Latest / Financial Survival Network / Trump 2.0: Reloaded and Powered Up - Lord Conrad Black #6292

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Trump 2.0: Reloaded and Powered Up - Lord Conrad Black #6292 · Financial Survival Network

0:00
Speaker 1: And it's a bit confusing. So his opponents claim it's chaos,
0:03
Speaker 1: but it isn't. I mean, he's closed the border, he's
0:07
Speaker 1: got the Twerff discussions going, and so far, so good
0:10
Speaker 1: in terms of economic growth and inflation. And you know
0:15
Speaker 1: he's doing the necessary that he can to reduce crime.
0:19
Speaker 1: He's got NATO now scrambling out way beyond what their
0:24
Speaker 1: previous target was on military expenses.
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Speaker 2: You're listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network, where you
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Speaker 2: get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else to
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Speaker 2: thrive in today's trying times. You need the Financial Survival
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Speaker 2: Network now more than ever.
0:54
Speaker 3: And welcome you are listening to and watching the Financial
0:58
Speaker 3: Survival Network. Special guest today been on the show before.
1:03
Speaker 3: One of the great minds of our time. You may
1:07
Speaker 3: or may not be familiar with them, Lord Conrad Black, author.
1:12
Speaker 3: He's written more books than I can keep track of.
1:15
Speaker 3: He's got a new one out, The Political and Strategic
1:18
Speaker 3: History of the World, Volume two. From Caesar's to the
1:22
Speaker 3: Peace of Westphalia and Louis the fourteenth, and wow, it
1:27
Speaker 3: just came out earlier in the month, last month, May sixth,
1:33
Speaker 3: And well, Lord Black, it's great to have you back on.
1:36
Speaker 3: I want to talk about the book, but first your
1:39
Speaker 3: assessment of Trump two point zero or as I would
1:42
Speaker 3: call it Trump GPT.
1:45
Speaker 1: But what did GPT said as in chat GPT AI.
1:50
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, you know you're getting a bit technical. Look,
1:55
Speaker 1: I think he's off. He shows every sign of having
1:58
Speaker 1: an extremely successful cham I would say, I mean he's
2:01
Speaker 1: attacked on all the fronts at once. He knows he's
2:03
Speaker 1: only got one turn, but he doesn't have.
2:06
Speaker 4: The baggage of a Laine duct because you know, he
2:12
Speaker 4: can elect a vice president or every once after him,
2:15
Speaker 4: or at least put them forward as a candidate.
2:17
Speaker 1: And it's a bit confusing. So his opponents claim it's chaos,
2:21
Speaker 1: but it isn't. I mean, he's closed the border, he's
2:24
Speaker 1: got the Tower of discussions going, and so far, so
2:28
Speaker 1: good in terms of economic growth and inflation, and you know,
2:32
Speaker 1: he's doing the necessary that he can to reduce crime.
2:37
Speaker 1: He's got NATO now scrambling out way beyond what their
2:41
Speaker 1: previous target was on military expenses. He started out seven
2:47
Speaker 1: years ago, complaining that they weren't with a few exceptions,
2:51
Speaker 1: spending the two percent they pledged, and they're now all
2:55
Speaker 1: claiming they're going to three and a half percent. And
2:59
Speaker 1: he's there was not a word spoken by any serious
3:02
Speaker 1: person about peace in the Ukraine until he came, and
3:06
Speaker 1: now they haven't got it yet, at least it's under discussion.
3:10
Speaker 1: And you know, he's doing everything the president can to
3:15
Speaker 1: tear down woke, stop all the you know, the d
3:20
Speaker 1: inclusive with nonsense. I mean, let's have meritocracy. Let's just
3:25
Speaker 1: have the best people for every position. What their skin color,
3:29
Speaker 1: religion is. Nobody cares about that. It's just who knew
3:32
Speaker 1: are the best people for that position. And you know,
3:36
Speaker 1: it's all sensible. And he's he's starting to try and
3:40
Speaker 1: shape up education, abolishing the department and putting it in
3:44
Speaker 1: the States and in effect encouraging non union schools. And
3:49
Speaker 1: I mean, he's just doing everything he said. He's doing
3:52
Speaker 1: it all at once. And I assume that the big
3:56
Speaker 1: bill is going to pass in a few weeks and
4:00
Speaker 1: that'll be a that'll be a tremendous achievement, because if
4:04
Speaker 1: you read it, it's it's an extraordinarily comprehensive law. I mean,
4:08
Speaker 1: just read the headings of it. It touches all the
4:11
Speaker 1: policy areas he promised them. So I look at so far,
4:16
Speaker 1: it's looking very good.
4:18
Speaker 3: So the deep state, you've been a victim of the
4:22
Speaker 3: deep state yourself. We didn't call it that back then,
4:26
Speaker 3: but clearly that was it. And with Doge, which I
4:31
Speaker 3: believe Doge, even though a musk is gone, Doge is
4:34
Speaker 3: now embedded in the government and it's an AI venture
4:38
Speaker 3: to monitor all operations of the government, including the Pentagon. Eventually,
4:45
Speaker 3: were you at all surprised at the type of things
4:48
Speaker 3: we were spending money on in us AI d which
4:53
Speaker 3: which I've known it was.
4:54
Speaker 1: Ready to fear the words, So it didn't surprise me
4:56
Speaker 1: that much. But in a way I I used to
5:00
Speaker 1: be confirmed. I mean some of it, some of it
5:03
Speaker 1: was probably caricatured a bit unfairly, but some of it
5:06
Speaker 1: was obviously just you know, it's just it was what
5:11
Speaker 1: are you you know? It was throwing money out of
5:14
Speaker 1: the window. It was nonsense. Yeah, well, look in a
5:18
Speaker 1: budget of trillions of dollars for a country of a
5:21
Speaker 1: third of a billion, you're going to get a lot
5:23
Speaker 1: of waste money. But even at that it was a
5:26
Speaker 1: very interesting revelation. Now, they tried for a time to
5:30
Speaker 1: say that Mosque was running the country, Trump was poppaitive Moss.
5:34
Speaker 1: You remember all this, they try everything, it's all none
5:37
Speaker 1: of it is ever true. So you know they're they're
5:40
Speaker 1: they're like the child trying wolf and there's no wolf.
5:43
Speaker 1: R in the public's a bit tired of it.
5:46
Speaker 5: Yeah, well I was.
5:48
Speaker 3: I was impressed by the spending and the subsidization of
5:53
Speaker 3: of media and he was getting money.
5:56
Speaker 1: Politteral then do you see which is NANTA American Network? Yeah,
6:01
Speaker 1: I mean some of the programming is good, but they're used. Honest,
6:05
Speaker 1: it's as bad as you know your network.
6:07
Speaker 5: BBC was getting money.
6:09
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'm going to company owned by the British government.
6:12
Speaker 1: I mean, what guess the United States paying a British
6:15
Speaker 1: government crime corporation for it's madness.
6:19
Speaker 3: But and all of these fringe I think I can't remember.
6:24
Speaker 3: There was one conservative guy who supposedly can Oh Crystal.
6:31
Speaker 3: He's got tens of millions of dollars from it as well.
6:36
Speaker 3: They were an equal opportunity, but it turned into this
6:39
Speaker 3: huge grift, and what it really demonstrated was that the
6:43
Speaker 3: US government is one big grift.
6:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, was that Bill Crystal getting tens of Bill Crystal
6:50
Speaker 1: Yeah for Bold Rossia magazine, which is a hysterically anti
6:54
Speaker 1: Trump magazine.
6:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh really anti. Well, I guess that's all you
6:58
Speaker 3: needed to show. But he was getting his foundation millions
7:04
Speaker 3: of dollars from USAID and USAID has always been a
7:10
Speaker 3: sketchy organization, very fine line between it the State Department
7:15
Speaker 3: and the CIA, and they kind of did the soft
7:19
Speaker 3: power thing. But it's been exposed. Hopefully most of it
7:26
Speaker 3: will be eliminated. You know, Congress doesn't really want to
7:30
Speaker 3: like cut spending, though they don't really want to get
7:33
Speaker 3: rid of all these programs. Is Trump's force of personality
7:38
Speaker 3: and his determination is that enough to get rid of
7:41
Speaker 3: this useless spending.
7:42
Speaker 1: He's awfully good at It reminds me of when Reagan
7:45
Speaker 1: was pushing his tax cuts. He would wait until waivering
7:51
Speaker 1: congressmen were in their districts on radio Phonian shows, and
7:54
Speaker 1: then he would phone in his staff would range all this.
7:57
Speaker 1: All of a sudden he comes on the line and says, Congressman,
8:01
Speaker 1: now that you're speaking to your constituents, do you favor
8:03
Speaker 1: cutting their taxes or not and a stuff like that.
8:06
Speaker 1: I mean, he knew how to put the eat on
8:08
Speaker 1: them and he got to step through. But look, people
8:11
Speaker 1: didn't Reagan's opponents didn't hate and they claimed he was
8:16
Speaker 1: dulled and a movie actor, but electable person. Here, you've
8:19
Speaker 1: got something different. You've got an irrational dislike Trump in
8:23
Speaker 1: some areas. But the answer, in a word, I think
8:28
Speaker 1: is yes, you would be better placed being in the
8:31
Speaker 1: country than I am to judge it. But my impression
8:35
Speaker 1: is the country now feels Trump has proved his point.
8:39
Speaker 1: They stole his election, They've showered him with these spurious indictments.
8:46
Speaker 1: In the end, there were attempts to assassinate and presumably
8:49
Speaker 1: not directly connected doing his political opponents, but it's somewhat
8:54
Speaker 1: encouraged by them, by some of the outrageous things they
8:56
Speaker 1: said about him. He came through it all with dignity,
9:00
Speaker 1: with better humor. He's much more good humored and less
9:05
Speaker 1: bombastic than he was in his first term. And I
9:08
Speaker 1: think the country, the majority, feels he's earned his chance.
9:12
Speaker 1: He won fair and square.
9:14
Speaker 5: He has a man.
9:15
Speaker 1: They'd let him, let him, let him do what he
9:17
Speaker 1: said he did, see how it works, So I think, yeah,
9:20
Speaker 1: I think he's going to get I think he's going
9:22
Speaker 1: to get most of it true, and I think he'll
9:24
Speaker 1: probably succeed. It's early to say, of course, but in
9:28
Speaker 1: in being succeeded by the candidate he approved. Yeah, well,
9:35
Speaker 1: pretty pretty remarkable.
9:37
Speaker 3: The first person since Grover Cleveland to serve non consecutive terms.
9:43
Speaker 3: That in itself, and there's a lot of striking parallels
9:49
Speaker 3: between him and Grover Cleveland.
9:51
Speaker 1: He's a much more activist man than Cleveland. Cleveland was
9:55
Speaker 1: a popular mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York.
9:58
Speaker 1: I mean, Trump is the first person in the history
10:01
Speaker 1: of the office of president to be elected to it
10:04
Speaker 1: without ever having previously sought an elective officer held a
10:08
Speaker 1: high military command. He turned celebrity into the president's and
10:14
Speaker 1: it was an amazing thing. That's why everyone thought it
10:17
Speaker 1: was a joke and he came down the escalator, but
10:19
Speaker 1: it wasn't a joke.
10:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty remarkable that he actually pulled it off,
10:26
Speaker 3: that he was able to do it. I mean, like
10:30
Speaker 3: you say, with a zero political experience, but a lot
10:34
Speaker 3: of experience with politicians.
10:38
Speaker 5: And the public.
10:39
Speaker 1: I mean, he knew the public and he look he
10:42
Speaker 1: was like an African lion chasing wilde beast. You know,
10:48
Speaker 1: he sort of singled it out and then but after it,
10:50
Speaker 1: but he changed parties seven times and thirteen years. He
10:53
Speaker 1: was looking for his chance, you know, and then he
10:56
Speaker 1: got it. And then not only I mean it's two
10:59
Speaker 1: great innovations I think were translating celebrity into the highest office.
11:05
Speaker 1: And I mean you sometimes had had people who were
11:09
Speaker 1: celebrities becoming governance or something, but not present. And secondly,
11:14
Speaker 1: once he was there, he used sort of Dwight Eisenhower,
11:18
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon, Ronald Brigg and Republican capitalism and fastened it
11:23
Speaker 1: right on top of disadvantage districts and using the tax
11:28
Speaker 1: system incentive by his job creation in those districts, and
11:32
Speaker 1: ate heavily into these democratic chiefdoms, these voting blocks, and
11:35
Speaker 1: that it was relied upon since Roosevelt, like.
11:38
Speaker 3: Like the Teamsters, I mean, they didn't support him, but
11:43
Speaker 3: they didn't endorse Harris either, because they would they know
11:48
Speaker 3: they would have had a revolution among all the rank and.
11:50
Speaker 1: File supported and it's just the executive had to be neutraent.
11:54
Speaker 5: Yeah, they couldn't do it.
11:55
Speaker 3: So uh looking ahead, So the tariff's been highly controversial,
12:00
Speaker 3: it's going to throw the country into a depression, and
12:04
Speaker 3: this and that.
12:06
Speaker 5: And what's really happening here.
12:10
Speaker 1: Well, look, the US couldn't go on with a trade
12:14
Speaker 1: deficit of over a trillion dollars. And essentially that started
12:18
Speaker 1: not at that scale, but the idea of a trade
12:20
Speaker 1: deficit started during the Cold War, when the United States
12:26
Speaker 1: gave greater access than it normally would to a number
12:30
Speaker 1: of countries as an incentive to them not to waffle
12:34
Speaker 1: into the Communist block in the Soviet Block. It was
12:38
Speaker 1: a legitimate thing to do during the Cold War. But
12:41
Speaker 1: you know, the Cold War ended suddenly and very satisfactorily,
12:44
Speaker 1: but a lot of these things that needn't have continue
12:48
Speaker 1: you did continue. And that just grew and grew, and
12:51
Speaker 1: we were all, all of us in the West were
12:53
Speaker 1: hosed out of our underclothing by the Chinese. We all
12:56
Speaker 1: bought into this line. We just treated the nicely. They'd
12:59
Speaker 1: be one of my y you know. Now, Look, it's
13:01
Speaker 1: not like Nazi German area in the Soviet Union. It's
13:04
Speaker 1: not that evil a regime. But they know Chinese aren't
13:09
Speaker 1: threatening to go to war with us, but they but
13:12
Speaker 1: on the other hand, they were they were picking their
13:14
Speaker 1: pockets and it's got to stop down there. So you know,
13:18
Speaker 1: there's no reason for the United States to have a
13:21
Speaker 1: trade deficit of that size. And it was just a
13:25
Speaker 1: strictly commercial version of NATO free loading on America's back.
13:30
Speaker 1: I mean, NATO most of it got the brilliant idea
13:34
Speaker 1: that the United States was like a great Saint Bernard dog,
13:37
Speaker 1: you know, that it would do the work and take
13:40
Speaker 1: the risks, and the Europeans and Canadians would hold the
13:43
Speaker 1: leash and give the orders. Well, that's not how alliance work,
13:46
Speaker 1: you know. So you know Trump is disabused of that.
13:49
Speaker 1: But what the critics didn't see is that trade is
13:54
Speaker 1: only I think twenty one percent of American GDP, so
13:58
Speaker 1: exports are less than half of that. And you know
14:03
Speaker 1: that's that's a manageable amount of money to take a
14:07
Speaker 1: partial hit on. And the foreigners basically they're eating the
14:12
Speaker 1: tariffs and replying with higher tariffs themselves. Well that they can't.
14:18
Speaker 1: You know, that's that's not a defense that's going to
14:20
Speaker 1: work for it. In the end, you'll get everything produced
14:23
Speaker 1: in the US except a few raw materials that they
14:25
Speaker 1: don't have. And and so you know, one hundred and
14:29
Speaker 1: thirty or so countries are lined up to make deals.
14:32
Speaker 1: Not one of them think they're going to get a
14:34
Speaker 1: better deal in the one they had, you know, two
14:37
Speaker 1: months ago. So you know obviously it's going to be
14:40
Speaker 1: a gain for you. So we talk about the trade deals.
14:44
Speaker 1: By the way, on that, I must say, one thing
14:46
Speaker 1: I objected to is he never should have treated Canada
14:48
Speaker 1: the way he doesn't have. And I told him this
14:51
Speaker 1: person he doesn't have a legitimate grievance of hindon.
14:54
Speaker 3: No, because outside of energy, we run a surplus.
14:58
Speaker 5: With that's right.
14:59
Speaker 1: In the end, you take a lot of it, you
15:01
Speaker 1: resell at a higher price you'd get it from a
15:03
Speaker 1: statue price. And you know we're a fair trading country.
15:07
Speaker 1: I mean, you do have a very big grievance with Mexico,
15:09
Speaker 1: but Tenna is a fair trading country.
15:11
Speaker 3: Well, I think as the personal animosity towards your former
15:17
Speaker 3: minister and current, because I.
15:20
Speaker 1: Don't think he mins the present guy from when he's
15:22
Speaker 1: told me. I have my debts about him, but the
15:27
Speaker 1: current has been very careful with the Trump I think personally, yeah,
15:31
Speaker 1: they're together at west now. But is g said and well, it.
15:35
Speaker 3: Was like a big fire hose and you guys were there,
15:38
Speaker 3: so you'd hit by it. But yeah, I didn't think
15:42
Speaker 3: that was right. But on the other hand, looking so,
15:46
Speaker 3: one thing I want to talk about, and you probably
15:49
Speaker 3: have more knowledge of this than I do, but it
15:51
Speaker 3: seems to me like the only thing the only people
15:55
Speaker 3: less productive than Harvard tenured Harvard professors are diplomat and
16:02
Speaker 3: there we charge them with negotiating all these trade agreements
16:06
Speaker 3: and it turns into this multi decade grift where they're
16:10
Speaker 3: meeting at the finest resorts in the world, dining at
16:15
Speaker 3: Michelin Star restaurants. The Bordeaux is flowing, and the incentive
16:21
Speaker 3: is to not get anything done. Now, all of a sudden,
16:25
Speaker 3: I think AI plays a role in this as well.
16:28
Speaker 3: The heat's on and the diplomats are out of it.
16:31
Speaker 3: It's the economic it's not even the economists.
16:35
Speaker 5: That are involved. Well here, you've got to watch.
16:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's totally different the way these agreements are
16:42
Speaker 3: getting negotiated. And I think there's a prototype agreement and
16:46
Speaker 3: it's like, you know, sign you know, they say to
16:49
Speaker 3: the other side, to the other country, sign hard, press hard.
16:53
Speaker 3: You're making three copies, you know, just sign here.
16:57
Speaker 5: This is the deal.
16:58
Speaker 1: That's what he says. He's doing is issuing a statement,
17:02
Speaker 1: and this is the deal. If you don't like the deal,
17:04
Speaker 1: it's fun. But if you want to deal, here's the deal. Now,
17:07
Speaker 1: in some countries you might not be able to do that.
17:10
Speaker 1: But I thought again, and this is sometimes a tactical weakness,
17:21
Speaker 1: not exactly a weakness, but a technique that may not
17:24
Speaker 1: always work with Trump is oversimplification. You know, he had
17:28
Speaker 1: Nabarro saying ninety deals in ninety days. And you know,
17:32
Speaker 1: these trade deals are horribly complicated. You're trading finishing and
17:38
Speaker 1: putting some finish on shingles against vanadizing some metal or something.
17:44
Speaker 1: And by the time you'll work it all that, it's
17:46
Speaker 1: a terribly complicated thing. But so you can't do it
17:49
Speaker 1: that fast. But I like this thing he's doing. Now
17:52
Speaker 1: I'm saying, all right, here's our deal, take it or
17:55
Speaker 1: leave it. But what he really means is, if you
17:57
Speaker 1: don't like it exactly as it is, put a few
18:00
Speaker 1: things in it and we'll see if we can accept it.
18:02
Speaker 1: You know, so it'll act to bedite to think there's
18:05
Speaker 1: a framework in place. But you're right, I mean, the
18:08
Speaker 1: diplomats like everybody else sell think themselves as important as
18:11
Speaker 1: they can, but they're all these compromises. I mean Nixon
18:17
Speaker 1: and some of your great presidents like Nixon, who wasn't
18:20
Speaker 1: out standing president I think. And Roosevelt, you know, he
18:24
Speaker 1: never would let the Secretary of State do anything. He
18:26
Speaker 1: could go and talk to the South Americans or something,
18:29
Speaker 1: but all through World War two he never came to
18:31
Speaker 1: those big conferences with Churchill and Stalin or anything like that.
18:35
Speaker 1: Cardell Owl's longest serving secretary of State. But Roosevelt wouldn't
18:40
Speaker 1: let the State Department have anything to do with foreign policy.
18:43
Speaker 3: All right, So let's talk about your book and how
18:45
Speaker 3: it ties into this where I said, Jay, you your
18:49
Speaker 3: work here, because it's multiple volumes, how did you like,
18:55
Speaker 3: how'd you come up with a concept here that?
18:58
Speaker 1: Well, because of all the research I did writing biographies
19:03
Speaker 1: of prominent people and the histories of the US and Canada.
19:08
Speaker 1: I mean, you see behind me in the screen here,
19:10
Speaker 1: So for example, all of Cambridge University Medieval, Ancient, Medieval,
19:17
Speaker 1: and modern History bought some a lot of the volumes
19:20
Speaker 1: behind me. I had to read all this stuff and
19:22
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, this is nonsense.
19:23
Speaker 5: I mean, you.
19:25
Speaker 1: Could give you could give a good readable summary of
19:32
Speaker 1: everything that's important here in a much smaller space. And so,
19:37
Speaker 1: you know, not by design, but just as things worked out.
19:42
Speaker 1: The myth existed that in order to get any grasp
19:45
Speaker 1: of the history of the world you had to spend
19:47
Speaker 1: twenty years reading about it. And that is not true.
19:50
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't an untruth. It was just a mistake.
19:53
Speaker 1: And so these books of mine, as you know, there
19:56
Speaker 1: are a thousand pages pro volume, three volumes, but you've
19:59
Speaker 1: got everything there. You've got a good index. And you know,
20:02
Speaker 1: if you're interested in one, you know, in February, or
20:05
Speaker 1: interest in Alexander the Great, you can read all you
20:08
Speaker 1: need to know about them, you know, in a day
20:11
Speaker 1: or two there, and then a few months later you
20:14
Speaker 1: can read about you know, Queen Elizabeth the First. I mean,
20:17
Speaker 1: whatever you want, it's all there, and it's not If
20:20
Speaker 1: you want to go further, you can go get detailed
20:22
Speaker 1: books into these things. But by condensing it that much
20:26
Speaker 1: you can. There is a certain logic how how history moved.
20:30
Speaker 1: And there is progress, I mean, there actually is progress.
20:33
Speaker 1: If you look at where this thing began, where the
20:36
Speaker 1: people were just plans with no real organization going around
20:40
Speaker 1: killing their neighbors to where we are now. I mean,
20:43
Speaker 1: obviously it's still terrible things happen in the world, but
20:45
Speaker 1: it's a lot don't kill it next.
20:47
Speaker 3: And where we were so still killing our neighbors, but to
20:50
Speaker 3: a bit in.
20:51
Speaker 1: Some places, but we're the larger countries are behaving and
20:54
Speaker 1: the more civilized.
20:55
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, it's it's remarkable and how complicated our
21:01
Speaker 3: modern society is. And the amazing thing like I just
21:08
Speaker 3: look at like the whole air traffic control system, the
21:12
Speaker 3: fact we can fly all over the world in a
21:15
Speaker 3: moment's notice as long as the TSA lets you through
21:18
Speaker 3: the to the gate.
21:20
Speaker 1: And it's so compl they'd finished, you know, rummaging through
21:24
Speaker 1: the underclothing of eighty old women.
21:27
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the older you are, the more curious they
21:30
Speaker 3: are about about your intimate areas, it seems. But you
21:36
Speaker 3: know that the system, even though it's got problems, and
21:39
Speaker 3: you know, government all that, but the system is the
21:43
Speaker 3: most complicated system in the world in all likelihood. It
21:48
Speaker 3: seems like it's easier to send a rocket into space
21:52
Speaker 3: than it is to get a you know, a triple
21:56
Speaker 3: seven from England to New York. But you know, somehow
22:02
Speaker 3: we've cooperated and it's a global cooperation to make this
22:07
Speaker 3: system work. And yeah, it's got its problems and accidents happened,
22:11
Speaker 3: but overall, you know, it's a collective human effort that
22:15
Speaker 3: has really distinguished us because prior to you know, the
22:21
Speaker 3: last two generations, it was very difficult to go from
22:24
Speaker 3: one continent to the other by plane. You had generally
22:28
Speaker 3: you were taking ships. Maybe the last three generations, going
22:32
Speaker 3: back to the sixties, you know, the late fifties kind
22:37
Speaker 3: of was the birth. And you know, like you said,
22:41
Speaker 3: things have gotten better, except our media has gotten worse.
22:45
Speaker 3: Is because they'd specialize in just telling us how awful
22:49
Speaker 3: everything is, when really things in many respects haven't been better.
22:55
Speaker 3: I mean, I think the family, the interpersonal relationship, and
23:00
Speaker 3: what technology has done. Yes, there's some definite negatives there,
23:06
Speaker 3: but overall, the amount of knowledge that is available to
23:10
Speaker 3: the lowliest person on the planet in the palm of
23:14
Speaker 3: their hands, and.
23:15
Speaker 5: The quality of life.
23:18
Speaker 3: You know, for the largest numbers, it's just never been better.
23:23
Speaker 5: This is true.
23:24
Speaker 1: I mean, the number of people in poverty, as I
23:28
Speaker 1: understand that in the world was under fifteen percent. Have
23:31
Speaker 1: still a lot of people, but that's not a big percent,
23:33
Speaker 1: and when I was young, the number was over fifty percent,
23:38
Speaker 1: and even countries of them particularly well governed. When I
23:42
Speaker 1: first went to Brazil in nineteen sixty eight, it was
23:44
Speaker 1: only a half literate country. Now it's a completely literate entry.
23:48
Speaker 1: And the Chinese and the Indians are pulling again. Their
23:54
Speaker 1: methods aren't appropriate to the North America, but they're pullings
24:00
Speaker 1: and millions of people out of poverty every year, so
24:03
Speaker 1: that certainly is progress. The lesson on that one, Kerrie,
24:06
Speaker 1: is that if the major powers are not at war,
24:10
Speaker 1: the amount of prosperity generated is astounding. And you can
24:14
Speaker 1: argue about the distribution of it. Our friends and the
24:17
Speaker 1: left say that it's unfair distribution, but the fact is
24:21
Speaker 1: it affects everybody. The lowest groups, you know, do get richer.
24:28
Speaker 5: Yeah.
24:28
Speaker 3: Well, the technology that things were surrounded with, that would
24:32
Speaker 3: have been for the noblemen way back when there wasn't
24:37
Speaker 3: you know, the availability of these tools to really improve
24:42
Speaker 3: your life, to help you get through life, to have
24:45
Speaker 3: a better life. It just wasn't there. I mean, and
24:48
Speaker 3: you think back the printing press. You know, it's a
24:53
Speaker 3: fairly recent innovation that kind of sparked it all.
24:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, the tremendous impulse to the you know when this
25:03
Speaker 1: may have been before your time, but when I was young,
25:07
Speaker 1: there was a Dick Tracy comic strip. Oh and you
25:10
Speaker 1: he spoke into his watch you. Yeah, like you're talking
25:13
Speaker 1: to well not my wife has a box like that.
25:16
Speaker 1: And and the email, I mean we sit here with
25:20
Speaker 1: a handheld device and send emails to Russia in the air,
25:25
Speaker 1: Argentina or Australia anywhere and get a reply back in
25:29
Speaker 1: three minutes. I mean that would have been just science
25:32
Speaker 1: fiction stuff up until about thirty years ago.
25:35
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was. I was away.
25:37
Speaker 3: I was in Spain and Thailand, and I managed to
25:41
Speaker 3: keep my podcast going, was writing content for my website,
25:46
Speaker 3: and I never really I mean I didn't work as much,
25:50
Speaker 3: but I was able to basically conduct myself almost as
25:55
Speaker 3: well as if I was just sitting here at my
25:57
Speaker 3: desk here in Florida. So so, so, your book, your
26:02
Speaker 3: Volumes one and two and three mentioned is on its.
26:06
Speaker 5: Way the overview.
26:10
Speaker 3: So I always like to ask people, and they've had experiences,
26:14
Speaker 3: what did you learn from it from writing this because
26:18
Speaker 3: writing is a process of learning. I don't think many
26:21
Speaker 3: of you out there think about it. But when you
26:23
Speaker 3: write something, your understanding of it really goes up, and
26:30
Speaker 3: your knowledge of it and the way it all kind
26:33
Speaker 3: of fits together because you're connecting dots. It's harder to
26:37
Speaker 3: connect the dots looking forward than it is looking backward.
26:41
Speaker 3: But what's the biggest revelation you got from really rehashing
26:47
Speaker 3: you know, modern history here?
26:50
Speaker 1: All of history. I mean, I go back as far
26:53
Speaker 1: as we have authentic history. I don't get in that
26:56
Speaker 1: this is volumet one, of course, but I don't get
26:59
Speaker 1: into law or legend, you know, I mean just stuff
27:04
Speaker 1: that we can authenticate. But that still gets us back
27:08
Speaker 1: to about three thousand BC. I'd say a couple of things.
27:15
Speaker 1: One is religion never goes away. And I'm not getting
27:22
Speaker 1: into my religious views or anyone else's here. And I
27:26
Speaker 1: mean I think religions like sex, people should do what
27:29
Speaker 1: works for them and avoid what doesn't and be respectful
27:32
Speaker 1: about this and be discreet, you know, but.
27:37
Speaker 5: It never goes away.
27:38
Speaker 1: And these militant atheists who think it's just superstitious rubbish
27:42
Speaker 1: and every day we're getting closer to a plinnitude of knowledge,
27:48
Speaker 1: they'll never succeed because the human mind is always preoccupied
27:53
Speaker 1: with the existence of spiritual forces and the frontiers that
27:59
Speaker 1: are beyond our ability to reach. Even though we you know,
28:03
Speaker 1: the advances in science and elsewhere human research and ingenuity
28:11
Speaker 1: or astonishing and gratifying, they don't actually has had for
28:16
Speaker 1: a long time thought obviate or vaporize the general pursuit
28:23
Speaker 1: of a or an attempt to propitiate a divine intelligence
28:27
Speaker 1: of some sort. That's one thing. I mean, religion is
28:30
Speaker 1: much more sophisticated now than what than it was three
28:33
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, but it's still there. Another family answers
28:38
Speaker 1: with progress is real and there are a lot of
28:40
Speaker 1: cynics around who say that it isn't and human nature
28:43
Speaker 1: doesn't change much. I agree with that, but the fact
28:46
Speaker 1: is just what we were talking about a few minutes ago.
28:48
Speaker 1: I mean, if the major countries are not at war
28:52
Speaker 1: with each other, the amount of prosperity that is generated
28:56
Speaker 1: is it's just just look at the skylines of the
29:01
Speaker 1: cities of world in our lifetimes. I'm not an older
29:03
Speaker 1: than you, but when I was a young person, I'm
29:06
Speaker 1: in Toronto right now, the tallest building in the British
29:09
Speaker 1: Commonwealth was it was a bank building here in downtown Toronto.
29:13
Speaker 1: It is twenty six stories tall. Well, I mean, I'm
29:16
Speaker 1: not saying that progress is necessarily measured in tall buildings,
29:19
Speaker 1: but the amount of economic activity and the amount of
29:22
Speaker 1: construction and just the building things and advancing things a
29:29
Speaker 1: newness and when we focus on that. But we do,
29:32
Speaker 1: as you said in a few minutes ago, we do
29:34
Speaker 1: reduce the poverty levels very profoundly. I'm not saying we
29:38
Speaker 1: couldn't do better. I'm not saying any system is perfect.
29:42
Speaker 1: But the point is there is progress and very few
29:46
Speaker 1: countries today are governed by people who think that really
29:50
Speaker 1: the principal activity is simply to go and make war
29:54
Speaker 1: on your neighbor and kill him and take his territory.
29:57
Speaker 1: And that's how we start an edging.
30:00
Speaker 5: So true.
30:00
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things, and you mentioned the prosperity.
30:04
Speaker 3: One of the things I like best about what President
30:07
Speaker 3: Trump is doing has nothing to do with political is
30:11
Speaker 3: the encouragement to explore and exploit resources, whether it's minerals, oil, gold, silver, copper.
30:24
Speaker 3: Because one of the fallacies of the left is that
30:27
Speaker 3: somehow we can have this green economy and never have
30:30
Speaker 3: to use a jackhammer to get new metals and resources
30:37
Speaker 3: out of the ground.
30:39
Speaker 1: I think we were afflicted in the ways by a
30:41
Speaker 1: sort of economic snobbery that blue collar was beneath us.
30:46
Speaker 1: So we were all going to have a service economy.
30:49
Speaker 1: That's fine, except people in India, Thailand or something Vietnam
30:56
Speaker 1: can produce the same service at a quarter of the costs.
31:00
Speaker 1: So what are we going to do now? Yeah, I
31:03
Speaker 1: mean we sort of lost tract of the fact. I
31:08
Speaker 1: mean I never agreed with that Buchanan. I thought he
31:11
Speaker 1: was too primitive in his views, you know, sort of
31:15
Speaker 1: paleo conservative.
31:16
Speaker 5: Isolation but native.
31:18
Speaker 1: On the other hand, I never agreed with Herman and
31:22
Speaker 1: Kahn either. I used to go to that a few
31:24
Speaker 1: years ago, and his idea was that we would outsource everything,
31:29
Speaker 1: just be leisure society. That's not going to work.
31:33
Speaker 3: Maybe the robots and maybe the AI, but certainly not
31:37
Speaker 3: to other countries because because you've got to produce something
31:41
Speaker 3: in the end. The whole concept of the consumer economy
31:46
Speaker 3: I've always found to be disturbing because I think we
31:50
Speaker 3: should be producers, and the idea that we're just here
31:54
Speaker 3: to consume and not contribute and not produce has always
31:59
Speaker 3: been disturbing to me.
32:01
Speaker 1: Well, and The worst of it, I thought was in
32:05
Speaker 1: the fifties and sixties, when General Motors was the greatest
32:08
Speaker 1: corporation in the world. They had this thing called planned obsolescence.
32:12
Speaker 1: Their cars would fall apart after twenty five thousand miles,
32:16
Speaker 1: so you know, I mean nowadays they go for two
32:20
Speaker 1: hundred thousand mileth I mean they all look the same.
32:22
Speaker 1: I'd sort of like the look of cars then better,
32:25
Speaker 1: but they were putting one over on us, and then
32:29
Speaker 1: they lost their market to the Japanese and the Germans.
32:32
Speaker 3: The problem is that that business model is alive and
32:35
Speaker 3: well in your kitchen and or laundry room. Because those things,
32:39
Speaker 3: whether the Chinese components, if you get five years out
32:43
Speaker 3: of them, you're doing great.
32:45
Speaker 5: And that is disturbing.
32:48
Speaker 3: To create demand by building inferiority into your products, charge
32:54
Speaker 3: twice as much.
32:56
Speaker 5: I mean, I remember, he just go back like I remember.
33:00
Speaker 5: But in my.
33:01
Speaker 3: Parents' house we had a Nordge a refrigerator that was
33:05
Speaker 3: thirty seven years old.
33:07
Speaker 5: Norge.
33:07
Speaker 3: It was a great brand, yeah, and it made a
33:10
Speaker 3: lot of noise even all those years later. But man
33:14
Speaker 3: like the thing kept working and try to find something
33:18
Speaker 3: that'll do that well. The book is the political and
33:22
Speaker 3: Strategic History the World, Volume two, from Caesar's to the
33:25
Speaker 3: Peace of Westphalia to Louis the fourteenth AD. And well,
33:33
Speaker 3: it's great.
33:33
Speaker 5: Having you on.
33:34
Speaker 3: I think we go to fourteenth century to sixteen sixty one,
33:39
Speaker 3: so we got no.
33:40
Speaker 1: Fourteen AD to sixteen fourty one.
33:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, fourteen AD A pardon me, yeah, fourteen AD, which is.
33:46
Speaker 5: A long time ago.
33:47
Speaker 3: We don't even call it a D anymore, which bothers
33:50
Speaker 3: me a lot. And BC is B and I don't
33:54
Speaker 3: know what any of it means, but at bce the
33:57
Speaker 3: Christian era. But one thing I do think is that
34:03
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three that will be the reset that historians used,
34:08
Speaker 3: because that is the time when AI really became known
34:13
Speaker 3: to the public and used by the public. But the
34:17
Speaker 3: book is available at Amazon and wherever fine books used
34:22
Speaker 3: to be sold. And if you've got a question for
34:25
Speaker 3: Lord Black or myself, shoot me an email KL at
34:28
Speaker 3: Carrie LUTs dot com. If you go to the site
34:30
Speaker 3: Financial Survival Network dot com, you find a link to
34:33
Speaker 3: the book. And if you sign up to our newsletter,
34:36
Speaker 3: I really appreciate it. Like over seventy five thousand of
34:39
Speaker 3: you have in the past fourteen years, Hard to believe,
34:43
Speaker 3: Lord Black, we will definitely have you back on again
34:45
Speaker 3: when volume three hits the press, the digital press or
34:49
Speaker 3: the printing press, whichever comes first. Really appreciate you coming on,
34:54
Speaker 3: you know, your contributions to knowledge everything else.
34:58
Speaker 1: It's greatly appreciated. Thanks so much for having me.
35:01
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to carry Letz's Financial Survival Network, your
35:05
Speaker 2: solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to
35:09
Speaker 2: Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever,