Latest / Trend Watch / Episode 29: ICC v Israel, UK Elections, and Alito Under Fire

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Episode 29: ICC v Israel, UK Elections, and Alito Under Fire · Trend Watch

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Ready to take a deeper look at where history, politics, and economics all intersect?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then you've come to the right place.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Each week,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: here's where we pull back the headlines and focus on the big trends,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: the stuff that actually shapes our future.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Through the noise, we focus on the signal.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Neil Howe, and this is TrendWatch.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Today is May 23rd, 2024, and this is Trend Watch.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, everybody.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: As usual, I have on my fellow analyst, Christian Ford.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, Christian, you know what I'm going to ask.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: How was your week?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my week has been pretty good, Neil.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of my friends this past weekend were graduating from law school and from
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: their graduate programs at GW,
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: and they were all wondering if there were going to be protests at graduation,
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: but...
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Turned out there was very little fanfare.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you needed to go to an Ivy League school like Harvard.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Apparently they had, I don't know, a few hundred people walk out, right?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know what happened at Brown or Princeton or Cornell or Columbia.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe Columbia I should have mentioned first.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's good.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I guess that brings to an end the camp ends, right?
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or at least for now, unless they're summer programs.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, at least a little vacation in that.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, on to our farewells.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: I have two of them and one American, one abroad.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I will start with Ivan Boski.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Ivan Boski, the notorious stock arbitrageur of the mid 1980s.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: who inspired the roguish Greed is Good speech in the movie Wall Street,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: before being sentenced to three and a half years in prison for insider trading.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: He died last week, Christian, at age 87.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Boesky was an interesting man.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: He was
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Born in Detroit in 1937, he was raised in a family of Russian Jewish immigrants.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: His father was a businessman who ran restaurants.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And little Ivan also hustled as a kid to make money.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: He wasn't into books.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: He went to three colleges, never graduated from any of them, and somehow got into law school.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: But he didn't do well.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And as I recall, he was never hired by any law firm.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: What saved him,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: was his marriage in 1962 to Laura Silberstein and into a very wealthy family of
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: hotel owners,
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: which got him invited to join Bear Stearns,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: where he learned about stock arbitrage.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: In 1975, after trading around for a while, he started his own firm, Ivan F. Bosky & Co.,
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: So how did he know about such news in advance?
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, well, in the early 80s, he organized a ring of insider informants who gave him the news.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: He would send them money,
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: often cash and hundred dollar bills packed into suitcases,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: and they would send him information.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Boesky made $65 million when Chevron acquired Gulf,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: $50 million when Texaco bought Getty,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: $50 million when Philip Morris acquired General Foods.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: Other huge deals involved Nabisco, Union Carbide, Boise Cascade.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, alas, I know you know how this is going to end, Christian.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: But Boesky's stellar rise was cut short when federal investigators,
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: led by one young Rudy Giuliani,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: then a U.S.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: prosecutor early in his career, got a lead on one of his payoffs.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Giuliani made a deal with Boesky in which he agreed to wear a wire
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: That is to say, Boesky agreed to wear a wire to gather evidence on Michael Milken and other traitors.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then Boesky plea bargained his way to a three and a half year federal sentence,
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: two years of which he served in Lompoc federal prison camp in California.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: After prison,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: he and Laura divorced,
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: but in the divorce settlement,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: she agreed to pay him $20 million plus $180,000 per year for life.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's pretty sweet.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: That was the one part of his life that just struck me more than any other.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Who said that crime doesn't pay?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: Boesky later remarried, had another child, and lived for the rest of his life in La Jolla, California.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now,
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: if you've ever been to La Jolla,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: but that's kind of close to heaven on earth,
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's right.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a beautiful place.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: At his peak,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Boesky personified the lavish lifestyle of the rich and famous Wall Street traders
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: in the 80s.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Owning multiple homes and penthouses,
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: hosting lavish parties,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: commuting by helicopter to work,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: overseeing banks of trading terminals,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: and all the rest.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: He was often mentioned in the same breath as other silent generation tycoons of
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: that era,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: like Carl Icahn,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: T.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Boone Pickens,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: James Goldsmith,
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_01: and Saul Steinberg.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So let me come back to how I started.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: The greed is good speech.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: In 1986,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: and this was not long before he was indicted,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: he gave a commencement speech address to UC Berkeley Business School graduates.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: They were all at the time all full of young Gen X power tools.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: You can just imagine how they're addressed, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And at one point in the speech, he said, I think greed is healthy.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: You can be greedy and still feel good about yourself.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: At which point, all the students cheered and applauded.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: this speech apparently was an inspiration for Oliver Stone in making his movie Wall Street,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: which came out a year later in 1987.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And here I will just, you know...
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Give my little rendition of Gordon Gekko.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we all recall these, right?
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: These lines.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I am not the destroyer of companies.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I am a liberator of them.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Greed is right.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Greed works.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Greed in all of its forms,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: greed for life,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: for money,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: for love,
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: knowledge,
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: has marked the upward surge of mankind.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And greed,
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: you mark my words,
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: will not only save Teldar paper,
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Come on.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's got to be that's got to be one of the great speeches.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: Let's move on.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Our next departed, Ibrahim Raisi.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: The hardline president of Iran,
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: whose brutal career as public prosecutor,
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: earned him the nickname Butcher of Tehran.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: He died last week in a helicopter crash at age 63.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know a lot about Raisi's life.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: He was born in 1960.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: He was raised in a clerical family in the town of Mashhad, Iraq.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: near the northeastern border of Iran.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: In accordance with family tradition,
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: he went to clerical schools and then in his teens to Qam Seminary,
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: the largest and most famous Islamic seminary in Iran.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yet Qam also,
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: and I think this is,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: oddly to Westerners,
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: serves as a law school,
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: since in Iran,
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: law and a religion overlap in the Sharia.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it later became clear that it was the law part of calm seminary that Raisi found most interesting.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: In 1979,
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: at age 18,
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Raisi's education was interrupted by the Iranian revolution,
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: which deposed the Shah and set up a new revolutionary republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Raisi found favor with the revolution's leaders and two years later was serving
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: prosecutorial posts before rising to ever higher judicial posts.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: He was appointed special prosecutor of Tehran, the capital,
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: in 1985,
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: a post that he kept after Khomeini died in 1989 and his successor,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: the Ayatollah Khomeini,
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: came to power.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thereafter, Raisi moved from one chief judicial post to another.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: In 2016,
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: he was appointed chairman of the Aston Quds Rasabi,
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: which made him wealthy because his charitable religious trust,
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: in effect,
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: owns a significant share of Iran's economy.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: In 2017, he ran for the presidency for the first time, but was beaten by the incumbent Hassan Rouhani.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: In 2021,
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: with the apparent backing of the Ayatollah,
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: he ran for president again and won in an election notorious for its poor turnout
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: and the fact that all the popular alternative candidates had been stricken from the ballot.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: Why did the Ayatollah and the other hardline conservatives favor Raisi?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because he was a hardliner himself and over the years had proven as much in
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: repressive measures of breathtaking scope.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's here, Christian, that I should explain Raisi's nickname in Iran, the Butcher of Tehran.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: In 1985,
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: while he was a special prosecutor in Iran,
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: just as the Iran-Iraq war was ending,
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: he was responsible for the torture and execution of roughly 5,000 political
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: prisoners who had been rotting away in Tehran prisons.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the war was over.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: He had to do something with these people.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_01: Many of them were hanged six at a time from forklift trucks.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And there's much been written about that.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's really a horrible story.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And he's been indicted by various international organizations.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he's one of these people who really wasn't really allowed to leave Iran.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Reminds me a little bit of the ICC story we're going to be getting to.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: He was similarly brutal in putting down popular uprisings in 2009,
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: the so-called Green Revolution,
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: and just a couple of years ago in the fall of 2022,
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: in women-led nationwide protests against the morals police.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: By the time Raisi died last week in a helicopter crash,
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: he was still busy ruling back the personal freedoms gained by Iranian women in that protest.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: While Raisi has always been a favorite of clerical hardliners,
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: he was never,
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: I should say,
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: popular with the Iranian people.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: I guess, you know, almost needless to say.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: He had little charisma.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: He was a regime insider.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Also,
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: because he was considered a Sayyid,
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: or this means a descendant of Muhammad,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: due to his clerical family roots,
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: he was widely viewed as a possible successor,
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: as Ayatollah.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: when Khamenei, who is now 87, dies.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Who will now be president?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well,
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Vice President Mohamed Mokbar will act as president until a new election is held
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: within 50 days,
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: according to Iran's constitution.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that election will likely be as rigged as the last.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: You might want to know who's going to be the next Ayatollah.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no one knows, of course.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: But now the odds-on favorite is the Ayatollah Khamenei's son, Mu'tabba Khamenei.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: So there you go, Christian.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: The more it changes, the more it's the same thing.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Ibrahim Raisi, not widely lamented after his death at age 63.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: As always,
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: let me remind you,
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: if you like this podcast,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: please go ahead and share it with your family,
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: friends,
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: and repost it on social media.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: And from now on, only some episodes will remain free.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think we should,
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: as we always do here,
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: take a moment to tell listeners that this podcast isn't all we do on Substack,
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: but we also put out lots of written content under the name of Demography Unplugged.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: And
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know what we do there, right?
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Demography, economic stuff, generational trends, all of it.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, Neil.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: I would just recommend to our listeners to check out the latest piece that we
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: posted today,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: which is your second piece in this series about how Americans view the Gaza War,
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: where you really break down opinions by demographic subgroups.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some really interesting and honestly a little bit surprising findings, especially –
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Support for Israel by White Evangelicals.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: You also give a very interesting look at how age and generation,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: how they have different views depending on memories of Israel in the past.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I would highly recommend our listeners to go and read that post.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was an interesting experience for me to write it.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was definitely longer than I like to ordinarily do pieces.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think readers will see that.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: But it was really interesting.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think levels of knowledge about the Gaza War I think was fascinating.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: Pew Research actually gave, you know,
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: A few thousand people, a small multiple choice test.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out that the people who both follow the war most closely and know most about it
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: are old people, right?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out that younger people are generally careless about it.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Generally, those two go together, obviously.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you care about something, you generally know more about it.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: That surprised me a little bit, given the protest on college campuses.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I do, you know, last week, I wrote about the campus protests.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: This time, I really wrote about everybody
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I also wrote about young people,
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: but not just campus protesters,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: all young people,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: all people in their 20s or all people in their 30s.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there is an extent to which the campus protests do reflect some differences among young people.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: For instance,
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: they're considerably more likely to sympathize with the Palestinians,
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: less likely to sympathize with Israel.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: And there's some really good reasons for that.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And as you say,
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of lay that all out,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: both in terms of change in generational experience and also just change in who they are.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this this younger group is, for instance, a lot more nonwhite.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's just start with that.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And and.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I go through the correlations on that.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: That definitely has something to do with who you sympathize with and and a bunch of
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: other stuff,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: education,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: urban,
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: rural and and and obviously religious affiliation.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's an interesting multilayered story.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: I enjoyed doing the piece and I have part three coming up.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I will get to that, probably among other pieces I'm gonna do over the next few weeks.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: I believe in that I'm gonna talk about how leaders have clarified choices or not
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: clarified choices for Americans.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And leadership,
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: when it comes to foreign affairs,
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think political leaders play a very important role historically.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: This is true in World War II and the Civil War.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's really true in Vietnam War.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: But the ability of leaders to clarify choices
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: on issues where the public really doesn't necessarily have strong inclinations going into it, right?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: It plays a very important role.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I would like, and eventually I will write about that as well.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get into today's podcast, Christian.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: As usual, we always have lots to talk about.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: We've got market news, then we'll be covering stories from around the world.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: What do we have?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have defense rests in Trump hush money trial, setting up closing arguments scheduled for next week.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Nikki Haley says she'll vote for Trump in the 2024 election, but doesn't quite say she supports him.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: Ohio,
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: the state of Ohio,
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: threatens to leave Joe Biden off the ballot for not certifying the presidential
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: ticket in time.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is a
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: You'll have to explain this one to me.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: Mainstream media pillories Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito for flying an upside
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: down American flag at his Alexandria home.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Upside down American flag.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: That has a very interesting history.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: We might be able to get into that.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then there's the International Criminal Court, which requests warrants.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: We're going to move to international now.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: The ICC requests warrants for the leaders of both Israel and Hamas for committing
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: crimes against humanity.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that touched off.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Really, a firestorm reaction around the world.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: We'll get to that.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: In the UK,
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announces snap national elections on July 4th,
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: a lot earlier than anyone expected.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, not that it'll do him any good.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And in France,
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: Marie Le Pen's National Rally Party threatens to leave the identity coalition in
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: the EU parliament after scandal erupts among Germany's AFD leaders.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, I leave it in your hands.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Why don't you start with markets?
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Neil, the S&P 500 closed down 0.74% today and over the last five trading days is down 0.55%.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: As for the global Dow, we have a similar story.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: They closed down 0.73% over the last five market days is down 0.99%.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: As for the VIX,
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: that closed at 12.97%,
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: which is a little above what we have been seeing over the last week.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And as for the 10-year Treasury, that is at 4.48%, up 10 basis points over the last five days.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, you know, definitely...
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: the equities have been going down when rates have been going up,
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: long-term rates at least have been going up.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: What do you have, any indicators this week?
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I have a few.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: We have some from the U.S.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: We got the S&P Flash PMIs for May, which looks pretty good for the U.S.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Manufacturing rose from 50 to 50.9.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: This was significantly above expectations.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And services rose from 51.3 to 54.8.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: That smashed expectations and was the sharpest expansion we've seen in a year.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: We also had some data, Neil, on new home sales, which fell 4.7% month over month in April.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of people are saying this was due to the high mortgage rates.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's interesting.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: The accelerating PMI in the equity market,
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: it's just all they look at,
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I guess,
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: is Chairman Powell,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if the PMIs look really good, well, that means that it's higher for longer, right?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: And apparently that's all they're looking at.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: They've got all this debt that they're floating,
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: they're turning over,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: and they just keep on wondering,
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: when's that going to go down?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: When's that going to go down?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, we'll bear with that.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anything abroad?
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I have a couple things from the Eurozone, Neil.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: We also had flash PMIs for May.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Manufacturing rose from 45.7 to 47.4.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So while that still marks a contraction,
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: it actually is the highest reading the Eurozone has seen in 15 months.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: Services remained flat at 53.3%.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: And we also had flash consumer confidence for the Eurozone for May.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that came in at negative 14.3%.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Slightly better than April's negative 14.7% reading.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Confidence has been slightly improving since February due to expectations of rates
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: cuts by the ECB,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: but still significantly negative.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: So are you are you good to launch in here?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with our first story, Neil.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: The defense rested in Trump's New York hush money trial.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Closing arguments will begin next week.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, Trump ended up not taking the stand.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: one of the defense's few people they called was was attorney Robert Costello,
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: who largely claimed that Michael Cohen was lying about his testimony.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Quite closing arguments next week.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then it goes to the jury.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is that it?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I looked at the polls.