran up to the Soviet leader pleading.

Leonid Iliich, we don't know who these people are.

And Bresnaff's reply, this is Soviet humor.

Come down, comrade.

These are our most destructive weapons.

Soviet economists.

Michael, a very good evening to you.

Economists have had a bad reputation in the Soviet Union and now again we have an

economist at the front of an unusual decision by Vladimir Putin to move a man named Belusov into the role of defense

...