TRIGGERnometry - Pinchas Landau: Why the Middle East is in Chaos

Episode Date: January 19, 2020

Pinchas Landau is one of Israel's leading commentators on economic  and financial affairs  Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At Trigonometry, we don't pretend to be the experts. Ask the experts. Our absolutely fantastic guests, this week is an independent economic and political consultant. Pingers Landau, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you very much. Great to be here. It is great to have you here. Thanks so much for coming.

We've seen you talking about many different things over the years, and we were so glad you could make it. For anyone who unlike us does not know who you are, just tell everybody who are you, how have you come to be sitting in this chair? What's been your journey through life? Okay, very briefly. I was born in London. some years ago, emigrated to Israel in 1976 after getting a degree from LSE.

I've been living in Israel for all that time. I have been working as a independent consultant for over 20 years, 22 years, something like that. In macroeconomics, an increasingly political risk analysis of Israel and the Middle East, have always been very interested in current affairs in history, in British and European history, have been on and off at Kilkenomics in Ireland since it started in 2009, which is where we met. And I visit London frequently usually three or four times a year, so I'm fairly plugged into what's going on here. Well, you mentioned being based in Jerusalem and the Middle East. as you said just before we started the interview, it seems to be kicking off.

And you said, wherever you stick a pin on the map, something is happening. So give us a broad overview for people who are, I mean, it's going to take about half an hour just to give us a superficial view of it. But give us a broad overview of the things that are happening now in the Middle East. Okay. This is really complicated and difficult. And broad overview, you start with the fact that the dominant theme in the Middle East, today is that there is an intensifying struggle between the two key forms of Islam,

which are Sunni Islam and Shiite Islam. And without going into the religion and theology, what matters is that the Sunnis are the vast majority. The key Sunni states are Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is important because it is the site or in Saudi Arabia, the sites of the key. Muslim or Islamic cities of Mecca, Medina, and that's where the, so Mohammed lived and so on. Shiite Islam is centered on Iran. Iran underwent a revolution in 1979 and became a Shiite theocracy, which it means that is run by religious leaders who have a very extreme version of Shia Islam, which never

exist in the past and they are engaged in seeking to export their religious revolution throughout the Middle East. And that is causing a great deal of trouble pretty much everywhere. That is a broad overview. The second thing you need to know about the Middle East today is that the mega event of the last decade is the strategic decision by the United States to not entirely withdraw, but to considerably downgrade the Middle East in the context of American foreign. policy. It's began under Obama. It's been continued by Trump. It will, virtually everybody

thinks that it will continue irrespective who the next president is. So we're seeing a change, a fundamental change in American policy. And what that means in very simple terms is that the sheriff has left town. And that means that all the other players who were previously constrained by the existence and activity of the sheriff are now much less constrained. And where does Israel come into all of this? Israel is, interestingly, is much more sidelined by these developments, whereas if you go back to the 70s, 80, now you go back to the 20th century, the second half of the 20th century, the struggle between Israel and its neighbors and Israel and the Palestinians was very much

at the center of Middle Eastern events. This has changed very dramatically in the 21st century. So that Israel is much more on the sidelines. Israel, Palestine, is far, far less important than it was in the view of pretty much everybody in the Middle East. And what we have seen in recent years is that Israel has strengthened considerably its relationship with many of the Sunni states, notably. Egypt, now increasingly Saudi Arabia, albeit still clandestinely, and other Persian Gulf

states such as Oman and the UAE. So all of the countries which feel threatened by Iran, of which Israel is along with Saudi Arabia at the top of the list because the Iranian Revolution has set as its goal to wipe Israel on the face of the earth. So Israel has been engaged in a struggle with Iran for some decades, which has become much more intense in recent years, and consequently Israel is finding common ground with many of the Sunni states are also threatened by Iran. So Israel's position has changed dramatically and in some senses become stronger because

it is part of a regional quasi-alliance. And why do you think that America supports this withdrawal in the Middle East? Because normally, you know, America had a very strong presence like you said, but why is it now they're going right, no more, we want out? This is a reaction to first and foremost the invasion of Iraq, which proved to be a very, very costly, in both the financial and human sense and in the political sense. So after 9-11, the Americans invaded Afghanistan, which seems to go very well, but the object

was to destroy the Taliban movement there, which they failed to do. And then Bush, for whatever reasons, decided to invade Iraq and remove the Saddam Hussein regime, which militarily was easily accomplished. But what then turned out was that they had no follow-up plan. So the Americans made very serious blunders in the first decade of this century. And in the current decade, what we've seen is a tremendous reaction to that on the part of the general public and most of the leadership. They don't see, they regret some of the things they've done.

They think they were counterproductive. That's one way of putting it. But from a foreign policy perspective, they did not achieve their, they did not achieve their goals in a strategic sense. And they, look, it goes much deep in that. In American culture, the American culture is very black and white, as you've seen very, many, many contexts. And Americans tend to say, okay, we're going to go in and do something somewhere. And if it doesn't want, they leave.

you're very different example, but it's very indicative, right? In the 1990s, in the decade of the 1990s, Merrill Lynch, which was then the biggest brokerage company in the United States, twice decided to go into Canada, right? Not talking about somewhere far away, they decided to establish themselves in Canada. They did it. They said, no, somebody else came in. That's a mistake. We're losing money. We're leaving. A few years later now, we really want to be in Canada. Went back into Canada. No, it's not working. Leave a mindset which to Europeans is very strange,

very short term, very kind of bottom line oriented. But that's how they work. And Pinkus, do you think it's also as well that the Americans swallowed this idea that you can import democracy everywhere? All you need to do, overfro the regime, put in democracy, hey, presto, you've got a democratic state. And what Iraq showed them,

is that this was a load of nonsense. Absolutely. Yes. See, I do get some things, right? Except looking at the wrong camera. It's that one over there, me. Looking around this. Looking for a camera to look into.

I'm definitely always over that. One of the things I find interesting you're talking about how Israel is essentially building relationships with the Sunni state. It's almost like you've got perfect multiculturalism in the Middle East. East, you've got the Jews and the Muslims working together? You haven't got anything perfect in the Middle East, let alone multiculturalism.

The only place, arguably, in the Middle East, where you have any kind of functional multiculturalism is in Israel, where there's a large Muslim majority who are increasingly integrated into the economy, finally, and a Muslim minority, right? As a minority, right, in Parliament and in the general, in the system, so on. Israel is the only country in the Middle East. East where the Christian minority is not only hanging in there, but actually thriving to some degree and not being driven out as it is in virtually every other country in the Middle East.

So in many respects, multiculturalism insofar as it exists in the Middle East is very much an Israeli phenomenon. And that's just in the kind of cultural religious thing. And of course you have the fact that gays in Israel are a clear. movement who are working for their rights and are accepted and so on, which is, again, stands in somewhat sharp contradistinction to the situation in many other countries. I love the way, the delicate way in which you put that. To put it more crudely, they're not being thrown off buildings in Israel and like pretty much

everywhere else in the Middle East. Yes, that is correct. Yes, we could go much further, but that is correct. And so, Pinkus, why is it, right? I go on my Facebook timeline, many of whom, are populated by left-wing liberals, and they portrayed to me that Israel is a great evil of the world and the reason why the Middle East is so unstable,

why does Israel have this reputation, and is it in any way justified? Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world, so let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality, the kind where you wake up and feel like a human being, rather than someone who's been thrown down a staircase. Most mattresses are just layers of synthetic foam and crossed fingers.

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Trigger to check out their mattress and furniture sale. That's Avocadogreenmatress.com slash trigger. Avocado green mattress.com slash trigger. This is, now you're kind of digging deep, okay? The sources of the left liberal, deliberate misperception and the way it's present, mispresentation of Israel. and Israeli culture and so on, is a fascinating phenomenon because if you go back 40 or 50 years, right, in the 60s and 70s of previous century, Israel was one of the left's darlings for numerous

reasons, but this has changed. Now, you know, we could spend, if you had six, seven hours, we could spend a lot of time drilling down. The number of viewers who would still be with us after the second hour would be in the single digits. The bottom line from the Israeli point of view and increasingly from the point of view of Jews across Europe and indeed now in the United States is that the left liberal demonization of Israel is indistinguishable from anti-Semitism and that it should be seen in that light. This is just a modern version of, or an updated version of, um, the very ancient anti-Semitic tropes.

And this is a major issue and arguably the major issue facing Jewish communities throughout the Western world and nowhere more so than the United Kingdom where we have a formally mainstream Social Democratic Party, which was for many, many years, had very strong and positive relations with the Labour movement in Israel. has been taken over by the hard left and is now in the view of most people, not just Jews, most people in the UK is overtly anti-Semitic and they cover it up with this sheen of, no, it's only about Israel, but no one accepts that anymore. So, you know, this is a major, major issue.

It is not any more subject to rational analysis. In other words, we can go through all the facts and figures about the things I was talking about multiculturalism and many, many, economic and social and religious and on and on and it doesn't make any difference because it's become a dogma and that is a major problem. So you are of the view that the Labour movement has. has become anti-Semitic in this country. The Labour Party in the UK has become anti-Semitic. I mean, I'm just an observer, but you have seen the writers and other groups make these

proclamations and I think that is now the mainstream view as far as I can judge. Well, 87% of the Jewish Chronicle put out of Paul recently saying that 87% of British Jews think that Jeremy Corbyn's anti-Semitic. Oh, well, that, yes. In other words, the Jews are convinced of it. Yes. Right? To the point that many friends of mine are taking the line that, yes, I remain and I want Britain to remain in the EU.

But that is no longer the issue. The issue is the need to vote against Corbyn and prevent Labor getting more of their candidates in because Laborers, the Labour Party has eliminated all its Jewish MPs. and in many cases put in problematic candidates. And therefore, you will find that the entire Jewish community in this country is engaged to an extent that I've never seen before, right, with the rabbinic and lay leadership saying you've got to get out, you've got to vote, vote for whomever in your constituency has got the best chance of defeating the Labour candidate because Labour is anti-smit. And this is accepted by everybody.

But we're in an unprecedented situation here. And when you think there is a strong tradition in the Jewish community of being labor, left-leaning... Absolutely, absolutely. The majority of British Jews voted labor. The older ones for reasons to do with a generation or two ago. The young ones are reasons to do with today's thing. But absolutely right. By the way, let me ask you this.

Why do you think it is that Jews tended to vote for left-leaning parties? Because normally you expect a community that's thriving, that's economically quite successful. As people get wealthier, they tend to move towards the conservative end of the spectrum. Do you seem to be the exception to that trend? Is that fair to say? Well, first of all, I don't claim to have real in-depth knowledge. But what I would say is that there has certainly been a very significant shift in others. I'd go about 50 years when I was a kid.

So the percentage of the resulting labor was much higher than it would be today. if Tony Blair was a candidate. So there has been a shift to do with moving up on the socioeconomic rankings and so on. Nevertheless, having said that, there is still a very strong affinity and historic relationship with Labour, which has only been ruptured these last few years

since Corbyn became leader. And coming back to the Middle East, one of the things that's happened recently, of course, is the change in Saudi Arabia, with Mohammed bin Salman taking over. He seems to be a whole new creature, if I can put it that way, and part of maybe a broader thing that we'll talk about, which is the emergence of these very strong men, generally men, leaders around the world. What do you make of him and the impact that he might have on the Middle East?

Well, he is having a major impact in many respects, many different ways. So within Saudi Arabia, he is leading a push towards greater social liberalization. But at the same time, he has and is behaved and behaving like a medieval monarch. Saudi Arabia is a medieval country. It's important to understand that. You can't judge it by any Western standards because they're just not relevant. So if you know your history in Britain, France and so on, you're a medieval British history with King Henry's and John and Richard and all the stuff.

So you had a king who was sometimes stronger, sometimes. You had barons and lords and so on around the country, and each of these guys really ran their own fief in the medieval system. And the king would try to get taxes in terms of money, in terms of produce. And if he needed to go to war, then he would say, you know, you've got to supply so many men in the U.S. So it wasn't the king around the whole country. It was very much decentralized.

And if you apply that model to Sordrebe, you have some understanding of what's going on. Right, he, even though he is the king, he has difficulty imposing his ideas on the entire royal family, which is a very large and complex group of people. And beyond that, there are many, there are tribes, and these tribal units together comprise the army and the armed forces. and there are business entities, business groups. One of the most famous is the Bin Laden family who came to prominence because one of them decided not to pursue a business career that went in a different direction. But they are very big commercially oriented family, nothing to do with terrorism aspect.

So Soudreve is a very complex place. and he is trying to wrench it out of where it was, socially and particularly economically, in reliance on oil and so on, and force in a different direction. And that is very difficult to do in a very conservative country. And he's doing this whilst being engaged in what is a very deep-seated struggle against Iran and Shiite Islam.

And he's doing it with the American defense umbrella and are fading away. And so he has enormous problems. Apart from those stemming from the fact that he's young and immature and so on.

He has objective problems. And going to Israel at the moment back there, by the way, you might not know this. One of the most offensive things about Osama bin Laden, do you know this? He used to be an Arsenal fan. Massive arms. personal phone. One of the main reasons I disliked him. Anyway, but...

You didn't have any other problems with him? You were... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's always round an awesome season ticket holder. You used to live just around the corner from there. Anyway, but there is a major figure in Israeli politics at the moment who's in a little bit of bother. Could you explain what the charges are against him and what the impact that's going to be if he's found guilty on the Israeli state? Okay. I love the way you... sigh before answering every question because we're asking you these big questions about a region that you would probably need a three-month lecture series to address and we're giving you about

five seconds to do it. Yeah, but it makes life much easier because you have to kind of compress it into sound bites and you'll have to take your leave it as it were, right? Because each one of these... So, Netanyahu's long political career and long career as prime minister, he's been Prime Minister for over 10, 10 and a half years non-stop. And before that he was Prime Minister for two or three years. So we've now reached the end of the road.

Now, you want me to relate to the legal staff and the charges and this and that and the other, but I regard all those very secondary. He has been indicted finally on a bunch of charges, which any or all of which could be found guilty or not guilty, etc. And nobody's going to wait for that legal process to play out. Netanyahu, in political terms, has passed his sell-by-date. For many reasons, the most obvious of which is that he's been in power over 10 years, most of the Israeli public is tired of him.

They're extremely tired of his wife. That's a separate story, but it's very, very important. She's an eminence cre. She has enormous power over him and contriended. She is involved in many, many political decisions. So he is now, as I said, at the end of the road. What is important is that this year, right, let's just not go through the whole thing, this year have been two elections, neither of which he won.

He did fairly well, but he didn't win and he wasn't able to put together to reestablish a coalition which he would lead. Sounds a bit like British politics over the last nine years, doesn't it? Okay, but British politics are neophytes in this coalition stuff, right? In Israel, it's the norm. Yeah. So his political power has considerably been constrained and it is waning and he is going downhill. What is important now, now means today, this week, because of the technicalities and complications of the constitutional and political situation is that in order to get rid of him and save themselves, the senior liquid people need.

to find somebody else, basically make a putch, depose him and bring in somebody else. And they're trying to muster the guts to do that. But it's very difficult. He's very entrenched. You've got a lot of loyalists and so on. If that doesn't happen this week or next week, then it will be doomed to have a third election within 12 months. But the could will very likely do pretty badly or worse even than they did last, then lose

more seats and so Nantanio is on the way out that's the bottom line however you slice and dice and the legal stuff is irrelevance but you know whether he's found guilty and whether he goes to jail that's way down the road that's not important let's not dive too deep into that and plus by the time this video goes out we will know what has actually happened so we'll see if those forecasts are accurate but if we take a broader step back and talk about the strong men leaders. There seems to, am I right in saying that around the world, we have seen a trend of consolidation of power in China.

You know, Donald Trump is a very, I mean, in this country, we've got a competition of beta males. But apart from that, apart from that, we do seem to have this around the world. Obviously, Putin is very strong right now and all around the world. Do you see a trend there? And if you do, what is it caused by? Yes, there's clearly a trend. It's a trend only in certain areas and not in others.

So that, right? Netanyo is an interesting example. Just in the Middle East, in the immediate area, right? And the Middle East is a region where you always had strong men. The late unlamented Saddam Hussein and the late unlamented Mr. Gaddafi and so on and so on. But currently you have in Egypt, President Alcissi, who is a military. leader who deposed the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013. You have Mr. Erdogan in Turkey, who has won power going back a long time, but has basically

eliminated, pushed out all his rivals, and has become terribly authoritarian and made himself president and so on. Netanyahu is also a good example, if only for the fact that he's been in power for 10 years, he's longer than any other Israeli Prime Minister. and he has won a series of elections and so on. You have Mr. Modi in India, which is a democratic country, and he has not only just won elections, but he's presented a very different approach to national leadership.

And Mr. Abe in Japan, who is also an elected leader, very similar to Nyao in interesting ways. I put it to the Japanese people that I meant. I imagine a Prime Minister, who was Prime Minister for a short time, and he wasn't a good, he wasn't success, and he lost power. And then a decade later, he managed to return to power, and he's been in power for a very long time. Does that sound familiar to you? And they, the Japanese are forced to crack a smile and say, yeah, yeah, that's right. Because they immediately identified with Abe, when I'm talking about Netanyahu, but it's very remarkably similar.

Well, it's very remarkable in itself. It's like John Major coming out of retirement now and leading the Tories to... They're not that old. I mean, it's... Gordon Brown, then. Tony Blair, the Gordon... Well, Gordon, Tony Blair was very successful, of course, but Gordon Brown maybe... Yeah, right.

It's like Gordon Brown being re-established as the... British jobs for Scottish workers, since he comes back with that, fantastic. That's a good job. Scots don't like working. That's a great Rory Bremen line. So this is happening. So why is it happening? If you like, if you like, Mrs. Merkel was also of that ilk.

Strong man. Yeah. Seemingly. So why is it happening? The simple answer, and simple answer usually very helpful and largely right, is because in the wake of the great financial crisis 2008, people came to the conclusion that what they had been told and sold was a load of and they wanted people who were giving them some kind of message of that made sense to them. And in many countries, and this is the theme that links Putin, Modi, Abe, Erdogan, Netanyahu, at least all of those, and Orban in Hungary, and others, and Trump, the theme of make it

whatever it is great again, right? Restore Russia and make Japan a serious country again. The same theme runs in country after country, and the people who promoted this theme, this idea, have done phenomenally well. So that shows that's what people wanted, and why they want that? Because, as you said, I think,

they came to the conclusion that what had been accepted as the right and proper thing to do was at least not working and maybe wasn't of any use anyway. And do you think part of it as well is the fact that, like you listen to Americans talk and a lot of Europeans here, they seem to be this general consensus

of, you know, the best days of America are over, the best days of Europe are over. And all of a sudden, you've got this person coming in and going, no, that's not true, that's a load of nonsense. I'm going to make America great again. Sod what these liberals think. Let's go forth. What Steve Bannon calls a managed decline.

Yeah. Okay, so then, you know, managed decline is a very, very fascinating concept. But it's complicated, right? There are countries that are in an extra world decline like Japan, which they're trying to turn it around. There are countries that are not in decline, not India. the opposite of decline. But they perceive themselves as needing strong leadership and the Congress party or whoever it is has failed and so on. And then, of course, you have the extreme example of Russia where Putin has succeeded in not just arresting but reversing some of the most dramatic trends of decline and weakness and so on.

And people respond to that, absolutely. And Trump is giving the same rhetoric. But well, of course, whether to what extent if at all that's true is a different matter. Do you think it's true that he is restoring America's greatness? There's very little evidence, shall we say. Very little evidence. And a man who judges his domestic economic success by the level of the Dow Jones and industrial averages, skating on very thin ice.

And you're not one of these people who've got what we were talking about as Trump derangement syndrome. You're quite open-minded, I think, about some of the stuff. But you don't buy his economic boasts about how the economy is doing? Well, I certainly don't buy his boasts. I mean, in other words, if you did a massive tax-cutting exercise and you gave lots of money to certain areas, then you would expect the economy to do most of the things that it did in 2018 and that are fading away in 2019.

So most of the serious people who might read who are not victims of Trump derangement syndrome, think that the American economy is doing badly and it's going downhill and there will be a recession and so on and so forth. The problem, of course, with Trump, as you correctly point out, is that it's very difficult to find people who are capable of having a rational discussion. In other words, and the flip side is as we put in as well. And that goes to Netanyahu, the kind of people you were talking about earlier, right? So my job, as it were, as an analyst and a consultant, is to bring an objective assessment

of what is going on. And in every one of these cases, whether it's Trump or Putin or Netanyahu or Modi or whomever you like, right? So you can say, you know, these are his achievements and these are the areas where he failed

and each one of those open to discussion. So do that for us, Pinkett's with Trump? Do that for us. What's your objective, rational assessment of his achievements and his downfalls? And by the way,

that's sign you can hear is YouTube having a meltdown. In fucking he! First, okay, Trump's main achievement globally is that, I mean, it's very difficult because he screwed up a lot of things, but he has, I think, okay, without going to the whole global thing, right, he has kicked the European so hard that they are now thinking and acting different. differently. That's a wonderful example, right? So many people over the years have said the Europeans are slackers and they don't pull their weight and they just live under our defense umbrella and they don't want to spend any money and so on and so. Have too many naps. Right? And Trump came and screamed at them and kicked them in the balls and now they're actually doing things. Now, it's certainly possible to argue that his style and all the rest of it are counterproductive.

But here is an example where they've been very productive at fairly great cost. Trump is asphyxating Iran. This is a very, very important thing which is not well understood at all. Even whilst he is withdrawing from the Middle East, everything is complicated, right? So people are talking about Americans are drawing from the Middle East. Trump cut and ran from Syria to a couple of months ago. power in the Middle East today is scale, orders of magnitude

greater than that of Russia, which is deeply involved in the Middle East with bases and so on and so, they don't even begin to compare. So the American withdrawal and retreat in terms of actual power has got much more assets than the Russians do and so on. So the real.

The real issue, of course, is are you prepared to use them in what form? And Trump is very clearly made, right, we're not having boots on the ground, we're not going to have our guys killed and so we'll just blow up other people and that. But in the case of Iran, where, by the way, Trump's policy is not one of tweets and not one of ideas that he thought of in the bath, or Trump's attitude and policy towards Iran is consistent going way back when he was president, for he was president, before he was a candidate, before he even thought of being a candidate, it goes back many, many years. And his use of American economic power, vis-of-eeran is phenomenal, right?

So that, for instance, not just the Europeans, or the Chinese oil companies have cut them left. Because no economic entity in the world given a choice between losing the American market and losing the Iranian market, There's no choice. There's nothing to talk about. So he is asphyxating, which means he's strangling the Iranian economy. And that's why there are riots in Iran and putting tremendous pressure on the regime.

So, you know, you can go down and list. What about China? Chinese are scared. They don't know what to do. And one of Trump's great achievements is that he has exposed. He has raised to the surface the existence of a very broad consensus in the American business community that we've had enough of China. We are fed up with their stealing our IP and cheating us and not letting us in and so on.

And we are really pissed off about this. And until Trump, it was not possible to talk about that because it was impolite. And now it is okay and the whole, not the whole, but massive consensus within the American and business and financial community supports Trump's approach towards China, and it will roll over to the next president, almost irrespective of whom that is. So those are some of the achievements that you can give them credit for. In order that people don't assume you're a massive Trump fan and you want to make... At this point, we unfurled the American banner behind you.

The cap comes down. God bless America, but we're going to get you a golden toilet just to celebrate. What are some of the weaknesses of his presidency? What are some of the dangers? I mean, obviously the tax cut doesn't sound like you're a big fan of that. No, I mean, Trump has simply extended the policy of funneling more or more money to the top 1%. 0.1%, whatever you want to call it. The great beneficiaries of the tax cut have been the rich, ultra-rich and the corporations.

And he has done virtually nothing for the poor slobs who voted. for him, right? How many jobs have gone back to America? Now, it's against that, the employment figures are very good, right? America has very low unemployment, et cetera, et cetera. But that is true of most European countries. Most of the Western economy has record low unemployment. And clearly, that is not connected to Trump's policies. That's a much broader phenomenon. So, you know, Trump has not done very much in terms of making America great again. He has considerably intensified, maybe even caused or contributed to the tensions within American society, ethnic, racial, etc.

But I mean, you can just go on and on, right? If you have reached a point where the Russians can say with regard to Trump's SMS or tweet or perhaps even it was a diplomatic telegram of the good old school, right, he sent a message to Erdogan, a president Erdogan, of Turkey, telling him in so many words what he thought of him or so on, right? And the Russians said that this is not acceptable behavior. So he's ripped up the rule book on how you conduct foreign relations. And he has also gutted most parts of the American government,

notably the State Department, and many others as well, where there are literally hundreds and hundreds of important positions which have not been filled. So, you know, this is not how to run a country. Well, if the Russians are setting the moral standards, you know your country's pretty fucked, isn't it? But look, if I'm an ordinary Trump voter, I kind of look at the official slogans of what's happening, right? He seems to be addressing the border security issue, right? He's trying to build a fence, maybe not a wall, but a fence.

The economy is booming, right? A big, beautiful wall. A big, beautiful fence, right? The economy is booming. He's killed al-Baghdadi, right? he's destroyed, he's destroyed, I'm using all of this kind of slightly in inverted comments, but these are certainly the claims that he'd make. I mean, you go, he's standing up to China.

You know, that sounds to me like him delivering on his promises, doesn't it? No, this is all grandstanding. This is all a show, right? Like meeting with the Rocket Man, right? Rocket Man who was upgraded to my dear friend, whatever his name is, and so around North Korea. He also relates pretty quickly between calling someone like the worst person ever and his best friend. Right.

So this is not a serious person and most of what he does is not serious. And in the best case, is unhelpful. And in many cases, extremely harmful, particularly in the longer term. And, you know, you compare that to some of the – I mean, again, you're talking about Trump supporters, right? The Trump supporters means people in Pennsylvania and, I'm. Ohio and Wisconsin who turned the election right and if Trump has any claim to genius and all the rest of it simply because he understood that there are these few states which are going to turn everything and if he can win them Democrats will

lose and he won although he didn't expect to win but he that was how his strategy was built and Hillary Clinton was most appalling candidate did not visit from the Wisconsin primary through the election and therefore cannot have any claim to to to unhappiness that she you know she didn't win Wisconsin well she did say recently she's gonna win again she's gonna win again she said yeah traditionally a democratic state which she blew but so your Trump supporters in Youngstown Ohio so they want jobs they want their life that they want the opioid epidemic and they know they have a

long series and things. Those issues are not been addressed, and their well-being is not significantly improved. There are among the Democratic candidates, people with ideas which would significantly improve the lives and well-being of people like that. Who? Which candidates? Certainly Elizabeth Warren.

some of the others as well, right? I mean, the problem is that some of them are really far out. Bernie Sanders is very far out. And some of Warren's stuff is very far out. But Warren, at least, is a very rational, mainstream person. She's a senator. She's been around, and she was a professor, and she comes from a working class background,

and she has actually thought through these things. So she doesn't spout slogans. and she would do a lot which would benefit the people who vote for Trump because by voting for Trump, they are expressing their disgust at what the Washington elite has done to them for decades. There are people on the other side who would do that, and Trump will do nothing for them, as done and will do nothing for them. Insofar as they're benefiting there, there are jobs available, not good quality jobs, right? that there are jobs available more than there were.

But this is a cyclical boom, right? Use the economic terminology. This is a cyclical boom, and we are heading for a massive crash, and they are totally unprepared and vulnerable. Starting a business can seem like a daunting task, unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business,

From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and all birds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com slash special offer. And why are they vulnerable, Pinkas? Because their healthcare system is a disaster. Their pension system is on the verge of collapse. They, they as a population, do not have the skills in you.

They are uneducated, et cetera, et cetera. That'll be the clip we use Americans are uneducated. Look, the data, you know, the jury's in the data there, right? And there's nothing to have. The reason, you know, the United States is a very big country. It's got 300 million people and they still have the top hospitals and the top this and the other. And that's fine if you're at the top.

But for the bottom 50% it's really bad news. And there are great swathes in the United States that are third world countries. And Jim Rickards made the point as well that there is this massive problem with student loans. Yes. Well, that is a very specific issue, which is, A, that people who have finished their degrees and so on are buried under these massive loans. But more substantively, more and more people are getting, uh, um, supposedly. at education which is very little real value to them but on the other side of the balance sheet they emerge from it with significant financial debts which they are

going to carry with them and you know be lucky to pay off at all and so they got little assets in terms of what did they get out of their education and plenty of liabilities yeah they spent a hundred grand to get a gender studies degree yeah well quite Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Pinkas, unfortunately, our time is almost up. You're a busy man. We've got to let you go.

So before we do that, we've got one more question for you. And the question always is, what's the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be talking about? Demography and having children. Okay. Tell us more. The, well, everybody in the West, the whole of Europe, Eastern Europe, more even the Western Europe, suffering from demographic decline. right we talked about Putin Putin managed to stop the rot

and he's brought it back some wants so people beginning to have children and they're not dying at the age of 48 from liver malfunction from drinking too much vodka right so Putin has got some very very serious achievements Stop laughing in my heritage

Yeah no it really isn't funny I mean Putin's got genuine genuine achievements along with So the big Now United States is incredibly, 10 years ago, would not have been possible thinking. The United States is now in serious demographic decline.

The people we were talking about, the Trump voters, they don't have children, they die young, American life expectancy is going down, and so on and so on, right? So the developed world is facing a demographic crisis. Now you can argue the same is true in China and so on, but, but, Europe, North America, Japan, South Korea and so on, these are countries in very serious demographic crisis, whatever you want to call it, which by the way is why the pension system is going bust, one of the main reasons, and having children has gone out of fashion. And people have very good arguments, so they can't afford it and so on, but that simply

brings you back to government, right? You can have policies that remove some of the obstacles they're having children, right? That doesn't mean everybody would have children. Most of these policies don't work because of other factors. But people who want to have children and say, I can't have another child because the cost of, child care or so on, right? The woman won't go out to work, she'll stay at home, except. That whole syndrome, two parents, both, or two income families.

So if you're only down to one, you're already on the borderline. These things can be addressed. Now you can argue that all the efforts so far, whether it's in Japan or France or wherever, they haven't succeeded. But given that this is literally existential, you would expect that it would concentrate considerably more attention on the part of policymakers and voters. and yet it doesn't. Well, there you go.

So stop using contraception and have as much sex as possible. That is our message for this week at Trigonometry. Pinkus Landau, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate your time. As always, follow us at TriggerPod

and we'll see you again in a week's time with another brilliant episode. Take care. See you next week, guys.