Hanlon's (disposable) Razor

As the old saying goes, “Don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance”. But when actions have consequences, can we really separate the two? Against the backdrop of British comedic philosophy, we look into what makes Trump tick, the beliefs of those around him, and how the “Failed Man Complex” shapes the world we live in. Finally, with a lesson in accounting, we address the misconceptions around global trade and government bookkeeping.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
You know ,

Speaker 2 (00:04):
I sound so pompous, like Apparat , whatever, but
apparatus is his .

Speaker 3 (00:13):
People

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Have been asking me to make sense of what's been
going on lately. So I invitethem down to the studio and we
sit down and they get to say,I'm going to ask you a bunch of
questions, and I want themanswered immediately.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Give these people air, give

Speaker 2 (00:28):
These people

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Air, come

Speaker 2 (00:33):
On co Hagen , give these people air .

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Good morning. Good afternoon. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good morning. Bon

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Bon . Right? Today is the 6th of April, and this
is our third podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
Yeah. Third discussion.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Third discussion.
When I was heading here, I waslistening the news for the last
week. Oh, boy. Uh , yes. And Iheard about the guy who was
speaking 25 hours about Donald.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Oh, yeah. Cory Booker.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Yes. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
I thought that I should have listened to him. Uh
, well, I , I just heard abouthim today. So, . Yeah .
I

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Mean , he talked for 25 hours. 25

Speaker 1 (01:12):
Hours. So he could have given quite a lot of food
for thought. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
I mean, mostly the , uh, on the internet , uh,
highlights are there because ,uh, they don't usually talk
profoundly for 25 hours. Ofcourse, I didn't, obviously I
didn't listen to the wholething, but , uh, the guy who
previously did it was readingfrom the phone book, so they Oh
, really ? Were just like ,literally going down like a
Adam , uh, Alonzo, whatever, , Alexa, whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So they just wanted to , to make a break the
record. Right. That's what theywanted to do.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, yeah. Also, like, you know, stand up to all
the

Speaker 1 (01:45):
Bullshittery that's going on . Yeah . So , nothing
. Okay. Okay. So to continueour warmup mm-hmm
. I have , uh, read , um, theEnglish , uh, writer and lawyer
whose name is Neil White . Doyou know him? No. So I'll read
it. Trump lacks some of thequalities that Britain's
traditionally valued. Oh,

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, I heard about this. Yeah. Okay. Now , but go
ahead.

Speaker 1 (02:09):
For example, he has no class, no charm, no
composure, no trust, noempathy, no width , no warmth,
no wisdom, no delicacy, nosensitivity. I don't want to
read it all. But , um, the fullstory, the full article that a
guy has , uh, written is aboutwhy Britains do not like Donald
Trump. And they don't like himbecause he's , uh, not

(02:33):
charismatic person. He doesn'treally know how to make good
jokes. Uh , he's verystraightforward. No sars , no
nothing, just , uh, like atank. Has he always been like
that?

Speaker 2 (02:45):
The British have their own weird sense of humor.
So yeah ,

Speaker 1 (02:48):
I totally agree with that. But do you agree with
this statement?

Speaker 2 (02:52):
I mean, obviously he's objectively funny. The
things that he says ishilarious, but it's just, the
problem is that what he saysnow is he's no longer on a ,
you know, morning talk show.
He's, you know, the presidentand he has actual power. So the
funny things that he says isnow terrifying because it has
the force of action. Mm-hmm . That's why he's
so popular on the memes,because of things that he did

(03:13):
is funny. You know, a lot ofit's funny at his expense, but

Speaker 1 (03:16):
I've heard that the official politicians, they have
courses of how to behavethemselves, what to say, what
not to say, this kind of stuff.
Yeah .

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Well, that's stupid.
'cause that doesn't apply.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
So is he natural? So the way how Trump behaves right
now these days is the exact,the same way as he behaved 10
years ago, 20 years ago, 30years ago, whenever you
remember him.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
I mean, nothing's ever like exact, but I mean ,
yeah. He's basically, I don'treally know how to describe
that. It's just people havecomplex personalities. So like
trying to answer in a whole,like, broad thing, definitively
yes or no, that's like kind ofimpossible. So,

Speaker 1 (03:54):
No , I want to understand , uh, again, I
haven't been , uh, followinghim for the last , uh, several
decades. Mm-hmm . And I don'treally know whether in his last
, uh, 10 years that we knowhim, all of us, I mean, all
over the world, because again,I didn't know him like 10 years
ago. I lost 200 bucks on him, eight years ago. So,

(04:16):
yeah. Yeah. I did a bet. I dida bet. And , uh, I put 200
bucks that Trump wouldn't win.
And , uh, irony was that I wasbetting with a Mexican guy who
was , uh, betting on him. So hewould win. And I was asking
him, Diego, why you are doingthat? Like, you are putting

(04:37):
money on Trump, but he would bebuilding the wall. And he told
me like, you know what , uh, ifhe wins, I'll get my 200 bucks.
If he loses, I will give 200bucks , uh, for the world not
to be built.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
It's like hedge fund strategy.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Exactly. .
But I lost 200 bucks , uh, howmany 80 years ago or whatever.
And I lost it again, last year.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
I don't know if those are actually like Delta
neutral strategies, ,but , uh, there's definitely, I
guess, hedging

Speaker 1 (05:13):
That is funny .
Again, that's why I'm sayingthat , uh, I lost 400 on Trump.
And that's why, that's why I amwondering how he evolved as a
person, as a public figureduring the last , uh, let's say
10 years.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
I mean, he , he's always been like this.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
But , uh, the British have like, their whole
concept of the, the hoity tothis and like , uh, permanent
proper, which, you know, asAmerican, I find kind of
annoying. But I think the mainpoint from that article that
you were sharing is that theguy doesn't have really any
self-awareness, which is true.
And that's the main thing.
There's like a lack of empathy.
So , yeah, he's funny, butusually he's funny because he's

(05:52):
like, you know , making fun ofsomeone else, or he is like
quick-witted to defend himselfor something like that. But ,
uh, as far as making some likegrand profound statements,
yeah, he's not really likethat. And the British kind of
like , uh, you know, theyusually like humor that makes
you think, and obviously , well, most of us like humor that
makes us think. So it's notlike a Britain versus America
thing, you know, most of ourbest comedians are great

(06:13):
thinkers. Like George Carlin ,may you rest in peace . He was
like one of the most profoundcomedians. Totally

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Agree with you, by the way. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Yeah. So , uh, and obviously, I mean, I wanna get
a lot of flack from the Brits,but like most Anglo comedians,
the ones that are famous areAmerican, not British.
.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Okay. But , uh, anyway, this is not the topic.
I ,

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah , yeah. So, like , uh, he's , uh, he's
funny in the sense that like,yeah, he's hilarious 'cause he
says stupid and , uh, and all .
But

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Does he realize that he's saying stupid?

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Uh,

Speaker 1 (06:44):
'cause one interesting thing, and I keep
thinking about that in one ofthe articles, I also read about
him . So thanks to thosepodcast, I , I'm reading quite
a lot , uh, and I'm hearingquite a lot about , about him.
So there is , um, vallistunning tactics. Well ,
basically you flood everythingwith whatever you say. So it

(07:05):
doesn't matter what you say,but you flood everything with,
with yourself. Yeah .

Speaker 2 (07:08):
It's called G Galloping. Okay,

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Thank you. I translated it as a stunning
tactics, but probably , uh,that's called Gish Galloping.
Yeah. Okay. So he realizes thatno matter what he says, it's
whether or not, but he is justsaying for the sake of saying
without any ,

Speaker 2 (07:30):
Well , yeah, but it's not like some profound
media strategy. He doesn't havesome like Grant super strategy
where he's like playing aspeople say four D chess. It's
just that he's like a ratingsguy, like the television, he
was really obsessed with , uh,the ratings , uh, before
president, you know, he was ,uh, you know, the apprentice.
So he was always like watchingthat. And then he'd always look
at the ratings of any of thenew shows that he would go on.

(07:52):
And then he always liked itwhen people reported that, oh,
that audience went up when hewas on. So his ratings obsessed
, and he knows that the way tobe in the constant media
attention is to do a lot ofthings constantly. And then ,
uh, of course, you know,everyone falls right into it.
And , uh, they reporting onhim. I mean, even with like
Zelensky thing, right? It waslike obviously atrocious, but

(08:14):
then at the end he's like, oh,this is gonna make for great
television, because that'sabout as far as his mind and ,
uh, conceived things. So , uh,yeah, he does that. He does ,
uh, a lot of noteworthy events,but it's not some grand
strategy for hisadministration. It's so that he
likes being in the center ofthe attention. And of course,
now that he's, you know,president of the United States,

(08:36):
it's very easy to do that. Andhe just keeps doing that so
that the attendance,

Speaker 1 (08:39):
Thinking about ratings, okay, I can understand
when you are a businessman andyou are featuring on the TV
shows, you can check theratings of these TV shows. Now,
if you are president , uh, youhave different ratings, right?
So the support, again, I don'tknow how it works in the us but
let's say in other countries,there are surveys where people

(08:59):
are asked if there areelections tomorrow, would you
vote for the candidate X or YYeah, yeah. That , those do
have the same in the us

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Yeah, of course. But all those surveys are because
people always ask that thing.
But the thing is, the mediaapparatus of the parties are
all geared towards getting aguy elected. Obviously when
it's off election, that mediaapparatus is not there. So when
people are just asking pollslike, oh, if election was
today, who would you vote for?
It's kind of like, you know,the , what's that expression

(09:29):
like? I think it's a Russianexpression, isn't it? If my
grandfather was a , um, was hadhad wheels, he'd be a bicycle
or something like that.
I think there's like a more ,uh, r-rated version of that,
but yeah. Right . Is that theexpression?

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Not really, but , uh, originally

Speaker 2 (09:47):
Horse was like, my grandmother had balls. She'd be
my grandfather. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah .

Speaker 2 (09:51):
I didn't wanna say it, but yeah,

Speaker 1 (09:53):
, the bicycle stuff comes from the,

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Probably the British

Speaker 1 (09:56):
British, yes. No , Italian cook . Italian cook ,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah . Oh ,

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Oh , was an Italian.
Okay. Italian,

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah. Bicycle , you know? Yeah, yeah
, yeah , yeah . I , I watchedthat and , uh, yeah, we , we
laughed a lot about that. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Exactly . So all those things are like,
basically those polls arebasically. Uh ,

Speaker 1 (10:15):
But what ratings then? Well , seriously
speaking, no ,

Speaker 2 (10:18):
He doesn't like Nick care . 'cause even before
Trump, the Republicans, there'sa famous , uh, league of , uh,
MIT Romney who was the , uh,Canada in 2012. And then he was
saying, you know, Hey, there'slike 40%, it's 47% of the
population that's not gonnavote for me, and that's not
gonna vote Republican. We don'tcare about them. He was trying
to say something profound, butof course it took the soundbite

(10:39):
out and, you know, it leakedand everyone was like , oh my
God, he doesn't care about 47%of the America population.
Right? So there was like awhole big thing. But that's
kind of the , uh, philosophy ofmost of these political
parties, is that yeah, it'sgonna be a big portion of your
population that's not gonnavote for you no matter what you
do. So ignore them and onlycare about making sure that the
other 53% vote. I don't wannamake this like, oh, I'm bashing

(11:02):
the Republicans thing. 'causethe Democrats kind of do this
too, as well. They just don'tsay it like that way. Because
for example, in the , uh, 2016elections, right? That was the
first time Hillary ran, or,well, the second time after
Obama. But yeah , it wasbetween Hillary and Bernie
Sanders. And there was , um, alot of internal talk within the
political sphere and ally news. 'cause like, I was in DC so I

(11:24):
was listening to all the thingsduring the bar conversations
and all the politicalstrategists, because the bars
in DC are like full ofpolitical operatives. Matter of
fact, the funny thing is like,you know , I'd be dating girls
and they'd be like saying, ohmy God, it's so refreshing to
like, you know, having drinkswith you because every guy on
Tinder, it says, oh , I'm an ato this congressman, or I'm an
aide to that congressman, orI'm a lobbyist for this. And
like, they hate it because DCis just so politically

(11:46):
incestuous. Everyone talks toeach other about this. But
anyway, they were talking withlike during 2016, there's this
battle. 'cause obviouslyeveryone normally knows about
the battle between Clintonversus Sanders, but there is
also a battle for the strategyof the Democratic party where
Hillary Clinton's camp wants tospecifically focus on the
battleground straits , the thebattleground states .

(12:09):
Right. And , uh, and reallyfocus all their money and
effort and the getting out thepoll for those , uh,
battleground states so that shewould get elected. Whereas
Bernie Sanders, he's like, Iwanna start a movement. Right?
So he wanted to have theDemocratic Party do outreach
for all the 50 states. And uh ,obviously with , uh, Hillary
Clinton winning the candidacy,her, her camp and her , uh,

(12:33):
party apparatus strategy wonout. Clinton

Speaker 1 (12:35):
Winning Canada.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah. 'cause you know, democratic primary was
between the Clinton versus ,uh, Sanders. Yes. And then she
won, and then she went to goface off , uh, against Trump in
the general election. Mm-hmm .
Mm-hmm . So I'mtalking about not the general
election, but the primaryelections. Mm-hmm
. Mm-hmm . And ,uh, the party elections, if you
will. So her strategy of onlyfocusing on the battleground
states, which is kind of likesimilar, if you kind of think

(12:59):
about why the Republicanstrategy of not giving a about
the 47%. So like both sidesthat kind of have this thing of
, uh, guy , I sound like one ofthose , uh, you know, nasty bad
faith people saying, oh, theboth sides. But no , I don't
mean like both sides as , no,they're all both equally bad.
But I'm just saying there'sthis , uh, general prevailing ,
uh, wisdom in the United Statesthat no matter what you do,

(13:20):
about 45%, or I guess 47% toquote that Romney said that are
not gonna vote for you. So, andthen corollary to that, there's
47% that, you know, will votefor you. So basically it's all
about fighting for the 6% inthe middle.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
So yeah, going back to the original thing with
Trump, it's like, yeah, hedoesn't care about the polls
thing. 'cause a, there arepolls because the election's
not happening 'cause of the,the Soviet , uh, grandmother
quote thing. And then the otherthing is that , uh, he doesn't
care that people like, evenlike, you know, the protests
that were just happening, whatwas it they were saying, like ,
oh, we don't care that theyprotest. We're gonna do what

(13:57):
we're gonna do anyway. Thatdoesn't affect us. Right. So
they basically just, they don'tgive a.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
He went golfing.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Yeah, yeah , exactly. He was golfing , uh,
this weekend, so he doesn'tcare. But like we were talking
about that earlier and like wasour last discussion. He's not
actually doing any of thisstuff. He's basically golfing
all the time. 'cause he gotwhat he wanted, which is his
immunity from , uh, punishment.
And he just lets Musk and allthese other morons , uh, this

Speaker 1 (14:19):
Stuff. So he doesn't care about the ratings now. He
cares about the noise.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
He just wants to be constantly in the news and
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (14:27):
Yeah , yeah , yeah .
Okay. That's totally clear. Andfor that reason, again, I , for
the last couple of weeks thatwe haven't heard each other,
there were tremendous amount ofnews , uh, coming

Speaker 2 (14:37):
By design

Speaker 1 (14:38):
By design. Yes. But I have no idea what's happening
inside of the us . So let'sforget about what we hear from
Paris, for example, fromFrance. What is happening
inside of the us . So what ishe doing to his fellow
citizens?

Speaker 2 (14:54):
That's a really big open-ended question. Like, what
do you mean?

Speaker 1 (14:58):
Well, every time we're counting the week since ,
uh, 20th , uh, of February nowit's been probably two and a
half months or three. And weknow how many papers have been
signed , uh, for the externalpolicy. And we more or less
understand where he goes interms of the directions, in
terms of the rest of the world.
But what he has done so far,like top three things

(15:21):
internally, which rest of theworld doesn't care, but local
fellow Americans do care.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Can't really answer that. 'cause it's not like
there's like a top three thing.
Everyone's different havedifferent , uh, pain points or
whatever.

Speaker 1 (15:34):
What comes to your mind first?

Speaker 2 (15:36):
It's not even that.
'cause also all these, for allthe hoopla around all these
executive orders, they don'tmean anything functionally as
far as , uh, actual actionswithin the United States
government. 'cause the USgovernment doesn't work like
this. 'cause the executivebranch is actually pretty weak
with , uh, being able to doquote new things. So all ,
there's a lot of like pomp andcircumstance and a lot of media

(15:58):
attention to all these things.
But actually we can only reallycontrol what's going on within
his department, which is theexecutive department, actual
laws and money and all thatstuff. They really can only
come from the , uh, legislativebranch. Of course, there are
real things that are actuallygoing on. He's pulling a lot of

(16:19):
the funding. He's refusing topay that out, which is
obviously having disastrouseffects. Now, yes, this is
illegal because he doesn't havethe power to do that, but he is
doing that. So I mean, that ,that's an issue, right? And of
course, there's lawyers andwhatnot fighting him. And then
also, like all these , um, youknow , deportations that are
going on those, again, thoseare not legal. He can't
actually do that. And lawyersand judges have been fighting

(16:40):
him and he's ignoring that. Sothere's a constitutional crisis
in that. So there's thesethings and , uh, and obviously
a a lot of the , the , thestuff that he's saying as the
statesman in chief is reallybad for the international
audience. So the United Statesis standing within, the world
is diminishing. So there'sthat. And of course, maybe the
average American doesn't reallycare about what the hell's

(17:01):
going on in, you know, Europeor Canada or Asia. But the
thing is, again, likely thelast time we talked about the
quote , American Empire isbased off of our relationships
and our alliances. So whetherthe person in Midwest or
Midwest , Ohio, or whateverdoesn't realize it or not,
their , uh, Americanness, theirability, their , their richness
of life as an American isslowly being diminished because

(17:25):
of that. Because a lot of ourrichness and our ease of life
comes from the fact that wehave so much influence
globally. So all that, and ofcourse all these, they're all,
they're all stitched togetherand they all like marry up to
the point that he's basicallytearing up the Constitution,
which is the foundation of ourcountry. So that's why I don't
really look at this as a topthree issue type thing. I

(17:45):
understand. Yeah. It's mostlylike, there's just one main
issue, which is the shreddingof the Constitution. Because
our country, most othercountries have , uh, Brits for
example, it's all about theking, right? Or you have your
loyalty or a specific country.
But in America there is no suchloyalty to quote the country.
We don't swear an oath to thecountry. We don't swear an oath

(18:07):
to a king. What we do, ourcountry is basically a
document, it's a piece ofpaper, which is the
Constitution. So our loyalty isto the Constitution. And
everything that we deriveourselves from comes from this
piece of paper.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
16,

Speaker 2 (18:21):
No, 17.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
17. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 17 ,

Speaker 2 (18:25):
Uh, 17 92, 93. Okay.
I'm sorry . I'm getting , uh,

Speaker 1 (18:29):
Washington.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Well, yeah , yeah , yeah, exactly. Okay . Yes. Um ,
'cause originally we were ourconfederation and then we
scrapped that. So this isactually our second government.
But you know, that's, you know, that's not the , that's
another

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Story.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yeah , that's another story. But basically
like, if the US Constitutionmagically applied to, I mean
obviously this is likecompletely ridiculous
statement, what I'm about tosay, but reductio a absurdum,
you know, that the logicalargument, so basically it's the
United States Constitution nolonger applied to the territory
of the United States, butmagically, let's say like, you

(19:03):
know , a genie came and snappedtheir fingers. And then all of
a sudden the US Constitutionnow applied to the territory
of, I don't know , Sub-SaharanAfrica. Then the United States
of America as the politicalphysical entity would be
Sub-Saharan Africa. Because ourloyalties are not tied to the
land, our loyalties are tied tothis document. So what Trump is
doing, what's government'sdoing, is shredding up that

(19:25):
document. So if you shred upthat document, like, you know,
most normal people outside ofUnited States or even people
within the United States willsay, well, who cares? We still
have the United States ofAmerica. But what I would say,
especially as a former militaryor former government official,
that no , our country ceases toexist because the whole essence
of our country is thisdocument. Without that

(19:45):
document, there is no country.
It's just like a random pieceof land.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
And again, very naive question, does he not
understand what he's doing?

Speaker 2 (19:51):
No, of course. A lot of people don't understand
that. Or maybe he doesunderstand what he's doing and
this is exactly what he wantsto do.

Speaker 1 (19:57):
But that's , uh, constitutionally legal first.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Well , yeah. That's why lawyers and everyone are
talking about this is a fullblown straight up
constitutional crisis. It's notlike we didn't have
constitutional crises before.
We've had tons ofconstitutional crises ,
especially in the early on ourhistory. It's just , the
problem is now that this is thefirst constitutional crisis in
the age of nuclear weapons.
It's also like the firstconstitutional crisis when
United States was basically theundisputed superpower, or I

(20:24):
guess that they call it nowhyper power . Because it was
like us and Soviet Union, wewere superpowers. But the
collapse of the Soviet Unionnow, like geopolitical
scientists say no , US now islike a hyper power . It's
something even beyondsuperpower. And then , so the
constituted crisis now actuallydoes matter even more so,
especially 'cause it's not likefor, oh, America number one,
we're the best. I'm not tryingto say that, but like, when

(20:46):
something bad happens to theUnited States, you know, we
used to learn in socialstudies, there was this thing
when the US sneezes, the restof the world catches a cold.
Well, now it's even more solike that. And you know, when,
when bad things happen in theUnited States, there's gonna be
even worse things that happento the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
We don't see it yet.
At least I haven't been able tosay anything like that. It's so
far. So do you think , uh,America has sneezed already or
is just

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Well, from a constitutional crisis
standpoint? Yeah, absolutely.
Of course, the rule of lawright now is currently not
being applied. Mm-hmm. The moment Trump
raised his hand and sworn oathat that very instant, his
presidency was illegal. Andit's not something like Q Anon
or Blue Anon conspiracy ,conspirator, conspiratorial

(21:32):
like statement. Mm-hmm . What I'm saying
is the fact that he didn'tdivest himself of his , uh,
business dealings. It's aviolation of the , uh, all
moments clause, which is aclause in the US constitution,
which limits corruption, likeseparates the personal benefits
of , uh, of governmentofficials from their , uh,
political , uh, benefits, Iguess you would say. So .

(21:54):
'cause the whole point is agovernment official should not
personally profit from their,their official capacity other
than the salary that's given tothem that's authorized by the
US Constitution. Right. We evenhave a clause in the US
Constitution where, or I thinkit's an amendment, I forget
what it is, but basically USCongress, they're the ones that
who determine governmentsalaries. Right? But the thing

(22:16):
is, if they vote for their ownsalary increase, salary
increase cannot hold effectuntil the very next election.
Ah . So it's that ingrained,one of the founding principles
of the Constitution is that nogovernment officials should
personally benefit.

Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah. You cannot use power for yourself, basically.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:34):
I mean, sure, if you win the election, obviously it
benefits you . Yeah, yeah . Butyou have to win the election,
the next election there benefit.

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Very smart , by the way.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Yeah. Well of course the US constitution's freaking
great. It's , the problem isit's not being followed right
now. Okay. So that's what I'msaying. So the moment he signed
, he raised his , uh, hand andgave the oath. His
administration wasconstitutionally illegal. And ,
uh, a lot of people, they don'tcare about, oh, well these
things happen . It's like , no,no. When you excuse these type
of things, I feel like this iskinda like a Jean Valon versus

(23:02):
Jve situation. Jve is like, no,these are the rules and you
gotta follow it. Normally I'm ahuge fan of Jean Valon , but in
this case, no jve is correct.
When it comes to , uh, to usconstitutional law , it's like,
no, these are the laws and youdon't bend it or anything like
that. Like the laws are thelaws and we follow it .
Otherwise, you just normalizethis , uh, the corruption.

Speaker 1 (23:22):
I love the way how we how we mix the
French and the American stuff.
Yeah,

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Oh , I really love it. Um, but , uh, coming back
to the Constitution, so yeah ,yeah . You brought me to the
question I wanted to ask. Um, Ithink it was the first time
during the last two or threeweeks, or probably first time
ever, but at least for me, Iheard that Trump was saying
that he is serious aboutthinking of problem making his
third term.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Do you, do you believe in that?

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Believe in what?

Speaker 1 (23:54):
Believe that he can do that?

Speaker 2 (23:55):
Well, obviously he can't do that. Do I believe
that he's gonna try to do thatand do that? Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Uh , he will try. Do you believe he will succeed?

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I, I, I mean , I'm not freaking Nostradamus here
now we're mixing Russian stuffinto

Speaker 1 (24:09):
.
No, but okay, okay. Okay.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
With the way thing I'll say, with the way things
are going, yes, he can succeedbecause we're in full blown
constitutional crisis mode andthere's nothing checking his
power. So if he wants to do it,if he wants to do this type of
coup, he has the means tosucceed. I'll , I'll say that.

Speaker 1 (24:29):
What could be the most, and if you don't want to
answer, please do not. But ,uh, what would be the most
probable scenario in this case?

Speaker 2 (24:37):
He makes some reason. And his lawyers are
already, I think they'realready coming up with this
type of thing. They're alreadylike making an excuse, like,
oh, well technically, becausehe , uh, lost the first
election with Biden. It's, Idon't even know the whole
arguments because they're sostupid . But , uh, and
I don't really follow it, but Ithink they're like trying to
say something like, oh, well,because technically 'cause he

(24:58):
lost that one election, theylike resets. And then there's
like another situation where heis trying to pull a me veev
where Vance becomes thepresident. Right. And then
'cause nothing tech , whichthis is all , by the way, all
of this is. This is not true.
I'm just saying, I'm repeatingwhat they're saying. Basically
saying that, oh, he's going tobe the vice president. Kinda
like Putin was with , uh, midiv . And then unlike what Putin

(25:20):
did, where Med Veta was allowedto carry out his full term and
then quote , reset, what heplans on doing is Vance is
going to, you know, win theelection and then immediately
resign so that Trump becomesthe president now , uh, because
he's the vice president. Andthen because technically he
wasn't elected as president,but he can serve this third
term. Again, these are all likewrong. And any constitutional

(25:43):
lawyer would say, this is allarguments, but these are the
rationales that they're tryingto cook up here.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Uh , this might not work because I don't remember
the amendment or part of thelaw, but , uh, one who cannot
be elected as a presidentcannot be elected as a vice
president as well. You're

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Right. Exactly.
That's why I'm saying all thisstuff is, but these are the
things that they're likeconcocting right now. So that
Okay . So that he has somerandom excuse. And again, like
it doesn't matter what thedocument says. If, if no one's
check putting in the check andif the people are rabid enough
to love Trump, and then they'lljust allow it. Okay. Okay . I
mean, and for example, just tobe fair here, we've done a lot
of , uh, unconstitutionalthings that , uh, people just

(26:19):
passed off. Like originally,like back in 1803, Thomas
Jefferson went to , uh,Napoleon to buy , uh, new Veil
France. Like New France, likethe Louisiana purchase. The
Constitution did not allowThomas Jefferson to do that,
but then he did it anyway. Andnot only Congress, but the
American people, no one thatsaid like, Hey, that's illegal.
You can't do that. 'cause wejust basically, we just doubled

(26:41):
the size of our country fornothing. So it's not like we
haven't done this before, but , you know, stakes are
a lot higher now. I

Speaker 1 (26:49):
Understand. I understand.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
'cause back then, 1803, we were just some
backwater, I understandcountry,

Speaker 1 (26:53):
A lot of things that we think cannot be done because
they're written on the paperactually can be done.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yeah. As long as the people allow it.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Uh , as long as the people allow it. Speaking about
the people we have , uh, spokenabout the ratings, what is the
current situation with , uh,people's feelings around Trump?
Like, people tend to hate himmore. People still love him. I
mean, those who voted for him.

Speaker 2 (27:18):
Yeah. I mean, you always hear on the news about ,
uh, people saying, oh my God, Ididn't know that he was going
to attack us too and I thoughtthese tariffs were gonna be
good, or, but now it's hurtingmy business. Or they're gonna
say like, when I thought he wasgonna kick out all the legal
aliens, he was going to kickout the bad ones. But you know,
my wife or my gardener, he'sleaving too. And now I'm
infected and I'm like mad. Andof course, obviously this is

(27:40):
the shot and Freud really playsin the media. So these are the
things that we hear about. Butin reality, I don't really see
much of a change with most ofthe , uh, Trump supporters
because the congressmen, thepeople who are supposed to be ,
uh, derived their power ortheir mandate from the people,
the congressmen, they'rebasically ignoring all of this.

(28:01):
Even though like people areprotesting a bunch of
congressmen know with all theseprotests, people are demanding
enough town halls and like,yeah, we don't care about you.
I don't have time for this. Youguys can protest all you want.
'cause they know that they'resafe in their districts and
that they have enoughsupporters that they're
untouchable. So despite whatthe media is trying to make
into hoopla from the actualbrass tacks of elections and

(28:23):
the way things are going,there's enough of a rabid
following for Trump and thequote Republican way of doing
things that most congressmendon't give a. So again, 'cause
none of this stuff, thepresident, you know,
functionally when you look atthe paper from the
Constitution, is actuallypretty weak. Right. It's a by
design because we fought a waragainst one of the most
powerful monarchs in the world,right. At the time. So we

(28:45):
didn't want another king,right? So we made it so that
the president was a very weak,and we made Congress a very
powerful and very strong, whichis, you know, the opposite of
the way things go in Europe. Sothe only reason why all this
stuff is happening is becauseCongress is allowing it. Like
all this stuff could endtomorrow if Congress just gets
their act together. But theywon't because despite all the

(29:07):
hoop law in the media, there'senough of people who don't
really follow politics thatvote when it comes down to
voting. Like, what am I votingfor a R ? Whoever has a r next
to their name Republican. Boom.
Done.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
And when is the next election to the Congress?

Speaker 2 (29:21):
In

Speaker 1 (29:21):
2026? Yeah, next

Speaker 2 (29:23):
November 26. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
So basically everything can finish in one
year, in one year and a half.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah. Well, things can finish right now too, if
the Republicans

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Okay with the current , um, situation in the
current version of theCongress.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Well, even with the current version of the
Congress, I don't think themidterms will do much because
in order to impeach, you need,okay , you only need a majority
in the house. So that's likewhat, seven seats I think right
now.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
Well , you don't have to impeach Trump. You just
need to post him. So no ,

Speaker 2 (29:54):
I'll post him . How, because right now, for example,
the tariffs, right? Yes.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Now that you have spoken about them, yes.

Speaker 2 (30:01):
Okay. The tariffs, the president cannot enact
tariffs. 'cause tariffs areessentially attacks . It's
annoying that the people, thisis another, like remember we're
talking about the Spaceballstheory, right? , you
know about Democrats arestupid. They keep calling this
tariffs when they should becalling this the Trump trade
tax. It even has like thealliteration of Shakespeare,
you know, the Ts Trump tradetax, triple T. But yeah, so

(30:23):
it's a tax. The tariff is a taxjust because you name it tariff
doesn't mean anything. Theseare tax . In fact, before the,
what was it, 16th amendment, Iforget which amendment. I think
it's the 16th, where weactually allowed for direct
taxes offer on income. 'causebefore that, Congress wasn't
allowed to impose income taxesdirectly onto the people.
Everything had to be indirecttaxes. It's a whole lot of

(30:45):
wonky stuff in there about ,uh, apportionment of the states
and everything like that forpeople to know. But whatever,
just for purpose ofconversation, it's basically
income taxes were functionallylike illegal . So most of the
quote taxes that the governmentraised up until the 16th
amendment, which was, I thinkthis was like 1913, I wanna
say, when the, that amendmentwas passed. So it was like, for

(31:06):
a long time of our country, theUS government raised tax raised
money through tariffs. Mm-hmm . Right? So
tariffs are , is tax. So thepresident does not have the
power to impose taxes. Congressdoes. But what the Congress did
was, hey, in the case ofemergency, it seems like every
dictatorship always comes fromthe emergency , the legisl of
emergency, right ? Emergencyenabling act, emergency power.

(31:28):
Yes. But basically Congresssaid there's a law that says,
Hey, if there's an emergency,then the president has the
power to enact 25% taxes.
That's why he made this whole ,uh, hysteria about , uh,
illegals coming through theborder and everything. A that
was a racist piece of type ofstory thing to win votes. But
also it was the way for him touse an excuse to say, Hey, we

(31:50):
have a national emergency.
Again, a constitutional lawyerwill tell you, this is all, but
it doesn't matter whether it'sor not. If people, if people
buy the story, they buy thestory. So I'm just explaining
the story, so don't blame me,but basically says, yeah, okay,
there's illegals and that's anational emergency. Darren
quote , invading the country.
And then because of that,because of this law that
Congress passed says, okay, wecan enable up to 25% taxes.

(32:12):
Now, of course, was it two daysago or four days ago, they had
the Liberation Day terrorists ,which are more than that
. So I don't know howthat's actually gonna work,
because technically that'sillegal. Because even this
National Emergency Act onlylimits you up to 25%. So I
don't know what type ofconcoction they , uh,
manufactured to justify this,or even if they even bother to

(32:33):
do it. But , uh, the point is,technically if you look at that
law, he has the ability toenact these 25% tariff or tax,
right? So even if the Democratscome into power or in the
house, right, and not in theSenate or whatever, you say,
oh, well they can oppose him .
Well, no, you can't oppose him. 'cause the law is the law.
The only way to quote opposehim is to actually pass a new

(32:55):
law to get rid of thatemergency power. Mm-hmm
. So this is whyopposition is not enough,
because the laws are alreadythere. You've already granted
out these laws assuming thatyou're gonna have a , you know,
a stable genius as thepresident. That's

Speaker 1 (33:08):
Interesting. This very interesting point because
, uh, that emergency state, howyou call it emergency state,
right? Yeah. Do you have anydefinitions of those?

Speaker 2 (33:20):
No. It's up to the president. If the president
declares an emergency.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
This is the back door , basically.

Speaker 2 (33:25):
Yeah . That's literally 1933 enabling act of
hi , uh, excuse me, of, of , uh, fricking uh , Adolf
Hitler.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
Right ? That's okay.
That's okay.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
It's literally the enabling act.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
. But , uh, now you mentioned that , um,
and again, i I truly respectthat , uh, the constitution of
the US which has been beingbuilt for the last 300 years is
a state of art. And it still,it has back doors like this
emergency state. There is,well,

Speaker 2 (33:53):
That wasn't in the Constitution. That was a law
that was passed. So theConstitution says Congress
writes the laws and alsocontrols the power of the
purse, and they can delegatesome authority, some of their
responsibility to the , uh, tothe executive power. Which
right now there's , uh, well,not right now, but before Trump
got elected, there was someback and forth fighting amongst

(34:14):
constitutional lawyers aboutwhether Congress has the power
to do that. 'cause for example,the Supreme Court during the
Biden administration, theygutted the , uh, EPA, the Clean
Water Act, which allowed , uh,president Biden to , uh,
control the polluting of therivers and the water. Mm-hmm
. Right ? Andthen the Republicans, because
you know , God knows why, butbecause I guess they hate

(34:36):
humanity. They're like, no,Biden doesn't have the power to
use the EPA to clean up therivers and the water or
drinking water. Why? BecauseCongress does not have the
power or the authority todelegate. They cannot delegate
their constitutional authorityto the president, to the
executive branch because theConstitution says only the
Congress, only the legislativebranch can enact these power.

(34:58):
So if, if Congress wants toregulate the drinking water and
the clean rivers, they have topass a specific law to do that.
And this was their way of theSupreme Court to basically kill
a clean water act. And so nowwe don't really have like good
drinking water, I guess, unlessyou know you have a democratic
, uh, or a pro environment, astate government. So they said
that. But of course, now assoon as Trump gets selected,

(35:20):
all of a sudden now they'rereversed and saying, oh, well,
you know, Congress delegatedthis authority for tariffs. So
I guess we're gonna use it toenact these trade taxes. So
there you go. This is the , uh,speak with fork tongue
situation that under ademocratic presidency, they say
one thing and then all of asudden when the Republican's in
power, they say the completeopposite. So the hypocrisy is

(35:42):
real . Yes. So , soyeah , it's going back to your
thing. It's like mm-hmm . And this is
also why Republicans easily winbecause they don't actually
govern. The last major law billthat was passed , like
consequential bill that theRepublicans passed was back in
I think like 2002, which waslike Medicare Part D or plan D,

(36:02):
whatever it is , which I don'treally know the basics of that.
'cause it was basically to help, uh, senior citizens , uh, pay
for the , offset the cost oftheir drug prices. And this is
like med called Medicare Part Dor something. This was under
George W. Bush. And it was likea genuinely a big nice thing.
But since then, there hasn'tbeen a single Republican bill
passed for over like 20, whatwas it now , almost 23 years

(36:25):
now, of where they do , sure.
They passed bills of like , uh,keeping the budget going and
everything that, but actualsomething of major consequence
that an improved lives or , ornot whatever. They haven't
passed any laws because thewhole point of being
conservative is not to actuallyprogress, right? You wanna
conserve, you want to keepthings going. Mm-hmm
. Mm-hmm. So it was very
easy to be a Republican 'causeall you have to do is basically

(36:47):
not do your job, right. If yourefuse to vote on anything, it
was just , uh, clog up thepolitical grinding machine and
never pass laws. Well ,technically you're doing what
the people have asked you to doas a conservative because
nothing's moving along assomeone who's not a
conservative, because I don'twanna use progressive. 'cause
that's not like a loaded termnow, meaning for a specific ,

(37:07):
uh, political philosophy. Butin order to actually be a
functional legislator, you needto be able to pass laws based
on new current events, right?
And that's what a responsible,you know , co concealing or
responsible legislator does.
But if you have conservativesin a majority, or even in a
super minority where they canjust block progress, well ,

(37:29):
they're doing their job. Andyou as someone who's trying to
react to the current events ofwhatever they may be, I'm not
trying to make a politicalpoint here. I'm just making a
functional mm-hmm . Statecraft point is that you
cannot do your job as alegislator because you have all
these quote conservatives thatare just blocking everything.
So when a Democrat is in power,the Republicans are doing an
awesome job because they canjust block everything that

(37:50):
Democratic president wants todo. And then the Democrats look
weak because they're like, oh,what are the Democrats ever
doing for us? 'cause they suck. They're not helping me
improve my life and everythinglike that. Well, yeah, they're
not improving your life becausethey can't improve your life
because they have the otherpart of the Congress. Yeah.
They're a minority, but they'regunking up the work. They can't
pass the laws that thepresident wants to pass.
Whereas now, with the Trumpthing, with Trump, what he's

(38:12):
doing, he's co-opting the lawsright. To do what he wants to
do. And now the Democrats needto fight back, but they can't
because again, in order tofight back, you can't just
roadblock like Republicans do.
Being an obstructionist is notdoing anything because he's
already taking advantage of thelaws there. And even
obstructing doesn't meananything. 'cause he can still
just do illegal stuff. You haveto actually do action. You have

(38:34):
to react, you have to dosomething. You have to do a
counteraction, which requiresbare minimum majority of
Congress to actually dosomething. So this is like the
fundamental issue with , uh,with I guess progress and
civilization versusconservativeness and savagery,
if you will.

Speaker 1 (38:52):
So Democrats look like , uh, accelerator and ,
uh, Republicans like in , uh,brakes .

Speaker 2 (38:58):
Yeah. I guess you could say that. Yeah, exactly.
But even that doesn't reallywork because the Democrats
can't just come into power andhit the brakes. Right. Because
hitting the brakes doesn't doanything. Because again, the
laws are the laws. You have toactually change the laws.
Mm-hmm . So inyour analogy, the changing of
the laws would be again,hitting the gas pedal.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I agree. I want to come back to
my original question. So onething that I , I didn't think
of , uh, before, and I didn'tthink from this perspective. So
whatever law you have, itdoesn't mean anything. And
we'll do differently. And thenafterwards, retrospectively we
will think how we can , uh, youknow, change it. So we change

(39:38):
the reality and the laws willfollow. Let me put it this way.
This is how Trump acts.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Okay. I'll follow with you.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
I was thinking, and again, maybe it is a bit naive,
but I was thinking that , uh,he's still playing by the
rules.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
No, no. He's , he's definitely not playing by the
rules. Okay.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Okay . Okay . That's what I didn't, again, how I
thought about him, and I'mcoming back to my original
question from the beginning.
You were growing up with,sorry, I don't want to mean
that, but like , uh, you aregrowing up with him and you
listen, and this is where, thisis the baggage that I want to
get a lot from. That's why I'masking these questions. Yeah.
So, okay. He's not playing bythe rules and uh, he has always

(40:17):
been like that. But , um, hehas some ideas to change stuff
and he's doing all of that.

Speaker 2 (40:25):
Uh , it's not, he has specific ideas. 'cause
again, he just cares aboutgolfing. Yeah , yeah . And
doing that and being leftalone. And then the people
around him have their ideas andthey basically just write
everything up. And then he justsigns whatever it is so that
all he cares about is beingable to golf and being in a
national spotlight. 'cause thatgives him an ego boost. But ,

(40:45):
you know, you bring a goodpoint here is that what he
cares about is his , uh, he hasthis image of being a
businessman, right ? Yes. So hewants to project that and he
wants to prove it, I guess, tohimself. And also the people
around him that he's a quote ,successful businessman. It's
kinda like the, thepsychological report that I
think the Brits released on ,uh, Putin, right? Is that Putin

(41:08):
was a failed , um, KGB agent.
He was just some like minor guyin the periphery of East
Germany. And he wasn't reallygood at his job. And , uh, by
the way , tuff

Speaker 1 (41:19):
Just recently told absolutely different thing.
Like who Tuff , you know him.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
Wait , who is he?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
I might lie with his official , uh, role, but he's a
special representative ofTrump. Oh,

Speaker 2 (41:33):
Oh , oh , Witkoff , right? Yeah . Witf Witf . I
thought you were talking aboutsomeone within the Putin , uh,
administration .

Speaker 1 (41:37):
Administration . No , but he made a comment
recently, I think to Mr.
Carlson. Yeah .

Speaker 2 (41:44):
What would you talk about Tucker Carlson?

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Um , only smart and clever people were part of the
KGB back in the day. So

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Oh yeah, then , then why did we win ? But ,
but basically it's kind of likeknown, especially amongst
people within the KGB backthen, which I guess now is the
FSB, right? But back then itwas that he wasn't that good of
a spy. But , uh, when he cameunder Yeltsin's , uh,
administration, he wanted toproject this image that, oh
yeah, I was a really good spyand I could do this thing. And

(42:12):
when he finally becamepresident, he wanted to
validate his own insecuritiesof being a spy to make the
Russian Federation politicalapparatus into this , uh, supra
KGB political apparatus to kindof prove to himself that no, he
actually really is a good spy.
So that's Putin's thing. That'shis psychological profile. It's

(42:32):
the same thing with Trump isthat Trump is not a good
businessman. I mean, hebankrupted his own casino.
Casino is like the most easy . You're literally
like, you're basically printingmoney. How can you bankrupt the
casino? It's the easiest thingto make money off of. Yet he
did that. His real estateempire failed. He had bad
business deals with his realestate, and that's why he never

(42:54):
released his taxes because hewas constantly losing money.
But he also had this obsessionto be considered like a
billionaire and to be on theForbes top billionaire list. So
he always inflate his net worththere, but also had problems
with the IRS as well with , uh,

Speaker 1 (43:09):
But he cannot object that he has been successful
hijacking the

Speaker 2 (43:12):
No, no, absolutely.
And then this is the point thatonce he became president, just
like when Putin, once Putinbecame president, he wanted to
prove all the critics Ron ,that no, he really is a good
spy. And look at all thishybrid warfare that I'm doing.
And sure enough, I mean, toPutin's credit, the hybrid
warfare that Russia has beencommitting on the West has been
topnotch. Partly is becauseEurope and America doesn't
fight back. But that's adifferent story. And it's the

(43:34):
same thing with Trump is thathe's not a good businessman.
But now that he's present ,he's trying to prove that he's
a good businessman. But thingswith businessmen is that the
CEO is the ultimate personwho's in power. And he's trying
to act like that where, okay,I'm the CEO , I'm in power, so
whatever I do goes, but theUnited States is not set up
like that purposely. Whereas inother European countries, yes,

(43:56):
the president of the PrimeMinister may have the big
power, but in the UnitedStates, because we fought
against the king, we didn'twant that. The ultimate power
comes from Congress. So he'strying to act like a big boy,
like, oh yeah, I'm a big man,CEO , and I look at all these
executive orders. I'm signingall this stuff is because he
can't do that. United States isnot physically, is not set up
like that. Only Congress can dothese things. So he can only

(44:18):
ask and beg and plead and workwith Congress to make these
things happen. But of course,because we're in a
constitutional crisis, himacting like trying to massage
his CEO credentials andbasically show that, oh yeah,
I'm actually really am a goodCEO , I'm not a failed
businessman. Congress hasallowed this to happen. The
Supreme Court has allowed thisto happen again. It's all a
hundred percent illegal. Themoment he raised his hand to

(44:41):
swore his oath, it was alreadya illegal presidency. But
because people are allowingthis to happen, it looks like
now he can look to himself andsay , yeah, you know, I prove
all my critics wrong. I'mactually a really good
businessman, even with thesetrade taxes, right? The
tariffs, the Trump trade taxesfor all the hoopla that's going
around on all those thingsdon't be wrong . I don't wanna
like minimize it. It's not likethis is not a bad thing. This

(45:01):
is a very bad thing, .
But if you look at the, theDepartment of Treasury every
day at , I think at 1630, at4:30 PM they release their
daily financial transactions.
This is a very like wonkishthing. So unless you're really
going into weeds on a lot ofthese things, or if you
actually encounter accountantsat the Treasury Department, you

(45:21):
don't actually look at thesethings. But it's there. It's
the public records. Every dayat 1630, you can go to
Department of Treasury andthey'll say, these are all the
money that we receive , andthis is all the money that we
sent out. And there's a bylinein there for , and it's public.
Yeah, it's public every day .
That's 1630. Just GoogleTreasury daily statement. It's
all there. And then there's oneline, I forget what it's
called, but I think it's likecustoms duties or customs uh,

(45:43):
flows or whatever it is .
Basically there's a line inthere and the treasury
statement, every single day, itshows how much money the United
States has collected fromtariffs. Mm-hmm .
And there hasn't been anoticeable increase in that
line since Trump took office.
So despite all this hoopla oflike all these executive wars
and things that he's doing, hehasn't actually implemented any

(46:03):
of these trade taxes because ifhe did, you would see it at
1630 on the daily treasurystatement.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
No, but I believe if he imposed these taxes when
just recently or just a coupledays ?

Speaker 2 (46:14):
Well, yeah, sure.
Two or

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Three days

Speaker 2 (46:15):
Ago. Right? So I'm , again, I'm not trying to
minimize this to say that thisis not a bad thing and it's
very bad thing become a badthing if this happens. But the
thing is, they're just causingchaos to stay in the spotlight
and tank the market. Becausealso if this thing does get
enacted, this just shows youlike how bonkers this is .
Because when you do a policy asa statesman, as a government
official, you have to take intoaccount how is this

(46:38):
mechanically going to work? Howis this functionally going to
work? And clearly they haven'tthought it through because,
okay, let's just assume we'relike hardcore Trumpists, like
we're really in hisadministration and we're gonna
enact these trade taxes. Right.
Okay. I'm gonna ask you, youMr. Bean counter ,
congratulations, you're now anaccountant in the basement in
the Department of Treasury orin the Customs in ice, and

(47:01):
you're in charge of nowenacting this executive order.
How exactly are you going to dothis when for example , we'll
take, I mean obviously we're inFrance now, we'll take this. So
we have European Union taxes ,according to his big beautiful
sheet that he really 20 20%.
Right. So that means France is20% tariffs. Right. Okay. But

(47:23):
ion , right, ion is ionnot a part of

Speaker 1 (47:27):
34 or 36 ?

Speaker 2 (47:29):
No, what's that?
Which one was the It was lowwas like 10%. Was it Martinique
was 10%. I don't remember. Ithought Reunion

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Was 34 .

Speaker 2 (47:36):
Oh yeah , sorry.
Yeah . Ion was 34. Yes. But uh, Ian French Guiana was 10%. I
think I forget . But the pointis for people who don't know
this, rayon and French Guianaor Mayos , these are wholly
integrated parts of France.
It's like basically Hawaii tothe United States. Yes. Right.
, there's no differencebetween French Guiana and

(47:58):
France Constitution. Just likethere's no difference between
Hawaii and the United States.
So Mr. Bean counter , who'ssitting in the basement of the
Treasury Department, what arethe mechanical implementations?
Because again, in order tocollect taxes, there has to be
some sort of mechanism, right?
The very boring stuff. But whatis the mechanical way that
you're going to implement thetax on French Guyana or Reunion

(48:21):
when they are actually a partof the European Union when
they're actually part of Franceand there's no mechanical way
to actually implement thesetaxes that he's proposing?

Speaker 1 (48:29):
That's fine. So the taxes are not that bad then?
No,

Speaker 2 (48:32):
No, no. Of course they're bad because they're
still going to enact something.
And just like with this DEIstuff, they said , oh, we want
to get rid of the DEI things,which is again, another bonkers
thing. What they start doing,they erased from the archives
of the US Air Force at theEnola Gay , a little plane that
dropped the first bomb on , uh,on Hiroshima, the first atomic
bomb. Why? Because they flaggedgay in the name of the

(48:53):
airplane. So there's gonna bechaotic implementations of this
batt insane declaration. 'causeit's not even a policy, this
declaration that there's norhyme or reason to what he
wrote. But there's gonna beeven less rhyme or reason to
the implementation of it. Sopeople don't know how to react
to it because there's nocorrect way to mechanically

(49:14):
implement the policies thathe's trying to implement.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
And I'm repeating that probably it's not that bad
because , uh, there will becows in implementation and the
actual implementation of thosetaxes will be, well, I don't
want to say that they will beneglected, but uh, if you don't
know how to implement thestupid taxes, you will be doing
that the most productive. So no,

Speaker 2 (49:38):
You'd think so, but obviously they're not doing
that. I mean, other things likethis in Nola gay example is one
thing. This whole icedeportations, that's a scary
version of application of it.
And even, okay, you're sayingthat it's not so bad because
maybe they're gonna be forcedto not implement it. But the
thing is, already from theAmerican Empire standpoint,
we're already losingcredibility with our trade

(49:59):
partners, right? Forget aboutour allies, right? Just in
general, our trade partners nowpeople are talking about, oh,
let's do our own trade unionsand our trade organizations and
leave America out of it.
America, since its foundationhas been based off of free
trade in the us We're goingback to the US Constitution. I
always like to make fun of my ,uh, army buddies because you
know, the Air Force, we wereborn from the Army in , uh,

(50:21):
1947 'cause we originally werethe Army Air Forces . But
anyway, whatever. So we'realways like the junior kid on
the pluck. But it's always makefun of the , uh, the army guys.
'cause the thing is, the armyhas no right to exist in the
United States in theconstitution. Every two years,
Congress has to re authorizethe US Army.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
Why is that?

Speaker 2 (50:39):
Because we were so afraid of a standing army
because again, the British armywas the one that basically
trampled on our right hand . Oh, okay . So basically in the
Constitution, there is noprovision for the US Army. What
the Constitution says isCongress has the power to raise
an army, but as far as astanding army, that's
completely illegal. So everytwo years there's a line, you
know, it's against a throwawayline that's been going on since

(51:01):
forever. It's basicallyCongress re authorizes the US
Army because that I making funof them. They're not a
legitimate militaryorganization. , of
course , they can go say samething about the Air Force
'cause we're not even in theConstitution regardless. But ,
but again, important is that USArmy. There's no such thing as
a standing army in the UnitedStates. Do you have to re-up
it? Whereas the Navy, that isconstitutionally mandated,

(51:22):
whereas Congress has the powerto raise an army, Congress
shall furnish and provide for aNavy because the framers of the
Constitution, the foundingfather said we need a strong
and powerful Navy to protectour interests so that we can
have trade with othercountries. Because the way
we're gonna grow as a countryis with free trade. So whereas

(51:43):
the Navy is mandated by the USConstitution, the army isn't,
it's because free trade isessential. And now all this,
what's going on here is thedestruction of the free trade
global apparatus, if you will,with the United States at the
lead. And that's, that's a veryreal effect irrespective of how
the mechanical operations ofthese trade taxes are going to
be implemented.

Speaker 1 (52:04):
I think, again, I'm trying to be devil's advocate
here, during the last severalyears, since 2000, I believe,
since Obama, when he decided tomove out all of the production
outta the us . Right.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
What production,

Speaker 1 (52:21):
Maybe I'm wrong here. So you'll correct me.
Basically, you just consume andyou , the only thing that us
produces are the debts, Ibelieve, which it sells outside
the what debts? The EBTS . Oh ,okay .

Speaker 2 (52:37):
That's , yeah .
Alright .

Speaker 1 (52:39):
Now, what Trumps wants to do, he's not against
to trade as such, per se, Iwould say, again, I remind you
I'm being his advocate for asecond. He's not against trade
as such. He wants to bringmanufacturing back to the US
so, you know, make quite a lotof things cheaper and so on and
forth. I do understand though,that we're living in a global

(53:02):
world where you cannot producean airplane alone. Nobody can.
Yeah. There are from five to 17countries, each of which
produce some parts of thefuture airplane, including
software, including systems,including the leaders,
including whatever. But he'strying to, and I can read it
like that. He's trying to bringthat manufacturer back to the

(53:25):
us

Speaker 2 (53:27):
Okay . I'm following with your devil's advocacy. So

Speaker 1 (53:31):
Question is, okay, maybe he's doing it a bit iCal
, a bit clumsy, but he's tryingto do that. So his intention
bad ?

Speaker 2 (53:41):
No. Well, I mean, doesn't matter what his
intention is because it's justwrong. There's no way to ,
there's no way to spin aroundit. What you just say to Yes,
that's what he's thinking. Butit's an incorrect thought
trade. The best way I canexplain this is, I have to say
this again. The space ballstheory . Democrats are stupid
that they keep comparing him tofascists as if , uh, people are

(54:04):
going to care about that andthat's gonna get them to win
votes. When Trump and, youknow, literally did a sig , he
and Aaron was like, yeah, Musk,you know, and he got like more
popular, at least amongst hisbase, despite the outcry. They
keep calling him a fascist whenhe is actually a communist.
Because you remember thisprobably from your school , uh,
school education, what theSoviet Union did, what was the

(54:26):
trade policy of the SovietUnion? There was tariffs and
there was Stalin, right? 'causethere was the whole thing
between Lenin and Stalin aboutthe philosophy of how to spread
communism. Lenin wanted tospread communism all across the
, uh, yes. Yeah. Like a globalSoviet establishment where
Stalin was like, no, no, no, Iguess it's not really so much
Lenin versus Stalin. It wasmore like Trotsky versus Stalin

(54:48):
because Lenin died and thenTrotsky was supposed to be the
main guy. But anyway, whatever,we'll get back to that . It's a
different story. But the pointis, yeah, Lenin and then
through Lenin, Trotsky waslike, no, we need to spread
communism throughout for haveglobal Soviets, right? And
that's how we bring communismwhere Stalin's like, no, we
need to focus on the RussianSoviets or the, the Russian
controlled Soviets and makecommunism strong there. And

(55:10):
only there can we defeat theevil powers of , uh, the
capitalists pig dogs , right?
So the way obviously Stalin wonout, so the way he did it was
they basically closed off thetrade so that there was only
trade within the Soviet Union,right? As well as within the
Soviet aligned countries, youknow, Warsaw Pact and also,

(55:30):
what was the acronym for likeCuba, Vietnam, and some other,
it was like co cova covo , I ,I forget what the, there was
some Russian acronym, butwhatever. But the point is
there was only trade amongstthese things and there was no
trade anywhere else. So therewas like mm-hmm .
There was very strict movementsof goods. And what Trump is
doing right now is essentiallyis the exact same thing with

(55:52):
these trade barriers. He'srestricting trade . He wants to
bring the manufacturing back,right? Because again, what
Stalin did was he didn't wantto be reliant on the capitalist
imperialists for theirmanufacturing capacity . They
had to be developed locally,right? It doesn't matter if
what the wellbeing of theSoviet citizen was, but the
manufacturing had to be done inthe Soviet Union and you know,

(56:15):
everyone else. And that'sexactly what, what Trump is
doing, his trade policies rightnow, and this is not an
exaggeration. Maybe communistsmight object to me calling it
communist, but at the veryleast, let's call it, it's a
very stalinist approach totrade by bringing this stuff
back. And again, as acapitalist, someone who
understands the concept ofcapitalism, capitalism is not

(56:36):
some, despite what communistslike to say, capitalism came as
a economic philosophy tocounteract the mercantilistic ,
uh, philosophies of theabsolute monarchies. Like Adam
Smith for example, what he didwas, hey, look at the
capitalistic , uh,manufacturers in Britain, which
was operating under a , anessentially a constitutional

(56:58):
monarchy versus the decadent ,uh, mercantilist policies of
Louis . The , uh, well backthen, I guess it was Louis the
16th , but basically under the, uh, Louis the 14th absolute
monarchy on CN regime , uh,system. And then look how
England's, or, well, back then,I guess it was Great Britain.
Look how great Great Britain iscompared to the Ian regime,

(57:19):
France. So this was a critiqueof that type of mercantilist
policies to say that the bestway to elevate the standards of
your city , of your subjects isto have free trade and
encourage, you know, is it like, it's not from the benevolence
of the baker and the butcherthat we have bread and meat on
our table. It's for their owngreed. So use the greed as a
force of, as an engine of goodto increase the overall wealth

(57:41):
of the citizens, right? That'sthe whole point of that. And
then of course, after AdamSmith wrote that, then like,
you know , uh, Ricardo, hewrote the , his whole concept
of comparative advantage,everyone to enjoy the maximum
benefits of economicprosperity. Just because you
can do something doesn't meanyou should do it if someone
else can do it comparativelybetter, right? Not absolutely
better, but comparativelybetter. So the whole concept of

(58:03):
comparative advantage came andthat was integrated with into
capitalism. And that's theconcept of free trade is that
hey, just because the UnitedStates can do manufacturing,
that's not gonna make usricher. Well , we'll make us
richer as we'll. Let theseother countries build it,
manufacture it, and then we'llbuy it from them. And then we
get richer and they get richerand everyone gets richer. And
that , that's the essence ofcapitalism, is that we do this
type of trade and then eraseseveryone's , um, wellbeing. So

(58:26):
what he's doing by goingagainst comparative advantage
and putting all these barriers,it's not only from an academic,
but from the core essence ofwhat capitalism is. By no means
of exaggeration, this is veryanticapitalistic. And, and if
anything, like we said, it'sStalin istic . And I would even
go further and say, this iscommunistic. The Trump

(58:47):
administration is the communistadministration. And it made me
, some communists are listeningto this and they're like angry
at me for saying this. Butlike, lemme just put it this
way, even to the Trump people,they don't understand the
concept of what a trade deficitis. Because for example, right
now, do you have a farm or no?
Yeah. Where do you get yourmilk and your beef and your
eggs and you know, whatever itis else that you eat.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Of course I go to the butchery, I go to the Yeah
. To the shop to buyeverything.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Yeah , you go to the shop, right? Yes . So what do
you do to do that? You takemoney, you take your own money,
and then you give it to theYeah . To the market. And they
give you all the stuff that youconsume and fill your
refrigerator with, right? Yes.
So, okay, from an economicstandpoint, right, you have a
trade balance. Excuse me, youhave a trade deficit with the
supermarket, correct? Right.

(59:34):
Now are you mad and say, oh,this is. The supermarket should
buy meat and then eggs andbread from me because we need
to balance things out. And I'mgetting screwed here because
I'm giving money to these guysand these guys are giving me
real things that I can eat.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
I've seen this comparison already. I thought
about that. It's not verycorrect because when you are
country, you also have meatsand milk with others who have
meat and milk.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Well , okay, well let's stick with them before,
if we're going back tocountries, let's talk about
like manufacturing. 'causeobviously food is different
'cause it's perishable. So toavoid that, especially 'cause
they're focused onmanufacturing capacity. But
anyway, yeah, go back to yourpoint. Uhhuh, .

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
So what I want to say is that countries, again,
what he was saying, what Trumpis saying that he's doing that,
because quite a lot ofcountries are getting richer
because of the us where uscould have been richer along
with them. That's why.

Speaker 2 (01:00:28):
But see, but how is that sentence make sense?
Richness. It's not a eco , Imean, yeah , sure, of course is
economic, but the thing is, howdo you define richness? Most
people think of richness isabout ease of life, quality of
life and things like that,right? And the fact is, when
you're rich, you have lots ofmoney so that you can
basically, it's not like you'rescrooge McDuck where you can

(01:00:48):
like jump into the ,the pool of gold coins. And
that makes you awesome. I mean,although, yeah, as a kid, I
thought that was awesome, . But the point is, is
that with the money that youhave, you can buy stuff and use
it. So you can buy like highquality foods, you can buy
fancy cars, bring in aired bagsfor the ladies, right? You can
buy a bunch of awesome,luxurious things. And so your

(01:01:08):
life is improved, right? Yes .
That's what richness is. Sothis is what he just, him and
his people don't understand theamazing deal that the United
States has because the UnitedStates, what we do is we print
money, right? We have money.
Like we print these like piecesof paper that have our name on
it, and then we give it tothese other countries, which we

(01:01:29):
can just basically make an IanUnlimit supply of. And they
give us real things, realsteel, real luxury bags, real
maybe food too. But

Speaker 1 (01:01:40):
Uh , real iPhones, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
Yeah, real iPhones, right? And these are the things
that products that we consume,and all we're doing is just
giving them useless pieces ofpaper. So we have an amazing
deal where all these othercountries are doing all the
backbreaking work of buildingall this stuff, and then we get
to enjoy them. You've seenthose , uh, like the Foxconn

(01:02:01):
videos, like the undergroundvideos of the Foxconn plant in
China where like, it'sbasically like slavery almost,
well, not almost put this, butbasically modern day slavery
and then building the iPhones.
And here like everyone aroundis consuming iPhones, right?
That's what a trade deficit is.
You're giving money, whichmm-hmm . As , as
a sovereign entity, you have amonopoly power on that and you

(01:02:22):
just give it away. And thenpeople are giving you real
things that you could consumethat actually matter to the
essence of a , a human being,right? Because you can't feed
yourself with money. You can'tclothe yourself with money. I
mean , I guess you could if youlike, stitch it together and
make something , right?
But the thing is, money is justan abstract thing that allows
us to account, right?
Accounting account for trade,whether it's trade between you

(01:02:45):
and me as individuals orbetween countries. And what a
trade deficit is, is you'regetting more real stuff as a
human being that is beneficialto you in exchange for units of
accounts. So it just, itdoesn't make sense. 'cause we
talk about this, I think in ourfirst , uh, when we're talking
about government efficiency, isyou don't want businessmen to

(01:03:06):
be in the government, or atleast not to think as
businessmen because what abusinessman needs to do and
what a government person needsto do, they're two sides of the
same coin, but the oppositesides. A government is a maker
of money and the taker ofthings, a country is a maker of
money and the taker of things.
Whereas a business is a makerof things and the taker of

(01:03:27):
money. So when you have abusinessman go into the
government, they say, oh no, wewant to make things and take
money. Well, that's literallycommunism.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
I like this analogy of , uh, two sides of one
thing, but

Speaker 2 (01:03:41):
Opposite.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Opposite, opposite.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, that's clear.
But how do we explain that? Theprevious makers of money and
consumers of things created soenormous deficit of a country
which should be tackled oneday.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
If you're a company, yes, a deficit is a problem.
'cause you don't create money,right? You create things. So
under capitalism, or actuallyunder any economic , uh,
construct, you create goods andservices and you exchange that
for money so that you could usethat money to get other things
for yourself, right? So let'ssay like if I'm really good at

(01:04:19):
raising chickens, but I want toeat meat, well, I'm gonna raise
a lot of chickens so that I cangive that to you, then you can
gimme money. So then I can usethat money now to go buy meat,
right? Because the thing that Ireally want is meat . It's just
that I'm not equipped to buymeat. That's the whole point of
trade and economics in general,right? A human being can't do
everything all at once. So thewhole point is we organize
ourselves into societies invarying political

(01:04:40):
establishments and varyingeconomic establishments so that
we could benefit off of eachother's labor, right? So it
doesn't matter if you're acapitalist or a communist or a
mercantilist or, even ananarchist. This is how human
beings, this is how animalsoperate.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
So you want to say that deficit for a governments
is normal. Sorry, not forgovernment, for the state is
normal. Well,

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah, you have to, in order for a government to
function by definition, it hasto have a deficit. Because
again, just from accounting 1 01, you have double entry
bookkeeping, you have assetsand liabilities, right? Yes. So
if I have money and then I giveit to you, right? Let's say I
give you 10 euros, $10,whatever, right? So now I have

(01:05:22):
a deficit of 10 euros, and youhave a , you have a surplus of
10 euros. Yes . Mm-hmm . Now that as a
business, that's bad, right?
Because I don't create euros.
So I have to go as a business,now I have to go out because
I'm in deficit 10 euros. Now Ihave to do more work. I have to
do something so I can get 10euros back. So I can be back in
at least zero or so .

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
Now when you have minus 10 euros, you get
something else for this , uh,value.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
Sure, sure. Yeah.
And assuming I consume it, nowI want something else, right?
Well, now I need to get another10 euros. Basically, if I'm
operating under a deficit, thenI need to be able to make more
money so that now I have moneyto actually give so I can get
more because I can keepconsuming, right? Mm-hmm
. 'cause humanbeings, we have to constantly
consume, right? Otherwise wedie.

Speaker 1 (01:06:03):
That is

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
True. Right? So that's the thing. And economics
and money is just the lifebloodof how this works. That

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
Is true. But if you compare that to, sorry, if you
compare that to, to live blood, you have , um, how do I
compare that? You have thedeficit of blood, which is
growing over years.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
No, but that's the thing, it's not, so back in the
day you had gold standards orsilver standards, right? And
then it's based off of, okay ,

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
Until 19 70, 71,

Speaker 2 (01:06:31):
And 71 , and then definitively 73, right? Mm-hmm
. It wasbasically from the days of
Hammurabi. And even before thentill 1973, almost all countries
operated under some sort ofthing where the currency was
pegged to something. Now, we nolonger do that. So if your
money's backed off of gold,let's, for example then, yeah .
When you're giving money away,well now you don't have any

(01:06:52):
more gold left. So now you needto get more gold because you
don't control your own goldsupply. So you have to go out
and get more gold so you can dothrough trade or mine it or
something, right? Matter offact, most of the whole like
age of exploration was about,especially like Spain. They
were on the silver standard.
And then to try and tradewithin Europe, even medieval
days, even before capitalism.
Again , capitalism is justexplaining the how economics

(01:07:14):
works. And then he hadprescriptions on top of that.
Adam Smith did . But the pointis, again, this is how it
works, is that okay, Spain hassilver and they do things and
they trade and now they have,don't have as much silver, but
now, holy, Christopher Columbusjust discovered the American
continents and they have a tonof silver. Well, now, now we
just found a cheat code . Wecould just mine a whole bunch
of silver and then dump thatoff to the Europeans and then

(01:07:36):
become even more and morericher, right? 'cause again,
even there people recognizesilver is not the end goal. You
mine the silver so that youcould trade with the other
European power so you can getstuff and become rich, right?
So that was the situation. Butnow, because we're not on a
gold standard or silverstandard, the state, the
sovereign states have themonopoly power. And the

(01:07:57):
economics 1 0 1, we alwayslearn about, okay, this is a
monopoly. But then we say noone operates under monopoly. So
we only spend like, you know,one class lesson on it. And
then we immediately go intonormal stuff like supply and
demand and other things thatare not monopolistic. Because
you know , everyone agrees thatmonopolies are kinda like bad.
But the thing is, when it comesto currencies, governments are
the monopoly issuers ofcurrency. So you cannot analyze

(01:08:19):
a government and say, oh, wellthey gave away, we'll just use
America example, US dollars.
They gave away US dollars. NowUS has a deficit in US dollars.
What does , what does that evenmean? What does anyone else,
other than the United Statesgovernment create US dollars ?

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
No .

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
Yeah. So United States has a monopoly power on
the creation of dollars. Andagain, going back to the
counting thing, when the UnitedStates government gives dollars
to people that quote deficit isthe people surplus. Unless
you're a communist state or thegovernment should control all
the means of production,especially if you're like a

(01:08:56):
self min capitalist orwhatever. As the Republicans
claim to be, the governmentshould be there to enable
businesses to build things.
Well, the only way they canbuild things is if they have
money. But because businessescan't create money, they have
to get their money fromsomewhere. And if it's a United
States business, the only waythey can operate is by having
United States dollars. Andbecause they can't create their

(01:09:17):
United States dollars, theyhave to get it from someone.
And if there's a monopoly powerover the issuance of United
States dollars, that's thegovernment. So the only way for
businesses the proper is ifthey have money. Well, again,
from accounting principles,that's a surplus for the
businesses. So what is that bydefinition? It's a deficit for
the US government. And I'm notjust saying this is somewhat
abstract thing because duringAndrew Jackson, he was like our

(01:09:39):
seventh president. This is like, uh, 1820s I think. Mm-hmm
. Basically, hevowed that he was going to pay
down the national debt, notjust the deficit, but the debt,
right? So the United Statesgovernment didn't quote , owe
any money, and he actuallysucceeded. For a very brief
moment. The United States wason a surplus. The United States
government was on a surplus.

(01:09:59):
But again, if the United Statesgovernment has a surplus,
again, accounting principles,what does that mean? On the
opposite side, the citizenshave a deficit. The citizens
don't have any money. And whathappened during Andrew
Jackson's presidency, theUnited States government and
country collapsed becausethere's literally no money for
people to, to use to buy thingsand trade and do economics

(01:10:19):
with, so when I sayfunctionally, a government
must, and I use must andcapital letters, you know, OB
obligi in French, right? Itmust have a deficit. No , must
not . I'm not just saying somephilosophical mumbo jumbo
thing. No, I'm sayingfunctionally, mechanically,
whatever, like, you know, brasstax wise , all governments must
have deficits for theircountries to work because their

(01:10:43):
deficit is your surplus. Whenyou have a hundred euros in
your bank account, that's asurplus for you. And by
definition, that means there'sa hundred euro deficit in the
Euro bank . There's no otherway. Like this is a functional,
physical, mechanical aspect,undeniable aspect of the
economy. So again , Iunderstand from a business

(01:11:04):
standpoint, oh, the deficit,this is bad. We need to make
money. But , but thegovernment's the complete
opposite.

Speaker 1 (01:11:08):
Okay. Okay. Uh , I understand. And why do, do you
have in the US the limitationfor this budget budget? Why
every time you have to breakthe limits to extend it a bit
and a bit , the debt ceilingand a bit and a bit and a bit

Speaker 2 (01:11:20):
The debt ceiling.
Yes. Yeah, that was , uh, Ithink that was under JFK time
where again, you had a bunch oflike Harvard guys who again,
didn't understand thegovernment. And basically he
had this whole group called theWiz Kids, and they're all like
his Harvard buddies. And theywanted to , uh, curb the limits
of the , uh, of the executivepower. And again, this is not
only a misunderstanding ofeconomics, but it's also a

(01:11:41):
misunderstanding of politics.
Because they said we wannareign in the power of the
executive to not spend money upto a certain point so that we
can stop 'em . So that we canlimit the quote deficit. You
could argue that, okay, maybehad they had point, because
this was pre 1971, so we'restill on the gold standard, so
fine, okay, I'll accept thateverything was tied to the gold
price, right? The whole BrettonWoods agreements . So we wanna

(01:12:04):
limit the ability of the USgovernment to spend money
because we needed to defend theprice of the US dollar with
gold. 'cause that's what thewhole economic system was
reliant on. Fine. Okay. I'llacquiesce to that. But the
point is, again, as we saidearlier in our conversation
today, who has the power of thepurse is the president or
Congress. It's Congress. So allthe president can do is enact

(01:12:27):
the payments that Congress hasauthorized. So the debt ceiling
functionally is a stupidbureaucratic thing that's
meaningless. It's senselessbecause all the president can
do, all the executive branchcan do is pay out all the
things that Congress hasordered the president to do.
And I say ordered , I literallymean ordered. 'cause then they

(01:12:48):
passed those spending bill,which has the power of law.
It's the force of law that sayswe Congress demand, or we order
you the executive branch to paythese bills. So why is there
even a debt ceiling? Becauseyou're trying to limit the
power of the president. You dothat already by passing these
laws. So the president can'tjust go past what you say.

(01:13:10):
Whatever you tell the presidentto spend, that's what the
president is going to spend. Sodebt ceiling is just a
completely, it's a stupidbureaucratic thing that again,
some Harvard people who didn'tunderstand government , they
made it. And then now we'redeal with it every like couple
years. Where especiallytypically we never hear about
it during Republicanpresidencies. 'cause it always
gets increased, but all of asudden, again, 'cause the whole
point of Republicans is toobstruct. Whereas Democrats are

(01:13:32):
trying to like actually passsomething meaningful. So under
democratic presidencies, it'salways becomes an issue. Oh,
the dead ceiling. Dead ceiling.
We've like increased the deadceiling. How many countless
times and nothing's everhappened, right? And again, not
only that, but going back tothe other thing that we were
talking about is we've becomeso rich and because of
technology, we have anasymptotic , uh, increase in ,
uh, productivity because ofmachines and like computers and

(01:13:53):
everything. Well, that justmeans we're becoming more
richer. So of course thenational debt is going to
increase exponentially becauseour productivity has been
increasing exponentiallybecause that's the whole point
of technology. Again, if peopleare getting richer, what does
that mean? Right? Fromaccounting principle, people
getting super, super rich meansfrom our accounting principle,

(01:14:14):
the government is gettingsuper, super in quote , debt
and deficit. People just don'tunderstand basic accounting
principles of a government'sliability is your asset. This
is not some like philosophicalpolitical thing. No, this is
functional accounting, the ironrules. It's like you can argue
science, but you can't arguemath. Right? It's the same

(01:14:35):
thing that you can argueeconomics, but you can't argue
accounting. One person'sliability is another person's
asset. And in the case of thegovernment, the government has
to be in a liability for thepeople to have assets. It's by
definition has to be, there'sno other way. That's

Speaker 1 (01:14:51):
Clear. Thank you for this. Um , economics 1 0 1, I
wanted to touch , uh, we don'thave much time left, but , um,
one last thing I wanted totouch today. Interesting
thought I read again, we havehuge countries like China, like
the us like Russia as well.

(01:15:11):
Yeah. And it looks like we donot know the rules under which
they operate their like closedblack box. What do you mean?
Which produces how I understoodit? The decision making process
Yeah . Is not clear in any ofthose countries right now.
Okay? You can include Russia,you might not include Russia,

(01:15:32):
it doesn't really matter. Butit looks like that the key
players in the world do notfollow, how to say that? You
have players in the globalworld, right? Mm-hmm
. Uh , two bigcountries who make their
decisions based on their ownscenarios. Those scenarios are
not clear for Trump, at least.

(01:15:53):
It is very, very clear. Hedoesn't have any, last time we
discussed it , he doesn't haveany long lasting the train .
He's doing just this particularmoment decisions. Yeah . The
same applies to other bigplayers. Now what ? Like

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
What? Like China.
Like China,

Speaker 1 (01:16:07):
Yes. Okay. I'm not a specifically expert on the US
and definitely not expert onChina, but this is the opinion
that I have read. Now, do youthink it is a stable situation
that we are having in the worldright now where all key players
have no doctrine ? They havevery unclear decision making

(01:16:28):
process?

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Oh yeah. I mean, absolutely. It's , uh, it's not
clear at all. We're , this isvery unstable.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
So the situation is quite chaotic. The problem is
that smaller countries in thiscase , uh, have to follow the ,
it's very difficult for all therest of the world to plan
anything for a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:16:47):
No , absolutely. And a businessman doesn't care if
things are being bad or thingsare being good, economy is bad
or good. I mean, obviouslyyou'll prefer an economy to be
good over bad, but a badeconomy is not necessarily a
bad thing for a business. Whatmatters for a business is that
economies are stable.
Stability. Yes. Yeah . Disagree. You can always plan if an
economy is bad, but stable, youcould plan for that. And sure,

(01:17:08):
you might not make as muchmoney, but you can have a plan
and then you can counteractthrough whatever levers at your
disposal as a CEO , as acompany to mitigate the effects
of a bad but stable economy.
Mm-hmm . But anunstable economy is erratic and
you can't plan for that. So asa businessman, you don't want
that. So that's why Iwholeheartedly reject this

(01:17:28):
argument about, oh, Trump andhis businessman, they , because
they're not just wrecking theeconomy, they're making it
unstable, and that's bad . Likeif they're doing a bad job with
the economy, but things arestable, I'd be like, yeah ,
okay, politically this is. But,you know, whatever, if
businesses can profit off ofit, they can profit off of it.
Instability is the key issuehere. And if you're a hyper
power like the United States,or a close ally of a hyper

(01:17:52):
power like the European Union,stability is something good
that you want. And even likeRussia and China benefited from
the hyper powerness , if youwill, of the United States in
the nineties, you Russia gotricher. China definitely got
richer and like everyone gotricher. Sub-Saharan Africa got
richer, right? Maybe Americagot disproportionately richer.

(01:18:12):
But it's undeniable that thenineties and early two
thousands was a generallyspeaking, right? Generally
broad strokes was a veryprosperous time for the world
at large. And if you're Americaor America close, right? You
want stability to maintain thatsituation. And even if you're
against America, like China forexample, you want to at least

(01:18:34):
be able to take advantage ofthis so that you can get high
up. But in an unstablesituation, there's a very real
case that America and countriesclose to America now will lose
that status because instabilitycreates change. Where it's 100%
all downside for quote ,liberal world order. But
there's a potential good sidefor quote , America's enemies
'cause of instability. Chinawould never be able to be quote

(01:18:57):
better than the United Statesin a stable environment. They
can only be better in anunstable requirement. It's like
in Formula one, right? Youdon't win, you don't overtake
the , uh, opponent on thestraightaways. The way you win
formula oh one , it's on thecurves, right? So it's
basically like that situation.
So that's what's the problemhere. So if you are Americorp

(01:19:20):
or if you're close to America,what you wanna do is you want
to restore some sort ofstability while you still can
to maintain this, to maintainyour level of wealth or quote
greatness, whatever the hellgreatness means.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
So maybe this is the strategy of Trump because he
wants to break the stabilityand , uh, based on this ,

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
Uh , yeah. But again, why ? Like , why, why?
Because if you are quote ,because I don't believe he's
like pro-America, he's prohimself, but if you believe
he's pro-America, why would youwanna break the stability?
You're already on top? And youcould always use your being on
topness to do greater andbigger things if that's really
what you wanna do. But there'sno point. 'cause again , the ,

(01:20:00):
uh, who's the , uh, not Bennett, his main economic , uh,
advisor guy , uh, Marin startswith an m or he , he wrote this
whole thing where it's like,it's their economic philosophy
of like, oh, we're doing allthese trade taxes and
everything like that so that wecan , uh, you know , bring it
back to manufacturing, lowerthe strength of the US dollar

(01:20:20):
and but maintain the globalreserve currency of the US
dollar. All these things thatthey're saying, like if you're
an actual economist, you knowthat it's not just bad policy.
They're incongruent, they don'tmake sense with each other
because you can't want tomaintain the status of the
global reserve currency, the USdollar, but also weaken it at
the same time. 'cause the wholepoint of being a reserve

(01:20:41):
currency means it's in demand,which automatically means it's
a strength of the US dollar.
And oh, by the way, you'retalking about , uh, oh, the
deficit is so huge. Well, yeah,of course it's freaking huge
because of the United States ofthe global reserve currency.
That means everyone's trying toget as many dollars as possible
so they can use it to hedge, tobe the foundation and basis for
their own economies. So if allthese other countries are
trying to get as many dollarspossible, well that means

(01:21:03):
there's gonna be a , a deficitfrom the US side and around
accounting , the US governmentside accounting principles, the
United States government'sgonna have a giant deficit. So
anyway, but back to this thingis their economic policy is not
just wrong and bad, it's just,it's incongruent. It doesn't,
there's no logical link becauseyou cannot be a global reserve
currency and have a weakcurrency. You cannot bring back

(01:21:24):
manufacturing. Mm-hmm . Butalso maintain global currency.
Because if you wanna bring backmanufacturing, that means
people are throwing dollars,giving you dollars, and then
you're , um, and you're givingthem stuff, you're giving them
goods, right? But then thewhole point of global reserve
currency means well then you'renot global reserve currency
anymore because you're suckingback all those dollars back
into the government. So you'relosing that. So his policy

(01:21:46):
just, it's not congruent. Itdoesn't make sense. It's not
just bad. It , it'snonsensical. And to the
original question you'retalking about, oh , what does
this mean for differentcountries and everything like
that? This is my main problemthat I have with , uh,
geopolitical analysts andinternational relations people,
is that their whole academic ,uh, framework, if you will,

(01:22:09):
when you study this inuniversity, even in obviously
in the military, right? Whenyou get up the higher end rank,
you , we have to learn aboutinternational relations,
obviously from a militarystandpoint. But the academic
standpoint of this is alwaysbased on state actors, like
state apparatus, apparat,right? I think is the plural
and how these apparat, God Isound so pompous with like

(01:22:30):
apparat, whatever, ,but apparatus. This is , but
the, how these states interactwith each other on this type of
, uh, geopolitical level, as inthey're not actual human
beings, but they're just , uh,yeah. App , apparati in
interacts, I had to usesomething word other than
apparati. But these , um, thesefunctions, these organizations

(01:22:52):
how to interact with eachother. But when you have
dictatorships, you don'tactually have a bureaucracies.
Yeah, I guess that's what we'lluse the word bureaucracy. You
don't have actually thesebureaucracies doing the actions
so that a lot of these theoriesof international relations that
are based on rationality arenot applicable anymore. Because
even during the height of theCold War, United States
obviously was a bureaucracy andSoviet Union, you could say it

(01:23:15):
could be a dictatorship, butobviously we , I wouldn't agree
with that. It's obviouslyauthoritarian, but not a
dictatorship because you stillhad the central committee that
was pulling the levers , right?
Maybe the premier, the generalsecretary would say something
like Bhn Khrushchev could saysomething, but even if he said
something, it was up to thecentral committee and then the
underlying , uh, like that was actually
in charge of enacting thosepolicies, right? So you still

(01:23:38):
had to deal with thebureaucracies and so
international relations that atleast academically it made
sense. But when we starteddealing with dictators, like
specifically like , uh, SaddamHussein and uh , Ayatollah and
then now with , uh, Russia,with Putin and whatnot , is
that international relations,at least from an academic
standpoint, no longer applies.
Because right now all thatmatters is the individual

(01:23:59):
actors. And this is the issuewith Trump, and this is what
the Europeans are falling intoa trap, is they're still using
their own academicinternational relations
theories to engage and try toanalyze and react to what the
United States is doing with theassumption that the United
States of bureaucracy, what theproblem of the constitutional
crisis is, that it's no longera bureaucracy. You're literally

(01:24:20):
at the whims of individualhuman being. So you need to
throw international relationsout the window and you need to
engage with them as apsychologist or as a
psychoanalyst and react to 'emin that way. Because when you
try to do it as a bureaucracy,you're going to lose because
the instruments of state craftare no longer applicable , uh,
no longer , uh, beneficial foryou to be able to enact the

(01:24:41):
policies that you want to do .
And that's the issue that we'reseeing right now, is people are
trying to react and everythinglike that. And the only ones
that are going to be able totake advantage of this are, I
mean, essentially autocrats,China, Russia , everything like
that, because they areessentially commanded by
individual. So it's just onepsychological profile against
another psychological profilewhich can actually interact

(01:25:02):
with, whereas a bureaucracycan't. And that's, I think
that's the biggest like tragedythat we have right now.

Speaker 1 (01:25:08):
And this is where we stop today. Yeah . With this
positive note, we have startedwith the Brits giving feedbacks
on Trump, and I thank you foryour opinion on that. And the
British humor, which I adore bythe way, but now about Trump, I
was a bit, how to say that? Notshocked, but , um, surprised.

(01:25:29):
Not surprised. You mentionedthat. Uh , he doesn't really
matter how he changed. I mean,he didn't change a lot. And it
doesn't matter what exactly hedid as internal politics or
external politics becausebasically he's just generating
the cows. Uh , that's how wechaos. Sorry. Oh , oh ,

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
Oh , sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:25:45):
Oh yeah. So this is how the , today's concession is
very linked and , uh, all ofthe strings starts starting
from the beginning, arefinishing in the end, but you
are finishing your pitch, yourconversation saying that it is
a tragedy.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Well, yeah, I mean, from my perspective, it's a
tragedy. If you're , uh,against this world order, then
you Sure . It's , I guess it'sa great, again, like in Formula
One, if you're not in firstplace, you want things to be
unstable. 'cause that's whenyou can actually get ahead.
Let's see how it unfolds,right? Yeah. Yeah. As a Ferrari
fan, I'm , uh, you know , , I'm not very
optimistic for the prospects ofAmerica. . Let's see.

(01:26:22):
Thank you very much. Yeah, ofcourse. Anytime .

Speaker 3 (01:26:24):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
If you would like to comment on this podcast or on
the topics covered within it,or you'd like us to raise a new
topic in our next episode,please feel free to leave us a
message or voicemail on www.cobsm.com. That's charlie oscar
delta bravo sierra mike.com .
Thank you for listening and seeyou at the potty rta .