TRASHFUTURE - Terminal Velocity

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

Riley (@raaleh), Milo (@Milo_Edwards), Nate (@inthesedeserts), and Alice (@AliceAvizandum) deal with new developments in the shadow finance debt bubble arena, including allegations around another "tech company" that seems to have invented a bunch of money for itself. We theorise as to what it all means before having a little more fun with a New Type Of Guy to introduce to the canon, and we wrap it up with a reading that may indeed rival "Shoes" in sheer madness. Here's a central location to donate to bail funds across the US to help people held under America's utterly inhumane system: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/the-bail-project If you want access to our Patreon bonus episodes and powerful Discord server, sign up here: https://www.patreon.com/trashfuture If you want one of our *fine* new shirts, designed by Matt Lubchansky, then e-mail trashfuturepodcast [at] gmail [dot] com. £15 for patrons, £20 for non-patrons, plus shipping. *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind GYDS dot com). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/

Now, on the History Channel, we return to the horrors of communism. Colonel, could you maybe tell us a little more about your time in the East German security apparatus? Ja, well there was much demand for patriots who were prepared to work for the state. At the time I was studying at the Technical University and I was approached by someone from the Interior Ministry and he asked me if I was a patriot and I said Ja and he said are you Vogue and I said Ja's Queen. A few months later I was a member of the Vogue Stasi.

The Vogue Stasi? Ja, ja, ja, this is the Vogue Stasi. When the communist government first came to power, they immediately introduced five new genders. By the time ten years had gone by, they introduced fifteen more and they needed a new breed of agents to enforce the rules. What sort of rules were there? For most people it was okay.

Local party officials would tell them that they had to have blue hair or red hungries but for some it was harder, they resisted. I found myself going to a factory to confront a man there. He said to me, I am married with children, why must I identify as nine wolves, each more gay than the last? And I said to him, this is Marxism. So was this about the time that you started to become disillusioned with your work? Nine, nine, this took a long time.

The first ten, fifteen years it was all routine, inspecting workplaces to make sure they were run by a girl boss, checking that guys were not being dudes, preventing people from saying that they were English. This was okay, people understood, but the job changed forever on December 31st, 1983. So what happened then? What was the day they made racism illegal? And I suppose that made your job more difficult. More difficult?

Yeah, it was impossible after this. At one point in 1985 we had a task force of 10,000 men breaking into people's homes and tearing the little gollybugs off of the jam. Everyone's favorite jokes about Slavic brain puns had been banned. In the street in East Berlin we had a huge bonfire of every phrenology caliper we could find. People were furious. By 1986 people were saying, this is 1984.

In 89 the wall came down after it was charged by over a thousand men who had been forced to be gay since 1962. It's unbelievable, truly this is political correctness, gone mad. Hello, this is the new episode of Trash Future. We are only in German today, but it will be a very short episode because we can't fucking speak German anymore. You just said, I have clapped Mac before. Yeah, I have clapped.

I mean, let's be perfectly honest, Germans will do that shit with us. I told the story to Milo before, I was in Germany and I remember hearing this girl talking to her friend in a cafe. And she was like, yeah, I just had brain storming. And I was just like, surely there's another word you can say this German that's not brainstorming. But it probably takes 10 minutes to say. Also probably has some very bad connotations.

Yeah, fair. Yeah, hello, everyone. Welcome to Trash Future, the podcast where we speak German, apparently. Or maybe we don't. Different, slightly different personnel line up today. It's me, Riley from TF Acres in the Caliphate of Tower Hamlets. I'm also joined by Milo in an undisclosed location. Hello, it's me, feelings.

I'm not having them. No, ladies, emotionally, it's called. You want to get a dose of maloponous, you know. Who should be? German and German, do you need maloponous? We have so much. I can't. I can't believe that I've ruined.

I busted my maloponous nut on all of my good maloponous jokes before we start recording. Yeah, if there are any frau lines listening to this episode of the podcast. And you want to bust a maloponous nut. What the fuck is your accent? Every time you criticize it, it goes south and east. Well, I don't Spanish at this rate. Yeah, it's like, it's a Friday.

You guys like maloponous. No, guys, I think you're being unfair, Riley, is speaking with an accurate accent for a German colonists and Belize. I don't know why he has that particular accent, but he does have it. I think my my accent is like, I think my accent is sort of like Bond villain German. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, no, this is this is, you know, this is just this is just how I talk. You know, it's just it's valid to say that you're going to fire the laser.

I lost my monopolies in this smelting accident. All right. All right, everybody, let's, you know, let's let's take a breath. It's stop. Stop this ludicrousness. You know, it's it's TF. It's me, Riley. Milo is single and ready to reflect on how he's doing. Anything not mingle because that's illegal. Do not not ready to mingle. Do not mingle with me.

No matter how much no matter how much you want that sweet maloponous, do not mingle with Milo. Mingles are forbidden Christian or otherwise. I also am joined by Alice in an undisclosed location. Yes, feeling fine. Love to not disclose my location or other certain things. Yeah, not disclosing how much not disclosing how just what not disclosing the presence of my maloponous on the dates.

Not disclosing the cubic volume of maloponous. A guy who's already a dude getting getting bottom surgery to get a maloponous specifically. It's just like, no, give me the big Milo dick. Yeah, and also we are up. We have producer Nate is on the call today. Nate, how's it going? This didn't used to be an unusual occurrence.

But yes, I went full hermit mode for a while, but I'm back. I'm here in an undisclosed location south of the river doing well. Thank you for having me back on since we will not say returning fresh future champion a a hundredth time return guest. Here and he's here to talk about maloponous. No, we are going to talk about a few things today. We're going to talk a little bit more about our friend Green Sill, the actual bond villain who doesn't talk in a German accent.

I was charging me fuck your laser. No, Mr. Bono, I expect you to fuck off. And we're going to talk about a bit of fraud. We're going to talk about a new kind of Tory guy who I think has ascended into the canon, and then we're going to read a very delightful article, just what I'm extremely excited about. Love to read stuff. Now, without further ado, let's talk Green Sill because Lex Green Sill,

just a simple country. Mono Farmer, he's back if you don't know what this is. Listen to the previous unlocked episode. Yeah, we unlocked it for the sake of this. Yes, Frankenstein's balance sheet. So go listen to that so you can understand what they are. Go ahead and do that now. We'll wait.

You're actually you're actually thinking of Frankenstein's monster's balance sheet. The professor was called Frankenstein. So yeah, we will wait and we will continue to crack ourselves up by saying the word Malopanus. Yes. No, so we want to say Green Sill. Green Sill.

So if you remember the company that SoftBank used to like pump a bunch of money through a bunch of other SoftBank companies to make them look profitable allegedly, they this is a quote from a press release from them. Green Sill, the leading provider of working capital finance for business and people globally is pleased to announce that hit it. So both businesses and people, the two kinds of things are pleased to announce that it has. Thank you, Milo. That has been approved by the British Business Bank as a newer credited lender

to provide invoice finance through the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme. So yes, Lex Green Sill's money press is going to run the fucking coronavirus bailout. I see no problems here. You know, that that that company that's been behind a lot of high profile collapses because its financing methodology conceals debt and disguises it as operating expenses so companies can be like piloted like ants being taken over by a fungus. He's in charge of helping to save the we's one of the banks that are non banks in tax that's in charge of helping to save the economy

from the pandemic. So I think we can all breathe a little bit easier. Assured that, you know, doom is coming and it is coming in the form of his big dumb smiling face. Yeah, I'm enjoying this closer cooperation with our Australian cousins that we're having, you know, we're not only getting on its Tim Tams, but we're also just throwing the economy in the back of the yoke and seeing what happens. Yeah. And the other funny thing is that Lex Green Sill, like because the the circular financing arrangement that we talked about

last month is now being reported by the FT, but most of Green Sills discussion in the media still seems to be his participation in getting working capital to banks through his again, you know, tech company that's an email address in a way to work around lending regulations and also the fact that he has opened some kind of large nature park in Cheshire to hunt the most dangerous game. I've got to say really, it makes me laugh to think that if the FT is reporting on our reporting on this this phenomenon, that means Lex Green Sill himself, with his Bond villain ass name, has probably found out about it and is banging

his metal glove fist against his table, only shot from behind like the villain and fucking Inspector Gadget. I'll get you, podcaster. No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to enjoy the lemur exhibit. Why is James Bond being threatened by Sean Connery? He's going to an identity crisis. Anyway, hello to the army of of Green Sill corporate lawyers who are listening to this and going, what the fuck is a maloponous?

Well, it's a thing that we decided to call Milo's penis. Where is your husband this evening? Could he be looking at a maloponous? So basically, yeah, he also, number one, I think all that was in the Credit Suisse marketing document. So I think they probably came across it independently. I'm willing to bet that they did. But nevertheless, you know, if they did come across it through us,

that's also fun, but I'm pretty sure they would have come across it independently. Nevertheless, I want to talk about this nature park because the Chester Times, which is where he lives, says a wealthy Chester resident has plans to create a natural sanctuary in his backyard to address growing threats of wildlife decline and climate change. It's a bit much to call it a backyard if you can fit a fucking wildlife preserve in it. Also, it's just like, yeah, I'm don't worry, I'm planning a new lawn and some trees to address climate change.

We said that 71 percent of the emissions were were caused by just 100 companies. This isn't what we meant. Yeah, no, this is this is cool. I look forward to absolutely nothing weird going on in relation to this or about this. No, I look forward to this being incredibly regular and definitely not the subject of, you know, any kind of documentary at a later date. I am sure that there absolutely will not be any alligators in this garden to whom, you know, people will end up being fed by former intelligence

professionals who are on the payroll of wealthy business people. I don't think that will ever happen. Listen, there's plenty of reasons why you might take delivery of a consignment of tranquilizer rifles that are perfectly legitimate and above board. It would be slanderous of us to suggest that Lex Griesel actually did have genetically modified sharks in the ponds in this public sanctuary that he fed local counselors to from Chester, who didn't approve him

to put his giant death laser in the main square of the town. It would be slanderous to suggest that it was laser is really a misnomer. It's mostly for eye surgery. It's a dual use technology most of the time. I mean, to be honest, if you're looking at insane billionaire delusions of grandeur, the idea of someone building a laser to perform Lasik surgery on God himself is definitely in the remit of being a weird Australian finance lord. So I, for one, think it's all possible.

Just like one of those NRA guys being like, this is an insult to responsible death laser owners. I've got I've got some more details on this. A slideshow presentation includes a map labeled with a watercourse restoration. Again, it would be slanderous to say they're genetically modified predators in that watercourse and woodland creation, which also it would not be true. And I would say that anyone of the most dangerous game is going to be hunted in this woodland creation.

Yeah, there's no evidence to suggest that. No, there's absolutely nothing that would lead you to believe that Lex Green, so is attempting to recreate Turok as part of a deranged attempt. I was going to say that he's just he's just personal friends with Rutger Howard. There is not a remake of surviving the game being shot in real life. I'd love to be personal friends with Rutger Howard. But there's no evidence of a consignment of mad Mac style buggies being shipped to this place that are all covered in armor plating.

It's also got an edible ecosystem following a public right of way community orchard grassland restoration and a path designed for all abilities and several viewpoints. And that's all. Yeah, sure. Does I have any temples? I'm sure the edible ecosystem also is not going to involve like, you know, ironic punishments for people who cross him. No. And I mean, like the the reason why there is a like mosque like building on there with just like a piano in it and a dome is, you know, normal.

Yeah, it's the piano. It's the Billy Joel song, the piano mosque room with with the manacles and then a saw that's chained to the wall and then a scale that's connected to the locking mechanism that opens the door. That's not I just literally was all I could think of was play us a song. You're the piano mosque. It's a rom dudes asking if I've been to a piano mosque yet. Wording under the subheading, our vision

reads to create a natural sanctuary for Shotwick Park to address the growing threats of wildlife decline and climate change. The project will offer a wide range of community benefits, including access, education and a place of research, a local scheme or a global issue. Exercise. Yeah, I intensity interval training, but nothing can possibly go wrong. Yeah. So Lex Greensl is building a Jurassic Park where

passersby can look at the magnificent mollopinets rise up above the trees. That is actually I always hum that when I get my dick out. Clever girl. Got a lot of looks at the urinals. OK, well, to the three people who are still listening. Now, I want to in the vein of Greensl, I wanted to talk about another soft bank invested company. Right. We are still we do not stop talking about soft bank.

You know, I think this is still. It's firmly open. I think this is this is still like we are still sort of coasting on the last round of soft bank madness, which is going to keep on folding for a while. But I don't think there I think they're you want to queue up the next one. Yeah, I want to know what's going to be the next soft bank still. But you know, we can we still have some soft bank madness to go. So this company is called Wirecard.

And again, this is another company where due to some things that we'll talk about later, I want to emphasize that we're all happy, healthy and doing well. Yeah, none of us are having any dark thoughts at any time. Um, we're we're all checking our cars with a mirror on a stick every morning. Yeah, I'm checking under every car, not even my cars. I'm just, you know, I'm like, I've purchased one of the finest British dowsing rods. And I've been using it to look for IEDs.

Not a single one has popped up. I'm checking I'm checking under the cars like I'm Christopher Chope. Yeah, I'm just I'm having my new roommate, Nicholas Tartaglione. Keep a lookout for anyone who might be hunting me. You know, so basically Wirecard is a German FinTech darling. It's an older company. It was started in 1999 and effectively without going into much detail. It is a pain.

It is an online payments processor, which means it engages in issuing and acquiring. So it is the technological infrastructure, if you like, the pipeline of information and also crucially security provider for e-commerce. Yeah, so you buy your package of sex dildos, or at least I do. And what other kind of dildos are there? Decorative? Yeah, exactly. Entertainment, medical, yeah. So I buy my shipment of sex dildos.

The sex dildos salesman does not get my credit card information. No. So this is due to a set of regulations called PCI DSS, which is about payment card information, digital security standard. So what that means is when you pay for something, you will usually. Yeah, when you pay for sex dildos, you'll you you'll put your your card information into like a little widget on the merchant site. The merchant never actually sees it. They don't want to see it.

They don't want to know it. And then there are specialist companies that have relationships with banks. So they'll they'll basically exist to transfer the money from one bank to another and hold and use your payment card information and keep that all secure and so on and so on. And so this is this is basically, yeah, a payment gateway, a payment processor. And that's what wire card is. It's one of the biggest ones and it knocked Commerce Bank off the DAX 30, which is like the biggest stock exchange in in Germany.

So it's like a very established company. And the hope in Germany was that it would be the next SAP, which was the big German tech company of like the previous generation of tech companies. And so, yeah, wire cards, whole business model is that they host the payment, they host a payment, they can do the payment processing for you. A lot of times it'll be white labeled and they'll complete and process the payment for a small fee that they'll charge to either the merchant or the bank or what have you. Now, what some and that's so their actual business, you know, is fine.

It's neither here nor there. The business itself, it's not like Green Cell. We're like, hold on, hold on, hold on. This is incredibly complex and weird and nothing good. This is quite normal. So what and also the other thing before I go into this further is you should know that the way that they operate around the world is sometimes in, especially in countries like, say, like in China or through like the Gulf.

They will have a relationship with a third party who will then complete all of their introductions for them. So you can sort of build this pipe in a lot of different ways. And the third parties are where a lot of the interesting story is of this, let's say, interesting company. So it was founded in 1999 by the world's most German man, Marcus Brown. Dr. Malopanus Brown. And so Dr. Malopanus Brown basically had this, you know, he had this idea.

He developed this company and it has been a market leader for quite a long time. Expanded around the world and to the point where 58 percent of its revenues can sometimes come from like Middle East card services, which is its Middle East third party. But like more importantly, Dr. Marcus Brown, he sounds like this. We're facing some negative media coverage due to a set of allegations that are all known and are addressed. We think we can resolve these allegations quite quickly.

Anyway, he resigned like a couple of days ago. Hey, hey, the allegations, I guess, are resolved. Yeah, when everything is fine. So what's what's going on? What are these allegations? Well, over the last couple of years, the FT has been publishing internal documents that have been indicated that sales and profits at Wirecard, especially these third party units, international units,

may have been invented fake, completely thin air. Just oof, oh, no, you're money. Oopsie. Oopsie. How many profits it's highly ephemeral. I I am one of them. What I find very interesting about this is the the fraud is alleged to amount to about two billion euros. And so not a not a not an inconsiderable amount of money.

But I get a bit more than community service for that, I think. But also not like systemic risk amount of money. So we're going to go through why this is important as we go through what's happened. So basically, the whistleblowers have been leaking documents to the FT and the German regulator since for the last couple of years. But there have been sort of allegations for the last several. The company has always responded. And this is what I think is very funny with basically a Trump strategy,

which is like which is which is saying the the FT. Both they they used fake documents to make these allegations because they're in the pocket of like short sellers like Crispin Odei. And anyway, they misinterpreted the fake documents also. Very unfaithful, very unfair. Yeah. Oh, God, this is this is conjuring German Trump, which I don't like at all. Well, we'll think we'll think about it.

Well, my like, I'm real. They said documents, they run fair, what I like very very sorry. I really enjoy number one Milo, is that your German Trump sounds like a sort of 100 year old ghost. Are you really commenting on someone's German accent? Considering our previous revelations about your Belizean German. I'm not saying I'm perfect. I'm just saying Milo is doing an impression of an ancient child ghost.

You have to understand, it was a very long time in South America. We had to maintain the language, even in the face of inferior speech. We had to we had to keep sounding weird. This is Grayson Carter's Oscar party, no longer hot. No, absolutely not. Hi, so basically what I also really like that they were saying, oh, the files you're looking at are fake and you're misinterpreting them. Cool. Yeah. Yeah.

You're fake and gay. Yeah, it's fake. And also you're wrong about them, which is I. You know, brass balls. So what they did was they they hired KPMG to conduct an independent audit of their books, saying that an audit would vindicate all of its accounting and that, no, all of this money wasn't just invented out of nothing. And then it said, you know what, our investors at the probe finds anything. We're going to have to we're going to absolutely tell you what it finds.

And then they said that that there is not any reason to have even the faintest doubt over the account. Sorry, this is Mr. Brown. Yeah, Mr. Brown, he says the allegations will be resolved very quickly. This is really cool. Again, this report comes back and is like, pretty sure you invented two billion euros. And he's like, this is a big step forward. And they didn't find any incriminating evidence for the public allegations of balance sheet forgery. And then and then resigned immediately.

Immediately resigned to always do when the allegations are unfounded. Yeah. Well, he went he went to resign because he was apparently he was going to become a game warden in a nature park in the north of England somewhere. So basically what happened is, yeah, they this company sort of allegedly invented two billion euros, approximately of revenue for itself. It's not clear exactly what this was for. I'm not clear if this was being like then like misappropriated or if it was used to like prop up a company that wasn't selling much.

I think that's going to come out eventually. We don't know now. But the reason we know the reason we know that it's a crime, allegedly, if they did this is that they did it themselves instead of asking Lex Greensill because the only people who are allowed to just make up money is the government. And then this guy. Yeah, we just decided this Australian money farmer can do this. So if you want to just invent profit from whole cloth for your company,

you can't just do it. You have to sign up to Greensill and then you can do it. And they didn't do that, which is weird. They just like decided we don't we don't need this like extra step or just like allegedly parody in a video game Minecraft invent two billion euros worth of revenue. That's German efficiency, baby. I mean, to be fair, we should be thanking them.

I mean, if they invented two billion euros, that means no one could have two billion euros before that. So that's pretty right. You had to stop at one billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine and ninety nine cents. They paid a guy to count that high. And then they were like, yeah, what comes next? And he was like, I don't know.

So yeah, that's that's that's that's the situation, right? They allegedly invented this through a third party. And KPMG said, actually, no, we weren't able to obtain nearly enough information in our six month audit to address any of these issues. And now I believe at the time of recording, the shares are trading at 20 percent of their high. I mean, I'm going to find out what that is. Well, 18 major banks are there still it's still 25 euros a share.

If you'd like to open your trash future trading platform now, guide you through our market tips. I'm just going on to Bloomberg. I want to see what it's high was in the last two years. All of the Bloomberg classifiers that you've been responding to. Yeah. Well, yes, I would like to buy a Maserati that's only had one corpse in it. So it's high was 159 euros. But the fact that it's still trading at 24 euros after it's been implicated

in a gigantic, huge fraud scandal, the fraud scandal, like of this recession is it says something to me about the extent to which that the stock market has just completely decoupled from the real economy. I just it's just there's just there is no relationship between these two things anymore, because this is and you can see it. The fact that, you know, in the US, despite the fact that again, we're going into a once in an ever recession, the stock market is still like basically rallying even though none of because well, it's rallying

largely because most of the companies know that most of their costs are being backstopped by the government. So when we said line go stop at the beginning of season three, this is kind of what we're talking about. Why is it going from any kind of like observable reality? Which is why these guys presumably thought of you can just invent a value because this thing doesn't go to us and sing anymore. I mean, that's not wrong, right?

It's not that's not incorrect, you know, and and so like I think about this in terms of the stock market basically existing and you can see this from the fact that Wirecard like what like Bear Stearns was trading at like, you know, nothing banks unwound when for things like this in 2008. And you know, Wirecard's still got a share price. You can still buy and sell Wirecard for 24 euros a share. And people are still and if it is priced like that, it means people are buying it at that. Oh, this seems fine.

I mean, it's not at all a symptom of like institutional wroughts. Yeah, at all. Why would that be a problem? Absolutely. That's just called entrepreneurship. It means the stock market is essentially a confidence game where we I think a lot. But now now more so than ever. Like it's not that it's a newly confidence game. It's that it's now a confidence game where like it like the Eiffel Tower that you're trying to sell now has a big sign on it that says, Hey,

this guy doesn't own this and you're just proceeding anyway. So here's the other thing, right? You know, I talk, I talk sometimes about the the rot of our institutions. I talk about that a lot. I talked about in the bonus episode with Patrick Wyman about how these things used to serve a function and also be evil. You know, like the stock market is like if you're going to have a system with a market economy that is going to be that is going to do not do that.

Yeah, don't do that for one. But if you're going to have that, it's important to be able to for that to function to be able to issue equity in order to fund undertakings. You know, that that is one major way that you can do that. And it seems to me that like the in especially in the last 10 years and especially in the last two, the performance of the stock market has largely been about, I mean, again, it's always been about increasing the wealth of the richest people.

It's just in this case, it doesn't even have it's slightly beneficial within the context of a bad system, etc., etc. Intended effect of being able to finance new projects is no new projects are happening. It's now just the wealthy getting richer by agreement and confidence that the government will backstop any losses. Well, yeah, I mean, that's just to create transactions, right? Like to create a degree of randomness against which you can bet so that people can make money.

That's basically all it's doing. Yeah, and that's that's true of like pretty much all institutions right now. Like it's just like fully mask off because nobody's nobody's bothering with the kind of like legitimizing functions anymore. So I just want to find out what the valuation of wire card is or what it was 12 months ago, because that's important. Valuation. So yeah, it was valued at about 17 and a half billion dollars.

And that was in February 2009. And the thing to note is that a bunch of German banks, a bunch of European banks and asset managers, in fact, several hedge funds are invested in the maximum amount they can be in wire card. And wire card failing, which it seems to be going to do that, by the way, because its bond, its rating was went from triple A, safest houses to junk basically in a very short period of time. Again, almost like those racing don't relate to anything

if your triple A bond can just like tank over nice. And so all of the so a lot of the investments in wire card, whether that's in debt or equity that are being held by banks as assets on their balance sheets, which they're in many ways required to do, all of a sudden that vanishes. And so again, is wire card enough by itself to cause a systemic market collapse? No, it's not. Just like Greensill isn't enough by itself in terms of like the

even the entire securitized finance market globally, not enough to cause a global financial crisis by itself. My concern, especially, you can see this in the fact that the US has started buying corporate bonds, which is basically doing QE directly to companies. So the US is doing it a bit differently than the UK. The UK, we kind of have this intermediary, Lex Greensill. The US is just doing it directly. But all companies are basically banks now, which is great.

And so I'm really enjoying imagining some like German ratings agency guy like backpedaling on how they gave it a triple A rating being like, no, no, no, all three of these A's. This is good for Achtung. This company is so shiny. What I see is that there is going to be that the current bubble, the current the current bubble, the thing that's going to cause this this next recession is going to be, I think, unsustainable and massively overvalued

corporate debt that's created by the zero interest rate problem. Because lots of weird companies are doing lots of things. They're borrowing and failing. They are there is widespread, either legal or illegal fraud. And I am and the fact is, like we talked about in the Green Sale episode, none of this is regulated because the system of prudential regulation we have only fixes the last problem. So it is my opinion that you can understand quite a bit about the recession

you're going to be in by the major global scale fraud that precedes it. So before the recession around the millennium, you had the Enron failure that was about sort of like self-dealing through stock before the around the great financial crisis in 2008, you had your Bernie made off, which was essentially infinite confidence in the financial system to be able to grow infinitely. Because by the way, the frauds always work when there's growth. It's that when the music stops and everyone has to sit down,

that the frauds stop working. And so and then you have Wirecard, which has been dogged by this for the last couple of years, but now is blowing up now. It's that when these bills start coming due as these investigations get more intense. And it is my opinion that the Wirecard is telling us a lot about the nature of the crisis to come, which is going to be related to this wild west of private sector fintechs and so on, that have had zero oversight and in fact have been encouraged to do all the fucked up shit that they're doing.

Absolutely. But like, yeah, this is this is like in our extended metaphor of us having like fallen off the cliff of capital. This is like us having identified some more bombs in our pockets that are just like cartoonishly lit. And it's also funny how it's just like the same thing over and over again. Like, you know, do you remember when Goldman Sachs was taking, you know,

really shit mortgage back CDOs that they knew were shit and selling them to their own clients to like avoid them being on their balance sheet, Pepperidge Farm remembers. And also, Alice, I slightly disagree with you in terms of the extended metaphor there. I think what happened is that we can now see the taxi we're going to land on. We can identify the car. Yeah, we are.

Yeah, you're a dirty bastard for a German one processing firm, aren't you? Season Diner cheeky bastard for a taxi driver. I just I'm struck by the idea of us crashing through the roof of a taxi. And it turns out to be the taxi from the end of the Longgood Friday. The fake taxi from the end of the Longgood Friday. Yeah, that's that's that was a movie about fake taxi. Yeah, that's right. Oh, you're a cheeky bastard from an oponous.

What is it? Bob Hoskins being played here by a pirate. The Riley accent enigma machine strikes again. You just need to find a totally unrelated person and say, like, do an impression of Sean Bean and it will come out as a perfect Bob Hoskins. Here's the thing, you know what? We said earlier that the stock market at this point, like it's function as a capital racing mechanism, largely vanished after the Facebook IPO.

I think you could just bet on the randomness of my enigma accent machine and it would be about as related to the performance of the underlying economy. Well, that's that's our plan. That's our hot stock tip. Don't blame me. I had all my money invested in George Laysen Bay. OK, so a little more about Wirecard than I want to move on. So the way the actual fraud allegedly worked, according to the FT, is that they would look at that they have third parties.

So in Dublin, Dubai and Singapore, who would act as introducers for their issuing and acquiring network, like I explained earlier, and the FT reported that three such partners were at times responsible for half the group's sales in most of its profits. Wirecard, of course, dismissed these allegations before Dr. Mokas Brown retired to go work on that game farm up in North England. For first, I mean, this is this is this is cool, right? Like this is not at all indicative of the fact that like a crucial part

of your payment infrastructure and like as such a crucial part of your economy, which is like mostly treat based and mostly revolves around people getting packages of sex still to ship to them is just not profitable on its own. But you can't have the state do that. That would be insane. That would be ridiculous. And so you end up with these like five person club promoter ass firms in Dubai that like, like, yeah, we made like a

I don't know, a billion dollars last year. Is that you believe that? Oh, you want you want it to be like the Soviet Union? You want everyone to receive one gray sex still, though, exactly the same size that comes in plain brown packaging with a bloody Charles Charles Marks on it. That's his name, isn't it? So Al Alam was the third party

acquirer at the center of the scandal in Dubai. They had like five employees in no website, but they had like 58 percent of this gigantic global payments just titans. Yeah, this is that's just a club promoter, right? That's that's all it is. It's like, yeah, no, Al Alam is telling you about how good the VIP room is. And it's just like, yeah, I make a million dollars a year, actually. Yeah, I see.

Yeah, I'm getting this company bottle service. Yeah, the standard of the birds in our balance sheet is outrageous. I'll be one of the best payment processing companies in the southeast. So out of the thirty four client names listed on Alalams documents, eight had ceased trading at the time the business was attributed to them. And a further 15 then told the FT they've never heard of or worked with Alalam. Oh, no, that's also good. Toby Young of companies.

See, Daisy. And also when this because when this was being reported on, they the FT was alleged to be like in cahoots with the short sellers. And so Wirecard like hired a former Libyan. A former Libyan intelligence chief who's one of their shareholders who then funded a surveillance operation in London. Do you think you've got a bargain on like a Libyan intelligence guy after they took that L in Libya?

Yeah, I mean, that stock must be trading pretty low. But like genuinely, right? If they had got like Harvey Weinstein's firm of like X Mossad guys, if they had paid a little bit more for that premium, we probably would not be talking about them because we'd all be like floating face down in several ditches right now. Or again, it's just never the story never would have come out. And we'd be talking about Brex, a credit card company for startups

that I'm going to talk about in the next bonus episode. Cool. So basically what happened is that this Libyan guy then retained the services of two security companies, Sloan Risk Group in London, an APG protection who then oversaw an operation codenamed Palladium Phase Two. Again, the club dumb club promoter shit. Palladium Phase Two is a club in Rhygate.

Yeah. Wow. Palladium Phase Two also sounds a bit like something you would poison a Russian dissident with, which I imagine is more their game. And so before we move on, I want to talk about the soft bank angle a bit, which is that soft bank employees and one outside investor bought 900 million euros worth of what's called convertible bonds, just basically a bond with an option to convert it into a certain set amount of stock.

That's cool. You can put the top down. Yeah, exactly. A Cabriolet bond. And this was in order for them to have a strategic partnership where soft bank thought that they could like get in and buy this company at a bargain, which seems to just be a big part of there. We only make the wrong decision ever business strategy. And so and so, yeah, the idea was that they were going to have a strategic partnership where they could incorporate lots of wire card stuff

into different soft bank products, but also use wire cards network to engage in digital lending and turn themselves into a fintech, which means a bank that's not regulated. So we kind of can suss out a little bit of what soft bank wants to do there. Yeah, I mean, this is like everything now becomes an unregulated bank and also is a scam. Yeah, absolutely. And it's all just different kinds of club promoters and courtiers

and just all people sort of handshaking and trying to get to the courthouse. Oh, yeah, I'm doing a I'm doing a smooth transition here. Yeah, same. Yeah. So yeah, that's that's wire card. I think it's very interesting. More to learn about it that my main gap in my knowledge is I don't yet know what the rationale was in particular, like what they were trying to do, whether it was individual avarice or prop up the company or whatever.

But I'd be interested to find out more as it develops. So let's move on because I want to talk about a new kind of guy. Yeah, we found a new guy. Yeah. This guy, I'm so excited because I've had this guy in my mind for a while. Hmm. I've been trying to if you're familiar with the bridge end secret service jokes that we've been telling, it's very that this is the kind of guy. And like if nothing else, Trash Future exists to

categorize and taxonomize kinds of guy that we think are funny. And this is 100 percent welcome to the guy's own. Yeah. And this this guy, the name, the name of this guy is Tory sex party guy. Yeah. This is the type. This is the guy who watches Eyes Wide Shut and is like, cool. Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. But on a way lower budget, let's do that, but involving a number of single beds that have been crudely

pushed together in what looks like your nans room. Can we do this by renting everything? Yeah. Yeah. Just like painting Tommy Lee Jones entirely gold, but like on a budget. And now waiting for Milo to do the what if gold member painted him entirely black because he's Dutch and the Dutch love to do blackface joke. I love polish. There we go.

He predicted he predicted you would say that verbatim when we were doing the notes. So no, so Tory sex party guy. This is all arose from reading and learning about Dougie Smith, who is the husband of Munir Amirza, a bit of a backgrounder. If you don't know, Munir Amirza is a longtime adviser of Boris Johnson, who was one of the spiked people. Yeah. Boring. Who care? Who care? Don't care. Not interested in her.

Interested in her Tory sex party guy. Yeah, I'm going to do just a little bit of background on this so they know what we're talking about, especially the American listeners. Basically, she's been as a result of the Black Lives Matter protesters. Boris Johnson was like, we're going to set up a review into structural racism and institutional racism. And he was like, I'm going to choose this person to do it, even though she doesn't believe in institutional racism.

Anyway, that's boring. But Colomas are writing about that. I'm interested in Dougie Smith, her husband, the Tory sex party guy. Yeah, tell us about these sex parties, the sex farm for sex hookers. So basically, the Tory sex party guy. He is a long and long time conservative grandee. He's been involved in the party since the dear penthouse. I never thought this would happen to me.

He's been involved in the party since about the turn of the century. In 1997, he was actually in the referendum party, which we talked about on our history of weird chance or Euroscepticism in the UK with our episode of QAnon Anonymous. So do check that out. Not to be confused with the Woffarendon party, which is much less horny. So he also, so he was the the he was in charge of conservatives for change,

which was like one of these modernizing think tanks. But also he ran conservatives for change. Just imagine coming up with a name. Yeah, like Canada. So basically, he is he's at the Tory sex party guy and he ran something called fever parties until 2003. That's the thing where you will get coronavirus.

Yeah, that's that's that's like boomers in the villages being like, well, I'd better do my part and get coronavirus so that we can reopen the economy and I can go get a haircut is completely bald. Yeah, I love I love to do mask for mask of the Red Death. Yeah, on purpose. So the fever is shagged. No, it's it's shut down in 2003. But this was another case of the Iraq war.

Yeah, it was shut down in 2003 when Hans Blix couldn't find anyone who could make him horny. So this site read this was reported by the Mirror closer to the time. In our spare time, we go to great lengths to hold sensational parties that can equal what New York and Paris with their much more liberal laws. Have to have to offer young swingers. If you are a young, attractive and sophisticated couple and you're seeking the thrill of sexual recreation among your peer group,

then you've come to the right place. How many times have we heard the word young in this paragraph? Two or three creation. You can come down to our clubhouse, which looks like a fancy mosque. So among your peer group, you come to the right place. You and your partner can find everything you desire on special Saturday nights with fever. Oh, yeah.

So his whole thing basically was he would they would like it's like killing kittens, but much sleazier and killing kittens, by the way, run by someone who's like a connected to the royal family and who's had like even homes. If you remember who that guy is at one of their over 70s sex parties. Oh, I don't like the sort of that at all. I don't want to be connected to sex widowism. Let's just say at that point over 70s, just call it a lemon party.

Everyone knows what that is. So the personal history of Dougie Smith, he no longer runs fever, but this is sort of something that he's that he's always been quite sort of open about, is that he says, I've never made a secret about the fact that I run both conservatives for change and fever. The two things don't overlap and therefore it doesn't pose a problem. Fortunately, we're living in the 21st century and even naturally sensorious people tend to feel slightly subconscious about wagging their fingers

at what consenting adults do behind closed doors. I love the idea that like his defense, his first line of defense is like, there's no conflict of interest between my sex. Sorry, my party just my party repealed a law that would have prevented quite a bit of what goes on here like four years ago. There's no conflict of interest. When I go to the sex party, I hang up my thinking cap at the door as I put on my bowl weights.

And here's the thing, right? No, it's I don't I don't think it's wrong to. I mean, I personally think it's wrong to run a sex party because I'm anti-horny. Yeah. And also because this is like dangerously normed court, like the music at these things has not got to be good. Just derude sense, Norm, 24 hour loop. Absolutely. J.Kwon's tipsy has been played at one of their events. So but so that's true, you know, if you want to have a sex party,

go ahead and have a sex party. If you want to have a sex party, you can keep it. If you want to have sex, if you want to have do sex parties and work in politics, fine, don't care. But what I think is more interesting is less like, you know, the shock that most of the media is sort of indulging in about the the revelation of this this sex party guy coming back into the public eye. And more that I think this tells us quite a bit about what the conservative

party is and who it's for. Wish you would come back into the public's mouth first or something. Jesus. Oh, I'm just saying. So you know, your eye gets like stuck off as fucked vibes. So this is the personal history of Dougie Smith. This is all from various press sources, including the Mirror. So in the early 80s, he worked for the Adam Smith Institute, our friends on Tufton Street while pursuing a career in the Federation

of Conservative Students as a prominent member of its right wing libertarian faction, coming elected in 85 as the FCS vice chairman. However, it later transpired that his claim to be a student at Napier College was erroneous and his election was declared null and void. He was stealing student valor. I love that. That's so funny. Playing playing student politics on easy mode, just with the cheats on by

not being a student. Well, it's also it's really funny that he's like, he was like, oh, yeah, I've been in conservative politics for a while. It's like, no, you were in the reform party, the referendum party, rather, in 1997. You weren't a student when you were trying to be in the Federation of Conservative Students. You got thrown out of Strafglad University after failing your exams. No, once you get thrown out of Scottish University after failing your exams,

you start a podcast. That's the career trajectory. Yeah, that's what you do. And then moved into conservative politics around 2003 and to like the actual upper echelons of the party. And I think what this tells us, right? Alice, you and I were talking about this, is that the guy he reminded me of the most is Ben Elliott, the minor.

So he's the minor royal and who started quintessentially, the elite concierge service that has some kind of, you know. Yeah, that was the one that was like, we'll get you anything you want in a luxury sense. Anything. Yeah, like that was the vibe. It was like, if you want to go to Lex Greenfield's Jurassic Park and like hunt twinks from from Chester with with like a sniper rifle, we can arrange that for you.

That was quintessentially that was their vibe. Are you looking for something ripe and legal? Quintessentially, you may remember, they were in the middle of building the world's biggest yacht for a bunch of billionaires to live on full time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. How can I forget? Yeah. You know, the the the the gigantic billionaire only yacht

that they can live on full time. Quintessentially service slash shipbuilder slash club promoter. Yeah, no, makes total sense. You know, spending most of your time in waters that might be described as international and international style waters. It's very funny to me. It's just like all the billionaires on the boat, like living in this or like quasi billionaire society, but they're all billionaires.

So the fact that they're a billionaire isn't interesting at all, especially when all the male billionaires are just stuck there with all the female billionaires who are not the kind of women that male. I reckon this would be a great show. I think we should commission it. I think this is just a Goddard movie. So basically what I was thinking, right? And this is Alice, you and I were talking about this,

is that we have to learn that like the conservative party around sort of 2000, 2003 ish after basically like breaking with John Major. Yeah, basically what happened is and like we we did not see it because we weren't doing a podcast. We weren't paying attention to these things. But a very similar phenomenon to the line going stop happened to politics where politics stopped being like anything that bore any relation outside the most like venal levels to like actual events.

And it started being just a line that goes up and down for its own sake. It's just that the line was polling data. Yeah. And what we were talking about is that this is basically the conservative party. It was never the party of Dominic Cummings. It was always the party of Dougie Smith and Ben Elliott. And these just couriers. Yeah, absolutely.

Just having fun with your friends and being important. It's a bullpiss. It's having they're having fun with the toy steering wheel. Well, like, you know, well, spiked rights, their cultural policy and, you know, Tufton Street rights or economic policy. These people don't have to be capable or intelligent or interesting. They just have to be big enough chancers that they can, you know, wangle their way, maneuver their way in and then keep maneuvering.

Wrangle was a very good choice as well. No, it's a safe space for people named Dougie to never be made fun of for being called Dougie. And like this is all part of the same thing. That's how you get Boris Johnson as prime minister. It's how you get Matt Hancock as health secretary is that like none of these levers go to anything anymore. They're just like a sort of a conduit for think tanks

and like various like culture war headbangers. And all of the stuff that the actual party does is just sort of useless and just designed to like amuse each other. Well, it's it's it's it's basically the most that they actually do is PR. That's in terms of them actually needing to be able to do something. The vast majority of what they do is PR to try to, you know, spin toughed in streets policies to make it look good or, you know, try to make people feel as though they're threatened by Ash Sarkar or whatever.

And, you know, most of the people who are in the top echelons of the party are essentially just just courtiers who make it one another feel good and maybe who, you know, betray and backstab one another and stuff. And make each other feel pretty good, if you know what I mean. The real power centers are just fucking miles away for anything to do with them from everyone. Like the thing that I put down in this and I mooted this as an episode title was Jeff Bezos, Dr. Manhattan, right?

Like this guy has existed throughout history. The Borgias had this guy, you know, the guy who does the cool sex parties and is not very interesting in and of itself. The guy who like supplies you with your fancy golden shoes. That's that's been an essential function to power for so long. But now the places where power actually is, there's a reason why they all seem so alien to us. Like why Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates seem so weird.

It's because they don't need anything like this. That they're not stuck in and fucking. And that's why. Exactly. Then no, they're so isolated from everything that like the only thing that Jeff Bezos can decide to do with his money is go to space because he doesn't want to go to a sex party. He doesn't care about this stuff. And all of these guys are just like left without that power center.

And so they're coalescing around just this vacuum of nothingness. Jeff Bezos wants to fuck the face of God. And until he's done that, he won't be happy. Exactly. Jeff Bezos is looking at a watch. Jeff Bezos is in Vietnam, defeating the Viet Cong singlehandedly. Jeff Bezos is eight feet tall, blue, head to toe. And is like carving a hydrogen atom on his head. The ultimate destiny of mankind is Richard Branson

jizzing all over that obelisk from 2001, I suppose. Like the alt right. The good thing is, you know, Jeff Bezos, if the thing that the powerful actually want is to fly to space to fuck God, there's not much that God underage. Well, that can't be provided for them by the courtier set. There's no they can't do that. They can just do them amuse one another while accepting the fact

that they are dumb pipes through which other ideas flow that they just have to not get in the way of. Like also, one thing you can use to kind of to prove this a little bit about, like how distant power is, is that previously, the way you determined where a hierarchy was was like friends and stuff. Like, oh, the king is wearing his like waistcoat button unbuttoned. We should all do that. Or the king is wearing a pounded wig.

We should all do that. Nobody is waxing their skull to look like Jeff Bezos. Yeah. Right. The king is wearing an eye mask and has his dick out. So. Yeah, exactly. But like people might like Reddit guys might aspire to like Elon Musk or whatever. But he's small time compared to like the people who matter and nobody wants to be like them.

Hmm. Anyway, so I just I think it's we can now introduce into the canon of guys, the Tory sex party guy as the courtier, the courtier without the king, the Byzantine administrator who administrates for the sake of administering and just really likes that he's got like a slave he can put his feet on. Yeah, absolutely. That the someone who is in a power structure that isn't doing anything

but loves being in that power structure and enjoying the fruits of being in like the upper middle. Well, like this is this is what's so embarrassing, right? Is that like these people are inadvertently who we're burning everything down for us to keep their little sort of ball pit safe. Cool. Awesome. I like that much like like the creep in Starcraft in Starcraft, there's a ball pit is beginning to engulf all of Europe.

One of the only ballpits where you bring your own balls. A ball pit is haunting Europe. The ball pit of special treat boys. Yeah. So with having having now like thrown this guy up into the into the stars to make him a constellation, I'd like to end on a very fun little article that I have been mulling over and obsessing about for a stint reading series. We love to know we haven't done one of these in a while.

Yeah, I'm excited to see what kind of like dead bird you bring us. Call me, call me Kintyre, because this MF Mullen. So this is by BBC political editor Laura Kuhnsberg. Oh, hell under the show. And it's entitled Food Vouchers Matter. So I guess that's a play on the marches, I suppose, or maybe just incredibly tone deaf. It's all good. Vouchers Matter.

So I'm voting for incredibly tone deaf, but you know, let's see. So she begins the article. Oh, God, I'm excited about this. Most of us change our minds all the time. This is the minds politics as. This is the most like Laura Kuhnsberg, Tory press secretary way of starting a column. It's like Boris Johnson has been arrested today for murder after beating a small child's death.

And Laura Kuhnsberg writes a column that's like, well, we all get angry sometimes, don't we? You know, so a child, we've all paid a billionaire to hunt a child. We've all owned a tranquilizer rifle, haven't we? Yeah, a little bit of background here. So essentially the there has been this campaign by several public figures, most notably a footballer, Marcus Rashford, although admittedly it was a labor campaign as well. But like Marcus Rashford was the one who, you know, did all the stuff.

Actually advocated for it, unlike pretty much any labor figure. Yeah. So, you know, well, Rebecca Long Bailey did, to be fair, anyway. So what happened was there was this free school vouchers for free school meal vouchers program that kids get over over the year that then stops in the summer. But because there's like no school and no jobs, they were like, maybe we should just keep this program going over the summer because it's a way to get money to people we know needs it.

And we know that it's like something that's going to keep kids eating. Are there no workhouses? Well, that was the that was the Tory line until Boris Johnson was forced into a U-turn by this on the policy, which was to cancel it by Marcus Rashford, largely. So this is Laura Koonsburg writing about Boris Johnson doing a huge screeching U-turn on the policy of free school meals over the summer. Yeah. And I was like, I didn't do U-turn.

I was always going to do this. So I'm going to start this again. Keep that in mind, Laura Koonsburg again, writes this article about the government being forced to completely change a policy by saying, most of us change our minds all the time. So I guess this wasn't special, I suppose. Never mind. Yeah, I thought I was going to wear it to the fever party,

but then in the end, I wore black. Milo, that sort of prefigures more or less the level of analysis. No, not literally, but it does prefigure the level of analysis that comes next. Maybe maybe this morning you had planned to go for a run. And actually, when push came to shove, another 10 minutes in bed seemed like a better idea. Oh, that's a relatable.

I love to be relased. This morning, maybe this morning, you were planning on, you know, starving some vulnerable children. But when push came to shove, you decided that not being lynched by the people of Britain was better. I mean, I think about one of Milo's terms of phrase that when you're from such a rarefied extractionist, Laura Koonsburg, you're growing up eating swans or whatever the fuck they do that you could

genuinely envision like, oh, maybe you thought of going for a run, but instead you paid someone to go on a run for you. And that would be relatable in whatever fucking, you know, lightning silhouetted castle she grew up in. Comic timing. Yeah, there it is. That's that's what you pay us for. That's right. Yeah, that is right. So you do not have to pay us to hear this.

Yeah. So basically, you just keep that in mind as well. That's her level of analysis here is, you know, Boris Johnson, again, is like making a systemically has been forced into a systemically important change in policy. And she's saying, well, this is a lot like if you choose to sleep in. Hmm. Yeah, same thing, in my opinion. Yeah. You know, politics and personal decision making.

No, no clear blue water between them. Well, that's that's why we have to budget like a household, right? Is because politicians are just like us. Yeah, because Laura Kuhnsberg can't count above four, I guess. As one, two, three, many. Is sometimes you count above four and sometimes you pay someone to count above four. So maybe when you grew up, you wanted to be an astronaut. OK. Yeah.

But then you start to death. As is right. But then discovered that you weren't that good at physics and develop a vertigo as an adult in any case. What the fuck are you talking about? This is this is just in name shares. How is this like what Boris Johnson? How is this like being forced to do a U-turn on policy because of politics?

You know, when you have food, right? And sometimes you wouldn't have food. That's a lot like if you wanted to be an astronaut. Yeah, this is like this is like POV, the coked up guy at the sex party who can't get it up is rambling to you about why that is. Yeah, just like crying about not being an astronaut. You thought you thought I was going to get it up. I thought I was going to be an astronaut.

You know, we'll we'll face disappointments. Maybe she goes on. You spent years doing one job, but then decided over time that it wasn't for you. Maybe you spent years at the BBC and then decided you'd much rather be a conservative, fussy headquarters. But this is normal life. What is this? Is this for a Danny Boyle movie?

What the fuck? All right, boys, normal life. Listen, you can't have slumdog millionaires until you create some slumdogs. This is normal life and perfectly rational behavior. One of the most well-known 20th century economists, John Maynard Keynes, summed up in the game of politics, there's one quarter back. John Maynard Keynes, the inventor of the wine gum.

When the facts change, they change my mind. She's basically playing. It sounds like she's stalling on her own headline BBC political article for which she is the head politics editor. You know, these free school meals are quite similar to the ones they serve at Krusty Burger. This is an extremely like a screw Flanders ass piece of writing, but she's really she is padding the word count.

It's as though she's been like surprised and just started dictating this while trying to figure out what she was going to say. Because again, don't forget, she could have said that this was going to be a disastrous policy and through like sheer public campaign against it, that it was transformed. And then she's like, everyone changes their mind sometimes. It's like when asked to when when presented with a situation where a normal person would be unable to write about this

without saying the Tories were about to do something wrong and then were forced to not to do it by politics, she basically filibustered her own argument. That's why she makes the big bucks. Who else do you know that can do this? Although for the pedants among you, as with so many of the most quoted statements, it may have originally been said by someone else. Cool. Cool.

OK, well, the thing about quotes is they were all said by somebody. And sometimes you don't know by who. This is this is this is literally the Wayne Gretzky, Michael Scott of this article is she has he has spent what like now really a hundred words of her like and like front page political journalism article. Just being like, maybe maybe Keene said this. Maybe he did impossible to say. Anyway, what are we actually achieved?

Anyway, what were we talking about? Do you sell toast as Abraham Lincoln once said, don't believe everything you read on the Internet. It may have actually been said by someone else, a different August economist called Paul Samuelson. If I have been a slightly different phrase, quote, when my information changes, I alter my conclusions. This is a whole paragraph at this point.

This is this reminds me of you know, this reminds me of the from from previous reading series. It reminds me of Raphael Baer's shoes column. You know what they say? OK, Raphael Baer's shoes column was like, this is this is someone who has a beautiful mind. I think this column is like Laura Kuhnsberg is Robocop and she's trying to like you are a second to comply.

No, no, she can't like Robocop. She can't like can't target the the people who the the people in charge of the company she she physically can't do it. This is her shorting out. Yes. Why then do politicians try and avoid a change of heart? It's not just to escape occasional headlines about a screaming U-turn, although that is part of the equation. The headlines, which I am currently like,

tensing every muscle in my body, not to write. It's about judgment and authority to on an individual issue. Doing the right thing because of a change of heart is better than pursuing a policy that will cause harm. Fantastic analysis. Thanks, Laura. The policy that was no change of heart. Yeah. Also, the policy that will cause harm. But but weren't they intending to pursue that policy that will cause harm?

Don't worry about it. Beyond the subjective nature of the quote unquote right thing, there are also moments when the political momentum is the subjective nature of the rightness of feeding children. Yeah, of course. Yes. And the political momentum is pulling so strongly in one direction, it becomes inevitable. Again, no question about the political momentum.

Just just no. This is why Colvin lost. Yes, this is because he couldn't he couldn't appeal to the people the crane seals who read this and are like, good analysis. Momentum style thugs. Although ministers have for many days defended the decision not to pay for free school meals in England over the summer, highlighting other chunks of money given to councils to help money given to councils that have often had

all of their funding cut by about 60 percent. Other chunks of money. Nice and specific. Nate, can you please ready a dog whistle here? The involvement of a my dog whistle drop. The involvement of a young, well-liked, articulate and high profile player like Marcus Rashford made that defense less sustainable by the hour. No, don't don't don't like that.

Oops, whoopsie daisy. But that's that's not doing tropes, though, because tropes is only one when the left doesn't. So also, like, you know, I would I would I think there are I would I would say someone in Laura Kuhnsberg's position probably should know. I don't think everyone should know this. Like, well, everyone should know this, but I would say if you're writing national news, you should probably be aware of calling a black man articulate.

Yeah. And that's a bit of a dog whistle, my friend. Again, it's it's something that I wouldn't expect everyone to know. I think they ought to. But if you're the national news editor at the UK of the UK's BBC, you should probably know that in the UK. There's only one BBC and it's called the BBC. Yeah, I fucked that up. I fucked that up.

So Tory MPs started telling their party handlers the whips in the last 24 hours, they wouldn't vote for it. And some senior figures in the party had started to question what the merits were of continuing a fight that would have taken a relatively small government check to fix with the downside of sticking to a plan of terrible optics, not giving in made it look one MP feared like the Tories have a blind spot on poverty. Again, never suggest that we actually have one ever.

Obviously, they can only do the right thing. It's just sometimes it turns out the right thing was something else. And if anything, we should thank them for eventually doing it. Yeah, it turns out that when they thought they were doing the when they were doing the wrong thing, they actually were only doing the wrong thing because they thought it was the right thing. So in a way, it was the right thing. So like they are like the Tories always intend to do the best thing for

everyone, of course. And then I'm going to spend 400 words like, you know, saying, I wonder who sought talked about opinions. I'm going to quote some of my favorite economists. Pedants among you will note this might have been someone else. A quote is when you say something someone else said, please, please, let me stop writing this. It hurts 100 percent of the people who read Laura Koensburg are pedants to be

fair. Like, can you imagine the sort of people who are like, Oh, Laura Koensburg has written an article. I must sit down to read that. Can you imagine how insufferable that person is? So another former minister said it was causing widespread concern that number 10 is bad political instincts. So not long after he sat down to chat to my excellent colleague, Sally Nugent for BBC Breakfast, and it was Marcus Rashford, one Boris Johnson,

zero. That's a sports metaphor because he plays sports. Yeah. In the game of politics, there's one scoreline and it's Marcus Rashford, one Boris Johnson, no. Anyway, hey, stick to sports. Yes, stick to sports, Laura Koensburg. Every now and then it can be important for governments to show that they are listening. She is actually, she has spun this to make it look as though the Conservative Party is extra sensitive to the needs of people.

Well, she has, she has brains made of wet Victoria sponge is the thing. And I'm so like this is this is it's not even it doesn't even make me angry because it's just so like it's such a frippery, right? Oh, it's it's to me, it's just very funny. Yes, yes. She's an Ed 209 who is you can see the smoke coming out of the brain. Every now and again, it can be important for governments to show they are listening and it's pretty clear that the political froth over,

quote, U-turns causes much less fuss among the political froth. But the reality, too, is that frequent changes of heart can be damaging over time. It's a land of contrasts. Also, the end of the article is, hey, stop doing this, or you might lose your credibility. I'm doing as much as I can to defend you now, but there's only so much I can do. Also, this is the same. This is the same Laura Koensburg who like doxed the father of a sick child for confronting the Prime Minister in hospital one time.

She thought she was just giving out his table code at Weatherspoon. That was an affair. She just wanted everyone to send him peas as a fun prank. Yeah, that was that was Laura Koensburg doing this is him here. And now with the actual Prime Minister, it's like, well, you know, sometimes sometimes we get a bit too heated in this game of politics. And maybe sometimes what we need is to have a think and to change our minds. Yeah, it's not fair to send the Prime Minister a hundred black puddings to his table.

It's just it's gone. It's all on his plate, literally. Yeah, each. Yeah, we have to send those hundred black puddings to the Weatherspoons app to children around the country. So each time there is a reversal, you can hear a little bit of the government's credibility being chipped away. So again, the problem wasn't the policy. The problem wasn't what they wanted to do.

The problem was that the way they did it might make people trust them less. Oh, no. I just I just love the idea of like the government's credibility is being chipped away, says local quarry worker. I think the thing about it for me that's always so just unbearable with Laura Koensburg is that it's not that she sees her job as, you know, the the the meme of the fucking soldier getting hit with all the goddamn knives and grenades and shit while the little child is sleeping in the bed,

except the child is Boris Johnson. Like we get that. That's table stakes. But it's the incredible kayfabe that every other establishment journalist in Britain seems to have about how nakedly obvious it is that she just carries water for this government. They're always like, oh, wow, what a brilliant political mind she has. What insightful commentary. And then you read it and it's like it feels like the first draft

of Barry Weiss's article about Australia, how like Australians have fun. And there's kangaroos. Like it's the most, I don't know, for lack of a better expression, simptake. And and yet no one it feels like you're going completely insane because nobody will acknowledge it. Like, OK, her replies will acknowledge it, but none of the various other eyes wide shut party attendees will ever acknowledge it. And that's I think one of the things that's so frustrating about it is that you just

we have been sold this idea that the UK is just unlike other countries in so many ways. And in this regard, we have a state broadcaster that's supposed to be more or less a neutral arbiter and it's become more and more. It's just like the respectable version of Guido Fox in the way that like the Wall Street Journal is respectable Fox News in America. And that that just you just reading her words, like I'm just stewing with fucking contempt, listening to it because it's just over and over again,

constantly getting lied to. He's like, you know, that bad thing, bad things are actually good sometimes. And it's just like at what point are people finally be like, please, we get it, you love Boris Johnson, stop doing this. But they won't because, I mean, obviously, like as each day goes by, they stack more and more, you know, eyes wide shut attendees into the like the senior management of the BBC. And I mean, I don't know, it's a big joke, except there's always this

veneer of it being completely neutral and professional. And so many people in the UK trust it as a neutral source. And again, the idea, if you if you deign to criticize, it's like, oh, I guess you want Fox News, then it's like, no, I don't want either. We already have Fox News in this fucking country. It's called every single goddamn news channel. So I'll carry on with the article. Each time something else is unpicked, that loyal back bench

or a minister loses a little of their own willingness to provide defense for the boss and freak out and freak out sessions can give an impression to the wider public of a government that keeps simply getting things wrong. But because when you put a cross in the box in the voting booth, you're putting your faith in your favorite or perhaps least worst option. Cool. Wow. Oh, for a minute, I thought she was going for a for a for a metaphor from football, putting a cross into the box.

No, no, she's being literal. Oh, metaphor is here. Yeah, I love that. Just being like, anyway, remember how voting works? How much more of this fucking column is there? I'll tell you, in the game of voting, there's only one cross. You get to put in one box and it's the box of the person you're voting for. And you're voting for them to be quarterback.

Yeah. That's politics, baby. So draining. Like I can I want to go to sleep now. Politicians have to demonstrate to the public and their parties on a perpetual basis that they are heading in the right direction and taking the correct path. Well, they don't know they don't because they have you to do it for them. What is this?

What is this article, but a massive effort in obfuscation of being like, well, who can say what a policy is? Some what may be right for me and not be right for some. You know, you know, is it good? Is it bad? It's totally obfuscating the actual politics of it and just turning it into like, you know, a little whistling song about Boris Johnson waking up and deciding what to have for breakfast.

What if those school lunches contained potassium benzoate, you know? Last, last sentence. Too many U-turns and governments can end up going round in circles instead. Wow. I'm Laura Koonsburg. This U-turns would be more of an oval, really, but I don't understand what's going on. This felt like a like a slow cabin depressurization.

I could feel my eyes swelling in my skull. Yeah, I don't I don't feel good now because of this. Yeah, we're all the Ed 209. We had to we had to be in John Malkovich into like Laura Koonsburg's circuitry and try to understand. No, I'm feeling like the guy in RoboCop shot the arm off of. Wait, I mean, you could be one of you could be one of the guys who shoots the dick off of because that would be better than gender

reassignment surgery in the UK. This is what I've got to do is I've got to like try to provoke RoboCop to perfectly shoot off my dick and balls. Oh, no, I've been shot in the malopinus. And we're bringing it back around, everybody. It's my specialty, if nothing else. Oh, my goodness. So, hey, we want to thank you for listening to yet another episode of this silly show.

We also want to remind you that, you know, they that the bail funds are still out there and still need your support. So that link, as always, is in here. Once you've done that, you know, we'd love to have you on our Patreon. Like I said, we unlock that green sale episode, which you really should have listened to before continuing with this one. But there's lots of other great stuff on there. We talked to Patrick Wyman again, and we are going to be watching the movie

Logan's Run this week. So do check that out. Also, we're selling shirts. I'm selling shirts. I sure we've still got quite a few shirts left. Would you would you like a shirt? Send an email to the email address. Yeah. So once once we sell all of those, we can get a new third design

and beginning to think about what that's going to be. And we all are big eye. Yeah, we're all riding. All five of us are riding a giant eye and parking it outside of some like venture capital firms building. Just like, hey, can we park our eye here? It's like looking in through the blinds and stuff. It's a t-shirt that has that Laura Koonsburg article written on it

in like increasingly small font like an eye test. Like John Maynard Keans defines politics. That'd be cool. So yeah, do all that stuff. Also, you know what it is. Check out Hell of a Way to Die. Check out Well, There's Your Problem. Check out Milo's Russian podcast, if you're a Russian speaker.

There are a few people who listen to both. And check out the Boney Island Whitefish also. Boney Island Whitefish? And 10,000 posts, which is Hussain's new spinoff. We're basically in lockdown. We're all going to Seattle. Yeah. I've started a podcast where I'm watching every episode of the

police procedural drama bones, but only season five of the police procedural drama bones, which was on in about like 2008. And the one where they started to run out of ideas. Yeah. With with Andrew from Buntavista, and it's a lot of fun. And Hussain is doing 10,000 posts, which is about like the history of the internet through the posts that made our brains this way. Exactly.

It's pretty good. And also me and Nate have a new series called Britonology, which should be the first episode, which should be coming out shortly. Is that on the Patreon as well? Beyond the Patreon. Yeah. So if you are not a Patreon subscriber, you can basically sign up to hear me and Milo discuss deeply British things in which I react

to the horrible fucking scenes he's put before me. He's basically Virgil, making me navigate through concentric circles of hell in Britain. That's where he is. So, yeah, I guess that's that's something we've all sort of a lot of us have started little side projects and other fun stuff. So we're just putting those in the Patreon for you to enjoy if you're already already a subscriber.

So there's there's a lot of fun stuff there. There's not just the second episode every week. Anyway, Patreon is signed up to the Meloponnes tier for bonus. You can get sent. You can get sent a different picture of a Meloponnes every week. That's some very like Rick and Morty shit. Oh, it was one of the Meloponnes gets made. Sophocles is Meloponnes Rex.

Yeah, I'm I'm actually my favorite philosopher was a Meloponnes of helicarnassus. Well, bye, everybody. I have to go translate a passage of Meloponnes from my Latin class. All right, all right. Our theme song is here we go by Jinsenget on Spotify. Get it. Listen to it early. Listen to it often. Listen to it.

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