EXPERIENCE 219 | Geopolitics, Russia-Ukraine, Regional Economics, and Competitive Advantage in Business and Life with Constantin Gurdgiev, Ph.D. and Associate Professor of Finance at the Monfort College of Business at UNC. - The LoCo Experience

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
In this episode of the LocoExperience Podcast, I hosted
Constantine rggi, PhD andassociate Professor of Finance
at the Montfort College ofBusiness.
Constantin outlines his work inthe fields of economics,
geopolitics, and finance,sharing insights from his
research on geopolitical risks,tariff impacts, and financial
market volatility.
He also discusses his teachingand research positions in the

(00:22):
United States and Irelandemphasizing his efforts to
integrate real worldapplications into academia
through internships and studentengagement.
Stanton delves into thecomplexities of the Ukraine
Russia conflict, drawing on hisexpertise in Russian and Irish
economics, he discusses thehistorical and geopolitical
context that has contributed tothe ongoing tension and

(00:42):
critiques, the Western approachto handling the situation.
The conversation also touches onbroader themes like the
weaponization of economicsystems, challenges to US
economic hegemony and themultidimensional nature of
modern global conflicts.
Constantin also reflects onregional development issues
specific to Northern Colorado,including regulatory burdens,
the high cost of living, and theneed for regional cooperation

(01:05):
between cities To maintaincompetitive advantage, he
suggests practical steps such asreducing state level taxes and
regulatory burdens to fosterbusiness growth.
The episode concludes withpersonal reflections on his
family and life experiences.
It's an intriguing journey and Ihope you'll join me in enjoying
my conversation with constant.

(02:02):
Welcome back to the LocoExperience Podcast.
My guest today is Constantin IVand he is an associate professor
of economics, among other thingsat UNC.
And I saw him speak at a BizWest event last fall, I guess,
or early in the new year.
Early in the new year.
Exactly, Kirk.
Yeah.
So thanks for taking the time tobe here.

(02:23):
My pleasure.
My pleasure.
And uh, for probably the most ofmy listeners that have never
heard of you, uh, could you justset the stage a little bit?
Uh, it looks like you got yourfingers in a lot of pies.
Uh, I don't know about whetherthe, whether they're pies or
mouse traps.
This is a big question always,isn't it?
Uh, so first of all, littlecorrection.
Yes.
So I'm associate professor offinance, oh, finance.

(02:45):
Actually, I Montford College ofBusiness at UNC.
Uh, that's my main job.
Economics is a part of UNC aswell, but they're not part of
MCB.
I am a economist by trading.
So my PhD is actually, you know,for my scenes is macroeconomics
and finance.
Okay.
Theoretical stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so I used to studyeconomics.
I do some economic analysisthese days because I'm kind of

(03:06):
in a weird area of finance thata lot of people miss when they
are operating in a localeconomy.
Um, I, I work in a geopolitical.
Risks and geopoliticaluncertainty.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Part of finance.
So it's macro stuff.
So we look at the, you know,whole country's moving, the
whole market's moving, um, wars,conflicts, sanctions, um, all

(03:28):
these things.
Tariffs.
Tariffs, yes.
More on, this is more of a tradefactor, but then of course, how
does that impact finance?
In fact, I have a couple ofgraduate students currently
doing some work.
So in addition to teaching atUNC, I also have a visiting
position in Ireland, in changecollege, Dublin.
And I have graduate studentsthere.
So they do a lot of work withme, uh, in terms of the research

(03:51):
and tariffs.
Yes, absolutely.
Like out of 15 students that Isupervised this year, there, two
of them actually are doing workon tariffs.
Hmm.
So it's a pretty big deal.
It is huge deal, of course.
I mean, look, look at themarkets.
Yes.
I mean, uh, we've had anabsolutely amazing period.
I don't remember who said it.
You know, that, you know,sometimes, you know, nothing
happens in decades and thendecades happen in one day or one

(04:13):
week.
Yeah.
We had that one week.
Exactly.
Uh, last week was unprecedentedby any comparatives.
But then again, when you thinkabout the beg from the, the last
25 years or so of our historyare very much unprecedented.
You have the global financialcrisis, which was out of
traditional sync for thetraditional crisis type of

(04:34):
things, or market reactions tothings.
Uh, it was systemic.
It was very deep.
Uh, then we went, was financed,uh, deeply.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Not only finance, but realeconomy.
Yeah.
I mean, the great recession, um,you have to go back in
nomenclature to greatdepression.
Mm-hmm.
To see something like that.
So it's once in a hundred yearsevent.
Then we had covid pandemic.

(04:55):
I mean, my God, if you war in myfield, supply chain descriptions
would actually kind of thinklike.
How can we contrive somethingthat great.
This is so good to study.
As terrible as it is, it is.
Exactly.
You're correct.
You know, we study things whichare dismal, you know, and this
was pretty dismal event.
And then of course we havegeopolitical crisis going on

(05:16):
since then.
2022 Ukraine, Russia war, um,you know, you have the 20 16, 20
17, 20 20 periods in terms ofthe elections.
Um, and then we have newelection this year, last year,
2024, uh, which are historicallyunprecedented.
Yeah.
Whether it is a politicalscience history, it is history,

(05:37):
history, uh, its economicpolicy, history, it doesn't
matter.
So when we entered the lastprobably three weeks span of
time, there were some indicatorsof what was happening.
Some of the market participantsstarted reacting in anticipation
of that.
In other words, they took theadministration on this, you
know.
You know, for what they weresaying, okay.
Mm-hmm.

(05:58):
As being truthful and intendingto do these types at that
roughly speaking scale and all,but by and large, even those
market participants who had thiskind of, you know, foresight
Yeah.
Could not expect the level andthe uncertainty and the
volatility of the decisionmaking that we have witnessed.
Right.
Oh, and it's on, it's off.
It's on, it's on, it's off.

(06:18):
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, it's delayed for 30days, it's delayed for 90 days.
Yeah.
If we wore a piece of steel, wewould turn into Damascus quality
steel, you know, uh, the Epicstuff.
Yes.
What was that?
The Samurai Sword Arian orsomething like that from the
Game of Thrones.
Yes.
I forgot the name.
Uh, that they use there.
But we're not still, we're humanbeings and so we are scared.

(06:39):
We are uncertain.
We are panicked.
Yeah.
Um, behaviorally we areimperfect our decision making in
kind of circumstances as you cansee from markets that go like
this.
Correct.
Absolutely.
Yes.
And we kind of think of themarkets as more rational than
the average agent.
Well, we kind of saw that, youknow, they're not fair enough.
I, I was actually listening toDave Ramsey on whose podcast?

(07:02):
Oh, uh, Sean.
Sean Ryan Show.
Okay.
I think, yeah.
Yeah.
I think something like that.
Um, something Ryan.
Anyway, uh, and he was talkingabout how kind of the, the
Reagan pull pulling us out ofthe, the recession of the late
seventies a little bit was somuch more about.
People's mindsets shifting thanit was actually about this

(07:25):
regulation or this tax or thisthing.
Um, and he was optimistic thatonce we can stop the gyrations,
maybe people will kind of, youknow, sentiment is huge.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Beyond the doubts, we as humansreact to that, that's called
leadership.
Uh, in fact, most of thepolitics, most of the political
leadership, when you go back inhistory and look at it, it's not
about capability, it's aboutprojection, it's about message.

(07:49):
Reagan had happened to have thecorrect message.
If you look back today at whatReagan was saying about, say,
for example, immigrationpolicies, uh, what he was saying
about economy, what he wassaying about the balance and act
between the winners in theeconomy and the losers in the
economy.
And then you lay the path beyondReagan because of course eight
years of Reagan have beentransformative.

(08:10):
And they laid the foundation forthe kind of what we call
compassion conservatism.
Mm-hmm.
Of the early 1990s.
Of course it all dies in the mid1990s.
He has with new Gingrichrevolution and compassionate
part disappears.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and then, you know, so whenyou look at that progression,
Reagan really strikes a greatcomparative.

(08:31):
He is a big transformative typeof a president who was mostly
not.
Not resting on the competency ofexecution, but rather on the
quality of messaging andconviction.
Hmm.
Um, we Ms.
Reagan today.
Definitely.
Yeah.
Um, and I'm not saying thatbecause I would approve of
Reagan's policies being deployedtoday.

(08:53):
Some of them are meaningful.
Again, remember that Reagan wasthe last president we had who
have enacted substantial enough,fundamental enough immigration
reform.
Hmm.
Which was an immigration reform,which reinforced our ethos of
this nation.
Yeah.
The ethos of the melting pot.
The ethos of opportunity land.
Yes.
Um, and then did it, like, wasit restricted from there?

(09:17):
Or just too many people wantedto sign up for it over time and
No, it's not that.
Where did the system break down?
I mean, the system broke downbecause it became, there's no,
no perfect system can survivethrough the test of time because
time changes things.
Mm-hmm.
The flows have changed ofmigrants.
The objectives of the migrantshave changed.
We needed to keep the systemadjusting to that.

(09:38):
We needed reforms after Reagan.
There was no reform of theimmigration policy at all.
We had kind of patchwork, youknow, kind of in a old where it
was clearly broken.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yeah.
We were, you know, we were firstput in plaster on basically, you
know, like razor cuts.
Yes.
Uh, then on shark bites.
Yeah, the plaster didn't change.

(09:58):
We still were applying.
It just wasn't up for the jobanymore.
No, no.
You couldn't hold that.
Uh, we knew that because theentire immigration reform has
ended, culminated in daca andyou know, it culminated in
basically if you use theparlance of the 1990s Bill
Clinton's policies.
Yes.
Don't ask, don't tell.
We have these people here.
We would like to normalize them.

(10:19):
We can't normalize them.
They deserve to be normalized.
Right.
We can't normalize them.
They should be here.
We can't normalize them, butlet's pretend that that's okay.
Right.
You know, and so, you know, inthe end, the dreamers, you know,
um, and in the end that was theeffectively the nail in the
coffin of the, in my view as anoutsider coming into the United

(10:41):
States of what was the greatpromise, the shining, you know,
city on the hill, um, the torchthat has led the countries and
societies to transformation, notonly in terms of the outward
mobility of people sending themto the United States, but also
internal mobility of people andinternal political changes as

(11:01):
well.
So.
It seems like our populations inthe US have become, you know,
and maybe it's for lack ofrecessions and things, uh, but
more reluctant to move aroundfor opportunities and to leave
the inner city crappy economies.
One of the things that's move toNorth Dakota and working on oil
well, you know, whatever.
Well, it's not so much moving toNorth Dakota and working on an
oil well.

(11:21):
Okay.
I mean, you, you are strikingsomething.
You're touching upon somethingthat is empirical regularity,
which has transformed or changedthe balance of economic power
and economic dynamism betweenthe continents, uh, over the
last say 50 years.
If you go back to the 1990s,United States is an example of
the high internal mobility ofpeople, as you mentioned, people

(11:44):
looking for opportunities.
Yeah.
It doesn't mean going to NorthDakota, it means a doctor moving
from, say for example, ruralTexas to the urban, uh, yeah.
New Jersey.
Okay.
Bringing Fort Collins populationCorrect.
Up from 50 to 150.
And, but, but also when you talkabout the population numbers, it
is a mobility which was drivenby opportunity.
Mm-hmm.
It was mobility of the youngermiddle class.

(12:06):
Yeah.
Lower middle class.
Okay.
That go west young manmentality.
Exactly.
Bingo.
You've got it.
Okay.
What happened in this century isthat with the Great Recession
and even before the GreatRecession, with the cost of
housing rising mm-hmm.
With the pressures in the costof living, um, pressures of a
cost of education.
And healthcare.
All of those three majorexpenditures that happen over

(12:27):
the life cycle that we have havedepressed mobility of people, a
depressed social mobility ofpeople and economic mobility of
people.
Fewer people move today from thelower middle class to the upper
middle class than before.
Fewer people move today from,say, for example, the one
location to the next location.
Yeah.
Covid Pandemic a little bitdisrupted that, but that kind of

(12:49):
was very short term.
Well, and the ability for remotework and stuff, you know, that's
where Covid moved Oklahoma Covidfor the cheap living, but
keeping their job in SanFrancisco.
Uh, exactly.
Um, and that, that was the onlypart of the departure.
When you look at othercontinents, where you look at
Asia Pacific, for example, wherethe kind of the breakdown,
economic reduction of the.

(13:09):
Ancy of nationalism mm-hmm.
Has led to the greater mobilityof people.
You look at Europe where theEuropean unification process and
the European Union has fostered,it's not just European.
Yeah.
It adds a lot of liquidity totheir opportunities.
Bingo.
Exactly.
But it's also liquidity toability to move.
Mm-hmm.
She zone the polls all go toGermany for college.
Correct?
Correct.
And I remember I was in EuropeanUnion at the time, living, um,

(13:32):
when Poland became the part ofthe European Union and the
debate that was happening rightbefore, before that session, uh,
before 2004, where the peoplefrom those countries come in
should be allowed all of therights of working privileges,
ability to, you know, accesssocial welfare nets and supports
and healthcare supports andthings like that.

(13:54):
And I was at the front of thatdebate as well in Ireland, where
we were kind of caught inbetween, uh, as a society In the
end, Ireland made that decisionthat people coming into European
Union should have immediate toall of the benefits of being a
part of the European Union.
It Great.
Gave a huge boost to Irisheconomy.
Sure.
And you had so much skillscoming into the country.

(14:15):
So much.
Oh, their standard of living haslike Yeah, crazy.
Exactly.
Increase of course, 30 yearperiod.
That's true.
But that was, you know, but theywere super poor before that.
There's a lot of, there, there'sa lot of changes that have
happened before.
So the ES of 2004 and subsequentadditions to the European Union
and the mobility within theEuropean Union has benefited
Ireland beyond any belief.

(14:36):
Any belief.
Yeah.
When you look at actuallymicrocosm of Colorado, in a way,
the history of Colorado comparedto, say, for example, the
history of Wyoming, um, isindicative of exactly the same
dynamics you have.
Colorado has always been moreopen to the economic
development, to the mobility ofpeople, more welcoming to people
coming in.
Yeah.
Well, the weather's way nicerbuilding here.

(14:57):
Well, yeah.
Mountains are better.
And I look, don't, you know, flyfishing is better.
I can talk about that.
Yes.
That's, there's a reason I livein Colorado as well.
Yes.
Um, but beyond everything else,there's one thing that you want,
you want people to come in onthe basis of the merit
selection.
Mm-hmm.
You want people to come in topursue the dream.
You want people to come in tobuild their own, build new

(15:19):
things, add value.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we've benefited through thatin Colorado's history in the
past.
It's changing today's migrationin the last probably say three
to four years.
Mm-hmm.
We can see the pivotal change.
We have more over all thecommunity coming in.
Mm-hmm.
The younger community has beenpushed out to the east.
Um, and problem people's kidshave moved here from California.

(15:40):
Yes.
And now they have kids of theirown.
So the grandparents moved herefrom That's okay.
Whatever.
That's not the problem.
The problem becomes when thepeople's kids start moving out
of Colorado.
Mm-hmm.
I see.
And that is something that we'rewitnessing today.
It's already starting.
Okay.
We already have it.
Say for example, PSD schooldistrict there reductions in
terms of the kids enrolls, youknow, they overestimated the

(16:01):
impact.
They kind of.
Got too cautious in their ownplanet.
So that's a little bit of acorrection there, but you can
see that trend happening.
The problem when that isrepeated, when that process
continues over, say decade plus,we going to where risk can get
to the point like the rest ofthe United States that we become
ossified.
Yeah.
And when you become ossified,you become less and as
competitive and measuring thatis hard.

(16:25):
Measuring the competitiveness ishard.
What is Colorado doing wrong, ifI may interject?
Oh, oh, well, I mean, uh, okay.
Or is it just running outmomentum?
I it's not so much, I know, Idon't think it's so much as
something that is what Coloradois doing wrong, but rather from
my perspective, what Colorado isnot doing.
So we were driving from SaltLake City this weekend.
Mm-hmm.
It's a long drive.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Should have been listening tothe Local Experience podcast.

(16:46):
Well, you know, it's kind of my,you know, my better half is kind
of my local experience podcast.
So two of us were talking aboutthis.
She keeps you busy.
Um, we were talking exactlyabout this and she's a
professional in marketing.
Um, you know, she doesstrategical marketing advisory
in the beverages industry.
Okay.
And so the two of us weretalking about this, I'm a big
fan of organic local growth.

(17:08):
What we mean by this is that itis growth, which starts on the
basis of the demand locally, andit organically finances itself
instead of attracting high speedgrowth rates.
Yeah.
By bringing in cap capital fromthe outside, it organically
gradually grows, but it grows atfast enough rates to actually.

(17:29):
Escape the velocity or escapethe pool or the gravity rather.
Mm-hmm.
To gain escape velocity, toescape that gravity of the
immediate local market.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what I think of Colorado isnot doing enough, is that it is
not creating the momentum in thecore sectors where we can be
super competitive and superinnovative.

(17:50):
Um, and I'll mention thosesectors that I think, you know,
please.
Yeah.
Um, in terms of growinginternal, local talent and in
turn local, um, enterprise.
Yeah.
Whether it is for profitenterprise, for non-profit
enterprise.
So the sectors, I mean, Iactually AgriFood it's very
important.
High value added tremendously,big universe of AgriFood.

(18:13):
We think of AgriFood as farmers,but it isn't, it's not just
farmers.
It's, its a processing of food.
Yeah.
It's the creation of new typesof food.
It is also research anddevelopment.
It's associated marketing, it'sassociated biotech.
Yeah.
You start going through thelines of enterprises and areas
that support the proper AgriFoodsector.

(18:36):
Again, I fall back on Irelandbecause I spent 16 years there.
Great example.
High value added agriculture,high value added food
production, the country, whichstarted with having effectively
no cuisine of its own to be in aheavyweight in global markets.
You can buy Irish AgriFoodproducts today in the shelves.
In the, in Colorado.

(18:57):
That's it.
You can't buy Colorado goods outthere.
Yeah, that's the problem.
Okay, so that's one steppingstone.
But there is other associatedsectors.
So for example then foodretailing.
Right.
And transportation restaurants.
Yeah.
Okay.
Transportation.
You right, completely.
There's associated things withthat.
Hospitality.
Yeah.
Entertainment sector.
Okay.

(19:19):
Integrating our natural assetssuch as mountains, for example.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
And everything that goes with ittogether with the food sector,
with the drink sector, which wehave very healthy in terms of
beers.
Mm-hmm.
We are, we have a very nationweak, but trying to rise wine
production sector, which is veryinterestinghmm.

(19:39):
I'm fascinated by that.
And again, because of my betterhalf, I am blessed to be able to
go to the Governor's cup, loveand enjoy and meet people who
are passionate, who are great.
They're trying, they at the verybeginning compared to, say for
example, the French Italians,you know, the Californians,
they're not there, but can theyget to that level?

(20:01):
Yeah, they can.
Because they have passion,because they have talent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It will take generations.
So supporting this type of theorganic development, organic
growth that starts small, startslocally anchored.
Mm-hmm.
You travel to somewhere.
There, you know, there's coupleplaces.
Yeah.
Those wine reasons, Palisade.
Exactly.
They weren't selling anythingoutside of Colorado 10, 15 years
ago mostly.
And that's fine.

(20:22):
Yeah, that's fine.
But now they are let people comein here and that's how a lot of,
for example, if you take bigproduction regions, like say Pa
Robles in California.
Mm-hmm.
Pa Robles started by sellinggrapes to Napa and to Sonoma
producers because they couldgrow great grapes, but they
couldn't make great winenecessarily.
Mm-hmm.
Though, right.
A joint in Pastor Robles isShalon, you know, which was a

(20:44):
part of the, you know, um,challenge of the, of Paris, you
know?
Okay.
Um, you know, of course, youknow, so you have kind of some
individual producers like that.
But by growing grapes, theystarted acquiring the expertise.
So by, I would say eighties,they start getting to production
of their own wine.
They start with small volumes.

(21:05):
They start organically sellingit at the vineyards and to their
own clients lists.
You had to travel there todiscover them.
Once you traveled and discoverthem, you became the customer.
The word of mouth and thingslike that.
Mm-hmm.
It's now a multi-billion dollarindustry there.
Mm.
It is a rival to the majorproducers like Monterey, for
example, and Central Coast.
It is the, certainly has beat,you know, I think Santa Barbara

(21:28):
area.
Okay.
Um, and it is kind of the thirdlargest producer on the west
coast.
Yes.
Yeah.
That's neat.
But it's also the quality of theproduction.
So for example, if you thinkabout kind of the scale of
things.
Yes.
Uh, back in the 1970s, you wouldbuy maybe a vineyard or 1980s,
uh, a vineyard there for 3million,$4 million.
Okay.

(21:48):
Uh, I think last year there wasa, Dow Brothers sold the
vineyard for$900 million.
Oh.
And it's not a huge vineyard andyou can't even get one for 20
million.
No, no, I mean, no, no.
Forget it.
50, 1500 you might get like abackyard for 20 million.
You know?
I mean, you might park thetractor, you know, half an acre.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
So it's not, Dow Brothers is nota very big, huge kind of buy if

(22:13):
you want footprint, but you canbuy their stuff everywhere.
And it is a high end wine.
It is a high quality wine.
It's a rival to the big Europeanproducers can.
Is there that much margin in it?
I guess if you got the reallygood reputation, it doesn't cost
that much more economic, moreeconomics of wine making a very,
kind of very complicated, right.
If you can sell it for 200 bucksa bottle as well, you know, that
does a lot of margin.
You can produce some things for200, uh, dollars a bottle.

(22:36):
I think the kind of the bulk ofit would be in a 50 60
territory, which is sufficientenough margin, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Um, but it is also, a lot ofthat is based on auxiliary
additional sales.
Sure.
You know, beyond wine, there isevents and things like that as
well.
Um, a lot of it is based on abrand reputation.
Uh, brand reputation isimportant.
Brand capital is superimportant.

(22:57):
In finance, for example, we havedifficulty valuing those things
because we always need to attachthe dollar amount.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, that's something that I loveworking with my students.
You know, own and give them theappreciation and understanding
of how complex the forms ofcapital we really face today.
Yeah.
It isn't just about a loan.
It is about what is theunderlying asset supporting
network loan.

(23:18):
Yeah.
What are you acquiring?
We used to think in terms ofbuildings, we used to think in
terms of machinery andequipment.
Sure.
Not really.
We now think in terms of thebrands, we now think in terms of
the access to the capital.
Think of Nvidia.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
Nvidia is a great example.
Doesn't have factories.
Yeah.
It's entire value.
Contractors is in its owndesigns, in its own patents, its

(23:40):
own intellectual property.
You can't touch that.
Right.
You can't really physically moveit from one file to another
file.
Yeah.
From one side of the room toanother side of the room.
You can ship it though acrossthe borders, and you can find
locations in domiciles for it.
Where you would extract thegreatest value.
And again, you know, you thinkof, say for example, Ireland,

(24:02):
Holland, Denmark, these are bigtraditional locations for the
offshore and domicile ofintellectual property.
Mm-hmm.
They hold vast amounts ofintellectual property for
pharmaceutical companies.
Sure.
For the companies like Nvidia,for other tech companies and so
forth.
I mean, Colorado, actually, bythe way, when going now, from
the hospitality sector, fromthings that we kind of think of

(24:23):
traditionally, oh, this is justpast services, which is not
true, should not be seen as suchbecause it is high value added
service.
It can be high, not just highmargin, but also significant
volume.
So the revenue streams from itcan be significant employment
effects.
We can go also to the moremodern economy and we can look
at where Colorado is reallysuccessful and so far has been

(24:43):
competitive, but it's beenpressured.
Mm.
Airspace, for example.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Um, in the aerospace area, we'recompeting with the likes of
Texas.
We're competing with the likesof, say, California, how we're
going to compete when the scalein those two locations alone.
And then of course we also havethe Washington State of
Washington where the scale thereis so much greater, bigger
Right.

(25:04):
Than it is in Colorado.
And that gravity just kind ofdraws those Exactly.
Smart people to that place.
Yes.
Partly that's true.
And they also have policies todo so.
Well, California, less so Texasnow.
Much more so of course, youknow, we have Georgia for
example, which is trying toincentivize that Alabama.
Yeah.
You know, you have, there's aheat and competition Yeah.
Around the United States.

(25:24):
Well, like I just came back fromHollywood.
I was in Orange County over theweekend and we went up to
Hollywood for the, or LA for theday.
Yep.
And walked the, the, theboardwalk there and stuff.
And it was like, just thinkingabout how.
Hollywood can keep its mojo atthis point in time.
You know, you got states likeGeorgia states, like Montana and
Idaho bidding to have films andcrews there.

(25:46):
Their actors are a lot cheaperand a lot more eager to sign on
for nondescript roles and stuff.
And so the, the monopoly ofHollywood is, seems like it's at
least being threatened.
Hollywood doesn't make money byshooting movies.
Right.
I mean, Hollywood makes money byhaving intellectual property in
those movies.
Mm.
This is why Hollywood doesn'tmake movies inside Hollywood
anymore.

(26:06):
They're all over the place.
From our point of view though,it's really great to see that
finally we're starting torecognize that the idea that we
have the Rocky Mountains in themovie, but it's really in Canada
film.
Right, right.
It's really somethingfundamentally screwed up.
Yes.
So I'm really glad that we'rebringing, trying to bring more
and more incentives, moreproactive incentives in terms of
supporting film production herein Colorado.

(26:28):
Again, a great sector which canbe again scaled if you just a
location for production, that'sone thing.
Fulfillment.
You need to have production.
You need to have studios.
You need to have compute.
Compute.
People know how to do that.
Facilit.
Correct.
You need to have talent.
We have computationalfacilities.
We have ability to bring more ofthose.
So for example, things like datacenters.

(26:49):
Data centers, we always thinkof, Hey, that's it.
Yes.
But without data centers, youcannot have processing.
Yeah.
Shipping it, sending it acrossthe satellite networks is time
consuming, lag dependent.
Mm-hmm.
And expensive.
So having the support of thebackbone of the infrastructure
here probably is a good idea.
And if you start with the, withthat, you start going down, of

(27:11):
course, how do we provide waterfor cooling?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
How do we provide energy?
What sources of energy we'reusing?
Yeah.
What the cost of energy.
So all of a sudden thesetraditional sectors were always
thought of, Hey, you know, likethis is a dirty industrial stuff
behind the scenes.
It becomes closely aligned withmodern sectors of production and
investment.
Yes.
So it is a part of the economicdevelopment that is very hard to

(27:34):
crack.
One of the things I've, uh, saida, a number of times over the
last few years is that in, inthese days, especially during
like Covid, when they created somuch money, you know, flooded
the system almost with it tokeep the liquidity going and
whatever.
But energy is more like moneythan money is like money
anymore.

(27:54):
Because you can't just printenergy, you gotta pull it outta
the ground or suck it outta thesun or whatever.
And all those data centers andthings like that, you know,
computers sound nice and cleanand stuff, and all the little
stuff that happens behind thescreen when I push buttons.
But it's really, you know, abunch of coal and natural gas
mostly being burned so thatthose data centers can spin.

(28:16):
Tremendous.
Yes, absolutely.
And the, uh, energy mix in, uh,here in Colorado is very
problematic.
Yes.
Because of course, us using.
To reduce the cost of energyusing coal, um, is definitely
questionable.
We have natural gas, one of thevery big producers, we should be
using that.
More of that.
Um, there's a big concern fromour point of view that the scale

(28:37):
of the, say for example, AIquantum computing, um, and
general computing as well.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, scale of use and demand forenergy is so much higher Right.
Than anything we haveexperienced before, that really
you're looking at the basegeneration, which has to rely on
nuclear.
Mm-hmm.
You can't use either fossils orintermittent, you know, kind of
need to bring more base.

(28:58):
You have to bring big base andyou have to bring nuclear
problem.
From our perspective for nuclearis cooling.
Yeah.
And that is, but that issomething that we are overcome
as a technology develops.
Yes.
So, for example, things likesmall modular reactors, much
less, uh, scaled, you know,cooling.
Cooling, you can have coolant,which is based on the basically

(29:19):
reservoir.
Yeah.
As opposed to the traditionalcooling.
You have to have a massive riveror you have to have a massive
supply of ocean water orsomething like that.
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.
So, um, that gives us a littlebit of an advantage.
So we should start thinkingabout.
How do we integrate the modularreactors into the energy
production and grid here?
If you look for example, also atthe other sources, like say

(29:41):
water again.
Yeah.
We should start thinking moreproactively how do we create the
water sources and access towater and quality of water,
which is filtering of course.
And bringing it up to standardsthat can support modern
technologies.
For example, fab manufacturingfor the processors,
microprocessors chips and thingslike that.

(30:01):
Yes.
Yeah.
It require a lot of equivalent.
All of them.
A lot of them are going intoArizona.
Mm-hmm.
Where there is no water.
Yeah.
Why?
Well, I mean because of theincentives, they have very
strong incentives and becausethey now have developed the
processes where it's almost likesealed loop use of water.
Okay.
So you do not have to rely on acontinuous.
Well, and I suppose evaporativecooling is actually pretty

(30:22):
efficient there when it's ahundred degrees and Exactly 6%
relative.
So we should be at that race aswell.
We should be at those games aswell.
We got the quantum computingcorridor here, which is awesome.
Which is great to have.
Okay, great.
Win to the governor, great winto the people in Denver.
Fantastic.
But we now need to branch out ofit to provide the support for

(30:44):
computational facilities, fornot just quantum computing, but
all of their a joining andrelated industries.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you can see how manyopportunities we have.
Yeah.
Exploring those opportunitiesis, we're blessed with them.
Okay.
Exploring those opportunitiesrequires certain way of changing
the way we do things.
One of the things that Iobserved here, and I observed

(31:04):
that on the relationshipbetween, say, for example,
within the northern Colorado,between the cities mm-hmm.
Within the northern Colorado.
Yeah.
Um, we were exploring apossibility of getting an NSF
grant, uh, to support the kindof ideation stage of the policy
formation for the integrateddevelopment of infrastructure
systems within the northernColorado.
Yeah.

(31:25):
And, uh, the whole thing came toa screeching halt because the
different cities don't wannatalk to each other.
It's almost like we want tobuild our own little empire.
Yeah.
And then the little empirebecomes, I used kind of the
example of Pueblo, uh, used tobe a larger city in Colorado is
Colorado, is that right?
Yeah, it was, it was actuallybigger before than, um, Colorado

(31:48):
Springs.
Is that right?
Yeah, that's right.
Um, and it kind of decayed overa period of time due to internal
and external neglecteffectively.
Okay.
It became a kind of, you know.
Uh, kind of a spot for highunemployment, for example.
Yeah.
Um, it also became a city wherethere was much less of the

(32:09):
different diverse development interms of the economic
development.
Yep.
Um, more linked to thecombination of the kind of, you
know, traditional sectors.
Mm-hmm.
And then the Colorado Springstook the wind out of it
completely.
Right, right.
Okay.
So, well, and do you think beingcloser to Denver helped Colorado
Springs anyway?
Of course it does.
Yeah.
Beyond the doubts, but can youpair that?

(32:30):
Can you respond to that?
Yeah.
Through the more coordinated, Iwasn't actually suggesting that
Puebla should have competed withColorado Springs directly.
I'm saying Colorado Springs andPueblo should have cooperated
more.
Mm.
We are beyond that kind ofeconomy where you can have a
very competitive, adversarialrelationship.
Yeah.

(32:50):
It is more about the economy,where you have to find mutual
ways to build added value,create added value.
So my argument has been, forexample, that in order for the
northern Colorado to thrive andsurvive into the next, say
couple of decades if not longer,beyond that, we have to compete
with Denver.
We have to compete with DenverBoulder corridor.

(33:11):
Yeah.
In order to do so, we can affordnot to cooperate across the
border with Cheyenne.
Mm-hmm.
We cannot afford not tocooperate with the likes of,
between the Fort Collins,Greeley, and Loveland.
Okay.
And we need to start buildingconcerted cooperative channels
of infrastructure.
Transport, infrastructure,roads, infrastructure.

(33:32):
Sure.
Yeah.
Okay.
But also energy infrastructure,water infrastructure, and also
intellectual propertyinfrastructure, intellectual
mobility, infrastructure.
Mm.
We need to have a high qualityconnectivity between the
different areas.
We need to have the interlinkedand coordinated policies between
the universities here, communitycolleges here, all the way down

(33:54):
to middle schools.
Hmm.
We need to have, we need to stopbuilding little empires and
start focusing on the region.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Overall, I think the, my senseis that the chambers of commerce
like each other quite a bitwithin those three cities, but
that the, the city, thegovernment authorities are a
little different game in someways.
It's very interesting.
Yeah.
I kind of, I get that feelingthat there is a bit more

(34:16):
cooperation when you starttalking to, say, for example,
people responsible for economicpolicy.
Yeah.
But that's because in everytextbook they know cooperative
game comes zero with a betteroutcome than non-cooperative
game.
Fair enough.
Yes.
Fair enough.
I mean, you don't want to haveprisoners dilemma.
Yes.
And we have enough common, ifyou want vocabulary to kind of
say, yeah, we don't, we knowwhat prisoner's dilemma leads

(34:38):
to.
Yeah.
We rise together.
Yeah.
But when you take politicianstoday, and this is very
interesting, I think it's veryastute observation because I
think it also is the mark of ourtimes, which you are putting
your finger on, is exactly that,that politicization that we
have.
Yeah.
In a policy spectrum comes fromthe political spectrum
polarization and the politicalspectrum polarization is evident

(34:58):
all the way to the Washingtondc.
How much cooperation does theCongress today achieve?
Almost zero.
Exactly.
When you go back in history, hasthere been a transformational
president in the United Stateshistory who has not become
transformational president byachieving consensus and
achieving the, you know, orleading the majority within

(35:18):
Congress?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Of course not.
Would think not.
Yeah, exactly.
So we can't do anything becausewe have these kind of politics
of extreme polarization.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I want to, we've spent afair bit of time on Northern
Colorado, which has been superinteresting, but Cool.
I wanna zoom up a little bit.
Okay.
Um, your, your LinkedIn profilesuggests you're kind of an

(35:39):
expert in, uh, Russian and Irisheconomic factors and things.
And like, I wanna talk aboutlike financing war, financing
economies.
Um, you know, part of what I'vesaid, I'm an, uh, libertarian
minded guy for a long time and,uh, one of Reagan's old quotes I

(36:01):
think is, you know, tax what youwant less of and subsidize what
you want more of.
And, and I generally abide bythat notion.
And so if we could get to a, aless, um, income tax financed
economy, government function inthe US and do so through some
combination of tariffs and, uh,I've been a fan of the fair tax

(36:25):
fair tax.org.
Okay.
Kinda a consumption tax'cause wekind of want less consumption
anyway, according to all the,you know, the climate.
Uh, people and stuff like that.
And so like, instead of tryingto get people to hide their
income or not make any income,like let's just tax consumption.
Yeah.
That's, you know.
Okay.
Look, there's a, there aredifferent ways of taxation.

(36:47):
There are different, uh, toolsfor taxation.
Uh, it, some of it has beentried in different jurisdictions
and generates different results.
Consumption tax is veryinteresting.
Yes.
We have a sales tax in theUnited States.
Sales tax is non-discriminatoryin so far as it is applies to
say, for example Yeah.
Where you manufacture mm-hmm.
The goods or services Yep.
Where you produce them.

(37:07):
Um, it is alsonon-discriminatory in so far as
you know, which components youuse.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
In the production.
Yes.
So it is more of a tax on theactual consumption rather than a
tax on the value added.
True.
Okay.
In the European Union, forexample, in the rest of the
world, it is mostly the valueadded tax.
Mm-hmm.
Which is again, not asdiscriminatory on the basis of

(37:29):
where the things are made, butrather on the basis of who adds
value pays the tax.
Yes.
Yeah.
So there's a lot of interestingthings which go with both of
those.
There's some advantages,disadvantages for those things.
Okay.
But when we go towards greaterautomation, when we go towards a
greater contribution to, oftechnological capital in the
production mm-hmm.
And in the value added, you areright.

(37:50):
We want to go away from the ideaof income tax because income tax
penalizes work.
Yeah.
By us.
Yeah.
Whether it's work when we investin ourselves.
Our parents invest in us byeducating us, or it's a work
that we pursue ourselves.
Yeah.
Turning or whatever.
Or it is a physical work that wedo, literally spending hours on

(38:11):
the job doing whatever we do.
Okay.
It's, it's the effort which youactually want to reward rather
than penalize.
Yeah.
So I would be all in favor ofmoving away from the income tax
based economy.
Okay.
The United States is not quitean income tax based economy.
It's mostly debt based economy.
Right.
So we're not taxing Yeah.
Good thing we don't tax ourpeople.

(38:32):
What it takes takes, I would bein favor of shifting completely
towards the consumption, taxesand wealth taxes and the reason
why wealth taxes are importantOkay.
Is'cause you have to realizethat a lot of wealth at the high
level, not the level that youand I are familiar with.
Okay.
But at the level of saybillionaires Yeah.
And multimillionaires, a lot ofthat wealth is the income.
These people don't need to payincome taxes at all.

(38:53):
Right.
Because they're living off orleveraging their wealth.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we can introduce a tax onwealth, which is not prohibitive
to the general upper middleclass and below.
Mm-hmm.
Part of the population.
We can tax the 1%.
I'm not saying I'm not in aterritory of the, you know,
Sanders kill the rich, you know,Bernie Sanders or anything like
that by any possible means.

(39:14):
I come from the libertariantraditional thinking as well.
Um, just like yourself,especially on economic side.
I mean, you know, you know, havebackground studying under the,
you know, university of ChicagoSchool of Economics.
Um.
So I would be in favor of that.
Let's also add to that anothertax, which is, you know, I've
done some work in an Irishcontext because it was a part of

(39:35):
the International Monetary Fund,uh, review of the Irish taxation
policies after the globalfinancial crisis and so forth.
And that's the tax on land.
Hmm.
Site value tax or land valuetax.
Mm-hmm.
Practiced in some parts of, sayfor example, Pennsylvania in the
United States, some other partsas well in the United States.
You know, and it's a very kind,this is different than property

(39:55):
tax.
It's different.
It is assessed against the valueof the site on which the
property sits.
So you and I can make an effortfor the land, not the
improvement and improve theland.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
But our own improvements are notgonna be taxed.
Hmm.
What will be taxed if, say, forexample, a local government
decides to put a school nearbythe, you know, nearby your site

(40:16):
and that increases the value ofthe site without you doing it.
Hmm.
Interesting.
That value then will be capturedin the value of land.
Sure.
Not in the value of thestructure that you have with the
garden that you have theregrowing or whatever else.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So alternatively, of course,what happens when the government
decides to put a highway next toyour, your house, right?
In which case your value of theland drops and you get

(40:38):
effectively partiallycompensated through the lower
taxation.
Yeah.
Interesting.
So, I mean, again, you know,there has been research done in
the United States on that,primarily actually on the
Georgia society and the likes,you know?
Okay.
Um, and there's a lot ofinterest in that.
So go, go back to, uh, thewealth tax with me.
Mm-hmm.
Is that something that would be.
Like not, not on a transfer ofwealth, like an inheritance

(40:59):
thing, but more like a pay 0.5%every year.
Yeah, no, it would be actuallybased on the actual value of
wealth, uh, you can have it onan annual basis.
I think inheritance tax willalready have that.
Right.
Fine.
With me.
I think, you know, you have,just like with say for example,
flat taxes, you have a verygenerous upfront deduction.

(41:19):
Mm-hmm.
So again, you're not snaringinto the net.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
People who are, if I've got a$300,000 house, I shouldn't have
to pay an extra$5 a year.
No.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Of course.
Or you have, you know, if youinherit a house, which is, you
know, family house, which is$2million, don't pay anything.
Right.
Right.
That's fine with me.
Okay.
You don't use this taxation inorder to generate revenue alone.

(41:42):
You use this taxation toreorient the society's values.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You want to have the value in asociety where people not
accumulating houses as well, butrather accumulating other things
like businesses, like, you know,ideas like human capital.
Um, so when you think about it,do we want to encourage

(42:03):
formation of fixed capitalformation in this economy?
Probably not so much, right?
Yes.
We want to have goodinfrastructure.
The high level of course, at ahigh kind of, if you aggregate
level, yes, sure wanna have goodroads, we want to have good
communications and so forth.
But, you know, apart from that,we want to have usable real
estate that we live in.
It doesn't require a huge amountof the parts of GDP invested on

(42:28):
an ongoing basis.
Some of our policies, like I wasjust thinking about the interest
deduction on your home mortgageor your rental property,
mortgage or whatever, you knowthat's an incentive to carry
debt, correct?
Really?
Yes.
And they, I don't know why weshould have taxes that
necessarily incentivize that.
We do that, not because we wantto incentivize the carrier of
the debt where it's originatedfrom, but today it's because we

(42:49):
can't abolish that because if weabolish that all of a sudden
doesn't wreck a of affordablehouses.
Right.
Are going to become unaffordableinstantaneously.
So we in a way kind of create,it's, it's, you know, if you go
back to the philosophy, youcan't really white sheet it.
Yeah.
Like in the physics.
Yes, yes.
In the old days, you know, inthe, you know, uh, kind of
world.
Yes.
You had to draw these weirdthings called epicycles.

(43:11):
Yes.
The force fields, which didn'texist in order to counterbalance
the planets so as to make theearth the center of the
universe.
Yes.
And sooner or later you startedto come to the point where those
epicycles are the descriptors ofeverything and you know, they
don't exist.
Right.
So you got a problem the samewithout tax and subsidies
policy.
And this is a painful day today.

(43:32):
Of course.
Yes.
I mean, because we're talking onthe 15th of April, you're
talking about, it's a greatexample.
Okay.
You can have a middle classfamily like my, my own where
your tax forms amount to about170 pages.
Yeah.
It is insane.
It's literally hundred insane.
Right.
So taxation system in the UnitedStates, and I'm not kind of, you

(43:52):
know, the burden of doing yourtaxes Correct.
Is almost as bad as the taxesthat you actually pay.
It's, it's a total industry andit holds us hostage once a year.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And if you're in business, itholds you hostage more often.
Every quarter.
Yeah, exactly.
Every, every payroll.
That's right.
Yes.
So, I mean, the insanity of itis that we don't even think
about the fact that we have allof this infrastructure that
creates no value.

(44:12):
Yeah, and we can have asimplifying reforms and we can
have a change, as you said.
For example, a good examplewould be moving towards more
consumption based taxes.
Uh, a good example would be toremove as much as possible and
flatten out the, after thestructure of say, income tax.
Yeah.
Maybe a 12 page tax return.
Yeah.

(44:33):
Well, we shouldn't, you know,like if you are working, say for
example, if you have one sourceof income, active income, and
maybe one source of passiveincome, you should not be filing
the form, you know, more thansay two, three pages.
Agreed.
Who the hell needs all of thatstuff?
Who the hell actually checks?
All of that stuff?
Who manages all of that stuff?
There's a lot of jobs reliantupon having all those pages to

(44:55):
check.
I guess to, to be honest,personally, I think that most of
those jobs are pretending to dothe job.
Oh yeah.
And in the end, there is anoutcome and everyone is sitting
and praying that nobody willcheck, because to be, to be
frank, I don't think there is apossibility of, you know, fully
completing those hundreds ofpages of tax forms without

(45:16):
missing something.
Yeah.
Somehow.
I mean, it's, but then that'stax fraud and they can throw you
in prison.
Well, of course, if it isintended, if it seems like you
tried it.
Yes.
Yeah.
If it is intended, it's taxfraud.
But I mean, again, theseparation between what is the
tax fraud versus the taxmistake.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is kind of, you know, a littlebit more arbitrary than I would
like that to be.
But I can tell you that, youknow, I was talking to a

(45:38):
colleague of mine who is aprofessor of finance here in the
United States, not in thisstate, uh, you know, today, and
we were both, you know, kind ofwas supposed to be working on
the paper, uh, that we aresupposed to review, and both of
us can't actually review thepaper because we are both mired
into taxes completely.
I mean, this is, you know, theseare two people with the PhDs in

(46:00):
economics and finance who arestruggling.
Yeah.
And we have advisors hired forthat.
Right.
So it wasn't like, you know,struggling, you know, by
ourselves, you know, doing it.
So there's somethingfundamentally wrong.
With a system that we have.
Yeah.
It is not incentivizing thingswe want to incentivize.
Yeah.
It is penalized quite ofteneffort by people.

(46:20):
Mm-hmm.
Um, it is penalized and it overdecades and generation, that
translates into the change inculture, in preferences.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And once you get to thatterritory of kind of change, you
know, the Roth is so deep thatchanging it and the reversing it
is not impossible, but sodaunting that a lot of people
give up.
Yeah, yeah.

(46:41):
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of youngkids right now even that are
like, no way I'll ever buy ahouse, you know?
Correct.
Yeah.
And you know what, if you save10% of your income and live like
a coyote for a long time, that'sa lie.
Yeah.
You'll be able to eventually,you know?
Yes.
No, I mean, again, it's hard to,first of all, we, we expect the

(47:02):
young people.
I have two kids, you know, oneis 18, uh, another one is 14.
Um, and you know, it's very hardto expect from those kids to
behave the way we want them tobehave.
Yeah.
Because we, our generation hascreated for them the trappings
of social media, of peerpressure, um, of kind of, you

(47:22):
know, of high expectations,compliance, you know, they're
all carrying thousand dollarphones in their pockets.
Correct, correct.
Uh, right now.
Um, so you can say things like,you know, you shouldn't be doing
that.
And they turn around and say,but dad, you work for that.
You create that, you use thatyourself all of the time.
So in a way.
It is very hard to see how we'regoing to get out of this, you

(47:45):
know, the problem andpredicament that we have that
has grown over the last, say 25years or so.
And I'm using Millennium as abreakpoint, but started of
course, before the millennium.
Yes.
Uh, how we're going to go, notso much back but forward towards
the values that we have lostmm-hmm.
That we would like to have.
We know we should have.

(48:06):
And yet we have worked so hardto dismiss.
Talk to me about, uh, by theway, I didn't even ask you,
you've got an accent, it seems.
You're from somewhere easternEuropean.
Yes.
I would guess.
Oh, I like, I I'm a mix ofpretty much everything under the
sun.
Very trying to be very quick.
You know, just tell you thestory.

(48:27):
I I, I was born and raised inSoviet Union Okay.
In Moscow.
Um, I'm of, um, Russian andArmenian descent.
Okay.
Um, I immigrated into the UnitedStates, um, in 1990.
So like Armenian because your,one of your parents like got
Yeah.
Pushed out from the genocidethere in Turkey and stuff, or is
that, was it common for people?

(48:48):
People go It was a littlebefore.
It was before, yeah.
It was common.
Yeah, of course.
Because, well, and there's alittle enclave of Armenia up
there in.
By Lithuania or something too,right?
Or somewhere.
No, no, no, no.
You think about there's you,Azerbaijan, there's a, that's a
whole war, but that's, that'sthe Soviet created that mess.
Uh, okay.
So, um, yeah.
You know, there's a war going onthere, of course.
Yeah.
Uh, but, uh, Armenia always kindof had link, link ups Okay.

(49:10):
With Russia because of theorthodoxy, because of the
religion.
I see.
'cause of course, you know,cultural as well.
So my, you know, predecessorsfrom Armenia moved to Russia
proper back in the 1840s.
Oh, okay.
Gotcha.
They, hence my last name isified.
Okay.
Back in the days, if you went toImperial University, you had to
rectify your name and acceptChristianity.

(49:32):
Of course, they already wereChristian and they crucified the
name.
So that's kind of the Fairenough.
The etymology of it.
So I was born in Soviet Union.
I grew up in the Soviet Union,and, uh, in my.
Year 21, uh, of my age, I movedto the United States Oh, wow.
Uh, to California.
And I spent 1990s in the UnitedStates.
For education, or No, I firsteven, no, I moved venture

(49:53):
because I had a, yeah, I had abusiness.
Okay.
I had a business that wasstarted with two American, uh,
uh, partners.
Okay.
Uh, from California.
They registered in Californiaand then sooner or later,
because they had their ownbusinesses, they had to run.
Um, I had to come to LA to runthe business.
Okay.
I was kind of managing it on theSoviet side of first What kind
of a business?
What?
It was a brokerage company.
Okay.
So we were trying to brokerjoint ventures between the, and

(50:16):
investment flows mm-hmm.
Uh, between the Sovietenterprises and the US based
companies.
Sure.
Um, and it was successful on theside of finding the projects and
then kind of, you know, ofcourse the recession of the
1990s killed us off.
So I moved in 1990 to the UnitedStates to run the business and
it was actually very easy to doback then because.

(50:39):
There weren't really anyone elsemoving from Soviet Union doing
any business.
Right.
So, um, and then I ended upclosing the business when we
became kind of, you know, we runinto basically cashflow problems
and then, you know, we hadinvestors lined up, we couldn't,
you know, get over the hump.
Yeah.
Um, and so in 1993 I figured outthat I have to go and finish my

(50:59):
education and I startedengineering back in the Soviet
Union at the time.
Um, so I went to UCLA and Isaid, you know, I'd like to
finish my degree.
They looked at my transcript,uh, back in the days it was
before computers.
So it was a very big book that Iactually found my school in
Moscow, uh, translated my gradesinto the UCLA scale or whatever.

(51:19):
It was interesting.
And they kind of said, whatwould you like to study?
And I said, you know, I alwayswanna do something
international.
So I said, you have too muchmathematics and physics.
Oh.
In order to do internationalstudies, but there is an
economics degree and you can do,you know, basically
international specialization ineconomics.
Mm-hmm.
So I knew nothing abouteconomics, I knew it was

(51:40):
international.
I always wanted to studysomething international.
So I said fine.
So I came in, into the thirdyear into UCLA, finished that,
um, went on to the master's,then went on to do the PhD at
Chicago.
Both or so?
No, no, uh, no.
First, um, actually at U-C-L-A-Idid my master's in mathematics
there.
Um, and then I went to Chicago,to University of Chicago to do

(52:01):
the PhD.
I see.
Um, wasn't a happy time for me.
It was a bit personal, kind oftough year.
So I transferred from there toJohns Hopkins.
Um, and I was in Johns Hopkins.
Um, I met in Chicago, my partnercurrently my better half.
Um, and we moved to Baltimoreand I was into my second year of
PhD there.

(52:22):
Um, and I got effectively justopportunistically, uh, you know.
Had haunted.
Okay.
Had haunted into TrinityCollege, Dublin in Ireland.
Ah, um, you know, through thenetwork of Good Andfor comes
the, uh, Irish economy expert.
So in the year 2000, you know,we moved, you know, Ireland for
a couple of years when timeswere hopping kind.

(52:43):
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, it was great.
Absolutely it was right peak ofthe kind of second wave of the
Celtic Tiger, uh, before itbecame what I call Celtic
Garfield afterwards, um, it wasboom time, it was.com boom and
everything.
Um, and we moved for a couple ofyears, 16 years later, two kids,
a dog houses and everythingelse, you know, Irish

(53:05):
citizenship and everything, youknow.
Um, we kind of came back in 2016for, I was in business a little
bit for a while there in Europe.
And then, um, I sold out ofbusiness there and, uh, decided
to go back to academia.
So we moved to California.
Yeah, back to where I startedfrom in the United States.
Um, and I spent four years therein Monterey.

(53:28):
Um, and then course, oh, not a,not a terrible spot to, uh, no
great place.
Absolutely love it.
Still go back there all of thetime.
Uh, a lot of friends.
Fantastic place.
Um, pandemic hit, I lost my job.
Uh, and I was on the market, so,uh, did not land you here.
Northern Colorado gave me anoffer I couldn't refuse.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, so we moved here.

(53:50):
Um, you know, so it's kind of,it's very interesting because I
mean, I'm, you know, I becameover the 1990s period, in
particular a mountain goat.
So I love climbing.
I love, you know, being up inthe mountains.
I love hiking.
I love fly fishing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love foraging.
So even though we lived on thecoasts in California and in, um,
in Ireland, you know, our housein Ireland is literally on the

(54:12):
sea front.
Um, and you know, I always kindof drawn to the mountains and my
wife comes, you know, her familycomes from Northern Italy.
We have a house in Alps there.
Alright, so moving here was forme a very natural move.
Yeah.
Um, you know.
I'm kind of maximizing that.
Awesome.
We spend the entire winter flyfishing, uh, because you can't

(54:34):
do it in California because theyhave seasons.
Oh, really?
Um, here you can go, you know,any, your river, you know, as
long as it's, anytime there'sopen water.
Exactly.
You have a little bit of an openwater, you can fly fish.
We spend all of the winter, youknow, up in the mountains as
well.
So I'm pretty much every week,you know, after.
So you're happy?
I am happy.
I'm happy, uh, in a differentway as well in terms of my life

(54:55):
as well.
Um, when you grow older, youkind of discover things that
more matter that are moreimportant.
They become usually slowerthings, and for me, that's
exactly what's happening, youknow?
Yeah.
I'm kind of, you know, decidedthat, uh, all of the media, um,
you know, I've done that, notinterested that much anymore.
Uh, public engagements don'treally need them either that

(55:16):
much.
Um, being able to do quietlyresearch without the rat race
that a lot of universitiesengage in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
One of the things that, thepressure to publish and all
these things, well, we haveYeah, of course.
But the pressure, say one of thebest part of, uh, UNC from my
point of view is that I can domy research there.
Yeah.
No one tells me which areas Ishould be specialized in.

(55:38):
Go into the likes of a CUBoulder, you are forced to
actually be specialist in verynarrow area.
Mm-hmm.
You need to pursue publishing tothe point, not just publish
pairs, but publish in the top.
Yeah.
Than journals, uh, in adiscipline and come up with the
conclusions that are in linewith our general philosophies
too.
Correct, correct, correct.
Exactly.

(55:58):
That Don't dare expose those,our thoughts.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So, um, in, in my world now Ihave the luxury of basically
saying, I'm interested in this.
Yeah, let's do that.
Okay.
Um, and to give you example,like, I mean, I have a coauthor,
for example, who comes with aninteresting data set, you know,
quite recently and says, let'sdo that.
But the data set on Indonesianbanks, fine.

(56:22):
Sure I can do that.
You know?
Exactly.
And my colleagues wouldappreciate that.
Yeah.
And you know, you know, in termsof my job appraisal and
everything else, it counts asmuch, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, and there's a luxury to thatof course.
You know.
Well, and you know, I think it,it seems to me anyway that the
Montfort College of Business isreally an interesting
opportunity.

(56:42):
You know, it's, it's fairly wellfunded and supported.
They're, they're savvy.
They've recruited a bunch ofsmart people into the program,
and not just as an economist,but you've been in business at
least a couple different timesas well.
And so you kind of appreciate,not that just the academic.
Instinct, of course, of yourfield, but actually putting the
rubber to the road.
Of course.

(57:02):
And we do that.
And that's, that's veryimportant as well.
So I mean, like one of the verybig things, and I have an
18-year-old who is going tocollege right now.
Yeah.
And the decision making is in alocal college.
So we have current three rightnow.
Uh, cost is very important, ofcourse, consideration because,
you know, don't wanna be preppeddown with a bunch of debt.
Sorry, salary.
You don't really Exactly.
You know, I'm actually not aperson who likes debt.

(57:23):
I mentioned organic before.
Yes.
Organic growth.
Mm-hmm.
I'm a big fan of funding thingsfrom the cash flow you generate.
So I don't want him to graduatewith any debt at all.
Yeah.
Uh, there's a bit of a tug ofwar because here of course
doesn't understand that yet.
I mean, hey, we're all beenthere, you know, and when you
look back and you say, oh, mymom did say that.
Yeah, that's true.
You know, I should havelistened.

(57:44):
You know, we all like that, youknow, but we learned from our
own bruises.
Yeah.
I have some, uh, some advicefrom my own background.
My, so my dad started a farm, hewas a motorcycle mechanic going
back to 14 years old.
And then he started farmingevenings and weekends for 14
years or something.
He farmed evenings and weekends,but he eventually, the farm was
working about the time I wasgoing to college.

(58:05):
And, uh, dad said, well, son,you know, the farm's doing good
enough now we could help youwith your school a little bit.
Um, but I think you get a lotmore out of it if you pay for it
yourself.
And That's amazing.
Yes.
He was right.
I mean, at the time I bet you,you were going like, what the
No, he was right.
I mean, everybody I knew thatflunked out.
Yeah.

(58:25):
Their parents were paying forit.
Yeah.
So have'em be in for at least alittle bit.
Uh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So I mean, like we learn d ofcourse things game, so Yeah.
I mean, but when you think aboutone of the advantages that, of
the, um, UNC and Monfort Collegein particular is that we are
actually laser focused on theidea that all of the people
going through the program inbusiness, it doesn't matter

(58:46):
whether you're study inmarketing, you're studying
management, you're studying infinance Okay.
Will have a full portfolio ofinternships.
Hmm.
And those internships can bestructured in so far as they can
be repeated over the period of,of time we want to place in or
like you sample a little bit, afew different things.
So even like people like myself,we are running around all of the
time trying to find newopportunities for internships.

(59:08):
Cool.
Okay.
So for example, we, I wastalking to a big healthcare
provider Yep.
In the area here now in, in thestate of Colorado.
Um, who is going to come onboard with offered internships
for our students.
Nice.
Pretty awesome.
There's sometimes you getstudents who are, who want to do
international as well.
You try to find for themopportunities international.
Yeah.

(59:28):
Challenging out of Greeley, butnonetheless, that's our job.
Yeah.
We want to do that.
So everything we teach has to bealigned, not just, we don't,
unlike other universities,unlike what we call R one level
universities, research focuseduniversities.
Oh yeah.
We are not training kids to go,or kids or young adults to go
into a PhD program down theroad.

(59:48):
Yeah.
We don't disadvantage them inthat sense as well.
We give them the ABCs, but ifthey want to do a PhD, they
probably should either look atdifferent university or look at
a career path to PhD.
So in other words, you graduate,you go to the find an employer a
little help you pay for yourPhD.
Exactly.
But also who will give you aframe for what you want to

(01:00:09):
study.
Yeah.
Because of course the PhD byitself should be Yeah.
Where do I point it?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So from that point of view,we're much more applied.
Our view is, and we constantlydo that.
I've served, for example, on thecurriculum committee, I'm on a
graduate committee nowadays aswell.
Um, we constantly looking at itfrom the point of view
opportunities.
Hmm.
I had, um, international affairsfor the MCB.

(01:00:30):
Um, and part of my job isexplicitly, even when we talk
about the exchanges for thefaculty international exchanges,
we always condition them as towhat's the benefit for students.
Yeah.
What doors does it open forstudents?
What opportunities it opens forstudents.
Okay.
Uh, we trying to structure theprograms where we bring students
out.

(01:00:51):
We try to support them.
We have scholarships for that.
Not only we have scholarships,unlike other universities where
you have the student body, someof which can afford additional
two, three, 5,000 for a tripabroad to study.
We actually structure it on abasis.
There should be no additionalcost for student Wow.
Compared to what they actuallyincur in their normal semester.

(01:01:12):
That's cool.
So most of our programs are likethat.
And you know, since I joined, wehad this big debate with the,
uh, international affairsoffice, for example, uh, who
wanted to structure more of thetraditional study abroad
education opportunities whereyou go for a semester and it is
a third party provider.
Yeah.
You screw around, hold your handand everything else.

(01:01:33):
No, no.
It's a serious program.
Don't take me wrong.
I mean, they're great as well,but they're much costly.
Sure.
So we kind of managed to restorethat balance.
We want our students to go.
Irrespective of the income,irrespective of their financial
opportunities.
And we want them to do thatbecause it opens doors.
Yeah.
'cause it opens differenthorizons because the companies
internationally, tradingcompanies, even based in

(01:01:55):
Colorado, will look at your CVor your resume when you are
graduating from college and theywill try to identify those
students who have thatexperience, who have that
exposure to internationaldimension in their classroom and
so forth.
So cool.
Yeah, absolutely.
We do.
If there's somebody listeningand they might have internships
available for their medium sizedbusiness out there in the

(01:02:15):
northern front range, uh, canthey just stalk you on LinkedIn
or something like, like that?
Absolutely.
Any channel.
I mean, you know, first of all,you can, you can bloody Google
me.
Okay.
Um, and you can get my email.
If it's private email, use it.
Whichever way, if you see me atany event, you know, stop me.
We are looking for that.
Call me at the office and it'snot just, don't call me at the
office because I don't answerphone in the office, but call me

(01:02:37):
on my, uh, cell phone.
Call me in any way, shape orform.
Okay.
Sounds good.
Um, and it also applies to othercolleagues of mine.
You can reach out to anyone ifyou go on Mc B's website.
Okay.
You have all of us with ouremail addresses.
Email any of us, and it will bethe same support as well.
Okay.
We want to see that more.
We will, in fact, actually inother programs, in other

(01:02:59):
universities, you would haveprobably an administrator
dealing with you.
Mm-hmm.
If you want an intern, if youreach out to somebody like
myself and you say, I'm lookingfor this skill set.
Hmm.
An intern, we will, I will reachout to my faculty, you know, the
23 people are looking well, orwhatever.
Not 200 people.
Okay.
200 people.
Like say, you know, 400 people.
We have an hour in finance, wehave about 200 plus students.

(01:03:21):
Wow.
Okay.
Um, so, but we know them.
Right.
Because there is about, youknow, say 10 of us who are
teaching, uh, them and I canemail all 10 of us and somebody
will come up with a list ofdifferent students.
We can discuss them and we canthen offer them as your interns.
That's the level of work we do.
Fair enough.
And it's totally normal from ourpoint of view.

(01:03:42):
And it's totally expected fromour point of view, because when
somebody says that we arestudent centric, everyone says
that.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We actually genuinely have to bestudent centric.
Yeah.
Because A, we have to competewith the bigger universities and
better funded universities andthere's a lot of competition in
Northern Colorado territory.
Of course.
Yeah.
We also have to.
Work with students, which comefrom so many different diverse

(01:04:04):
backgrounds.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Who are interested in so manythings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I imagine some of your studentsare, they're, they're a first
time college student in theirwhole family and they're coming
from Kansas or over 40% orsterling.
Yeah.
And it's a stretch for them toafford the tuition that UNC
charges.
Absolutely.
And a lot of the other ones arelike.
Uh, it's half as much as CSU, soI'm, I'm gonna go there instead.

(01:04:28):
'cause it seems just as good.
Absolutely.
Or it's too big.
CS u is scary and big and Iwould rather just go to a school
where I'm gonna know what,there's a lot of legacy things.
There's a lot of pool into UNCfrom students who know somebody
who graduated.
Mm-hmm.
In, maybe not in their family,but in the neighborhood, in the
area as well.
Um, that's one of the things.
There's another attractor aswell.
So at UNC in our school, in MCBin particular, we expect our

(01:04:51):
students to be fully tifull-time working.
Oh, so we accommodate them.
Oh, is that right?
We don't, we don't require them.
Right.
But we expect them of them havetime of at least.
Yeah.
Well, all of them will havepart-time jobs guaranteed.
Okay.
Most of them have more thanpart-time job in a traditional
way, its more than half load.
So as a result of it, we triedto accommodate them as much as
possible.
So one of the things we did, andthat came in in fourth this

(01:05:14):
year, and it's continued rollingout as well.
We have switched from the fiveday teaching to four day
teaching.
Oh.
So we now have Monday extra fullday.
You take day, you take Monday,Wednesday in person, or Tuesday,
Thursday in person.
Hmm.
And then Friday is remote.
Hmm.
So it's down to myself and mystudents to decide how we want
to work that day.

(01:05:34):
Hmm.
I'm, I usually just post somematerial for them.
I'm available if they want toreach out and we can have
one-on-one.
Sure.
We can have with a groupmeeting.
It's kinda your research timeand different things like that
too.
Not really.
It's still a student time.
Yeah, a hundred percent.
It's student time, so I'mavailable to them.
It's just that when we worktogether, we work, say for
example, on a project.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
So again, hands-on experientiallearning is facilitated through

(01:05:57):
it, but if you are working.
Or if you have to commute backhome for the weekend and so
forth, you can do it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we try to accommodate as muchas possible, those type of
flexibilities.
We're offering now a completiondegree online, which you can
finish degrees online as well.
Oh.
Um, so there's a lot ofdifferent modalities.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it is successful for us.

(01:06:18):
Okay.
So one of our most successfulprograms in the MBA, for
example.
Mm-hmm.
And our MBA is fully online,fully remote.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
There is no requirement forsynchronous, but again, we have
the flexibility.
So do I get to know my fellowMBA students or anything?
It's up to you.
Projects.
There are, yes.
A hundred percent.
So my class, so I'm teaching oneclass now.
I'm going to teach two classesin the program, uh, starting in

(01:06:40):
the fall.
Um, my classes all require groupwork.
Uh, I also hold, notsynchronous, but kind of, you
know, you know, preset hours.
So once a week I have two hourswhere I'm available.
Anyone can in, can come in onZoom at any moment in time
during those two hours.
Mm-hmm.
They can come in to discuss thequestions, they can come in to

(01:07:01):
discuss life.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Quite often actually thathappens more than they the
technical questions in finance.
Um, and it's uh, an opportunityalso for students to talk
between themselves.
Sure.
So even though they'rephysically separated, of course
it can be anywhere located and alot of them allocated in
different states as well.
Sure.
And even in the Colorado they'redistributed as well.
There's somebody who is up inthe mountains, you know,

(01:07:22):
somebody who is in the WesternColorado.
You know, you have an ability tohave a forum.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So yes, I mean, the answer is wewould like to have much more
community.
We would like to have much morebuilding of a traditional
interaction between thestudents, networks and so forth.
We are working on it.
We have created, for example, astudent, uh, advisory body.

(01:07:45):
So there's a alumni body whichis advising us, which is pretty
large.
It started with I thinkoriginally five people.
This is a second year that it isin existence and I think it's
now about 20.
Oh wow.
Um, of course there is alumninetwork, which is kind of formal
and traditional network.
Sure.
But that's kind of managed outat the university.
Yeah.
These people are giving theirtime directly.

(01:08:05):
Oh yes, absolutely.
And this event is now we'regoing to have, I think the
second event where it's comingup, uh, we're going to have in
Denver the meeting, and we'retrying to scale that up as well.
So, you know, going down thosefive more of those past
graduates, whatever, yeah.
Oh, and the jobs in region andstuff.
Ultimately every couple ofmonths we would have a network
and event.

(01:08:25):
That's the hope that we areheading and, uh, towards and the
networking event in the biggerareas like Denver Metro, like
say for example, Boulder again.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and so forth.
So yeah.
Very cool.
My, uh, my alma mater is, uh,North Dakota State.
Okay.
Uh, which back in those days wasa rival with UNC in division two

(01:08:46):
football.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
They, they traded titles a fewtimes back 20 years ago.
I don't know if they are still,you know, I honestly don't know.
Oh, North Dakota State moved upa level.
Okay.
So they're division one FCS now,and they, I think they've won
like 12 out the last 15championships.
Okay.
Oh, alright.
They're ballers.
See, I, I'm pretty ignorantabout those sports because none
of my kids are in, uh, in them.

(01:09:07):
So, well, we call football is infootball around here.
Yes.
Yeah.
But no, look, I mean, you know,it's fine.
Of course, you know, it'slocally, you know, um, I mean
there is also like, you know, ifyou think about different levels
and types of football mm-hmm.
Uh, and we think about soccerversus American football, I'm
starting to think about sayIrish football.
Yes, sure.
And then Australian rules aswell.
And all of a sudden you kind ofget the Oh, way completely.

(01:09:29):
Yeah, exactly.
Which looks totally different.
Yes.
I mean, uh, yeah.
It isn't rugby B it isn't ofootball football, but it's
something like football.
It is, it's true.
Um, I wanna take a quick break.
Yeah.
Potty break and then we'll comeback and, uh, I wanna talk a
little bit about the, uh, kindof risks in the world.
You know, what can we lookforward to in the next six to 12

(01:09:49):
months, both economically, butalso conflict risks.
Oh, right.
Yeah.
Fun.
Cool.
Okay.

(01:10:48):
And we're back.
So one of the reasons I firstreached out, uh, back a few
months ago was I thought withyour name, you might be kind of
an expert on the Russia, Ukraineregion and insights about, you
know, is it really about therare earths, is it really about
nato?
Is it really about poking thebear until the bear had to claw

(01:11:08):
back?
Uh, what, what are all of thesethings?
Yes, it's complicated.
You don't, you don't poke thebear for no reason.
Yes.
I mean, there is a bear there,you know, if you hike it through
the mud, don't poke the bear nomatter what the reason is.
But you know, the way you, it'skind of is the allegory.
Yes.
Don't poke the bear.
Um, there is a history.
Yes.

(01:11:29):
Yeah.
There's a long term history.
There is issues.
Um, Russia sees itself forwhether it's right or wrong, um,
as a, you know, not necessarilya superpower, but perhaps a
power to be reckoned with.
Yeah.
Somebody be respected.
Correct.
At least.
Um, and to regain that respectby, you know, hard effort.

(01:11:49):
Not always the most constructiveeffort I.
But nonetheless, from theRussian perspective, it is
constructive act.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a very important effort aswell.
It's a geopolitical power, whichkind of sees, uh, you know, kind
of similar to America in thatsense that it sees itself as a
messenger, as a, um, as thedominant player in the region,
if not globally.

(01:12:10):
So, Pok in the Bear wasill-advised, like the acceptance
of Lithuanian, all these No, notso much actually.
That was okay.
No, this is a very interestingthing about this.
You know, we kind of, we firstoriginally when the process of
the breakdown of the WarsawPark.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
And a kind of Soviet empirestarted, we actually

(01:12:30):
overestimated the extent ofsensitivities that was involved
from a Russian perspective.
The Baltic states were nevernaturally a part of Russia.
Mm-hmm.
They were more like Finland orwhatever.
Exactly.
Bingo and e because Finland is agreat example.
Yes.
Finland was incorporated intoRussia as a basically fully
autonomous entity with its ownparliament, with its own
government, with its own rules,laws, and everything else in the

(01:12:54):
Soviet scene.
No, that was before.
No, it was way before in theRussian Empire.
Yes.
Okay.
Yep.
Uh, so when the Soviet, sorry,when the Russian Empire itself
dissolved, when the Czar.
Abdicated.
Mm-hmm.
It, it dissolved the connectionbecause the czar was never the
czar of Finland.
Right.
He was basically our Duke ofFinland.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, in a way, Z disappearing.

(01:13:17):
There was no other connectionbetween Finland.
Nobody else else kind came intothat agreement, if you will.
So there, there, there was nobase.
We've had a student with us fromFinland.
Right now my wife and I arehosting an exchange student.
That's awesome.
So I've learned a fair bit,like, you know.
Exactly.
And it's an amazing nation, bythe way.
Yeah.
The history of it is amazing.
The ability of that, you know,society and that culture to
survive next to this giant, youknow?

(01:13:39):
Right.
Russia with a history of theend, also by the way, being
wedged between Russia andSweden.
Sweden has, yeah.
They were assholes too for along time.
Well they, they, they had theiraspirations.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, and the aspirations is anice way of saying that.
And so and so did, of course,Pauls Yes, sure.
And Lithuanian, Polish,Lithuanian Kingdom, them and
adult.
So that whole neck of the woodshad been very much contested.

(01:14:00):
Of course over the centuries aswell.
But apart from the historyitself and the history doesn't
form who we are.
Sure.
Beyond the end doubts, there isa lot of kind of insecurity in
Russia as well.
NATO presents that insecurityand presents that pressure.
Um, you know.
Ukraine conflict really startedway before 2014 even.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
There was a constant pressureand pool within Ukraine, which

(01:14:22):
in modern Ukraine is the Sovietcreation.
Yes, sure.
It bolted on the westernUkraine, which was never really,
really a part of the oldtraditional Ukraine.
Oh, okay.
Or the eastern Ukraine.
And this kind of dichotomy, thedifference Yes.
Creates a very tremendous, youknow, force of kinda like a
north versus south element, likein the US less so, but more like

(01:14:44):
say north versus, you know,Republic of Ireland.
Gotcha.
Um, like the say Protestants andCatholics.
Yeah.
More like that.
And you have the religiousdifference as well there.
Yeah.
You have a Catholic, WesternUkraine and you have the
Orthodox Eastern Ukraine.
Oh yeah, of course.
And then you have also otherminorities as well there.
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, probably a lot ofnon-religious Western Ukraine

(01:15:05):
then too.
Uh.
Probably actually, or Catholicidentifying, but not too active.
Neither one, you know, that'smore like Central Ukraine.
Okay.
Which is administrative Ukraine,like Nepro area.
Okay.
All the way to kyiv,non-secular.
Okay.
Much more kind of modernized.
Yeah.
Much more, you know,industrialized urban or
whatever.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So, um, I mean this is all ofcourse very much, you know, we,

(01:15:29):
we wear curtain, uh, on the sideof much more complexity Sure.
Than this.
Okay.
Um, so I'm trying to do it inseven minutes here, so Yeah, no,
it's true.
Oh, good luck.
Luck.
Maybe got 15.
I'm a wrong person.
That question.
Um, so there is a lot of historythere and then history goes
back.
There's some good.
Things, there are some badthings between it, of course.

(01:15:50):
Um, so yes, the West has playeda less than smart role in the
process that doesn't absolveRussia.
Sure.
Exactly.
Absolutely.
Um, it played less constructiverole rather than, you know, like
the West played one.
I was terrified when, when Bidenshot the long range missiles
into Russia after losing theelection.

(01:16:11):
I was like, what are you doing?
Like, I'm not sure that wasallowing that.
Yes.
But, but on the other hand, ofcourse, if you take the position
from the point of view ofsupporting Ukraine, right, and
that is intellectual.
This is what they need position,they need more than that.
Right.
And where do you stop?
And that's the whole problem.
Yes.
Right.
So in a way, I'm actually inline with Trump administration

(01:16:31):
on the fact that that war shouldnever have been started.
Yeah.
A hundred percent.
The problem is that the wishfulthinking doesn't work forward.
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, and the argument I hearabout, you know, giving Russia a
piece of Eastern Ukraine andhaving an agreement that's
signed and forces done and stuffis that, you know, after Trump

(01:16:52):
has gone next, uh, crappypresident we've got in the
office, Russia's gonna takeUkraine and then they're gonna
take Poland and then they'regonna take the rest of it.
I don't think that Russia willtake poll.
I don't think they will either.
I don't think Russia has anyambition in terms of the
additional territory gains.
I don't think it wanted this toUkraine either to begin with.
Um, but now you had a bunch ofpeople dead, but now it has.

(01:17:13):
Right Eastern Ukraine.
Yeah.
Um, I would be of the view thatfrom my point of view, Ukraine
is an independent nation.
Mm-hmm.
And sovereign states should notbe attacked.
They no matter what, if they doattack, then defense is
justifiable.
Yeah.
Okay.
But non defensive war is notjustifiable.
But this is my personal view.
Sure.
Yes.
Um, we are, as they say, wherewe are.

(01:17:33):
And this is a big problembecause how do you resolve, how
do you get out of here?
Um, the difficulty we have isless logistics of the, who
controls the ground, but more ofthe logistics.
Who has the trust?
Nobody has the trust.
We don't trust the Russians.
Russians don't trust us.
Yep.
Ukrainians don't trust theRussians.
We don't trust UK Ukranians andnobody, they trust UK Ukraine.

(01:17:54):
Um, yeah.
Even poll except for theEuropeans seem to trust Ukraine.
Even poll.
No, I mean even Europeans.
Europeans say that they trustUkraine, but to be honest, you
know, do you really anythingthat the French Trust Ukraine or
for that matter, French trustanyone but the French Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean if you look at the, forexample, Italians and you look
at Maloney.
Sure.
Um, you know, she comes in fromthe point of view into the

(01:18:17):
political realm today, theleadership.
Right.
She's the MAGA of, uh, she'sworse than maga.
You, I mean, you know, like itwas before MAGA got accused of
being fascist, you know, she wasaccused of being fascist.
Yes.
And now she's one of theleaders.
Of the, you know, kind offreedom movement and Well, and
France would have that leadertoo, potentially.
Yeah.
If, except for the funny right.
Businesss they pulled with theelection.

(01:18:38):
That's right.
So I mean like, and Germany too,you know, you go everywhere.
The only countries like Irelandare the ones which are saying,
we don't have the right wing.
But then you have the, you know,conman, McGregor, you know.
So I mean there is, the paradoxof that is that we're in
extremely complex environment.
Yeah.
We are not only environmentwhere we deal with risk, if you

(01:19:00):
use the proper terminology, wedeal with what, in the 1990s US
military, the US Army haslabeled vuca volatility,
uncertainty, complexity, andambiguity.
Hmm.
And that is an environment wherethings don't just happen, as
kind of unpleasant events.
What happens in this environmentis a systemic crisis.

(01:19:20):
Mm-hmm.
Big things, big wars.
Not just small skirmish, notsome kind of stable, relatively
balanced conflict that happenedin 2014.
Yeah.
In Eastern Ukraine, but actuallyfull out wars.
And that's 2022.
Yeah.
So from this point of view, evendevising any sort of, the

(01:19:41):
response has to start with theproposition.
What's the worst case scenariothat you're going to get?
And up until what?
2022 we had, the worst casescenario is we're going to have
a lot of people dead.
Now we have the worst casescenario of the nuclear World
War.
Everybody's dead.
Effectively everybody's dead.

(01:20:01):
Okay.
And, uh, if you go historically,who normalized that reality, it
wasn't the Russians, it wasactually the first idea of the
winnable nuclear conflict.
So-called limited nuclearconflict came out in the United
States and it was codified inearly n by the likes of the
Atlantic Council.
Mm-hmm.
Or the council Foreignrelations.

(01:20:22):
Yeah.
Okay.
In the United States, theadvisors to our policy makers,
the advisors to our nationalsecurity heads in Congress, in
the White House and everywhereelse.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So in a way we are now, is thatbecause of the pressure of
profit from,'cause you, you sellmoms, is it military industrial
complex?
Yeah, that's a very interestingthing.

(01:20:43):
So military industrial complex.
I did some research on militaryindustrial complex and part of
kind of, you know, there is verysurprisingly for the size of the
military industrial complex, ifyou go into finance and
economics literature, therearen't a lot of papers.
Nobody studies, not a lot ofdirect evidence of Oh no, it's
not that.
It's just nobody really studied.
Not a popular subject.
Yeah.
It's not a popular subject.
It's like studying the coolnext.
So when we wrote, you know, whenI had myself and a couple of my

(01:21:04):
graduate students, uh, back Ithink around 2013, started
research on that.
And it took me until 2023 topublish the first paper on this.
Okay.
Uh, because nobody wanted totake it.
Journals are not interested.
And what's the punchline if, Imean, so the punchline is the
following.
The military industrial complexdoesn't make money out of the

(01:21:26):
direct immediate wars.
I.
What they make money out of thetwo things.
One is kind of pipeline ofordering the budgets.
Okay.
So the budgets of war are moreimportant than the wars
themselves.
And a second thing, when thingsbecome really uncertain, when
things not just blow up, okay.
But they blow up in anunpredictable way.

(01:21:49):
So again, it's not the risk.
Okay.
So there's two things thatinvestors in military industrial
complex, like they like thesteady pipeline of orders that
they can program into thefuture.
And that's, you know, somethingYeah.
Just keep making this manyparts.
Yep.
So that's how you regularbudget, but the wars themselves,
the spikes, the moments of thisacceleration in the uncertainty

(01:22:12):
about the future demand, italways kind of leads to the
promotion or the support of themilitary industrial complex
stocks.
So in a way you can see now, oh,and they just like to see their,
their stock price going need,why we constantly need this kind
of, you know, drive towardsbeing belligerent.
Yeah.
Ose, um, United States is in away, Jimmy Carter was correct in

(01:22:34):
saying that in its history, thisis probably the most war in
nation on face earth, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Even though we've haven't foughtreally a war on our own soil.
Right.
For quite a long time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, blessed we are bythat, but we have supported
whether directly or indirectly,um, vast numbers of conflicts.

(01:22:54):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, it is unfortunately a.
Um, it is the geopoliticalreality today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we're going to see more ofit.
I think one of the biggest riskpoints of this and you know,
like seeing, uh, Chinese andNorth Korean troops joining the
Russians on the fronts and stufflike that is like, that's the
last thing they want.

(01:23:14):
Not so much Chinese.
Chinese are staying cool onthat.
Okay.
They've got, you know, not yet.
There's, there's some argument,there's some, you know, kind of
reporting coming out of Ukraine,uh, that they have traced some
Chinese, um, conscripts.
Okay.
Not conscripts, but the contractsoldiers.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um, but that's not the notsignificant reported thing.
Yeah.
Uh, North Korea is differentstory.

(01:23:35):
So Russia has signed a, youknow, basically a common defense
clause with North Korea.
Oh, is that right?
Okay.
That happened, uh, in 2023.
Okay.
Um, and um, you know, as aresult of that Russia actually
yeah.
A win for North Korea.
'cause they're like, Hey, thosehuge, huge win for North Korea.
Absolutely huge win for NorthKorea.
Korea, and plus a great exportfor like, they got a bunch of

(01:23:56):
starving men in North Korea.
They do like better to get anice paycheck.
Uh, they do sent to thehomeland.
The numbers of them are limited.
Yeah.
I mean you're talking about fiveto 10,000 as far as we have the
credible, actually trainedinformation.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, you know, that actually wentin.
Um, all of them, as far as Iunderstand, have stayed within
Russia property.
So it's the Kors region.

(01:24:17):
Okay.
Where Ukraine had the countryoffensive, remember?
Yep, yep, yep.
Um, that's where they fought.
They haven't crossed, as far asI know.
Into the Ukrainian territory.
Yeah.
Uh, which of course would be,you know, kind of probably an
act of war against Ukraine byNorth Korea.
Right, right.
Um, it's very hard to even tracewhat exactly is the act of war
these days.

(01:24:37):
Okay.
Right.
How far we moved back in thedays it used to be you send a
very stern letter to the leaderof the other country.
Right.
Oh, that's, and then you send,you know, you know, at night,
you know, with a bill of, youknow, where you ask for things
and demand the things, you know,and then there's, you know, kind
of the war, the buddy thing, youknow, a little slap with the
glove.
Exactly.
And bingo.

(01:24:58):
Exactly.
It used to be like, and you goback to the 19th century, the
history of warfare.
I mean, you have the first eventof the so-called barbar or
modern war happens in 1812.
In Russia, Napole, Napoleon's,uh, campaign in Russia.
And it was the first time whenthey encountered the concerted
resistance.
Organized resistance by thenon-combatants.

(01:25:20):
Mm.
The partisans.
The locals.
The peasants with pitchforks.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It shocked Europeans.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It shocked the refined European.
European because we wereprofessional armies.
Yes.
And we fight army to army.
We don't touch the peasants.
Yes.
Right.
I mean, and here's the peasantstouching you.
Right, right.
You know?
Um, so that changed the modernwarfare.
Yes.
And since then we kind ofevolved.
Well, and even the RevolutionaryWar with the Americans, where

(01:25:42):
the British are like, we line upand we stand this far apart, we
shoot each other.
You guys are hiding behind treesand shit.
That's, that's not fair.
That's right.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So, I mean, like, you know, andthat kind of Nobel structure of
the campaigns and militarycampaigns has disintegrated over
period of years.
So we now, today are in the.

(01:26:03):
War environment where it is youhave the non-human actors
involved.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All the drones and stuff.
Uh, not only drones, Roberts.
Sure.
Um, we effectively turn the warfield or the battlefield into
the constant test and labmm-hmm.
For new technologies.
Mm-hmm.
It's happening on the westernside and on the Russian side as
well.

(01:26:24):
Um, so in this environment tokind of go around and kind of
scream about the North Koreans,I mean, it's almost like, you
know Yeah.
Not that significant compared toall the rest that's going on.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, and if you start thinkingabout this drone technology,
like do we, are we, can we keepup now?
You know, very interestingquestion.
So, I mean, Russia has managedto, and this is goes to the, my

(01:26:46):
profession and kind of my fieldof expertise as well.
Um, you know, we were all takencompletely unprepared by the
ability of the Russian economyto switch to the kind of
military industrial complex.
Um, Russia had really not ameaningful military budget
expend before the war, and hasretooled its economy very

(01:27:09):
successfully and has managed theways to bypass tremendous
sanctions, which have never beendeployed in the history against
any other country in a past.
Yeah.
Um, it is to the point where italmost like to me was a.
A risk of devaluation of thedollar.
Like if you could just takesomebody's money.
Right.
So they're not driving thedevaluation of the dollar
themselves.

(01:27:29):
No.
But the risk of a anothercurrency replacing the dollar,
you know, bricks or something.
Yes, correct.
Yes.
Yeah.
We just took a few billiondollars, you know, we've started
that process, what we call that,you know, in my profession we
call that weaponization ofeconomic systems.
Yep, yep.
Uh, they can be financialsystems, they can be trade
systems.
The United States over the lastsay, and it's really started

(01:27:51):
with the late 1990s onwards.
Okay.
Iran sanctions.
The very big move was of coursethe, uh, second Gulf War.
Sure.
Um, and there, after it'saccelerated tremendously by now,
we have weaponized absolutelyeverything we have.
We have weaponized aid, we haveweaponized humanitarian
assistance, we have weaponizedhealth.

(01:28:14):
Provision.
Um, anything that is outwardlooking in the United States,
you know, from our treasurydepartment to our health, again,
to our food supplies is allweaponized.
When you do that, you createincentives, both push and pull
incentives for the nefarious oradversarial actors, whether
they're Russia, Ukraine, yeah,sorry, no, Ukraine, China, um,

(01:28:37):
but even Ukraine, Poland aswell.
They're not adversarial, butthey're competitive in many
ways.
Okay.
As well.
Um, all of these differentplayers have used to some
extent, the United Statesweaponizing its systems to
resist that.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the idea of, say for example,digitalization of the economy, a
global economy, we think of itas the kind of, you know,

(01:28:59):
juxtaposition between Russiaplus China and maybe other
bricks.
Right, right.
Against the United States.
The biggest challenger to the USdollar in the last 25 years has
not been Yuan ruble or gold.
It was Europe.
Oh yeah, sure.
So when you think about it isEuro are Europeans, our lives

(01:29:20):
well, but we create anopportunity for them Right.
To effectively benefit from whatwe benefited for decades of the,
you know, post Bretton woodsstructure of the economy and
Bretton Woods structure of theeconomy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, maybe they can carry thattorch for a while and be the,
there is a, there's a worldadvantage to it, but there is
also a huge burden to that.
Sure.
You mentioned being policemento, to the rest of the world,

(01:29:41):
which creates a draw on our ownresources.
Yeah.
Because we we're almostobligated to that because we're
the ones that money invest morein the global if you want
security than we invest in theroads and railroads in the
country.
Sure.
We certainly invest more inPentagon, which is an outward
projection of our power mm-hmm.
Than we invest in healthcare inthis country.

(01:30:02):
Sure.
So, I mean, yeah.
There's a burden to that malinvestment.
Huge burden.
Massive burden.
Yeah.
So yes, there are benefits tohaving this dominant hegemonic
position in the global economy,but also in military industrial
space.
Uh, it's a heavy yolk to bear,kinda, but there's also Correct,
yeah.
Is there is also a cost.
There is no free lunch.
Yes.
Um, so in a way, you know, thechallenge that we're witnessing

(01:30:26):
today, uh, to the US economy, USdollar, US hegemony is so
multidimensional.
It's very different from theCold War Challenge when you had
the literally juxtaposition oftwo superpowers.
Sure, yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and the, there was.
More tension to that.
Sure.
But the change was how we wouldsee magazines all the time
comparing the size of ournuclear stockpiles and stuff.

(01:30:48):
Right?
Correct.
Yes.
That's where we got at.
You know?
Uh, but the tension was almostone dimensional.
Hmm.
Now it is so multidimensionalmm-hmm.
That you have the challenges tothe United States.
How, give you example, thepredictability is real hard.
Tar.
They take tariffs.
Yes.
The tariffs have triggered thereaction between and kind of, if
you want trade war, of course hehas it for tat between China and
the United States.
Sure.

(01:31:09):
But behind the scenes, I thinkit was yesterday, there was a
conversation happening in PE inBeijing, uh, about the need and
the projecting that it's public.
Yes.
Projection of that conversation,of course, that we get on our
end, uh, about the need to havea closer relationship, uh, in
terms of investments flows, interms of trade, in terms of

(01:31:29):
diplomacy, in terms of allcultural links between China and
Vietnam.
Hmm.
Vietnam has drifted towards theUnited States orbit far enough
that it is now an alert from theChinese point of view, and the
Chinese are going to deploywhatever soft diplomacy they
usually deploy, which is usuallyinvolves investment and trade.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, but also cultural exchanges,also educational opportunities.

(01:31:52):
Well, because Vietnam was one ofthe first countries to respond
and be like, we're in, we'retalking.
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
Yes.
So there's a very interesting,these type of challenges.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Back in the Cold War era wouldbe happening way before the
actual confrontation takes placeand they would be much more
stable.
Right.
Right.
Now they're multidimensional.
The president would sendemissaries four months before a

(01:32:14):
deal was made.
Of course.
And stuff.
Instead of Trump just going, youknow, we're gonna Texas shut
outta those.
And once they're in our orbit,we can rely on them being in our
orbit.
Yes.
With exception of, of course,know non aligned states like say
India, which always kind ofthreaded both.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dimensions, you know.
But in by and large, there waseither my camp and your camp.
Yeah.
Now there is my camp and onething.

(01:32:35):
Your camp.
Another thing, and I'm playingan independent one for now, you
know, in a third thing.
Well, and yeah, the Europe isreally a hard thing to figure
out.
How does that fit in with,that's another Spanish Ukraine,
for example, foreign ministertoday coming out with a
statement that he believes thatEurope should be in alignment
with the close alignment withChina.
Oh yeah.

(01:32:55):
So I mean, here we have thepresident of the United States
who is trying to, you know, kindof both country China.
But I mean, at the same timesome people say that he's
building the, you know,alliances between the, you know,
or he's incentivizing theEuropeans to kind of join United
States in a position to ChinaHouse, you know, taking over
Greenland and, you know,screwing Denmark fits into that.

(01:33:16):
I'm not sure you know this well,is it really screwing Denmark
though, or would it be a, aburden lifted from them that we
would gladly carry So far,they're not given us indication
that they would be party lifted.
No, they don't talk like that.
But when I look at it like froma big picture, it almost like
they have to send a bunch ofmoney to Greenland every year.
It's like, no, it's kind of, youknow, Vladimir Putin probably
has made an argument at certainpoint in time that lifting off

(01:33:37):
the Eastern Ukraine from therest of Ukraine would lift the
burden from, yeah, you don'twanna have to finance that.
Uh, fair.
But yeah, I mean, no, I don'tthink so.
I think, you know, I think thenotion that, uh, president Trump
is playing, playing some sort ofa seven dimensional chess game
here is a little bit straightahead of, you know, more He's

(01:33:58):
President Trump, is he, he's a,a projection map, and so how big
Greenland one is, he had to haveit bigger than Texas.
There's, beyond that of course,you know, he's also, he's
clearly is a president who isdriven by the desire to be put
in the textbooks Sure.
In history textbooks and whatbiggest thing you can do other
than add territory on majorscale.

(01:34:20):
There's other things.
I mean, the, the whole, youknow, north, the, uh, Arctic
Ocean, uh, the access to theArctic Ocean.
Sure.
Uh, United States only has thatthrough a small part of us, uh,
Alaska.
Um, you know, we can't really beplayers Yeah, yeah.
In the Arctic with just that.
Yeah.
Canada is clearly kind of, youknow, very hesitant as well.

(01:34:40):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, you know, so you have this,you know, there is, there is
incentives.
Yeah, of course.
Um, but I mean, you know, wouldyou go about it by the way?
You've got his gun.
Yeah.
You, no, I mean, um, yeah.
You're certainly not attractingCanada to join the United
States.
No, I know.
I don't.
Do you think Canada should be,uh, uh, a state or 10 smaller

(01:35:02):
states?
That's, that's a question whichI think is so esoteric at this
stage.
I think the United States needsa North American, um.
Customs and uh, yeah.
Labor market union.
Yeah.
We need to have the relationshipwith our neighbors that are
again, cooperative andconstructive.

(01:35:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
To the point of being similar tothe European Union, that would
be free mobility of labor.
Yeah.
You can preserve ident.
You can preserve, I mean, look,Canada has multiple identities
itself.
Sure, yes.
Quebec versus, you know, ohyeah.
The rest British Columbia versusthe rest.
You, well, in all the Midwesternones, right.
The, they're, they're basicallyNorth Dakotans.
Well, and Saskatchewan andManitoba and stuff.

(01:35:44):
Yeah.
There might say that there'sNorth Dakotans now, but Yeah, so
Exactly.
So you can have that.
We have tremendous diversitywithin the United States of
course as well.
We have the south, we haveFlorida, which is different from
the south.
Sure.
I mean, you can narratedifferent world.
Why, uh, why is Canada sofocused on, um.
Carbon credits and preventingglobal warming when it's so cold

(01:36:06):
up there, they benefit from alittle warm up over time.
This is interesting, in, in, ineconomics there is a kind of
subfield of, uh, environmentaleconomics, which looks Yeah.
Yeah.
At that, you know, um, at kindof, you know, what are the REBA
effects?
They could raise corn up thereinstead of just wheat.
Um, and interestingly enough, soa former student of mine took
his first job, um, you know,years ago, um, working for a big

(01:36:31):
family office in Europe, and oneof the deals that he was working
on structuring was the purchaseof a large chunk of permafrost
land in northern Canada.
Okay.
Um, and the premise was that itwill turn at certain point in
time, into arable land.
In a hundred years, this will befarmland.
Yeah.
I mean, you can see for example,like say, you know, you know,
wine makers in SouthernCalifornia moving father and

(01:36:52):
father North.
Yeah, yeah.
We have now wine being made inCanada, you know.
Yeah.
Uh, we have wine returning backto the British Isles, you know,
so, um, you know, not sinceRoman times.
It was there produced really atscale, you know, so yes, there
are of course gains to be had incertain areas.
Okay.
Um, the problem becomes is thatthe problems of the south will

(01:37:13):
be imported into the north.
Right.
One of the big drivers is thewhole migration, for example.
Yes, totally.
We have that at scale now,starting to happen in the likes
of the Middle East, in the likesof parts of Africa as well.
Yeah, yeah.
Where there is a combination ofconflicts plus, you know,
searing heat, violence and thenheat and then impact on soil.

(01:37:36):
Yeah.
Impact on quality of soil,impact on water livability and
so forth.
So when you think about this inthe past, we always, we are
comfortable with saying, forexample, things like energy has
driven wars before there werewars for oil.
Yeah.
We know historically there werewars for salt.
Sure.
Because of the importance ofsalt in preserving food.
Yes, sure.

(01:37:56):
In the past, why we havingdifficulty thinking in terms of
the geopolitical crisis.
Right.
Being driven by mass scalechanges in the livability of
different parts of the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it doesn't mean that youhave to believe in a completely
uh.
You know, cataclysmic.
Yeah.
Apocalyptic type of theenvironment.

(01:38:16):
Uh, change, you know, scenario.
So do we have to be more open tochanges in sovereignty or
boundaries or alliances orunions then I think we have to
be more open to how we definesovereignty.
Hmm.
Yes.
Um, it doesn't mean that youhave to give up on your ability
to control your own borders.
It doesn't mean that you have togive up on the ability of having

(01:38:37):
your own identity.
It doesn't mean, uh, that youhave to give up on trying to pa
to chart your own path.
Yeah.
That suits your specificculture, your history, uh, into
the future.
But it does mean that we have tobe more comfortable with change.
Yeah.
Yes.
Fair.
Um, um, I'm gonna call a timeout because we've got a couple

(01:38:58):
more segments that aremandatory.
Uh, and I do want to get, uh,Ava outta here in time, so,
alright.
Um, first we have the ping pongball challenge and uh, I'm gonna
have you draw three balls out ofthere and I'm gonna ask you the
question from my list that'sassociated with those balls.

(01:39:20):
Okay.
You can grab the whole thingover to you if you'd like.
Okay.
Let's do that.
Alright.
So, and uh, so just grab anythree numbers out of there and
then you can set that back over.
I'll take care of it.
Let see if any of the numbersactually that they're all good.
I find lucky.
Alright.
Okay, so, so, uh, yeah, what'sthe first number you'd like me
to, um, I'll start backwards.

(01:39:40):
One, the.
Number one.
Yes.
Number one, exactly.
Oh, this is fun.
Uh, first time this question'sbeen asked, I think.
What's your favorite childhoodmemory?
My favorite childhood memory,um, probably is a set of
memories that form me.
Okay.
I, I'm a big fisherman.
Okay.

(01:40:00):
I like fly fishing.
Okay.
I'm a big forage as well, and Igrew up on a, um, in the city of
Moscow.
Yeah.
When you said foraging earlier,I meant to ask, but like for
mushrooms and things like thator, oh, edible mushrooms.
Uh, edible berries, you know.
Okay.
Herbs, you know.
Um, my last foraging wasactually in December, back in,
uh, on the central coast inCalifornia.
Okay.
And it was, uh, portini that Ibrought the whole box off back,

(01:40:23):
fresh.
Nice.
And I had some herba.
This is in Italy mostly, orsometimes?
No, that was, uh, Californiaright here.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Also in Italy as well.
In Alps we do that as wellthere.
Yeah.
Um, so I forged pretty much foreverything I, including for the
firewood, for my, uh, littlebarbecue pit.
Okay.
So I like barbecue with anatural wood fire.
So I forage for the, uh, wood aswell.

(01:40:45):
So that favorite childhoodmemory.
So my favorite memory would bemy river I grew up on, because I
grew up in Moscow City and wehad a property outside.
We still have that propertyoutside of Moscow.
Um, and it's a nice, you almostlike a little country home or
whatever Exactly.
Like the would have Exactly.
It's a summer house.
Yeah.
Summer house with a couple ofacres of land right on the
river.
And I grew up there and I spentthat.

(01:41:06):
And so that river is my,probably.
Yeah, you are kind of mosttreasured memory.
You can always call up thatsound of that river almost.
That's right.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
You can feel it.
You can see it.
You can smell it.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Never leaves quite.
Yeah.
Um, next question.
Oh, yes.
Uh, 2020.
Um, what's your go-to excusewhen you want to get out of

(01:41:30):
plans with someone other thansaying, I'm Russian, I don't
make plans.
Yeah, exactly.
You know, you don't want to makeplans with me.
Yeah.
Uh, what's my favorite excusewhen I get to get out of
something?
Uh, usually it is a work thing.
Yes.
Sorry.
Just gotta work.
We always, yeah, exactly.
There's so much stuff I have todo, you know, I can't go to a

(01:41:53):
concert.
That's my, usually my wifeactually goes like, you know,
let's go to a concert.
You take bought tickets.
You know, no, no, no.
I'm, you know, I'm working now.
Take Suzy.
Um, so, um, yeah, that probablywould be pretty banal, but
usually, yes.
Fair enough.
I don't like relying on thingslike say health.
Right.
'cause it's kind of almost likea bad omen.
Yeah.
You know?
I guess so.

(01:42:13):
I don't, that's fair know.
If I say to someone, if I tellsomeone that I'm genuinely, you
know, that I'm sick, I'm usuallyprobably genuinely sick.
Yeah.
Fair.
Uh, but if I say like, I have towork.
They probably will kind of knowin me, they will say, is it
workout or is it work?
Or is it work?
Like doing research because theyknow I like doing that.
Right, right.
You know, or is it literallygrading papers, which I hate.

(01:42:35):
Who doesn't?
Oh, exactly.
True.
Um, last one.
Oh yes, number seven.
Number seven.
How do you define happiness?
Um, I define happiness and Iexperience happiness on a small
scale.
I don't define it on a big scaleof big events in life.
Yeah.
I define it on an everydayexperience.
Yeah.
For me, happiness is when I amup in the mountains and I'm

(01:42:58):
actually just free.
Yeah.
Free from bullshit of everydaylife we have.
Yeah.
Don't think about nothing freefrom things like thinking about
taxes or thinking about how I'mgonna pay for the tuition of the
kids, or how I'm going to affordvolleyball fees or you know,
what, even free from the idea ofwhat I'm going to eat.
Yeah.
You know, today.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, it is literally, you know,kind of a friend of mine, no

(01:43:22):
Decisions to be made.
My mountaineering partner, uh,here, you know, he actually says
that, you know, I have religiousexperience when I'm in the
mountains.
Yeah.
Uh, when I'm in a forest, youknow?
Uh, and it is like it, you know?
Yeah.
It is something where youencounter something bigger than
yourself, more pert thanyourself, and something that
doesn't judge you.
Yeah.
Doesn't fair enough make anyview of you.
Yeah.

(01:43:42):
Yeah.
You don't even exist for it, youknow?
I think that I, uh, I wasreflecting on a, a phrase, I
think my dad's custom combinerin Texas, uh, told him this
phrase, but he's like imaginingon a rocking chair sitting in
front of a house and sometimes Isit, some thinks I.
And sometimes it just sits.
Yeah.
Uh, and that notion of justsits, you know, even if you're

(01:44:04):
hiking through the woods.
Exactly.
You know, not just movingthrough the space and seeing the
things completely different ofthings.
See Right.
Listen to, to the birds orlooking at the clouds or, yes.
Like, you know, like, you know,I'm going to go on Saturday for
example, up into the mountainsand, uh, you know, there's, I
know that trail.
I know the river there, I knowthe waterfalls there.
Last time I was there, youcouldn't see the river.
You're actually hiking over it,but you can hear it.

(01:44:26):
Yeah.
And that experience, every diffevery moment is different.
Yeah.
Every, every time you take thattrail, it's a different trail.
Bingo.
So this no such thing is commonin who said that?
I mean, one of the Greeks, youknow, said you can't step into
the same river twice.
Yes.
Yeah.
You know, and it's probably,it's the most acute observation
of reality.
You can't step into the sametime twice.

(01:44:47):
Yeah.
And the only time you experiencethat and you know, that is when
you are fully free.
And that's it.
Hmm.
I dig it.
Um, we, uh, we bribe ourlisteners to listen to the whole
show.
And so, uh, so the luckylistener that writes in with the
answer to that first question,uh, the favorite childhood
memory, um, that being thesummer cabin, uh, outside of

(01:45:08):
Moscow and the river, especiallyaround it, uh, will get you$25
from Chiba hut, from Loko thinktank.
Um.
We didn't really talk about yourfamily too much.
Your kids or your, your, yourspouse, your partner, um, care
to talk a little bit about that,uh, influence in your life and a
huge influence.
Of course, the family isprobably the most important

(01:45:29):
anchor we have in life.
Yes.
That's the only thing that wehave that physically connects us
to time.
Which is an important dimensionfor us as human beings.
Um, and also to spaces.
Okay.
So, um, I have two wonderfulkids, completely different
character wise.
Okay.
My oldest one is a golfer.
Okay.
I mean, was on a team for the,um, fossil Ridge High School,

(01:45:52):
um, competitive golfer.
He is kind of like a person whocan go and play 18 halls without
blowing up.
Hmm.
My 14-year-old will blow up.
Okay.
Can't play golf.
She's a volleyball player.
Uh, she played rugby before, soshe's a very kind of Sian
strong, uh, but also is kind ofamazing to watch her evolution

(01:46:13):
as well.
She is becoming, you know, shemoved from being kind of a very
strong personality to being astrong personality, but also a
kind of feminine balance topersonality.
Yeah.
Self restrained a little bit.
Yeah.
Both are very good students.
Okay.
Um, both are kind of, you know,not academically minded.
They, hopefully they're gonna gointo academia.
Okay.
I'm really happy with that.
Uh, my oldest is kind ofcurrently looking at, you know,

(01:46:36):
doing finance because ofbusiness.
Yep.
Dimension.
So applied finance, my youngestone is still kind of having big
dreams and she wants to do kindof medicine slash biology, um,
in her kind of studies.
Um, and she's oriented towardsthat, which is always amazing.
Yeah.
From my point of view, it'sreally great to see, uh, my
partner, I call her my betterhalf because she's a better half

(01:46:57):
of me.
She's more balanced than I am.
Okay.
Uh, she's, what's her name?
Uh, Jennifer.
Hi Jennifer.
Um, so she's, hopefully you'lllisten to this one.
Absolutely.
Amazingly beautiful human being.
Okay.
Uh, we've met, uh, now.
Yeah.
Where did you grab her?
I forget you.
So we met 30 years ago.
When, where were you then?
In Chicago?
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
Uh, we met 30 years ago thisyear in Chicago.

(01:47:18):
And uh, you know, we spent those30 years so far and, uh, I mean,
it's, was it, was it a romanceright from the first Yes, it was
instantaneously.
We have a lot of veryinteresting and strange
connections for the Russianversus, you know, she's, you
know, of course she was born inMichigan, uh, but she is half
Italian.
Okay.
Uh, almost half Cherokee.
Oh.
Um, and, uh, she works in acompletely different field.

(01:47:42):
Yeah.
She comes from advertising her,you know, degree is in
sculpture, so she's an artmajor.
Uh, we've met, uh, randomlythrough kind of third party
friends.
Okay.
Um, and the first time we met,we had a fight.
Perfect.
We had an intellectual debatediscussion, which was very
heated, uh, where she was tryingto convince me that there is
such a thing as an American art.

(01:48:03):
And I was trying to convince herthat all of the American art is
really European art and isderived poor copy from European
art.
Uh, not necessarily no.
Fantastic copy, but I mean, it'svery different.
Uh, so we had a art historydebate.
Interesting.
Um, her view was, uh, you know,sadly that what the hell does
this economist from Universityof of Chicago know about art?

(01:48:23):
Uh, and my view was, uh, kind ofprobably around the same kind of
Look how cute she gets when shegets sassy.
Yeah.
Oh, no, absolutely, totally.
Uh, hot.
I mean.
But anyways, um, so we hit offright, right away.
Um, her background growing upbetween the United States and
Italy kind of matched mybackground growing up in other,

(01:48:44):
totalitarian in, in my, okay.
I'm kid Of course, yes.
Uh, in Soviet Union, but alsohaving very strong connection
with Italy.
Yeah.
Because I had family members inItaly.
So when I grew up living in theSoviet Union, I was able to
travel to Italy all of the time.
In fact, my Italian was betterthen than it's now.
Um, so we actually hit off verywell from the very beginning.

(01:49:06):
Um, and it's been, uh,absolutely up and up and up in
that, that sense.
Oh, and you had 10, almost 12years, uh, just the two of you
before you started makinglittles too.
So that's venture time.
Absolutely.
More than that.
Uh, yeah, no, um, yeah, so 18years versus, you know, 30,
yeah.
About 12 years.
You're right.
Yes.
Uh, so we had tremendouslyproductive adventure together.

(01:49:26):
Yeah.
We, there was a period when wepainted together and exhibited,
um, and, uh, of course there wasa period when we were building
the family as well subsequently.
Sure.
Um, you know, genuinely whatworks for us.
Yeah.
Very interestingly enough isthat we retain our differences
in the fields that we're workin, in the interests we pursue,

(01:49:46):
and we can bring thosedifferences every day to dining
table.
Yeah.
And we can share them, learnfrom each other Exactly.
From different things.
You're learning that learningprocess, like as I said, we
spent seven hours on the road,me and her talking.
Yeah, yeah.
Um, and the youngest onesleeping because she was
competing in Salt Lake City ina, uh, volleyball tournament

(01:50:07):
there versus I was, of course, Itook some time off in the
mountains myself, um, you know,did a bit of a climbing there
and, you know, yeah.
We wore for seven hours on theroad and we were having a
conversation with That's neat.
Me and her after 30 years, after30 years.
And that's why, you know, like,I mean that's, there's, there's
a way of saying that you findyour soulmate.

(01:50:27):
Yeah.
Uh, she's certainly my soulmate.
Awesome.
Yeah.
Well, glad to hear that.

(01:51:15):
Um, our final segment, theclosing segment is the Loco
experience, and that's thecraziest experience of your
lifetime that you're willing toshare with our listeners.
Oh, okay.
Anything as in like, local,local, crazy.
Yeah.
Oh, I local.
Crazy.
Could, I mean, growing up in theSoviet Union and having gone to
the Soviet military, you know,so the Soviet army for two

(01:51:35):
years, you can't have a menu ofchoices of crazy, I mean, um,
when I grew up, you know, if youthink about it, kind of rite of
passages, was it intense at thattime in the Cold War and stuff
too?
It was very intense and so faris that I was, of course, you
know, I grew up in the 1980s,um, and um, there was this.
Break in point of very, what wecall inflection point.

(01:51:58):
Yes.
Yeah.
Um, of the change that Gorbachevbrought in as well.
Um, I mean, there is a lot ofcrazy experiences, you know, I
mean, we used to, when I grewup, for example, when we would
go to the proms equivalent ofthe proms, for example.
Yep.
Uh, we couldn't buy alcoholbecause Gorbachev has banned
alcohol sales in the evenings.
So, I mean, I remember we weredrinking pretty much anything

(01:52:21):
that burns, you know, so like,you know, underage drinking in
my background, in my childhoodwould've involved, you know, I
mean industrial alcohol.
Oh dang.
Um, yeah, Robin alcohol stuffthat, the stuff that makes you
blind kind of thing.
Bad things to you, you know?
Um, so crazy experiences.
And even though, even though therest of the Russians, the older

(01:52:42):
people and stuff had troublegetting vodka or whatever.
Yes, yes, yes.
Exactly.
That's why that during, duringthat period in the like 19, mid
1980s.
Okay.
Yeah.
Um, there was tremendous amountof deaths.
Amongst the, uh, kind of oldergeneration Russians Mm.
Who would be addicted to alcoholSure.
Who had to basically consume orwar consume and things.

(01:53:04):
They were drinking a quarter ofvodka day and then they got, had
to stop.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yes.
So they switched to break foods,you know.
Oh, damn.
Um, and you know, we didn't dothat as teenagers of course,
but, uh, we witnessed that.
Hmm.
You know, so, I mean, there was.
You know, we used to go, forexample, um, fishing in the
wilderness area outside ofMoscow and you couldn't get a
train there, passenger trainbecause there's no stops there.

(01:53:27):
So we would actually pay offunder the table to the, um, you
know, the train, the conductors,train conductors, uh, to drop us
off there and we would get onthe cargo trains.
Yes.
Yeah.
Um, so, you know, stoppedfreight or us off, slow down,
they would stop for us.
You, and then they would pick usup on the pre-prescribed day,
you know?
Sure.
Uh, like a week later.

(01:53:48):
Uh, and uh, one time we weregoing and we left and we did our
fishing and we did our camp, andthen we got picked up and they
told us that the day we left wasa big holiday.
Um, half of the crew, uh, of thewhole depot there was about 50
people.
Okay.
Uh, basically ended up in thehospital and, uh, you know,
quite a few of them died fromdrinking break, break flu, and

(01:54:11):
you know, like if you wantcrazy, you know, we were
teenagers sitting with them whenthey started.
Whoa.
And they were offering us todrink.
Of course we had, you know,yeah.
We had the whole week ofbackpack and camp.
You don't want to do that.
Maybe just one bottle for theroad.
Yeah.
Like, you do not want to dothat.
You know, even with teenagers,you, you, you headless chickens,
but you still, you don't want todo that.

(01:54:32):
Interesting.
So they, they're kind ofexperiences like that.
Okay.
Um, so was your family middleclass throughout this.
Season kind of.
Yeah.
Yes, of course.
Yeah.
So my, my original family, myparents come from the mostly
medical background.
Okay.
Um, so doctors, uh, mygrandmother was a professor of
medicine.
Um, I mean I, part of my familyon my Armenian side, they died

(01:54:57):
way before I was born.
So as a result of that, I onlyknow my father from there.
Um, and you know, but from mymother's side of the family,
most of them were in the medicalfield there.
Some of them were professionals,you know.
Gotcha.
You know, in administrative sideof as well.
So a little more upper middleclass, at least when there was a
middle class.
But you have to remember that inthe Soviet Union, things were

(01:55:18):
upside down.
Yeah.
Yes.
So if you are a medical doctorin the Soviet Union, you earned
less money than if you walked ata factory.
Mm.
Versus if you walked in afactory, you made more money
than the medical doctor did.
So kind of, if we think abouthere, medical doctors are upper
right, right.
Plus, yes.
Well, the education we requireof it, well, yes.
Requires it.
Well, of course, but you also,you know, your earnings as well

(01:55:38):
and your wealth that youaccumulate.
So it was exact opposite of thatin the Soviet Union.
So, big contention, for example,between, and that influenced me
as well in terms of my currentcareer as well.
Of course.
Uh, big contention was within myfamily, between my grandmother,
who was the academic medicaldoctor.
Mm.
So she was a professor ofmedicine.
Um, she was a surgeon and so shekind of, you know, chose that

(01:56:01):
career.
And my father, who wasoriginally a research doctor and
then switched because of the lowpay that research doctors had,
uh, kind of started his ownunderground practice.
Hmm.
So he was getting Oh,interesting.
You know, he was getting privateclients.
Yeah, yeah.
And they would pay him, youknow, additional because the
weight was too long or thingslike that.
Otherwise,'cause no, becausethere's no income.

(01:56:23):
You couldn't make ends meet.
You couldn't afford anything,you know, if you just Oh, you
couldn't regularly be a regulardoctor.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Being a professor of medicine,your salary was back in the days
Ah, well it wasn't like, youknow, suppose associate
professor of medicine, uh, thesalary back in those days
would've been a quarter of whathe would earn if he worked Oh,
wow.
Privately.
Interesting.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so that influenced me aswell because my grandmother

(01:56:46):
drove my family.
She was the power figure in my,in my family.
And she actually kind ofinstilled that idea of research
focus into me.
So for me it was kind of, eventhough I started my career in
business, yeah.
I always gravitated towards a.
Life.
And your dad kind of startedmore in research, but got

(01:57:07):
entrepreneurial because he hadto.
That's right.
Yes.
And that was a big reef betweenhim and my grandmother.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Any questions for me?
Constantin?
This has been a funconversation.
Yeah, of course.
I mean, look, I mean, we startedthe conversation with a kind of,
you know, local Northern,Northern Colorado.
Okay.
And you ask me, you know, whatcan be done in terms of how can

(01:57:27):
we move Northern Colorado to,can we like that to be stronger
and stay competitive?
Uh, yes.
But also more resilient, notjust stronger, it's more
resilient, more being able toadapt more, being able to put
forward the value addition thatactually can be translated
outside of Colorado as well.
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
What, in your view, can do that?
Hmm?
What do you think?
We are not focusing enough?

(01:57:49):
Huh?
That's a good question.
You know, I think, um,regulatory burden has increased
a lot on business.
You know, I was a banker for 15years before I started Loko
Think Tank.
So that's 25 years.
It, it has to be twice as timeconsuming to, you know, and then
the family and medical leave actif you get five employees and

(01:58:11):
then you got this, if you get 10and you gotta do this and that,
and it's just kind of daunting.
And especially for those littlecompanies, the 1, 2, 3 companies
that are, or the 49 personcompany that once they hit 50,
then they're gonna have to do awhole bunch more expensive
things too.
And so that, that.

(01:58:31):
That burden at, at every level,uh, is definitely one of the
challenge.
I think, um, you know, certainlyfor Fort Collins, uh, we don't
really have like industrialsites and things.
We've got a a, a staff of 12economic development people, uh,
but there's really not very manyplaces for them to bring
companies from outside into, andso I'm unclear personally why,

(01:58:54):
uh, it should be such a largestaff in that space.
They're doing a lot of businessengagement and you know, things
around utilities and stuff.
So that's kind of the realground level stuff here.
Um, you know, being alibertarian minded though, I
think, you know, reducing statelevel taxes I think is gonna be
a competitive advantage forstates.
I, I think I heard two or threestates just announce that

(01:59:17):
they're moving toward, uh,getting rid of state taxation on
business, um, no, on personal.
Okay.
You know, tax other thingsinstead of income tax, um,
because that's been a big driverof people moving to Florida,
people moving to Tennessee,things like that.
Absolutely.
And so I think at least tryingto get into the middle sector of

(01:59:38):
the state income tax burdenwould be good.
Um, yeah, it's a good question.
I think, you know, in whatevercan be done, uh, which mostly is
regulatory of the cost ofhousing, and it's not mostly
regulatory, but probably 20% ofthe cost of a house is, you
know, R 57 insulation whenreally our.

(01:59:59):
Climate doesn't really requireanything more than 30 or
something.
Mm-hmm.
But you gotta put the 57 in.
'cause we, the 57 is better thanthe 30.
Well is it really, you know, uh,what if you can't get the 57 or
if it's five times as much?
So there's just a lot ofbuilding code obligations that,
that are good in theory, but endup making everybody's rent$300 a

(02:00:21):
month higher.
Um, so those are probably thingsduction come to mind.
Um, okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
I mean, that's where workforcethings, so people don't get
quite as big a shock when theycome here for some jobs.
That's true.
Of course.
I mean, the, the problem is thatyou wouldn't be coming in for
the jobs anymore in Colorado.
Right.
Because the cost they're ofliving is so high already.

(02:00:41):
Right?
Right.
Unless you are working in thesectors like say, you know,
computational sectors or theYep.
Higher margin type jobs.
Uh, yeah, technology, jobs andeven manufacturing things.
And we talked about agribusinessa little bit.
You know, there's gonna be lowend jobs there, but there's also
gonna be higher end jobs there.
And manufacturing is also alwaysgreat.
Absolutely.
Manufacturing, especiallyrobotics and so forth.
But again, you know, that isprobably not so much driven by

(02:01:04):
the cost of living, but ratherby the availability of sites.
Yeah.
Availability of energy,availability of, you know,
access to the transportationnetworks and things like that.
And I think that's where Greeleyhas Fort Collins and, and
Loveland to an extent beat.
They got so much more water,they got so much more green
space, you know, to the southand east especially, but also
elsewhere.

(02:01:24):
Um, call it that's suitable, butyes.
Well not green, but that'ssuitable for industrial
development, call it.
Yes.
Yeah.
Um, so I think that's acompetitive advantage for, you
know, east of I 25 realm.
But then on the other side, youknow, it doesn't have that great
connectivity, right?
The roads connectivity is notthere, so transportation is
going to be harder.
True.
Um, you, well, regionalcooperation, like that's

(02:01:45):
probably the number one thingfor Northern Colorado is
regional cooperation.
Yes.
We need a clustering effect, youknow, and it's clustering effect
also means that you have placeswith higher quality of living
like Fort Collins, and then youhave the places which have the
ability to create the greensites, as you said, for
development and so forth, whichcan be not just Greeley.

(02:02:05):
Um, Loveland is a naturaldevelopment for the extension of
the, for Collins.
Yep.
As well.
Kind of, so you have thisnatural corridor with, to that
extent.
Um, Cheyenne is probably more onindustrial and energy.
Yeah, yeah.
Intensive side, you know?
Well,'cause they have,especially with the Air Force
improvements going on up there,there's gonna be a lot of
critical mass.
Correct, yes.
Of systems and connectivity anddata centers.

(02:02:27):
Probably ab Absolutely.
So there is an idea for that,and it's a good question why,
you know, what eight, uh,economic development officers, I
think in Fort Collins, 12 and12.
12, there's a few that are morein the small business sector,
they're gonna be on in a fewweeks.
So I shouldn't, uh, I shouldn't,uh, shouldn't before.
I'm not going to force you toohard on that one.
Yes, exactly.

(02:02:49):
But it would be, it, it'sactually quite interesting
because, um, in being here forthree and a half years now, um,
you know, and being an economistby train Sure.
And being involved before withthe things like say policy
development, you know, you know,excise taxation, law development
in Europe, um, I actually findmyself completely not being, you

(02:03:11):
know, in any way, shape or formengaged here.
Um, I'm not making an effortmyself.
So not to say Yeah, yeah.
Um, at all.
But, uh, there is no outreachfrom the 12 in economic
development, you know?
Well, there's maybe somebodylike, you know, no.
Out outreach from the likes ofGreeley either, you know?
Yeah.

(02:03:31):
Yeah.
So it's very interesting that,uh, to me it is indicative of
this idea of the siloed thinkingthat we have in a corporate
world.
Yeah.
Uh, and having worked at IBM.
Um, you know, I am familiar witha giant corporate siloed way of
thinking.
Sure, sure.
Where everyone builds their ownempire, right.
We build the walls around ourown empire.
Right.

(02:03:51):
And we still have this fortressmentality.
One of the challenges with, withgovernment employees, I've been
told, is that everybody comparesthemselves to one another by the
size of their staff.
Yes, that's true.
By expenditure.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's, it's the IT department.
Oh.
What big of, how big of adepartment do you oversee?
Yep.
It's, it's like the, it's thecurse of the IT department in
the corporate world.

(02:04:11):
Equivalent.
Yes.
Yeah.
They, uh, you know.
Their CVS look, or their resumeslook and read.
Like I, I was in charge ofinstalling$150 million system.
Yes.
Sure, sure.
You never really read what thesystem was supposed to do.
Could have been a$30 millionsystem that worked better.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is also why every purchaseand, you know, kind of decision

(02:04:33):
favors large companies likeMicrosoft and BM, it's because
you can't really go wrong.
Yeah.
Yes.
You spend a lot.
Yep.
You know, and you have gottamake support.
Well, it doesn't really, that'sa big question, you know.
Doesn't work.
Yeah.
Constantine, I've enjoyed theconversation.
Thank you for making time.
Thanks.
Thanks, Craig.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Hopefully you get a bunch ofcalls with, uh, companies that

(02:04:54):
wanna have interns from MontfortCollege of Business.
Would love to.
We would absolutely welcomethat.
Absolute.
Oh, not phone calls.
Yeah.
Uh, messages.
Phone calls.
Phone calls, emails.
Anyway, slow mails passengerpigeon.
Absolutely.
We'll take it in anything.
Right, in any form.
Godspeed young man.
I appreciate you being here.
Thanks.
Cheers.

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EXPERIENCE 219 | Geopolitics, Russia-Ukraine, Regional Economics, and Competitive Advantage in Business and Life with Constantin Gurdgiev, Ph.D. and Associate Professor of Finance at the Monfort College of Business at UNC.

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