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Jan. 14, 2020 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
49:40
Episode 787 Scott Adams: Pinnochiohontas, Iran's Collapse, Booker Booking
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Hey everybody, it's time for Coffee with Scott Adams.
Luckily, that's me.
Luckily, that's you.
Now, you may feel a little bit happier today, might not kick in right away, but I've decided to tweak the simulation a little bit to make you happier.
So you'll be noticing approximately 7% to 8% greater happiness throughout the day, and it'll probably be permanent.
But I just thought, eh, I'm going to give you a little extra.
I just cranked it up a little bit.
And all you need to enjoy this day, to its full extent, well, you don't need much.
Not really. All you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like my coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
Sorry, my robot lips got a little stuck there.
The unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine hit of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
The simultaneous sip.
Go. Mmm.
Simultaneity. Some of you have been watching me experimenting with a different studio setup.
I've been experimenting with different technology for doing what we're doing now for now three years approximately.
I built down four different studios.
Meaning four different, completely different equipment setups to do this at a higher quality.
So far, 100% failure.
Every single thing I've done has been worse than just putting an iPad on my desk and clipping this stupid thing to my shirt.
Nothing's even close so far.
Now, in some ways, I thought the sound was maybe a little bit better or richer with the other microphones.
But as other people noted, and I waited to see if somebody else said the same thing.
And by the way, this is one of those lessons about the power of one opinion.
Exactly one person...
I put a note, I think it was on the YouTube comments, just one person said something that happened to hit me just right and changed my mind completely.
And that was that this microphone I had been using, it just has more character.
There's something more alive about it or more personal.
I don't know exactly what it is, but the professional microphones seem to take some of the character away.
I don't know exactly how to put that.
But the better the quality was, the worse it was.
I don't know. I can't explain it.
Let's talk about the news.
I'm running a poll right now on Twitter to find out what's the best nickname for Elizabeth Warren, given the latest dust-up with Bernie Sanders.
And let me check the poll, because I want to see how we're doing.
How we doing?
We're doing...
Why can't I find my poll?
I'm shadow banned from myself.
No! All right, here we go.
So the three choices I gave were Pocahontas, of course, the president's favorite.
Lion Liz, a new entry, Lion Liz, with an apostrophe instead of a G on lion.
And then I added a new entry, Pinocchio-Hontas.
Just because it makes you think about Pinocchio and Pocahontas, and it's a funny word and you have to say it.
When I say Pinocchio-Hontas, Didn't you need to try to repeat that at home?
Where are you at home saying, Pinocchio Hontus.
Pinocchio Hontus.
It's hard to say.
It's fun to say.
That's technique. If you can make somebody repeat your brand or your name or your nickname in their head just because it's interesting to say, that's a winner.
It looks like Pocahontas is going to win.
I doubt I can beat the president's naming, but it was fun.
Because there's this story in the news that Warren has accused...
Well, I'm not sure if she's done it or her campaign or supporters have done it.
Because I don't believe she has made a public comment confirming this.
But Warren's people accused Bernie Sanders of telling Warren during a private meeting in December a year ago...
That he didn't think a woman could win against Trump.
Now, what was your first reaction when you heard, of course, Sanders denied that that happened.
So what was your first response when you saw that Bernie Sanders says, here's one version of what happened in the room, and Elizabeth Warren's people said, here's the other version of what happened in the room.
What was your immediate reaction?
I'm going to give one of the biggest compliments I've ever given to a politician.
Are you ready? Bernie Sanders, love him or hate him for his policies, has enough of a credibility and a track record that when it came to a decision of which one of those two people was just flat out lying, Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, it wasn't even close, was it?
Didn't you have the same reaction?
Have you ever seen a situation where there are two national figures?
They've got a difference of agreement about what is true.
Wouldn't you normally think that either one of them could be lying?
Isn't that the most natural thing?
You think, well, they're both national politicians.
They could both be lying, so you don't really know.
But when you see Bernie Sanders You know, face-to-face with Warren, one of them is lying because they have opposite stories.
You know which one it is.
Was there any doubt in anybody's mind who was lying about this?
Now, you could maybe try to make it sound better by saying, well, they thought they heard it this way.
But there's no, first of all, without even addressing the credibility of Sanders, Which is high, right?
Love him or hate him, I don't think there's any chance that he was lying to you.
I mean, I seriously don't think there's any chance that Bernie was telling a falsehood about that meeting.
I just don't. Zero possibility.
But you don't even need to hear Bernie's side of the conversation.
If somebody came up to you and said, Bernie Sanders allegedly told Elizabeth Warren that a woman can't win the presidency, what?
What? A woman just kicked Bernie's ass in the presidency.
Hillary Clinton beat Bernie and then got more votes than Trump.
Do you think Bernie didn't notice that he lost?
To Hillary Clinton and that she got more votes?
No, because when he was asked about it, it's the first thing he said.
The first thing he said was, it's ridiculous.
Why would I say that? Of course I think a woman can win.
Hillary got more votes.
They just happen to be slightly in the wrong places.
So, if Elizabeth Warren tries to run against Trump on character, how is that going to go?
Because she just stabbed her friend in the back.
She just took out a big old knife and said, Hey Bernie, good old friend, come over here for a second.
Come over here. Okay. Could you turn around?
Don't ask why. Just turn around.
For those of you listening on podcast audio only, that was my impression of stabbing.
Sounds like that.
How can she run against Trump?
On character with this in her portfolio.
And then of course it led to articles, I just tweeted one, where they list all the times that she has lied.
Why is the garbage, there's a garbage truck outside that's extra loud today for some reason.
So this could be actually sort of a defining moment in the campaign.
I feel as though this should take Warren out because it feels disqualifying to run against this president who even his critics would have to admit he's getting a lot of stuff done, right?
Economy good, blah, blah, blah.
So if they're running against Trump based on his personality, you can't run Warren against that.
She just took herself out of it.
Bernie could. Bernie Sanders could still run on character.
He would lose for other reasons, but he could run on character.
She can't. That's done now.
Let's talk about something else.
Let's talk about imminent. Those of you who have been watching my periscopes, who is the first person you heard say That the president should stop saying imminent, because it doesn't matter.
It's completely irrelevant how imminent it is, because if somebody has a track record of doing something every day, you don't really have to ask if they're going to do it tomorrow.
In fact, you don't even need to know they're going to do it tomorrow.
You just had to know that they did it every day until today, and there's a good chance they'll do it tomorrow.
That's it. That's it.
That's the whole thing. So now you've heard Bill Barr say that explicitly.
He said, literally, that the imminent part is just not important.
Doesn't matter, because his past was enough of a track record.
Anderson Cooper, and I think the President is now saying the same thing, that it doesn't matter how imminent it was, Because of his track record.
Anderson Cooper pushed back on that with a little monologue.
I just watched a clip of it.
And he pushed back.
He said that Barr and Trump saying it doesn't matter how eminent it was is wrong because it does matter.
It does matter. And then I was listening for the reasons of why it matters.
I don't think I saw any.
I don't think I saw any reasons for why it matters.
Has anybody heard of a reason?
Of why it matters that the President and Senate was imminent, but maybe it wasn't?
Doesn't matter to me.
All right. Trump, of course, loves to get people talking.
I love how he can find the exact edge of danger, but he usually, usually, doesn't take that extra step into, now you've gone too far.
He goes right to the edge.
Of what you think might be sort of too far, but you're not sure?
And he did that again with retweeting a meme of Pelosi and Schumer wearing, it was a doctored image of them, wearing Iranian garb, you know, with the headgear and everything, and an Iranian flag behind them, you know, indicating that they're more with Iran than they are with the United States.
And, of course, everybody went nuts about that.
But it's just a photoshopped meme.
Every time Trump uses Twitter the way Twitter works best, Which is this.
It's exactly this sort of thing.
There's a Twitter personality, and then there's a real person personality, and then there's a meeting the heads of state personality that Trump gets into when he plays it seriously.
Then there's this rally personality, which is more, you know, he'll drop some S-bombs and some light cursing, and he'll be more provocative and say, beat up people and stuff that's not real.
But he plays it for laughs.
When he's on Twitter, he just plays the best Twitter troll ever.
So he gets into Twitter personality, retweets a meme, which is the most common thing you could ever do on Twitter, and the world goes nuts, and we all get a laugh out of it.
So, good time was had by all.
Let's talk about...
So, Iran...
Can't figure out how not to make things worse lately.
So, as you know, the Iranians have finally taken responsibility for shooting down that Ukraine airline.
And today they announced, or maybe it was yesterday, that they would take action and they would arrest, let's say, they announced the authorities have arrested those responsible.
And anyone involved, blah, blah, blah, blah, should be punished.
What exactly does that mean in Iran?
When they say that the person responsible for shooting down the plane has been arrested and they'll be punished, I'm a little confused.
Because wasn't it an accident?
Do you arrest and punish people for an accident?
No matter who was guilty, was it the person who designed the system, the person in charge, or was it the person who was pushing the buttons, you know, the worker, if you will?
Do you kill people for making a mistake at their job?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's not an improvement.
Are the people in the streets...
Let me ask you this.
Is there anybody protesting in the street who's saying, let's punish or kill, The person who made the mistake?
I believe there are zero people asking for that.
So the Iranian government has decided a harsh punishment for some poor person who probably was just trying to do the best they could at their job.
And maybe it was just hard.
Right? I mean, if you were in that job, do you think you could have done it right?
I don't know. I have a feeling that there were some really...
Conflicting signals and that you could have been punished either way.
Let's say you're the person who made the choice to fire the rocket.
Don't you think that that person believed that not firing the rocket was a big risk too?
There was somebody in a position where they couldn't win because they didn't know the future.
They couldn't tell if this plane was a risk or not a risk.
But if they let it through without addressing it, And they were wrong, and it was a risk?
Well, I think you get punished more for not taking the shot than taking the shot, right?
Because if you don't take the shot, what's that?
You're just not doing your job.
If you do take the shot, the worst thing that can happen is you're wrong, and you blew up a friendly airplane.
But in terms of how you would be treated in your job, you lose either way if you guess wrong.
So Iran, looking to God knows what, hang some people who made a mistake, That's not better.
The citizens of Iran should be protesting that too.
I'm not going to tell the citizens of Iran what they should do.
Let me retract that.
Let me just say, if I were there, if it's up to me, I'm not going to be happy because my leadership that I wanted removed decided to execute a citizen who was just doing their job to stay out of trouble.
Does that make it better?
No way. No way.
If I see my leadership executing citizens who are just doing their job the best they could, I don't think there was anybody who came in and said, well, I'll just bang it down today.
I'm not even going to try.
No. Whoever made that mistake was not trying to make a mistake.
Whoever fired that missile, you know, I could be wrong.
We could find out there's more to this story, but I doubt it.
I doubt it. At this point, I would imagine that it was just a mistake by somebody who was in a very difficult situation and was not trying to make a mistake.
All right. Cory Booker has dropped out, which of course creates an embarrassing situation for the Democrats, but maybe an even worse situation for Joe Biden.
Because... You know, if Elizabeth Warren or Klobuchar get the nomination, well, then at least the Democrats have stayed, let's say, compatible with their brand.
Because running a woman or an African-American or a Hispanic candidate, those would all be pluses.
But running an old white man against Trump, I just don't think that's going to get people to the polls.
So I feel as though Booker dropping out changes the bias in the party toward finding somebody who's not an old white guy.
So I think Booker dropping out is actually, ironically, wrong word, but you know what I'm talking about.
I think that it works against Biden and Sanders because it isolates them and puts a spotlight on them as being the wrong demographic group.
Now, Should Biden's lead be so much that he still gets the nomination?
What does this do to his decision about who to pick as his vice president?
Cory Booker.
Cory Booker might be a good vice presidential choice.
Don't see any reason why not.
He's young enough that he could be a presidential candidate if he sticks it out.
And of course, Harris.
Don't forget, Harris is still out there.
She's got the person of color thing going for her.
She's a senator and she's a woman.
That's good. Stacey Abrams, I would say, no chance.
I just don't think the public is ready for Stacey Abrams, mostly because she hasn't been part of the process.
I think there's going to be a big bias toward people who went through the war, you know, went through the process of trying to become president.
I would hope. I mean, I would think that that's where you'd want to be picking your vice president.
Not necessary. All right, so here's a good...
Here's a good example of how important it is to understand economics.
I talk about this in my best-selling book, Loser Think, about how a little bit of exposure to different fields, such as a little bit of understanding of how economists think about the world, gives you a great advantage.
And I say often, you don't need to be an economist.
You just have to, you know, get that top 10% of the way they view the world, the way they compare things, the way they consider the time value of money.
Probably, you know, fewer than 10 concepts would give you enough to have a little bit of attraction on what an economist is thinking.
And I bring that up because New York Times has an interesting article about the economy of Iran.
And Being me, I had to Google the author to find out what is the author's credentials.
Because if somebody's writing about economics, you really should check their credentials.
So this is Peter Goodman in the New York Times, and he's an economics correspondent.
Now, I don't believe that was his major, but for years he's been writing about economics, and he's a smart guy, right?
Because he's writing for the New York Times, so you don't have to wonder if he's smart.
You don't get to write for the New York Times unless you're smart.
So he's been writing on the topic, and I would guess that he understands it.
And that is confirmed by the way he writes about it.
So here are some of the facts he points out about the Iranian economy.
Because I was kind of wondering, How close are they to some kind of a collapse?
Because we tend to think everything's close to a collapse when it isn't.
So here are some facts that he pulls out.
One of them is that Iran is contracting, their economy is contracting at an alarming 9.5% annually.
If you didn't know anything else, the only thing you knew is that a country's economy was contracting by close to 10% a year, That's kind of all you need to know.
You know, you say to yourself, well, that's only 10%.
But in economic terms, the direction of things means a lot.
If the direction goes down 10% again, let's say another year of down 10%, you're done.
Probably Iran cannot survive one more year of being down 10%, or at least the regime can't survive.
The people will survive. So, kudos to Peter Goodman for starting off his article with the most important statistic.
Now, I don't know if someone who did not live and work in the field of economics would have so succinctly picked out and focused on the top decimation.
Somebody is correctly using the word decimation.
When you say an economy was decimated, The DEC in decimated refers to 10 as in 10%.
So if you knock something down by 10%, whereas let's say you defeat an army by 10%, they are decimated.
In common usage, people use the word to mean completely destroyed, but decimated means down 10%, which is a big, big hit.
So, what else do we know about Iran?
Here's something else that Peter Goodman points out, that the oil exports for the past year have been effectively zero.
Now, I guess smugglers have been doing some stuff and some oil is moving around, but it looks like maybe the oil moves, but it doesn't sell.
Meaning that your smuggler can take it somewhere, but you can't find somebody to buy it.
Now, I don't know if we have good visibility on the whole smuggling thing, because it's not smuggling unless they can get away with it.
It's not good smuggling.
So there's probably some oil exports going on.
But if officially it looks like zero, zero?
You're kind of done.
If you're them.
Alright, here's some more things that show more doom.
On Tuesday, Britain, France and Germany told Iran that they're on notice for violating the 2015 nuclear deal.
Hey, wait a minute.
I'm confused. Britain, France and Germany are pressuring Iran In exactly the kind of way that the United States would want them to?
Well, this can't be right, can it?
Because I've been told on good authority that they laugh at President Trump behind his back, and they don't respect us, and we can't get anything done in international deals and stuff because of the way they feel about President Trump.
I'm so confused.
Why is it that our allies are doing exactly what we want them to do?
And what is good for them and good for us?
I'm all confused.
It's almost as if other countries pursue their own national interest and that it happens to be aligned with ours.
Like every other time.
Do you know when else our allies pursue their own national interest?
Every time. Every single time.
So the whole conversation about whether we're going to get things done because of how they feel about President Trump has always been the dumbest take.
I mean, really, there's some smart takes, there's some dumb takes.
But the dumbest take is that other countries will suddenly start foregoing their own national interest because they're mad at President Trump.
That will never happen.
The reason that our allies are our allies is because we have common interests.
As long as we have common interests, we can kind of depend on them doing the things that we expect them to do because it's in their interest.
They don't stop doing what's in their national interest because they're mad at Orange Man.
It just doesn't happen. It's dumb.
So internationally, everything's going great.
So imagine, if you will, that Britain, France, and Germany force Iran into a situation where their non-compliance triggers United Nations sanctions.
I don't know how much you can sanction a country.
Don't you run out of things to sanction after a while?
But apparently there's something else that gets sanctioned.
Whenever we see these stories of sanctions, I feel like we don't get enough detail.
All right, here's another one.
Another bit pointed out by Peter Goodman is that inflation in Iran is running nearly 40%.
40%?!
We're talking Venezuela-like numbers here, and how is Venezuela's economy doing?
So their basic necessities are running out.
I saw separately an article that said that the average Iranian salary is just exactly enough to live.
And that, you know, another 10% below that, and people literally won't be able to rent a place and live and stuff.
So they're right on the edge, but there's more.
One in four young Iranians is jobless, with college graduates especially short of work.
Would you want to live in a country that is highly weighted toward the young?
So the demographic situation in Iran is they're very young.
And among that huge bubble of young people, there are a lot of college graduates who don't have work, and they've got a lot of time on their hands.
That is your worst situation, because college graduates are smart, and they've got time on their hands, and they're not happy.
That's a bad situation for social cohesion, because it is one thing to have dumb people mad at you, I shouldn't say dumb.
I don't mean to be insulting.
It's one thing to have people who don't have much, let's say, resources, don't have much ingenuity.
If they're mad at you, you can survive.
But if you get the smartest people in your country mad at you, and they have time on their hands, that's a bad situation.
That's a bad situation for the regime.
I saw a journalist use the word contempt.
To say that the Iranian public, because of the Ukraine airline denial, that they changed their minds and said, yes, we did it.
That the public feels contempt.
Contempt, now that's a writer's word, but I think it's a key word.
I think I've told you before that one of the most predictive words for a marriage is contempt.
If you see a married couple reacting to each other with contempt, it almost always signals the end of the marriage.
Two people can be really mad at each other, just mad, and it doesn't mean that the marriage is over, it just means two people get mad.
But when one of them is showing contempt, then the experts say, there it is, one of the two people has contempt, that's it, that's the end.
Because you don't You don't uncontempt.
It's sort of a one-way trip.
If it's true that the Iranian public, or some big part of it, is now feeling an emotion that could be described accurately as contempt, it's all over.
Now, I don't know that that's true.
I don't know if you talk to the average Iranian, would they use that word or some word like it in Farsi?
Don't know. But if you hear that word, Coming from the people involved, not somebody labeling them on their behalf.
But if they use that word or anything like it, it's game over.
Contempt is a one-way street.
Let me put it another way.
I often talk about the difference between wanting and deciding.
When you want something, you complain differently.
When you've decided, you call it contempt.
Contempt signals decision, as opposed to just wanting.
You could want your regime to change, and maybe you try a little bit and you don't get what you want, and you say, well, I don't always get what I want, but I tried.
That's what wanting gets you.
You try, it doesn't work out, you quit.
Contempt sounds like a decision.
A decision is not wanting.
A decision is you're going to go get it and you don't care what the cost is because the cost of a revolution is extreme.
A lot of people die. So the Iranian public might be on the cusp of wanting a different government versus feeling contempt and simply deciding the government's going to go.
We're probably not there, but I think we're right on the edge of that, and probably the economy failing will push them over.
The other problem that Iran has is credit.
Apparently, 70% of the banking industry is under direct control of the government.
And that's sort of good because I guess they're out in whatever they're doing.
They're pumping money into the system or they're allowing too much credit.
But anyway, they're violating the basic principles of banking in order to keep things together temporarily.
So they've got too much of a credit bubble.
I think something like half of all loans are past due.
Half? Think about that.
Imagine the United States where half of all of our loans are past due.
Half? Half of all your loans are past due?
I don't know if you can come back from that.
So it looks like the Iranian banking system is on the edge of collapse.
But here's probably the most important thing.
You know how dictators, and really any country, They can create cohesion by demonstrating an external threat.
Sometimes it's a real external threat, and sometimes it's an imaginary one.
But in both cases, if you have this external threat, you can make a case for your public coming together even if they hate their own government.
It's like, well, we hate our government, but we're all Iranians.
We're going to be on the same side because we've got this external threat.
That didn't happen.
You would expect that the external threat would look like whoever's putting on the sanctions, whoever's threatening the country militarily, and that's the United States.
But when...
There were two things that happened last week that completely changed the frame.
So the frame changed when Trump took out a Solomon A instead of taking out normal, you know, anything else that would hurt an Iranian citizen.
When Trump took out Soleimani, he made it very clear this is not a war against citizens of Iran.
This is a war against the same people you don't like, citizens of Iran.
We both don't like the same guy.
He's our problem, but he's also your problem.
We're going to kill him for you.
Whose side is the United States on?
Right? See where I'm going on this?
The president picked the only solution That allowed him to attack Iran and a vital asset, this general, who was so important, without changing the frame to the United States against Iran.
He actually created...
He found the only way to attack them in a substantial way that would be on the same side as the citizens.
That's pretty fine-tuning right there.
Talk about threading a needle.
But... There's more.
When the Iranian government lied to its people about the downing of the aircraft, and when it became clear that the Iranians had killed not only thousands, maybe hundreds or thousands of protesters recently, but the Iranian government had also shot down a plane, what side is the public on, the Iranian public?
Recent events have made it crystal clear, and in fact, the President has said it explicitly in his tweet.
He sent out a tweet in Farsi, supporting the citizens of Iran, but not their government.
You just saw...
I'm not seeing reporting on this, but you're watching one of the greatest persuasion games ever Maybe you've ever seen?
You know, I hate to say something's the greatest ever because it usually just means you can't think of the other ones right away.
But this looks like one of the most impressive persuasion reframes I've ever seen.
If I had told you a year ago that the president would reframe events in Iran effectively, like actually getting it done, Where the citizens of Iran feel more loyalty, loyalty is the wrong word, but they feel like they're more on the same side as President Trump against a common enemy, which is their own government.
If I told you a year ago that that could happen, would you have believed it?
That's actually what's happening.
It's the most ridiculously insane, effective persuasion I've ever seen.
What's the hardest problem in the world?
Peace in the Middle East.
How close are we to peace in the entire Middle East?
Okay, you never get complete peace because there will always be warlords and factions and proxies and stuff.
But in terms of the big stuff, you know, the big picture, we are closer than we've ever been.
We're actually down to one guy, the Ayatollah.
There's just one person Who needs to make one decision that would be in his own interest?
That's it. There's one person left, the Ayatollah.
He just has to say, okay, we're not going to be against you anymore.
We're just going to try to live in peace.
That's it. And what is in his best interest?
He has two choices.
One, the complete destruction of his country, and it will be his fault, and he is probably a few years away from the end of his life.
Does the Ayatollah want the last few years of his life to be the complete destruction of Iran?
Because that's his other choice.
Or, can he go with his own public and say, you know, Maybe we won't be so adventurous.
Let's just take care of things at home.
That's his other choice.
And maybe we'll be productive in terms of helping the rest of the Middle East calm down.
Maybe we'll turn off our proxies.
Maybe we'll spend our money at home instead of with the proxies.
He could do that.
One guy. One guy who has a terrible choice and one that's not so bad.
Trump did that. There's nobody else who would have brought us to this situation, I don't think.
There's nobody who would have made the same choices that Trump has made up to this point that got us to the point of one old man who's got a terrible choice and one that's not so terrible.
That's it. That's it.
Now, he might need more pressure.
But it looks like the people of Iran are going to apply it.
And it looks like the economy is going to apply it.
It looks like we're going to get pressure from the Europeans.
And the only thing that's going to stop it is all the efforts from China and Russia to stop the pressure on, oh, that's not happening.
That's right. The dog that isn't barking.
Putin is not telling us to back down on Iran.
President Xi is not telling Trump to back down on Iran.
They're sitting it out.
They're sitting it out.
What's that tell you whose side they're on?
Whose side are President Xi and Putin on?
Right? They're on Trump's side.
Because if they were not on his side, They'd tell you.
They're not shy. Wouldn't China say, this is a terrible idea.
President Trump, you should back down.
They'd say that. Of course they would.
Would Putin say that?
Well, maybe he's being a little more political at the moment.
But I think he'd say something that would suggest he's thinking it.
You know, he might not be as direct because he's got his own interests.
But I think we'd know.
If they didn't think this was a good idea, we'd know about it.
So it appears that President Trump, just bear with me for a moment, seems to have on his side all Republicans, right?
Pretty much all Republicans think he did a good job.
There are exceptions, but let's say 95%.
It looks like he's got Europe on his side.
It looks like he's got Putin and President Xi on his side.
And it looks like he has the Iranian public on his side.
The only people who are not on his side are maybe Rand Paul and some Democrats.
This is the most amazing thing you've ever seen.
Somebody says Trudeau isn't on his side.
Yeah, he is. Trudeau's on his side.
I believe Trudeau is on his side.
There may be things that Trudeau...
Well, I'm mind reading now.
So let me pull that back.
You might see Trudeau saying negative things because countries do that, leaders do that, but I can't imagine that Canada isn't happy about where things are at the moment.
I think even Canada would say, you know, it looks like we have an opportunity here.
This is the best situation we've ever seen in terms of getting to a better place.
All right, so I'm absolutely amazed.
You know, if the only thing the president did, President Trump, was solve the Middle East, then you'd have to say best president ever.
But it's early. We don't know that anything's going in the right direction.
We just know that We've never been this close.
This might be a once-ever situation, you know, because the Middle East has been bad forever in terms of danger and war and conflict.
We've never been this close to solving it all.
You know, the big stuff, anyway.
There's a story.
There's a $6 trillion asset manager at BlackRock Now, if you don't know BlackRock, I told you everything you needed to know.
There's one guy there who manages $6 trillion in assets.
$6 trillion. So it's a...
I don't know what BlackRock would be called.
A hedge fund or some kind of investment hedge fund sort of a...
I don't know their exact nature.
But they're an enormous financial entity.
Enormous. And he's worried about the fundamental reshaping of finance that's coming, and specifically he's talking about the danger of climate change, risk to credit.
So this $6 trillion asset manager is putting on a big letter that all the finance people will be reading today.
All the Fortune 500 companies will be looking at it today.
And one of the questions that many of you ask One of you asked.
Somebody says Project Veritas just dropped a birdie video.
Well, that'll be interesting. We'll check that out later.
So, anyway, this BlackRock manager guy is saying that from now on we really need to consider the effects of climate change On loans, basically, and credit and bonds and all kinds of loan vehicles,
you know, lending vehicles. And the idea is that the entire cities might not be credit worthy anymore, because if your city might be underwater or destroyed by hurricanes from climate change or whatever, that they might not be able to get loans to rebuild anything, because who wants to rebuild where the climate's just going to destroy it again?
So, he's putting that out there.
Now, what's important about this is where it came from.
If you and I complain about climate change and the risk of climate change, nobody cares.
But what's one of the things that most of the climate, let's say, deniers, the people who believe there's not a problem with climate change in the future or now, what have most of them been saying as one of their primary arguments?
Well, one of the primary arguments is that all the people who are smart with money are acting as though climate change doesn't exist.
And now a guy who manages $6 trillion, trillion, he manages that money, says that he's going to change his behavior because of climate change risk.
Now, I'm not here to argue climate change.
I'm just telling you what the news is.
The news is that your argument about, hey, all the smart people who do insurance and loans are acting like climate change is not a risk.
That just changed.
From today on, you can't use that argument anymore.
Because a guy who manages $6 trillion just raised the flag and just said, Those days are over.
From this day on, we have to treat it like it's a risk.
Now, it might not be, right?
That's a separate argument. Is it a risk or is it not?
But your old argument that the money people are treating it like it's not a risk just went away.
From this day on, you can't use that argument anymore because he's that big of a player that you have to say, yes, some of the most important money people in the world just decided they're going to calculate that in their risk management calculations.
It's a big deal. A big, big deal.
All right. Which, again, doesn't mean that climate change is going one way or the other.
It just means that the way we think about it has changed today.
It probably won't go back.
All right. Let's see what else we got here.
Well, I think I've touched on all of my major topics.
Maybe he's predicting human behavior, you say.
Maybe. Yeah, there's lots of the story, but the whole point of it is...
Two-thirds of the U.S. population lives within 100 miles of ocean.
Here's a little climate change factoid for you.
It's one of those you should always keep in your quiver.
So if you get into a conversation about climate change and somebody says the sea level is going up, blah, blah, blah, here's a factoid for you.
This is very non-commonsensical, meaning your common sense would not tell you this to be true, but it is true, which is the sea level will not rise the same way all over the world.
According to climate change, the thing that will make sea level rise, as much as the fact that there's maybe some melting glaciers, is the actual warming of the ocean itself.
So as the water gets warmer, it expands, which makes the sea level rise.
But the warming will not be in equal places around the world.
So you'll actually see places, if climate change plays out the way the scientists say, You would see sea level rising maybe a lot in some places and actually go down in other places.
And the reason it could go down, hypothetically, is that there are two conditions.
One is it didn't get much warmer, so the warming didn't affect one part of the country or one part of the world.
But two, the land and the sea are continually moving.
So there are places where the land is actually rising, So if you happen to be a place where the land is coincidentally rising and you didn't get that much hotter, you could actually have sea level dropping, even while it's rising to dangerous levels in another part of the world.
So, when somebody said that some high percentage of our population is near the sea, that's true, but it does not automatically say that the sea level will rise in those places.
And I believe that we have not seen sea level rise in any scary way on our borders.
Can somebody fact check me on that?
I believe that sea level has not risen in the United States in a way that would look scary yet, which is not to say it won't happen, but I believe that yet we don't really have a national problem on our borders.
I think other places are more at risk.
Fact check me on that.
West coast is rising, east coast is sinking, somebody says.
I don't know if that's right, but that's the sort of thing you could expect.
Now, I've been to the beach.
I live in California.
Haven't noticed. I've been to Hawaii a number of times.
Haven't noticed. Sea level looks exactly the same in Hawaii, at least in Maui.
Looks the same to me.
I mean, if it's up two inches, I can't tell.
All right. Can you see my progress on the drums?
Yes. Not right away, but I am working on something for that.
Please do the Veritas podcast.
Oh, there's a podcast on that?
So let's see. Let's look up Project Veritas and see what he's got going here.
Project. If you don't mind, stay with me for a moment.
Project Veritas. I wonder how hard this will be to find in the search.
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