TRIGGERnometry - Jim Rickards - “Trump Will Win Again”

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:05.160 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:06.480 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:12.120 And it does not get any more fascinating than the man we have back for you today.

00:00:16.700 He was one of the people who predicted that Donald Trump would be elected in 2016.

00:00:20.840 And he's got an interesting take on it today.

00:00:23.360 Jim Rickards, welcome back to Trigonometry.

00:00:25.440 Thank you, Constantine. Thank you, Francis. Great to be with you again.

00:00:28.060 It's great to have you back. Why don't we not beat around the bush and get straight to it?

00:00:33.640 Donald Trump, according to various polls, is down about 10 to 15 points in the polls.

00:00:39.040 There's obviously all sorts of things going on. A lot of people, even the people who were saying he would win four years ago, are now backing away from that prediction.

00:00:48.860 What do you make of that situation and who do you think is going to win as we sit here recording this mid-October?

00:00:54.340 Yeah, I can't imagine there were very many people who said Trump would win four years ago, backing away, because there were only five of us. It was Pat Cadell, Steve Bannon, me, Michael Moore, believe it or not, as far left, but he was smart enough to see what was coming, and one or two others. Donald Trump didn't think he was going to win. Melania was very upset in an election. She's like, what? I've got to be First Lady? By the way, she's been a fabulous First Lady, so all credit to her, but she was as shocked as anyone.

00:01:19.820 But no, basically, nobody saw it coming. But in the meantime, Trump's had a lot of success, a lot of controversy, obviously, always the center of attention. So there are far more people today who were willing to stand up and say, yeah, I'm with Trump, I'm voting for Trump, etc. And they in this cycle, the 2020 cycle, you're absolutely right, Constantine, they were saying that they thought Trump would win. Now they're all running for cover.

00:01:47.320 It's the typical Washington approach.

00:01:49.240 You know, why provide leadership when you can run and crawl in the hole?

00:01:53.820 And Republicans are worse than Democrats.

00:01:55.780 At least Democrats, you would expect them to say Trump's going to lose, but the Republicans are turning tail.

00:02:01.740 I took some comfort from that because my forecast, and I want to be clear, it's model-based.

00:02:08.140 Isn't everybody's forecast model-based?

00:02:10.080 So the answer is yes, but they have pretty bad models.

00:02:13.200 My models have worked a lot better.

00:02:15.880 So it's model based.

00:02:17.200 You know, you don't get very far in this business going with your gut instinct or your preference that has nothing to do with it.

00:02:24.000 But it says that Trump was going to win.

00:02:27.500 But I was getting a little nervous because there were a lot of people who agreed with me.

00:02:30.120 But just in a little in the last five days, I'm isolated again, which is great.

00:02:36.060 I feel more comfortable being out on a limb.

00:02:38.900 That tells me I've got this right.

00:02:40.500 So we'll see what happens.

00:02:41.480 It's going to be close.

00:02:42.160 I would never dispute the fact that it's going to be close.

00:02:44.600 And if you're an investor or someone who needs to prepare for all scenarios, and that's always a good idea, you can't rule out the fact that Biden would win.

00:02:53.120 And I could give you a whole playbook of what would happen if Biden wins.

00:02:57.440 But you've got to call it like you said.

00:02:59.200 Right now I've got Trump winning.

00:03:03.180 I would like to say on election night, he'll certainly win on election night.

00:03:07.120 But the problem is, and this is a big deal, the election won't be over.

00:03:11.780 I like the way they do it in the UK.

00:03:13.200 They have well-run elections, good exit polling, and they actually declare winners based on the exit polls.

00:03:18.940 And then they count the votes, but it's quick and it's a very good track record.

00:03:23.440 The United States is anything but, and this year is going to be much, much worse.

00:03:28.960 I don't know how much you want to get into it.

00:03:31.940 I travel around the world a lot and I run into foreign media and analysts and just everyday people.

00:03:39.620 And they always say, you know, Jim, we don't understand U.S. politics.

00:03:42.080 and say well that's okay americans don't understand it either uh but you can take people

00:03:46.880 through it so there's a lot behind the forecast uh i don't not sure which way you want to go or

00:03:53.620 how deeply you want to go well jim before we get into the nitty-gritty of it which we do want to

00:03:57.980 get into because one of the things i found fascinating you talking about four years ago

00:04:02.100 was how the betting markets were and the forecasting was based on amounts of money as

00:04:08.040 opposed to numbers of people. That was a fascinating thing. But before we go back to

00:04:12.000 that, a lot of people will be watching this going, look, Jim Rickards, he's a conservative

00:04:16.060 Republican. Of course, he's going to say Donald Trump's going to win. This is just, you know,

00:04:21.340 this is what he wants to happen. And that's why he's predicting. And what do you say to those

00:04:25.200 people? Well, I am, in fact, a conservative Republican. I think I'm more of a pragmatist

00:04:30.540 than a, you know, by the book conservative. But yeah, I'm a right leaning conservative.

00:04:38.040 But I don't get paid, and I don't have any success if I'm wrong.

00:04:44.920 So from serving the audience, providing a newsletter service, providing interviews like this,

00:04:53.120 banging the drum for one side or the other just because I may have a preference,

00:04:57.340 it doesn't get me anywhere.

00:04:58.700 It doesn't increase your – it doesn't improve your reputation.

00:05:01.760 It doesn't enhance your standing.

00:05:03.080 It doesn't serve the audience.

00:05:05.240 And by the way, in 2012, I predicted Obama would win.

00:05:09.280 I didn't vote for Obama, but I said he would win.

00:05:12.640 And all of Wall Street was all in for Romney.

00:05:15.120 You know, this guy, Paul Singer, Elliott Investing, and many others.

00:05:19.660 No reason to single out Paul Singer.

00:05:22.840 They were certain Romney was going to win.

00:05:25.180 And I actually put that into my model because Wall Street has a really, really horrible forecasting record.

00:05:32.080 I mean, ask yourself, do Wall Street see the 2008 financial crisis coming?

00:05:36.760 Did they see the 2020 financial crisis coming?

00:05:39.100 Did they see the pandemic coming?

00:05:40.840 Do they ever get anything right?

00:05:42.060 The answer is no.

00:05:43.700 And by the way, if you go back to 2019, July 2019, my book, Aftermath, at the end, between pages 288 and 293, it specifically mentions pandemic.

00:05:55.880 It says pandemic.

00:05:56.940 I had two other scenarios.

00:05:58.100 Three, I said each one has a certain probability.

00:06:00.620 there's a hundred percent chance one of them will happen in the next three years turned out

00:06:05.300 to be the pandemic i spoke about armed i spoke about social disorder armed um gangs in the

00:06:11.220 streets which is exactly what we have so everything that's going on now was forecast in my book my

00:06:16.220 2019 book aftermath i have a new book coming out maybe we've talked about that we'll tell you where

00:06:20.600 we're going but my point is yeah i have political preferences i vote uh but um i don't always vote

00:06:26.440 for the winner but i don't uh have much success if i can't forecast the winner or just to be clear

00:06:31.660 before you jump in francis whether you're right or wrong in your prediction you're not getting

00:06:36.020 paid by us either way oh absolutely this is a pleasure i'm happy to do it i'm just joking i'm

00:06:41.840 just joking i would say uh uh yeah we can go back and forth uh and all that but i would say the

00:06:46.080 audience wins so jim i've got a theory on what i actually i actually think trump's going to win

00:06:51.980 And my theory on why is because here we talk about a shy Tory vote, shy conservative vote.

00:06:58.760 People don't want to admit to voting conservative, having conservative values because of the backlash that they will face in their public life and so on and so forth.

00:07:06.580 But you can almost times that by 10 as to being a Trump voter in that not only do you face ostracization by your peers, your family, you also risk losing your job.

00:07:19.420 So why would anybody admit in a poll or otherwise that they're going to vote for Trump?

00:07:24.580 Do you think that's part of the reason why we see these polls so skewed towards Biden?

00:07:28.720 It's part of the reason that the polls are heavily skewed, you're right.

00:07:31.700 And that is part of the reason I personally don't worry about it because I don't have a job.

00:07:36.120 I mean, I'm just I'm a writer.

00:07:38.060 You can't fire me because I work independently.

00:07:40.640 So I guess I can say what I want.

00:07:42.500 But you're absolutely right.

00:07:44.160 It's gone beyond, oh, gee, maybe we'll have a heated water cooler discussion.

00:07:49.420 or a couple of people at a cocktail party getting their tempers up.

00:07:52.540 That's par for the course, but it's way beyond that.

00:07:57.100 And you're absolutely right.

00:07:58.140 People are being hauled before disciplinary committees at schools because they tweeted something innocuous.

00:08:04.360 You know, pro-Trump, let's say, but not, you know, QAnon or Alex, you know, I'm not talking about that stuff.

00:08:11.240 I'm just saying, you know, go Trump.

00:08:13.580 You know, something very bland of being hauled before disciplinary committees because other students feel endangered.

00:08:18.880 You know, it's a snowflake factor, as we call it. People are getting fired from jobs. They're being denied tenure. Their publications are not being picked up by the right journals, which is critical for a career path in academia and the law for that matter.

00:08:33.600 So the consequences are the punishments, if you will, for a point of view, are more harsh than ever.

00:08:42.340 And you're absolutely right.

00:08:43.380 Why would you speak up?

00:08:44.940 You just go to the voting booth and do your thing.

00:08:46.360 Now, having said that, it's, you know, Francis, you said it's sort of a factor of 10.

00:08:51.700 You're right about that.

00:08:53.260 Let me give you new data that's just literally coming out, came out this morning and in recent days.

00:09:00.240 In addition to the registered voter who is likely to vote, there's a distinction between registered and likely.

00:09:07.620 Let's take the likely voter who's likely to vote, voted for Trump, going to vote for Trump this time, but maybe doesn't talk to a pollster, doesn't voice that opinion.

00:09:16.000 In addition to that, the Republicans are crushing the Democrats in terms of new registrants, just going door to door.

00:09:23.700 We call it the ground game. You need tens of thousands, if not more volunteers.

00:09:28.680 It's the most thankless job in politics, but it's one of the most powerful.

00:09:31.700 You go door to door, knock on doors, introduce yourself.

00:09:34.700 And if the person's not registered and they lean Trump or you have reason to believe that, you get them registered.

00:09:40.560 You give them the forms or, hey, hop in my car, I'll take you down to town, whatever you need, or go to this website, et cetera.

00:09:46.520 But it shows up because certain states, including the key battleground states, actually allow you to register as a Republican or a Democrat or an independent.

00:09:56.220 Now, some states don't do that.

00:09:57.240 just registered, period. But some of the key states, including Pennsylvania and Arizona and

00:10:03.940 Florida, you can actually indicate a preference. So they get the data. This is hard data. This is

00:10:11.400 not speculation. And Republicans are beating Democrats two to one in new registered voters,

00:10:18.020 in particular, white, non-college educated voters. That's the Trump base right there.

00:10:25.740 You know, you can slice it and dice it any way you want.

00:10:28.300 And I think it's too bad we're so spun up about race, but there it is.

00:10:32.720 But the white non-collegiate, the high school graduate, high school dropout, the assembly line worker who never got any college, white, and in particular men, the margins are 100,000.

00:10:47.220 Okay, so maybe one state was about 190,000 Republicans signed up and about 95,000 Democrats signed up. So the margin was 100,000. But these are states that Trump won by 10,000 votes, or in the case of Pennsylvania, 44,000 votes.

00:11:03.760 So when you see 100,000 or higher margin in registrants for your party among a demographic that is just all in for Trump, and that margin is bigger than Trump's margin of victory in 2016, that is a very good sign.

00:11:20.780 The other thing that's even more interesting, black women are registering Republican and indicating that they want to vote for Trump.

00:11:28.800 Now, is Trump going to get 50% of the black women?

00:11:32.760 No.

00:11:33.800 40?

00:11:34.460 No.

00:11:34.820 30?

00:11:35.360 No.

00:11:36.380 But he might get 10.

00:11:37.480 And in 2016, black women went for Hillary Clinton 99 to 1.

00:11:42.580 They got 99%.

00:11:43.800 So the point is, if you even make it 90-10, so you add 10 points.

00:11:49.020 so what's that demographic

00:11:51.280 African Americans 12% of the population

00:11:53.600 let's just say half men half women

00:11:55.320 so you're talking about 6% of the population

00:11:57.620 with a 10 percentage point increase

00:11:59.520 that's 0.6

00:12:01.620 percentage points in your

00:12:03.520 column that's huge I mean when you're

00:12:05.460 winning these states by two tenths or three tenths

00:12:07.820 and here's a demographic that's coming

00:12:09.320 six tenths your way that by itself

00:12:11.720 is huge so there are

00:12:13.120 without getting too geeky maybe I already have

00:12:15.280 but the point is there are things like

00:12:17.460 that and just just to add one more footnote when you register a new voter someone who's never voted

00:12:23.040 before but they're like whatever they're fired up they're angry or they're motivated whatever

00:12:27.760 they're going to vote and you register them they are not in the pollsters databases because they've

00:12:33.580 never voted before now i excoriate the pollsters for looking at you know all adults or register

00:12:39.960 those categories don't matter you got to look at likely voters so the first thing you got to get

00:12:45.160 right is let's confine to likely voters you need a big enough sample which means 13 i've done i've

00:12:51.440 done polling for presidential candidates where i hired you know i'm not going to mention the name

00:12:55.060 but if i did it would you say oh yeah that guy top top pollsters so i've worked behind the scenes

00:13:00.300 how you construct the questions etc and um when you uh you need about 1300 respondents to have a

00:13:09.440 good scientifically valid poll well some of these are coming out you read you read the press releases

00:13:13.260 they had 800 800 registered voters i don't care about 800 registered voters you know half of them

00:13:19.060 won't vote and uh 800 is too small of a sample so that doesn't tell me very much the other thing

00:13:25.040 here ad nauseum and this goes back to where you started you know biden's ahead 10 points or whatever

00:13:29.420 by the way he's down to six today on the same polls um those are national polls we don't have

00:13:36.680 national elections in the united states that comes as news to a lot of people but we don't

00:13:40.840 We have 50 state elections and the District of Columbia.

00:13:45.380 So just throw that in.

00:13:46.520 So 51 separate state elections plus D.C.

00:13:49.980 And when you vote, you're not even voting for president.

00:13:51.780 You're voting for electors who then go to Washington in December and pick the president.

00:13:58.680 So that's how it works.

00:13:59.900 I mean, it's fifth grade, civics class.

00:14:02.560 But the point being, national polls are meaningless.

00:14:06.640 And let me be specific about that.

00:14:08.820 in 2016 uh hillary clinton got four million more votes than donald trump just in the state of

00:14:16.360 california just california now hillary beat trump by three million votes which means trump beat

00:14:24.040 hillary by a million votes in the rest of the country you know you got this big big cluster

00:14:28.380 of extra democrats in california now that will show up in a national poll you should be you know

00:14:35.640 they should be taking that into account but you can only win california once in other words you

00:14:40.120 can't just because you got four million more votes you don't get to win it twice you win it once so

00:14:44.960 the point being those three those four million votes in the example i gave skew the national

00:14:52.060 polls but they don't get you any electoral votes they're just wasted you could win with

00:14:57.380 50% plus one. That's all you need. So 50% plus 4 million is 4 million wasted votes.

00:15:07.940 So forget the national, look at the battleground states, look at Michigan, big deal, Pennsylvania,

00:15:12.640 Florida, Ohio, everyone knows what they are. Look at those individual polls. And even there,

00:15:18.140 there are a lot of flaws, but that'll give you a better guide.

00:15:20.920 And Jim, I'm going to put the counterpoint to you that a lot of people are saying that Biden is

00:15:27.000 going to romp to victory because people are sick and tired of trump they're sick and tired of his

00:15:32.180 divisiveness there's a rhetoric that he is racist and there's a backlash against him happening in

00:15:40.520 america handle the coronavirus very badly many people would say is that all you got um

00:15:46.080 here's the thing they've been saying that for six years on a daily basis so you're you're right that

00:15:52.400 people say that you're right that the media acts as an amplifier and repeats it and a lot of people

00:15:57.440 have that view you're absolutely right the question is is it enough to win i mean leave aside whether

00:16:02.520 it's true i would dispute the substance of it uh donald trump uh got the first israeli arab peace

00:16:11.320 deals in 25 years um he um prior to covid covid's a once in a hundred year uh you know uh setback so

00:16:21.120 you have to allow for that but prior to that

00:16:23.140 he had higher growth than the Obama

00:16:25.360 administration, lower unemployment

00:16:26.920 a lot of the job gains were

00:16:29.460 to African Americans and Hispanics

00:16:31.660 but by the way just to

00:16:33.360 prove the point, a poll came out

00:16:35.380 recently and this goes back to

00:16:36.840 I believe 1984

00:16:38.220 Ronald Reagan was in a

00:16:40.920 it might have been 1980, Jimmy Carter but

00:16:42.960 it was Ronald Reagan early days

00:16:45.060 80 or 84 and he was in a debate

00:16:47.420 and he said

00:16:48.180 And my fellow Americans, I want you to ask yourself a question.

00:16:51.840 Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

00:16:55.080 Now, he knew the answer was no.

00:16:56.700 We had a bad recession, high interest rates, high inflation, high unemployment.

00:17:04.020 So it was a rhetorical question in the sense that the answer was no, I'm not better off.

00:17:08.640 But he knew that.

00:17:09.380 But he asked the question.

00:17:10.300 Everyone was like, am I better off?

00:17:11.420 No.

00:17:11.960 Why would I vote for this guy?

00:17:13.620 So since then, the pollsters, Gallup in particular, picked up on this.

00:17:17.060 every four years they poll are you better off than you were four years ago in a very recent poll

00:17:23.060 meaning in the last couple days 56 percent of the americans said yes i'm better off than it was four

00:17:29.900 years ago now and and then they looked at other winners not the losers but the winners obama in

00:17:36.340 2012 george w bush in 2008 etc and their their answer to the question was kind of 47 48 46 in

00:17:46.200 that range they won with a below 50 yes answer to the question and trump's got 56 saying yes

00:17:55.660 that's a very good sign and then when biden was asked about it i mean it's a sad case i mean

00:18:01.260 basically um you know you might want to check the supplies in your bomb shelter because we were

00:18:07.240 electing well we're voting on a dementia sufferer and that's not that's not a gratuitous um claim

00:18:15.360 It's very clear. And a lot of physicians agree. Just to be clear, I'm not a doctor and I haven't interviewed Joe Biden, but that that's very clear to anyone who's paying attention.

00:18:25.640 So a reporter, you know, then he doesn't answer many questions, but the reporter said, well, what do you think about this poll that says 56 percent of Americans say they're better off than they were four years ago?

00:18:35.400 Biden said, well, they shouldn't vote for me. Now, I guess he couldn't do the math because if you tell 56 percent of the Americans not to vote for you, you lose.

00:18:44.400 But Biden's reaction was, well, they shouldn't vote for me.

00:18:48.620 By the way, that kind of angry response, that response function, which is more anger than rationality, is a symptom of Alzheimer's, early stage Alzheimer's.

00:18:59.340 You know, he's picked fights all through the primary.

00:19:01.400 You call people, you know, you're a lying dog face pony soldier.

00:19:05.040 He calls some guy.

00:19:05.900 He was a heavyweight.

00:19:06.740 He said he called him fat.

00:19:07.980 Probably meant to say fats, but he said fat.

00:19:10.920 He's challenging people to push up contests.

00:19:12.980 I mean, these are all, this is erratic behavior of someone who is suffering mental decline, and that's very apparent.

00:19:19.040 So, but my point is, data points like that are very favorable to Trump.

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00:21:16.120 The question that I wanted to ask, Jim, is do you think that American democracy is in a state of crisis?

00:21:25.260 Because there is a poll that is frequently used to demonstrate the fact that I think it's 30% of people on either side, red and blue,

00:21:33.360 say that they wouldn't respect the result of the election and do you think that we're going to see

00:21:40.920 social unrest on the streets if either candidate has a very very marginal victory the answer is

00:21:46.780 yes i actually wrote an article um i have a newsletter strategic intelligence comes out

00:21:51.820 monthly and it's a it's a it's a big list runs around 5 000 words that's a decent sized article

00:21:56.580 i wrote an article in february 2017 literally just a week or so after trump was sworn in as president

00:22:05.180 and i said uh i talked about the resistance and i said they're coming at trump uh and i talked about

00:22:12.460 what i call the five arrows um the first was uh you know scandal just get the guy so bought down

00:22:18.980 scandals that the white house becomes dysfunctional and he can't do his job uh two was the 25th

00:22:25.180 amendment which allows for the cabinet and or a committee of congress to remove the president

00:22:31.720 from office declare that he's mentally unfit at which point the vice president becomes acting

00:22:36.060 president by the way that will be used if biden wins say kamala harris will be acting president

00:22:40.220 by the by next summer um but but anyway they went after trump on the 25th amendment third was

00:22:46.520 impeachment um and uh fourth was uh just you know force him to resign make it so miserable

00:22:54.220 so relentless so one-sided so unfair that the guy would just resign the fifth one and i say

00:23:00.100 delicately was assassination but um i've just written a book on the covid pandemic and uh i

00:23:06.260 reached the conclusion based on a lot of evidence that's in the book so don't have to recite it now

00:23:10.460 that this virus did uh come out of a laboratory it was a bioengineered and did come out of a

00:23:16.560 laboratory i can't go so far as to say it was it was weaponized and released on purpose it

00:23:22.500 probably was an accident but if a virus if a fatal virus came out of a chinese lab

00:23:29.420 and the president was struck with it and sidelined for a few days and it's pretty close to

00:23:35.140 assassination so my point being every one of the arrows that i predicted has in fact been thrown

00:23:41.740 at trump and they have all failed um he's still you know he's still standing and uh and here we

00:23:46.880 are coming down the home stretch but they're they're still trying everything they can think of

00:23:50.720 Jim, let me try and use some of your past words on our show against you a little bit, because last time we had you on, you talked, we asked you, this would have been probably April, May, something like that, in the middle of the pandemic. And we asked you whether Trump would be reelected based on what was happening at the time. And you said, if the economy is good, there's a very strong chance. It's clear the economy is not going to be good, is it?

00:24:16.080 correct now uh saying that he'll get re-elected if the economy is good is not the same as saying

00:24:25.300 he won't be re-elected if it's bad true so i'll leave it at that uh the economy is not great um

00:24:31.420 but a lot of things um a lot of the decisive things happen at the margin uh so is it getting

00:24:38.760 better yes it's not getting better there's no v-shaped recovery you know larry kudlow nice guy

00:24:44.780 But as president, head of the National Economic Council, I say they should give him some pom-poms because he's kind of a cheerleader for whatever.

00:24:52.860 Very nice guy, really atrocious forecasting record.

00:24:56.960 So the idea that we're having a V-shaped recovery, it's all good, is not true.

00:25:01.880 And there's empirical data behind that.

00:25:04.320 In fact, everyone's worried about the second wave of the virus.

00:25:07.440 Okay, that may happen.

00:25:08.680 And what we're seeing is a second wave of terminations and furloughs, a second wave of redundancies.

00:25:15.500 The first wave was in March and April.

00:25:17.820 Obviously, businesses shut down.

00:25:19.320 They laid off employees.

00:25:20.800 But some didn't.

00:25:21.480 Some got the Congress enacted $3 trillion of support programs.

00:25:28.900 One of them was the Payroll Protection Plan and basically said a small and medium-sized business could apply for a loan, get it.

00:25:36.700 uh and the size of the loan was based on your payroll was two and a half times your payroll

00:25:40.440 and if you used it for the intended purpose which was payroll and rent was allowed if you used it

00:25:46.460 for the intended purpose the loan would be forgiven there'd be some paperwork at the end

00:25:50.280 you'd have to prove you paid or whatever well that worked it worked fairly well for anyone who

00:25:56.060 could qualify for it you had to jump through some hoops okay but the theory was that when that came

00:26:02.060 out in april and early may it was a two and a half two and a half month bridge loan to august

00:26:08.660 and the the view was that by august the pandemic would be over the economy would be recovering

00:26:13.700 restaurants would reopen they'd hire back people etc none of that happened the reopening did not

00:26:19.280 happen happened in fits and starts but then no sooner did they reopen they shut it down again

00:26:23.320 um when you go bankrupt you don't reopen it's you know there was wishful thinking to think that uh

00:26:29.960 um i mean i i live in a town i'm in new hampshire we have uh it's it's kind of a restaurant

00:26:35.960 magnum we have about 100 really good restaurants in in a small city but um what we're seeing now

00:26:41.980 is not that they shut down and they're reopening without their seating and you know 25 capacity

00:26:46.560 we're seeing bankruptcies we're seeing closures now the entrepreneur may go somewhere else and

00:26:51.920 someone else may step in and in the fullness of time maybe there'll be another restaurant but

00:26:56.600 Not now. Those jobs are not coming back.

00:26:58.840 And because everyone's used up their working capital to get this far,

00:27:03.820 now they are broke, and there is no new plan.

00:27:07.580 Thank you, Nancy Pelosi.

00:27:09.080 And as a result, we're getting a second wave of lips.

00:27:13.440 We're seeing it in airlines, restaurants, hotels, casinos, resorts,

00:27:18.140 you know, nail salons, et cetera.

00:27:19.940 And people look down their nose at some of those –

00:27:21.740 airlines is a big industry, but people look down their nose

00:27:24.900 at you know bars restaurants and nail salons they're like ah who cares you got 10 employees

00:27:29.160 in the aggregate those types of businesses are 45 percent of gdp and 50 percent of total employment

00:27:36.940 so maybe individually they're small but in the aggregate it's half the economy if you whack half

00:27:42.940 the economy you're not going to get good results now having said all that um the stock market is

00:27:48.600 close to new all-time highs that's that's a separate story people go how could the economy

00:27:52.260 be so poor if the stock market's going up and there's a very simple answer which is the the

00:27:57.220 stock market has nothing to do with the economy it has to do with the um market capitalization

00:28:03.000 of like six names you know they call it the s p 500 i call it the s p six if you say um well it

00:28:09.060 is if you take microsoft amazon netflix uh apple uh google so-called alphabet and facebook those

00:28:15.720 six stocks are 40 of the market cap of the s p so if they're doing fine the index is doing fine

00:28:21.700 the other 494 stocks however are nowhere near all-time highs and some of them are barely off

00:28:27.860 the lows of march 23rd so um and the ones i mentioned by the way are the least affected

00:28:34.200 by the pandemic you know if you're digital you're streaming how is netflix affected by a virus well

00:28:39.860 it isn't how's amazon affected by a virus well business is booming because people are afraid to

00:28:44.600 go out so i understand why those names are doing well but in a cap-weighted index you get into a

00:28:51.540 recursive function where people bid up the stocks and then the price goes up and what happens next

00:28:57.660 people buy them because the price went up and then you bid them up some more so you're in this

00:29:01.780 feedback loop uh they're going higher the indices are going higher the economy is not but when you

00:29:07.680 sit down at night and watch the nightly news or whatever they say s&p you know near an all-time

00:29:12.320 high so it sounds all good and jim isn't this virus and in particular the lockdown response

00:29:19.400 of this just going to exacerbate the gap between rich and poor, particularly in countries like

00:29:24.980 America? Yes, it already has. And I think it's a very, very good point. The income inequality was

00:29:32.540 pretty bad before this. It's worse now, because the most vulnerable are the most affected. And I

00:29:39.700 don't just mean in terms of getting the virus. Yeah, I mean, there are healthcare disparities

00:29:43.820 in terms of how you get treated if you get it,

00:29:47.400 but independent of people getting the disease,

00:29:50.940 just the fact that you've been fired or terminated or laid off.

00:29:55.180 And one of the things we're seeing, if you can, people are saving.

00:30:00.440 Well, that makes sense.

00:30:01.380 If you've just lost your job and you've got to pay rent or pay the mortgage

00:30:05.060 or a car loan or a student loan or whatever it may be,

00:30:07.840 you're going to save more and spend less so you can meet those obligations.

00:30:11.020 even if you're better off uh and you've kept your job you're doing what economists call

00:30:16.840 precautionary savings which is you don't you're not stressed on a day-to-day basis but you're

00:30:22.220 like well maybe i'll be next you know maybe i'm getting fired maybe my business will go down

00:30:26.240 and so um i will save more well savings can be a good way to drive an economy assuming

00:30:33.640 you can find productive investments for it you can route it to investment and it's productive that

00:30:39.920 you know investment is part of gdp uh but the problem is that has a five to ten year payoff

00:30:46.500 if you can find the projects which is doubtful because there's no agreement between democrats

00:30:51.760 and republicans on infrastructure spending you know where's the interstate highway system where's

00:30:56.060 the moon landing where's you know where's the big uh big ticket items that are going to um

00:31:01.420 absorb some of this investment well they're not around right now other than the military to some

00:31:05.600 extent um but uh if you're saving and you don't have productive investment that comes at the

00:31:11.780 expense of consumption the u.s economy is 70 driven by consumption so what you have is a

00:31:17.320 situation where maybe you have some investment uh but maybe you just have savings and liquidity

00:31:22.400 trap which best case has a 10-year payoff and worst case not much payoff at all at the expense

00:31:28.700 of consumption which is getting crushed immediately here and now that's that's the

00:31:34.020 recipe i mean i i actually expect um i i distinguish and we don't have to belabor this

00:31:39.180 but i distinguish between recessions and depressions a recession is you know we all

00:31:44.120 know what it is it's two consecutive quarters of declining gdp with a couple you know maybe

00:31:48.600 rising unemployment a couple bells and whistles and we have the national bureau of economic

00:31:52.160 research which is the official arbiter of when they start and stop and they've already said

00:31:55.920 it started in february and i think that's right uh a depression is different depression is a long

00:32:00.300 term uh period of below trend growth you can actually have growth in a depression the point

00:32:06.820 is it's below potential it's below trend and your debt's going up and your growth isn't going up

00:32:11.660 enough um so we're probably out of the recession the recession hit in the second quarter so first

00:32:18.900 i was just speaking the united states but i think it's true generally the world first quarter down

00:32:22.860 five percent because it really struck in march it had a pretty good january and february but

00:32:26.740 march was bad enough to take it down five percent second quarter was down uh 31 percent approximately

00:32:33.780 uh so there's your recession right there are two back-to-back quarters of declining growth

00:32:38.500 third quarter we won't have the numbers until i think october 28th it looks like it's up 35 percent

00:32:44.440 um so people go wait a second jim you know down 31 percent up 35 percent aren't you back where

00:32:50.780 started and the answer is no go back to your fifth grade math book uh if if you if you started

00:32:56.460 100 so 100 of gdp that's your baseline you go down 30 down 31 you're 69 so you've got to apply

00:33:04.620 the 35 to the 69 that's that's about 20 or so it gets you up to 89 you're getting round numbers

00:33:11.980 gets you up to 89 89 is not 100 and then what about the fourth quarter what if it's down again

00:33:18.940 what if it's two percent you know you're not getting out of this

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00:34:35.360 I want to stay with Trump just for the moment. Jim, there are two other things that have happened

00:34:40.540 since we last talked to you, which will undoubtedly have a huge impact on the election.

00:34:44.580 The first one of them is the coronavirus. As we talked earlier in the interview, there is a perception among some people, I would argue many people, that Donald Trump has not handled it well. Over 200 and something thousand Americans have died. A lot of people think his handling of it was involved in that figure, in that very high death toll.

00:35:07.320 And the other thing is, we obviously had the protests in the wake of the George Floyd situation. We don't know exactly what happened there. But obviously, you know, visually, it looked very bad. And there was protests and all over the world, the riots continuing across America on a daily basis. And that is obviously something that may drive a lot of people into Trump's hands, because they feel like they no longer have security and safety in their own lives.

00:35:36.040 So how will those two crucial elements play in this election?

00:35:41.180 Well, the first one about Trump's handling of this, first of all, the 200,000 dead, you know, Kamala Harris, who's kind of a lightweight, is out there laying 200,000 dead at the feet of Donald Trump.

00:35:54.480 It was your, um, uh, Neil Ferguson who said there were going to be 2 million dead, uh, you know, in the Lancet. Uh, I think he's, I think he's with Oxford, but he's with one of your top, uh, universities and research labs and published in Lancet, which is the most prestigious.

00:36:09.220 He's a Jim, sorry to interrupt. He's at Imperial College London, but, uh, for, for American viewers who may not be familiar, it turns out he was very busy doing some extracurricular activities on the side instead of doing the work.

00:36:20.340 Correct. So he's been largely discredited. But I think you have to compare 200,000 dead is 200,000 too many. So we can stipulate that. But is it, oh, gee, good leadership would have been zero, but Trump was 200,000. So we will lay those fatalities at his feet. Or you were looking at maybe 2 million. In some states of the world, 200,000 was a job well done.

00:36:43.160 So that's the kind of balance you need to understand this, and I don't see that from any of our politicians, but I lean a little bit to the category that this could have been a lot worse.

00:36:53.900 Now, in the case of Trump, I think he handled it horribly, but let me explain why, because there are two facets to this.

00:37:01.600 One is, what policies did you pursue?

00:37:05.000 Were they effective?

00:37:06.620 And could someone else have done a better job?

00:37:09.440 There's a legitimate policy dispute.

00:37:12.080 The second part is, what was your demeanor?

00:37:15.000 What was your message?

00:37:17.000 What was your, how did you act as a leader?

00:37:19.780 We've never elected an immunologist as president.

00:37:22.780 We've never had an epidemiologist in the White House.

00:37:25.040 And no one should expect a president to be able to wave his hand and say, oh, the virus

00:37:30.360 will go away.

00:37:31.180 But Donald Trump is just the kind of guy who might say something like that.

00:37:34.480 I mean, it's absurd.

00:37:35.360 so if you look at actual policies he banned travel from china in january not march when

00:37:42.120 the hockey stick you know hyperbolic growth started in january probably right there saved

00:37:48.660 several hundred thousand lives because china was busy exporting the virus people were flying out

00:37:53.420 of beijing shanghai wuhan on a daily basis going all over the world this is why italy got whacked

00:37:58.920 because it was fashion week and the chinese on the the big chunk of the italian fashion industry

00:38:04.100 and then those people came to new york uh etc so um so so the point is china was busy exporting it

00:38:11.540 and trump cut it off then in very short order meaning in a matter of um well probably four

00:38:18.180 or five weeks in stages ban travel from the uk travel from the eu uh travel from uh close the

00:38:25.280 canadian border canadian border longest non-defended border in the world closed uh and

00:38:30.880 still not reopened by the way um so he did a lot of those things right now we have mario sorry um

00:38:37.820 andrew cuomo the governor of new york he's coming out doing daily press conferences and he's screaming

00:38:43.240 he's hyper he's ventilators ventilators ventilators get me the ventilators get me the ventilators

00:38:47.520 trump used what we call the defense production act which now allows the president basically

00:38:52.420 through executive power to order u.s industries to produce certain goods in a national emergency

00:38:59.580 state of war etc a lot of these laws have been around since the 1950s because we were getting

00:39:04.200 ready for a nuclear war um and he got the ventilators guess what those ventilators are

00:39:09.700 unopened they're stacked up in warehouses they don't work it's a it's a really bad treatment

00:39:13.880 and there's no better example of that than your prime minister boris johnson because he was near

00:39:18.120 death he'd say the same thing himself and his doctors had a choice you could intubate which

00:39:23.520 means you put the that's the ventilator you put the tube down your throat that's called intubation

00:39:27.600 and it's like a it's like a lung machine that pumps your lungs or give him pure oxygen the

00:39:33.320 more the better and intubation doesn't work because the problem is not your lungs your lungs

00:39:38.060 work fine the problem is the oxygen can't get to the blood cells in the lungs intubation is what

00:39:44.340 you do when your lungs are not working you gotta like pump this guy's lungs up uh but oxygen is

00:39:49.180 the answer because we get more oxygen in in the lungs more of it will get to the blood and that

00:39:53.940 will keep you alive they had a really close call they said we're not sure what we're going to do

00:39:57.780 they went with oxygen and baris johnson survived um and that was the right decision and but but

00:40:04.700 he's he's like a one-man case study of the fact that ventilators don't work uh and so trump got

00:40:10.860 but trump got the ventilators and there's like i say they're still in boxes so uh this warps

00:40:16.300 warp speed we don't have a vaccine yet but but even his worst critics are are amazed like wow

00:40:22.280 the fact that you got, you know, billions of dollars, billions of dollars to 10 or more major

00:40:29.540 drug companies all over the world and told them to work flat out and waived every impediment and

00:40:33.680 waived every regulation. Yes, safety and effectiveness still counts, but we're going

00:40:37.180 to get all the other red tape out of the way. We don't have a vaccine yet. We may not, by the way,

00:40:41.560 I'm not saying that the vaccine is a foregone conclusion, although Wall Street seems to think

00:40:46.680 so. I'm not so sure. But my point is, there's nothing more you could have done. He did everything

00:40:50.760 possible so if we're talking about um the ventilators even though they don't work he got

00:40:55.080 he surged two hospital ships to um new york and los angeles he built a field hospital in the

00:41:01.680 javits center it's it's just like you know it's a big convention center um etc he war speed got

00:41:08.380 stuff going on the vaccine the travel ban put a little he did all those things exactly right

00:41:13.460 exactly right now what did he do wrong trump was handed an opportunity to maybe break the ranks of

00:41:20.700 the top 10 best presidents in american history he had an fdr moment remember fdr was sworn in

00:41:26.800 1930 march 1933 at the depths of the great great depression it was a bank run and and he closed

00:41:34.840 the banks imagine today president just saying all the banks are closed i'll get back to you when

00:41:38.300 they reopen that's what fdr did uh you know um confiscate a goal raise he did a lot of things

00:41:44.460 don't need to recite the fdr thing but but what he did above all he inspired confidence he said

00:41:49.220 gave a very famous speech and the memorable line of course is we have nothing to fear but fear

00:41:56.080 itself it was very it was a Churchillian moment it was an FDR moment Trump had that opportunity

00:42:01.400 what you should have done any any business manager knows this any seasoned politician knows it you

00:42:07.040 deliver the worst news first you say you know what this is bad this is a pandemic haven't seen this

00:42:13.640 in 100 years sad to say we may have you know 100 000 or 200 000 fatalities tragedy we may get that

00:42:22.740 but we can beat this together working together as americans mobilizing industry with your help

00:42:29.460 etc we can beat this that speech would have guaranteed him victory and would have put him

00:42:35.960 in the history books he didn't give that speech he got out there and this is in late march early

00:42:42.160 april every day did these tedious tendentious two-hour press conferences where um pardon my

00:42:50.760 language but he got in a pissing match with lightweights like john carl and and you know

00:42:55.920 the washington press corps you know that worked in 2016 and it worked in a non-crisis situation

00:43:02.440 because everyone hates the press anyway it wasn't at all the right thing it wasn't he didn't he

00:43:08.680 He failed to rise to the occasion.

00:43:10.960 So substantively, he did almost everything right.

00:43:14.060 A few mistakes, but they were inevitable.

00:43:15.680 Nobody had this right.

00:43:18.180 Nobody knew what we were dealing with.

00:43:19.560 But given that uncertainty, he did a really good job substantively.

00:43:23.500 Stylistically and from a leadership point of view, he was horrible.

00:43:28.020 And if he loses, again, my forecast is that he'll win.

00:43:31.860 But if he loses, I'll lay it at the feet of those press conferences.

00:43:35.160 I'll go back to April and say that's where he lost

00:43:36.880 because he failed to provide leadership okay and then take me uh through blm which has obviously

00:43:42.420 had a huge impact on society over there as well sure i call it a bolshevik lives matter they are

00:43:47.440 a neo-marxist organization they have a platform you can go to the website this is not you know

00:43:53.120 a conspiracy theory we're not going to 4chan or anything just go to their website and look at

00:43:58.680 platform. They endorse a policy that has killed more African-Americans than slavery and lynching

00:44:09.300 combined. There were approximately 3.1 million American slaves from Africa and their descendants

00:44:19.380 during the period of slavery up to 1865, going back 1619 to 1835, about 3.1 million, 3.1 million

00:44:26.640 slaves and they didn't all die because of slavery but if you said their lives were you know in effect

00:44:32.720 worse than impaired degraded etc call that 3.1 million victims and several hundred thousand from

00:44:37.760 lynching um they have but black lives matter supports uh abortion which has killed 20 million

00:44:46.320 black children so if black lives matter why are you supporting abortion you say well abortion is

00:44:52.720 black and white it's not um african-americans about 12 of the population uh and they're about

00:44:59.240 40 of all the abortion so abortion is disproportionately a kind of black genocide

00:45:06.000 and if you think that's a stretch i would say the biggest abortion provider in the united states is

00:45:11.080 planned parenthood planned parenthood was founded by margaret sanger uh she was a public figure in

00:45:16.920 the 1930s go read go read what margaret sanger said she was a racist and anti-semite um and said

00:45:24.940 one of the reasons we need to have more abortions is so the black population doesn't get out of

00:45:28.780 control that's what she said again you can look it up um and so uh there's your founder of planned

00:45:35.800 parenthood those are your statistics in terms of abortion and black lives matter supports a policy

00:45:43.080 of black genocide so they're they're frauds uh they're frauds in terms of the public persona

00:45:47.700 where they're not frauds is they say they're neo-marxist and they are well but what will be

00:45:53.640 the impact of everything that's happened as a result of their protests uh on the election do

00:45:58.960 you think uh it's going to help trump uh it's i talked to a guy i won't mention his name a couple

00:46:05.640 of days ago well-known figure you know top top investor multi-billion dollar portfolio um and he

00:46:13.840 called me he calls me from time to time for you know just to talk about the economy and portfolio

00:46:19.440 applications and stuff like that well and he's a smart guy he's very plugged in he calls me he calls

00:46:24.000 50 other people this guy is very plugged in and he was anguished he lives in wisconsin uh and

00:46:32.820 And he was, I don't understand what's going on.

00:46:36.440 He said, I went to a drugstore, you know, we have CBS or Rite Aid,

00:46:41.100 you know, different chains of drugstores.

00:46:44.320 And it was completely boarded up, but it was open for business.

00:46:48.200 And I went inside to get some prescription.

00:46:51.320 And he said there was an armed guard, Justin Black, he wasn't a rioter,

00:46:55.260 he was an armed guard with, like, bandoliers, multiple weapons

00:46:59.080 and extra ammunition, you know, standing guard.

00:47:01.400 and he said what is this is this america in 2020 my answer is yes it is get used to it and then he

00:47:08.660 went to another place and they were they were in the process of burning it down he said i pulled

00:47:13.100 up and there was a guy you know throwing papers in a trash can lighting on fire and getting ready to

00:47:18.200 you know break a window and he said i just drove away well um okay that's kenosha that's milwaukee

00:47:24.820 um but the same is true in portland seattle um there's a cold-blooded point-blank shooting guy

00:47:32.200 shot a uh a bodyguard for nbc um shot a guy in the head uh in denver it's all on film there's

00:47:41.000 no dispute about what happened i'll leave the judicial system to its devices but um this is

00:47:46.220 going on all over so uh and then black lives matter i call it bolshevik lives matter they

00:47:51.660 finally woke up and said huh why are we burning down our own cities we've got to take this to

00:47:56.080 the suburbs and that's where the white people live and not all of them but you know that that's where

00:48:00.060 the um the white upper middle class they moved out they're out in the suburbs so let's go out

00:48:04.900 in the suburbs and they are so all of a sudden if you're in a ring of suburbs around the city

00:48:10.600 that's burning and you think you're safe you're not this is all sunken people get it even when

00:48:16.500 the networks don't cover it i make the point that the local news does uh and local news is local

00:48:22.360 news they have a lot less political bias i won't say none but they have less than the networks and

00:48:28.320 their job is to bring people news from their communities well you may not see it on on the

00:48:33.240 networks but you'll see it in local news kenosha and portland and denver and atlanta and la and a

00:48:38.700 lot of other places people get it they know that they know these are not protesters there are some

00:48:43.580 protesters out there and you know no one questions anybody's right to protest peacefully

00:48:47.920 but that's a small part of what's going on this is violent i would call it insurrection i would

00:48:53.920 call it revolution um and uh you know before we went on the air i said i feel a little bit like

00:48:59.240 you know you're in uh england and i'm in france and it's 1789 and i'm reporting from the front

00:49:04.780 lines of the revolution we have something going on here that's not too distant from a revolution

00:49:10.060 and there's only one way to deal

00:49:12.580 with it which is you have to crush it

00:49:13.980 and people say to me

00:49:16.320 well Jim we had riots in 1968

00:49:18.820 and I

00:49:19.880 remember the riots in 1968

00:49:22.500 I've had a whiff of

00:49:24.220 being in the wrong place

00:49:26.340 at the wrong time

00:49:27.320 and we had other riots along the way

00:49:29.500 Rodney King I think 1992

00:49:31.020 and he said

00:49:34.380 but these seem worse and what's different

00:49:35.780 I'll tell you what's different

00:49:36.960 the rioters are always there

00:49:38.980 The Marxists are always there. The people who want to burn things down are always there. That's not new. They're just they usually keep their heads down. But now they're they're asserting themselves. What's different is that the government authorities are not trying to stop it. Now, I remember in 1968, you had you had a you know, if you had a Democratic mayor, like Mayor Dale in Chicago and a Republican president like Richard Nixon, they work together.

00:50:05.980 They might have hated each other's guts the rest of the time, and maybe they didn't agree on much else.

00:50:10.500 But Democratic mayors, Democratic governors, Republican presidents agreed that you cannot let riots get out of control, that you cannot let that grow, and you have to do something about it.

00:50:19.640 And they did with the National Guard or whatever it took, and they supported the police.

00:50:24.360 that's not happening now whether you know teddy boy wheeler in mayor of portland or uh you know

00:50:32.020 what's her name uh summer of love uh jenny mayor of seattle um you know laurie lightfoot i call

00:50:39.140 laurie lightweight in chicago these people are incompetent not that bright and hate trump so to

00:50:46.520 them that uh affects their outlook more than the fact that their cities are burning so the reason

00:50:51.780 this is different the reason it's spreading is that um people on the ground are not stopping it

00:50:57.900 well there is a way to stop it which is vote for trump and that's what's happening

00:51:02.120 and so you think that if you if people vote for trump that that would be a far more effective way

00:51:10.620 of dealing with as you called it insurrection correct because uh you know right now that one

00:51:17.680 of the problems with trump and trump created this problem himself as usual i always say this

00:51:21.880 this election is not between trump and biden biden is a an empty corn husk uh this election

00:51:28.100 is between like the good trump and the bad trump so that's that's how i think about it um but uh

00:51:33.460 just uh you know taking the uh you know the bad trump for a minute because he he is kind of his

00:51:40.440 own his own worst enemy um he uh is willing to do something about this but the mayors and the

00:51:47.740 governors won't work with him but if he is re-elected um what's going to happen he trump

00:51:54.280 sets himself up as an excuse for no for not doing anything like we have racism blame trump we have

00:52:01.100 riots blame trump the economy's weak blame trump uh yeah okay presidents get some of the blame i

00:52:06.920 understand that but it trump has become an all-purpose excuse not to do your job not to be

00:52:13.900 an effective mayor not to be an effective governor um not to suppress riots not to uh you know

00:52:21.700 arrest people not to charge and etc because we just hate trump so let's just blame trump

00:52:27.860 well okay that'll get you so that'll only get you so far it'll get you a lot of burned out real

00:52:33.100 state but what's going to happen when trump wins are you going to let your city burn for the next

00:52:38.120 four years um and blame trump is that going to work the voters going to support that or will you

00:52:45.180 have you know maybe a moment of lucidity and say you know what we really got to put a lid on this

00:52:50.440 so uh uh now having said that just to be clear uh we haven't really talked about this but

00:52:56.220 in my forecast is that trump's going to win he may not win on election day

00:53:01.980 no he actually when you when they say two in the morning so the election's november 3rd

00:53:07.420 let's say it's november 4th so two in the morning three in the morning we're all up late um and

00:53:14.040 watching the results come in and trump's going to have big leads in a lot of places they're not

00:53:20.420 going to declare him the winner they're not going to say the election's over because we're going to

00:53:25.020 guess something like no one knows the exact number but perhaps as many as 40 million mail-in ballots

00:53:31.680 that has never happened before we've always had you know absentee ballots i got one once i knew

00:53:37.300 i was going to be away and i went to town hall i got the ballot handed back over the counter

00:53:41.120 um yeah that's that's all this but this these mail-in ballots they're being mailed out uh on

00:53:47.940 mass unsolicited they're you know they'll put a mailbox with 100 ballots in the lobby of a

00:53:56.000 apartment building until i'd want to pick one up and send it back right uh you know somebody's not

00:54:00.900 going to pick up 50 and fill them out and send them back so they're going to have to count them

00:54:05.460 now some states have done this a lot and they're good at it i was at oregon and florida are two

00:54:11.020 states that have had success with this they kind of know what we're doing pennsylvania has never

00:54:15.260 done this before not to this extent in pennsylvania the whole election may come down to pennsylvania

00:54:21.160 now every try opening uh five million envelopes and counting them it takes a while um and how

00:54:27.880 competent is government bureaucracy not very so and then state laws are going back to what i said

00:54:33.480 before about no national election we have state elections the laws vary some states say okay you

00:54:39.900 can count the ballots as soon as they come in uh in which case they may have a pretty good count

00:54:45.880 not complete but pretty good on election night other states say you cannot open the first mail

00:54:51.560 in ballot until election day so you're going to wake up on november 3rd with a pile of you know

00:54:56.560 10 million ballots and maybe 5 million whatever uh but those are the order of magnitude we're

00:55:01.460 talking about um you're not going to count you're not going to count 5 million ballots in one day

00:55:06.260 you're lucky to count it in a week so so we're going to be sitting around a week after the

00:55:11.660 election waiting for the results from pennsylvania let's say or michigan meanwhile if you look at

00:55:18.440 the scoreboard trump's ahead because the the it's that it's absolutely the case that the democrats

00:55:23.960 favor mail-in ballots and the republicans favor going out on election day and casting a vote at

00:55:29.560 the polling place i don't know why we can't agree on anything in this country but that's just the

00:55:33.720 case so those votes are counted immediately the voting machine votes so trump's going to run up

00:55:39.620 big margins in these places and they're going to say well time out we're not declaring him the

00:55:43.640 winner because um we got all these mail-in ballots so and though they're predominantly democrats so

00:55:50.600 what's going to happen is the the lead is going to erode his lead is going to keep going down

00:55:55.560 doesn't mean he loses but it's going to keep going down down down there are both campaigns

00:56:00.800 The last time I checked had approximately 600 lawyers each.

00:56:05.420 I dare say they have more today.

00:56:08.120 And these are the top election lawyers and litigators in the country, in every state.

00:56:12.380 It's not like they're all in New York.

00:56:13.520 They're fanned out across the country.

00:56:15.400 They're going to march into court, federal district court.

00:56:17.960 They're going to get injunctions.

00:56:19.200 They're going to get orders to impound the ballots.

00:56:21.160 They're going to try to extend state law.

00:56:24.400 State law said, I mean, look, Americans can barely renew their driver's licenses without screwing it up.

00:56:29.140 I include myself in that.

00:56:30.800 um how are you going to vote i mean you have to check the boxes okay you get that but then some

00:56:36.380 of them have signature requirements some of them do not some of them need witnesses some of them do

00:56:41.480 not and then when you fold up your ballot you're going to stick in the envelope and mail it back

00:56:45.280 well some of them have what's called a security envelope so you put the ballot in the security

00:56:48.980 envelope and then you put that in the big envelope and then you mail it back so that when it's open

00:56:53.420 the security envelope goes to like a poll watcher or somebody more official uh did they remember the

00:56:58.440 security envelope uh did they put the right postage on it uh what does state law say about

00:57:04.640 ballots that don't have security envelopes well some of the laws say you discard them they didn't

00:57:09.620 follow the rules well that's a lot of discards and they're heavily democrat is some judge going

00:57:14.560 to say well every vote counts sorry forget the security envelope well i'll appeal that to the

00:57:19.200 court of appeals and it's going to make its way to the supreme court and guess what we have a

00:57:23.180 vacancy on the supreme court and we have hearings this week to fill the vacancy so this right well

00:57:28.600 by the time this goes out uh amy connie barrett may well be sitting on the court she's likely to

00:57:34.540 be part of a six to three people would argue conservative majority and then of course i guess

00:57:41.480 where you're taking this is people are going to say her being on the court is illegitimate because

00:57:46.380 she was appointed rushed quote-unquote rushed through and then the election gets decided by

00:57:51.100 uh this court the supreme court with her on it and people say the election result is

00:57:56.440 illegitimate is that what you're saying no uh i think okay um it's interesting uh that is what

00:58:04.820 the democrats are saying uh i to me uh her nomination the confirmation hearings the final

00:58:11.720 vote etc are totally legitimate she will take her seat uh legitimately and be one of the greatest

00:58:17.140 appointments in america no sure sure i'm saying the argument will be from from democrats correct

00:58:22.200 is the decision made by the supreme court is not legitimate because she was appointed at the last

00:58:27.460 moment we should have waited blah blah blah and so i guess i guess what i'm getting at and this

00:58:33.000 is something francis and i have both talked about and have been very concerned about is

00:58:36.640 if it's a close election which no doubt it will be there will be a tremendous amount of bickering

00:58:42.320 about whether it's actually a legitimate outcome or not well let's make okay let's take that

00:58:47.500 scenario constantly and make it a little worse because that seems to be what i specialize in

00:58:50.780 um what uh you're saying uh you know it's a foreground conclusion and perhaps by the time

00:58:58.380 this uh interview is released she'll be seated don't assume that uh remember in brett kavanaugh

00:59:04.680 you remember all the controversy and the allegations of gang rape and uh you know

00:59:09.940 et cetera and Christine Blasey for you remember all that well that did not happen during the

00:59:14.780 confirmation hearings that after the confirmation hearing was done uh but before it went to the

00:59:22.000 floor of the senate Diane Feinstein you know pulled a pull a letter out of her uh you know

00:59:27.920 desk drawer which because we're sitting there the whole time we have credible allegations

00:59:31.960 that you know whatever and then they blew it up after the hearing so if you're a democrat and

00:59:38.860 your goal is to push this past the election day because you think the democrats will win the

00:59:44.400 senate um how do we know they don't have uh you know uh and they set their sleeve in terms of

00:59:51.740 some you know doesn't have to be credible just defamatory or uh detrimental release that they're

00:59:59.760 not using now they're saving until the days before the election for the sole purpose of trying to

01:00:05.720 delegitimize the process and keep her off the bench now she'll probably be on the bench you're

01:00:11.220 probably right but i don't rule out that other scenario where you end up going to a court four

01:00:16.140 four but even if it is uh a nine person court and you get a six three decision you're absolutely

01:00:22.780 right that will uh result in charges of the whole thing being illegitimate etc which they did with

01:00:28.640 george bush they never accepted the fact that george w bush was a legitimate president because

01:00:32.900 he prevailed with a 5-4 Supreme Court decision on counting hanging Chaz in Florida.

01:00:37.940 This will be worse.

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01:01:08.200 Great stuff

01:01:12.300 Jim we can always rely on you to cheer us up

01:01:15.340 that's why we love to have you on the show

01:01:17.260 people say I'm Mr. Doom and Gloom

01:01:19.020 I'm actually an optimist

01:01:20.600 I'm a pretty

01:01:21.920 happy person as I go through my day

01:01:24.660 but I don't

01:01:25.460 like I said I don't get any points for

01:01:28.400 wishful thinking and what I really offer is not doom and gloom but hopefully good analysis and

01:01:35.300 above all my concern is that I want people to see what's coming. And Jim just before we finish and

01:01:41.060 we talk about what's coming we have lockdowns happening all through Europe and the United

01:01:46.160 States and people seem to prioritize lockdowns and everybody locking down and adhering to these

01:01:54.120 rules over the economy and the economy seems to be something that a lot of people don't seem to

01:01:59.140 understand they're like oh it's just the economy it doesn't matter but in very real terms and very

01:02:04.020 clear terms could you explain to laymen like me and constantin speak for yourself man what actually

01:02:10.760 happens when there is an economic crash and what are we likely to see particularly with this type

01:02:17.280 of economic crash which is unprecedented well that's right it's unprecedented um it you know

01:02:25.260 at the risk of uh seeming like a book salesman but i always say books are hard to write and

01:02:29.820 harder to sell but i would refer uh readers to my new book it's called uh the new great depression

01:02:35.300 winners and losers in a post-pandemic world uh it's available for pre-sale on amazon coming

01:02:41.100 in january but i spend a lot of time in the book going exactly on the issue uh that you raised

01:02:47.120 francis and first of all lockdowns don't work um the evidence is uh overwhelming uh lockdowns are

01:02:53.820 the first resort of politicians and i'm sure we have this guy anthony fauci i mean he's 80 something

01:03:00.100 he's running a major government agency i mean i i sort of sympathize with millennials like don't

01:03:04.280 you baby boomers ever retire except he's he's older than the baby boom like you know enjoy

01:03:08.680 your retirement while you're still running this bureaucracy and doing it poorly um but uh there's

01:03:14.240 an old saying you hear it a lot here on wall street you know if if you're a hammer everything

01:03:19.500 looks like a nail and if you're an immunologist everything looks like a lockdown you know it's

01:03:26.040 in the absence of a vaccine they go all we can do is lock it down so we can do that's not true

01:03:32.000 first of all lockdowns don't work there's good evidence for that secondly um who put him in

01:03:36.940 charge uh and this i would fault trump for this i you know it's trump in a emergency meeting or his

01:03:42.920 coronavirus task force do you want an immunologist an epidemiologist and virologist at the table

01:03:48.360 absolutely the best ones you can find not necessarily uh placeholders in the bureaucracy

01:03:54.000 call johns hopkins or harvard or mit get the best stanford get the best people you can find

01:03:59.540 and give them a seat at the table but do not put them in charge because they don't know anything

01:04:04.460 about economics this was exactly the point you were raising and and here's the here's the telling

01:04:09.520 piece of data more people have died because of the lockdown than have been saved due to lockdown

01:04:18.860 and those has lockdown saved some lives probably you know i hard to quantify but probably but we

01:04:23.960 know it has killed a lot of people 50 000 excess suicides i say excess that means above the baseline

01:04:29.980 so there's a certain amount of suicides since the lockdowns began in march 50 000 suicides

01:04:35.980 um spikes in uh drug abuse spikes in alcohol abuse spikes in domestic violence spikes in

01:04:43.840 deaths from heart attacks and cancer because people didn't go in to be treated because they

01:04:47.980 were worried about covid uh anxiety depression by the way i have a whole chapter on the mental

01:04:52.620 health aspects of this and how it sort of played into the riots meaning did covid cause the death

01:05:02.360 of george floyd of course not not saying that but the death of george floyd was a catalyst

01:05:07.420 for yes some peaceful protests and a lot of illegitimate violent protests but how not

01:05:13.880 protests but just violence riots how much of that was fed by the anxiety and depression of people

01:05:20.600 being cooped up for months and by all of a sudden political leaders say well yeah we use social

01:05:25.080 distance social distancing unless you're rioting in which case we don't care oh okay that's that's

01:05:30.440 practically an invitation to go out and uh start writing but um so yes uh the scientists were

01:05:37.900 okay at coming up with ways of figuring out the benefits of the lockdown but they were abysmal

01:05:46.640 at considering the opportunity costs in other words did you get some benefit yeah but what are

01:05:51.420 the costs no one no one ever called a timeout said okay we hear you but what are the costs

01:05:56.380 in anxiety depression suicide alcohol drugs um loss of skills loss of networks loss of

01:06:03.700 i mean social interaction um you know this is a this is a great format here but i've been with

01:06:09.180 you guys in london it's a lot more fun doing in person we all know that well uh the people who

01:06:14.460 are dying uh uh because of uh lockdowns not to mention the 5 000 or more killed because of

01:06:21.420 Governor Andrew Cuomo's orders to requiring nursing homes and adult care facilities to take

01:06:27.000 COVID patients. He said, you have to take these people. Okay, fine. You killed over 5,000

01:06:32.900 innocent nursing home and adult care facility patients who didn't have COVID because you put

01:06:38.860 the infected in the nursing home instead of finding an alternative. That's what's been going

01:06:42.860 on. So do lockdowns work? No. By the way, one of my sources on that, Dr. D.A. Henderson,

01:06:49.840 former dean of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

01:06:54.200 The man credited, not a solo effort,

01:06:57.760 but credited with leading the eradication of smallpox in the 1970s

01:07:02.620 and a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom,

01:07:05.240 which is our highest civilian award.

01:07:06.740 It's like the Congressional Medal of Honor.

01:07:08.820 Wrote a paper in 2006, pre-COVID, and said lockdowns don't work.

01:07:14.180 So this is not something I pulled off the web.

01:07:17.460 the medical evidence is very clear, but we have destroyed the economy. We were very successful

01:07:22.460 at that. Well, fantastic. And on that note, that very happy note, Jim, as always, we should mention,

01:07:30.940 of course, the new book. We've read all your previous books. You're a very prolific writer,

01:07:36.100 and they're always fascinating, very interesting, a lot of detail, a lot of data. We recommend

01:07:40.980 people go and pre-order the book. Remind everybody what it's called and when it's coming out, Jim.

01:07:45.160 Yes, The New Great Depression, Winners and Losers in the Post-Pandemic World, publication date January 12th, but available now for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

01:07:55.680 And we'll make sure to stick the link in the description of this video and audio, so make sure you go and check that out.

01:08:01.560 And with that, Jim, as you know, we've got one more question for you.

01:08:05.000 Which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about, but we really should be?

01:08:09.920 Well, deflation.

01:08:11.280 uh the that's the greatest economic danger we face um because deflation increases the real

01:08:19.720 value of debt we have enough debt okay so but the thing is i'm a big uh not just fan but i always

01:08:25.120 insist on converting data from nominal to real um you know this is where the bond bears have it all

01:08:32.120 along nominal rates are a lot of good so the lowest rates in 50 years or whatever lowest nominal

01:08:37.160 rates yes not the lowest real rates real rates are still very high uh and that's a product of um

01:08:43.340 of deflation uh and we have disinflation now we're going to go into deflation that increases

01:08:48.120 the real value of debt it makes it impossible to get out so so the only way out you can't grow your

01:08:53.360 way out uh it's too late for that uh we're in a depression uh you there's no reason for the u.s

01:09:00.780 to default on this debt because we can print the money so you know no reason to default actually

01:09:05.400 there's only one way out which is inflation i'm not saying inflation is a good thing i am saying

01:09:11.260 it's the only way out just mathematically and but the fed's been trying to get inflation for 12 years

01:09:17.120 and they've failed and they're going to continue to fail because they forgot how to do it but in

01:09:21.760 chapter six and the conclusion of my book i explain how you can get all the inflation you

01:09:28.040 want in five minutes and i expect to see that in the future basically by devaluing the dollar

01:09:33.800 against gold not the euro the dollar euro cross rate it goes up and down and you know maybe for

01:09:39.360 an importer exporter it matters but all the currencies dollar euro yen swiss franc pound

01:09:44.700 sterling they're all in the same boat they're in a lifeboat maybe some are taller some are shorter

01:09:49.360 some are smarter some are prettier but they're all in the same boat they're going to survive or die

01:09:53.580 together but where's the one objective metric that's not in the boat against which you can

01:09:59.440 all devalue at the same time. There is only one, which is gold. Two presidents did this, FDR and

01:10:04.780 Richard Nixon. One did it on purpose and it worked. One did it by accident and it fell miserably. But

01:10:10.200 it's like letting the genie out of the bottle, you know, good genie, bad genie. But the Fed

01:10:14.800 doesn't know this. I'm explaining it to your audience, but the Fed doesn't know it. They're

01:10:18.240 going to find out the hard way. But this implies a much higher price for gold in the years ahead.

01:10:23.920 Jim, thank you so much for coming on the show. Fascinating as ever. And we are going to

01:10:29.360 see what happens whether trump really will win the election or not and thank you guys so much

01:10:34.980 for watching the show as ever our shows are on wednesday and sunday those are our interviews

01:10:41.680 they go at 7 p.m uk time always we also have live streams constantly we do indeed and they go out

01:10:48.560 on tuesday thursday friday and saturday 7 p.m uk as well and as we head off thank you once again

01:10:54.240 for watching make sure you go and follow follow jim on twitter as well we'll put the the his

01:10:59.100 account in the bottom of the video and we'll see you very soon take care guys and see you soon

TRIGGERnometry - October 28, 2020

Jim Rickards - “Trump Will Win Again”

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