A disagreement over a busted taillight fine ended with an Oklahoma police officer tasing a 65-year-old woman.
Body camera footage shows an unnamed officer interacting with the woman, Debra Hamil, during the July 16 traffic stop. The officer presents Hamil with an $80 ticket and asks her to sign it. Hamil protests: “I don’t think that I deserve to pay $80 for something that is fixable—and I can fix it, if that’s all you want me to do.”
The officer tells Hamil that she is under arrest for refusing the ticket and asks her to step out of the vehicle. Hamil says “no,” rolls her windows up, and locks the doors before the officer can open them. Hamil briefly rolls her window down to tell the officer that he’s “full of shit,” then tells him to hand the ticket over so she can sign it. The officer says they’re “beyond that.” She drives off. The officer enters his vehicle.
The footage cuts to the officer approaching Hamil’s truck. He’s eventually able to pull her out of the truck and down the ground. After she refuses to put her hands behind her back and kicks the officer away, he deploys his taser.
Hamil is eventually handcuffed and placed in the back seat.
"YOU ARE FULL OF S***!" | CAUGHT ON CAMERA: A 65-year-old woman became aggressive with a Cashion police officer, kicking him and resisting arrest, after she refused to sign a $80 ticket for a broken tail light.Christine Stanwood KOCO has the full story >> https://bit.ly/32TaJSu
Hamil was later charged with assaulting an officer (felony) and resisting (misdemeanor).
When KOCO posted the video on Facebook, some of the comments supported the woman and some supported the officer. But one thing is certain: This situation was avoidable.
Traffic stops for busted taillights and other minor infractions just aren’t worth the risks they generate, both for motorists and police officers. Often, the stops are really being used to generate revenue or as a pretense to search for contraband, such as drugs or guns, when an officer otherwise lacks probable cause. Even then, Berkeley law professor Christopher Kutz has argued, the few times police successfully find something “don’t justify the enormous social costs of widespread police interventions.” In the worst-case scenario, a traffic stop could result in death, as the surviving families of Philando Castile and Sandra Bland know well.
If police truly wish to continue to go after low-level crimes, they can cut down on interactions like the one seen in the video by reserving traffic stops for accidents and impaired drivers while using cameras and other technology to enforce minor violations. Though it’s also worth asking how many of those minor violations are worth prohibiting in the first place. Such fines often amount to the criminalization of poverty, especially given that poorer Americans are more likely to drive older cars, which are at a higher risk for finable offenses.
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At the second round of Democratic debates, entrepreneur Andrew Yang criticized Amazon, accusing the online retail giant of “closing 30 percent of American malls and stores.” Yang has a plan to protect dying malls, proposing to direct $6 billion to prop up struggling shopping centers.
But one company is already repurposing many of those suburban behemoths: Amazon.
In North Randall, Ohio, in 2017, Amazon bought an abandoned building that once had been the largest mall in the world, and repurposed it as a fulfillment center. The move brought 2,000 new jobs to the city, and it put the massive, decrepit building back to good use. As a local Ohio official toldThe Wall Street Journal, in a report about Amazon’s moves to repurpose old malls around Ohio, turning the dead malls into distribution hubs helps lift local property tax revenue as well. Nationwide, there have been at least 23 former brick-and-mortar retail spaces repurposed for industrial uses since 2016, the Journal reports.
As Daniel Laboe notes in Yahoo Finance, “dead malls” are particularly well-suited to become distribution centers. They’re usually located near highways, making it easy for Amazon to move products from them to the final customer’s home. The new ownership also puts the infrastructure associated with these old malls, from roads to sewage systems to electrical lines, back to work, rather than letting it rot in waste.
Malls might have some nostalgic appeal, but their replacement is just another example of creative destruction at work. The introduction of Sears’ mail-order catalogues challenged mom-and-pop businesses around the turn of the century, and the catalogues were subsequently challenged by big chain stores like Woolworth and A&P. Big box retailers in shopping malls were the villains to scrappy mom-and-pop businesses in the ’80s, and now they’re the ones looking for a bailout.
The fact is, it doesn’t make sense to try to push consumers back to an old shopping model. At this point, more people seem to prefer shopping online. Amazon’s plan to repurpose dead shopping malls saves resources, broadens local tax bases, and creates jobs in distressed communities.
It’s not without precedent, either. The fate of these old malls is reminiscent of the fate of Sears’ old distribution centers, many of which have been transformed into offices and new retail locations.
Yang needn’t worry. Dying malls don’t need saving, and the market can handle it.
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One day does not a confirmed reversal make, but I wanted to offer a couple of gut check thoughts and chart updates.
If you’ve been reading my weekly market briefs and some my public market analysis pieces you know I’ve been presenting the 2990-3050 $SPX range as a potential major sell zone. For most of July markets have been dabbling in this range and the July top range ended up being 3028 on $SPX.
Yesterday’s rejection of this range came on Jay Powell’s press conference. Past Fed chairs have been reluctant to give regular press conferences and for good reason. There’s an old adage: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt. That may be a bit harsh, but Jay Powell did himself no favors with that press conference today. Remember keeping confidence is the Fed’s hidden directive and Jay Powell no doubt lost some confidence yesterday. How this will all play remains to be seen, however keep in mind the technical context and this context may matter greatly.
Some chart updates then.
Firstly this is the $VIX chart I offered last week in VIXplosion:
And this was the discussion from Friday where I re-iterated the pattern and talked about a coming $VIX spike:
Here’s the updated chart:
Tell me again how you can’t chart the $VIX.
While many are just focused on the day to day action markets are a journey and structures matter. Now we’re far still from gap fill outlined above, but the pattern got triggered and we’ll have to see how it evolves in due time, but for now we can note that the pattern suggested a spike was coming and it did and a nice one to boot. Technicals matter.
Also of note: The larger pattern structures held as resistance for now and we’re seeing some trend line breaks:
Also note highs came on negative divergences.
But no major damage has been inflicted on this market yet, but for now the Sell Zone has shown to indeed have produced a rejection:
And as long as this is case this leaves room for the unthinkable:
But it’s very early and nothing’s been confirmed. But as I said on July 16:
Tops are processes and they take time with a bunch of back and forth and if this market is to evolve into a top I expect nothing different here. And don’t forget this market in particular remains subject to relentless jawboning and political influence more than any market in history. It’s a very complex environment.
At the second round of Democratic debates, entrepreneur Andrew Yang criticized Amazon, accusing the online retail giant of “closing 30 percent of American malls and stores.” Yang has a plan to protect dying malls, proposing to direct $6 billion to prop up struggling shopping centers.
But one company is already repurposing many of those suburban behemoths: Amazon.
In North Randall, Ohio, in 2017, Amazon bought an abandoned building that once had been the largest mall in the world, and repurposed it as a fulfillment center. The move brought 2,000 new jobs to the city, and it put the massive, decrepit building back to good use. As a local Ohio official toldThe Wall Street Journal, in a report about Amazon’s moves to repurpose old malls around Ohio, turning the dead malls into distribution hubs helps lift local property tax revenue as well. Nationwide, there have been at least 23 former brick-and-mortar retail spaces repurposed for industrial uses since 2016, the Journal reports.
As Daniel Laboe notes in Yahoo Finance, “dead malls” are particularly well-suited to become distribution centers. They’re usually located near highways, making it easy for Amazon to move products from them to the final customer’s home. The new ownership also puts the infrastructure associated with these old malls, from roads to sewage systems to electrical lines, back to work, rather than letting it rot in waste.
Malls might have some nostalgic appeal, but their replacement is just another example of creative destruction at work. The introduction of Sears’ mail-order catalogues challenged mom-and-pop businesses around the turn of the century, and the catalogues were subsequently challenged by big chain stores like Woolworth and A&P. Big box retailers in shopping malls were the villains to scrappy mom-and-pop businesses in the ’80s, and now they’re the ones looking for a bailout.
The fact is, it doesn’t make sense to try to push consumers back to an old shopping model. At this point, more people seem to prefer shopping online. Amazon’s plan to repurpose dead shopping malls saves resources, broadens local tax bases, and creates jobs in distressed communities.
It’s not without precedent, either. The fate of these old malls is reminiscent of the fate of Sears’ old distribution centers, many of which have been transformed into offices and new retail locations.
Yang needn’t worry. Dying malls don’t need saving, and the market can handle it.
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Rwanda closed a major part of its border with the Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday after people died of Ebola amid the second worst outbreak in history. So far the disease has killed more than 1,800 people and sickened over 2,600.
A boy having his temperature checked in the city of Goma, a transit hub on Congo’s border with Rwanda that has had two cases of Ebola confirmed so far.CreditCreditPamela Tulizo/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The latest victim died just days after his case was confirmed by medical professionals in the border city of Goma, home to over 2 million people and an international airport, according to officials in Congo.
the Congolese Health Ministry said the 1-year-old daughter of a man who had died of the disease in the border city of Goma had Ebola.
The man was Goma’s second confirmed Ebola case, and he died on Wednesday after spending several days at home with his family while showing symptoms. –NYT
Aside from the two deaths, the 1-year-old girl’s case marks the first known transmission of the disease in the city. The first confirmed case in Goma was a 46-year-old preacher who was able to successfully pass through three checkpoints on his way from Butembo, according to Fox News.
In this Sunday, July 14, 2019 photo, Red Cross workers carry the remains of 16-month-old Muhindo Kakinire from the morgue into a truck as health workers disinfect the area in Beni, Congo. The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak an international emergency. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay) via Fox News
The World Health Organization, meanwhile, has recommended against travel restrictions – however warns that the risk of regional spread is “very high.”
“The challenges to stopping further transmission are indeed considerable. But none are insurmountable,” reads a Wednesday statement from WHO. “And none can be an excuse for not getting the job done.“
The border crossing has been closed after more cases were reported in Goma, eastern DR Congo (Reuters)
According to the Congolese government, there was a “unilateral decision by the Rwandan authorities” to close the border crossing at Goma, according to the BBC. “The Congolese authorities deplore this decision, which runs counter to the advice of the WHO,” the statement continues.
Last week Saudi Arabia stopped issuing visas to people from the DRC, citing the Ebola outbreak, shortly before the Islamic Republic’s annual pilgrimage this month.
According to Mayor Gilbert Habayarimana of Rubavu district in neighboring western Rwanda, the Goma border was closed “to avoid unnecessary crossings,” adding “We are closely monitoring the situation at Goma, the border can be reopened anytime, when the situation improves.”
Health officials for months feared that an Ebola case would be confirmed in the city. Just days after the first Goma case was confirmed, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Ebola outbreak a rare global emergency – the highest level of alarm.
The organization has used such an alarm level only four times in its history, including the Ebola epidemic that took the lives of more than 11,000 people in West Africa between 2014 and 2016.
While the alert prompted a surge of millions of dollars in new pledges by international donors, health workers say a new approach is desperately needed to combat misunderstandings in the community that lead people with Ebola not to seek medical help. –Fox News
Rwandans who regularly cross the border at Goma have also expressed their concerns.
“The closure is terrible for me. My seven children and I get something to eat when I go to Goma for work. Yes, Ebola is a terrible thing, but living is what matters most,” said builder Ernest Mvuyekure, who works in the city.
“I am more afraid of hunger than Ebola, they should not close the border. I would rather die of sickness than of hunger.“
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KktRjI Tyler Durden
Before the end of the day, a budget-busting, deficit-hiking, $2.7 trillion spending deal will probably be on its way to President Donald Trump’s desk, and he appears willing to sign it.
But you wouldn’t know about that if you watched this week’s Democratic primary debates.
The Senate is poised for a final vote on the budget deal later Thursday—the bill cleared the House with bipartisan support last week, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin hammered out the details last month. The two-year, $2.7 trillion budget deal hikes federal spending by about $320 billion annually and is estimated to add about $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. It also shatters budget caps. It actually hikes spending above the pre-sequester baseline that was in place prior to the 2011 budget deal, which temporarily reduced federal spending and brought an end to trillion-dollar deficits for a few years.
That Senate vote was supposed to take place Wednesday, but was postponed a day amid rumors that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) was having a difficult time getting a majority of his caucus to back the plan, Politico reported yesterday. Under longstanding unwritten Senate rules, a so-called “majority of the majority” must approve of legislation in behind-closed-doors meetings before it will be brought to the floor.
So there’s a sliver a hope for fiscal sanity in Washington, D.C., today, with some prominent conservatives openly opposing the deal. Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah) says he will vote against the plan because it “perpetuates fiscal recklessness.” Both senators from Florida, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, are on the record in opposition. So are Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R–Penn.), both well-known as fiscal conservatives.
It’s more likely that the eventual vote will be, as Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) said Wednesday on the Senate floor, “the last nail in the coffin” of the Tea Party—the grassroots conservative movement that sprung up a decade ago to oppose higher spending and bigger deficits, only to be largely subsumed into the Trump takeover of the GOP. Paul also plans to vote against the plan.
If Republicans can’t muster enough opposition to stop the deficit-increasing budget deal from passing, it’s unlikely that Democrats will. Even with the $2.7 trillion budget deal hanging in the balance, Democratic candidates for president did not utter a single word about the national debt or federal deficit during the debates in Detroit this week.
There was some robust discussion of health care spending—which accounts for about 40 percent of federal outlays—but only in the context of debating how much more of Americans heath care costs the government should cover. Questions focusing on how Democrats would pay for Medicare for All and other health care proposals were mostly brushed off by candidates as “Republican talking points”—a barb that actually gives Republicans far more credit than they deserve, given their recent budgetary track record.
Maybe CNN should take most of the blame for this. Its debate moderators spent more than four hours over two nights grilling 20 presidential hopefuls, yet they did not see fit to ask a single question about the $22 trillion (and growing) national debt—and the candidates, unsurprisingly, did not bring it up on their own.
Considering that several of the candidates on the state are current members of the U.S. Senate, the very legislative body that will vote on the budget deal Thursday, CNN missed an important and obvious opportunity for voters to draw distinctions among the 20-member debate field.
Would any of the candidates have offered even the slightest suggestion that adding trillions more to the $22 trillion national debt might be an error we’ll regret later? Maybe we’ll find out at the next debate in September, but don’t hold your breath.
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A dismal ISM print followed by an even worse construction spending data has sparked a renewed hope that things are just shitty enough to force The Fed to cut cut cut more than Powell would like to admit.
Are these really the best and brightest that the Democratic Party has to offer?
It was going to take a monumental effort to top Marianne Williamson’s level of craziness on Tuesday night, but on Wednesday there were several Democratic contenders that gave it their best shot. Kirsten Gillibrand and Jay Inslee were particularly unhinged, and Joe Biden “repeatedly stumbled over numbers and phrases” during an incoherent performance that will be remembered for a long time to come. The Democrats may have more than 20 candidates running, but none of them looks like a president at this point. Perhaps that will change, or perhaps a stronger candidate will enter the race eventually, but right now Democratic strategists cannot be feeling too good about their chances of winning the 2020 election. Of course Republicans are facing some very serious challenges of their own, but at least they don’t have to worry about a powerhouse candidate on the other side.
After what we witnessed on Wednesday night, there are several candidates that should simply pack up and go home, because their performances were downright embarrassing. The following are the 13 nuttiest quotes from Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate…
#13 Kirsten Gillibrand: “The first thing that I’m going to do when I’m president is I’m going to Clorox the Oval Office.”
#12 Jay Inslee: “Our house is on fire. We have to stop using coal in ten years and we need a president to do it or it won’t get done. Get off coal. Save this country and the planet.”
#11 Joe Biden: “Obamacare is working.”
#10 Julian Castro: “I don’t want to make America anything again. I don’t want us to go backward. We’re not going back to the past. We’re not going back where we came from. We’re going to move forward.”
#9 Andrew Yang: “We need to do the opposite of much of what we’re doing right now and the opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian man who likes math.”
#8 Kamala Harris: “What we need is someone who is going to be on that debate stage with Donald Trump and defeat him by being able to prosecute the case against four more years. And let me tell you we’ve got a long rap sheet.”
#7 Cory Booker: “We have a real crisis in our country, and the crisis is Donald Trump — but not only Donald Trump, I have a frustration that sometimes people are saying the only thing they want is to beat Donald Trump. Well, that is the floor and not the ceiling.”
#6 Bill de Blasio: “If we’re going to beat Donald Trump, this has to be a party that stands for something. The party of labor unions. This has to be the party of universal health care. This has to be the party that’s not afraid to say out loud we’re going to tax the hell out of the wealthy. And when we do that, Donald Trump right on cue will call us socialists. Here’s what I’ll say to him: ‘Donald, you’re the real socialist.’”
#5 Jay Inslee: “And number two — number two, we have to make America what it’s always been, a place of refuge. We got to boost the number of people we accept. I’m proud to have been the first governor, saying send us your Syrian refugees. I proud to have the first governor to stand up against Donald Trump’s Muslim ban. I’m proud to have sued him 21 times and beat him 21 times in a row. I’m ready for November 2020.”
#4 Andrew Yang: “Raise your hand in the crowd if you’ve seen stores closing where you live. It is not just you. Amazon is closing 30% of America’s stores and malls.”
#3 Cory Booker: “There’s a saying in my community that you’re dipping into the Kool-Aid and you don’t even know the flavor.”
#2 Kirsten Gillibrand: “I think as a white woman of privilege who is a US senator running for president of the united States, it is my responsibility to lift up those voices that aren’t being listened to. And I can talk to those white women in the suburbs and explain to them what white privilege actually is.”
#1 Jay Inslee: “We have one last chance. When you have one chance in life, you take it. Think about this. Literally the survival of humanity on this planet in civilization is in the hands of the next president. And we have to have a leader who will do what is necessary to save us. That includes making this the top priority of the next presidency.”
Sadly, it is quite likely that one of these individuals will be the next president of the United States. That is quite a depressing thought, especially when you consider the path that this country is currently on.
Protesters hit night two of the second Democratic presidential debate with a group of them removed Wednesday night after they demanded New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio fire Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who put Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, in a deadly chokehold in 2014, and a woman interrupted Joe Biden to chant about immigrants being deported.
‘Stop all deportations on Day One,’ read the large banner the woman unfurled in the hall of the Fox Theater while Biden and Julian Castro were debating immigration policy.
I think that we are going to see much more of this sort of thing in the months ahead, because anger and frustration are reaching a boiling point all over America right now.
This is likely to be the most chaotic election cycle that we have witnessed since at least 1968, and it isn’t going to be pretty.
I wanted to mention one last thing before I end this article. Once again, we had a debate where Joe Biden got significantly more talking time than anyone else and Andrew Yang received the least. The following comes from CNN…
The second night of CNN’s 2020 Democratic debate just wrapped, and by the end of the night, former Vice President Joe Biden had the most speaking time, with 21 minutes and 1 second.
Sen. Kamala Harris spoke for 17 minutes and 43 seconds. Meanwhile, businessman Andrew Yang had the least amount of talking time, with 8 minutes and 38 seconds.
It probably won’t ever happen, but it would be nice to see at least one debate where there is a level playing field for all the candidates.
Certain candidates are clearly being pushed to the forefront, and others are clearly being marginalized, and we are just supposed to pretend that it isn’t happening.
Our political system is deeply, deeply broken, and it is getting worse with every election cycle.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31acppe Tyler Durden
Before the end of the day, a budget-busting, deficit-hiking, $2.7 trillion spending deal will probably be on its way to President Donald Trump’s desk, and he appears willing to sign it.
But you wouldn’t know about that if you watched this week’s Democratic primary debates.
The Senate is poised for a final vote on the budget deal later Thursday—the bill cleared the House with bipartisan support last week, after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin hammered out the details last month. The two-year, $2.7 trillion budget deal hikes federal spending by about $320 billion annually and is estimated to add about $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. It also shatters budget caps. It actually hikes spending above the pre-sequester baseline that was in place prior to the 2011 budget deal, which temporarily reduced federal spending and brought an end to trillion-dollar deficits for a few years.
That Senate vote was supposed to take place Wednesday, but was postponed a day amid rumors that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) was having a difficult time getting a majority of his caucus to back the plan, Politico reported yesterday. Under longstanding unwritten Senate rules, a so-called “majority of the majority” must approve of legislation in behind-closed-doors meetings before it will be brought to the floor.
So there’s a sliver a hope for fiscal sanity in Washington, D.C., today, with some prominent conservatives openly opposing the deal. Sen. Mitt Romney (R–Utah) says he will vote against the plan because it “perpetuates fiscal recklessness.” Both senators from Florida, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott, are on the record in opposition. So are Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah) and Sen. Pat Toomey (R–Penn.), both well-known as fiscal conservatives.
It’s more likely that the eventual vote will be, as Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) said Wednesday on the Senate floor, “the last nail in the coffin” of the Tea Party—the grassroots conservative movement that sprung up a decade ago to oppose higher spending and bigger deficits, only to be largely subsumed into the Trump takeover of the GOP. Paul also plans to vote against the plan.
If Republicans can’t muster enough opposition to stop the deficit-increasing budget deal from passing, it’s unlikely that Democrats will. Even with the $2.7 trillion budget deal hanging in the balance, Democratic candidates for president did not utter a single word about the national debt or federal deficit during the debates in Detroit this week.
There was some robust discussion of health care spending—which accounts for about 40 percent of federal outlays—but only in the context of debating how much more of Americans heath care costs the government should cover. Questions focusing on how Democrats would pay for Medicare for All and other health care proposals were mostly brushed off by candidates as “Republican talking points”—a barb that actually gives Republicans far more credit than they deserve, given their recent budgetary track record.
Maybe CNN should take most of the blame for this. Its debate moderators spent more than four hours over two nights grilling 20 presidential hopefuls, yet they did not see fit to ask a single question about the $22 trillion (and growing) national debt—and the candidates, unsurprisingly, did not bring it up on their own.
Considering that several of the candidates on the state are current members of the U.S. Senate, the very legislative body that will vote on the budget deal Thursday, CNN missed an important and obvious opportunity for voters to draw distinctions among the 20-member debate field.
Would any of the candidates have offered even the slightest suggestion that adding trillions more to the $22 trillion national debt might be an error we’ll regret later? Maybe we’ll find out at the next debate in September, but don’t hold your breath.
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“I have never in my life seen an economy like this. This is even better than the ’60s. It is phenomenal. And I think [it’s] primarily because of deregulation, not tax reform. My companies in California, in Texas, in Florida, in Illinois…have been set free.”—Kevin O’Leary
For the past 10 years, the reality TV show Shark Tank has entertained and edified millions of viewers by dramatizing how entrepreneurs pitch venture capitalists. And none of the “sharks”—the investors who compete with each other to fund businesses they think will be successful—is more entertaining or edifying than Kevin O’Leary, whose signature insult to unsuccessful contestants—”You’re Dead To Me”—has become a pop culture catchphrase.
But O’Leary isn’t just a small-screen blowhard. Born and raised in Canada, the 65-year-old investor got rich by developing educational and family-oriented computer software in the 1980s and ’90s and holding firm to a gospel of thrift, savings, and reinvestment that he’s outlined in best-selling books such as Cold Hard Truth on Men, Women, and Money. Over the years, he’s diversified his investments into vineyards, storage facilities, and more, and he’s dabbled in politics, too, briefly considering a run in 2017 to head the Conservative Party in Canada. His brash nature earned him easy comparisons to Donald Trump but O’Leary, who lives in Boston, is openly free trade and pro-immigration. He’s long been in favor of marijuana legalization and gay rights and opposed to military interventionism.
Nick Gillespie sat down with O’Leary at FreedomFest, the annual gathering of libertarians in Las Vegas. They talked about why Shark Tank is so popular, why Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is so bad, and whether “democratic socialism” is really a threat to the free market capitalism that O’Leary says makes us richer and happier. They also discussed why O’Leary thinks Donald Trump has been great for the economy despite a personal style so many, including O’Leary himself, find unappealing.
Interview by Nick Gillespie. Edited by Ian Keyser. Intro by Mark McDaniel. Cameras by Jim Epstein and Meredith Bragg.
Some highlights from the conversation (edited for clarity):
Trump “is a great entertainer.”
“Great politicians, great leaders, great CEOs are phenomenal entertainers. Going back to the days of Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and Bismarck, they used to hold council at night, have big dinner parties or sit around the fire with their men and tell stories. They would tell stories of great defeats, great battles, great loves, and that would spread through the troops…and it would capture the hearts and minds of the people. Donald Trump is exactly that. He is a great entertainer.”
The chance Donald Trump “doesn’t get a second term…is zero.”
“The chance [Trump] doesn’t get a second term in my view is zero. And I’ll tell you why. I don’t recall in modern times when going into a second term at full employment, the incumbent of any party has ever lost their mandate ever.”
“Saving baby whales is not what businesses do.”
“I believe that…the DNA of a business is to provide to its constituents. Clearly, customers come number one, number two, employees, somewhere in there are the shareholders…. You who started it, you’re the last. When you try and shift business’s true purpose and say that it’s going to save society, you will fail. Not some of the time, but 100 percent of the time. Saving baby whales is not what businesses do.”
“The role of government is to provide basic services.”
“I think it’s the role of government to provide basic services…. I’m particularly fond of what they do in Switzerland, where they basically have multiple tiers of things like health care and support for those that are poor. What they do is they’ll say, OK, if you’re a wealthy Swiss citizen in Geneva and you want to get an MRI because you want one tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock, you’re going to pay for it. They’re going to take the proceeds of that and they’re going to redeploy it into purchasing more MRI machines so those that aren’t as fortunate can get free MRIs.”
“Everybody’s a socialist when they’re young.”
“I was a socialist when I was 18 years old too. I was left wing. I got my first paycheck and I saw something called tax on it. Everybody’s a socialist when they’re young, until they start working and they start realizing how tough it is out there and they start realizing how much money government wastes when they take half their income and taxes. And that’s when you become a conservative. The older you get, the more realistic you become. And a majority of those people make the transition in their mid-twenties. That’s what happens. I never worry about it.”
Why he prefers investing in women-run companies.
“[Women] are very, very good at mitigating risk….I’m almost sexist in the sense that even the producers have to say to me, you’ve got to invest in some guys. I said, why? They don’t make any money. These women made me all this money…. Why should I take risks with men who can’t cope, who have testosterone sales targets they never hit, and all the rest of that stuff? I’m very biased about people that understand financial independence. Women mitigate risks. Women know how to manage time. Women set reasonable goals, have very sticky cultures in business. That’s all women.”
“I don’t fear any innovation at all. I fear regulation.”
“Capitalism over the last 200 years has destroyed many industries and reborn others. Forty years ago, you couldn’t have ever dreamt that someone who sat in front of a screen and wrote code would make half a million dollars a year in their first job…. Men and women will never be replaced by machines because they’ll always be finding new purpose in new problems being solved. I trust capitalism to do that. I don’t fear any innovation at all. I fear regulation. I fear burdensome government. I fear that a third of every dollar raised by government through taxes is wasted in every capitalist society.”
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