Latest / Trend Watch / Episode 28: Race for the Senate, Fico Shot, and EU Threatens Georgia

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Episode 28: Race for the Senate, Fico Shot, and EU Threatens Georgia · Trend Watch

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: Ready to take a deeper look at where history, politics, and economics all intersect?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then you've come to the right place.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: Each week,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: here's where we pull back the headlines and focus on the big trends,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: the stuff that actually shapes our future.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Through the noise, we focus on the signal.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Neil Howe, and this is TrendWatch.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Today is May 15th, 2024, and this is Trend Watch.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome back, everybody.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: As usual, I have on my fellow analyst, Christian Ford.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, Christian, how was your week?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's been pretty good, Neil.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have much to report, though, you know, just...
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: Slaving away, you know, demography does not rest.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Demography does not rest.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's amazing how that works.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: Every day life goes on.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: We all get older.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the world still turns.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well,
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm glad that there's nothing in your life to distract you and you're suitably
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_02: bored by everything else except demography.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: That just pleases me.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_02: No end.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's get started on with our farewells.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: We have two today, actually, both both members of the silent generation.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: I want to start with Pete McCloskey,
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: the seven term Republican congressman from California who challenged Richard Nixon
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_02: for the presidency in 1972.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: and later became the first Republican to denounce Nixon for his complicity in Watergate.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: He died last week at age 96.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: McCloskey was born and raised in Loma Linda in Southern California.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: He went to college at Occidental and Caltech as a naval reservist just after World War II ended.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: He's one of those first wave silent.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think he was born in 1927.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: He graduated with a bachelor's from Stanford in 1950 and then from Stanford Law School in 1953.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: And Christian, somehow in between, he managed to volunteer to serve in the U.S.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: Marine Corps during the Korean War.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: where he led a rifle brigade and earned several awards,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: including the Navy Cross and the Silver Star for Heroism,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: plus two Purple Hearts.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: He later wrote a book, The Taking of Hill 610, about his exploits in Korea.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, how about doing that between three years between Korea
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_02: graduating and getting your law degree.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: After practicing law in Palo Alto, he chose to enter politics as a liberal Republican in 1966.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: He was at that time one of the very few Republicans to oppose the war in Vietnam.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: Christian, let's not forget this.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: In the silent generation, there were lots of liberal Republicans.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: This was a time when many Republicans were more eager than Democrats to work, say, for conservation,
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: You know, a government of experts or take the lead even in working for racial equality.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: One thing is for sure.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Back then, no one called no one called liberal Republicans like a McCluskey, a rhino.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_02: in 1966,
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_02: McCluskey defeated the conservative Shirley Temple Black in the Republican primary
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_02: and then won the election.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_02: He won another seven times, serving in Congress until 1983.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: While Congressman McCluskey gained national reputation and certainly national
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: attention by repeatedly taking liberal stance,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: often against the grain of his party's leadership,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: he
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: He was the first member of Congress to call for a repeal of the Gulf of Tonkin
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: resolution that had authorized the Vietnam War.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_02: He repeatedly called for an end to the bombing of North Vietnam.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: And then in 1972,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: he entered he entered the presidential nomination race against the incumbent
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Republican Richard Nixon,
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: which was,
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_02: of course.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: a hopeless cause, though he did win 20% of the vote in New Hampshire.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: But I recall it created a real stir at the time.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: And then Nixon went on to have this absolute landslide victory in the 72 election over McGovern.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: Early in Nixon's second term,
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: in October of 1973,
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: after the so-called Saturday Night Massacre,
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: this is when President Nixon fired two attorney generals in a row because they
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: wouldn't drop a subpoena to procure the Watergate tapes.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: McCloskey became the first member of Congress from either party to call for Nixon's impeachment.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, think of that, even before any Democrat did.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: In the late 1970s and early 1980s,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: he again raised conservative hackles when he repeatedly denounced Israeli Prime
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: Minister Menachem Begin for bombing an unfinished nuclear reactor in Iraq and for
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_02: occupying the Golan Heights.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: Well, by now, in the early 80s, we're already entering the age of Reagan.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so by now, Rockefeller Republicans were a dying breed.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_02: And as you can well imagine,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: McCloskey's views were growing increasingly out of step with the liberal Republican.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I should say with the typical Republican voter becoming less liberal.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: In 1982,
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: he ran for an open California seat where he entered a wild GOP primary featuring
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: Bob Dornan,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Barry Goldwater Jr.,
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: Maureen Reagan,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_02: and San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson and many others.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Pete Wilson ended up winning on his way to becoming governor.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And as for McCloskey, well, he never had a chance at this point.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: So McCloskey retired from politics to practice law.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: In 1987, this was fascinating.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: In 1987, Pat Robertson, who was running for president, sued McCloskey for defamation.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: This was after McCloskey publicly announced that during the Korean War,
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Robertson's father had used his influence to keep Robertson out of combat.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it turns out that suing McCloskey was a bad decision.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Very soon, several Korean War officers backed up McCloskey's story.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: And McCloskey should have known he was colonel of the unit Robertson served in.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, bad mistake.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, Robertson gave up and was forced to pay all the attorney's fees.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: So that's how that ended.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: In 2006,
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: McCloskey again tried entering politics by running in a GOP primary against an
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: incumbent Republican congressman in California,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Richard Pombo.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: His campaign emphasized raising ethical standards in Congress,
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: and he ran under the slogan,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Congressmen are like die-uppers.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: You need to change them often and for the same reason.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Come on.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's a great that's a that's a great.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: Well, McCloskey lost by a wide, wide margin next year in 2007 at age 79.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: He announced that he was changing his political affiliation from the Republican to the Democratic Party.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: And ever since he said he voted for Democrats in national elections.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what do we make of this life story?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Here's my takeaway.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: During the American high, the silent generation came of age in a nation gripped in groupthink.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: And what I admire most about so many of this generation's leaders is how as they
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: grew older,
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: they struggled to break out of groupthink.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: And that was certainly the case for Pete McCloskey, who passed away last week at age 96.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: My second silent generational life story is James Harris Simons.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone called him Jim Simons.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: The brilliant Ivy League mathematician who set up his own investment fund,
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_02: Renaissance Technologies,
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: earned billions and ultimately invented a whole new industry called quant investing.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: He died last week at age 86.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Simons was born in 1938, was raised in a Jewish family in Brookline, Massachusetts.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: As a teenager, he loved mathematics.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: He got a BA in math from MIT in 1958, a PhD in math at UC Berkeley in 1961 at the age of only 23.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: In the mid-1960s,
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: he worked for the Defense Department,
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: helping the military to decode Soviet encryption.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: And from 1968 to 78,
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: he served as head of the math department at Stony Brook and brought some of the
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_02: best math minds in the world to that university.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_02: Simons was acknowledged as one of the best minds himself, I should add.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_02: He earned several math awards, one of them for discovery.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_02: With another mathematician,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: this was Xing Shen Chern,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: the so-called Chern-Simons forms theorem,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: which led to big advances in topological quantum field theory.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: Christian, don't ask me to explain what that is.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's interesting.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's how manifolds behave in multidimensional probabilistic space or something like that.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: You really don't want to know.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: But it turns out Simon's wanted more out of life.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: And namely, he wanted to make money.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: You may be familiar with the old joke, Christian, what's the difference between a pizza and a math PhD?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: The pizza feeds a family of four, okay?
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_02: He also had a wild streak, a need to embark on dangerous challenges.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Just after graduating college,
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: he once traveled with a couple of friends all the way from Boston to Bogota,
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_02: Colombia by motorbike,
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: a trek that eventually was covered by the press.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well,
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_02: for Simons now at his current age,
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: you know,
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: by the late,
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: after spending a decade as Tony Brook,
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: that challenge was how to apply mathematics,
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: in particular,
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_02: the use of complex pattern recognition techniques to making money in markets.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: So in 1978,
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: he left academia to start an investment company on a Long Island strip mall called
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_02: Money Metrics.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: which in 1982 he renamed Renaissance Technologies.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And for a good 10 years, his fund's performance was boom or bust, mediocre overall.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_02: Back then,
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_02: because no one was applying math to markets,
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: it was very hard to acquire market data in digital form,
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: and the computers weren't powerful enough really to do a lot with it.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: That changed in 1988 when Simons brought on board James Axe,
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: an algebraist from Cornell,
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: who helped him convert lots of market data into rule-driven trading algorithms.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: They founded the firm's flagship Medallion Fund in 1988.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: They named him Medallion.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: It was in honor of all the math awards that Simons and Axe had won.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the rest of the story is history.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Very well known.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Over the next 30 years,
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: from 1988 to 2018,
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: Medallion earned a fabulous average annual return of 66% per year before fees and
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: 39% after fees.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: No one else in the investment world comes close to this performance,
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: not Warren Buffett,
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: George Soros,
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Peter Lynch,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Steve Cohen,
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: or Ray Dalio.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: These numbers,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: by the way,
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: come from Gregory Zuckerman's excellent book about Jim Simons,
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: The Man Who Solved the Market,
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to know more.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: About the same time Simons launched Medallion, there were a few competitors trying to do the same thing.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_02: Among these were Ed Thorpe and a very inventive statistical arb group at Morgan Stanley.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: These, fortunately for Simons, never survived.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: There was,
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: however,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: one former Morgan Stanley quant,
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: David Shaw,
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: who did set up another quant firm in 1988 called D.E.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: Shaw,
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: which today remains probably Renaissance's only quant competitor in terms of its
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: longevity and its market outperformance over that long time period.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: Around the year 2000,
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: a bunch of new quant firms were launched that have since become well-known,
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: names like Two Sigma,
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: AQR,
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Alpha Simplex,
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: and others.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: But Jim Simons had the vision, and he was there from the very beginning.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: So in this sense, he really created the whole black box model of quant investing.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: These were investment firms that were less interested in hiring business types who
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: were skilled at trading and bargaining,
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_02: but rather academic types who were skilled at modeling and thinking.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, come on, Christian, you want to be just paid for thinking, right?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: There we go.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there we go.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: So at his death, Simon's net worth has been estimated at around a cool $31 billion.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: Today, his firm regularly makes around $10 billion per year in trading gains.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's pretty good for a firm that only employs about 300 people.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: And keep in mind that the Medallion Fund is owned almost entirely at this point by
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_02: the company's current and former owners and their families.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: You...
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you can't invest in that.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's not open to you, Christian.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: So just don't even think about it.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's not open to any of us, actually.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: What do people who knew him well most recall about Simons?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one is that he was a chain smoker.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Like many in his generation, he picked up this habit early and was never able to quit.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: Another is that he was a generous philanthropist.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: Again,
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_02: like so many of the silent generation,
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: he enjoyed using his wealth to benefit institutions that he thought would benefit others.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: Last year,
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: his foundation gave $500 million,
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: half a billion to Stony Brook University,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: which is,
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_02: I believe,
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_02: the largest unrestricted endowment in the history of higher education.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: And finally,
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think his friends recall that he was a liberal in politics,
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: giving Renaissance a progressive political tilt that was eventually canceled out
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: when they hired Robert Mercer in 1993.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: Mercer,
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_02: who became CEO of the firm in 2009,
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: together with his daughter,
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: Rebecca Mercer,
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: are famously huge donors to conservative causes.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Simon hated political polarization,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: and he never let politics interfere with his close friendship with Mercer,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: a boomer about eight years younger than he was.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: Jim Simons, who passed away last week at age 86.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: As always,
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: let me remind you,
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_02: if you like this podcast,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: please go ahead and share it with your friends and family.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: Repost it on social media.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: From now on, we will be restricting some episodes that remain free.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: Christian,
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think we should also take a moment to clarify to listeners that this podcast
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: isn't all we do on Substack,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: but that we also put out lots of written content under the name of Demography Unplugged.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: That's where we...
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: Do what we can to break down demographic, economic, and generational trends.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, Neil.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: I would just say to all of our listeners that they should look at some of our
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: written pieces,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: especially,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: you put out a piece this week,
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Neil,
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: What Americans Really Think About the Israel-Hamas War.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: That is part one of a three-part series that you are writing.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: writing about the conflict and we're getting a lot of great feedback from it.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: I will also say this is only available to paid subscribers and we've gotten a lot
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: of feedback from people saying,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: this is why I pay for your work.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I suggest that all of our listeners go and check that piece out.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: And thank you.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_02: So let's get into today's podcast.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: As always, there's plenty out there.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: First, we got market news.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then as usual, we'll be covering stories from around the world.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: We've got the Senate election updates, along with announcements about the presidential debates coming up.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: We have updates on Trump's New York criminal trial.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: with testimony this week from none other than Michael Cohen, right?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Donald Trump's former troubleshooter.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: Internationally,
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: Russia's army is gaining ground in Ukraine at a pace which is beginning to alarm
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: Western allies.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_02: We have a story from Georgia,
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: that is to say the country of Georgia,
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: not the state,
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: whose government just passed a law clamping down on foreign-funded NGOs.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_02: causing the EU to threaten to freeze Georgia's bid to join the EU.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Slovakia, this just hit today, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: Slovakia's new right prime minister,
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Robert Fico,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: I think with just out of surgery,
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: he's still in critical condition after being shot five times,
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: probably by a political opponent.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll say something about that.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: Geert Wilders,
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_02: I should say Geert Wilders has announced that his party is ready to form a
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: conservative coalition government in the Netherlands.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: The Belgian national elections will be held June 9th.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: And there's a we'll talk about that.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: But a Flemish successionist named Tom van Grieken, who is now in the lead.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_02: One more manifestation of the new right there.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: And the IDF,
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: the Israeli Defense Forces,
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: are pushing deep into the eastern quarters of Rafah in their effort to engage the
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: last Hamas battalions and flush out the last Hamas leaders.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_02: So with that, Christian, I pass it back to you to see what's happened in markets.