This is CBS. I on the world. I'm John Batchel. The Scholar Report with CEO Chris Wrigal of Scholar.com,

a global technology firm with business on all the major continents. We're looking now at the North American continent and the R word.

That is formerly how Wall Street refers to the word recession. And they like to capitalize it when they use the R word. That is formerly how Wall Street refers to the word recession, and they like to capitalize

it when they use the R word. For some time, Chris, you have been reporting that the recession is in

place on Main Street throughout your customer base, hesitation, caution, care about spending,

about budgets. Now it's on Wall Street. Is that in some

way comforting or is Wall Street going to get it wrong also? Good evening, too. Good evening, John.

There's certainly been a Main Street recession for last 18 to 24 months. That was masked or hidden

by government spending under the Biden administration.

You continue to see the consumer tightening on travel, on discretionary, on leisure,

on other purchases because the consumer is out of credit.

Probably very much like 1980 through 1982, we're going to have to go through

a corrective period now that we're off of the sugar high of wild government spending. That will

certainly impact GDP. That will certainly put us into a definable recession simply because of the

smaller amount of dollars being spent. But ultimately, it's tackling the bigger problem of addressing the deficit and the debt,

which is that category killer that's out there for all the consumers.

So you've got to get that under control.

So we have to make it through to the other side.

I'm glad you mentioned the deficit and the debt because that is the driving need in Washington. And Doge is a tentative answer. It's not

the profound answer. You have to take on the entitlements for that. Do you hear from your customer

base that they understand Doge is the first stage of what must be done? First, you go after the

discretionary spending, and then you go after the entitlement.

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