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Ray Dalio on the Decline of Real Interest Rates (Podcast) · Masters in Business

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  Speaker 1: This is Master's in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
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  Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and yes, this week's extra special guest is extra extra special.
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  Speaker 1: His name is Ray Dalio and he is the founder
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  Speaker 1: of Bridgewater Associates. Ray is a fascinating guy. We've had
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  Speaker 1: him on the show a couple of times, one for Principles,
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  Speaker 1: the second for Big Debt Crises, both of the books
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  Speaker 1: he's written previously as well as Ray did the initial
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  Speaker 1: Master's Business Live, which we would be doing but for
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  Speaker 1: the pandemic and lockdown, we would have continued that into
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  Speaker 1: this year. This is really quite an intriguing conversation. Ray
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  Speaker 1: has done a deep dive into the history of the
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  Speaker 1: rise and fall of currencies, of great powers of debt.
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  Speaker 1: He really brings an analytical approach, not just a global
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  Speaker 1: macro and investing, but how to think about the world,
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  Speaker 1: how to think about the variables that we deal with.
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  Speaker 1: I am completely tickled by the idea of Ray at
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  Speaker 1: home in Connecticut with the ability to pretty much get
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  Speaker 1: whoever he wants on the phone and basically having a
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  Speaker 1: podcast of just him and somebody else because he's interested
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  Speaker 1: in a particular subject matter, such as currencies or pandemics
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  Speaker 1: or monetary history. And when you're Raid Dali or you
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  Speaker 1: could pick up the phone and get whoever you want
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  Speaker 1: on the other hand to basically give you a crash
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  Speaker 1: course in that area. And he's endlessly um curious. He's
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  Speaker 1: one of these people whose intellect is always hungry for
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  Speaker 1: figuring out what happens. I'm fascinated by the way he
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  Speaker 1: views the world and the economy as this big mechanical
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  Speaker 1: contraption that you can understand if only you take the
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  Speaker 1: time and effort to dive into it. And pretty much
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  Speaker 1: that's what he's done. And I find him to be
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  Speaker 1: just a really fascinating guy to talk to. I think
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  Speaker 1: you'll find this to be an intriguing conversation. So, with
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: no further ado, my interview with Bridgewater Associates Ray Dahio.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: My extra special guest this week is Ray Dalio. He
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: is the founder of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Bridgewater has generated the most amount of profits for its
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  Speaker 1: clients of any hedge fund in history. He is the
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  Speaker 1: author of several books including principles life and work, big
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  Speaker 1: debt crises, and the upcoming the changing world order, Why
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  Speaker 1: nations succeed and fail. That will be out January, Ray Dalio,
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  Speaker 1: welcome back to Masters in Business. Thank you Berry, glad
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  Speaker 1: to be here. Well, I'm glad to have this opportunity
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  Speaker 1: to have a conversation with you. I know that you're
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  Speaker 1: a student of history and market cycles, and you're a
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  Speaker 1: big macro guy looking at the world from a thirty
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  Speaker 1: thousand foot perspective. I wanted to talk to you about
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  Speaker 1: really what is going on in in what can only
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  Speaker 1: be described as a fairly unique moment in history. Well, uh,
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  Speaker 1: it isn't it isn't. You know. The one thing that
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  Speaker 1: I learned about early on, particularly when the dollar in
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  Speaker 1: one was broken from gold, is that many things that
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: surprised me had never happened in my lifetime before, but
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  Speaker 1: they happened many times in history before. And the three
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  Speaker 1: things that are happening now that are the big backdrop situation.
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  Speaker 1: Before we had the covid um our first, the debt cycle,
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  Speaker 1: monetary creation of debt, and monetizing debt. The last time
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  Speaker 1: that happened was in nine thirty three when interest rates
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  Speaker 1: is zero, and central banks printed a lot of money
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  Speaker 1: and so on, and that's a big factor because we're
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  Speaker 1: dealing with the question of the value of money and
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  Speaker 1: how that happens. So that's number one. The second is
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  Speaker 1: the large um wealth and political and social gaps that
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  Speaker 1: are causing us to be at each other's throats and
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  Speaker 1: also giving very different choices in terms of the left
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  Speaker 1: and the right and capitalism and socialism. And the third
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  Speaker 1: is the rise of a great power to challenge the
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  Speaker 1: existing great power UM, the rise of China to challenge
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  Speaker 1: the United States in many areas UM. And we're seeing that,
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  Speaker 1: and one has to go back to the period to
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  Speaker 1: look at it. And then when I felt that I
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  Speaker 1: needed to understand it better, I went back five years
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  Speaker 1: because I needed You know, these cycles, they go on
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  Speaker 1: like a hundred years, and in order to follow a
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  Speaker 1: world order arise in a decline of empires and all
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  Speaker 1: of those things, one has to go back a number
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  Speaker 1: of cycles. So that's what I did. So we have
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  Speaker 1: those as the backdrop. And then we had COVID, and
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  Speaker 1: COVID is the stress test, and the world had COVID
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  Speaker 1: and the stress test, and that's the moment we're in.
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  Speaker 1: So when we look at today, we have to see
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  Speaker 1: it in that um in that light because when we
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  Speaker 1: think about where do we get money from the creation
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  Speaker 1: of debt and the printing of money, and where do
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  Speaker 1: we get to support when we're talking about the next
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  Speaker 1: bill that might or might not past next stimulative it
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  Speaker 1: has big implications to the economy, to the markets, and
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  Speaker 1: so on. And so that's the dating, all right. So
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  Speaker 1: working within those three big frameworks, let's start out talking
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  Speaker 1: about monetizing debt. So normally Congress can't agree on renaming
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  Speaker 1: a library. But back at the end of the first quarter,
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  Speaker 1: in the midst of the panic, they passed a three
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  Speaker 1: trillion trillion with a t three trillion dollar Cares Act,
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  Speaker 1: a giant stimulus plan. Was that the right call back then?
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  Speaker 1: And what was its impact on the national economy? It
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  Speaker 1: was it was the necessary call. But it's a reflection
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  Speaker 1: of where we are in the cycle, and so it
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  Speaker 1: has consequences. It's the necessary call because if you don't
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  Speaker 1: give money to those that they gave money to money
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  Speaker 1: and credit, we would have had an implosion and we
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  Speaker 1: would have probably had a great deal of social problems. UM.
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  Speaker 1: But it's not real money in the sense that the
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  Speaker 1: real money would have required taxation or it would have
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  Speaker 1: required cutting spending. And so the easiest way to give
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  Speaker 1: money throughout history, we've seen this. The easiest way is
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  Speaker 1: to create government debt and have the central bank purchased
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  Speaker 1: that government debt and and and provide other loans because
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  Speaker 1: it's not taking money away from anybody and it's not
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  Speaker 1: cutting spending, both of which are intolerable. And that move
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  Speaker 1: is very much analogous what happened on April nine. That
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  Speaker 1: was the announcement to the same thing that happened on
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  Speaker 1: March five three, except then we had an exchange rate
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  Speaker 1: which was tied to the dollar, but they are tied
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  Speaker 1: to gold. But they needed to sever that tie in
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: order to do the same type of policies. And if
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  Speaker 1: you look at throughout history, that's what happens. And then
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  Speaker 1: that's what makes the market go up. Okay, the value
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  Speaker 1: of money, because all investments compete with each other, and
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  Speaker 1: so that brought down nominal and real interest rates. We
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  Speaker 1: can talk about multiples, stock multiples and bond multiples, I
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  Speaker 1: think might help to convey the concept. But the decline
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  Speaker 1: in real interest rates and the decline in nominal interest
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  Speaker 1: rates pushes asset prices higher in and of itself, and
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the putting of money into our loans for companies and
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  Speaker 1: so on. They drew the line at investment grade, and
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  Speaker 1: those that were the fallen angels just past that and
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  Speaker 1: they would buy those things. Those guarantees or even knowing
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  Speaker 1: that those purchases would take place created the financial support.
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  Speaker 1: So we saw an expansion in multiples. When we think
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  Speaker 1: of multiples, you know, we we think of multiples that
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: stocks and bonds compete with each other. But when we
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: look at stocks, we think of multiples multiples times earnings,
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  Speaker 1: and we look at bonds we think of yields, and
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  Speaker 1: they're just the inverse of each other. So one could say,
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  Speaker 1: you know, what is the multiple on a bond and
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  Speaker 1: the multiple on a bond now, with interest rates being
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  Speaker 1: close to zero uh low in the United States and
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  Speaker 1: below zero in Europe and Japan, is a very high multiple,
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  Speaker 1: almost in you know, an infinite multiple, more than a
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  Speaker 1: hundred times. And because stocks and bonds compete on yield basis,
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  Speaker 1: that also drove up the yield and so you're seeing
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  Speaker 1: the movement of money out of cash and bonds and
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  Speaker 1: moving to asset class, and that has been the main driver,
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  Speaker 1: and it's been a world phenomena because the Europeans have
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  Speaker 1: done an analogous version of that the Japanese have because
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  Speaker 1: there is a void. The void is for every individual
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  Speaker 1: or a company or country, there's a certain amount of
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  Speaker 1: revenue that comes in a certain amount of expenses and
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  Speaker 1: a certain balance sheet. And if your income is less
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  Speaker 1: than your expenses and you don't have a good balance
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  Speaker 1: sheet and you look all a lot of money, you're
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  Speaker 1: going to have a bankruptcy. You're gonna have a problem
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  Speaker 1: unless you get that. And so it was necessary, and
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  Speaker 1: but it changes the value of money. So let's talk
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about the value of money. Let's discuss
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about America's exorbitant privilege. We own the
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  Speaker 1: reserve currency of the world. What does all this continuing
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  Speaker 1: debt monetization mean to the US maintaining that reserve currency status?
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  Speaker 1: And uh, what might it look like if the U
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  Speaker 1: s would lose that reserve currency status. Well, as you
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  Speaker 1: point out, that is the greatest power because the United
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  Speaker 1: States as a whole, which is just the aggregate of
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  Speaker 1: the individuals, is buying more from the rest of the world.
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  Speaker 1: Spending more than it is selling to the rest of
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  Speaker 1: the world. We just had another large trade deficit number,
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  Speaker 1: and it is doing that by selling credit, by selling
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  Speaker 1: our bonds. And so when we look at that dynamic,
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  Speaker 1: there's a certain amount of UM bonds out there UM.
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  Speaker 1: And the world always wants to hold a reserve currency
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  Speaker 1: because that's what you save in. If you want to
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  Speaker 1: save in something UM, you know you're not going to
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  Speaker 1: save UM, You're gonna save in the world's reserve currency.
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  Speaker 1: And that has been the exorb of and privilege. However,
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  Speaker 1: what we're two things are happening that are threatening that
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  Speaker 1: a bond is a currency or a currency is a bond.
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  Speaker 1: What I mean by that is when you own a bond,
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  Speaker 1: that is a promise to receive currency, and that when
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  Speaker 1: you have a central bank that can print currency without
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  Speaker 1: a boundary, that means you have to sell a lot
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  Speaker 1: of bonds. So when we run large deficits, and we
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  Speaker 1: will in the future, no matter who the president is,
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  Speaker 1: we will run large deficits, we will have to sell
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  Speaker 1: bonds to the rest of the world. And if you
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: look at the owners of those bonds UM, and most
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  Speaker 1: importantly I would say it's a combination of central banks, UH,
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  Speaker 1: sovereign wealth funds, and of course some other investors. But um,
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  Speaker 1: they are overweight in bonds and they're gonna have to
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  Speaker 1: buy more US bonds than they have to buy. And
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  Speaker 1: that's coming at a time when the rewards of those
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  Speaker 1: bonds are bad. In other words, there's now a negative
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  Speaker 1: real interest rate of about one percent and no nominal
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  Speaker 1: interest rate. And it's coming at the time when there
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  Speaker 1: is a large production of debt and large monetization. So
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: we are testing the limits of how we can how
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  Speaker 1: far we can go in a fiat monetary system, and
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: nobody knows exactly over the short run, let's say, over
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: the next year or two and so on. We know
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: that everybody wants buying power and dollars. There's something that's
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: received all around the world, and you create a squeeze
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: in those and there's also a lot of dollar denominated
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: debt that has to be paid, and that's a supporting
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: because they need dollars to pay those debts. That's a support.
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  Speaker 1: But those supports are are are failing, will will diminish
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: with and so we're testing the limits. Now you ask
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  Speaker 1: what would happen, what would happen would be if you
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: don't own bonds, um. And that's not only Americans, but foreigners,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: because they might say pension funds might say pen h
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  Speaker 1: bonds don't do me very much good. And and if
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: you started to see their interest rates rise at all,
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: then you see bond prices go down and you see
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: stock prices go down, which would be intolerable. So if
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: you have that movement, that would require the Federal Reserve
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: to then buy more to fill in that gap, which
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: would be monetization, and that could create a spiral. But
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: the answer to your question of what would happen is
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  Speaker 1: that you would have to then um pay um. You're
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: you have to cut your buying two exceed um your earning. Um.
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  Speaker 1: You'd have to go to surpluses to pay down your
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: debt or you at least have to go to balances
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  Speaker 1: that would require That would be tough, and it would
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: also mean that you would have a depreciation in the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: in the value of the dollar, which is changes America's
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: purchasing power in the world. So when you look at history,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: you've seen throughout history, Um, I've gone back a number
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: of years. And by the way, if everybody wants I
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: wrote this up on LinkedIn um changing World Order. You
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: can see seven cases of different currencies and the value
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in currencies and what what triggers them. But all currencies
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: at one time or another have been devalued or destroyed.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: And uh and so that's that is a risk that
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: one has to watch very closely. So, Ray, let me
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: refer back to something you said earlier. You mentioned in
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: the government did a lot of fiscal stimulus. They basically
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: issued a lot of bonds of which the Federal Reserve
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: ended up um using as a basis for lending. Basically,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the Fed was funding the government. That that sounds an
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: awful lot like modern monetary theory is MMT not all
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: that modern, that's right, that's right. Uh. Mm T is
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: a version of what I call monetary policy. Three. So
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: what I mean is monetary policy one is interest rate policy,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: cost of funds when interest rates at zero, and you
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: can't use that policy anymore, you go to monetary policy.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: To monetary policy too means the central bank essentially prints
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: money and buys financial ass it. That causes financial asset
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  Speaker 1: prices to go up, but it doesn't trickle down very much.
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: It widens the wealth gap, and it doesn't get it
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: into the hands of those who need it, it gets
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: it into those who have financial assets. Monetary policy three
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: is when there's a need to get it into specific hands,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: and the federal government, the central government, is the only
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: one who can direct where it goes. So a lot
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: of the spending that we've seen in terms of its
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: direction required the Federal Reserve to require the government to
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: borrow the money. That's Federal Reserve lent it the money,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: and that as a result, got it to go into
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: the hands of those who needed it the most. Um.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: And that's monetary policy three. So I would say, um,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I think you should focus on on monetary policy three
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: rather than the more narrow definition of modern monetary theory
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: because it's the but it's it's basically that we are
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: now in a government controlled capital markets. So the government
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: will allocate resources through fiscal policy that will be monetized,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: and so it's going to be a much more government
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: controlled fiscal and monetary coordinated monetary policy, and that will
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: affect all the markets, it will affect us in many
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: many ways. Let's talk a little bit about what's going
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: on with wealth and income inequality. A number of people
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: have made the case that the mostly monetary response to
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: the Great Financial Crisis without a whole lot of accompanying
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: fiscal response lead to a lot of widening income and
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: wealth inequality. What your view on that, Ray, Well, it's
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: it's certainly true. Although the ingredients of the widening wealthcap
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: we're a you know, a number of ingredients, um, and
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: I we should talk about the widening wealthcap. But yes,
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: the purchases of financial assets helps those who have financial
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: assets more than it helps those who don't have financial assets.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: And what we saw, of course is those purchases caused
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: financial asset prices to rise up um and didn't trickle
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: down in the same way to others, and so it
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: widened it other Fay, let me interrupt you there for
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: a second, Ray, And I want to just put some
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: meat on the bone. So about half of Americans don't
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: own any stocks, and of the Americans that do own stocks,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: about half of those equities are owned by the top
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: ten of m of the country economics. So when you
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: say stimulus of financial assets doesn't trickle down, I'm assuming
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: that's more or less what you're referring to. Yes, you've
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: said it very well and for a variety of reasons.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: It's a self perpetuating cycle because as you have more assets,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: like right now in terms of wealth, the top one
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: tenth of one of the population has slightly more than
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: the bottom combined in wealth. And when wealth is those assets,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: those financial assets that the central bank buys, that perpetuates
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the cycle. And there are other things that relate to that.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: For example, I did a breakdown of the economy and
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: the financial positions by Quinto, and I really wanted to
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: look at the bottom and relationship to the top to
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: see these different economies. And um, what I saw, for
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: example is that on education, those in the top forty
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: on average spend about five times as much money on
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the children's education than those in the bottom six. And
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: it's a natural cycle that um. You you know when
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: you we all want to take care of our kids
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: and we want to educate them well and so on.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: But we see it. I see it here in Connecticut,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: which has a large wealth gap. We can get into that,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: but I mean, um, a total absence of resources, and
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: it becomes self perpetuating because it then becomes better educated
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: people then earn more money and so on, and that's
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: becoming more and more true also as technology is playing
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: a greater role, because as technology is replacing people, including
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: now more and more elements of thinking, you are getting
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: into an environment of those who are designers of the
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: technology and so on doing better and better. Because it
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: is the process of capitalism to do things most efficiently
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: in pursuit of the profit. That then leads to those
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: changes which means rely less on people, rely more on machines.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: So there's a monetary component to that, There is a
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: technology component to that widening yellow of gap. And then
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: of course there's also globalization. It's more efficient for the
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: whole to have globalization to produce things in where they're
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: most efficient, of course. And but what you see is
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: within countries you have a widening wealth gap. Between countries
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: you have a narrowing wealth gap. In other words, those
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: who are less lower income, they learn more and they rose.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: And so if you happen to be in the country
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: that's rising less quickly and you happen to be on
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: the bottom end of that, that globalization hurt you in
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: incomes too. And so those three things have produced the
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: disparity that we see, and at the same time that
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: is what has led to the political consequences that we're experiencing.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: In other words, the rise in populism across the world,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: but of course it would come in the United States,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: particularly because of the disparity. So let's get into that
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: a little bit. You've written about the hollowing out of
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: cities and regions and indeed society as a whole. How
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: is that manifesting itself and what can we as a
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: nation do about it? Well, again, I'm describing the mechanics
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: of this. I'm not ideological, I'm just mechanical. There's a formula,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: simple formula. If you've got a lot of debt and
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: you have a big well gap, and you have an
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: economic downturn, you have a fight over how to divide
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the pie. That can be dealt with either through printing
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: money or you have to deal with it with If
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: you don't print the money to finance the deficits the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: way we're talking about, then you have to either raise
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: taxes or cut spending. Now, in states, they don't get
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: to print money. I mean, the main difference between the
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: federal government and the state governments has to do with
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: this printing of money and monetizing debt thing. So if
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: you're in a state like Connecticut, New Jersey, Illinois and
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: so on that has large debts, a large wealth gap,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: and you know, experiences a downturn. Then you create a
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: dynamic where either raising taxes or cutting spending makes a
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: place more difficult to be in. Those with income don't
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: want to experience the tax increases, and when you cut expenses,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: those expenses are for the people who are really the poor.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: People in those states are intolerable and so and they
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: also reduce services, and so it makes it a less
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: hospitable place to be. So you've seen that hollowing out
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: dynamic like Captain in places like Detroit or the rust
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Bell places and so on, where those moved, they move
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: from one place to another place that's more hospitable for them.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: And when they move, those who move and have the
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: higher income, they bring their taxation. Their tax money is
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: with them, and it begins a self perpetuating cycle because
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: then services go down. It becomes a more antagonistic kind
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: of environment, which creates a motivation. So I think that
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: when we're looking at add this is gonna be there's
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: gonna be a big issue after the election, um, how
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: those states are going to be dealt with and those
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: deficits quite interesting. I know a number of people have
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: proposed various cures for this. One concept is baby bonds.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Everybody gets a small set of bonds at birth, or
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: theoretically a small account which could compound over time. I
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: know you've studied universal basic income. I was kind of
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: surprised to see what you learned. Tell us a little
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: bit about that. Well, first of all, I think that
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the basic necessities of educating children well must be done.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: It's inexcusable. It's the greatest cost to our country, and
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: it's the most unfair not to educate children in some
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: analogous way. I think the basics what is needed, um,
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: also basic healthcare, basics, certain basics. UM. I was lucky
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: to have, you know, two parents who care for me.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I went to a public school, and I came out
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: to a world of equal opportunity, and that's all that
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: anybody needs. But they need those things, and then the
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: question is how to best give that. They also have
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: to be productive, because you can't just give income income
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: money has no intrinsic value. And so if you keep
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: giving income and money to people and you don't make
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: them be productive, that's not gonna work. What you eat
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: and what you consume is going to be based on
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: what you produce, so you have to make people productive
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: and so on. So now you deal with the question
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: of how would you bring that about, how would you
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: engineer for that? And what is the role of university
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: basic income? Which has pros and cons But let's say, um,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: you can't just you can't do every thing. So if
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: you go to universal basic income, which can be very expensive,
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: it has the benefits of being efficient. If apparent handles
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: that money well and has the greatest notion of how
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: to best use that money. Well, uh, you know, that
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: could be very good. You don't have a bureaucracy to
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: administer it and so on, and that that's the problem. However, um,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: the usage may very you know, you put money in
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: the hands of some people, um, and and that money
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: may not go to the best uses for their children
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: and and beyond. And so when you think about does
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: it go at the expense of let's say, certain education programs.
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I'll give you an example in Connecticut, where the wealth
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: gap is large and we're intimately involved, twenty two of
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: the high school students want five. In other words, are
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: disengaged or disconnected. Disengaged means when they're attending school, they
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: have an absentee rate or more and they're failing classes.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: That's disengaged. Disconnected means they don't come to school anymore
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: and they don't know where they are one in five
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: And if you look at the finances of that and
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: how you could change that, they end up in uh,
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: detriments to the society because they're they're in at the
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: cost of incarceration. All these things are terrible. So there
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: has to be that usage and money. I would say,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: through our philanthropics um efforts, we get windows into some
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of these things, and they're so cost effective to use
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: the money right in programs. So the question is do
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: you want to find do you want to give checks
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: or do you want to give programs because you can't
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: do both, And so that's the real question. I think.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's a question of the need to
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: do take care of children well and educate them well
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: and those types of things even there, you know, so anyway,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: it's a priority question. So we're going to talk more
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: about your philanthropy a little later, but I just have
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: to ask a very basic question about the role of government.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: What should Americans expect from their state and local and
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: federal governments? What level of service is reasonable in a
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: modern somewhat civilized society. Well, there are two ways I
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: could answer that question. What a modern civilized society should
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: provide and what you can expect given the structure. There
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: are two different things I think everybody should expect. That
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: the basics and that I dealt with before, that I
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: experienced when I was growing up. I was born in
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: and I went to and there was the American dream
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: and we're all in it together, and I wow, that
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: was great. I got went to a public high school,
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: public school all through my life, and parents who took
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: care of me, and that and and if they have
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: health care, basic health care and so on, that's pretty much.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: And then you come out have an equal opportunity. Everything
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: has shown that that is that should be expected, that
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: it is. If you don't do that, it's not fair
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: and it's not productive because you cut a large percentage
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: of the populations of people who could be productive. As
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: you narrow that group that has opportunities, you exclude those
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: who might be the most creative and capable people, and
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: so you suffer in both of those ways. So I
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: would think that basic civility and basicness essity would require
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: those things. Then when you ask what can you expect,
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: somebody can't just demand something. We have to understand how
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: the system works, and the system works mechanistically. So you know,
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: let's say you're in a state, and so you're going
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: to get money from taxation, where's the money come from.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: You're gonna have taxation, and you don't have enough money, literally,
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: and so you can't just say I'm in the state
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: and I'm expecting it. You have almost a constitutional challenge
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: to provide that money, because let's say it's education money.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: For example. By the constitution, education is a state issue,
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: like in the state of Connecticut, about eight percent of
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: the money comes from the federal government and the rest
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: comes from within the state. And so if if taxpayers
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: move and states operate that way, you can sit there
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: all you want and say I need these basics, and
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: you won't get those. And one of the big things
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: is that people actually really don't have much contact or
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: knowledge of what it's like to be in each other's shoes.
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: I live in Greenwich, Connecticut, and um and up the road. UM,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: you know, it could be fifteen twenty minutes away is
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: another world. And I wouldn't have the exposure to this
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: if it wasn't from my wife kind of living in
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: that world to be helping helping this and so on.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: And I can understand it as as I walked down
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Greenwich Avenue and and so on, where you know, these
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: are normal people who want to take care of their families,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: and they have that and the awareness and the um
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: and the acting on that awareness, you know, is a
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: structural is a structural problem because at the end of
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: the day, you know, everybody's trying to do the best
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: they can, and so it's a problem. So those things,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: what are you gonna do. You're gonna say, we expect it.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: But it's sure that health case to me that you
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: need to provide those based six makes sense to me.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about some of your recent
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: writings about China. You have discussed the confluence of longstanding
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: economic trends and big shifts in the political environment. How
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: much of a collision course is China and the United
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: States on? Well, there are five main areas of conflict,
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: five or six, and they're a manifestation of history repeating itself.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: So just to take a second on that. We began
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the existing world order in ninety world War two ended,
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: we began a new monetary system, Brenton Wood's monetary system
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: in forty four, and we set the rules, and the
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: United States then accounted half of the world economy. It
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: had of the world's gold stocks and gold stock and
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: the words gold and that and gold was money. And
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: we built a dollar denominated system and an American world order,
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: which is why the United Nations, the I M f M,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: the World Bank a roll in the United States, and
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: that that happened, and then as a psycho happens. If
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: you look at history, China over the last two thousand years,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: but has always been like one number one or two,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: one of the most powerful countries. And then starting from
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: eighteen forty until Ninette had a collapse and then it
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: began to emerge in and then in nineteen seventy eight
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: dankshall Ping came to power and they he tapped into capitalism,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: state capitalism. He created state capitalism and since then till now,
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the average real income has in reached by twenty two times.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: It's been very productive and it's becoming very capitalist. In um.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: It's uh, there are billionaires being formed, their ideas, their
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: um um I p o s um. There's creativity and
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: there's that competition. And so when you get a rising
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: power challenging and existing power, there are different ways of
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: doing that. And so there are five types of we
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: call them wars conflicts, and they are the trade war,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: the technology war, the geopolitical war, the capital war, and
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: you could have a military war. The trade war we
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: know very we know a lot about and that's the
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: most minor of those. Um it's really the overall conflict
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: that matters. The technology war, you see it um anything
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: from Huawei, TikTok and so on, and who going to
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: produce what technologies in this world. That's something we can
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: talk about if you want to. The geopolitical war is
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: a very important thing, but I want everybody agrees has
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: been agreed that Taiwan is part of China and there
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: should be peaceful unification. And there's a region around there
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and that includes Hong Kong, and they have historical meanings
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: because they used to be part of China. Then in
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the wars they were taken away from China and then
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: they've been promised back and they are big issues. And
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: then there's influence in the world as they've become competitor,
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: and so there's that gel political world war capital war
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: is a very important thing. History is shown that when
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: you get into wars, this is very interesting even before
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: their awars, that they foreign powers cut off to the
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: other They cut them off for capital, and they cut
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: them off for needed items like in World War two
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Japan Um when we when there was the rise of
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Japan in there, Um they were cut off from oil,
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: they would cut off from rubber, um, and they were
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: men cut off from capital. We could we did say
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: that we wouldn't pay their debt, and the United States
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: today could do that with the bonds they owned. China
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: owns about a trillion dollars worth of bonds, and the
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: president unilaterally can say, um, you know, we're not going
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: to pay those bonds or cut off capital in different ways,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: and so you see the development of capital markets and
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: so on. And then of course, um, there's the military
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: question because at the end of the day, it's a
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: test of power. So if you look at the geopolitical
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: part of this in the region, militarily, China has developed
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: what military experts tell me is a military actual superior priority,
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: and about two thousand MILEAR eight and I don't know
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: anyway would be very bad. That includes the Taiwan area
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: and so on. And because the world doesn't have a
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: World Court to plead your case, it is always a
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: testing of each other's limits and boundaries, and that would
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: have big implications for the United States stature in the world.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: So those issues are all wrapped up together. In other words,
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: there's a lot to argue about. At the end of
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: the day, though, the most important determinant of power is
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: how we are with ourselves. I should say, you know,
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: we've got these conflicts with China, and those conflicts also
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: mean that we're having separation. Um we can get into that.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I don't want to ramble too long, but the decoupling
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: is a necessity and would be part of our environment
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: head now when we talk about decoupling. Over the past years,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: it feels like we've become much more integrated with China's economy,
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: their manufacturing prowess. I hate the phrase frenemies, but we
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: certainly have aligned our interests together in a lot of ways.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Our entire supply chain comes very much runs through China.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: How easily can these two nations decouple. It seems like
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: we're both fairly dependent on the other, of course, because
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: we lived in an environment when you have globalization and
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: you took it as an assumption, particularly the Chinese took
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: it as an assumption that they could build on the
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: American technologies and they'll be there. Chinese are more vulnerable
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: than Americans are to a technology war at the moment.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: They know that, and as a result they're initiating ways
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: um semiconductor chips and many other ways so that they
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: can become self to efficient because you know, classically in
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: a conflict, you're cut off, you're cut off from capital,
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: you're cut off from what you need, and it is devastating.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: And because it has to exist as a possibility that
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: you can have war, I mean history is shown when
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: there's a rising power challenging existing power. That's happened sixteen
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: times in the last five years. Twelve of them are
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: actually shooting wars. That possibility certainly exists, which means there
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: must be decoupling there, or said another way, there must
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: be self sufficiency so that one cannot be cut off
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: from what one needs. And that means that there's a
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: process over the next five years you're going to see
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: a lot of decoupling. It creates inefficiency for the world
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: as a whole. However, you know it's not going to
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: change the world. That those efficiencies are almost luxury by
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: comparison to the necessity of surviving. And so you will
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: see that kind of decoupling. And the real question is,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: um you know what it will look like. Two systems,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: how do they operate in parallel? Can we have harmony
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: or are we going to get something else? But it'll
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: it's happening, and it's a pressing thing on both countries
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: to make it happen fast. So you mentioned there was
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: sixteen examples of a rising power challenging the existing order.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: Give us a few dates and places. Where else have
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: we seen situation similar to the rise of China challenging
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: the United States? What's parallel? Well, I think the I
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: think the period is the most analogous period I touched on.
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: You know, that was the when interest rates at zero,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: when there was a lot of printing of money and
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: changes and so on and so forth, when the wealth
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: gap was the same as it is now and so on. Well,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: during that period, there was a depression and there was
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: the rise of Germany, and there was the rise of
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: Japan to challenge the existing world powers and sort of
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: out of necessity. And there was a lot of conflict,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: internal conflict in those cases because during such times people
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: become more extreme. The right becomes more right, the left
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: becomes more left, and they fight with each other more
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: and when they fight, um it becomes more disorderly. You know,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: in that period there were four countries that were democracies
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: that chose to have autocratic systems. You know, that was Germany, Italy, Japan,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: and Spain in terms of trying to have autocratic system
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: to bring order to disorder. And so that period was
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: very analogous, and if you go down to the particular
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: alers of Japan, it's analogous in many ways, even because
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: the geography of the place is in many ways similar.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: You know, to get oil, you know, you have to
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: go through the Straits of Malacca, and you've got to
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: you know, you bring resources from there, and you have
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: bonds and and you know, all of those things. In
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: many cases, the evolution that led up to Pearl Harbor
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: when they were cut off of resources, and the idea
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: of that been if they cut off of resources, they
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: respond those things seem very much analogous. I think, though
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: the difference this time is that we are dealing with
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: a more powerful country and Germany or Japan relative to
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: the United States. To put that in perspective, China has
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: a population that's four times the size a little bit
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: more than four times the size of the United States.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: That means if it's capital income is half the United States,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: then its size will be twice that of the United States.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: And so it's an economic power, and it gained economic
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: power by following a lot of capitalist policies to create
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: the inventiveness and allocate resources. So it's a anyway, it's analogous,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: but bigger. So we have an election coming up November three.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: The president gets elected, the new president, or I should say,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: whatever new administration comes in, and that particular president picks
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: up the phone and says, Ray, you're a China expert,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and you're an economic expert, I'm concerned that the United
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: States is slipping in terms of our world leadership. What
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: sort of advice would you give him? Well, there's internal
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: and there's external. The most important thing internally, as measured
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: by leading indicators of well being are things by what
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: is the education level of the population. What is the
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: financial condition? Are you producing more than you are consuming?
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: And do you have a balance sheet in which you
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: have more assets relative to liabilities. You've got to go.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: So you've got to get productivity going, You've got to
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: get education going, and so on. So you have to
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: have internally You've got to become internally also more aligned.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: You have to have the population rowing in the same
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: direction rather than fighting with each other, and so um
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: I would say, you know the ways of achieving those things.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: How do you achieve a bipartisan American dream and rowing
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: in the same direction? How would you achieve that? And
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: then make clear about productivity and how how you would
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: achieve that. It's a big it's a big order. But
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: if you're going to get strong, those are the things
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: you have to do into eternally to get strong and
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: protect your financial system externally. There are there's the realization
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: that we have these issues and there has to be
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: a plan, a strategic plan. And I think that both parties,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: I would say internal people who fight with each other,
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: and I wish they can visualize what civil wars have
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: been like, what fighting with each other can be like?
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: This This could be nothing by comparison with what we
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: good experience. We can't take this for granted, so if
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: we it's the issue is most importantly how we are
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: with each other, both internally and externally. Externally, I know
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: um that the Chinese leadership and I believe the American
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: leadership realize that if you slip into one of those
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: unacceptable um wars, that the ways that we've invented for
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: hurting each other are, you know, greater than ever before.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: World War two cost more lives than any other war
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: before it, and World War Three in its various ways
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: is so horrible. So one hopes that there's a fear
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: with that, and so that each would have to find
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: the way of defending the others. There's a concept called
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: the prisoners dilemma, and basically what it means is if
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: there are two people or two countries and each could
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: kill the other or they could cooperate, what should each do.
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: And the answer to that is kill the other a
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: stasis that they can because if there's some risk and
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: you don't know what they're gonna do, it's an existential risk.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: So you just get rid of the other. And so
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: the only way that you're going to be able to
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: deal with that is to go to the higher level
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: and say, how can you protect each other. The more
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: that it's done with a tip for tat and you know,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: an exchange range of hurts um, the more problem is,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: and that problem is gonna worsen over time for the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: United States position because time is on China side. It's
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: growing faster. A lot of things will mean it will
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: be more independent five years from now than it is today,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: and so on. So there has to be the thinking
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: through both domestically and internationally of how you have win
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: win relationships. And that's a lot to ask for people
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: who want to fight with each other. Fascinating stuff. Ray
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Over the three topics we've been discussing, there there's one
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: overarching theme and it's something I know you've written about
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: extensively and I find obvious and yet so widely ignored
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: by so many people. You have written the most important
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: thing for an investor to do is to confront reality
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: how it is, as opposed to wishing it is something else.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: Explain why that even has to be discussed. Isn't it
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: just a given that we all have to deal with
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: the world as it is and not how we wanted
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: to be well neurologically, I mean, we um one would
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: think that logically, but there are you know, a couple
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: of impediments. There are subliminal emotional things that enter into
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: our decision making. You know, like when an investment goes up,
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: one falls in love with it. Investors had to fall
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: in love with it rather than and think, wow, that
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: was a great investment, rather than thinking that's more expensive.
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: And so there are those kinds of things. And then
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: there's also that many of the things that have happened
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: over time have not happened in our lifetime before, even
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: though they repeat, So those lessons from history, we each
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: learned them differently. I remember my dad, Um, you know,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: he went through depression and then war and then you
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: know in the nineteen fifties, you know, he wanted to save,
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: he wanted to secure that, he didn't want to go
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: into the stock market and so on and that. But
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: there was another part of that cycle when you know,
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: booms come after depressions and wars because people don't want
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: to fight with each other and they work together. And
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: he missed out on the stock market, and then you
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: have through the full cycle that it's common knowledge you
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: know to borrow and to buy stocks, and so one
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: of these things have cycles to them, so they're understandable. Also,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: the nature of the mechanics of markets lends itself to that.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: It's a funny thing. Let's say the concept of long
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: term security produces short term volatility. What I mean is
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: the concept of duration. So let's say I give the
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: absolutely certain return for the next twenty five years, like
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: a bond or inflation index bond or whatever. That will
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: produce greater near term volatility because the duration of that
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: asset produces a volatility as the discount rate for that changes.
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: So all those things drive people to those I think
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: bad behaviors are referring to. So let's stick with the
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: concept of bad behaviors. Very low rates have sense investors scrambling,
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: and as we saw in the mid two thousands, there's
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: a tendency for them to chase yields and assume a
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: lot more risks than perhaps they should. What sort of
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: advice would you give investors who are looking for more
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: yield without having to embrace an exorbitant amount of risk.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: Right now, yield difference is to start with interest rates,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: but we could also deal with things like earnings yield
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: are very small in relation to the volatility. So if
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: you look at a bond, you get very little interest,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: right less than one percent. What depends what bonds you're getting,
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: but basically, if you have a secure bond, secure of default,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: you have no hardly any interest rate, even almost a
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: negative interest rate. And because all assets compete with each other,
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: that's true in inflation and exponse, it's true in all
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: asset classes. Some of them don't let you know what
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: the exact yield are. But because there's so much liquidity
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: chasing them and they compete, they all in the future
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: have low meal. And so those who are looking for
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: yield have to realize that price changes are more important
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: than yield. Okay, one day's price change is greater than
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: one year's yield, and so you have to go away
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: from looking for the field. And and any time there's
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: something yields more than something else, people are not just
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: giving away free money, free yield. There's always an element
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: of a risk, of the fault risk or something otherwise
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: the world would arbitrage that. And you know, you make
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: a ton of money by buying the one and selling
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: the other, and all the people try to do that,
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: it's a problem. So be careful about yield in terms
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: of those things. And that's why you have to think
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: of price changes. And then when you think of price changes,
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: I think it's important to think about the value of money.
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: We started to talk about that, and so um, with
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: interest rates being where they are and um there think
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: of that as risky. You know, most investors think the
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: safest investment is in cash because cash doesn't have as
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: much volatil city to it. But cash is going to
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: be the worst investment, particularly in this environment, because it's
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: it's attacks, it doesn't have the volatility to it. But
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: what it does is like now it's like a negative
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: two percent a year, So um, it's this non volatile
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: hidden tax. At two percent a year. You look at
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: the compounded effect of one or two or three percent
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: per year on your life and your and so on,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: and it is enormous. So cash, you can't you cash
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: no in this environment, and bonds in this environment, in
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: my opinion, are not sort of good asset classes. And
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: so get away from yield and you have to start
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: to think of what are the other store holds of wealth.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: Give us some example. I'm I'm gonna assume you're gonna
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: talk about gold or you're gonna talk about preferreds or
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: dividend yielding stocks, all of which have different degrees of volatility.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: So if you don't want to sit in cash, if
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: cash is trash, and if bonds aren't yielding much of anything,
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: where should a prudent investor put their money. Well, two things,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: I'd say. First of all, stocks has always been a beneficiary.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: So I want to be as a store hold of wealth.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Because if back to that March three evaluation, or we've
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: had one in August one and so on, Yes you
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: saw a gold, but you saw stocks, and so in
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: other words, things real things, income streams, and so they
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: don't have to be those the most stable. They can
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: have growth to them. I just want to be clear.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: Multiples go up and so on. And then there are
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: the assets that you refer to. But balance is the
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: most important thing. So you don't want cash, I think,
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: I don't think you want bonds, and I do think
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: that you want alternative storels of wealth, but diversified well, so,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: and when I say diversification, I mean diversification not just
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: of stocks and stock sectors. But yes, I want some stocks.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: Um so diversification of asset classes, diversification of currencies, and
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: diversification of countries in order to achieve balance. If you
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: balance well, you don't give up any return in order
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: to reduce your risk, because all assets compete with each
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: other and so on. So I think that my own
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: view would be I don't want cash, I don't want
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: much in the way of bonds. I want a diversified
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: portfolio of assets that tend to diverse each other, first
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: by each other. Those are the ones we mentioned, and
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: I want them in other countries. And do pay attention
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: to the currency, because there is a currency risk. We
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: have gotten used to looking at everything through the lens
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: of our currency. So when we say the dollar, you know,
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: how how are you doing, and you say, well, the
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: stock market, I'm doing great. The market is you know,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: my portfolio is increased by ten percent this year because
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: you're measuring it in a currency, and those currencies that
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: depreciate the most often have than not that price rise.
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: But you can lose money in buying power because you're
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: not you're viewing it through that lens. It's a little
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: bit like being in in a boat in the water
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: that's going up and down. And you look at land
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: and you think land is volatile, the asset classes that
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: you're looking at through that lens is something. So you
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: need currency diversification too. Well, let's stick with that concept, because, um,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: the old weather portfolio, which which has a pretty successful
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: track record, has a lot of exposure to fix thing.
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: Come if you were creating that from scratch in how
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: might that look different than it has historically? Well, it's
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: fixed income exposure has declined a lot as interest rates
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: approach zero because of the mechanics of what zero interest
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: rates means. So maybe it's worth touching on that. When
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: you get interest rates low enough, not only don't they
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: provided a return, but they don't provide a diversification benefit
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: because there's a limitation of how much interest rates can
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: go down, which means a limitation of how much those
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: assets can rise in price. And so the way that's
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: a problem for the central banks too. I mentioned that
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: there's monetary policy one, two, and three. Monetary policy one,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: you can't cut the interest rates, and so historically then
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: what you get is the printing of money, buying of
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: financial assets, buying of government assets, and so on. The
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: reflationary type of policies that we have here, and so
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: if you're seeking diversification when interest rates are close to zero,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: bond yields are close to zero, you won't get it
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: in bonds. The diversification and the way monetary policy works
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: to produce an easing is to have reflation assets, such
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: as that which happened on April ninth when they did
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: fiscal and monetary policy moves. So let's talk a little
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: bit about gold, which has seen a pretty good run
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: over the past decade, although certainly not as strong as
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: as stocks have seen. What are your thoughts about heart
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: assets like gold and how important is it to either
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: all whether or risk parity approaches to asset allocation. Think
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: of gold as an alternative cash next to a dollar
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: and the euro and twice as much as the Japanese
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: yend is gold in central bank reserves, and it used
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: to be the world's money, and it is viewed as money,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: which and there are reasons it is. It's there's a
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: limited supply of it, it's storable, it's transferable, and it's
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: universally accepted as a medium of exchange and a storehold
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: of wealth pretty much. But like cash, it's not a
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: good returning asset it normally over time, very different in
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: debt cycles. In the early part of a debt cycle,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: when there's not much debt and you get a higher
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: interest rate by holding cash or cash deposits, it pays
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: to own cash instead of gold. But what happens in
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the debt cycle is that basically debts rise relative to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: the amount of money there is. Money used to be
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: gold up until and then there's the claim, and so
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: late in a debt cycle you get to have hardly
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: any interest rate, so you don't get much of an
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: interest rate benefit of opening cash relative to gold. They
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: both the yields are are not much, and you're getting
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the production of the other kind of money relative to that,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: and that's why you see the movement in that direction.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: You also see as real interest rates decline, which central
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: banks have to do by increasing the supply of money.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: That causes the real interest rate, causes the goal to
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: go up because gold think of gold as being something
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: that's steady, and so if if you're taking the present
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: value of money now in the future, and the discount
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: rate for that, the interest rate that you're discounting goes down,
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: the real interest rate it goes up. In value. So
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: gold historically has been an effect of diversifier at certain
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: times in history when there's kind of that breakdown of
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: the monetary system, um, when you have you know, the
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: excessive printing of money and so on. So it is
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: a think of it that way, and it is, and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: it's an effect of diversifier. UM. So I would say
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: instructuring a portfolio, there's it's important to have a piece
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: into gold that doesn't have a big, big piece. But
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I think almost everybody is pretty much underweighted
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: to that. Whether that's ten or fift or something I
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: don't I don't know, but so that's part of it.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: But there are other storeholds of wealth. Again, I would
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: want to sort of break them into you know, are
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: they liquid, can you transact? Can you move them? As
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: distinct from some other assets, Let's say like real estate,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: which is very much situational and and and not very liquid.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: You know, you could change the picture of you have
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know, commercial or residential real estate in a
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: location New York, San Francisco and or X y Z London,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: and the circumstances can change. It's not as effective as um.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: You know, as a form of storehold of wealth. Liquidity
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: and diversification and rebalancing are very important. So let me
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: ask you a question that I have no idea what
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: your answer is going to be, although you just mentioned liquidly,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: so maybe that's a factor. What are your thoughts about
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies like bitcoin? I think that at the end of
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: the day, we hasn't They have a number of problems,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: but so three big problems. First is as an alternative
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: currency of purpose of the currency is a medium of
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: exchange and a store hold of wealth. And number three
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: is it has to them in order to be viable
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: not objectionable to the government. Uh, those are the three problems.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: You can't go easily transact with a lot of things
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: with cryptocurrency. Can't go in and put the cryptocurrency on
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: my credit card and buy in the same way as
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: a store hold of wealth, it has enough. It has
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: its own volatility. To that lie Bro was going to
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: be something that would have been more viable in other words,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: of stable value alternative. But as a store hold of wealth,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: if it has a volatility, because it has so much speculation,
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: it's tough to say I want that as my store
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: hold of wealth. So it has a little bit of
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: a chicken and egg problem. And then at the end
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: of the day, governments are if it had any viability
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: or going to object to it, and in one way
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: or another will make it. You'll have to be a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: criminal to use it. In other words, they will outlaw it.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: They'll simply say they'll outlaw it, and then you have
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: real problems with it. I don't think, and central banks
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: don't use it in the same way. That doesn't mean
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: digital currencies. In other words, China will have a digital
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: rem embee or lawn at Europe will and we will
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: have digital currencies, but they're controlled by central banks. They're
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: not an alternative storreld of wealth that the governments will tolerate.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: And history shown that. You know, why did they outlaw
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: gold around the world and you know in the United
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: States and so on, because they don't want those alternative
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: currencies and digitally, so the medium of exchange, even between
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: central banks is not going to be digital. Quite interesting.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: Let me change this up on you. I know you've
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: been practicing meditation for a long time. How does that
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: factor into your decision making process? Does it have any
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: impact on the way you actually allocate capital? Analyze companies
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: think about the world. Meditation has given me and it
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: gives other people and equanimity what it means. What I
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: mean is I feel that I can look at things
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: in a less emotional way. I can accept realities as
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: as what they are. Basically. Mechanically, what happens is you
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: you go from your conscious brain to your subconscious brain.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: You repeat a mantra and now work. It's a word,
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: that's a sound basically, and it therefore cleans your mind
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: of thoughts. And then when you repeat that sound, it
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: eventually disappear and you're in a subconscious state pretty much,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: and that's very peaceful, but you're not conscious and you're
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: not unconscious. You're in your subconscious mind. That helps to
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: connect the subconscious and the conscious mind. And it also
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: helps to people to become more creative because a lot
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: of creativity comes from the subconscious and it allows me
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: and other people who do it to sort of do
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: things with a calmness, accepting the world as it is
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: and thinking the world is a puzzle and you have
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: to solve it. So meditation, uh, you know, has helped
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: me in those ways. And you've been you've been practicing
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: this for quite a while haven't you since nine that's
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: quite amazing. So I have to ask you about what's
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: going on with this election depending on the outcome, is
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: there anything that might happen that would force you to
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: rethink your views on the economy or how you would
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: allocate assets or is it really just a temporary blip
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: and things continue on afterwards. No, I think it's very important.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: Um Let's say, if I was to take both parties
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: will have um large deficits and and monetization. Both parties
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: will have an aggressive China policy, I think, but one
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: party will be more capitalist and say favor asset holders
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: and so on, than one will be more um left
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: and favor the redistribution. That doesn't mean let's say if
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: you have a Biden election and you look at the
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: particular policies, I think it would look more like the
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: Roosevelt years in that you will have larger deficits, probably
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: larger spending, larger stimulation and the like, but you will
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: have more of a monetization of that, and that will
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: be quote the stimulation for the policy. But at the
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: same time, you're going to have the rise of tax rates,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: in particularly eliminating the tax changes the corporate tax changes,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: changing capital gains rates and so on, and those those
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: rate changes will have an impact, and you'll have specific
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: policies that will stimulate certain areas of the economy, like
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: the green policies. You know, it's roughly targeted to nearly
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: two trillion dollars. Anyway, we don't know how much will
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: come of it exactly, but that will be a very
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: big area. I think you'll see more infrastructure and so on,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: and so you'll see particular areas of the economy benefit
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: and other areas of the economy are not benefit. And
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: and so there's you know, you get into the which
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: sectors and all of that would would benefit on you know,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: and how much of the discounting thales will have implications.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: I think the most important issue will be whether the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: country can be brought together. And I'm worried that capitalists
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: know how to increase the size of the pie. They
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: understand the profit system, they understand productivity and so on,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: but they don't know how to divide the pie that well.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: And socialists or those that are more of the left,
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: have a problem for using as much the increase in productivity.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: And so if you know, my my hope My dream
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: would be that you have and all encompassing that brings
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: together smart people who understand the mechanics of economics, UM
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: and policy and UM and but represent different points of view.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: It can be brought together to get us to be
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: productive and do the right things, whether they're education and
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: be productive and all of those things and move in
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: the right direction. And I think whether that happens or
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: not will be of paramount importance. It's a difficult um
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: situation to be because of where we are in the cycle.
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: In other words, every day is not a brand new day.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: So we whoever inherit the presidency, whatever party, whatever president,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: will inherit an income statement and a balance sheet that
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: is what it is today, and will inherit certain circumstances,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: and that's going to be tough. So the real question
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: is how we're going to be with each other, I think,
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: and that's the most paramount important question. I think you
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: mentioned the Green Deal that the Biden camp has been
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: talking about. I know that you've been very interested in oceans,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: and your Blue Ocean project has been very successful. So
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: let's use that as an excuse to dive into your
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: philanthropic works. Tell us a little bit about what you've
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: been doing in Connecticut with schools and buying computers for kids,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: and what you've been doing in terms of the Dahio
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Center for Health Justice. You know, I'm very lucky also
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: to have a wife who who shares my concerns, and
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: she really were We live in a state which is
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: the highest per capita income, has the greatest gap in incomes,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: and owes a lot of money. So it's a it's
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: a terrible thing and that we feel like, you know,
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: as our community and we see see those things and
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: so it's you know, it's bad and basic. So COVID
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: highlights this, but the difference in education. So we encountered
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: the fact that um, sixty kids in the state of
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: Connecticut didn't have any computers. Well normally you should have it,
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: and they don't have connectivity. I'm not having computers. Not
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: having connectivity is you know, it's not it's like not
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: having toilets and not having running water in your house today. Um.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: And when we had education as an issue, you know,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: what what are you going to do just just not
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: educate the kids? And the state didn't have the money
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: and um so anyway, we uh, we bought you know,
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: sixty computers, and we're trying to deal with you know,
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: the connectivity and partnership with the locals. We the people
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: on the ground really like the teachers. We have the
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: utmost respect for are the teachers who are in these positions.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: They know the best and we and my wife particularly
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: works with them, and so we try to help in
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: those ways. And and you know, other ways. We're bringing
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: micro finance to here, to the state, and we're doing
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: other things to try to help in our small ways.
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: We're still you know, dropping the bucket related to that.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: And then you're asking about the health. So education is
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: a fundamental right and so on, and I feel with
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: my wife and I feel very blessed and so we
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: feel um that that's something we want to do. Education.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: And then this health justice thing, yes, we've created with
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: New York Presbyterian. We initiated Health Justice Center because there's
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: such a big difference in poverty rates, you know, particularly
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: among black and brown communities. I mean, it's just so
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: difficult the poverty, the a number of people together in
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: the places, the rates of contracting, COVID, all of these things,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: and even attention to how the bodies work differently and
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: all of that has been neglected, and I think it
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: must be. It must be very difficult to be in
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: those circumstances and not receiving it any health So we um,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: you know, we just made a donation of fifty million
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: dollar donation to set up that Center for Health Justice.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: You know, we're lucky philanthropically that you know, we have
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: those resources and we have a certain perspective because you know,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: we've come from not having much to having a lot,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: and we see these things. So anyway, that's what we're
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: lucky enough to do. And I know you've done a
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: couple of projects on the oceans with Mike Bloomberg, and
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: you've done a number of projects. And I do recall
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: reading you say something about the giving pledge. Am I
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: am I recalling that correctly. Yeah, my wife and I
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: decided to give away more than we're going to get
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: away a lot of most of our network and then
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 1: Bill Gates asked me about that, and we were delighted
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: to do it. We we learned from each other. Uh
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: doesn't change the amount of money that we would donate,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: but we I learned a lot and we learn a
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: lot through that process. And yes, you know you touched
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: on ocean exploration, which is also a sort of a
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: passion which I could get into. But we we do
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: a number of things micro finance. We make it a
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: family activity. Um, so we have four sons and daughters
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: in law and so on, and so we view the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: philanthropy as pursuing each other's philanthropic passions and that's how
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: we do it. Sounds interesting, So I know I only
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: have you for a few minutes more. Let me jump
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: to our speed rounds, our favorite questions we ask all
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: our guests, and um, let's plow right through these. So
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: everybody under lockdown these days is streaming a lot out
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: of media. Tell us what you're either watching or listening
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: to these days. Well, by and large, I'm so um
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: targeted to try to learn about the things that I want.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: And I'm very lucky to be able to speak to
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: almost speak with almost anybody that I can speak with,
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: and so, um, it's not general media that I'm doing,
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: it's it's what I do or podcasts and so and
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: although there's so many fabulous ones that I'm that I
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: feel I'm missing out on. But if I can get
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: the person and I can ask them questions and do
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: the research. That's what I've been doing a lot of it.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: And because I can do it so easily, I can
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: go from one to the other and anywhere in the world. Um,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: I've been like a kid in a candy store doing that. Well,
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: everybody is stuck home, just waiting for the call from Ray.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: That's that's pretty funny. Tell us about tell us about
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: your early your early mentors who helped shape your career. Well,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: you know they were they were mostly um, just like
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: individuals who cared about me. UM. I remember I started
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: um don stock. I caddied and I was at a
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: twelve I bought my first stock and I would walk
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: around UM and this nice man UM who was a
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: specialist on the New York Stock Exchange floor, was just
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: a great guy and talked and we talked about markets
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: and things. UM and his kindness and his insights and
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: so on helped to get me, you know, hooked on
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: the game. And so he had a fit and a fact.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: You know, I remember, you know a teacher of mine,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: a particular teacher, UM I remember. And then as I
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: got older, let's say Paul Boker, Um I UM not
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: since before vente when was the breakdown? Of Monetary System
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: UM nine seventy seventy one. I first got exposure to
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: Paul Boker, and then over a period of time I
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: was lucky enough to get to know him and have
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: him become a good friend of mine. And uh, he
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: was definitely UM a role model. And I think role
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: models and heroes. UM. I think we're in an environment,
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: by the way I'm digressing a little bit UM, in
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: which where there's so much criticism it's fashionable to criticize
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: and bring down, and we don't have any agreed upon heroes.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: But he was. He was a hero of mine. UM.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: And then UM, and then there was there was a
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: from my son's there was a scout master and well, anyway,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: I can go on and on UM. Of those different people.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: The personal in my life had the biggest effect. But also,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: you know, seeing what heroic characters were had an effect
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: on my life. And then I would say for markets
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: it was don start quite fascinating. I know you're a
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: big reader. Tell us what you're reading these days, and
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: give us some of your all time favorite books. I
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: don't read as much as I hunt in books. In
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: other words, I'm like I'm going after something and so
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: I have many books that I then drill into, but
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: I do it in a certain way where I can
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: almost get to the part of the book that is
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: the part that I need to understand. And so for
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: the last year and a half, I wanted to study,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: um the rises and declines of reserve currencies then, which
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: led me to the rises and declines of empires, and
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: and that led me to study, you know, a whole
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: bunch of books and then speak to the people, Paul
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: Kennedy's Rising of the Empires. I mean, I can go
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: on and you know, on list those, um. If you're
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: asking for good books, I would say three good books
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: that I recommend as um Lessons from History by will
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and Ariel Durrant, which is like a hundred and four
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: page book, I think, and it's a summary of these
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: great historians who um wrote five thousand pages on something
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: like five thousand years of history and sort of distilled
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: the themes down to that. I would say, Uh, Paul
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: Kennedy's Book of Rising client Great Empires or Great Powers
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: is a great book. I would say on evolution, I
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: think evolution is very interesting in it so it's humanity
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: and how uh and goes beyond humanity to all the species.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: I would say I really liked Richard Dawkins A River
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: from Eden. My son gave me um Joseph Campbell's Hero
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: of a Thousand Faces, which I think is just you know,
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: it's an arc life arc and very very practical, very interesting.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: These are the books I suppose. I think some good
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: books that are just recently came out. Uh. Read Hastings
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: and I believe about organizational culture. Read Hastings, Netflix founder
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: and running of Netflix, and we believe in certain culture
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: things in our organizations. He wrote a good book. H R.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: McMaster's book that just came out is a very good one.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: Richard Hans just came out with who Authory. I can't
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: remember the exact names, but it was the history of
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: the world or something that gave a good overview. Those
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: are a bunch that I all think are are good
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: that'll key people busy for a couple of days. If
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: a high schooler or a recent college graduate asked you
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: for advice about beginning a career in the world of finance,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: what would you tell them You couldn't have picked a
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: better area to do it. Markets. I love I love
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: markets because particularly global macro because you cover almost everything
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: in the world and you can bet on it and
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: test how good you are, and you could go short
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: or along and and so it's great exposures you to
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: the world. But I would say, you know, play the game,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: and that you don't know what you're doing, So be humble,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: get beat up, and learn your lessons. What you will learn,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: I think is that what you don't know and how
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: you deal with not knowing is even more important than
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: anything you know. So the power of diversification, the ability
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: to gain humility, it'll teach you humility, and it will
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: teach you open mindedness, and if you're curious, it'll be
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: it'll be great, and it will give you a measurement
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: you know of every day of how you're doing. That's
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: an objective measurement that's terrific. And if you get good
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: at it, um you know, it's one of those careers
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: that's rewarding. I mean, I did it because I love
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: to play the game, and I just happen to be
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: lucky that it made money. I didn't, you know, I
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: could have been something an architect or something else and
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: wouldn't have been the same. So it's got those benefits,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: but it it's a lifelong journey and it's it's expect
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: the ride. Learn your humility. I have an expression, pain
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: plus reflection equals progress. And how you make your mistakes
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: and how you learn from those mistakes, how you learn
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: how reality works, and how to deal with reality, and
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: to then write down your principles that you learn and
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: learn and build on them. That that's, you know, it's
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 1: a great path, really good answer. And our final question,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: what do you know about the world of investing today
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: that you wish you knew forty years ago or so
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: when you were really ramping up. Well, what I learned
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: over and over again is that, you know, let's say
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: forty years ago, I thought I I just learned from
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: my experiences, and I was arrogant enough to think I'm
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: going to go in there and just pick the things.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: And what I learned along the way was how to systemize,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: how to convert look back in time and the same
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: thing happens over and over. To look at reality as
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: a machine, to understand how the machine works, and then
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: to convert that learning into algorithms so that it works
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: in parallel with my brain. Because my brain is limited
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: in its capacity to juggle a lot of things and um,
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: and then you know, to keep learning that humility and
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: finding out, you know, what's the next new thing that's
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: going to happen that I might have missed. I missed
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: the pandemic. The pandemic took me by surprise. I figured
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: I didn't have an edge on the pandemic, and that
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: was stupid, because you know, you read history and you
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: see that these acts of nature could be pandemic, could
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: be endwat diseases and so on of had big impacts
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: and so um, you know, I guess I learned that
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: I you know, what's going to hit me in the
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: head to worry about that, and so um, I wish
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: you know. And that's something I think I've learned, and
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: the markets will teach that new young investor um that
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: pretty quickly. So I learned it then, and I wish
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: I knew more about the things like I wish I
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: knew more about pandemics before uh this year. But anyway,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: that's kind of my answer. Thanks Ray for being so
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: generous with your time. We have been speaking with A. Dahio,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: the founder, chairman and co c i O of Bridgewater Associates.
• 1:27:05
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