Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. Hello and welcome to
Speaker 1: another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 2: And I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 1: Tracy, what do you think the rich people are doing
Speaker 1: these days? You know, Like, I know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of like big business people lining up or who have
Speaker 1: lined up behind the Trump administration. But they have to
Speaker 1: be kind of anxious, right because things like mass tariffs
Speaker 1: and so forth, talk about reducing the role of the
Speaker 1: dollar and global tra it has got to make them
Speaker 1: kind of anxious.
Speaker 2: I actually know the answer to this.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, as a person, no.
Speaker 2: Because the New York Fed publishes a survey of consumer
Speaker 2: sentiment where you can break it out by pay bracket,
Speaker 2: and so the high pay bracket, it's probably not the
Speaker 2: super super rich, but it is pretty rich. And yeah,
Speaker 2: they're getting worried for all the reasons you just laid out.
Speaker 1: But I do think if you exist in a pay
Speaker 1: bracket that already sort of.
Speaker 2: Suggests that you're not that right, not the real You're
Speaker 2: not the real. You know, you're getting a pair what
Speaker 2: high standards you have to But anyway, I think these
Speaker 2: are really interesting times.
Speaker 1: Needless to say, for the globe, for people who have money,
Speaker 1: for people who have feet around the world where they
Speaker 1: want to bet. You know, one of the things I
Speaker 1: wrote about it last week were recording this March twenty fifth.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the big trades that really had
Speaker 1: been characterized the last fifteen years is like bet on
Speaker 1: the US, literally against everything right by the S and
Speaker 1: P five just you know, you get no payment for
Speaker 1: global diversification. You didn't make any money in China, you
Speaker 1: lost money, you didn't get any pay for em you
Speaker 1: didn't really get anything in Europe at least for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks. So far this year, that's reversed pretty sharply,
Speaker 1: and so one question is like, if you want glory,
Speaker 1: should you look outside the US borders?
Speaker 2: Right diversification finally potentially paying off, although again it's only
Speaker 2: been like three weeks, but we have seen a lot
Speaker 2: of people, in fact, we've recorded episodes about this talking
Speaker 2: about how this is a huge sea change in global politics,
Speaker 2: potentially in global markets as well. This big moment, similar
Speaker 2: to the fall of the Soviet Union, something that could
Speaker 2: forever alter Europe's economic and political and security paths. So
Speaker 2: we'll see.
Speaker 1: Big things are happening in Germany is like, we're gonna
Speaker 1: spend hundreds of billions of dollars on defense. They've really
Speaker 1: never done that. It's a change. So anyway, I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about our guest, someone I've known and talked to
Speaker 1: numerous times over the years, but we've never had on
Speaker 1: the podcast, luminary in the Worlds of journalism, previously a
Speaker 1: financial journalist, an interesting guy who suddenly popped up. He
Speaker 1: started posting again recently, and so that'll I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe here's in New York City these days, we're going
Speaker 1: to be speaking with Nick Denton. He used to work
Speaker 1: at the Ft, used to work and he wrote a
Speaker 1: book and many most people would probably know him as
Speaker 1: the founder of the Gawker family of websites. He currently
Speaker 1: is a new thing called a Futua Kiato. He's gonna
Speaker 1: be some sort of journalism trading kind of hybrid. Maybe
Speaker 1: we'll find out what that is. Nick, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for coming on Odd Lots.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be fun.
Speaker 1: I have a question. I've known you for a long time,
Speaker 1: but I've never asked you this. I actually don't know
Speaker 1: the answer to this. Well, how would you describe your
Speaker 1: political ideology. The reason I ask is that, you know.
Speaker 2: Like, starting with an easy.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna like say, like the most awkward intro
Speaker 1: to a guest ever. Your former company, Gawker was put
Speaker 1: into bankruptcy in large part due to Peter Thiel. But
Speaker 1: then I've talked to us, like I kind of think
Speaker 1: he has like some like teallite sympathies at times, which
Speaker 1: is a weird thing to say, but i'd like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sort of picking up on some of that. But
Speaker 1: I don't know if I'm wrong. Are you like quietly
Speaker 1: based how would.
Speaker 4: You I remember a conversation with you actually on Twitter,
Speaker 4: I mean a DM conversation and maybe twenty six twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: at the end of which you said, oh, maybe preference
Speaker 4: falsification is happening on a very very wide scale. So
Speaker 4: I think you may have been surprised back then at
Speaker 4: the time. I would call myself a libertarian back in
Speaker 4: Gorka days, but I don't think that's really accurate, okay,
Speaker 4: because I.
Speaker 1: Think, what do you know, just a liberal?
Speaker 4: No, I'm probably an authoritarian, growth oriented follower of leak
Speaker 4: one you and to a lesser extent, But thanks you
Speaker 4: oping benevolent authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: Okay, full contact alright, Tracy.
Speaker 2: So Joe mentioned that you are a long time journalist,
Speaker 2: a veteran journalist, and I think you started your career
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty nine covering the fall of the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: And as I mentioned in the intro, a lot of
Speaker 2: people are kind of reaching for that analogy in describing
Speaker 2: this moment in Europe. Do you think that holds is?
Speaker 2: Are we seeing a shift on that kind of scale?
Speaker 4: Well, I guess Nia Ferguson's piece we are all Soviets
Speaker 4: Now was the one that got people thinking in these terms.
Speaker 4: And then you know, yes, I was in Eastern Europe
Speaker 4: in eighty nine and that was a very classic empire,
Speaker 4: Soviet Empire, and a very classic uprising against it, demonstrations, unions, protests.
Speaker 3: And eventually a complete collapse of legitimacy.
Speaker 4: This American empire is definitely more subtle and been around
Speaker 4: twice as long, a say, more subtle, more subtle, Yeah,
Speaker 4: keep going hidden empire.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think there's a book with that.
Speaker 4: Name eighty years rather than forty. You know, it's been
Speaker 4: a lot longer. It didn't end immediately with the fall
Speaker 4: of the arm Curtain, and I think it's been in
Speaker 4: all our heads as Europeans for a long time. You know,
Speaker 4: I come from My father was an Atlanticist. I was
Speaker 4: an Atlanticist. I saw the United States as being an
Speaker 4: extension of Europe, a place where Europe had gone to
Speaker 4: seek new adventures and new continents and new industries. And
Speaker 4: that dream is utterly gone.
Speaker 1: Because you still, you know, you have the World Economic
Speaker 1: Forums of the world. Does anyone believe it anymore?
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess the polls.
Speaker 4: The Poles still seem to believe it for well, the polls,
Speaker 4: and you know, in some English. But I think for
Speaker 4: me the two key incidents not the abuse of Zelensky
Speaker 4: in the Oval office, but the abuse of Denmark, a loyal,
Speaker 4: small but loyal American ally.
Speaker 1: The country that actually is arguably very much in alignment
Speaker 1: on immigration policies.
Speaker 4: Well, if you're going to talk about civilizational suicide, I
Speaker 4: don't exactly know how you fit Denmark into that. Where
Speaker 4: the social Democrats have actually stolen the entire agenda of
Speaker 4: the of the right wing in Denmark, and as a
Speaker 4: result there is really not much of a right wing
Speaker 4: resurgence anymore or in Denmark, so Denmark totally chose the
Speaker 4: way for a lot of social democratic parties in Europe.
Speaker 4: So there was that, and then there was the abuse
Speaker 4: of Radics Sakowski, you know, one of the prime atlantisists
Speaker 4: in Poland calling it, you know, Elon Musk, you know,
Speaker 4: with an assist from Marco Rubio telling him to be quiet,
Speaker 4: little man. Now that might just seem petty on my
Speaker 4: behalf to focus on that, but you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 4: somebody who was absolutely in the American camp. And so
Speaker 4: if they're abusing somebody like Radis Sikorski, they clearly don't
Speaker 4: care at all about the Western Alliance.
Speaker 2: And you're actually leaving the US now, right, Why have
Speaker 2: you been here?
Speaker 4: Yeah, to some extend, I've been gone since the end
Speaker 4: of twenty sixteen. We came back for family reasons, and
Speaker 4: now we're going for good selling the apartment.
Speaker 2: How come?
Speaker 4: I mean I was one hundred percent in US assets
Speaker 4: pretty much in January, both in terms of stocks, real
Speaker 4: estate and everything, and now it's pretty much for stocks
Speaker 4: are one hundred percent China and Southeast Asia well, and
Speaker 4: the real estates. We just got a nice, loved little
Speaker 4: house in the Buddha Hills.
Speaker 2: So you're you're diversifying in your portfolio, and in real life, I.
Speaker 4: Guess the diversified portfolio would be something like US fifteen,
Speaker 4: China fifty, rest of the world thirty five percent, something
Speaker 4: like that. So I'm obviously not not doing that because
Speaker 4: I think the adjustment is going to be an opportunity
Speaker 4: for people to make money. So I guess it's going
Speaker 4: to end up more or less where electricity production divides
Speaker 4: up in the world. You know, I come from an
Speaker 4: emerging markets reporting background too, where you couldn't really believe
Speaker 4: any of the statistics.
Speaker 3: You couldn't believe the GDP numbers.
Speaker 4: The only numbers you couldlready believe maybe output and tradable sectors,
Speaker 4: electricity output, that kind of thing. And so that's that
Speaker 4: tends to be how I've looked at the markets now.
Speaker 1: So you're going to be living full time. The Buddha
Speaker 1: Hill looks very very nice part of Budapest. Who should
Speaker 1: I believe about Orbon Should I believe Tucker that he's
Speaker 1: a great defender of civilization or should I believe the
Speaker 1: liberals that he's completely corrupted, not a friend at all?
Speaker 4: I mean something in between a new orban, a bit
Speaker 4: early on back in eighty nine when I was with
Speaker 4: the FT for whatever four years in Budapest, and he
Speaker 4: was always the most talented of his generation as a politician.
Speaker 4: Clearly knew how to play the game, and clearly knows
Speaker 4: how to play the game now, having channels open to China,
Speaker 4: Russia and the United States and playing a small country's
Speaker 4: hand really rather well. There's a giant BYD factory in Hungary,
Speaker 4: there's a giant Coatl factory in Hungary. If it actually
Speaker 4: comes down to it, I think most of Hunger's economic
Speaker 4: interests are actually China aligned, So I think that's where
Speaker 4: they'll end up forced. But there's no harm in maintaining channels.
Speaker 3: With the other powers.
Speaker 2: Just going back back to the intro, we were talking
Speaker 2: about whether or not let's call them the global elite,
Speaker 2: are feeling anxious at the moment. I think it's fair
Speaker 2: to say you probably move in some of those circles
Speaker 2: ultra wealthy. What are people saying right now, Like, what's
Speaker 2: the mood music that you're hearing?
Speaker 3: Well, we're going to.
Speaker 4: Talk about antisemitism or not definitely, Okay, it's free, free space.
Speaker 4: So when globalists get the blame for what was actually
Speaker 4: at that time. I think only a five percent or
Speaker 4: seven percent correction. When Trump blame globalists, I think it's
Speaker 4: a foretaste of what will happen if there is a
Speaker 4: significant repricing of assets in America the globalists quote unquote
Speaker 4: globalists or is is it like four brackets?
Speaker 3: I forget what the code is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there the three parentheses.
Speaker 4: So the Cosmopolitans, the internationals to quote unquote European Wall
Speaker 4: Street Journal, like any anything that seems internettional. Anybody who's
Speaker 4: ever been to Davos or maybe just the Swiss Alps
Speaker 4: full stop is going to come under suspicion and they
Speaker 4: are going to be their life is going to be uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: In the States, I think it's going to be uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: They're going to be attacked from the left for being capitalist,
Speaker 4: and they'll be attacked from the right for being unpatriotic.
Speaker 4: And I think people are going to find, as they
Speaker 4: did during the kind of the looting phase of the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty protests, that there is no real sympathy for
Speaker 4: the Soho Loft Duweller in an environment like this when
Speaker 4: people are actually asking, so where did all the money go?
Speaker 4: Where did all the money of the last twenty five years,
Speaker 4: you know, during the during this period of American and exceptionalism,
Speaker 4: when America was really the only place to put your
Speaker 4: money if you wanted to invest your time or your
Speaker 4: money in the future.
Speaker 3: So where did it all go? What was left at
Speaker 3: the end of it?
Speaker 4: What's the high speed rail network?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 4: Where are the new companies? And I think those questions
Speaker 4: are going to be very hard for people to answer.
Speaker 1: These are the thoughts that I have, like late at night,
Speaker 1: crawling up my phone, and then I wake up and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, like make my kids breakfast, and I
Speaker 1: go to the work and it's fine and it's fun.
Speaker 1: I love coming in here. And then like ten o'clock
Speaker 1: at night, that's is like my mind. Oh too, So
Speaker 1: like I was hoping, you know, want.
Speaker 4: Have you spent Have you spent much time just playing
Speaker 4: around with Ai?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: He spends so much time playing around with AI, so
Speaker 2: much office time.
Speaker 4: What were you going to say, Well, un enormous circumstances,
Speaker 4: I'd said, like, this transition would take a good long time.
Speaker 4: You know, historically it takes decades, not years. But since
Speaker 4: January twentieth, and I don't mean the Trumpe inauguration, and
Speaker 4: I don't mean the Roman.
Speaker 3: Salute by l or must but I mean the deep
Speaker 3: seat drop.
Speaker 4: Since January twentieth, I think it's actually clear that AI
Speaker 4: is universal. It's going to be everywhere in every country,
Speaker 4: on every chip. And one of the first things that
Speaker 4: people are going to do with it is they're going
Speaker 4: to ask how to make money, and then they ask
Speaker 4: more sophisticated questions and have more sophisticated methods of working
Speaker 4: out how to make money.
Speaker 2: So you're doing something with this right, Like you have
Speaker 2: a new venture where you're using AI to trade or
Speaker 2: to research for trade.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just started.
Speaker 4: I started actually doing a simple analysis of the electric
Speaker 4: car market, projecting forward byd in Tesla sales to twenty thirty,
Speaker 4: just to see.
Speaker 3: Where it would end up.
Speaker 4: And you know, to look at the you know who
Speaker 4: is in the lead at every single level of the
Speaker 4: value chain. And then you know, when you've got an
Speaker 4: army of researchers that you're back and call, and you
Speaker 4: know how to manage them well enough, you can get.
Speaker 3: Pretty robust answers pretty quickly.
Speaker 4: You know, our answers that then lead to you to
Speaker 4: make trades that maybe you wouldn't have had the confidence
Speaker 4: to make otherwise. And I think I'm not the only one.
Speaker 4: So I think it's recursive that we all know that
Speaker 4: we're all working more and more like this, and as
Speaker 4: we recognize this in other people, so the feedback loops accelerate,
Speaker 4: and so system changes that might have taken decades get
Speaker 4: compressed into months or years.
Speaker 3: That's my theory.
Speaker 1: I'm actually not still totally convinced, you know, Like I've
Speaker 1: I use AI tract kidding, I mean I do, and
Speaker 1: I've used like deep research and many of them. I
Speaker 1: still think it's just a tremendous amount of garbage. And
Speaker 1: I don't say this, but I also want to. It's
Speaker 1: funny when you are answer when you're talking about AI.
Speaker 1: I could only imagine if chatipt you'd come out like
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, what you would have devised to torment Gawker writers,
Speaker 1: something about making them compete with AI and very you know,
Speaker 1: because all media organs have this like anxiety about well,
Speaker 1: this is actually pretty good at writing, except and then
Speaker 1: the journalists like you would have loved. You would have
Speaker 1: loved torturing your writers in some way by making.
Speaker 4: Them Competit prefers the torture the ais to compete with
Speaker 4: each other.
Speaker 1: But you would have you would have gotten a kick
Speaker 1: out of it, I feel like, and they would have
Speaker 1: really hated you for it.
Speaker 3: Okay. I think that some kinds of journalists.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't say you're abso the run of the mill journalists,
Speaker 4: but some kinds of journalists are extremely well equipped. I
Speaker 4: don't think they recognize the talents they have, and that
Speaker 4: are ability to ask good questions or to play games
Speaker 4: with somebody else who actually has information. But you want
Speaker 4: to get out of them that their skill and playing
Speaker 4: that game is actually is very is very powerful right now,
Speaker 4: that they could be traders if they wanted to be, especially.
Speaker 1: You, No, especially about me. I don't have to go.
Speaker 2: What's been your best trade so far this year?
Speaker 1: Yeah, good question, let's trader.
Speaker 2: I guess by d and Zaomi and that was based
Speaker 2: on your AI research.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'd look.
Speaker 4: I've been into electric cars for a while. I'm a
Speaker 4: gadget head. I look at things from a consumer standpoint,
Speaker 4: not a producer standpoint. That's always what we sought to
Speaker 4: do with Gizmoto and Kataku and Jelopnik and the other
Speaker 4: consumer technology properties that we had.
Speaker 3: And you look at.
Speaker 4: These cars site by side, especially when you're talking about
Speaker 4: the SU seven, when you're not a BYD car and
Speaker 4: a Zomi car.
Speaker 3: BYD is a battery factory, battery.
Speaker 4: Company and Zamia phone company, and they both come into
Speaker 4: the car sector. Zomi's very first car out of the
Speaker 4: gate is really quite exceptional, with a very nice design,
Speaker 4: totally automated or as automated manufacturing process as you're likely
Speaker 4: to get, and anybody who's had their hands on it,
Speaker 4: including the CEO of Ford, does not want to let
Speaker 4: it go. It is clearly either half the price for
Speaker 4: the same quality or twice the quality for the same price.
Speaker 4: But we're not talking about twenty percent Japanese advantages as
Speaker 4: they had in the eighties, but we're talking about fifty
Speaker 4: to one hundred percent advantages in many areas. And the
Speaker 4: lead of the Chinese manufacturers is extending.
Speaker 3: So that seems pretty obvious to me.
Speaker 1: Why do you think now one of the interesting things,
Speaker 1: like I had to pulled up a chart of shell
Speaker 1: me and BYD is a listener. I wrote about it
Speaker 1: for a long time. For like the last ten years,
Speaker 1: Chinese stocks have kind of been dead bunny. So even
Speaker 1: though like the rise of Chinese manufacturing dominance has been
Speaker 1: a story that's existed for several years. I wrote about
Speaker 1: it this week in the newsletter two, it has not
Speaker 1: redounded to the benefit of Chinese shareholders. This is a phenomenon,
Speaker 1: and there's actually been this incredible amount of you know,
Speaker 1: they talk about like overcapacity, and I don't really like
Speaker 1: that term, but you know, the things that have not
Speaker 1: benefited shareholders. Do you think something's changing on that front
Speaker 1: such that the lead that these companies have now developed
Speaker 1: will be monetized in a real way.
Speaker 4: There are signs that China is opening up it's capital markets,
Speaker 4: small signs to begin with, but you know, they've got
Speaker 4: mainland funds investing in Hong Kong stocks. You've got the
Speaker 4: anointing of various Chinese companies by Xijiping at the meeting
Speaker 4: that they had whenever it was.
Speaker 3: Three weeks ago, four weeks ago.
Speaker 4: You have the I think recognition on social media that
Speaker 4: you have the strongest pr The China has area of
Speaker 4: nighttime videos of cyberpunk cities which cannot be argued with.
Speaker 4: And you know YouTubers going for a ride in the
Speaker 4: s U seven and being blown away by the acceleration.
Speaker 3: And I actually don't think it's a total accident.
Speaker 4: There's black YouTubers who seem to find it easiest to
Speaker 4: embrace the quality of Chinese products. But I think you're
Speaker 4: going to have you're going to have two different debates.
Speaker 4: You're going to have invested Tesla narrative, which seems to
Speaker 4: be almost exclusively political at this At this point, there's
Speaker 4: very little product content in the pitch at all. In fact,
Speaker 4: the only photographs you see of Tesla products usually involve
Speaker 4: them being on flame in flames, and I'm talking about
Speaker 4: Elon Must's own account. And meanwhile, the Sea of Jami is,
Speaker 4: you know, is posting up product porn.
Speaker 3: All around the clock.
Speaker 4: And just in terms of a product battle, in terms
Speaker 4: of features and in terms of marketing and in terms of
Speaker 4: price point, the Chinese have won.
Speaker 3: It's as simple as that.
Speaker 4: And if you don't recognize that, well, you're just not
Speaker 4: paying attention.
Speaker 2: How do you actually go about valuing political risk or
Speaker 2: trading on political risk? Because when I think about journalists
Speaker 2: potentially trading the competitive advantage isn't really number crunching, right,
Speaker 2: it's kind of looking into the company and feeling the
Speaker 2: vibe and figuring stuff out that no one else has
Speaker 2: seen yet.
Speaker 4: It's a multi dimensional approach. So I mean, I assume
Speaker 4: that the earnings forecasts are priced into the stock array,
Speaker 4: so there's no point reanalyzing that. You might as well
Speaker 4: just you might as well just take that as a given.
Speaker 4: The question is what do you see that other people
Speaker 4: do not? And you know, journalists tend to have an
Speaker 4: idea of the momentum.
Speaker 3: Of a story.
Speaker 4: So for instance, right now, I just I would say,
Speaker 4: speaking as a journalist and editor, that the fall of
Speaker 4: Elon Musk is the greatest business story of my entire life,
Speaker 4: absolutely worth getting out of retirement for, because here you
Speaker 4: have somebody who was real life iire man, you know,
Speaker 4: absolutely genuinely has three well beating major achievements under his belt.
Speaker 4: I don't care whether other people helped him do it,
Speaker 4: but he made it happen more than anybody else in
Speaker 4: the Western world.
Speaker 3: But the problem is there's.
Speaker 4: Only one of him, and he's up against a lot
Speaker 4: of Chinese competitors in cause, in robotics, in batteries, in
Speaker 4: mobile phones, in a whole bunch of different fields.
Speaker 3: And I think he's gonna lose.
Speaker 1: We should sit on this for a second, or we
Speaker 1: should stay with us for a second, because I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of people kind of like the
Speaker 1: people who have called for let's see Trump wriggle out
Speaker 1: of this one again, Like who've convinced themselves that actually,
Speaker 1: this could never happen, that Trump will always wriggle out,
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk will always riggle out, that he's always
Speaker 1: able at the last second to find something because of
Speaker 1: his cult to personality or genuine managerial skills for the
Speaker 1: genuine managerial skills of the people right below his level.
Speaker 1: You say, the story now is that the biggest this
Speaker 1: is the fall.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think this is the fall. I think
Speaker 3: he may have a couple more tricks up his sleeve.
Speaker 4: But you know, if you think about, you know, the
Speaker 4: gap between the Tesla fundamental value now as an electric
Speaker 4: car company that is ex growth, Like just think about that, yeah, Like,
Speaker 4: think how much their valuation depended on extrapolations of growth
Speaker 4: and the interruption of that growth. What that means to
Speaker 4: any net present value calculation. The it's national market so
Speaker 4: plainly being torched byl Mask himself. You know, with all
Speaker 4: of the pr and propaganda that he puts out that
Speaker 4: might shore up the Magabase. But every single thing that
Speaker 4: he does, every single pitch on the wild on the
Speaker 4: you know, in front of the White House, is turning
Speaker 4: off both natural Tesla buyers and the big blue cities everyone,
Speaker 4: everybody except for the Magabase, you know, so you're going
Speaker 4: to probably.
Speaker 2: Don't buy that many evs anyway, Well.
Speaker 4: Apparently they are buying some, so it's not entirely it's
Speaker 4: not entirely a fiction, but every single one that they
Speaker 4: buy further cements this image as the magamobile and kills
Speaker 4: the international story and international story which is in any
Speaker 4: case in trouble. And because Tesla, you know, in China
Speaker 4: doesn't have very exciting cars compared with the ones that
Speaker 4: is that its competitors come out with, so I don't
Speaker 4: think the international market is going to work, which means
Speaker 4: that it's pretty much all down to robots. And he's
Speaker 4: pretty much put all his chips on the Optimus, which
Speaker 4: seems incredibly dangerous to me, and the mark of somebody
Speaker 4: who's who's really desperate, and you know, putting it all
Speaker 4: behind a very very risky race in which he is
Speaker 4: starting from behind. How did you.
Speaker 2: Get so into cars out of curiosity?
Speaker 3: How do I get into cars? Isn't it just just
Speaker 3: isn't that just something.
Speaker 2: That just is you were born with an interest.
Speaker 3: Like a cyber truck.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was very disappointed when I saw the
Speaker 4: metal panel. I thought somehow, I guess I didn't research enough.
Speaker 4: I thought it looked like it had been forged somehow,
Speaker 4: a single and then to see so I think the
Speaker 4: most damaging thing for Tesla, the most damaging video for Tesla,
Speaker 4: apart from the I Love Speed video, but the most
Speaker 4: damaging video for Tesla is actually seeing the metal panels
Speaker 4: come off because the glue isn't they use the right glue,
Speaker 4: And that just sort of kills the mystique of something
Speaker 4: that was sort of pitched as a Mars rover that
Speaker 4: you can so I think the you know, the Optimus
Speaker 4: hasn't been seen since there was a video they put
Speaker 4: out in December of it rather gingerly working its way
Speaker 4: down a slope, a little bit better than Joe Biden,
Speaker 4: but not that much.
Speaker 3: And meanwhile, if you follow it.
Speaker 4: The pace of videos released onto social media by Unitary
Speaker 4: and other Chinese makers.
Speaker 1: It's got another conversation about I know they're beating us anywhere. No, No,
Speaker 1: keep going. I know it's a big deal.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can't spin that one. It can't be spun.
Speaker 4: Like a demo is a demo, and they're doing demos,
Speaker 4: and those demo they're kicking ass, they're doing side flips.
Speaker 3: You know that there's a.
Speaker 4: Race in Beijing next month, like a humanoid robot race.
Speaker 4: If Musk was really feeling it, he'd have an entry.
Speaker 4: There's no way that Ultimus is going to go up
Speaker 4: against you. However, many hundred robot competitors there are in
Speaker 4: China that are going to show up to that the
Speaker 4: race is lost already.
Speaker 2: It is crazy though, even with all the social media
Speaker 2: evidence and demonstrations of what the cars can actually do,
Speaker 2: you still have people who are kind of conspiratorial about
Speaker 2: the social media videos. So I remember one came out
Speaker 2: two or three weeks ago. It was Tesla versus I
Speaker 2: think it was buyd You.
Speaker 3: There was a Tesla Jaumisu seven race.
Speaker 2: Maybe well this one it was a YouTuber who was
Speaker 2: driving a Tesla into a fake wall to test the
Speaker 2: self driving technology, and the car just went right through
Speaker 2: it in a very dramatic fashion, and you had all
Speaker 2: these people, I assume Tesla fanboys and Musk fanboys saying
Speaker 2: that the video had been faked and that no one
Speaker 2: should believe it, and that Tesla's technology is great.
Speaker 3: It's very right.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's very hard to kind of to tell
Speaker 4: truth from fabrication these days. Some of the Chinese videos,
Speaker 4: but one of them had to be repeated in front
Speaker 4: of a mirror just to kind of prove that it
Speaker 4: was real. But I don't think anyone's really questioned that.
Speaker 4: You know, there's one where there's like a slightly smaller
Speaker 4: humanoid robot that was actually dancing and sync with a
Speaker 4: couple of human dancers. Oh yeah, I saw which, and
Speaker 4: that one looked completely impossible to It was from two
Speaker 4: different camera angles. That was impossible to fake. So it's
Speaker 4: going to be hard for anybody really to compete with that.
Speaker 3: That's my view.
Speaker 4: And if that's the whole of your story after the
Speaker 4: collapse of the international car market, then what remains beyond
Speaker 4: that in terms of the Tesla story, apart from maybe
Speaker 4: military contracts, so you start to get a little bit
Speaker 4: more science fiction, Like if you're looking for exit.
Speaker 1: Ramps, what do you think about the dominance of US
Speaker 1: internet companies, because that was actually maybe even more than Tesla, Right,
Speaker 1: like the story of the twenty tens, you know Facebook
Speaker 1: that uh And when you get out of the United States,
Speaker 1: did they still have a sort of lock or still
Speaker 1: like deep competitive moats the way they were perceived to
Speaker 1: have in the twenty tens.
Speaker 3: That's great, a great question.
Speaker 1: T talk exists, So that's a problem for them. But
Speaker 1: it's improvable that a non US company can have a
Speaker 1: gigantic social media But what do you think this is
Speaker 1: where the money is?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the type platforms are extraordinarily vulnerable and
Speaker 4: the vulnerable for the same reason Tesla is vulnerable. Tesla's
Speaker 4: biggest factory is in Shanghai. Tesla could be you know,
Speaker 4: it could be kind of crippled with a signature on
Speaker 4: a piece of paper.
Speaker 1: Does US text your is never like to their benefit.
Speaker 1: They never had a Chinese business. They don't have, you know,
Speaker 1: like they never made Facebook's never made money in China.
Speaker 3: Apple makes all.
Speaker 4: Of its phones in China and has and has had
Speaker 4: almost no success in diversifying its supply chain into India
Speaker 4: or Vietnam. And I mean, look don't take my word
Speaker 4: for the people I pay attention to it the right wing.
Speaker 4: It's Palmer Lucky's recent interview, but he has a long
Speaker 4: five minute spiel all about Apple and how easy it
Speaker 4: would be for the Chinese government just to you know,
Speaker 4: basically seize the factories and become the dominant supplier of
Speaker 4: smartphones to the world. That you know, the most valuable
Speaker 4: company in the existence of the United States could go
Speaker 4: up like that with a couple of degrees.
Speaker 3: And I don't think that.
Speaker 4: Kind of risk is actually priced into the market. So
Speaker 4: I have a short on Apple as well as Tesla,
Speaker 4: and so I think that, you know, there are some
Speaker 4: companies that are less vulnerable than that. But you know,
Speaker 4: even the companies that have no industrial dependence on China,
Speaker 4: you know, a company like you know, Facebook or X.
Speaker 4: Would it not be reasonable for Europe to say tomorrow
Speaker 4: that X should be X in Europe should be divested
Speaker 4: as TikTok was that. You know that Europe is tired
Speaker 4: of you know, American politicians interfering in its internal affairs,
Speaker 4: and the full spectrum of free European speech should be
Speaker 4: absolutely given a platform. But there's no reason why outsiders
Speaker 4: non Europeans should either participate or should actually have our
Speaker 4: ownership have control in such companies. It would be a
Speaker 4: very reasonable, consistent thing to do. And what about Facebook, Like,
Speaker 4: there isn't a huge amount of European antagonism towards Facebook
Speaker 4: right now, because Facebook really does comply with local regulations.
Speaker 4: But all of these companies are very much dependent on
Speaker 4: goodwill and on the Western Alliance continuing to exist in
Speaker 4: some form.
Speaker 2: So speaking of Europe, I mean there is a sense
Speaker 2: that Europe is way way behind when it comes to technology,
Speaker 2: certainly versus a place like China. Do you have faith
Speaker 2: that that's going to reverse or is it the case that,
Speaker 2: like maybe they get good at something else, something non
Speaker 2: tech like what is driving some of the optimism here.
Speaker 4: I'm not actually invested in any European stocks right now.
Speaker 3: I do think that Europe is sort.
Speaker 4: Of a side story here, but the ratios all off,
Speaker 4: you know, I do not believe that magically in two
Speaker 4: thousand and eight the United States economy started to perform
Speaker 4: brilliantly and Europe just slipped into stagnation. I think it's
Speaker 4: actually much more likely that, you know, Europe went through
Speaker 4: austerity and has been pretty much going through austerity ever
Speaker 4: since in some shape or form until the recent decision
Speaker 4: by the German government to finance rearmament, and the United
Speaker 4: States has basically avoided austerity at every possible juncture that
Speaker 4: you know, two thousand and eight, rather than being a
Speaker 4: purge of Wall Street in the way that the dot
Speaker 4: com crash was a purge of Silicon Valley, instead of
Speaker 4: that being a purge of War Street, the economy was
Speaker 4: immediately reinflated, and it's been reinflated after every single minor
Speaker 4: correction ever since, and so we've basically got twenty five
Speaker 4: years of bubble.
Speaker 1: Could you see a world you know, you mentioned that
Speaker 1: in the end it might just make more sense for
Speaker 1: Hungary to just throw in its lot with China. That's
Speaker 1: where the future is industrially, that's where that's his biggest
Speaker 1: trading partner. Could you see I mean, like that be
Speaker 1: you know, twenty years from now Germany making the same
Speaker 1: calculation like core Europe.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think it's gonna be twenty.
Speaker 4: Years, Okay, so sooner, but you know, it's it's actually
Speaker 4: madic if Europe is being bullied by Russia and the
Speaker 4: United States.
Speaker 3: Sometimes in concert. They want different things.
Speaker 4: You both have territorial demands, and the United States is
Speaker 4: also trying in a rather belligerent fashion to renegotiate, to
Speaker 4: negotiate a debt restructuring.
Speaker 3: It's a strange kind.
Speaker 4: Of negotiation, which involves insulting all the people that hold
Speaker 4: your treasuries. But it is a kind of negotiation.
Speaker 1: But in some way it ends up ward. China is
Speaker 1: a friend.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, this has kind of lost Germany already.
Speaker 4: I don't know whether, even if the tune change, whether
Speaker 4: the German Atlanticists would revive. I think a kind of
Speaker 4: trust has been broken, and a face of America has
Speaker 4: been revealed.
Speaker 3: It will be hard for people to forget. And there's
Speaker 3: also been a you know, there's been a.
Speaker 4: Nationalist resurgence in Canada, in Mexico, in China and in Europe.
Speaker 4: You know, the people the Chinese, don't you know the
Speaker 4: Chinese joke that you know, Trump is the great nation builder,
Speaker 4: you know, the great nation builder of other nations. And
Speaker 4: when Donald Tusk says reminds people that Europe is five
Speaker 4: hundred million people who don't need to be begging three
Speaker 4: hundred million American for help dealing with one hundred million
Speaker 4: Russians who can't even handle forty million Ukrainians. When you
Speaker 4: start to look at it a little bit differently, I
Speaker 4: think some of that European graven this fools away.
Speaker 2: So you mentioned the post two thousand and eight reaction
Speaker 2: in the market, and I do think there is a
Speaker 2: tendency on the part of policymakers to reinflate as quickly
Speaker 2: as possible. And we've seen this over and over twenty
Speaker 2: and eight, twenty twenty. They moved very very quickly to
Speaker 2: get the market back up. And it does seem like
Speaker 2: a very idiosyncratic characteristic of the US's political economy is
Speaker 2: the importance of stocks and asset prices and this idea.
Speaker 2: It really feels like everything kind of rests on your
Speaker 2: portfolio of financial assets, so your retirement, your education, probably,
Speaker 2: the things you buy, housing, basically everything. Are we just
Speaker 2: doomed to be kind of forever tangled up with the
Speaker 2: stock market or is there a realistic path for the
Speaker 2: US to kind of move away from that, to disentang
Speaker 2: itself from financialization.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're totally hooked. Hm, You're totally hooked.
Speaker 4: It's just it's been twenty it's been at least twenty
Speaker 4: five years, be longer.
Speaker 3: You know, you look at General.
Speaker 4: Electric, you have the idea of shareholder value, which seems
Speaker 4: so modern.
Speaker 1: You know, I got a new fridge this week. This
Speaker 1: is GE. I was like, I didn't even know G.
Speaker 1: You'm still made fridge. It's a G.
Speaker 3: Keep going, it's a badge or it's an I.
Speaker 1: Looked at it. I got a new frigerator. You look
Speaker 1: at it and I was like, oh, it's a G.
Speaker 1: You logo on. I wonder who makes it? Anyway?
Speaker 3: Keep I mean G. Jackson jack Wells' G is the warning.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's the warning of a company whose earnings were
Speaker 4: massage carefully up so that it actually acted like.
Speaker 3: A pension phone rather than a company.
Speaker 4: And you know, people warned about the growing importance of
Speaker 4: G finance and the financialization of America's prime manufacturing company,
Speaker 4: and the whole conglomerate was left as kind of a
Speaker 4: husk at the end of the process.
Speaker 3: So that is the warning.
Speaker 4: I I don't see how America kicks the habit.
Speaker 3: You know, China had a policy of.
Speaker 4: Hiding its light after cl being arguably right and through
Speaker 4: right through up until twenty ten or so. You know,
Speaker 4: arguably it's companies have hidden their light subsequently too. You know,
Speaker 4: you look at their market values, you look at their trajectories,
Speaker 4: it's nothing that impressive. But now we've got a moment
Speaker 4: when you've got America pumped up through marketing and financialization,
Speaker 4: and you've got China that has quietly built and produced,
Speaker 4: and they are now being compared directly with one another
Speaker 4: in b Yey versus Tesla, in Zami versus Apple, and
Speaker 4: the comparison is pretty devastating.
Speaker 1: Are your children learning Mandarin?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I'm serious, like, because I some people are doing that now.
Speaker 1: Yet I just have one last question. You know, I
Speaker 1: joked that if AI had been around, I think you
Speaker 1: would have found a way to torment the Garka writers.
Speaker 1: You did do that because it wasn't Ai, but you
Speaker 1: had this belief that, like, oh, the commenters, that's where
Speaker 1: the real action is, and you're gonna make the writers
Speaker 1: compete with the commenters, and if the commenters are creating
Speaker 1: better content, then hey, so be it that they're better.
Speaker 3: Than the writers.
Speaker 1: And I feel like for several years since then, you've
Speaker 1: always sort of clung to this belief that that's where
Speaker 1: like the real action is in various ways. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like the people tell us a little bit about what
Speaker 1: you're building now, and does it tap into that spirit?
Speaker 4: And I guess I'm taking two lessons from the Gorka
Speaker 4: experience and just the experience of seeing watching flame Wars
Speaker 4: on the internet, since god knows when. Echo chambers are very,
Speaker 4: very dangerous, and arguably the Gorka writers were in an
Speaker 4: echo chamber from maybe twenty eleven through to twenty fifteen
Speaker 4: when it well blew up. And when I see Elon
Speaker 4: Musk on Twitter, you know, or Joe Rogan in the
Speaker 4: podcast world, it all looks extremely familiar that, you know,
Speaker 4: here you have somebody who's basically hanging a little bit
Speaker 4: too much attention to the to the most engaged members
Speaker 4: of the audience.
Speaker 3: Audience capture is real. It's real.
Speaker 4: And that's actually why I don't think that Musk is
Speaker 4: capable of getting out of this vortex that he's trapped in,
Speaker 4: because he's playing to that gallery, playing to the gallery
Speaker 4: of I see extreme right wingers, and they are going
Speaker 4: to lead him and each other off the edge of
Speaker 4: the cliff.
Speaker 1: Nick, thank you so much for coming on odd List.
Speaker 1: That was one of the gloomiest episodes. I really think so,
Speaker 1: I really think so. But I really appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic and I'm glad we made it happen
Speaker 1: while you still have the Well that was grim.
Speaker 2: It was a fun conversation, fun, but the subject matter
Speaker 2: was grim. You know what I realized as we were
Speaker 2: sort of reminiscing about Cocker. I totally forgot I wrote
Speaker 2: like a freelance piece or just a contribution to do
Speaker 2: you remember Ion nine?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I wrote this article about like some
Speaker 2: Russian billionaire that is trying to like reach eternal life
Speaker 2: through robotics or something. Obviously you wrote.
Speaker 1: That for Ion nine. Yeah, I didn't know you wrote
Speaker 1: an Ion nine piece.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd totally forgotten. Yeah, but obviously you know, like
Speaker 2: more than ten years later, we're still waiting for immortality,
Speaker 2: so tech can only go so far.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna be waiting a lot longer than
Speaker 1: ten years. I mean, I think there were two two
Speaker 1: three things that I found bracing. One is the industrial
Speaker 1: divide is massive and growing right between the US and China.
Speaker 1: That seems real. That's really worrisome to me. The description
Speaker 1: of the ways in which the current administration has like
Speaker 1: insulted even like stalwart allies, Why mock Denmark and so forth?
Speaker 1: That seems like a really big deal. And then obviously
Speaker 1: you know the impulse to you know, you get a
Speaker 1: little bit of a wobble in the sell off and
Speaker 1: you blamed and I'm doing the prints the globalists. That
Speaker 1: is disturbing.
Speaker 2: Well, the other thing I was thinking about was, you know,
Speaker 2: Nick mentioned China's starting to open up its capital accounts,
Speaker 2: and it's kind of interesting, slash ironic that is happening
Speaker 2: at the same time that the US seems to be
Speaker 2: you know, they haven't done it yet, but there does
Speaker 2: seem to be like this isolationist will when it comes
Speaker 2: to capital markets, like maybe they don't want as much
Speaker 2: foreign capital coming into the country, Like you get that sense, right,
Speaker 2: And so they're the US and China kind of moving
Speaker 2: in opposite directions. And then also like doing some of
Speaker 2: the same stuff. It's interesting, like building out manufacturing.
Speaker 1: Right. You know what I like about Nick that he's
Speaker 1: a journalist who can act just like talk stocks. How
Speaker 1: many journalists No, seriously, because there are journalists who are
Speaker 1: in their specialty could say things, but how many of
Speaker 1: them could just like bs with you a while about
Speaker 1: like stocks. Nick can actually do that. It's actually really impressive.
Speaker 2: I think you need to be careful about saying that
Speaker 2: in an office full of at least like a few
Speaker 2: dozen journalists who can on No.
Speaker 1: Right, I feel like you're right. It's more than like
Speaker 1: say like, eh, I'm short that or I'm long that,
Speaker 1: and they'll like actually have a confident trading position. No. Look,
Speaker 1: a lot of people can tell you a lot about stocks,
Speaker 1: whether they're like I mean, I well, we can't. We
Speaker 1: can't short stocks obviously at Bloomberg. But like most journalists
Speaker 1: I've ever talked to generally don't have like yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: short Apple and Tesla, I'm long Boidea to show me like,
Speaker 1: you know, it just sort of by the index. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed talking to Nick.
Speaker 2: It was fun to reminisce and also think about the
Speaker 2: very grim future.
Speaker 1: Shall we leave it there, Let's leave it there.
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the All Blots podcast.
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway and.
Speaker 1: I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at The Stalwart.
Speaker 1: Follow Nick Detton. He's at Nick not Ned and check
Speaker 1: out his new endeavor, Fututa Kiado. It's at Fututa Kiyado.
Speaker 1: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen armand dash Ol
Speaker 1: Bennett at dashbod and Kele Brooks at Kale Brooks. For
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