Today, Peter will be talking about COVID-19 vaccinations. The title of his presentation is Will Vaccination and the Pandemic. And as you know, the ECB produces quarterly forecasts of the economy. The evolution of the pandemic has, of course, become a key ingredient of our forecast since its outbreak. The key input indeed is to arrive at the growth path of the economy by looking at the speed of vaccinations and its impact on the pandemic. So we very much look forward to learning today from Peter whether vaccinations will indeed end the pandemic. The format of Peter's talk is as follows. Peter will give a short presentation of about 30 minutes and the remaining time will be interview-based. You can direct your questions to Peter through the host of the meeting via the chat function, which is the fifth button at the bottom of your screen. I will then collect your questions and post them to Peter. I should say that I apologize in advance if I cannot get to your question because of time constraints. Peter, on behalf of the ECB and its executive board, some of which are on the call already, it's a great pleasure to have you with us today. The floor is yours. Thank you very much, Luken. Good morning. I welcome everybody from London, where I'm working remotely from home, and I'm always impressed by central banks because of the very serious research you're doing and one of the things that you may not expect from us, but London School, we probably employ the largest group of health economists or economists of health in any academic institution in the world, but also we have about 100 mathematical models, and I'm sure you must also have plenty of them. Most of them have a mathematics or physics background, but quite a few also economics, and so we've been working with some national banks and trying to, well, to go beyond the crystal ball forecasting with this epidemic, which is not so easy. The question here, of course, that all occupies us, when will this crisis end? The first question is, of course, to define what do we mean by end. That's not a philosophical question, but as I will go into this, for vaccines, the primary impact will be a decrease in mortality, hospitalization, severe disease, but not necessarily that the virus will stop circulating. I'll come back to that, but also you could argue in some countries in Southeast Asia and in East Asia and in like in New Zealand, at the moment life is fairly normal. For example, in Singapore, as of Monday, people will go back to their offices, and my eldest son lives in Laos, they had less than 10 deaths, and life is completely normal, except you can't get in or out of the country. And the same is true in New Zealand, so and the question is, how long is that sustainable? But what I'll do is to give very briefly overview, what are the vaccines in somewhere are we without going into too many technical details? And then what will it take to indeed bring this epidemic under control? Ending it, just like to remind everybody, there is only one human virus, virus that infects humans that has been eliminated, eradicated, and that's smallpox. Now, about 30 plus years ago, and that's it. And so we should be be under no illusion what what we can achieve, certainly in them in the short term. Now, I think it's fair to say that in most of continental Europe, we're entering, I would say a third wave, you can see here on the left side, the reporters daily cases of COVID in the first peak is, you know, is clearly an underestimate because there was the testing capacity was very low. And that was in the spring. And now we got into another peak between October and December, with, if you can see here on every day, about 300,000 people in Europe were infected. This is Europe beyond also the EU. So that includes UK and some of the so-called neighborhood, as I'm learning, EU speak now. And then we were on the really going, it was going quite well, thanks to the lockdowns and all the measures, social distancing and masks and so on. But now there is a rebound. That we know, and we're in some countries, an increase of 30 to 50% in one week of the number of cases. And that's not due this time to increase testing, but there's a genuine increase. It is driven mostly by so-called variant and a virus strain that is more infectious. I'll come back to that also, and that originated in Kent and in England, and which was brought under control in England, thanks to pretty draconian lockdown. So that's the good news is it's possible to do that. But it's this variant plus premature relaxation of the measures that means that we are going into this new wave and while vaccination has not been rolled out sufficiently. You look here at the deaths, you know, COVID-19 is the second cause of death in Europe. It was the first cause of death by the end of the year, of last year. So it's not a marginal phenomenon because to those deaths you should add deaths from other diseases but in people who could not access health care because hospitals are overwhelmed are restricted in terms of what they can do. And so there is quite some good evidence that there is an increase in deaths also from stroke, heart attacks and even cancer. So it is quite, you know, when we think of the impact, as you know, very well as economists, this we should look beyond the, you know, the immediate direct cost and direct deaths. Next slide, please. So the European Centre for Disease Control, which is an entity of the European Union based in Stockholm and has just recently developed and made available a, you know, what they call a COVID-19 forecast hub where various modelling exercises for various groups are being put in, you know, in a database and by country with forecasts. And of course, as you can see here, as you all know, the uncertainty range of the forecast, of course, increases over time and the various models don't always agree. However, in general, I would say that the current third wave was fairly accurately predicted by most mathematical models. Because of the, as soon as this variant came up from England, because that variant is 70 percent, up to 70 percent more transmissible. So you have in a sense a bit of an epidemic in the epidemic and the virus that is taking over, which complicates life tremendously, and there are other variants in other parts of the world. Again, I come back to it. It's also increasing mortality. This is all work by the London School of Hygiene Tropical Medicine. And so I'm not suggesting that, for example, I just took Germany, since you're based in Germany, that we will go that path. As you know, there is the worst case scenario is not always or usually not what we see here. Plus, it assumes that the, you know, that the measures will be relaxed. However, it should give us some pause to reflect that we're certainly not out of the woods. And also when you take a bit of a longer term modeling until the end of the year, most models predict in the autumn, winter, another increase, but much less because of vaccination, fewer deaths. And that is to do with seasonality. Because we all have experienced in our life during when it's getting colder, we get a cold as it's called.  And also the viruses are response, our immunity, the fence against viruses is less effective. So that's a bit for the time being, but it's a really good resource there. And you can play with it and extend it to the time and so on. Next slide, please. Now, going to the, so the situation is serious again. We all had hoped that by the spring, we would could be able to relax and without this variant that would have been the case. But the viruses are one purpose in life. When you think of it, there is no death of a virus is survival is eternal life and is finding a host and that means a living cell, be it a plant, a animal or a human being because viruses cannot survive and multiply without living cells. They actually parasitize. They use our machinery to multiply and to then find another host. So this is what the race between the virus trying to multiply and escape the, you know, the evolutionary pressure that we're putting on there and then our control measures. In Europe, there are four vaccines that have been approved by the European medicines agency. As you know, is the first one was the BioNTech Pfizer vaccine, this is the Moderna vaccine from an American startup. We have the Oxford and AstraZeneca vaccine and the Janssen and Johnson and Johnson vaccine. These are all approved and they're roughly equally effective when it comes to preventing death and, you know, and severe disease. The interestingly here is that two of these vaccines, the BioNTech developed and the Moderna developed vaccines are completely new, never before have they been made available because they use directly a technology called messenger RNA. So you inject in a sense the genetic code of the spike protein, which then the body fools the body and the body thinks it's a natural infection and creates this immunity. And I think this will be the start of a whole new generation of vaccines. As we all know, this has been, these vaccines have been made in record time in less than a year. Normally it takes just to mind you about 10 years at least to develop a vaccine and sometimes no much longer. For example, HIV, which is actually killing still close to, you know, a million people a year and was discovered in 1983. We still don't have a vaccine because there the virus is so smart and changes so much that it's difficult. So we've been lucky that vaccine was possible biologically against the coronavirus. And these vaccines are not only have been shown to be effective in clinical trials but also the real world effectiveness is also high because that's not always the case. Often the real world effectiveness is lower than when you do a need study and you know when you eliminate all the things that you don't like and that you want to have a proof of concept. Now here and the first data came from Israel, the country that has had the fastest deployment with over 60% of people in Israel in fact vaccinated now. And that in no time and all with the same vaccine, the biotech Pfizer vaccine. And I won't go into the details here but the effectiveness even after one dose was already 70% and that's confirmed by data from Scotland, from England and from smaller groups in the US and soon we'll see more and more of that. So basically you can hardly say it's just eliminates nearly 100% deaths, hospitalization and severe disease, which means that the burden of disease is going to be much much less. However, the vaccination coverage as you know very well and become one of the big political and geopolitical issues of our time, including last, yesterday on the European Council, there's very uneven deployment and supply of vaccines. On the left upper side you see and this is another source of information is the vaccine center of the London School of Aging Tropical Medicine has a daily update of a vaccine tracker and so you can see here the percentage of population that is being covered. Over 60% now in Israel, the UK is at about 45% now. United Arab Emirates using Chinese vaccines is also very good, well placed and the US is moving very rapidly as you may have heard yesterday, President Biden announced that 200 million vaccinations will be given in the first 100 days. He said vaccinations that means that not everybody will be fully covered, but this is a major effort. Also interestingly that Chile is doing very well in this nearly all European countries are lagging behind. There's a big issue on supply, that's for sure, you know all the troubles with AstraZeneca which is not honoring the contract made with the Commission and only delivering about 20 to 30% at the most and many countries have based their strategy on that vaccine because it's easier to administer and supply chain and the price. But there's also the fact that when you look at it through this, the Buyer's Club to say so of the Commission, 88 million doses have been distributed to member states but only 62 million have been given so there is like 26 million that are hanging there. Some of that you need a reserve to give the second dose, that's good management. But many countries have started far too late with their vaccine plans and deployment and which is amazing even if the Commission had already in July and then in October again issues some recommendations for people get ready. So it is not only supply but it's supply and logistics and the commitment plus there is also some other issues that I'll come back like vaccine confidence. However, the situation is far worse in low and middle income countries, particularly low income countries where only recently have vaccines arrived. Next slide please through a mechanism called COVAX. COVAX is an alliance as part of the anti-COVAX COVID tools accelerated accelerator you see on the left side and on the right side COVAX and which was launched by President von der Leyen in on the 4th of May and now is managed by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation which was launched after the Ebola outbreaks in West Africa which killed about 11,000 people but was limited to three countries but paralyzed these three countries for over a year and Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea and the mining sector was very heavily affected there and so that is CEPI it's called is there to develop vaccines where there was market failure against Ebola but came in very rapidly. I'm a board member and already during the World Economic Forum in Davos now two years no last year we issued the first contracts and that was around the 20th of January so before that we were certain that this would become such a bad issue. Then is also Gavi the Vaccine Alliance and the World Health Organization so their goal is to provide vaccines to fund vaccines for particularly low income countries and the money is starting to come it's not enough but they've started to deploy vaccines there the problem is supply and one of the big issues now are exports of bands in India but also the US with the Defense Act which prohibits the export of any material that can be used for vaccine manufacturing and so even Indian companies depend on that. At the same time the African Union has started to negotiate with companies and so I think that the issue today is not so much money but it's supply and this is not just a let's say a moral issue you know in terms of global equity and the quality but the reality is also that no country is safe unless every country is safe. If we if we vaccine if we're all vaccinated we could become like in New Zealand close all the borders and so in Europe forget it but also what's happening if there are millions of people infected with it virus that will be a breeding ground for you know for variants to for mutations to come up and and I'll move to that now. Next slide please. Yeah being Belgian I like to show the name of it so where are we going and the next slides please. The first question is will vaccination work and I put vaccination rather than vaccines because the vaccination is the act of yeah of of immunizing people and the first question here is will they work against new variants and I'll come back to the next slide but the many unknowns how long will they protect us is it one year two years five years and we have like measles vaccine that's as a child you get it you're protected for the rest of your life for influenza and for the flu every year we need another shot because there is a new variant coming up so that's the first unknown and time will tell are they safe I think the answer is now safely we can say yes because we have now close to well over 100 million people have been vaccinated in the world and there will always be side effects I was actually yesterday I got my second dose of the Pfizer one all I have is a bit of a sore arm but there was this scare of thromboembolic events particularly in women after the AstraZeneca vaccine but the European medicines agency was very firm with no evidence that this was caused by it and in Norway they had some people who died but then it turned out they were very frail very old people in care homes who yeah with the death rate was not higher than you would expect but number four is really as at the moment is a huge bottleneck will there be enough the supply is definitely not there but in all fairness this has never been tried before one to develop a vaccine in 10 months 12 months and then to manufacture billions of it no company has done it and it's interesting to see that with the exception of Pfizer the big vaccine manufacturers just as JSK Sanofi Merck and Merck Sharp and Dome in the US they're not involved at the moment in the initial development of these vaccines they will now start producing and they teamed up like JSK with CureVac and Merck is gonna produce some of the Janssen vaccines and Sanofi I can't remember but also another one so this is supply issue is a huge issue and and as we you know we all know it's a big so you know political issue and India is the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world just that it is for medicines but there they also can't follow at the moment so but I think this is a temporary issue by the end of the year we may have more vaccines than there are arms in the world so we have to so it's really now that's a problem is and there are no easy solutions as some people there is the people's vaccine movement is said if we just abolish IP we'll have vaccines everywhere now you should know that there are for to make a vaccine there are about 300 to 400 steps and with all with the patent and but it's mostly technology and it's it's like you have a I love cooking so you can have a cookbook of a three Michelin star chef that doesn't mean you can make the same meal and so safety and quality assurance are really really key so but there are moves for local manufacturing again in Africa for example in Dakar the they're producing already a yellow fever vaccine on the market and that is really a proof that they can do it and that could be the foundation of you know of vaccine manufacturing Brazil has some also and of course in Asia I wouldn't be worried about that and then the last point is will people accept them there is a growing movement of what a neutral term calls vaccine hesitancy or vaccine confidence it's very unequal but in Europe it is very strong in country like France and Poland and Bulgaria even among healthcare workers on doctors and and this could derail completely the impact of vaccination next slide please just a interlude here on the so-called variants what is a variant it's a it's the same virus but it is undergone mutations which every virus does all the time it's like an error in their multiplication so that's a random phenomenon but now and then that error gives them an evolutionary advantage so that they're more transmissible and will take over from their competing viruses now corona virus is not too bad in flu influenza virus they mutate like double the pace and HIV is like when you're infected with living with HIV you can have 100,000 different viruses in your body and so that's why we have problems so do this vaccines work against the variants and we know that for the British variant it's fine to make a long story short no difference with the original you know virus for the South African one which is now invading quite a few countries there the AstraZeneca vaccine showed only 10% efficacy in other words it's not working but the Novavax not yet on the market was a decrease but the Janssen the J&J vaccine was you know was highly effective against severe disease and hospitalization a bit less against mild infection so here we see a difference in among vaccines and that's why in Africa now they're very keen to have Janssen vaccine also because it requires only one injection next slide please now this is a huge challenge and we and what we don't know is will people require just as for influenza a regular booster vaccine a vaccination so against new variants how many variants will there be is there a defined spectrum can we predict that we will be using AI and machine learning to try to to see as you know there's a system there and that's very important for for industry and about all these companies are now working on already on the second generation of vaccines and this is where the Commission has really come up to speed with together with industry but also the EMA and the ECDC and this is called the HERA incubator and here are for health emergency preparedness and response authorities which is a proposal for later because clearly we as EU we were not prepared also as you know health is not a competency a legal competency of the EU and the Commission could have said okay fine it's not a competency but that is of course not an option and it's of course I don't think you should have competency in health care and all that every country so specific it goes back to centuries in Germany to Bismarck you know you don't want to mess with that however with the you know for when it comes to pandemics cross-border issues are so important and also the US for example has an instrument called Baada that has invested about 12 billion billion dollars in the development of vaccines we didn't have that and that put us in a weaker position and so again to make a long story short there is a whole program now and in close contact with industry but also regulatory fair so that we can have fast tracking of these much needed new vaccines next slide so when I'm coming to the more to the end now and the future of the pandemic when you take the long-term view it will vary by country of course and depends on many factors I mean is the societal and public health responses and that's going to be more and more difficult I think there's enormous let's say corona virus fatigue plus the economic impact is enormous vaccine coverage and then the older issues that I mentioned duration of immunity seasonality future mutations of the virus and can have the next slide I think that the these are very simplistic models but based on pretty sophisticated work and so you could have first of all nearly all experts agree that we're not going to get rid of this virus like sister within our the next two years however we will be able to manage it and to live with it and the question is will this be like an annual outbreak like for the flu or every other year or five years so that we should know better I think after the next winter next slide but it won't be that and there's a lot of talk about herd immunity so herd immunity being a the level of immunity in the population that makes that you know that every that the virus doesn't find enough susceptible individuals to you know to infect and then you know that it will you know fade out and that's a combination of vaccine induced immunity and natural immunity but again this is modeling from our school also but from and could just in his group and and the and the it shows that for example in the UK they would need to reach 95% vaccine coverage because the vaccines are not perfect people don't always take them etc so I think that this is going to be extremely difficult to achieve we know that for reasons it's also 93% but that's for children and we reach that but if you go below below for example people refuse it you get epidemics next slide so coming to the end so there is a quite a movement of zero COVID people say we should you know go we should not accept anything less than zero COVID so in other words zero is means zero is not no COVID and I think that's a real illusion for many reasons that you can see that maybe in the longer term we need to aim for that but we have to see in as a society what is acceptable we accept that every year there are depending on the country thousands of people die from influenza if we set a bar for a COVID to zero that will completely paralyze society but it's it's an appealing fact but once you start thinking it through it's not going to be feasible and we'll go more to a you know and so what we call endemic next slide and so the I think that have to be optimistic also but realistic to answer the question will vaccination end the pandemic I think it will bring it under control definitely and we can go not back to normal but we can go forward to normal it'll be a kind of a new normal and for example I guess that masks and more testing and so will be part of the system digital green certificates also called vaccine passports very controversial but the reality is it's it's already going to be there so again I'm not going to go into all this but I think we we will go the next one to a kind of a normal type of life but with a lot of providers so we'll need to continue a number of social distancing and mask wearing just like in Japan when you have a cold you just you know you wear a mask to protect the community and one of the fascinating things for me is why some Asian countries and Southeast Asian countries have been so successful in bringing this pandemic under control where using exactly the same measures as Western societies where it's just out of control with 126,000 deaths in in the UK for example and some probably we need to look at on the one hand what governments can impose and what's acceptable in one society the other but also if you have a hyper individualistic type of culture with me myself and I that that is really a big friend of the virus I'll so we'll need to continue and the last slide here and and this is a question I often get good do we have to choose between the economy or the or health and the answer is actually you can't save the economy if you don't bring this epidemic under control this is this is already some early research that was published in the Financial Times which by the way is a very good source of information also for us in public health and so we need to bring this epidemic under control otherwise we can forget the you know the economic reliance and so the the the answer to the question is yes but and and and not completely but there's frankly no other way out thank you very much and sorry to speak a bit to them thank you so much Peter so I will kick off with a few questions from the floor and I will also turn it over a bit later on in the interview to our board members and give them an opportunity to ask you questions as well so Peter as I said you're the special advisor to the European Commission on COVID-19 matters we explained to us that the development of vaccines has been extraordinarily impressive but the rollout of vaccines has been slow for a variety of reasons the question is when do you expect that all adults in Europe will be vaccinated yeah that's a key question for for the to go back to the question of the talk and the goal is to have like 70 percent of adults vaccinated by the summer in July August I think that's still feasible but it requires two things enough vaccines but also countries must really accelerate I mean like I got my first vaccine here on a Sunday morning I mean you need to work seven days a week and it has to be like a military type of operation and and with very good communication in some countries you know you have to go first on online and a website and all that and that's fine for many people but the most vulnerable the most the oldest one they may not know how to do that so we need to to make it people-friendly and so it is in our hands and it's in the hands of every government and I don't understand that with this new surge that this isn't a national priority in most countries Peter in the european continent there are many questions about the effectiveness and especially the side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine you explain the difference between this vaccine and other vaccines are these concerns warranted yeah I think that when I hear people who are skeptical about vaccines you have a hardcore of let's say anti-vaxxers and that's because they want natural immunity and they're against this or think it's a conspiracy of the of big pharma and so on okay that's one group but that's pretty small group then you've got people with legitimate questions you know indeed if it normally takes 10 years to develop a vaccine how do you know that this works and that it's safe particularly if you only spend a year on it so I think that is a very reasonable question and but the answer is any equivocally that it is safe that um yeah as I said we have now about 100 million people the fact that these thromboembolic events were detected I find is a an indication that the monitoring system of monitoring side effects is working it's and but again I understand that you know with the precaution principle which is stronger in some countries than in others in some it's enshrined in the law in others not and I but I think that yeah I'm I would be happy to to take the AstraZeneca vaccine I think it's they've not helped themselves with their own communication I must say but uh no I and the same is true for the other vaccines on the market and by the way the AstraZeneca uses the same or a similar platform as it's called to vaccine delivery as Janssen as the J&J and and there also we have experience already of hundreds of thousands of people so combined um no it's it's fine I mean I think yeah I I wouldn't hesitate to take it I mean that's not a scientific argument but uh if if you would I always think if you make a policy statement and you would not apply it to yourself then then it's not credible. Peter you explained that it will be difficult to reach community against the virus explaining that large parts of the world will have low vaccination rates what about children do you see a prospect that they will be vaccinated? Very good question and ultimately in terms of bringing it really under control we will need to vaccinate children as well because even if children don't get ill they are playing some role in the in transmission it's quite controversial because it has many practical implications for you know keeping the schools open or not and scientists don't fully agree on the immediate risk and we know for example that infection rates in teachers are not higher than in the general population but children get infected yeah but in you could argue let's assume all adults are vaccinated but then the virus will just infect you know happily as many children as possible and that is so the the good news is that the vaccines were tested initially in adults because before you do trials and you test out new medicines and new vaccines in children you want to have you know certainty about the safety particularly of vaccines and in adults and and and that passed the test and now you know I expect that in well a couple of months or so we will know the results but I anticipate that it will work with children children are far more used to vaccinations than we as adults but that's a good question and that means that that's probably only for the end of the year however I would say the goal of vaccination today is in the first place you know eliminate mortality so people don't die anymore people don't get into intensive care units don't be hospitalized and don't have severe disease and then you know and you can really we can have a pretty we can open societies again thank you Peter we understand that a person who has been vaccinated can still fall sick that would be less affected with only light symptoms after taking a vaccine do we already know whether a person who has been vaccinated can still contract the virus and infect others yeah first of all vaccines are not 100 effective I mean even like Pfizer and so on the Moderna it's 95 96 percent so that's why exactly we don't know yet this is new so it's not 100 percent so in rare cases it may happen and up to now indeed people who became then infected they their disease was much milder and that's but it's still early days because there are also people who get reinfected naturally particularly there's now quite a few cases in Brazil because there is a variant that seems to be quite different and most seem to be milder in disease but some not so this is open question but an important question is that when you're vaccinated it's not only vaccination is a very interesting it's both egoistic and altruistic and it's a win-win as we would say you know you become you know you're immune so you're protected but the question is do you also shed less virus are you less likely to transmit so are you not a risk for others and here the data are starting to come in particularly from Israel and the answer is that most most likely and the question is will this reduce transmission by 50 percent or 90 percent we we don't know yet but my guess it's going to be very high also because why do virus the vaccines work they reduce your vaccine your virus load and that's why you get less severe disease and if you have fewer viruses you will exhale fewer viruses and infect fewer people but that's not yet supported by the facts this is just a matter of time thank you some have argued that the virus may be settling into a limited set of mutations or variants and that vaccines will therefore remain effective what is your view on this yeah i hope that that's true but we can't take the risk no that i think from an evolutionary perspective that's probably what will happen but is that how long is going to take and so a big question if i were you know a vaccine company i would want to know are there four or five or ten you know significant variants that could influence the effectiveness of my vaccine or only two so that's yeah but it's it yeah and it's not an all or nothing when i show this the the data on the effectiveness of vaccines it's not when you're exposed to another this new variant that suddenly your vaccine is no longer effective but it could reduce it so yeah it's i wish i had the answers to all these questions because that's what we're working on very but they're very very good questions yeah thank you peter let me ask one more question before turning over to the board members on the call peter we understand that you were exposed yourself yourself to the virus and you just shared with us that you also took the vaccine do you have any advice for the participants by the way we have 140 on the call what to do when you get sick with the virus yeah about a year ago i was in the hospital indeed you know i was one of the first here in the uk to to become infected and even after we had already closed our university and work from home but anyway i got infected i still don't know where and um yeah so and i made a mistake of continuing to work i'm a bit of a workaholic so that's not i would advise when you get sick stop working and take good care of yourself and isolate yourself um but um and and monitor make sure you know you have a good medical council and that you know in case you deteriorate that were to go what's interesting with this is that um you don't have to cough or to be short of breath and to be in trouble because the that can come later so in my case my what we call oxygen saturation so the fact that you're you know your blood and your lungs are not functioning and giving off oxygen to your brain and everything which then creates brain fog and all that can happen without being short of breath so i would suggest to buy an oxygen saturation you know this is something you put on your finger very easy to monitor and if that goes below a certain level it's all in there then i would go to the hospital but but also even if you had it because i assumed that some of the people on the audience will have had the infection i mean it's so prevalent that take the vaccine and but probably we only need one injection because the the first injection is like a booster because we already have immunity and we know already that that gives you a fantastic boost of our protection but still i took the both partly also because i want a vaccine certificate and that i can finally travel again thank you for sharing this this personal mouth with us and i'll turn over to our board members Fabio Fabio Panetta do you want to start thank you well first of all i want to thank peter for next and seven very interesting very clear um you explained very very clearly how to prevent covid the efficacy of vaccines and the constraints that we face in mass vaccination but you did not say anything on how to cure covid so my question would be what is the state can you say as something on the state of research on possible medicines to cure covid once you are effective do you expect any effective anti-inflammatory medicine to become available in the near future no fabio this is a very important question because even with vaccines that some people will continue to be sick and we need that particularly those who are more vulnerable and whereas i was let's say pleasantly surprised with how quickly we had vaccines i was this i've been disappointed by progress on treatment i thought the opposite will happen so i was wrong on that one and there are a few things we know that you know if you apply you give very early on in the infection before it typically would be hospitalized then with an uh you want to kill the virus an antiviral um meets like remdesivir for example it's a bit controversial but that works however after that uh it's the virus is going so like in my case i was in dorsal and thanks to oxygen i made it um but then i went home and then my trouble started i had this long covid for six months and and then it's the immune response and so you have to suppress immunity and there there's a very cheap drug dexamethasone which has been shown to work but up to now we still not really uh you know very effective in our treatment although survival is much higher than a year ago and that's more of a experience you know we know how to manage this clinically um and so there's a lot of research going on at the european level there is now a network um or for clinical trials there are two one for treatment and one for um vaccines and the problem was that up to recently everybody was doing their small trial and and the results were inconclusive so we need to join forces there uh on both sides and um and i think time is everything what may work in the beginning may not work at the end and if you start suppressing immunity in the beginning you may actually make things worse so it's it's far more um sophisticated than we originally thought and also for example uh thrombinabolic events where since we know that that's for Anzac Zeneca was in the news is very they're very common in uh you know i had this myself and then you have cardiac involvement so you can prevent that so it's yeah but it's uh something that uh the where i'm most optimistic is that we will have so-called monoclonal antibody therapies that kill the virus just as that these are therapies that are being used also in cancer for the beginning and then immune modulators afterwards and and there i would look at there are a few coming from you know treatments for autoimmune diseases so but it's um yeah we we need a far more systematic approach and that's now what the this clinical trials network is is attacking and i'm glad that that the time should be over that every clinician do their little trial and then and the results are inconclusive that's the problem thanks for that thank you so we also have uh Frank Alderson and Philip Lane on the call Frank or Philip do you want to ask a question thanks a lot uh extremely interesting um my actually i the first i would like to ask um you know this is to to get this under control of course all these scientific things have to be done but we you you made abundantly clear in your slides also that it's a question of of people's trust in the virus and in the whole process now of course we are just central bankers and supervisors but we have a you know we have a strong presence in the in the debate we we publish all the time we we give interviews we are called to the european parliament so from your perspective ideally uh what would we be saying and what would help as much as possible to get some control very fair question not an easy one but i would say that um first of all um let's i think you have a high credibility and so getting the right uh how to say and the fine line is to say there is hope but folks at the moment no time to relax and um and maybe it's i'm just thinking aloud um to uh to think about some key messages around this that's something that we could work on i i did about a year ago with the bank of england when mark carney was still the you know the governor and um and when the unknowns were even bigger but i would say that uh and i give regularly um talks and uh you know and in a dialogue with investment companies and uh banks and all that not the central banks um private equities just and and they all want to know how long is this going to take and and where and some and um but i think that the at the moment uh we need to how to keep hope alive in the population uh and i say yes there is light at the end of the tunnel if we can deploy the vaccine um but uh yeah i think that um yeah i don't know enough about what's alive in your milieu you know what people look at it i guess everybody's fed up with the you know all the constraints and so on and and and hoping that we will have a a a nice summer um but that may or may not be the case i would say at this stage probably the best would be push authorities in every country to to be far better organized for vaccination i mean it's really not acceptable some countries start really seriously vaccinating or organizing themselves after christmas or after new year honestly um and this is um you know it's not that there was no warning uh for me that's hard to understand because it's also from a perspective of every country if you get your population vaccinated it gives you an enormous advantage economically um societal and and everything so this is not just a public health issue as you know you know well thanks for a good question i need to think about it further yeah uh philip maybe i'll just again jumping beyond the pandemic i mean obviously in your career you spend a long time at dinner with aides and with abola so so now you have this pandemic so so what you know from this i mean do you think uh whether you personally or the professional public health specialists uh what a surprise to in terms of uh not so much as you say you were surprised by the vaccine progress but how advanced economies uh have dealt with this uh has been unnet impressive or unnet disappointing or you know the humanities believing that uh the world uh you know has done a reasonable job or or the more focused on the fact it's it's clearly uh being quite limited in terms of global vaccination and then as he's just said that rollouts and communication issues in different countries yeah philip by something i think a lot about and uh one is for the last five six years i had one of my standard speeches to say so was uh are we ready for the next pandemic and uh you know and the answer was no uh but but i made one mistake i thought the next pandemic would be an influenza virus one of those spanish flu type of thing which will happen one day you know that's uh that's not rocket science um it's like the big one in california one day they will have the earthquake will wipe out silicon valley and everything it could be tomorrow it could be in a hundred years so we can expect something influenza so that's but then i think um your question is yeah and then there was a ranking of um advance of economies of countries how well are they prepared and number one was the u.s number two the u.k both have a very bad track record on this how to deal with this epidemic i mean uh with 126 deaths in the u k over half a million in the u.s and so on and didn't do a good job um whereas some countries that were very low ranked like vietnam and uh as it allows in taiwan and and they they've done a really good job and that's why i'm so fascinated i i i go a lot to singapore i mean i have um i'm there at the national university of singapore and work with them and and in japan and they had uh you know the number of deaths is like in some countries less than 10 vietnam is like what a hundred million people something like that um and when they have one case it's panic and they do everything um so we've not we've not done well i think and too slow um and um so for me what the lesson is that uh you always use a crisis to i know there is opportunities in there and you we need to get ready now for the longer term and for the next crisis and that sounds a bit far-fetched but that's what also the with the commission this whole area of being um you know more self-sufficient than before we really enormous weaknesses um what i had not anticipated at all but that's more of your type of area is that i okay the economic fallout yes but not the um the geopolitical type of fallout and uh that we're seeing at the moment that uh i had uh well it was not on my radar screen i mean uh and so um yeah and and it's not a solution that every country would say we're i'm gonna uh develop my own vaccines and so on it's not i mean the global supply chains is are are enormous and for i mean are very complex so that's um but i think now um if we don't know as individual nations as regions um don't get our act together to better prepare it because like in southeast asia east asia and in hong kong and so on they were they had this south's outbreak in 2003 and they put in place um let's say a fire brigade uh you know in case some an outbreak would come up they were well prepared testing and tracing immediately had the laws they had everything and what we've been doing is to set up the fire brigade when the house was on fire that's and but it means that you need to invest and in in the fire brigade and you hope that they will never have to be deployed and that's in politically not so easy to to get so that's what we need to do and and uh at the moment while of course we this should be part of the the recovery plans for for covid otherwise we'll go exactly through the same mess thank you is that okay yeah thank you Peter um so we've come to the end of your talk uh on behalf of the ECB really want to thank you very much for your talk today i think it has become crystal clear that us that there should be more of these conversations between economists and health experts and we should do definitely more of that so thanks everyone also for joining and until the next webinar um wish you all the best Peter


Java loop challenge two. Just a quick reminder, if you're coming from, if you're not coming from loop challenge one, I'm not my normal recording environment, so you might hear some background noise. I'm actually sitting here looking out at some very lovely Sakura. So let's take a look at Java loop challenge two. Yeah, so we're basically using some for loops and we're gonna be doing some stuff with looping. So let's take a look here. So number one says create a loop to print the numbers one to 10 inclusive. Now, I should have added here, what I wanna do is I wanna print the numbers horizontally and I wanna put a tab between the numbers. So let's just work through this problem step-by-step. So it says create a loop to print the numbers one to 10 inclusive. So it means I'm starting at one. I'm ending at 10. Inclusive means that I want to also print 10. I'm including 10 in that list. And although it doesn't really say it explicitly, I wanna print all the numbers. So one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. So four, I'm just gonna use I because that's what I've been using in my other programs. This could be X, might make a little more sense in this case. I wanna use I. Again, I'm starting at one. And it says inclusive of 10. So that means while I is less than or equal to 10 or I could do less than 11. Doesn't matter which one I do. Whichever makes more sense to you. Now if you're here because you're an AP student or planning to be an AP student, this is one of those things that you'll see a lot on AP tests and they like to confuse you with less than and less than or equal to. Thanks, that's very educational, I guess. Anyway, so we are incrementing by one. I'm gonna go ahead and put my closing brace in here just to get that in there. And again, it doesn't show it here. It doesn't say it, it should say it. I wanna print horizontally. So I'm gonna do system.out.print and I'm gonna print I. Now this isn't quite correct, but let's go ahead and test it out. So I'm gonna compile it. I'm using the Genie editor here. And I'm gonna go ahead and execute it. And let's see how the result is. So we get one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and 10. So I know that part's working. The loop is correct. I started at one, ended at 10, incremented by one. I'm happy. But what I wanna do is I want to also add a tab as I mentioned earlier. But if you haven't done that before, let's just start with adding a space. Okay, so I'm gonna compile it, add the space and now I've got a space between each of my numbers. I could stop there. I don't have to add a tab, but adding a tab I think makes it look a little more graphically lined up. So to add a tab, I think that's a forward slash or is it a backslash, maybe a backslash, and a T. So that tells the computer to print a tab. So I'm gonna go ahead and compile it. I'm gonna go ahead and run it. And you can see now there's a tab between each of these. Now depending on your computer setup, this tab might be a little bit smaller. It might be a little bit bigger. I think it's a computer setting. I don't really know much about it, but it lets us line up our numbers in nice neat columns. Now, number two is a different type of problem. But similar, it says create a loop to print the sum, key word there, sum of the numbers one to 10 inclusive. Now notice it says one to 10 inclusive. This is the same loop issue or loop problem as we had in the first example. So I already know how to do that. I'm just gonna go ahead and copy this. So I don't really like typing again. I'm gonna take that out because it's a different problem. So see what it says, create a loop to print the sum of the numbers one to 10 inclusive. So because I'm printing a sum, I need to make a variable to hold that information. So I'm gonna say int sum equals zero. So when I start, the sum's gonna be zero. So it says the sum of the numbers one to 10 inclusive. So I'm gonna do it inside the loop. I'm gonna say sum plus equals i. And I'm gonna do system, system.out.println and I'm gonna print i, oops, plus, I'm gonna do t again and do a tab plus sum. So let's compile that and run it and here we go. So we got one, because zero plus one is one. One plus two is three, three plus three is six, six plus four is 10, 10 plus five is 15. I did this on the board the other day and my students were like, no, that's not right, you can't count. And I was like, oh my gosh, you're right, I can't count. Anyway, so 10 plus five is 15 and so on and so forth. And the sum up to 10 is 55, okay? So again, we started at one, we ended at 10 and 10 was inclusive. So notice here, I'm using another variable to hold the sum. So I need two pieces of information. I need my iterator i and I need my variable sum to hold that information and to keep changing along with the iterator i. Now, the next one is a slightly different problem. So it says create a loop to print the even numbers only from one to 20 inclusive. Okay, so I've got my starting point, I've got my ending point, I've got my increment. So let's go ahead and do that. So for int i equals one, because it says to start at one, not zero. And while i is less than or equal to 20, i plus plus. So no matter what else we do, this is the structure of our loop. Starting at one, we're going to 20 and 20 is inclusive. That's why I have the equal sign here. If it was less than 20, it would stop at 19. Less than or equal 20 stops at 20. Less than, oops, cancel, sorry, I don't wanna enable Siri. Less than 21 will stop at 20. Again, this is a very common little gotcha. Even though they'll do this on the AP quiz questions. And because they think it makes you a better programmer apparently. So create a print only even numbers. Now here's a question. How do I determine if a number is even? Now, some people would say, okay, well if I just change this to a two and I do i plus equals two, this will give me the correct answer. But I don't want you to do that for this one. I wanna start at one. I wanna go to 20 because what we're doing is we're learning to use conditions to determine what we do inside the loop. So it says print only even numbers. So I have to determine if, terming, I always do that, if the number is even. To do that, if I percent two equals equals zero. So percent is called the modulus. And what it does is gives you the remainder. So for example, one divided by two is zero with one leftover. Two divided by two is one with zero leftover. So it's even. Three, or sorry, three divided by two is one with one leftover. Four divided by two is two with zero leftover. So that's how that works. So if it's even, print ln, well, let's print it across. Print, I should have specified that. i plus t plus, so we're only printing the even numbers. So I'm gonna go ahead and compile that. Because I didn't follow my own rule about always adding that extra brace before filling it in, okay? And again, some people will point out that in Java, if you only have one line of code, you don't need the braces. I strongly recommend putting those braces in. It'll help you keep your code organized. And later, if you have to add some code in here and do something extra, it's a lot easier. I just think it's gonna help you to keep your code organized. That would be my advice. So compile it, run it, and you can see here, we got two, four, six, eight, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, and 20 inclusive. Moving right along. Number four, create a loop to print the sum of the even numbers from only from, should be only from one to 20 inclusive. So this is clearly a combination of this problem and this problem. Now just a quick Java thing. I've already declared sum as an integer here. So I don't need to declare it again. But I do need to reset the value to zero. Now I've already got this code. So I'm just gonna go ahead and copy that. It's the same basic problem. So print the sum of the even numbers only from one to 20 inclusive. So I'm gonna do the same thing I did. If it's even, the only difference is that I'm counting from two, four, six, eight, 10, et cetera. And then if it's even, I add it to the sum, not dumb. Sum plus equals I. And then I'm gonna go ahead and print that plus the sum. So I reset the sum to zero. And I didn't put in there because I already did that way up here. And then it says only the even numbers. So I first have to find out, is this number even? If it is, add it to the sum. And then I'm gonna print that out. Again, notice how I didn't have to add these because I already had them from the previous question. So I'm gonna go ahead and run that. And you can see something has gone horribly wrong. What the sum plus equals I. It should be two plus four plus six. And what did I do wrong there? I can put it correctly. I have a sum equals two. Sum plus equals I, system out. Oh, duh, I'm gonna do print LN. That's pretty horizontally. Okay, so let's go ahead and do that. And now I've got two, zero plus two is two. Two plus four is six. Six plus six is 12. 12 plus 18 is 20, et cetera, et cetera. Down to 90 plus 20 is 110. Which is interesting because that's also, that's double 55. So that's kind of an interesting mathematical thing. I'm sure there's some mathematical explanation for that. Okay, now, so that's that. So this again, this was a combination of the previous two exercises. And this is why I say that these exercises do them in order because they build on each other. Okay, number five, create a loop that prints the two times table from zero to 12. So this is zero times zero equals, or zero times two equals zero. Zero times one equals, sorry, one times two equals two. Two times two equals four. Three times two equals six, et cetera, et cetera. So what we're iterating through here, we're starting at zero and we're ending at 12. So I'm gonna do four int i equals zero. i is less than or equal to 12. And I'm going up by one. Let me go ahead and close that down. And what it says is I want to print the two times table. So I'm gonna do system.out.println and I want to print i times, I use an x here, I use an asterisk, it doesn't matter. Times two equals, plus, this is where it gets a little confusing, i times two. Now what you might want to do here, you want to say int product, product is what's the result of a multiplication. So this makes it a little more clearer. So product equals i times two. And then here I would just put product. Maybe that makes this one a little bit clearer. So we're printing the two times table from zero to 12. So zero to 12, up by one. So zero times two is zero. One times two is two. Two times two is four. And we're just printing it out row by row. So we go ahead and run that, or compile it, run it. And there is our two times two. Zero times two equals zero. One times two equals two. And if you're having trouble figuring these types of things out, you want to look at the pattern. So I got a zero, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, all the way down to 12. And then the mathematical relationship here is this times two is zero. This times two is two, et cetera, et cetera. Now some of my clever students are like, well, couldn't I do zero, two, four, six, eight, 10? You could do that. And then divide to get this number. But usually we would be going the other way. Especially since we're printing the two times table. Now, this last one's a little bit more difficult. And what we're doing here is a little bit different. What I'm gonna be doing is I'm gonna be printing one, two, three, four, five. And then the next row, we'll have one, let's see, two, sorry, there should be two, sorry. Two times two is four, three times two is six. Four times two is eight. And then five times 10. And then this will be three. And then we'll have three times two is six. Three times three is nine. Four times three is 12. Five times three is 15. And 12 by 12. So this is an interesting challenge. It's a bit like this, but it's also a little bit different. This may be the first time you've done something called a nested loop, which is where we have a loop inside of a loop. So I'm still doing 12 and 12. So I'm gonna do four int i equals one. i is less than or equal to 12. i plus plus. And I'm gonna go ahead and put my other brace in so I don't forget it. Now I need a second loop. Again, this loop is also going from one to 12. I'm gonna use j. This is just kind of an old kind of programming habit. I think from Pascal or something. It's something that's very common. i and j were often used as iterators. You'll see that as well in the AP stuff. So what I wanna do is I'm gonna do system.out.print. Not print, print, not print line, but print. And I'm gonna do i times j. Then at the end of each row, I'm gonna do system.out.println. I think I have to put quotes in there. I think this will do it. Let's try it. I'm not sure. Okay, yeah, it did do it. Okay, but it doesn't look very good. So we need to add, okay, so let's go ahead and compile that. And there we've got our times tables, okay? Because this is i. i goes up to 12. This is i times j. So i is one. So one times one is one times two is two. One times three is three. One times four is four. Okay, so i times j. So one times one is one. One times two is two. One times three is three. We go all the way through to 12. We come down, i is now two. So two times one is two. Two times two is four. Two times three is six, et cetera, et cetera. And it goes all the way down to 12 times 12. Pretty nifty. Wonder what happens if I add zero? I'm just kind of curious if it's gonna do what we want it to or not. Let's compile, I'm kind of curious about this one. Okay, it does basically the same thing.  But I don't really think that helps our case at all. So we go ahead and put that back and compile it. Make sure it's working. Okay, again, this is a tough one, especially if you've never done this type of thing before, but I think up to number five, it should be fairly straightforward. This one you gotta do a little bit more thinking. And if you're one of my students, we'll do more problems like this later. And yeah, we'll go over that bit more step by step. Okay, that's it. Thanks for watching and keep on coding.


What's up guys today? We have a very very exciting topic of discussing what happened to the Atlas pumpers now facing an SEC lawsuit and Criminal charges for using social media to pump and dump stocks We also go over the FTX scandal and the overall market This one is a jam-packed podcast so we'll for sure want to listen up stick around and enjoy cheers guys and let's get into it What's going on guys we're back with another episode of the after hours podcast today We have a fiery one that I'm excited to start so Alex I'll kind of pass it off to you and we'll go from there. Yeah, so I'm sure you guys have noticed or heard in the news lately There was a massive $100 million pump and dump scam that just got exposed that just got blown up into massive proportions and the crazy part is we're gonna explain everything guys We're gonna explain, you know, who these people are what they did how they did it What's gonna happen and kind of the future of trading because of it? But my thing that surprised me the most is how fast that these people got caught because the saying is the wheels of justice Grind slowly and these people were scamming during 2020 and 2021 and 2022 they got caught usually takes until 22 what like 20 30 for these people to get caught so I think that's very interesting how a lot of these pump and dump schemes are Getting caught faster and yes, I thought that was just kind of crazy is how fast they got them So a little bit of backstory on these things is these were a couple of normal dudes Probably never traded before in their lives or if they did trade they didn't really make much money training and then When the pandemic started and everyone was locked in at home a lot of people started making discord chats They started making telegram chats. They started making these private chats where you know They would just use it as a way to communicate and talk Eventually those private rooms became free rooms where you could join as much Free doesn't matter and they got slowly filled hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people just looking for free signals and free alerts Now these people that were doing the scheme, you know, we're pretty well aware of what they were doing So they would accumulate stocks early. Let's say they would buy stock on Monday They would tell all their friends about it on Tuesday on Wednesday They would be tweeting it and then as soon as that tweet volume came in as soon as people started finding out Stock would go up go up go up. They would say they're adding more and instead they would just be selling their position There were very many pump and dumps as you probably can remember from the last year is CEI was a massive one DTS was a massive one and these people just cleaned up. They were pretty much stock Manipulating right they would buy stock early they would pump it up to other people and They would dump the stock when they were telling people to buy more they said that they believed in the company They said that's gonna go to the moon and they didn't even have any shares of it, right? So stock manipulation is obviously illegal. You can't do that We see stock manipulation every single day in our industry on lower scales with screen share rooms with email alert rooms or whatever type of alert rooms, but a lot of those people Although they're making a lot of money. They're pretty small fish, right? And These people in the course of two years made over a hundred million dollars pump and dumping stocks They would buy Rolls Royce's they would buy houses.   They're pumping some of my biggest trades this year at last year DTS 170,000 one day CI 69,000 one day I've made hundreds of thousands out of people made millions of dollars betting on the other side of these pumpers So I mean before we continue into you know, what happens next I want to kind of open it up to you guys and kind of if I've missed anything or if you guys want to comment on I think it's just it's wild. No, I think I think these guys were definitely the most Successful pumpers and like the modern trading air and like the last like 20 years like obviously they were like The boiler rooms in the 80s in the 90s and you know, there's always been stock pumpers You're going back a hundred years, but these guys in such a short period of time were able to accumulate Was it a hundred million they accumulated is that there the number I think it totally made a hundred million I think their discord chat room had anywhere between two to three hundred thousand free people Which is insane and it's like for them. It was the perfect storm, right? Because it was COVID met lockdowns met people working from home met trading became cool And then the pumpers just went nuts, right? And and I think that on the flip side like you said it led to a lot of small cap to mid cap traders having the best Years of their lives in the trading in the market because there was so much crazy Volatility and you said there's like pumpers today like there are pumpers every single day like every single day But every single day there are people and pump it and pump it and it's yeah Every every day there's pumpers and stuff But these guys brought a liquidity and a volume that I've in five years have never seen it would be like they would get Involved the stock was gone and it was it was violent rips So it was it was cool to see and and same thing. I think like you said times are just moving faster that they caught Them a lot quicker. I mean it took them five years I think to nail bell for it like after he stepped down and you know, it's just it's crazy To see what you said in a year and maybe it is them taunting.  They didn't do anything that bad You know, they're not that great Or they are great like they still have a loyal fan base, which is actually crazy to me When you scroll through the discord, I'd say, you know, even even beforehand or like even before this drop They still have loyal people there.  That's the thing that they're Their client base Is garbage man. It's people that's stupid bro It's people that believe in this nonsense and that's it just blows my mind that they were able to amass so many degenerates Yeah, that would buy anything that they said Oftentimes what happened it was would spike up instantly Crash instantly It would lose all their money But because the room was free it just kept turning and turning and more more more more more people because Their business model was not too charged because they could make way more money pumping dumping stocks and going on to the next thing about this is A lot of other people in our industry have been caught for stock manipulation. It's a very very common thing it's like It's almost that thing that's like sweep under the rug because if you have enough money Essentially, you just pay a fine and you're done with it You know, one of the biggest ones that got caught was raging bull. They paid 10 million dollars Another one was I think warrior trading they got they paid three million dollars and now this one with Atlas They Are I think they'd be made an example out of because this whole ftx stuff is going on and If that's like another thing that we're going to be talking about but like In my opinion, these guys were so well politically connected that like they're not going to get anything more than a slap on the wrist And because they're not going to get anything more than a slap on the wrist I think the sec is going to make an example out of this hundred million dollar pump scheme because They need something to take attention away And the perfect thing is sending these guys to jail. So I think based on the times Based on what's been going on There is a very high probability that these people not only are going to give back all the money plus more And see some jail time, which is crazy because now That should make other pumpers other social media influencer pumpers Be scared to help because Now they're next right. There's so many other discord rooms. There's so many other pumpers and The reality is a lot of these guys can't make money trading and that's why they are pumping but You know for us that's on the other side of the trade That makes money when they pump things. I mean, it's a little bit Unfortunate that we're losing pretty much easy money, right? It's easy money it's very easy money to bet against these pumpers wants to trend has changed and You know, this is an opportunity for everyone to kind of clean up before it's all got right Yeah, that's true. And I think pumping is kind of weird because there's like in my opinion There's two kinds, right?  It's kind of sad to see That we're gonna lose a lot of volume But on the flip side, hopefully a lot of these people who lost money or saw that now understand Like it's time to invest in real education and like that there's millions of dollars to be made but it's like Focus on the right way to trade And I kind of want to touch on the ftx thing You said a little tiny bit, but I just wanted to say I have a feeling that they're going to use this Like they've always said crypto is unregulated So I think they're going to show that how regulated the stock market is And they're going to say in like congress and all that they're going to say well Now the crypto market has to go to this regulation because see we nail pumpers here And we're going to nail pumpers and crypto and then we're going to nail all that So I think it's going to be just a huge.   Have you got to pay $15 million bro?  He got paid $15 million. He lost around $15 million. So technically it's a wash, you know, like technically so He didn't have paid an ftt, right? Am I wrong? He didn't get paid. It was no money. No idea Got paid in the overall token He got paid. I think pretty much they gave him free money.  If you haven't I do recommend it But like that you basically lied to so many people but somehow through being Persuasive and having money which was actually just customer funds They managed to persuade people to thinking they were the real deal How many people of large like kevin oliri is not a small investor. I think he's worth like a couple hundred million Got this guy and he's standing by he had no idea until the last final day that this company was insolvent And that there was no money But he's now on tv crying to congress saying like We were scammed the company is was put out of business on purpose by cz I think it's also interesting to note that when they give someone that ftt token It's almost like giving them stock in ftx, right? That's essentially what it is. So it's like stock in the company. So I think in scenarios like that When someone like oliri or venture or whatever sees that they're getting stock, they know That the end game is the ipo that shit and then sell their stock for 10 20 30 x profits oliri got 15 million Probably thinking that on the ipo day that 15 million would be 100 million, right? So when that happens that kind of that greed Forces them to look the other way essentially, you never know. Maybe sure. Maybe he didn't know that the books were insolvent But you know, he could have probably done a better job You know at least double checking because hey if I say Hey, I got 100 million in my bank account. Cool. That sounds good. I'm cool with that.  It's a it's a whole it's like the burning made-off scam the burning made-off scam was If you leave or you pull out money You will never be allowed to get into the fund again and the fund was making like 17 percent a year So it was in their best interest to not question anything to not pull out money Because if you did that you're out of the circle. So it's probably same shit's happening here That was like, um, they asked uh chumath there.    It's like Humans are naturally greedy. So like something interesting bro is like like currency stuff So like the way usually it works is currency is usually backed by something physical like gold and every time That the currency gets debacked By whatever they say they deback it or they it'll make it uh double checked by anything Eventually the currency implodes Because humans should keep printing printing printing money It's unlimited money and eventually the currency becomes worthless It happens every single time in human history Started with romans and just kept going and going and going the first time it was ever de pegged or de De-synced with gold or whatever it was or whatever they 1971 and next and they eventually humans just like They just keep printing money and they just keep ruining it because eventually that currency becomes useless Same thing in the stock market eventually there's going to come a group of new pumpers Now not on discord.  They're going to make the next hundred million dollars The cycle is going to repeat because humans are always greedy Humans will always be looking for signals. They'll always be looking for alerts and they're always going to be looking for the easy money They're going to be looking for the lottery ticket And eventually whoever sells them that lottery ticket will make a substantial amount of money The people seeking those lottery tickets will lose a substantial amount of money and the people like us That bet against them will have a significant amount of money with no jail time because we're not doing anything sketchy So the cycle will always repeat Humans will always remain greedy And our job as professional traders Is to find where those pockets of greed are and if warranted To make money on the way down Yeah, I mean pumpers have been around since literally the beginning of of the stock market You can go back to the rose bubble. I mean, I'm sorry till at mania. You can go back to the 1900s guys like jesse You live more. We're always talking about pumpers. So you're right. It's always going to be there Whether it's just the how the message is delivered. It's just different. I think this is one of the biggest I've ever seen of like people getting nailed and I'm very curious to see kind of how it all unravels Um, especially with against so much involved in the media Um, and I know it's big because I have people who are not traders messaging me about it being like, oh my god Did you see the shit?  It's the Rolls Royce. It's 100 million dollars. It's pandemic. It's this it's that it's It has everything that it needs to be to be a big story and because of big story It will have a big outcome and I'm very curious to see during this lawsuit Which other people were involved, right?  They're gonna throw someone else under the bus Yeah, and I'm pretty sure there's gonna be some notable reputable people That are probably gonna be involved in this as well. Yeah Well, there were there there've always been like messages leaked between like uh Like on twitter between like other people who have rooms like I don't know if you remember that in like 2020 2021 where They were leaking messages about other people who had and it's all gonna come out man it's all gonna come out and we're gonna see it and it's just gonna be interesting but What this tells me like you said james is like this is This is pretty much the bear market, right?  It's just crazy because you know, we don't know how long it's gonna last and you know We don't know how much money we're gonna make during that time, but In the meantime, there's still opportunity like this week that we're recording this podcast We have tons of runners tons of moves Exactly so we're pretty much chilling it's just It's just very it's very crazy what's happening and Again, we'll post the full Lawsuit in the description so you guys could read it, but they're literally like for cei They bought two million shares At like 50 cents a share And the stock went as high as like four bucks Was that their biggest pump wasn't there one that won't even create was I forget they had another one Which was another one that was great. I remember that it was a daily I remember in alex there was a period of time where you were hitting it every single day It was like every morning that say up buying more buying still buying still buying and it was every single day but Something I think that's that's really important to like note too is like You're not a real trader in my opinion or like a real like risk manager if your Entire like process revolves around these pumpers like the one benefit to like what we all do Is like we don't need pumpers. It's helpful and it's almost like a subset like niche that we get to trade But like we like like if they never pumped another stock again, it would Wouldn't affect it. It wouldn't affect what it's just an added bonus like every day you make $100 a day day job But you find a $10 bill on the floor. You just pick up a $10 bill Bow says it every year. He's like I should be sending these guys like like a bottle of dawn parry because they pay On the dawn parry a little bit more than that. I think seriously I mean, I don't know I think I think we're in a weird position where like, yes We're in a weird bear market. We're in this little rally right now But also small caps are hot and like all these pumpers are kind of dead right now. So we're still getting opportunity I mean, I just think that the pumpers like Like the one that we have now for instance, like I was saying this to james the other day Like he just his approach is like very bad as far as pumping goes, you know, like Stocks at highs and like he's looking to like Harry doesn't know how to trade these guys don't know how to trade Bro, it's like it's crazy because I was saying to james the other day like oh like what's what's farm ran Like what's he doing james?  Why Bro is to find the lightest volume stock with the lowest flow possible getting as early as possible So as fast as possible and the reality is bro, like I thought I was and again things might change But I thought these guys were gonna at least take it a little bit slower after seeing this shit But I think that They're just people are just greedy bro.  So I mean look this was bound to happen. They were bound to get caught It was only a matter of time. They were too big not to get caught.   I do this and that I get going like whatever it is every single person I know wants to get into the market or is in the market is looking for help Every single person says they try it on their own. They did this they did that and like I think the market Is there's I've always said that there's two biggest ways to make money is real estate and stock market And right now real estate people have too much of a barrier to entry to getting because too much money You at least need fucking tens of thousands of dollars if not like 50k to at least get something right? um So I think the stock market is always gonna be around forever I think the stock market is one of the best wealth generators ever and I think that one day bro We're just gonna wake up and people are gonna realize that hey this these people have been here for a while They've been helping for a while. They do things the right way. They don't scan They don't alert and now I want to be able to learn how to become a professional trader from the Harvard of trading education So I agree. I agree and I think I think right now the the idea of the stock market is scary to so many people because it's like We've been getting like the market itself has been getting wrecked But once people kind of wake up and see like hey these guys have been like consistently like killing it for like Years now and it's like they're doing really well and like things are going great So it's just it takes time. It's all cycle and eventually you who knows bro Maybe what we have to do is we have to do that because like the way we run things guy I mean like obviously you guys know but for the people out the way we run things. There's no alerts. There's no pumps There's nothing it's pure education. We post our watch list 30 minutes before the market opens and all we do Is follow that pre made plan. It's like if you want to bake cookies you need a quarter a cup of milk You need some chocolate chips you need one egg We give you the plan before we make the cookies and all we got to do is follow the plan to make the cookies and maybe what we have to do guys is as away For people to realize is maybe they want alerts. Maybe we alert them to watch us every day so that they see what we're all about I know it's a discussion that we've had internally, but I think that's going to be the next step is for people that want to get You know fed things will feed you guys to watch us and you'll realize that 30 minutes before the market open our plan is made You guys will realize there's no front running. There's no follow the leader. There's nothing like that and Maybe after that then you'll want to take trading seriously Yeah 100 100 I think that's why like, you know, we always make it a clear point that like we're actually trading something That's repeatable too.  I wanted to uh before we wrap up I wanted to touch on uh like cpi and some of the news we got yesterday.  Uh, was it a half a point raise? Yeah, half a point. Yeah Well, they still raised and he did signal that that potentially in 23, uh, they could be slowing rates You know and kind of stopping that and trying to aim towards his goal But what do you guys think about everything that that kind of came up this week? I think they're just gonna keep hiking until that he reaches his goal I mean that's really it like I mean he came out like what was it? I don't know if it was last week or the week before but Came out and basically said like oh like we're thinking about slowing like we're thinking about slowing and then hike to half point so, I mean I think like to me like I mean 7 inflation shit The only tool they have is is really for the most part to hike those interest rates So he's just gonna keep doing that.  I mean there's not really much else they can do so I have a hard time believing that they're going to slow rates when you know, that's the only tool he has, you know Yeah, I um I don't see a world where we get anywhere near like two to three percent inflation within the next like couple years I just don't see it I don't see it. I feel like we're probably Going to sit at a hyperinflation whether it's just sits at like five percent or even a little higher for multiple years And I think we're just going to have high rates high inflation for a while Until it all breaks and I think like Alex you've mentioned in the past like something needs to break Before things can really change and I was going to say bro I was going to say they're going to keep going until something fucking breaks And they're magic tool they have they have one more tool here They're magic tools the money printer. Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. They're going to keep going until something breaks And they're going to save us by printing money. That's it.  I'm here to fix you. I'm here to fix it I'm going to I'll give you a stimulus We're going to be fine. Don't worry Uber just went bankrupt.  No, I think that was a gift I think that was a gift to everything that they collapsed because I don't even think I don't think anybody knew about that shit It just happened But there will be a company and it's it's a perfect storm right now for the federal reserve because right So we have the house and the senator split. So they're not going to be printing any more crazy money Through, you know policy, but the federal reserve can print they have their own narrative and they have their own mandate which is two to three percent inflation And try to get lower interest rates So they're gonna like you said, we're gonna they're gonna keep pushing and pushing and eventually something will break Something's gonna break bro. Something's gonna break something's gonna break and when it breaks That break signal that Gapped down that flush is that buy that is the signal that is the signal Yeah, and I mean everyone says it all the time like I follow a lot of really interesting people on twitter that talk about this And they're just saying how this whole time as crazy and volatile as it been like you get the vix no one's afraid No one's afraid because nothing crazy has happened.  I think that we're gonna have it's gonna continue like this until 23 And then we're gonna start seeing the corporate earnings come out from these massive companies And they're gonna say wait a second the holidays were kind of shit this year spending was lower People are starting now to fall behind on Payments, I mean I posted we were talking the other morning about how like credit cards and stuff and like People are still very caught up and people have been spending money But I think we're gonna start seeing that change really quickly in in delinquencies and and people just lower savings and all that Bro, everyone that I know that has money is not trying to spend money right now.  I went two nights ago. I went out to dinner 200 bucks. It was nothing.  It's 200 dollars That's why I'm like, I don't want to spend money anymore Anyone with any sort of money has smartened up and realized it's just a waste It's a waste to go out and do it right now.  I mean, I went Christmas shopping the other day I see people maxing out credit cards at Louis Vuitton doing crazy bullshit So it's just that will continue and that cycle will happen and then like we said it'll break And then we'll be ready to kind of move into the next cycle Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, I think that's it guys. So what we'll do is in the description We'll put all the uh, the lawsuits the information and everything so you guys kind of decide for for yourself Everything we said is for Entertainment purposes only This is not our opinions or these are our only soul opinions. These are not backed by anything other than comedy So don't try to sue us because we have too much money and you won't win All right, well, we'll end it on that. I love that disclaimer Motherfucker


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