Speaker 1: John Man.
Speaker 2: It's been two years, two years fourteen. Interest rate rises
Speaker 2: felt like it's never going to stop. But it has stopped,
Speaker 2: hasn't it? Yes? Hooray, hooray? And is it over? Is
Speaker 2: it over? Are the interest rate rises over? Is it
Speaker 2: now going to I know what's going to happen now,
Speaker 2: first quarter of next year. First cuts, They're just going
Speaker 2: to keep cutting. It's going to go back down to
Speaker 2: near zero. House prices are going to go up thirty percent,
Speaker 2: Our portfolios are going to go up thirty percent. Everything's
Speaker 2: going to be fine.
Speaker 1: It's going to be marvelous. I'd say, you really believe that.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's going to go back to zero,
Speaker 1: but it is weird. The Bank of England obviously has
Speaker 1: held interest rate. It's at five and the quarter percent,
Speaker 1: and it's sitting there saying, oh, yeah, but this might
Speaker 1: not be it. We still really worried about inflation, but
Speaker 1: still really worries about wage rises. But of course the
Speaker 1: night before the fads has come along, and never minute
Speaker 1: thought that they would do the same thing. Everyone had
Speaker 1: thought that the Federal Reserves, the US Central Bank would say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're holding interest rates, but don't get too excited because
Speaker 1: we're still worried about inflation. And instead what they said was, okay,
Speaker 1: we're holding interest rates and actually next year we're probably
Speaker 1: going to cut by three quarters of a percentage point,
Speaker 1: so three interest rate cuts, and immediately the market just
Speaker 1: exploded higher. Because it's kind of that thing about the
Speaker 1: the central bank boss adding whiskey to the punch bowl.
Speaker 1: That's basically what happened. So the FEDS can open the
Speaker 1: floodgates for everyone to get all excited about rate cuts
Speaker 1: in the Bank England is kind of somewhat futilely trying
Speaker 1: to pretend that it's not going to end up having
Speaker 1: to followed suit.
Speaker 2: But why do you think the feed has done this?
Speaker 2: Because you know, obviously they look really stupid, having been
Speaker 2: just like the Bank of England, having been so late
Speaker 2: to come to trying to deal with inflation, and we've
Speaker 2: been rather assuming that they would want to look like
Speaker 2: they'd really knocked it on the head. They'd want to
Speaker 2: be a bit macho, and so the odds of a
Speaker 2: policy mistake too far in the rate rising direction it's
Speaker 2: more likely than cutting too early, right. But now suddenly
Speaker 2: they seem to be backing off from you know, the
Speaker 2: last bit is the hardest. We're going to take it
Speaker 2: all the way and you know, inflation is never going
Speaker 2: to get past us again, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I quite be honestly, I have no idea this.
Speaker 1: You know, the market reaction is a demonstration that it
Speaker 1: did take people by surprise that they basically said, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it's fine, well done there. And all I can think
Speaker 1: of is that they genuinely do think that inflation has
Speaker 1: been overcome and that they're not worried about it coming back,
Speaker 1: which takes me is that would be very kind of
Speaker 1: you know, that'd be quite a silly thing to think.
Speaker 2: Well, it's it's very nineteen seventies, isn't it very nineteen seventy?
Speaker 2: You know, there are quite a few cycles in the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies when we got to a position like this,
Speaker 2: Inflation had fallen quite a lot. Central banks right, oh
Speaker 2: look see on week clever, we did that it's all
Speaker 2: over and started muttering back cutting rates, did cut right,
Speaker 2: and then then you know, inflation would turn around and
Speaker 2: split up again. It just seems like a very interesting
Speaker 2: take in a geopolitically complicated world when we increasingly understand
Speaker 2: that that nasty geopolitics lead to inflation where there's lots
Speaker 2: of moving parts, lots of odd stuff happening, it just
Speaker 2: seems bizarrely complacent to me.
Speaker 1: I would definitely disclaim it's fool hardly. Kevin's in the
Speaker 1: market had already you know, loosing financial conditions, because it's
Speaker 1: not as if, you know, bind deals were going down
Speaker 1: and then into you know, stocks were going up. It's
Speaker 1: not as if the fair is pushing back against an
Speaker 1: overly what it sees as an overly tape mask. And
Speaker 1: only you can justify this, I think, is by if
Speaker 1: you know, we're getting trying to get into the head
Speaker 1: of the policy maker and thinking, right, well, actually, I
Speaker 1: don't think inflation is going to go much higher. The
Speaker 1: fact think it's going to go lower, and that means
Speaker 1: that real interest rates are going to be higher, and
Speaker 1: so that means that current conditions are restrictive. But I mean,
Speaker 1: it's one of those ones where I do find it
Speaker 1: somewhat hard to explain why they've just decided, because it's
Speaker 1: kind of it is very much like throwing the market
Speaker 1: at Christmas present, and if you know, if it wasn't
Speaker 1: for the fact that I don't think the FED in
Speaker 1: the States is especially party politicized. You would have to
Speaker 1: think the fact that we're coming up to twenty twenty
Speaker 1: four election year would seem it seems like an It's
Speaker 1: just it seems like an odd time to be encouraging
Speaker 1: markets higher because the S and P five hundred is
Speaker 1: already okay, sorry, the Magnificent seven stocks are already very expensive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, However, obviously the market reacts, and we do know
Speaker 2: that the best time to buy equize is when importuated
Speaker 2: to falling.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's yeah. And you know, on that front, UK
Speaker 1: stocks are still cheap, well not quite as cheap as
Speaker 1: they were, you know, kind of three or four months ago,
Speaker 1: but they're still cheap. I was looking at the house
Speaker 1: builders again this morning, and I'm so glad that my
Speaker 1: ethics would stop me from buying them anyway. That might
Speaker 1: be kind of like kicking myself, because you know, they
Speaker 1: have they've kind of gone up a lot in the
Speaker 1: last kind of like six months or so. But you
Speaker 1: know that that can I imagine that for the foot
Speaker 1: SAE two fifty particularly, there's probably more to come, because
Speaker 1: I suppose the other point here is that everyone's still
Speaker 1: really gloomy about the UK economy.
Speaker 2: Yes, gloomy, you know, well gloomy about the UK economy.
Speaker 2: I know, but I've just got an email through from
Speaker 2: one of the one of the platforms asking people where
Speaker 2: they expect to invest next week, when next year, or
Speaker 2: where they intend to invest next year. And the UK
Speaker 2: is really popular with retail investors at the moment, and
Speaker 2: one of sensible that's be their sense. Well well done,
Speaker 2: retail investors one in four expect the forty one hundred
Speaker 2: to twenty twenty four over eight thousand, eight and ten
Speaker 2: planning to put up their exposure to equities, particularly UK equities,
Speaker 2: most popular market globally for UK investors. So while you know,
Speaker 2: our our institutional investors and our pension funds, et cetera
Speaker 2: couldn't be getting out faster, our retail investors are thinking, well, actually,
Speaker 2: you know, okay, cheap is cheap. That's nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I suppose it's all sort of thing is
Speaker 1: like Andrew Bailey going on a bit who he supposed
Speaker 1: to wash through without look that he's ever seen, and
Speaker 1: you know, sort of but I just don't. I don't
Speaker 1: see this. So next year, the cost of leving is
Speaker 1: not going to be as drastic because real wages are
Speaker 1: going up. All the people who are terrified of what
Speaker 1: the mortgage was going to be, say six months ago,
Speaker 1: are now going to be refinancing at a lower rate
Speaker 1: than they expected. It's going to be higher than this.
Speaker 2: There's not a time to expect it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's expectations that are the people if it's time
Speaker 1: to prepare for all this stuff. And a lot of
Speaker 1: the debt doesn't the corporate debt doesn't roll over till
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. So I am struggling to see from
Speaker 1: that kind of attempting to be objective point of view,
Speaker 1: why two losing in twenty four should be such a
Speaker 1: bad year when all of the kind of headwinds that
Speaker 1: we faced in twenty twenty three are diminishing, if not
Speaker 1: turning into tailwinds.
Speaker 2: Great optimists that you are, now, John, what is that?
Speaker 2: What does that mean? Fulling interest rates, particularly in the
Speaker 2: US economy is not as bad as other people think.
Speaker 2: Does that mean that? I know we say this all
Speaker 2: the time, but it's really time to think about the
Speaker 2: ukn investment trust sector and enjoy that double discount. You
Speaker 2: still think that about you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I and you know, having been early all year if
Speaker 1: you like. It's that's the whole point of being a
Speaker 1: retail investor. You can be patient. It's about the only
Speaker 1: advantage you've got over an institutional investor. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that investment trusts me be a good idea. I
Speaker 1: was reading actually an interesting piece from Stifle, one of
Speaker 1: the brokers, kind of earlier this week that was suggesting
Speaker 1: that even like Scottish mortgage might be a good one,
Speaker 1: because I know that's the obviously it's been. It was
Speaker 1: the hot kind of growth one for ages. It's still
Speaker 1: trading on a discounty about nine percent. When I look
Speaker 1: at what UP is doing in the States, and it's
Speaker 1: the kind of very growthy one. You can see that
Speaker 1: it's about to burst higher from you know, it's a
Speaker 1: year ago high, and I can just see the kind
Speaker 1: of growth stuff and you know, anything that's kind of
Speaker 1: attuned to interest rates kind of boat and I had
Speaker 1: almost an a kneedjate basis so that maybe want to
Speaker 1: look at but you know what, lots of the other
Speaker 1: stuff is cheap doing putting all the value kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we just get the speed and the hard
Speaker 1: time and god digging, and we.
Speaker 2: Should remind everybody, by the way, that ARC's bottom was
Speaker 2: pretty much around when Kathy Words came on our show,
Speaker 2: wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, we are.
Speaker 2: We are a signal. We are a signal.
Speaker 1: Not going to see which wine I'm going to say
Speaker 1: which one.
Speaker 2: We are all sorts of signals, which reminds me, which
Speaker 2: reminds me. I don't want to make this interesting no
Speaker 2: for too long, But I did a poll on on
Speaker 2: Twitter asking our readers about bitter about bitcoin, gold or cash,
Speaker 2: so that they would have the opportunity to answer in
Speaker 2: the same way as our guests, and it was hijacked,
Speaker 2: hijacked by the bitcoiners, and so it ended up being
Speaker 2: I can't remember what the final result was, but nearly
Speaker 2: seventy percent bitcoin and under thirty percent gold, which I
Speaker 2: thought was absolutely fascinating because is a complete lesson in liquidity, right.
Speaker 2: It is not It is not the case. It is
Speaker 2: not the case that sixty or seventy percent of the
Speaker 2: people who follow me on Twitter, who listen to us
Speaker 2: on this show would take bitcoin over gold. But it
Speaker 2: is the case that if you can create a liquidity rush,
Speaker 2: you can force something up. So I just thought that
Speaker 2: absolutely bring is the story of bitcoin in a Twitter
Speaker 2: poll hate mail to be easily addressed, thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Right now, we are moving into December. This is exciting
Speaker 2: Christmas coming, and that means that for the rest of
Speaker 2: this month we are going to do something slightly different.
Speaker 2: We're going to bring you conversations that are slightly off
Speaker 2: the investment track holiday listening that's going to make you
Speaker 2: think about something other than investment trust though of course
Speaker 2: John will continue to think about investment trusts and nothing
Speaker 2: else all the way through until we go back to
Speaker 2: marketing stuff in January. So this week, with all that
Speaker 2: in mind about challenging you to think about things in
Speaker 2: a slightly different way, we've got Pipper Malgram, who's been
Speaker 2: on the show before, talking about geopolitics and all this
Speaker 2: kind of things. She's absolutely fascinating, so listen to her
Speaker 2: in this one. And then next week we've got a
Speaker 2: really interesting guest and we're talking about the future of farming,
Speaker 2: which again is slightly off propic for us, but very
Speaker 2: very interesting and the kind of thing that you'll absolutely
Speaker 2: want to talk about over Christmas lunch. Welcome to Marrin
Speaker 2: Talks Money, the podcast in which people who know the
Speaker 2: markets explain the markets. I'm Marry in Sunset Web. This
Speaker 2: week we're bringing a conversation with Piper Malgram, economist, author,
Speaker 2: and former advisor to US President George W. Bush. Now,
Speaker 2: as we promise, this is a wide ranging conversation. We're
Speaker 2: going to talk about all sorts of things, the conflict's
Speaker 2: growing across the globe, some reported on, some not so
Speaker 2: reported on, about what's going on in space, and about
Speaker 2: her expectations for their next president. Pipper, thank you so
Speaker 2: much for coming in today. What a delighted us. Ever, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's been a while. It's our last conversation, and last
Speaker 2: time we talked about how it rather looked like World
Speaker 2: War three was kicking off, and you said, people aren't
Speaker 2: noticing yet, but all the signs of there. There are
Speaker 2: hot wars, there are cold wars, there are underwater wars,
Speaker 2: there are space wars. There's all kinds of stuff going on,
Speaker 2: and it's time everyone took notice of that. And people
Speaker 2: are they're beginning to notice, aren't they.
Speaker 3: They are now. But it's amazing how they missed all
Speaker 3: the signals that this was coming. I mean, there have
Speaker 3: been so many incidents. I guess the issue is there's
Speaker 3: no overarching narrative, so instead the media focuses principally on
Speaker 3: the things they can photograph. It's the old rule. If
Speaker 3: it bleeds, it leads, so there has to be a
Speaker 3: human interest story. So Ukraine, that's an event, but it's
Speaker 3: seen as a localized war. Now we have Gaza and
Speaker 3: Israel and that's it seems like another localized war, and
Speaker 3: both produced these incredible photo ops. But in the background
Speaker 3: we've had events like even before the Russians rolled the
Speaker 3: tanks into Ukraine, we had this extraordinary incident where someone
Speaker 3: cut the fastest internet cable in the world, which is
Speaker 3: up in the Arctic Circle in a part of Norway
Speaker 3: called Spalbard. And you ask why is the fastest internet
Speaker 3: connection in the world in this incredibly obscure place, and
Speaker 3: the answer is because virtually every major satellite connects to
Speaker 3: Earth at that spot. And so it was literally an
Speaker 3: effort to eliminate the ability to have missile guidance or
Speaker 3: frankly GPS.
Speaker 2: And that really felt like an active wood didn't.
Speaker 3: Well, and the British Chief of the Defense Forces, Sir
Speaker 3: Tony radikin the next day came out and said, this
Speaker 3: is an active war and then he went completely quiet
Speaker 3: because everyone in NATO and the United States went, Holy moly,
Speaker 3: we don't want to say we are actually were directly
Speaker 3: with Russia. It's a very different thing to be involved
Speaker 3: in proxy conflicts in third party locations than a direct confrontation.
Speaker 3: And same with China.
Speaker 2: And also, how do you prove who cut that cable?
Speaker 3: Well, exactly, and they're still investigating that whole thing. But
Speaker 3: since then, there's no question we have had lots of
Speaker 3: Internet cable cuts, particularly the subsea cables all over the world,
Speaker 3: the what do they call it, the Marseille cable that
Speaker 3: connects the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
Speaker 2: Evenly keeping told, these are sort of mistakes by fishermen.
Speaker 3: Well, like look at the most recent one, the Baltic Connector,
Speaker 3: where the allegation is that it's a Chinese vessel called
Speaker 3: the New New Polar Bear, and it is apparently it
Speaker 3: dragged its anchor across it, and the fact that an
Speaker 3: anchor is missing off the New New Polar Bear is
Speaker 3: kind of a giveaway. But of course no one wants
Speaker 3: to come out and say the Chinese have deliberately done
Speaker 3: this or look at that as a real possibility, but
Speaker 3: I think that within strategic security circles, everyone understands there's
Speaker 3: an underwater war going on, and it is about the
Speaker 3: communications infrastructure of the superpowers. But it's not only those
Speaker 3: I've also described that we're in, well, a hot warn
Speaker 3: cold place is meaning space where we have lots of
Speaker 3: incidents with satellites, space events. But look, there are no
Speaker 3: journalists there and it's mostly classified. So every once in
Speaker 3: a while you'll read about the Russians destroy their own
Speaker 3: satellite and you're like, well, who cares then, Well, because
Speaker 3: it creates this massive debris field that is described as
Speaker 3: razor blades in a washing machine.
Speaker 2: That creates a space that other countries call go into correct, So.
Speaker 3: It's a denial of access strategy. There are lots of
Speaker 3: those types of incidents, and we're in a proper space
Speaker 3: race now between especially the United States in China as
Speaker 3: to who gets the first physical foothold and military base
Speaker 3: on the Moon, which is its own story by itself.
Speaker 3: But we also see this sort of hot war and
Speaker 3: cold places in the High North and the Arctic. We're
Speaker 3: certainly seeing it in the Baltic and then we're in
Speaker 3: a cold war in hot places, especially Africa, where we've
Speaker 3: seen the West facing off with the Wagner Group of
Speaker 3: Russia in many locations, the whole Sahel conflict arguably, which
Speaker 3: is you know, North Africa across the Sahara. And then
Speaker 3: in the Pacific we have what General Millie, the outgoing
Speaker 3: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has said is an underreported
Speaker 3: massive military build up in the Pacific, which is true,
Speaker 3: and that is very much about establishing footholds on strategic
Speaker 3: Pacific islands. And it's the US and China again jockeying
Speaker 3: for a position. So I don't see how you can
Speaker 3: look at the map and say we're not in a
Speaker 3: global conflict.
Speaker 2: But it's scars. It's hot to see who's on what side,
Speaker 2: and who the goodies are and who the bodies.
Speaker 3: Well, and this is an open question too. This is
Speaker 3: about superpowers being in conflict over their different objectives, and
Speaker 3: the world lines up differently behind each of those superpowers
Speaker 3: and changes their minds. I mean, the events in Gaza
Speaker 3: and Israel are changing a lot of people's minds, and
Speaker 3: that may be part of the strategy is to create
Speaker 3: an incident that actually divides the West. If that's the case,
Speaker 3: it certainly is doing that. But I think this is
Speaker 3: what they call the gray zone in warfare. It's not
Speaker 3: the traditional tank meets tank on a battlefield. This is
Speaker 3: about using information as warfare. It's about cutting off communications capability.
Speaker 3: It's a whole different kind of what they call hybrid warfare.
Speaker 3: And I think it's taken amazingly long, especially for the
Speaker 3: financial markets, to really comprehend the global nature of this phenomena.
Speaker 2: And if you look at it, I just want to
Speaker 2: go back to hots and cold places and space, etc.
Speaker 2: A lot of that is that getting a foothold on
Speaker 2: the Moon for example. It's communications, but is it also
Speaker 2: access two minerals, Because we're hearing a lot about mining asteroids,
Speaker 2: for example, and we're hearing a lot about being able
Speaker 2: to put solar stations in space and that being the
Speaker 2: greatest way for us to get easy, straightforward and something
Speaker 2: that is refer renewables, reliable energy. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: going on in space that is not just about communications.
Speaker 2: It's about energy.
Speaker 3: Minerals, yeah, and command and control. So yeah, I think
Speaker 3: people really have a hard time understanding the implications of
Speaker 3: two new energy technologies. One is space based solar power,
Speaker 3: which has been proven by both cal Tech with the
Speaker 3: Jet Propulsion Lab and by Airbus, So it's no longer hypothetical.
Speaker 3: I'm put simply, you literally put special mirrors on satellites,
Speaker 3: catch the Sun's rays, convert them into radio waves, safely
Speaker 3: transmit them to Earth, and now you have unlimited, clean
Speaker 3: green electricity and any power grid anywhere at any time.
Speaker 2: That still doesn't take away our problems of storage and transmission.
Speaker 2: We still have to overcome. Well those barriers before.
Speaker 3: You don't have to worry about as much.
Speaker 2: If you because it just keeps coming.
Speaker 3: Just turn the button on it goes. The distribution piece
Speaker 3: also less relevant because you can just pump it to
Speaker 3: whichever power grids you want, so the distribution side becomes
Speaker 3: less of a problem.
Speaker 2: But then you have to pump it via a grid.
Speaker 3: Well, you still need a grid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So what I'm saying, I don't have to get
Speaker 2: it to grade, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: Nonetheless, this is a such a game change or that
Speaker 3: the Saudis are backing the British in one of the
Speaker 3: first prototypes, which will be done over the North Sea,
Speaker 3: because they can see their hydrocarbons are going to be
Speaker 3: worth a whole lot less once this goes live. So
Speaker 3: imagine if you could have access to cheap, unlimited energy.
Speaker 3: That is such a game changer for any economy on
Speaker 3: our So whoever gets their first is way ahead of
Speaker 3: the other. The second one is nuclear fusion. And the
Speaker 3: thing about nuclear fusion is, yes, we're making advances very quickly,
Speaker 3: but we still don't have anything operational. We're not that
Speaker 3: close to a prototype. But what everyone understands is the
Speaker 3: Moon is full of helium three, and you need helium
Speaker 3: three for the nuclear fusion process. And our expectation is
Speaker 3: we're not going to the Moon to step on it.
Speaker 3: We're going to the Moon to stay and to build
Speaker 3: and to launch from it. That means you need both
Speaker 3: space based solar power and nuclear fusion on the lunar surface.
Speaker 3: So this is one reason we're in an outright race,
Speaker 3: and there's a genuine geopolitical competition to prevent other superpowers
Speaker 3: from getting their first.
Speaker 2: Okay, hence flowing up your own satellites.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the great story I love about, because I've
Speaker 3: always been in robotics, is that only the Americans and
Speaker 3: the Chinese have satellites with robotic arms, and the Chinese
Speaker 3: have now demonstrated they can go up to a satellite,
Speaker 3: grab it and literally hurl it into outer space, which
Speaker 3: has got the Americans going, Holy moly, what do we
Speaker 3: do if they grab one of ours.
Speaker 2: Which they easily could, which they easily could.
Speaker 3: And this is one of the reasons why the US
Speaker 3: and everybody else is moving so fast in the direction
Speaker 3: of these tiny shoe box satellites that are so small
Speaker 3: you can't really target them. Space is so vast it's
Speaker 3: very difficult to target them all. But look when Elon
Speaker 3: Musk he was using Starlink to assist the Ukrainians, the
Speaker 3: Chinese came out and said, hey, you're a military company
Speaker 3: and he said, no, no, no, I'm not. And they said, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: because the Ukrainians are using your satellites to do offensive
Speaker 3: military operations. He said no, no, no, no, We're just doing
Speaker 3: humanitarian But the Chinese said, well, look, if you keep
Speaker 3: doing this, then we're going to build our own mega
Speaker 3: constellation and ours will be armed and we will be
Speaker 3: able to take out your satellites. And notice interesting sidebar story,
Speaker 3: Rwanda has applied for permissions to have the largest satellite
Speaker 3: network of all And you're like Rwanda now that country
Speaker 3: has emerged as a Tech Center in Africa. But the
Speaker 3: real issue is they're working with the Chinese. So the
Speaker 3: idea that we're so far ahead in satellite communications tech
Speaker 3: that nobody can catch up is not correct.
Speaker 2: And she kind of interrupt with a little question, ignorant question.
Speaker 2: You say, RWANDO is applied, who do you apply to you?
Speaker 3: It said, it's the International Telecommunications Union and the licenses
Speaker 3: for doing these things in space. But you're right to
Speaker 3: ask the question because the more we reach into space,
Speaker 3: the more clearer it will be that there are virtually
Speaker 3: no rules or rules that anybody will adhere to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we have an increasing number of what we
Speaker 2: have these new space stations in the UK. Right, we've
Speaker 2: took before about the one in Shetland which I visited
Speaker 2: a ven the summer, coming along very well, expecting to
Speaker 2: launch launching next year, and they'll be launching exactly what
Speaker 2: you're talking about, these small shoe book satellites, and suddenly
Speaker 2: everyone will have a satellite.
Speaker 3: Everyone will have a satellite. Yeah, So you're right. And
Speaker 3: noticed that we had a cable cut off of the
Speaker 3: Shetland Islands between the Shetland and the Pharoe Islands, and
Speaker 3: people are like, well, who cares there's just a bunch
Speaker 3: of sheep up there. But actually that sable is critical
Speaker 3: for both those satellite launches and also for the monitoring
Speaker 3: of Russian vessels because.
Speaker 2: That's called activity.
Speaker 3: Because of course there's a ton of activity at a
Speaker 3: time when nuclear weapons are being outright threatened. Russia's just
Speaker 3: removing itself from the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty, and within
Speaker 3: hours of the Duma making that decision that they would withdraw,
Speaker 3: they did a huge simulated nuclear test on all surfaces
Speaker 3: at once. So this is all hardcore, old fashioned geopolitics.
Speaker 2: And what does it all mean If we have all
Speaker 2: these simultaneous wars, hot, cold, underwaters, based, etcetera. All running
Speaker 2: at the same time. It's a very different geopolitical environment
Speaker 2: to the one we've been used to, a very peaceful
Speaker 2: or seemingly peaceful world with low interest rates and low
Speaker 2: inflation and expanding geographical cooperation, etc. What does what you're
Speaker 2: talking about mean for a global economy.
Speaker 3: Well, I think there are lots of implications. I think
Speaker 3: this is very different from World War One and World
Speaker 3: War Two. And I know it scares people when I've
Speaker 3: said it is a World War three, but they assume
Speaker 3: that means the kind of parnage that we had in
Speaker 3: the previous wars. I don't think this is the case,
Speaker 3: although we we are seeing that on the ground obviously
Speaker 3: in Ukraine and Gaza right now. But this is much
Speaker 3: more a technological confrontation, so a lot of it occurs
Speaker 3: in ways that again the public never sees, isn't really
Speaker 3: aware of. And what that's doing is spurring all the
Speaker 3: superpowers to invest much more money in technological advantages, including
Speaker 3: for example, what I said about GPS is vulnerable in
Speaker 3: this war that I'm describing, and so innovations are happening
Speaker 3: where a new form of GPS is being created that
Speaker 3: doesn't depend on space. I can't tell you lots more
Speaker 3: about that, but I know that, you know, the big
Speaker 3: defense innovation arms, they're all doing that. So suddenly we're
Speaker 3: seeing e merging of defense requirements and technology innovation, and
Speaker 3: that isn't what we saw before this all started, So
Speaker 3: that's new I think as well. The breakdown of the
Speaker 3: relationship between the super powers has actually caused supply chains
Speaker 3: to initially break but now totally reconfigure and spontaneously emerge
Speaker 3: in all sorts of new places. So It's true that
Speaker 3: in the US we are now manufacturing again. After decades
Speaker 3: and decades of private equity saying we wouldn't touch anything
Speaker 3: physical with a barge pole. Now they're like, we need
Speaker 3: to be making physical things. And this is why, for example,
Speaker 3: silicon ship production has really moved from Taiwan to Texas
Speaker 3: and Arizona, and frankly, the next location for chip production
Speaker 3: is going to be space because you can make these
Speaker 3: things it's a natural, clean space. It's actually cheaper because
Speaker 3: of that, and we have all this new lace lithography
Speaker 3: that is cheaper, smaller machines that can do much more
Speaker 3: efficient job. So bottom line, we are innovating in the
Speaker 3: chip space, both with the supply chain and the location.
Speaker 2: Sounds positive.
Speaker 3: It will. I'm just saying people adapt, right, And I'm
Speaker 3: not saying it's great. We're having a war, it's not.
Speaker 3: But when you have this kind of conflict return to
Speaker 3: the landscape, then people start to adapt and those adaptations
Speaker 3: are where the value is now being created. And by
Speaker 3: the way, on this point, I think it is really
Speaker 3: important because look, I grew up in you know, mutual
Speaker 3: assured destruction when the Soviets and the Americans were aiming,
Speaker 3: you know, multiple nuclear weapons at each other all day long,
Speaker 3: every day. People who are a lot younger, they're like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, what the heck is happening. They've never
Speaker 3: seen anything like this before. It's important to remember that
Speaker 3: normally in history, we are usually having these kinds of
Speaker 3: conflicts somewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we've been through an incredibly unusual period.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we had this strange and wonderful period after the
Speaker 3: end of after the demise of the Soviet Union and
Speaker 3: the end of the Cold War, where everybody was moving
Speaker 3: in the same direction, which was how do we lift
Speaker 3: the GDP. Now we're in conflict again. But honestly, my
Speaker 3: read is all of the superpowers are looking at this going.
Speaker 3: It's just getting too expensive. And I think there's pressure
Speaker 3: on Jijimpang to knock off this very Beelikhos warlike baiting
Speaker 3: of the United States. There's pressure on every US president
Speaker 3: to stop. I mean, both left and right want their
Speaker 3: presidential candidates to lean in a direction of let's not
Speaker 3: spend all this money on wars in Ukraine and Israel.
Speaker 3: Let's focus on issues at home and even Russia. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think the support for what President Putin is doing
Speaker 3: is diminishing every day, and he keeps eliminating all the
Speaker 3: members of his own inner circle, so eventually there is
Speaker 3: no inner circle. And I think we're going to end
Speaker 3: up with an all change of all of the leaders
Speaker 3: of these superpowers. And when that happens, which may not
Speaker 3: be so far off, and after all, we're in a
Speaker 3: presidential race, we can talk about whether Biden's going to
Speaker 3: be the next present, but I don't think he's going
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 2: Okay, that it was not going to be him.
Speaker 3: Who is it getting well, whether we can get into that, Okay,
Speaker 3: we'll get into it. Is here's the punchline of the
Speaker 3: whole thing, and it sounds so crazy, but when you
Speaker 3: get into real confrontation between nuclear superpowers and they are
Speaker 3: threatening to use nuclear weapons, at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: everyone loses their nerve. No one wants to destroy the earth.
Speaker 3: They don't want to live in a world that they
Speaker 3: can't see their loved ones, and they always end up
Speaker 3: going the complete opposite direction, which is they have a hug.
Speaker 3: Everybody's like, what, they have a hug? But I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: google it, Like you see the picture of brush Nevin
Speaker 3: Nixon having this huge bear hug, and then the picture
Speaker 3: of Reagan and Gorbach hop big hug. This is literally
Speaker 3: the it's what you get to the minute you start
Speaker 3: reaching for that nuclear button, everybody goes, we just can't
Speaker 3: do this, And the next thing you get what I
Speaker 3: call the bear hug. And I think, I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that President Biden and President Putin are going
Speaker 3: to have a hug. I'm definitely not, but I could
Speaker 3: easily see their successors doing this. And my question to
Speaker 3: people in the markets is, given all the time and
Speaker 3: energy you've spent preparing for all of the downside risks,
Speaker 3: how much time and energy have you given to thinking
Speaker 3: about what you will do when that bear hug comes?
Speaker 3: Because that piece dividend is valuable, and acid values will
Speaker 3: rise and innovation will accelerate even faster.
Speaker 2: So I just.
Speaker 3: Spend a tiny bit of time on that possibility, especially
Speaker 3: because that's how I always.
Speaker 2: All the talk at the moment in markets is about
Speaker 2: the disappearance of the piece to dividend, How expensive that
Speaker 2: the effect that it has on the fiscal situation. So
Speaker 2: pretty much every country globally is spending on defense goes
Speaker 2: from one to two percent of GDP at food five
Speaker 2: percent of GDP, and the fact, the fact, that obvious
Speaker 2: effect that has in our deficits and on inflation over
Speaker 2: the medium term. And that's where the expectation to a
Speaker 2: large degree of inflation staying at a higher level, interest
Speaker 2: rate staying at a high level comes from. Was a
Speaker 2: big part of it anyway. So what your describing sounds
Speaker 2: inflationary to begin with, and then really verat deflationary.
Speaker 3: Well, if I'm right about what's coming from space, that's
Speaker 3: massively deflationary. I mean, look at the Psyche mission alone,
Speaker 3: which just launched NASA's mission to the asteroid called Psyche,
Speaker 3: and we've already brought back samples from another asteroid called Benu.
Speaker 3: So this is no longer again imaginary or hypothetical, like
Speaker 3: we are bringing back the samples, which means asteroid mining
Speaker 3: can begin. So Psyche is said to be worth seven
Speaker 3: hundred times the value of the entire world economy annually.
Speaker 3: And if you were to distribute the value of the assets,
Speaker 3: the lithium, the collbaal, the gold, iron ore, every human
Speaker 3: would be a billionaire that you would do that. But
Speaker 3: imagine what happens to validation.
Speaker 2: That would come from everyone being a billionaire. Well, but
Speaker 2: think of.
Speaker 3: The deflation that comes from all these things becoming almost
Speaker 3: we're practically free.
Speaker 2: Under that, having to dig valash holes in the as absolutely.
Speaker 3: So you know. So here's the thing, though, I have
Speaker 3: to say, you've known me a long time as a
Speaker 3: person who does macro strategy. One of the hardest things
Speaker 3: is when you call something but you were early. So
Speaker 3: I started writing about the conditions for what we're seeing
Speaker 3: now in my book Signals in twenty sixteen, saying for
Speaker 3: inflation because of a bunch of choices we've made, inflation
Speaker 3: will come back, and geopolitics will come back. And then
Speaker 3: it slowly did, and then it suddenly speeded up. What
Speaker 3: I wrote again in October twenty twenty one, saying we're there,
Speaker 3: We're now in World War three. People just don't see
Speaker 3: it yet. Okay, now they're seeing it. So I'm just saying,
Speaker 3: I'm already seeing over the edge of the thing, and
Speaker 3: I can see the reconciliation coming because this is just
Speaker 3: getting too expensive for all these societies, and our capacity
Speaker 3: for true destruction is so enormous now. It's It's not
Speaker 3: like when my dad was an advisor to Kennedy on
Speaker 3: the Cuban missile crisis, where you had days and hours.
Speaker 3: Right now we're living in a world with hypersonic weapons
Speaker 3: where you don't even have fifteen minutes. So I think
Speaker 3: everyone will literally just lose.
Speaker 2: That back of ultimately, okay, all right, then who will
Speaker 2: be the next president? Who's going to be the hugging
Speaker 2: who's it going to be?
Speaker 3: Okay, I have a way out of the market view
Speaker 3: at the moment about the presidential race. It's so fascinating.
Speaker 3: So you know, we're on the six party system in
Speaker 3: the United States, meaning six times we have had part
Speaker 3: that came to an end and then we created new ones.
Speaker 3: I think we're maybe on the brink of the seventh
Speaker 3: party system. That the country is so divided and technological
Speaker 3: change is so vast that actually we need new structures.
Speaker 3: So the person that I'm watching most closely is Robert F. Kennedy,
Speaker 3: And everyone goes, what that's crazy. He's not even in
Speaker 3: this race. He's an independent. I'm like, watch his following.
Speaker 3: It is increasing at an extraordinary rate. And what he's
Speaker 3: done is first of all, to go down the middle.
Speaker 3: So he's a Clinton Democrat. So he says, let's not
Speaker 3: tax the entrepreneur because they're building the future. A lot
Speaker 3: of Republicans go, yeah, I like the sound of that.
Speaker 3: A lot of Democrats go, I like the sound of that.
Speaker 3: He says, but big corporates are not paying anything, and
Speaker 3: that's not right, so let's fix that. And again everyone
Speaker 3: left and right nods their head, Yeah, we should look
Speaker 3: at that. Then he talks about the corporate capture of
Speaker 3: the system in politics in America, and interestingly, there is
Speaker 3: a grassroots feeling in the country about that. So here's
Speaker 3: the key to all this. Trump now still has a
Speaker 3: fifty percent approval rating with his voters, even facing something
Speaker 3: like five hundred and sixty one years in prison on
Speaker 3: the current prosecution trajectory. And he had been very favorable
Speaker 3: about Kennedy, who is a populist on the Democrat side,
Speaker 3: and he has roughly twenty five percent. So you had
Speaker 3: fifty and twenty five and now we had seventy five percent.
Speaker 3: Of the country has already told us they want a
Speaker 3: populist and they want an outsider. And let's face it,
Speaker 3: let's look at the past elections. Every single time, we
Speaker 3: love to elect somebody you never heard of. Three years before,
Speaker 3: you never heard of Bill Clinton. Nobody thought George W.
Speaker 3: Would win. It was supposed to be his brother Jeb.
Speaker 3: Nobody ever heard of Obama. I can tell you no
Speaker 3: one thought Trump was going to win, and I wrote
Speaker 3: he was, he had a real chance. In twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: People were like, you're insane. And it wasn't a preference.
Speaker 3: It was just I can see how the forces are moving.
Speaker 3: Well today they're like, don't be ridiculous, Robert Kennedy. But
Speaker 3: I'm telling you watch this space and notice Kennedy's already
Speaker 3: said that he will pardon both Assannge and Snowden. Who's
Speaker 3: going to need a presidential pardon? I would say it
Speaker 3: might be President Trump, And Kennedy will say, look, if
Speaker 3: we try to incarcerate a super popular former president United States,
Speaker 3: we may end up in a real war.
Speaker 2: A civil war, like a realistic war.
Speaker 3: And we don't want to tear the country apart. So
Speaker 3: actually pardoning that president, which only works at the federal level,
Speaker 3: it doesn't help him at the state level. But nonetheless,
Speaker 3: the signal that it sends this kind of conciliation approach,
Speaker 3: this moderate middle let's have a cabinet with people on
Speaker 3: both sides of the It is resonating, and so I think,
Speaker 3: watch that space because it's changing the whole terms of
Speaker 3: this election. So we're it's going to surprise us.
Speaker 2: What about the Swami.
Speaker 3: I don't know it. No, And I've just been all
Speaker 3: over the States. I'm talking to people everywhere. Even the
Speaker 3: California tech community is not not behind. I think for me,
Speaker 3: he lost me when he said we need to arm
Speaker 3: every Taiwanese family with handguns. I was like, have you
Speaker 3: ever been to this place or understood the history? Like
Speaker 3: you know? I just and people are fundamentally not interested
Speaker 3: in foreign policy in the United States until this Gaza event,
Speaker 3: and now it's splitting the country. So it's becoming a
Speaker 3: really tricky issue. I think a lot of pologists are
Speaker 3: going to try to avoid it for that reason.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, now we know he's going to be president.
Speaker 3: Well I'm not saying, but I am saying he is
Speaker 3: going to to totally change what's said in this election.
Speaker 2: Yes, even if it's not him, he can change the conversation.
Speaker 3: He can change the conversation. Oh and by the way,
Speaker 3: the huge one is he's an environmentalist and the only
Speaker 3: one with real street cred on that issue. And I
Speaker 3: think Politico is right. They wrote he's the most trusted
Speaker 3: white man in Black America, and that is true because
Speaker 3: the Kennedy legacy and a bunch of other things. But
Speaker 3: I just think we keep picking the long shot, and
Speaker 3: so we can't expect this to be a normal one.
Speaker 3: I have actually one last thing I'll say on this,
Speaker 3: because we're doing a podcast. Every presidency is driven by
Speaker 3: a technology. So Trump won on Twitter, Obama one on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Clinton and Bush were still television presidents. This is a
Speaker 3: podcast presidency. It is being fought on the podcast airwaves,
Speaker 3: where you get three hours long form, no more hostile interviewer,
Speaker 3: and people are listening at great length. So if you
Speaker 3: think that this race is happening at the presidential debates
Speaker 3: on mainstream media, you are totally going to miss it.
Speaker 3: It's happening in this other technology space.
Speaker 2: Making me feel guilty, We've only got forty minutes.
Speaker 3: I know, well, people do go for three or four
Speaker 3: hours these days.
Speaker 2: I can listen to anything everything. I could listen to
Speaker 2: you for three or four hours. I'm not reul listen
Speaker 2: to anybody else. Okay, let's talk about if we can
Speaker 2: shifting away from the president that it's relevant let's talk
Speaker 2: about AI. I know that you know everything there is
Speaker 2: to know about how all the technologies are digging themselves
Speaker 2: into our lives, but where's the future of that.
Speaker 3: So AI is so fascinating because even the people who
Speaker 3: are at the cutting edge of this are saying to me,
Speaker 3: six months and I won't know what's happening, Like it
Speaker 3: moving so fast that even the experts can't keep up.
Speaker 3: But a few key things. One, we are optimizing. We're
Speaker 3: using AI to optimize for only two things right now,
Speaker 3: cost and efficiency. And humans are not very cost effective
Speaker 3: or efficient, and so we're not optimizing for human connection
Speaker 3: or things that we don't value in the markets, but
Speaker 3: actually value for human have value for human flourishing like love, beauty, joy,
Speaker 3: And I think there's an increasing recognition that humanity can't
Speaker 3: be shoehorned into being more efficient and shouldn't be because
Speaker 3: our great skill is lateral thinking and creative creative thinking,
Speaker 3: we're incredibly good at producing novelty, and so the AI
Speaker 3: community is beginning to clock this. So that's one thing.
Speaker 3: Second thing is add in robotics on automation, which is
Speaker 3: the field that I've been in. So imagine self replicating
Speaker 3: three D printers, self assembling and self replicating, three D
Speaker 3: printers driven by artificial intelligence that can now build and
Speaker 3: create on an extraordinary scale, not only here on Earth,
Speaker 3: but off Earth. And that is very much where the
Speaker 3: planning is for space right All the building on the
Speaker 3: lunar surface, the construction of the first oxygen grid, the
Speaker 3: first power grid, the human habitats are all about the
Speaker 3: application of three D printing. And so this is causing
Speaker 3: some people who are really expert in this field to
Speaker 3: make some fascinating comments. So Lord Reese, who's the Astronomer
Speaker 3: Royal of Britain, which is you know, the position that
Speaker 3: Newton had advising the Queen on astronomy. He's talked about
Speaker 3: this is an intelligence that's secular that we have created
Speaker 3: that's now growing of its own accord. And Craig Mundy,
Speaker 3: who was the head chief technology officer at Microsoft for decades,
Speaker 3: super expert on the subject. He says, look, AI now
Speaker 3: allows us to create an entity, as let's say we
Speaker 3: put it inside a robotic but an entity that can
Speaker 3: learn to the level of a fifteen year old in
Speaker 3: two weeks, not in one subject, but in every subject.
Speaker 3: So now combine these things and I think this is
Speaker 3: where the discussion of is it sentient, is it not sentient?
Speaker 3: It's getting awfully blurry out there. So I think mainly
Speaker 3: AI is going to give us great things.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: We can diagnose cancers before they even start to manifest
Speaker 3: with any symptoms. We can prepare fractures, we can manage
Speaker 3: the traffic, all sorts of things that need doing. But
Speaker 3: this business of building and creating physicality that has its
Speaker 3: own set of instructions which may or may not be
Speaker 3: in alignment with human flourishing. That's where the discussion is
Speaker 3: about what the heck what do we do?
Speaker 2: That's where it gets a little bit frightening. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: so let's try and pull all this together and ask
Speaker 2: what it means for because this is our core subject here,
Speaker 2: what it means for markets as a whole, and what
Speaker 2: that might mean for investors.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, I think it's so many different things. On
Speaker 3: the one hand, this idea that defense spending is now
Speaker 3: driving economies is true, and so drone and robotic technology
Speaker 3: start to be national priorities, so you can think in
Speaker 3: those terms. You can also begin to understand that with
Speaker 3: the breaking of supply chains and their recreation locally. I've
Speaker 3: been calling it glocalization, the relocalization of supply chains. Suddenly
Speaker 3: you want to be buying manufacturing firms in the West,
Speaker 3: not just any East as we were before. I think
Speaker 3: this is a world where you either believe the technologlogical
Speaker 3: innovation can create dramatically different outcomes. I believe it can,
Speaker 3: so I'm really interested in food production becomes much easier,
Speaker 3: managing water supplies much easier. I mean against This is
Speaker 3: all against the backdrop as well of an extraordinary advance
Speaker 3: and computational power. You know, as we move supercomputers, which
Speaker 3: you know, only five years ago a supercomputer could solve
Speaker 3: a problem in ten thousand years and that was considered
Speaker 3: historic and incredible. And that same problem can now be
Speaker 3: solved by a supercomputer in two hundred seconds. So our
Speaker 3: problem solving capabilities have exploded so far beyond our imagination.
Speaker 3: And I guess that for me is the main thing.
Speaker 3: I don't think we can live in a world anymore
Speaker 3: where all armchair investors using the old metrics. This is
Speaker 3: a world that requires you to use your imagination.
Speaker 2: So we can't just go out and buy a passive
Speaker 2: index fund and sit back. Is not gonna work. I
Speaker 2: just don't real off index it is.
Speaker 3: It really is, And there's a question of I mean,
Speaker 3: for retail investors, they don't want to get involved in
Speaker 3: anything that's too risky to tricky. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: everything now is some small startup doing a risky, tricky
Speaker 3: thing that then gets acquired and is suddenly part of
Speaker 3: a Google. And only the private equity crowd are catching that,
Speaker 3: and private investor and retail investors don't even get access
Speaker 3: to that anymore.
Speaker 2: So is that.
Speaker 3: Really where we want to be? Anyway? I think imagination
Speaker 3: is a crucial part of this, and that means getting
Speaker 3: out in the world and really looking at what's working
Speaker 3: and what's not working. What are the kids playing with
Speaker 3: that is going to be tomorrow's big technology.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the kids are still playing with crypto, aren't they?
Speaker 3: And they are oh yeah yeah. And the tokenization of
Speaker 3: finance and look, governments are moving further in that direction
Speaker 3: of fractionalizing money and making digital money itself. That is
Speaker 3: also in motion, and one has to think what are
Speaker 3: the implications of that for the economy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're making all the things that British investors traditionally
Speaker 2: invest in sound older investors coming up to Retoment et cetera.
Speaker 2: They're invested in old style listed companies in the UK,
Speaker 2: energy consu miss Staples, etc. Collecting dividends.
Speaker 3: Well, I totally get that. Look with interest rates where
Speaker 3: they are, bonds are paying well, so you know, everybody's
Speaker 3: shifted in the bonds. This is a huge problem for
Speaker 3: the tech sector because they have to outperform the bond market.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people in tech don't understand this.
Speaker 3: They're like, so, my technolology is so amazing, my product
Speaker 3: is incredible. I'm tempted to write a book called you
Speaker 3: know my product is incredible because they all believe this.
Speaker 3: But I'm like, babe, you don't outperform holding a thirty
Speaker 3: year bond.
Speaker 2: Well, this is interesting, isn't it. Because for the last
Speaker 2: half many years, during the tech bubble or the growth bubble,
Speaker 2: whatever you like to call it, you've been able to
Speaker 2: say my technology is incredible and still get money. And
Speaker 2: now you have to say my technology is incredible, and
Speaker 2: look at the money I'm going to make for the
Speaker 2: next eighteen months or I'm making already. Otherwise, no one's
Speaker 2: going to attribute any value to your incredible product and
Speaker 2: that's been the most extraordinary change for the technology industry.
Speaker 2: And even if you do that, not necessarily a bad way,
Speaker 2: by the way, I agree, I'm a bad totally agree.
Speaker 3: I think it's all much healthier than it was. But
Speaker 3: even if you do that, you now have to reinvent
Speaker 3: or keep pace with the technological innovation in your field permanently. Permanently.
Speaker 3: You can never rest, you can never rest, right, So
Speaker 3: this is Olympics on a whole new level. And there's
Speaker 3: actually there's one other subject that which I wanted to
Speaker 3: get into with you, and it's it's it's the most fascinating,
Speaker 3: super tricky, bizarre subject I've come across in my entire career.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm ready, you're you're ready in case, it's.
Speaker 3: Like buckle your seatbelts stuff. But it is at the
Speaker 3: nexus of what this what we're talking about, which is
Speaker 3: a level of technological innovation that may blow away everything
Speaker 3: we know about physics itself.
Speaker 2: Idea. Yeah, so what seems.
Speaker 3: To be happening since the Nobel Prize was awarded last
Speaker 3: year for quantum physics, which gave credibility to this idea
Speaker 3: that quantum entanglement is real. So it's almost as if
Speaker 3: our new computational power and our new capacity with sensors
Speaker 3: to gather information is punching holes in the Einstein standard
Speaker 3: model of physics. And on the other side is this
Speaker 3: quantum base model of physics that is not yet established
Speaker 3: or explained. And in that space, this is where my
Speaker 3: attention was drawn by a number of people from my
Speaker 3: days in government when I worked in the White House
Speaker 3: who called me up and said, you have to watch
Speaker 3: what Congress is doing on this whole what they're calling
Speaker 3: anomalist phenomena non human intelligence issue. And I was like,
Speaker 3: what are you kidding? So I started looking at it,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, holy moly. We have Congress holding five
Speaker 3: years of private hearings on this subject, and then one
Speaker 3: year of public hearings, and now we have not just one,
Speaker 3: but ten people coming forward from the highest levels of
Speaker 3: the intelligence community as whistleblowers, and apparently another thirty behind them.
Speaker 3: And what they're really talking about is that we have
Speaker 3: this kind of new technology from new physics. It's all
Speaker 3: in Pentagon black basudget programs that are not visible even
Speaker 3: to the leaders of the Pentagon itself. And this is
Speaker 3: one reason why the Pentagon hasn't been able to conduct
Speaker 3: the audit that Congress requires of them for the last
Speaker 3: five years.
Speaker 2: Because the spending remains secret.
Speaker 3: It remains totally secret, totally compartmentalized. But it appears to
Speaker 3: be about these kinds of technologies that don't fit our
Speaker 3: conception of the way the world physics. Yeah, now this
Speaker 3: of course attracts It is all merging with the whole
Speaker 3: old story about UFOs and UAPs and are there non
Speaker 3: human beings and all this stuff that people write off
Speaker 3: because of course that must be crazy. But as Senator
Speaker 3: Rubio said, if you have the most senior people from
Speaker 3: the Geospatial Intelligence Agency in the National Reconnaissance Office saying actually,
Speaker 3: this is real, then either we have our top people
Speaker 3: losing their minds or we are at an extraordinary moment
Speaker 3: in history. And I at this point am inclined to
Speaker 3: go with let's do the it's an extraordinary moment in history.
Speaker 3: Let's suspend the disbelief for just long enough to gather
Speaker 3: the information and then we can see what we bring
Speaker 3: science to to understand it. And I'm seeing some of
Speaker 3: the world's top scientists working on all of these elements,
Speaker 3: and I just think it's a thing from.
Speaker 2: What would that mean, Well, if.
Speaker 3: It does mean that we're going to have new technologies
Speaker 3: that revolutionize how we do things that you can't afford
Speaker 3: not to pay attention.
Speaker 2: Okay, So what that means right now is pay attention.
Speaker 3: It only means keep an eye. It's it's not the
Speaker 3: inclination will be to just say, oh, well that's nuts,
Speaker 3: but watch this space. Something important and historic is happening here,
Speaker 3: and I just think it's worth paying a little attention
Speaker 3: to on the side.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, we're definitely going to watch that and we'll
Speaker 2: come back to talk about it again in a year
Speaker 2: or so. Pepper, Before we finish, I have to work
Speaker 2: you something that is also a relatively historic question and important,
Speaker 2: and I think I know your answer is going to
Speaker 2: be but we'll we'll find out. We're keeping we keep
Speaker 2: them track of people's answers. Yeah, if I were to
Speaker 2: say to you, over the next ten years, you can
Speaker 2: have one asset class and one asset class only, and
Speaker 2: you have to choose between the following three things, and
Speaker 2: the first one is gold, and the second one is
Speaker 2: bitcoin okay, and the third one is a UK based deposit.
Speaker 3: Account the cash cash option.
Speaker 2: Would you take the cash option even over a teni period.
Speaker 3: So even though inflation seems high to people now, it's
Speaker 3: of course nothing compared to like you know, when I
Speaker 3: was a kid growing up. But I think all of
Speaker 3: the things I've described mean inflation is going to come down,
Speaker 3: and have in cash at your disposal is important so
Speaker 3: that when these opportunities come, you can enter them. The
Speaker 3: awful thing is when opportunities come and you're already stuck,
Speaker 3: you're already committed, or your cash is gone. For some
Speaker 3: I just think the optionality of cash.
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to use it for a decade.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know we can, but most of your listeners
Speaker 3: won't be able to get in on the technologies I'm
Speaker 3: describing for a decade.
Speaker 2: Okay, so they need to hold it. They need to hold.
Speaker 3: If they were a private equity outfit, I would say
Speaker 3: you can't wait ten years. But if you're the general public,
Speaker 3: you won't even have the opportunity because these firms won't
Speaker 3: go public that fast. So in that sense, it's a
Speaker 3: kind of it's a period to study, to work really
Speaker 3: really hard so that when you deploy that cash it
Speaker 3: will do amazing things as opposed to mediocre things.
Speaker 2: What if I take cash out of the equation, you're
Speaker 2: the fulest you to choose between gold and bitcoin.
Speaker 3: So I have not been a bitcoiner directly, I haven't,
Speaker 3: but I do understand the digitization of money and the
Speaker 3: tokenization of money, and I think governments, particularly the US,
Speaker 3: the UK and the EU, they are about to say
Speaker 3: we're going to have national central bank currency that's digitized
Speaker 3: and you can own bitcoin. You just can't hold it
Speaker 3: anonymously and you have to declare it for tax. When
Speaker 3: that announcement comes, the value of bitcoin, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: actually will go up, and dramatically will go will go
Speaker 3: up because regular people will start to understand that they
Speaker 3: can be in it. It's no longer you know, for
Speaker 3: rogues and renegades.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's probably regulated. It's real money, that's right.
Speaker 3: So in that sense, I would take that bitcoin bet.
Speaker 3: But that's a very different bitcoin bet than the bitcoiners
Speaker 3: are taking. Their whole thing is I'm taking it to
Speaker 3: get out of the reach of government. And I'm like, guys,
Speaker 3: you know, in electronic world, you really think that what
Speaker 3: you write on a keyboard can't be tracked. Seriously, you
Speaker 3: can't escape. We are in this world, there are sovereigns
Speaker 3: you can't get out from underneath that. So I actually
Speaker 3: think bitcoin and here's a funny thing. I think the
Speaker 3: US is going to end up as the largest sovereign
Speaker 3: holder of bitcoin through confiscation. Yes, literally, because every time
Speaker 3: they arrest somebody. The stash is huge. It's like four billion,
Speaker 3: and of course that's like more than the annual budget
Speaker 3: of the whole Justice Department. So do they want it
Speaker 3: to have a value so they can.
Speaker 2: You can't really stop trading in it right now, you
Speaker 2: can't do anything with it, wait with it.
Speaker 3: But if you make it legal, you will, and then
Speaker 3: they will be very wealthy themselves.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there we go. Pivot is bitcoin is boin advisors? Yeah,
Speaker 2: big owners, beware you'll you'll big will only be worth
Speaker 2: something if the thing you don't want to happen happens.
Speaker 2: That's right, really interesting.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Pepper, Thank you so much, Thank you, John. What do
Speaker 2: you think of Peppers? Great?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean obviously that's not the first time she's
Speaker 1: been in the show, but share always it's always something
Speaker 1: new into.
Speaker 2: The next and she's always early, you know, she's always early.
Speaker 2: She has been right so often. You know, she's been
Speaker 2: right on all this geopolitical stuff. She was right on Trump,
Speaker 2: She's write on lots of the dynamics around last the
Speaker 2: last couple of years or so. And in our conversation
Speaker 2: when she talks about watching Robert F. Kennedy, when she
Speaker 2: said that to us a week or two ago, nobody
Speaker 2: else was saying. And now you look around and has
Speaker 2: lots of chat about Robert F. Kennedy, not necessarily winning,
Speaker 2: but certainly changing the conversation. And space. You know, she
Speaker 2: has been talking about these issues in space for a
Speaker 2: very very long time now. I remember the first time
Speaker 2: she talked to me some time ago about the Russians
Speaker 2: blowing up their own satellites and creating these kind of
Speaker 2: razor clouds in space that would prevent anybody else using
Speaker 2: that space, and talking about this is a geographical land grab.
Speaker 2: You know, this sounded completely bizarre, but now this is
Speaker 2: a mainstream conversation and even I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: read it, but by the way, anybody listening, fantastic Christmas
Speaker 2: present for all the teens and indeed the adults in
Speaker 2: your life. Tim Marshall's knew that the future of geography
Speaker 2: have power and politics, and space will change our world.
Speaker 2: Lots of the stuff is in there, and you know,
Speaker 2: Tim's great, but this is a he's a mainstream author.
Speaker 2: And the stuff that Pepper was saying a couple of
Speaker 2: years back and everyone was going, yeah, she's nuts, now
Speaker 2: is out there in no Pepper. Nobody said you were nuts.
Speaker 2: Nobody said you were nuts. Just a little out there, Peper,
Speaker 2: just a little out there. And now everyone is happily saying,
Speaker 2: you know, geography is not about not just about the Earth,
Speaker 2: geography is about space. Everybody is talking about the possibility
Speaker 2: of maybe being able to beam solar energy down to
Speaker 2: Earth and not having to bother with all those ski
Speaker 2: fossil fuels and all the horrible wind turbines and all
Speaker 2: that stuff, and just beam it right down. Build a
Speaker 2: better grib grid Bobs, your uncle. Everybody's talking about space
Speaker 2: for everyone's talking about Lane Grab. Everybody's talking about getting
Speaker 2: minerals off the moon. You know, highly mainstream conversation, and
Speaker 2: the idea that China, Russia and America are in some
Speaker 2: kind of competition to have habitable zones on the Moon
Speaker 2: within the next decade. This is no longer even remotely weird.
Speaker 2: The only thing that's still a little bit out there
Speaker 2: is UFOs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was the bit that I so only read
Speaker 1: this in the transcript as far as I could. Wotko,
Speaker 1: So what she's seeing is that is Cana Lake. They
Speaker 1: can of black ops tape, military secret stuff. Is that
Speaker 1: that experiment? And we quantum computing or whatever this is,
Speaker 1: it's all been behind a paywall for you and those
Speaker 1: coming out. Is that the idea I couldn't quit walking?
Speaker 2: I think that's basically it. I mean, from what she
Speaker 2: was saying. And you know, we'd have to ask Pepper
Speaker 2: if we wanted more detail on this. But isn't it
Speaker 2: perfectly normal for defense, particularly in the US, to be
Speaker 2: doing all sorts of stuff that sounds completely bonkers to
Speaker 2: the ordinary person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely no, that's I mean, I agree with that.
Speaker 1: It's just the sort of v Kent parallel universities and
Speaker 1: things like that that got me.
Speaker 2: Why why do you think they don't? When did you
Speaker 2: turn into such a pedestrian thinker? John?
Speaker 1: It's true, I'm getting very very cool titty.
Speaker 2: I mean, you honestly think that you know, here we are,
Speaker 2: what's what's what's the phrase a motive? Dust suspended on
Speaker 2: a sunbeam. Here we are in our tiny little universe
Speaker 2: with all the millions and millions of other universes, et cetera,
Speaker 2: and you think it's we might be alone, very off
Speaker 2: topic bearing off topic topic.
Speaker 1: The other thing I thought was interesting is the and
Speaker 1: again i'd accused if any of our readers listeners are
Speaker 1: know more about this, But the asteroid mining. The one
Speaker 1: thing that gets me about that is that, yes, it's cool, but.
Speaker 2: How it's so.
Speaker 1: Expensive relative to other ways they getting this stuff. And
Speaker 1: none of this stuff is particularly scarce or not scarce
Speaker 1: enough yet that you would want to be flying in
Speaker 1: a space to you know, get it off an asteroid
Speaker 1: or even off the moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know we have satellites with arms that
Speaker 2: can grab stuff now, right. I mean that's why people
Speaker 2: was saying we're going for very small satellites now so
Speaker 2: it's less easy for them to be captured by other
Speaker 2: people satellites. And if you've got around, just grab a
Speaker 2: little astroid and bring it an.
Speaker 1: Isn't that going to blow the world up? What you
Speaker 1: do not deflect.
Speaker 2: But the only thing I would say, you know, you say,
Speaker 2: oh mining on the moon, it's so expensive, We can't
Speaker 2: do that. We've got loads of loads of stuff here.
Speaker 2: And you're right, you know, we talk about rare earth
Speaker 2: metals and everybody knows they're not remotely rare. There's loads
Speaker 2: of them around. But you know, if you could go
Speaker 2: up and get them off the south pole of the Moon,
Speaker 2: then you don't have to worry about planning permission. And
Speaker 2: I would.
Speaker 1: Say, maybe we can build affordable hosing for London.
Speaker 2: Well, I would say that getting planning permission to, for example,
Speaker 2: open a Lissier mining cornwall be significantly more expensive than
Speaker 2: inventing and building a mining rocket to go to the
Speaker 2: south pole of the Moon and bring it back from there.
Speaker 2: And you know, my only experience with planning permission is
Speaker 2: trying to build a garage in the garden. At this
Speaker 2: point cheaper to part the car on the moon.
Speaker 1: Have they seen more of a regulation than else?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And the other thing, Robert F. Kennedy like this is John.
Speaker 2: Trying to get He's trying to get off the subject
Speaker 2: of space because he's uncomfortable with the idea of UFOs.
Speaker 1: Right, Oh, No, comfortable with the idea UFO was.
Speaker 2: Just anyway, I've had too many I'm interested in the
Speaker 2: whole thing. And I love the way that Pepper talks
Speaker 2: about and one of the things I do think she
Speaker 2: talked about that was really interesting and important for us
Speaker 2: all to think about a lot is about satellites and
Speaker 2: how they've become part of our critical infrastructure, you know,
Speaker 2: the same as water or anything like that. So satellites
Speaker 2: they provide all of the digital infrastructure that we have
Speaker 2: on Earth, and people forget that that is created by
Speaker 2: the satellites up above, and that creates huge national geographical
Speaker 2: vulnerabilities outside our own borders. And that seems to me
Speaker 2: to be one of the most important takeaways from what
Speaker 2: people was talking about that we need to be aware
Speaker 2: of that, and we need to be aware that this
Speaker 2: is what we've got up here is effectively a privatized
Speaker 2: part of infrastructure because most of these satellites are private,
Speaker 2: but there is huge national interest in them. And one
Speaker 2: of the things that back to Tim Marshall, he talks
Speaker 2: about it in terms of the East India Company. You know,
Speaker 2: think about private interests that are so huge that they
Speaker 2: have national defense and national interest characteristics that means that
Speaker 2: they can't really be left to be private. So I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot to watch there. That's the interesting
Speaker 2: we had. Right Now we can move away from UFOs
Speaker 2: and you can talk about presidential candidates, which is what
Speaker 2: you were trying to deflect me onto. I'll tell you
Speaker 2: what I do know what's going on here? Can I
Speaker 2: tell you what's going on here? Everybody? John is from Galasgow,
Speaker 2: which is one of the UFO spotting places globally. It's
Speaker 2: Bonnie Brigg in the central Belt. Right, Bonnie Brigg is
Speaker 2: not that far from Glasgow. I bet that as a kid.
Speaker 2: As a kid, John was out every night drinking strong
Speaker 2: boe watching for UFOs. My right job. Fuite a little
Speaker 2: sensitive about it?
Speaker 1: Now, well I may have been bog fast and look
Speaker 1: that team I was taking up. I am not going
Speaker 1: to I can't tell you any vote it I was.
Speaker 1: I've sworn the Official Defense Secrets Act. Other than that,
Speaker 1: thanks for bringing up my childhood well with fun?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: So please? This is this guy, Robert F.
Speaker 2: Kennedy, This guy, this guy?
Speaker 1: What is the mechanism by which he changes everything? Is
Speaker 1: it just like being a third candidate who everyone's votes
Speaker 1: go to?
Speaker 2: Or have you been on his website?
Speaker 1: I hate to see it, but I haven't.
Speaker 2: Okay, can I strongly recommend, Can I strongly recommend? So
Speaker 2: we declare your independence. We will end the forever wars,
Speaker 2: clean up government, increase wealth for all, and tell Americans
Speaker 2: the truth. I'd go for that, you know. He's very
Speaker 2: clear on ending corporate chron is, dealing with a state,
Speaker 2: state institutions that don't behave democratically, coping with the cost
Speaker 2: of living. Not sure how you do that. He's an environmentalist.
Speaker 2: He's very keen on honest government, aren't we all? You know?
Speaker 2: A democratic government, he says, is supposed to be of,
Speaker 2: by and for the people. But government institutions have portrayed
Speaker 2: or trust. The intelligence agencies spy on our own people.
Speaker 2: Government and tech platforms conspire to survey and censor the public.
Speaker 2: Regulatory agents who being captured by those they are supposed
Speaker 2: to regulate. Wall Street controls the SEC. Polluters and extractive
Speaker 2: industries dominate the EPA. In the BLM, I don't know
Speaker 2: all the two agencies are other people. Well. Farmer controls
Speaker 2: the CDC, NIH and FDA. Big agriculture controls the USDA.
Speaker 2: Big tech has captured the FTC. No wonder trusting government
Speaker 2: is at an all time low. It's time to earn
Speaker 2: it back. Christ I'd looked for that. I didn't have
Speaker 2: to do anything else. Am I'd vote for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he certainly seems to be hitting the aid bidens.
Speaker 2: And you know, when you look at when you look
Speaker 2: at the options Trump Biden, these are unbelievably appalling options.
Speaker 2: How did the greatest country on us get to this point?
Speaker 2: The conversation around every dinner table this Christmas, how did
Speaker 2: the greatest country on us get to the point where
Speaker 2: it's asking people or looks like it's going to ask
Speaker 2: people to choose between Trump and Biden. And it looks
Speaker 2: like it is impossible. It should be impossible for either
Speaker 2: of these people to become president. Again, So when we say,
Speaker 2: you know, if something is impossible, then what is possible?
Speaker 2: And somebody like Kennedy looks possible conceivable.
Speaker 1: No, that's a really good point, because you're right. One
Speaker 1: thing that people have consistently forgotten whenever they go on
Speaker 1: about surprise election results is that the alternatives in the
Speaker 1: last kind of like you know, ten years have not
Speaker 1: been very appealing either. So, you know, Boris Johnson Versus
Speaker 1: generally Calledbyn Trump. Everyone forgets it was Hillary Clinton on
Speaker 1: the other side, of that who figured as well. So
Speaker 1: that's a really good point. Actually, so Biden Trump or
Speaker 1: an annoys guy who talks a good game.
Speaker 2: Literally anybody else, literally anybody else. Yeah, I mean there
Speaker 2: are a couple of candidates who look like they could
Speaker 2: break through the mechanism of it is difficult. But as
Speaker 2: Pepper says, well he may not necessarily win, fairly unlikely
Speaker 2: to win. There is something interesting hearing that he could
Speaker 2: change the conversation. People look at somebody like that and say, actually,
Speaker 2: hang on, guys like this exist. Why do we have
Speaker 2: to put up with these decrepids?
Speaker 1: So the other thing I like to but it is
Speaker 1: it kind of please and whole thing about the cold
Speaker 1: wars being followed by a big hug, which would be nice,
Speaker 1: that would be I thought that was actually the kind
Speaker 1: of best bit of your conversation. We are because hopefully
Speaker 1: she'd be as right about that as she was about
Speaker 1: cold wars and hot plics and hot wars and cold polices.
Speaker 2: Well, we really don't need any more hot waves, do we.
Speaker 2: And the truth is that you know, pretty much all
Speaker 2: the big powers are financially stretched at the moment, and
Speaker 2: this is her point. You know, this is too expensive,
Speaker 2: and wars cold or hot, and when people can't afford
Speaker 2: them anymore. And the US is very financially stretched. We
Speaker 2: are extremely financially stretched. I whichh we have time to
Speaker 2: talk about Scotland, which appears to be about to go bankrupt.
Speaker 2: By the way, have you been watching this?
Speaker 1: It's about not being watching any political stuff. Have been
Speaker 1: too central bank absorbed?
Speaker 2: Well, things are so bad here. Literally the money is gone.
Speaker 2: It's been spent on ferries that don't work, and you know,
Speaker 2: pointless foreign politics and giving grandstanding amounts of aid all
Speaker 2: over the place, etc. And now we literally don't have
Speaker 2: any money left at all. So the answer apparently had
Speaker 2: to put up tax rates on the middle classes, which
Speaker 2: I think will go really, really badly. We don't have
Speaker 2: much in the way of middle classes already. Anyway. Off topic,
Speaker 2: off topic, off topic, bring me back, bring me back. Wars.
Speaker 2: Scotland does not involved. Gotland is not involved in World
Speaker 2: War three, as much as some of them I think
Speaker 2: would like to be a golden World War three. Gotland
Speaker 2: is not of old in World War three. So yes,
Speaker 2: it gets too expensive. And when wars get too expensive,
Speaker 2: they do tend to end. And it's very difficult to
Speaker 2: search to see exactly how that happens to see the mechanics.
Speaker 2: All we have is the historical information that when you
Speaker 2: can't afford it anymore, you tend to stop, and then
Speaker 2: you have.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that's a good point because Russia's skin,
Speaker 1: Chinas skin and real skin. So yeah, that's that's probably
Speaker 1: a good bear. I mean, as far as I can see,
Speaker 1: all this is basically seeing that next year will probably
Speaker 1: be again what aging back towards the rule in twenties argument, Well.
Speaker 2: Yes, the Roaring twenties, which we will talk about. We're
Speaker 2: going to do a round here at the beginning of
Speaker 2: next year on this podcast and we'll talk about the
Speaker 2: possibility of the Roaring twenties then. But I am noticing
Speaker 2: Eddie Ardini, who we both read Eddi idina research going
Speaker 2: on and on and on about the Roaring twenties, and
Speaker 2: he has he has a pretty good record. Me called
Speaker 2: this year very well. And if we look back at
Speaker 2: people were saying about space and about the technological gains
Speaker 2: that come with this kind of space race, and if
Speaker 2: that really is a game changing energy, I don't even
Speaker 2: know how to describe beinging solar energy back to Earth
Speaker 2: from the sunny. You don't know how to describe it,
Speaker 2: but you know, some of these things begin to come true.
Speaker 2: Solar laser, some of these things beginning to begin to
Speaker 2: come true. And there are shift forward in healthcare and
Speaker 2: in digitalization, and AI really does make a big difference
Speaker 2: all these things that we've been talking about prages. If
Speaker 2: next year is the year, which it could be, then
Speaker 2: the Roaring Twenties come back. And the notebook that I
Speaker 2: got from Bailly Gifford at a conference a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago that has Roaring Twenties written on the front,
Speaker 2: I'll finally be able to use that without being mildly embarrassed.
Speaker 2: Happy days. That's the main thing. It is the main thing.
Speaker 2: It is the main thing. And now I'm thinking, no,
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking about John and UFOs again. But I'm
Speaker 2: I'm not going to tease him. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: tease him anymore. I'm going to finish up. Thanks for
Speaker 2: listening to this week's Marin Talks Money. We'll be back
Speaker 2: next week. Don't forget to leave us a review. It
Speaker 2: helps people find the show, and of course you can
Speaker 2: also tell people in personal about the show to help
Speaker 2: them find the show. This episode was hosted by me
Speaker 2: Maren Sunset Web. It was produced by Samasadi, additional editing
Speaker 2: by Blake Maple. Special thanks to Pipper Malcolm and to
Speaker 2: John Steppek. And of course it'd be sure to sign
Speaker 2: up to John's daily newsletter, Manager Stilled. The link is
Speaker 2: in the show notes, and you can know a lots
Speaker 2: more about John's obsession with investment trusts