This is the Human Action Podcast, the weekly show looking at politics and events through the lens of economics with your hosts, Jeff Deist and Dr. Robert Murphy. Welcome back everybody to the Human Action Podcast. As many of you know, we've been on a brief hiatus. We've been rejiggering the format a little bit into more of a pure political economy show where me and my new co-host, Dr. Robert Murphy, are going to be looking at current events and politics and society through more of an economic lens and particularly an Austrian economics lens. So I'm excited to get into a new format to be a little more topical, to get away from some of the book reviews we've been doing for the last couple years, which though we enjoyed them mightily, I think there's a lot of pressing issues going on. And Bob, it is great to see you. How are you? I'm doing great, Jeff. Thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward to this new format. Well, did you suffer through that state of the union? Yes. And it was, I think I should get hazard pay for that, but yes, I did listen to the whole thing. Yeah. Well, so obviously we've got events in Ukraine and closely related to those are sanctions. And man, oh man, over the last couple of days, I have seen more nonsense about sanctions. Well, for starters, Bob, this idea that they're costless, that they just hurt the Russians. And even then, the Russian government, but that, you know, what about the other side of the equation? I mean, if you're sanctioning Russia and not allowing, let's say, dollar or euro to flow into Russia, guess what? There's a flip side to that, which is oil and weed or whatever else is not going to flow out of Russia. Well, it's interesting. And I think, you know, the Biden administration and the other allies implicitly admit that because at least as of March 2nd, they were not officially applying the sanctions to the energy flows out of Russia. And the reason, and as I'm reading this Reuters article, and it was funny, they say the United States is open to imposing sanctions on Russia's oil and gas flows. But going after exports now could help Moscow, the White House said on Wednesday, as oil prices surged. And so, you know, you read in like, how is that? And they're making the obvious point that you're making. They're saying, oh, well, if we just totally didn't accept, you know, Russian exports of oil and gas that would raise prices at the pump for Americans. And that helps Moscow. So that's why we're not going to do that because we're onto them. You know, we're wily. But you're right. I mean, it's the same principle with everything else, too. But also, if anything, sanctions are less targeted than actual physical or kinetic forms of warfare, right? I mean, you can, horrific as it might be, you can target missiles in theory. You can send troops into military targets rather than civilian populations. But when it comes to sanctions, I think it's very, very difficult to have the force or the brunt of the effects of the sanctions only hit the bad guys you want them to, which in this case, I guess, are Russian politicians or oligarchs. Right. I mean, the whole premise of sanctions, you know, the idea being that, oh, we're going to apply pressure to the general population, and then they're going to in turn, you know, apply pressure to their leader to, you know, get that person to either change course or overthrow him. And so for one thing, just to make sure I don't forget to say this, they don't work, right? Like, for example, how long did we have sanctions on Cuba? And that didn't get Castro out of power. If anything, it allows the local dictator whose policies presumably are pretty bad for the people to then blame all the problems on the big bad US and, you know, and not unreasonably so. So I think, and I know that like when I was in grad school, my roommate was a literal Marxist at one point and she was all excited that she was going to get to go visit Cuba. And, you know, and I said at the time, I remember when you see it on how, how poor it is, that's because of socialism, not because of the US. And she was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's it's a very convenient thing to, you know, that's gives an explanation for how come these policies aren't are helping our people. It's because, well, if the most mighty nations on earth are sanctioning us, it's not surprising. So again, as a rally around the flag on 9 11, everybody was behind George W. Bush, except for a few of us, obviously. And so why would people think that that flips somehow, you know, in other countries, when the US and other powerful nations impose sanctions, if anything, that makes the local population more supportive of their leader? Yeah. Well, when I see, for example, that the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ have stopped trading certain Russian owned companies, you know, we have the ruble at a record low against the dollar. So that's certainly hurting the Russian people more than so called Russian oligarchs. And, you know, when Biden kept saying oligarchs, it struck me that an oligarchs are rich guy from a country we don't like, right? A billionaire is a rich guy from a country like ours. So that this this idea that we're going to seize the wealth of oligarchs, that strikes me regardless of where they are in the world, regardless of their attachment to our participation with the Putin regime. That strikes me, Bob, is a pretty dangerous precedent.  Yeah, I agree entirely with you. And in fact, depending on how well the wealthy person is in the good graces of the intelligentsia, he could be called a philanthropist. That's even better than a billionaire, right? And so if he gives a lot of money to their pet causes. Yes, right. A philanthropist is a left wing rich guy. Yep. Yeah. So yeah, I think you're exactly right.  And so, oh, well, we have to throw rule of law out the window and just target them.  You know, it's not that they've been formally convicted in a court of law. And therefore, these punitive sanctions can be applied to them as a punishment that none of that is going on. And so, again, regardless of one's views on the particulars of Russia moving troops and firing missiles at Ukraine, they the question is, do we want to set the precedent that, oh, yes, the Western governments, if they don't like certain people, they can just basically, you know, blockade them from global commerce, which is what they're doing. And as governments around the world are getting more capable of monitoring people's transactions as we're moving more towards a cashless society, and that's not just, you know, a random thing. Obviously, forces are pushing for that. People need to realize that's going to be the way in the future. Governments are going to deal with dissenters. They don't need to actually lock them up or disappear in the middle of the night. They can just flip a switch and all of a sudden you can't buy anything at the store. Yeah, domestic dissenters, I mean, that's what we have to understand here is that they're going to use this stuff on us. The idea that you can seize wealth or freeze wealth without any due process or legal proceeding, I think, is very, very scary. And we look, we've seen bank runs in Russia and Ukraine. We've even seen them in Canada when during the trucker convoy, the Canadian Trudeau government seized and shut off access to bank accounts for some of the people who had at least allegedly donated that. So this is this isn't just some far away thing. But some of this other stuff. Also, Jeff, if I could just jump in on that, I've seen stories about how people and I don't know if they've taken action on this yet, but certain officials are now investigating like, well, how can we get into and regulate Bitcoin because now these oligarchs and others in Russia, they're evading sanctions by switching to crypto. So again, it's they're going. It's a full court press. They're going after everything in the guise of, well, we got to stop, you know, these bloodthirsty Russians from invading their poor neighbor. And I've seen lots of normies on Twitter saying, well, this is a good reason for Western governments to ban Bitcoin because, you know, otherwise people are just going to be able to send money wherever they want to whomever they want. And governments won't be able to control it. And of course, that's related to the Swift system, which controls clearing transactions across the world for banks. And the U.S. effectively controls the Swift system, which, you know, the Russians have now been kicked off of. So again, the workaround for that is going to be that the Russians are will be more interested in the emerging Chinese system, the Chinese competitor to the Swift system for clearing interbank transactions in different currencies. You know, I mean, there's a lot of bad fallout from all of this. I think people need to understand, look, as I agree with Bob, I don't think sanctions work, but I understand people who are like, come on, we got to do something. And you claim to be non-interventionist. At least we got to at least apply economic pressure on the Soviets or else they're just going to be this rogue nation to look there. They've made this military incursion into a sovereign Ukraine.  But look at some of the fallout from this. I mean, we have this Valerie Gergiev. I hope I'm saying that correctly. He's, supposedly, close to Putin, but he is the conductor of the Munich Philharmonic.  I mean, that's sort of stuff. This guy hasn't lived in Russia for a long time. I'm reading about Canadian Junior Hockey banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from joining it. I mean, even from the Paralympics, the Paralympics, the handicapped people, Russians and Belarusians are being prohibited from participating in that. I mean, you know, look, if we're going to start seizing people's money because they have some involvement, maybe we need to seize the Biden's family money. I mean, this is just unbelievable. And I guess what bothers me, Bob, is that you'd think with social media, especially on the ground social media, we would be able to cut through the fog better than we could during, let's say, when W was invading Iraq. But we find this the opposite, is that sort of the mainstream narratives get boosted and amplified by these credulous social media users, at least that's my experience. Yes, same with me. And you would have thought that, at least with Twitter and things like that, people on the ground, and they can do that in sort of guerrilla journalism. But and we know why it's because they've adopted policies and learn from the top down to sort of clean that stuff up and get rid of disinformation. Speaking of which, it's hilarious to me. I was listening to NPR and the coverage of this stuff. And they were talking about how, oh, the Russian government, they're cracking down on like the ability of people to get accurate information. And so not in the commentator was saying how there was this divide among the Russian people, that the younger people, those who have access, and I think they even use the term alternative media, are getting the real message, whereas the older Russian population who rely on state media, they're being fed the Kremlin's line. And I'm listening to this on national public radio, who of course are totally pro-Biden and everything. So it was just kind of ironic that, oh my goodness, can you believe that the Russian government is using official state sponsored media to get its message out there. And they're cracking down on the ability of people to get the alternatives. And meanwhile, we're cracking down on COVID disinformation, et cetera, et cetera, according to them. So the whole thing, I do want to circle back to if you made a great point about even, no matter how much you try to target these things, it's gonna have a general fallout. And you explained why, if for no other reason that if the Russian ruble falls, right? So even if they just targeted very specific things in terms of exports out of Russia, will that other things equal is gonna make it harder for them? In other words, if foreigners who have their own currencies are prevented from buying those particular exports, then in general, the Russian ruble falls against other currencies, which makes foreign goods more expensive for domestic Russians, even if they had nothing to do with the particular industry being targeted. So again, the economy is a very interrelated thing and it's hard just to punish one little segment of these people over here without hurting their neighbors. Yeah, and it's hard to do it without unintended consequences too.  So apparently people use them in the subway in Moscow. So there's these huge lines because people are trying to get the tokens or the physical rubles or whatever they need to pay without having Apple or Google on their phone working. And so I know for a fact, Apple and Google both have so much cash on their balance sheets. I mean, they're like hedge funds unto themselves. So they're not sweating this loss of business. And more importantly, they can have good press. They can say, we're part of the war effort. We shut off access for these Russians to our products and they can get some good press out of it. But think of like a smaller US business, which had just recently in the last five or 10 years started getting some sort of access into selling goods or services in Russia. And now all of a sudden, you know, and that's 80% of their business or something. I mean, they're blameless in this. They're just some business in the US.  I think good people, moral people, you know, just because they feel good folks, that's not enough. We have to think about things and think a few levels through and not just be emotive about this. It's really, it's really bad. I mean, we're talking about people who are already far poorer in terms of their annual income than most Americans. And with Ukrainians, we're talking about people who are in turn far poorer than the average Russian. So these countries are not, you know, nearly as economically strong as we think they are. And if we start just imposing ourselves on them with sanctions, I mean, that's really a form of war. Sanctions are war. And it's easier to think of, I've just been reading RFK Jr.'s book on his family. It's easier to think of with an island like Cuba, right? Because Cuba, when we had a blockade on Cuba during the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, I mean, we could literally militarily prevent ships and planes from bringing any stuff to Cuba, including food. And you can imagine how desperate Cuba was in the early 60s. But Cuba is very, very small and economically dependent on, you know, they don't produce a lot of agricultural products. They don't produce a lot of oil. They don't have a lot of natural resources. So they're really dependent on imports to survive, much like modern-day Japan. Now Russia is a little different because Russia is vast, something like 11 time zones. Russia produces a lot of ag. It has a lot of oil. Presumably Russia could feed itself for a good long while. So when we think of sanctions as circling and cutting off an island, maybe that helps us understand it better. But, you know, Bob, you mentioned that the older Soviets are getting state-run or state-controlled messages where all the younger Hipper Russians are getting, you know, social media, and they know the real story. But look at the United States. I mean, there's no media network here that has been good on this war, this putative war. I hope it doesn't turn into a full blown war. Or sanctions. Even Fox, other than Tucker Carlson, who's been questioning the narrative, I mean, if you look at Fox, which has plenty of older Americans who are not very plugged in, I mean, the coverage, Bob, has just been dreadful. I mean, just embarrassing for our country, really. Yeah, just, I imagine, I haven't watched it too much, but just toeing the line and, you know, oh, Putin's bad, the U.S. is good. And, you know, this is just, he just invaded out of nowhere for no reason. And, you know, we're just here minding our own business. Yeah, that's basically it. And, you know, I think the other thing is that Fox News viewers, I said this the other day, it's like crack cocaine for them to show a young female with some sort of assault style rifle, you know, getting ready to dig in and fight back against the Russian bear. And, you know, they love that kind of story. I don't particularly like to see women getting killed and maimed in combat by a much stronger invading military force. That doesn't sort of get me going. But more importantly, I think it does a real disservice to the Ukrainians to feed this idea that, you know, irregular forces of untrained people, it can really defend the cities. Maybe they can. I mean, you know, that's a military question. But, I mean, this is a very serious situation to make light of it, I think. And, to view it in such oversimplified terms the Fox shows have really been doing. You know, it's not healthy. It's not healthy for our country. And, Bob, as you know better than anybody, war and money tend to be deeply entwined, right? We can't separate those two issues. Monetary policy and foreign policy, especially in the United States, where I would argue that monetary policy has really enabled a lot of bad and dangerous foreign policy. We can't separate these things. And so what's going on with the ruble and what's going on with oil and what's going on with the dollar here at home, which is not a very happy thing, all this has to be considered. And so war is not good for anybody. It's certainly not good for supply chain. It's not good for our own situation here at home. We've already discussed oil. But Jerome Powell had his annual or twice annual hearing before the Financial Services Committee yesterday. And wow, it wasn't a kumbaya warm and fuzzy thing. He basically said, yeah, this inflation isn't transitory. We're gonna get it under control, but prices aren't rolling back to what they were before. So I guess transitory now is out the window. Right, yeah, he's definitely said that. I think he even signaled that before too, that saying we're not using that word transitory anymore. So that's certainly gone, they're pivoting. And what is interesting though, as of the most recent official numbers, so the headline CPI number is the highest it's been in 40 years, while the official unemployment rate is 4% in change. And so according to their own exposition of, here's what our doctrine is in terms of balancing these two forces, they should be hawkishly raising rates. And so far, rates are still rock bottom levels. If you look at the Fed's balance sheet, they're still buying assets every month. They slowed the rate of accumulation a few months ago, but still the Fed's balance sheet, you look at it, it's rising steadily. So according to their own metrics, they should have been tightening a lot sooner than they have and yet they're not. And it's mostly at this point just mere talk. So I'm curious to see what happens and there's lots of reasons, one of which is we've talked about and you've talked with other guests, Jeff, that they sort of painted themselves into a corner with how much debt they've issued. And so there's so much outstanding treasury debt at this point just to, if the whole yield curve shifts up a few points, I mean, that's gonna have devastating consequences on the federal government's finances. Well, it's awfully ironic that the last time they started to supposedly attempt to reduce the balance sheet, COVID came along. And so COVID gave them the excuse and maybe it even kind of bailed out the Fed to say, oh, well, this is a pandemic. Clearly we need to take extraordinary measures. And now with COVID settling down, just as they were about to, and Powell announced this, start reducing the balance sheet. Well, oh, now we've got a war with Russia.  In citing because all the markets are so fragile right now because of the international situation that it would raising rates right now would be a mistake. Well, I just, I think that they will use this situation and the perilous global economy as an excuse to say, well, we wanted to have some half point basis hikes, which they haven't done since a long time ago, 20 years ago, as opposed to quarter point basis hikes. And we wanted to really start aggressively rolling some of this, however, $10 trillion of Treasury and other assets off the Fed's balance sheet. But I think that they're going to gin up a reason that this will be a war year and we need a war economy. Yeah, you're probably right. And just to circle back to what you were saying, one thing when I was teaching an undergrad classes, I would show a chart of the Fed's balance sheet for the 20th century and just say, hey, if you ever forget when there were major U.S. wars, just look at the Fed's balance sheet and you can tell. And except for a few things like the great inflation of the 70s, once they went off the gold standard. But certainly when the Fed was nominally tied to gold somewhat, that you could tell whenever the Fed's balance sheet mushroomed is, because, oh yeah, there's World War I, there's World War II, there's a career Vietnam. So it's not surprising if they have. And what's interesting too is that's not a conspiracy theory. If you read like Milton Friedman, I don't know if it's in capitalism, freedom or somewhere else, but even some of his pop writings to explain why he's not for the gold standard. One of the reasons he gave was, one thing he said is that no one believes in it anymore so it wouldn't stick, so okay, fair enough. But another one was, hey, if there's a crisis like a major war, you don't want the government's hands tied. So even the opponents of the gold standard implicitly admit that if all the belligerents had stayed on gold during World War I, the war would have been short-lived. Everybody admits that. Well, I will say this, Jerome Powell is a smart guy. He's a very well-read guy and he speaks carefully at these hearings, as all Fed shares have done. He's not as opaque as Alan Greenspan, who is absolute maestro at saying nothing in many, many words. But Powell's careful, he's a careful guy, he's a lawyer by training, not an academic economist. So when he says things like, well, which he did yesterday, well, earlier this week for those listening to the show over the weekend, when he says things like, well, you know, the world can have more than one reserve currency. That strikes me as something, well, that's true, first of all. The world already uses the dollar and it uses the euro quite a bit. It uses the yuan, et cetera, but okay, but that strikes me as something, A, he didn't say off the cuff or unintentionally, and B, he said to sort of begin softening us up to a new reality, a new status, where the US dollar is not king anymore and we can't just always rely on very low inflation, cheap imports to have lots and lots of cheap stuff with our dollars. So when he says that, I think you gotta read between the lines. Oh, exactly, I agree with you totally, that they know 10 years from now, the US is not gonna be the global superpower that it is right now, and maybe there won't be a replacement that might just be a bunch of regional powers and so forth, but you're right. They don't want there to be a huge crash. They don't want the dollar just to fall one Thursday morning when everybody wakes up and realizes the problem, and so yeah, how do you get out of it? You gotta just make it sound real matter of fact. Like you said, just state true statements, so they're not to say, hey, the US is no longer gonna be the, have the world's reserve currency just to make a factual statement that doesn't need to be won and just sort of ease people into it, and it's, I think that's sort of the, with these things, is there gonna be a currency crisis and when's it gonna come? Well, when it comes, it'll be real fast. That's kind of how it is. There won't be one until there is one, and then when there is one, it's gonna be fast. Yeah, I wonder what his status is with renomination, my Biden. I mean, I wonder if anyone in the Senate would be questioning that with if inflation stays where it is over the next six months. I mean, I don't know when he ultimately needs to be confirmed, to get reconfirmed by the Senate, but if I were him and I wanted to be reconfirmed, I think I'd want that sooner rather than later. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Cause things are just gonna get more awkward. And again, I don't relish his position. What are you supposed to do when you come in and the Fed's balance sheet's looking like it is. And then during the crisis and what the COVID, when things were depressed, okay, but at this point, as things slowly start going back to normal and prices start rising, what are you supposed to do? That he, no matter what he does, it's gonna be bad for somebody, for some groups. Yeah, boy, he's in a box.  Man, oh man, because social security is not right. Cost of living adjustments with social security and Medicare payments are not gonna rise that quick. The other interesting thing from the hearing earlier this week, Bob, was that Powell was talking about cryptocurrencies are vehicles for speculation. So I think this was brought up in the context of cryptos being used for international payments. He said, well, these are vehicles for speculation like gold. And again, that struck me as something he wouldn't just say off the cuff because even Ben Bernanke, who is no fan of gold, believe me, or gold standard, he had a lot of back and forth with Ron Paul over the years because Ron was in the same house financial services. Used to be called the banking committee. After the Enron crisis, they gave it this highfalutin name, financial services committee. But nonetheless, Ron always got at least a couple opportunities to grill Bernanke over the years. And I think it was 2011 or thereabouts, he said, well, what is money? So these are the kind of questions that central bankers don't normally get at hearing. So, excuse me, Bernanke got through that and then he said, is gold money? And Bernanke basically said, no, it's a precious metal and it's an asset. It's an asset and a capital asset. And so Ron said, well, why don't central banks keep diamonds or other kinds of assets on their balance sheet? Why gold? And Bernanke kind of hemmed and hawed on that. But he never said it's a speculative asset. And I would argue that 6,000 years of using gold as money makes it far, far less speculative than just about anything else you can own. You might not make money on the gold of a calling. It's speculative. That strikes me as a tell if Powell was playing poker. Right, so I agree with you, Jeff, that most certainly institutional holders and so forth of gold, if anything, it's a hedge. They're trying to protect themselves in case other assets perform a certain way. Their fixed income, for example, gets crushed because of unexpectedly high price inflation. You have your gold as a hedge. And so, on the one hand, you could say, oh, I'm speculating that the price of gold is gonna go up because I think this is a high inflationary environment. But if why you're doing that is to hedge against your other stuff.  And no, that's not really, it's more you're hedging yourself or insuring is the actual verb against the possibility that you might die early. So I think there is that. And then when you say, so not only is it not correct, but then why did he go out of his way to say that I think you're right, that he is trying to set up a paradigm and shift people's views. And as we were chatting before, we started recording, I've seen too that there are people floating out ideas about, oh, hey, with these sanctions on Russia, now the oligarchs and their ilk are switching over to try to using crypto. So we need to get more serious about that and regulating and cracking down on crypto. So it does seem like they are just trying to isolate and just get the public to have this distaste for, ooh, these are these other things that are besides government issued fiat money, those are scary things that they're speculative, they're volatile, ooh, and that's what those oligarchs use. Well, if there's one thing we can take away from these events of late inflation and also this hearing earlier this week, it's that the so-called independence of the Fed and of central bankers from political events, from Congress, from pressures from a president is just absolute nonsense. And frankly, I hope anyway, from my perspective, that people are losing faith in this whole concept of monetary policy. I mean, it doesn't work. We don't need monetary policy anymore than we need housing policy or oil policy or automobile policies, right? We need to let the market work here. And if you want an example of how hacky and politicized and unserious this whole process is, just go to the C-SPAN hearing earlier this week, put your own pile, because it opens with the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Maxine Waters. Okay, so, you know, the Mercatus or Cato can send as many white papers as it wants about rules-based monetary policy over to Capitol Hill. Maxine Waters is a partisan hack. She has no particular background in banking or money.  She's mean as a snake, and she's outrageously partisan. And so the idea that this is the person in charge of the congressional oversight of monetary policy, I mean, no offense to her, most of us, you know, most people don't know a lot about monetary policy, but the fact that she's charged with it shows you that this is a process which is too far gone, folks. It's too far gone. So we need to be thinking outside the box. We need to be protecting ourselves and figuring out how we're gonna deal with what's coming with the dollar. I don't think there's any other way to think about it.  So number one, I think Maxine Waters could be brought around to NGDP targeting if it were just explained to her in the appropriate vocabulary. So, I agree entirely with you on that one, that it's, I get why people go through the motions of, hey, we gotta try, but yes, the idea of reforming the current system right now, it's, again, it's under the old Soviet Union, if they asked a bunch of economists, hey, how much wheat should be grown? Where should we put the stores? There's no right answer. All you can say is, we don't know. Let the market decide, and there's some things are worse than others, but obviously, if you're in a system like that, you should lead off with what the correct answer is, and that's not what we do in US politics, even among a lot of so-called free market economists. Yeah, more generally again, sanctions, they're immoral, right? They're not targeting the bad guys, even if you accept the official narrative of who's to blame for these things in terms of the military action, and they don't work, right? It's not just like, well, yeah, some innocent people get thrown under the bus, but at least they don't work in terms of stopping the regime in question. Again, just look around the history of US sanctions on allegedly bad dictators and so forth, they're still in power, they don't work, and there's blowback, it hurts us as well. So we're hurting innocent foreigners, we're hurting ourselves for something that doesn't even achieve the stated objective. So again, this is crazy, and we need to talk more about that. Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you have it, the first installment of the new reformatted Human Action Podcast. We're gonna be coming at you every Friday with a new show on what's happening in the world around us from the lens of economics. So share it with your friends and we'll see you next Friday, thanks so much. Catch Jeff and Bob next week for another show. But in the meantime, you can find a world of content like this at Mises.org.


Hi guys, my name is Ariana Armour. The biggest part of my story is that I was in the LGBT community for 16 years. I was four years old. I was sitting there in Sunday school and this girl walked in. And I remember, wow, this is the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life. And I was ashamed that I was a girl. Around when I was seven years old, I came out officially. I ended up in a lot of mental hospitals on a lot of medications. After I started transitioning, I had been taking testosterone for two years. Just remember feeling, you know, I'm still depressed. I'm still suicidal. I'm still struggling. Nothing really changed about my life except for my body. I was working out at the gym at the time and this girl had just, she asked me to go to church with her. Belong story short, ended up going that day and I encountered God for the first time ever. Got set free of the demonic spirit of Jezebel. And so I can honestly sit here and tell you now, the desire to be with a woman is gone. The desire to be a man is gone. Where I once desired to be a man, I desire to have.


Hey guys, this is Nate, AKA The Foot Accountant. Welcome back to the channel. Yes, today's video is about Thursday flipping in FIFA Ultimate Team. I know it's only Wednesday, but Thursday is going to be a big day for FIFA Ultimate Team and I need to talk with you about it a day ahead of time to get you ready, get you prepared and everything that's going to happen with rewards Thursday flipping batch two coming into packs on Thursday slash Friday and now after today's votes between Kempembe, Mendez and Balde Diao or Kieta Balde, there is some interesting stuff that could happen this week on Wednesday. So you might be like, why are we talking about Thursday flipping? Nobody plays this game. Nobody's Thursday flipping trying to make coins. I would highly disagree with you. There are a lot of people that are still trying to make coins and be profitable and make coins to just do more content on FIFA. People need to make coins to do all these SBCs because EA is putting out like an SBC every other day. People want to take part in them, put those cards in their squad and SBC fodder is very expensive. So there are still a lot of people that are trading at this time. So this video is for all you guys or just a market update regardless of that. If you're just interested in what's going to happen this week, Wednesday and Thursday, this one's for you. Because again, after today's vote, I do think it makes things very interesting and especially with the batch to coming out later this week. Now today, we did have another vote. That was our content basically for Tuesday was the vote between Kieta Balde between Kempembe and between Thiago Mendes. Personally, I think Kempembe is going to win. I picked Kieta Balde just because it's different. It'd be a cool card to have, right? It'd be way cooler to have this boosted card than Kempembe because we just got Saar, who is a French center back. And if we do get Kempembe, which I think we will because he is a French PSG center back and he could be a very, very OP card in this game. The way that EA has been doing things and this is also confirmed by just all of these voting cards that they have put out. Think about the last few they put out. Jovic 93 rated, Ericsson 94 rated, Firmino 93 rated. And especially if you go over here to Footbin and take a look at the front page at these new cards that have been added to draft, the guys that hadn't that were in the vote that didn't win. They are all 93 or 94 rated across the board. So these are all 93, but most of these cards they've been upgrading have been 93 or 94 rated. So imagine a 93 or 94 Kempembe. This card is going to be ridiculous. A plus nine or plus 10 stat boost on this card all the way around. He is going to be an SBC that a lot of people want to do. He's French as well. He's going to link in and submit or just fit into all so many people's teams that I think this SBC is going to cause some market movements just because it's probably going to be cheap. It's PSG and it's French and it's going to have juiced out statistics in game stats and everything. Seriously, I think this SBC is going to be a market mover on Thursday along with everything else that goes on. So I want to talk about this week. What does this SBC coming mean for like Thursday flipping? What's going to move upwards in the market this week? Just based on what we've had in the game recently. Just look at all the SBC cards and a lot of the way they've been trying to push us lately in foot, right? They've given us a lot of Premier League players, a lot of Brazilians and a lot of French cards for Len Mendy and Dombele guys like that. They're either pushing us both of those two ways. They've done that all year. So many French cards this year, even Saar, right? We've had so many French cards as SBCs and so many Brazilians and that is not stopping at all. Like we just had this in Dombele. We had the Diabe French left mid card that just got upgraded and now we have the Malang Saar as well and I know a ton of people did this SBC right here this 92 Saar a ton of people did it. He's a very, very good card and I think a lot of people would also get this Kempembe to link up with him and people that didn't even do Saar will probably do this Kempembe as well because Kempembe card I think will look better than Saar's when it does come out. So that makes for some interesting market movements out. Now we think like if people are focusing on French or even League 1 links, what kind of stuff is going to rise up this week in rewards? Now we cannot look for, we can't look at full birthdays as we're going through some of the special cards on FIFA to look at this week or maybe stuff that could rise at rewards is a Thursday investment. We can't look at full birthdays because these cards are coming back into packs on either Thursday or Friday. We can't look at shape shifters really that much because they're still in packs. They're going to get hit with rewards supply. Same thing with Winner Refresh, Future Stars, Headliners. So where do we kind of have to look? We kind of have to look at team of the seasons and icons. Those are the only two areas this week that I would recommend trying to buy and flip during a Thursday flipping period. That's honestly the only way that I would go and to even narrow it down a little bit more. I would focus on the League Untots, the Premier League team of the season cards, maybe Bundesliga La Liga and then Brazilian and French links. Honestly, you know, La La is somebody who is a very rare right back, but this is a card that so many people are going to want to want this week even more after last week. This guy was, is up almost 100,000 coins from where he was last week. This guy was like 350K, 370 ish before the Star SBC came out. I would not be surprised if this guy reaches 500,000 coins this week because again, more French cards coming into the game. I'm trying to find this dude like the lower 400s if possible. And whatever happens today on Wednesday in terms of content could affect this card's price a little bit. He could go down a little bit, but this is like a very obvious investment. It's already started to get inflated a little bit, but if you see that around like 410, 420 on the PlayStation, I would be a big fan of that card just because that's going to be the first card everybody goes and tries to link up with their new SAR or with their new Campembe card in FIFA Ultimate team. So that's something to consider there. One other thing to consider is if we just got two French centerbacks, right? Who are you going to link to in goal? Steve Mandana, team of the season card. Extinct can't really do too well with him, right? Eurice. Let's say you want to buy Eurice card. He's like the next best French goalkeeper in this game. He has a road to the final card that is probably going to be re-released in packs. It's right now 140,000 coins. So I don't really think you want to go with either of those to be honest. Some people have mentioned like maybe the Kailor Nabas inform. I don't know which version of Kailor Nabas is in packs right now. I feel like it's this 89. I feel like it's this 89 rated Kailor Nabas inform. Is that true? Let's take a look at this on footband. 44K for this card. Yeah, it's got to be true. This has got to be the one that's in packs, right? Yeah, this one's definitely in packs. The 89 rated Kailor Nabas. Is this a good investment this week? I honestly think that it is right now. He's 44,000 coins. And he is 40. He was like he's in the kind of in like the 30 high 30s to mid 40s this week. I would be definitely a fan of this card on the PlayStation. It looks really rare as well. I'm a big fan of this. If Kempembe does come out. This might be a little bit overlooked right now at the moment just because there's so many goalkeepers that are not really easy to get strong links to that are French unless you're using an icon goalkeeper. Not there's really a French icon goalkeeper, but just icon goalkeepers in general to get links. There's not a lot of French GKs out there. So I kind of like this one this week. Honestly, we don't invest in goalkeepers that much for awards, but if people have SAR and they have Kempembe this week, this guy is a prime candidate for a week in the investment around the low 40 K range on the PlayStation and on the Xbox. I would say probably. Wow, actually Xbox is really cheaper now 36 K on the Xbox like high 30s on the Xbox as well. Watch for some supply during rewards. Did did his card go up at all now? He fluctuates between like 30 high 30s and low 40s every day. According to footprint. So in the high 30s, the low 40s for this card is I'm a fan of. I think it could very easily go to 50K this weekend as he goes out of batch one release and is has the links to Kempembe. So I'm a big fan of that. One other thing I want to just watch out for in general is just League on cards, right? Our very popular card in this game. I know we have other center mids. I know we have other special cards that are French that have been released already. This guy, I think was closer to like 200,000 coins earlier this week with when the Fabinho SBC dropped, I think it was on Monday. Yeah, check this out Monday. This guy is almost down to 214K. I saw a couple pop up actually under that and then yesterday as well. He was to 15 to 14 to 13. If you see this guy on like the 210 range or under 200 K like under in the 190s or maybe 180s on Xbox. I'm a fan because again French links are going to be so big and then this weekend I think because more and more people are finishing Mendy. More and more people are doing the SAR SBC and they'll do Kempembe and then, you know, Diabi as well got that 95 rated upgrade. Just a lot of French potential this weekend, which I like that card for. I do also like the pie as a just another League one investment de Maria as well. All these guys are kind of around 200,000 coins, but they're out of packs their League on and they link to these popular players that are just now getting SBCs that people are using and trying in FIFA. Marquinhos is one that I want to talk about because this guy could be in for a wild ride this weekend in my opinion. He's up about 20 K from where he was. He was 190 during the week this week. He's up over 220 right now. I think that this card is inflated right now with because of two things. Number one, he went down a little bit when SAR came out because that's a basically substitute good, but he's now going up because people are trying to link maybe their la la and their SAR and other League on players together. PSG players, but they also have that Fabinho and the Firmino card that they just got in foot as well. So this is like a Brazilian link with those League on links as well. This card probably is going to drop on Thursday when Campembe comes out when Campembe comes out on Thursday. This card is probably going to drop, but I think it will have a rebound potential later this weekend. That's what I think a lot of the stuff for Thursday rewards this week. I don't know how much of it. I'm trying to I'm trying to talk to you guys and figure out some things and talk through some cards that could go up before 6 p.m. UK on Thursday, especially with some of these team of the season cards and some of the icons, you might see them rise up a little bit more before 6 p.m. On Thursday, there might be an opportunity, honestly, to kind of double dip. I guess you could say invest for awards. See some stuff go up. You got to pick your, you know, pick your points really closely and pick them correctly, which is really why I kind of like icons for that. And then also buy panic at 6, 7, 8 p.m. UK on Thursday with all the stuff that comes out. If if that is the actual date when batch two cards are going to come out, you're probably going to see some panic on for birthdays. And we'll talk about that a little bit more later this week with like the batch one and batch two kind of market movements. It's still just a big question. Is batch one going to be released on Thursday or Friday? Because the website says Friday, but in game here it says Thursday. So that's going to be the big question that we don't know as of yet. We have to kind of look forward to. But I would expect a little bit of panic on Thursday regardless because this is what it says in game. And if they do put out a tweet on Thursday, it says hey, EA sports is, you know, we're putting in batch two. Then I do think you would see some some panic on more of those batch two cards like for birthdays and stuff like that. But again, for weak and the rewards, I like French resilient team of the season's Premier League cards as well. You know, Todd's cards from the Prem. I'm a fan of those although there are a lot of them are already inflated.  De Bruyne is all of these guards are really up in price is decent and not except for Henderson. Henderson is really the only one that is not inflated that much. And I think it's just because of the Fabinho, which honestly, this car is still in the 120s. Isn't terrible for me. If he drops down a little bit more, if like 120 flat is an option, I would get really interested with this Jordan Henderson, at least on the PlayStation at 120 K flat. But with Fabinho being out, this guy was kind of replaced by that Fabinho card. But a lot of the other Premier League links are up, right? Rashford was like two hundred and ninety K during the week and they sell out this weekend. He is now up to three thirty. This guy is actually up a decent amount. Just because people are starting to build Premier League squads, people are linking this guy to Bruno Fernandez. Wambasaka is up like 40,000 coins. Trent's up 40 K. Allison's up. Van Dyke's a lot. Literally all Prem Tots cards are inflated just because there's more hype with the Prem. One card that's not and I actually flipped this guy last week. Sayonchu, Sayonchu is not inflated. Now, if we do get a a Kempembe SBC, then I do think this card could take a hidden price. But this would be one that I could also see a rebound on as well because people need Premier League centerbacks with these more Premier League special cards coming out. So that's kind of it for like the team of the season cards. Now, if we're looking at icons, right? A lot of icons people might think, well, is there hype for icons? You know, we've had a prime icon SBC. Is there still hype for this stuff? I think there absolutely is a lot of these cards that are the favorites that people use a lot. Maka Lele, people still use a lot. Especially there could be some more hype on a Maka Lele card because of a Kempembe coming out. 200,000 coins for this card. Last week, he went from 207. He was in the low 200s. And then on the weekend, he was 265. He was in the 250s, 240. So went from 200 to 240. From the midweek, I don't mind this card again this week. Maybe down. Wow, he was really low earlier today. He got lows of 190 earlier today. I don't mind this card and you know, baby Blanc is another one. These cards are just so cheap now at this stage of the game. That's almost everybody can afford them. Not everybody, but a lot of people can afford them. So I don't mind a lot of these French midfielder. Like maybe even petite could be somebody else that you look at this week. Prime petite look at moments cards as well because some of the top tier icons the moments cards are starting to just creep up there in price because people are now at the point in the game where they have a lot of coins left and they're starting to buy some of these cards. So just start to get interested in maybe some of these icons this week. Some of the moments cards are just crazy cheap anyway. Like this guy was over a million coins for most of the year this year. Now he's in the 600k range. This is the type of card that I would even expect to see go up a little bit this week. Just watch out for some of those meta usable icons. You could see a bounce or a drop and then a bounce and a guy like Desai or Blanc of course again with Kempembe coming out this guy's 490,000 coins the moment block I think is somebody who I've been trading with this week a little bit this card goes from like 450 to 4 8490 all the time. You know some decent little quick flips maybe this guy drops down you know because the Kempembe SBC is probably going to be in like the 250k range. Maybe this guy drops down 70 80,000 coins. He could easily pop right back up after that initial panic selling as people go to link their Kempembe's together with other French cards in their teams with this Blanc so that's just kind of my thoughts of course the market could not react as well the Kempembe as I'm talking it up right now it just all depends on the price but I think there's going to be especially if batch to comes out Thursday a decent amount of panic around like a Thursday 6 p.m. timeframe and then a rebound after that into Friday if the batch to does not come on Thursday and actually does come on Friday then we'll have to talk about that again on Friday with a whole another round of panic and then another time of those cards rising back up into Friday night as people play the weekend leak because people know these rewards are solid we saw last week people were packing St. Maxim in red a lot of team of the season cards were supplied again so that's the only issue with rewards this week is that there are team of the season cards that will be in those packs is why I would say make sure it's a really meta tots card a lot of French links a lot of stuff like that and then look at icons for real because I do think they could be pretty good flips this week just go and flip in look at some of the middle baby and prime even prime moments cards that are just popular usable and very meta items on this game last thing very last thing I haven't showed you guys know I want to talk about this little bit today as well this is a little clip from the new update that was dropped today the title update that was dropped yesterday technically the special quality filter this is EA going above and beyond what we even wanted on the transfer market all we were asking for is a way to separate rare and non-records and they go ahead and give us this special filter that is going to filter out all the different card types by card type on the market so instead of having bronze silver now we're going to be able to click into that using I think the start button on your console and you'll be able to choose any card type that is in the game this opens up a whole new possibility maybe we'll have like we'll be able to see them add card types before they actually come out into the game who knows this is really interesting for the game for FIFA just searching the transfer market it's going to make it a lot easier to find some cards that we're not searchable before for the casual player and and then also they fixed the compare price glitch after literally since the start of the game this has been a problem and they go out and they finally fixed the compare price glitch which if you did not if you were not aware that sometimes and you would compare price on your transfer targets I noticed that most often when a player you you were watching was not expired then it would only show you like the first page or two and it would stop the listings before it would show all of them so that's what I mean shout out to now and for real but again this week I do think there's a possibility to make some coins from rewards with the stuff that is going to be impacts again I think I would focus on icons mostly with team of the season cards as a good supplement to that if you do want to make some coins and then seriously every single day when the content drops or whatever content there is they're dropping solid content usable content almost every single day and a lot of people are still on this game you literally in yesterday's video and as probably a good buy in like the hundred and thirty thousand coin range like one low low to mid one twenties one thirties he is now up to a hundred and forty thousand coins after the Fabinho initial panic selling when he was down like one twenty five so he's already started a rebound I would accept I would expect these cards to get supplied a little bit more today with rewards of course as they did last week then you know some of them are going to rebound back up as well so that's something that will look out and maybe talk about a bit more in tomorrow's video specifically some other ways that we could attack the rewards market on Thursday but I did want to make this video today with you guys just to talk about what could happen with the Campembe SBC all the hype around that and then of course show you the the new update and yeah just talk about what is going on I don't know what expect to expect today for content do we get another objective player I think last week and Wednesday is when they release Bruno Fernandez five objective players if they added another one here would be crazy I don't really know if we're do one since Kubo expires in two days maybe some sort of SBC today not entirely sure what they're going to do but it might get interesting today on Wednesday we'll see of course always watch out for some panic around the 6 p.m. timeframe a little bit of rebound after that is something that I would expect as well it's going to be an interesting Wednesday on the foot market of course because people are all on edge right these new summer heat cards SBC card and of course we were one day away Thursday as well is the big game between city and Liverpool so if you have not done either of those SBCs which I have not yet I'll be doing them very soon make sure you get on that because you definitely I think want to do the Fabinho and maybe the Phil Fodum because if Man City does end up winning or they just get a plus one for a draw both of these cards still could look pretty good but of course we want the win right all or nothing is kind of what we want at this stage of the game if you enjoy this video smash the thumbs up on it comment down below if you have any questions and subscribe to the channel for new it's been Nate the Foot Accountant catch you guys later peace


Good afternoon. So I'm in that wonderful position of being the last person. So it's good for you. You only have to stay awake for 15 minutes without visibly falling asleep on me. It's okay if you just don't snore too loudly. So I would like to first acknowledge my co-authors. I've been working on this research with co-authors who are all at NYU. I'm actually based at the University of New South Wales, which is in Sydney, not Wales. I was once asked by an American where he lives in New South Wales, and I said just south of Old Wales. And he seemed to accept that without even talking to me. Which technically it's true. We are South Wales. Just a hell of a lot of better weather. So my job here is to try and tie this in together a little bit and look at it through one particular prism. So what I think we've all been talking about here in this panel is really the role of corporations in society. And then the bigger problem we've been discussing for the last two days is particularly how corporations as a non-state actor fit into our sort of state-centric framework of international law. How does that all fit together? Claire was sort of looking at the particular prism of due diligence as a way of regulating companies. Justin was talking about the role of a potential ombudsman in doing that. And Sabine was then looking at the role of companies in societies which are transitioning into justice. My particular way of tackling this is to look at the very topical issue at the moment of social media companies. And I'm not so much tackling the thorny issue of Cambridge Analytica. I mean obviously Cambridge has long been held by us all as a bastion of ethics and virtue, but no longer. You are now all tainted with Cambridge Analytica even if it is in London. So Cambridge's name is now ever slurred I think. I'm not here to slur it further so I'm not going to address that. But I'm looking in particular at this issue around the role of companies in harmful content. I'm not so much that underhand tactics around privacy, but we'll get into a little bit of that at the end. So what's become very apparent to all of us and has been sort of forgotten in the last few weeks of drama around Cambridge Analytica is the really revolutionary role the Internet has played and its profound impact on human rights. It's had an unimaginable impact on access to education, really furthering that in many areas. It's really become closely associated with democratisation until Cambridge Analytica. But it's given particular credence to some organisations outside of the mainstream, political movements outside of the mainstream that simply wouldn't have got the prominence that they would have without the Internet. It's also given economic opportunities to millions of people around the world. So when we talk about the problems of late and how we think about regulating Internet platforms, a lot of it focuses on a particular, when we look at and think about human rights, we particularly focus on the right to free speech around that. And free speech is, you know, enshrined in the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights. And when we've been talking about regulating the Internet, well, a lot of people pop up sort of what people lead to straight away is, well, the problem is we'll be limiting free speech. And sometimes what we forget is that we already do limit free speech in many ways. In particular, you can see it in the ICCPR and the European Convention in many other ways that this is a basic right to have hold information and access information. But you can see that also we've all for a very long time been clear that it has limits, that it might be limited to certain areas. The vagueness and problems I think of looking at this through human rights framework is that there's a lot of ambiguity around those limits. Vague terms around national security and public order and morals. And we've seen in many places where particularly more draconian states that they might use those to clamp down on free speech. And that's the argument that people have been talking about in relation to this particular problem. My particular issue that I want to focus on today is around the notion that the Internet has become polluted with harmful content. And so what are we going to do about it? So in this particular paper, what we're talking about is the potential regulation of two types of harmful content. One is terrorist incitement. So using the Internet for things like terrorist recruitment. And the other is what we call politically motivated disinformation. What many people call fake news but it's hard to use that term now without conjuring up images of Trump. And to him fake news is anything that he obviously doesn't like. And so that's a term that's been used a lot in the media but we're particularly looking at the lens of sort of what we call politically motivated disinformation. So we're looking at what should be the role and who should be regulating this. Is it states? Is it companies? Is it other stakeholders? Is the job of people like you and me? Is it us as consumers? Do we have some responsibility in relation to this? So these two issues that I'm talking about around news that's around terrorist incitement and political motivated disinformation are very well connected. Because basically both have seen social media used as a sort of in a particular way in sort of a media warfare if you like to confront issues that they wouldn't be able to confront otherwise. And they're taking advantage of the essential elements of social media. So an enormous audience, something that can adapt very quickly. A capacity to launch new ideas including untrue ideas with a real sense of energy and urgency and a medium which really lacks vigorous oversight. So in terms of terrorist incitement one thing that we've been looking at is the role that groups like ISIS have played and used in social media to really an unprecedented scale to both recruit new members and incite violence. Estimates of the sort of the daily pro ISIS messages of studies that have been done in the last year have estimated there have been about 200,000 messages a day sort of related to largely recruitment for ISIS or inciting violence in the name of ISIS. One of the challenges that will come to when we look at regulation is how we actually talk about and define what terrorist incitement is. And some of the new laws that we'll get to in a moment have basically a banning speech that focuses on terrorist incitement. But that itself is a vague term if you look at it. I mean for years states have been trying to define what is terrorism. And we don't have any comprehensive convention on terrorism but now we're basically putting it in the hands of non-state actors like companies to ban terrorist incitement. When the states themselves aren't exactly clear what that is in the first place. And so this is one of the problems that we're going to come to. The other issue that we're focusing on is this so-called fake news of politically motivated disinformation. So this came to the fore obviously quite a bit with the 2016 US election. The role of groups like Cambridge Analytica and Facebook are still yet unclear as to the role that they've played in that particular election. But this shows you that some studies have basically looked at the views of how much news was circulated during particularly in US election. And you can see that fake news was actually getting a higher read rate than the sort of mainstream media news during that particular election. And so what we want to look at is what's the role of both companies and governments in trying to put an end to sort of politically motivated deliberate falsehoods that is focused on politics. So then this is sort of what we'll spend the rest of our time talking about because my interest in this issue is not so much that these problems are out there but what do we do about it? And you'd be glad to hear that I don't have any answers in relation to that. So one of the arguments that people are throwing around is this sort of notion that the problem with regulating free speech is this sort of censorship creep that once you start to regulate speech then you're opening the doors as to who might do that and how particularly governments might apply that wrongly. So the argument by Sun is that instead of regulating speech what we should do is basically the remedy to be applied is more speech. And this quote is often attributed to the US Supreme Court Justice Brands when he was talking about sort of the role of sunlight if you like. And people have been talking about in this particular forum some people have been talking about technology being our saviour that in terms of technology here is both the problem but the way to solve it is to basically allow more technology so to allow more speech. Now I think the problem that we have with this is that that may have worked at some point or you know been more possible in the past but now that basically the speed and scale of internet traffic is so strong that I think it's eroded the more speech solution. And today harmful contents can spread so wide and quickly that rebuttal becomes ineffective and the rebuttal is often lost. Those who speak first are those who speak loudest and we're not convinced that just letting free rein if you can will be the answer in relation to harmful content. So the next issue that is getting a lot of play in this area is the role of government, role of states in regulating digital content. And this is particularly interesting to us as lawyers as to how this might be done in a way that would be reasonable and also preserve international sort of do it within the international human rights framework. So we've seen some advances in this. We're about to see the new European Union law general data protection regulation come into play in May and this will basically require companies to report data breaches within 72 hours and it will give users of companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter a little bit more control about how their information is collected and also it's proposed sort of fines of up to 4% of companies revenue in relation to this. We've also seen the new German law that started this year that could require that on request could require companies to remove hate speech and this again requires the removal basically within 24 hours or potentially face fines as high as 50 million euros. And both of these have got some good points to them but I also think they've got some real dangers. One of them is the notion that they're of this sort of censorship creep where states start to regulate that it encourages other states to use this type of regulation not in sort of to further democracy. We've already seen this in Poland with its 2016 counter terrorism law which basically allows greater suppression of websites in the name of national security. Even the German law which links to sort of the criminal code, it talks about speech having to come down which is helping with the formation of terrorist organizations but also really broadly in terms of speech that defames religion. So these are really broad categories that right now what we're doing with some of these laws is they've got some link to state laws but it's also leaving a lot of discretion to companies and governments as to what restrictions should be, sort of what legislation should be regulated. I also think that what we're seeing in something like the German law to take down information in 24 hours will lead to companies just really wanting to take down more information rather than not take down information. Because why would they leave it up? What is in their interest if they receive a request to take it down and they're potentially facing a large fine, why would they even argue about it? I think there will be more haste in taking down laws. The third point there is around self-regulation. And so this is a really familiar theme in the business and human rights debate that companies that we don't need new laws that companies just simply need to self-regulate. And some of what we've discussed today particularly with Claire and Justin is saying what they're proposing is that actually it's been a failure of self-regulation. So I'm not convinced that self-regulation is of no use but I'm not convinced that it will save the issue just by itself. Today we saw Facebook announced that they're banning the IRA, not the IRA the internet research agency, the Russian group from its pages which again is a very delayed but proactive step on the company to basically say we recognize there's a problem, albeit maybe two or three years late. And so what we've also seen in the last couple of years is companies like Facebook increase their human fact checker, look at Google adjustment of its overall rhythms bringing more human oversight into them, YouTube's looking at how it eliminates and identifies violent extremist videos. So we've seen the companies being forced into take proactive measures if you like even though it is reacting to issues that come up. I think the problem with relying purely on self-regulation in this content is basically the business model here. So a company like Facebook derives 89% of its revenue from advertisers. So with that sort of model, the whole model of Facebook is built with selling users data. Now I also think that we're blind if we didn't realize that when you bought into Facebook in the first place, leaving the underhand tactics of Cambridge Analytica aside the role of these companies is that the way that they're making money, we're getting a free service is that they're using our data and they're selling it to advertisers. And that's been apparent for some time, I mean more than five years ago there was a whole debate when Mark Zuckerberg was in on this, basically arguing that privacy is dead, that we willingly forsaken our privacy. Now what we're starting to see here is basically clawing that back in different ways. So I think where we get to and where we'll come to in the end in our research is perhaps a more hybrid approach. So part of it will be relying on companies to act, but providing them with basically more vigorous oversight into how they do it. And importantly for me, I think the question around self-regulation is that it shouldn't be all in house. Is that if companies are making these decisions about takedown, most of the people in these companies are not human rights advocates, they're not experts. And so that they should be involving a broader group of stakeholders in these decisions. Companies should be reaching out. For years that was an argument in things and looking at how companies dealt with their supply chains and their apparel companies. And the reaction of companies initially, companies like Nike was like, no we've got this under control, we're going to do it in house. So clearly they don't and the social media companies don't either, but I think they do have an accountability and a self-evaluation role to play here. I think government interventions will have a part to play in the research that we're looking at, particularly around politically motivated disinformation. I think there's a real role for targeted legislation. I'm not convinced of the value of something like the German law, but I am convinced of making laws that require transparency around political advertising that basically require online firms to act as offline firms in relation to political advertising must become a reality. There's a bill in US called the Honest Ads Act, which I think is a starter in this direction. And so I think what we need is really smart targeted legislation, not just a blatant crude blunt tool that may allow sort of censorship creep to happen. So where we come up with, I think it's this hybrid approach, is that for particular problems, legislation may be useful, but it's got to be really targeted at the problem. But also we want companies to continue to sort of self-regulate in a way, but with oversight and also with the involvement of external stakeholders. So I think we're at the point in this particular field of that there's been a lot written about the moral reckoning of sort of the Silicon Valley giants in the last few weeks. And I think that for us that morality isn't going to be enough. That what we've seen is we've seen companies come out with great regret and sort of assurance that it won't happen again. And that by itself isn't going to be the answer. And so I think what we need is basically greater transparency in this area, both on governments, if they're requesting information be taken down and on companies. And so our way forward that we're thinking about is to try and think about what are the particular problems of these two issues and try and develop legislation that specifically targets that. Thank you.


When you got it, you spent it at $147 million. So he just he just wasted it. So then he spent another like 400,000 trying to open up in Atlanta. And you just sit back and see in these ventures. He's just trying to do these things and they're not worth ego ego. Pride before destruction. Yeah, we on boss talk. One on one, right? I got to ask you about I seen one deal where you 700,000 that she'll night paid to start Defro East. About 700,000. Yeah. Yeah. How did you cut? He wasted it wasted because it never opened up. Was wide. How do you how do you spend that much? When you got it, you spent it at $147 million. So he just he just wasted it. So then he spent another like 400,000 trying to open up in Atlanta. And you just sit back and see in these ventures. He's just trying to do these things and they're not worth ego ego. Pride before destruction. Wow, to see where he's at now, man, because he he. His whole legacy is gone. The money is gone. Defro changed, changed hands. Did you see this coming when you was a young man, when you was younger, when you was dealing with him? Because you was dealing with him at their peak. I would never do it. Shahid was there. Shahid. Shahid was my man. You were. I never made a dime with you. Not a penny would get from. They just from counting. Yeah, I see a lot of my homies work with him and didn't go. But the rise and fall, he tried to do too much for people that wouldn't do anything for him.  Yeah, he he basically had a deal where it was a lot of people that was in fear when it came down to him when it came to I was at I remember I was at a casino one night. I don't know if there was in fear, but I do know they start whispering a lot when he came in like. Right. And I don't know what they were whispering about. It was whispering about here come because they land to keep up a gang of confusion. So they bring in hood dudes, what he shouldn't even be. Just they run. Oh, a blood, this and blood. No, this is a business atmosphere. When after because you was dealing with him when you were with which I see Shahid Shahid Shahid Mohammed. OK, Shahid Mohammed. After you were dealing with after you had dealt with him, were there a time when because over the years, he was out and walking around and doing things and the power was gone. Were you still you say that's how. See, Yosemite Sam talk about was with death. Death row was over about time. He two thousand three. It was no death row. That's right. It was just a blemish. He wasn't in death row when ninety six, ninety five in the 90s. Correct. When he was there.


I'm so excited to be here just outside of Mount Gambia at a sawmill. Why not a sawmill? Well, I love the forestry industry here in South Australia. Not only is it good for our economy, but there's loads of forest that you guys can visit for free. Heaps of them don't even cost a set to go and visit. But first of all, I wanted to talk about the industry. How's this? Over 7000 South Australians are employed in the forestry industry right here in South Australia. And plenty of them are in an area called the Green Triangle. That's where the trees are grown. And that's all down in the southeast of South Australia. Before I show you where to play in the forest in South Australia, I thought I'd better show you through a sawmill so you can find out how the timber from your house ends up there. 300 people work at this site. I've been in the industry about 30 years myself. We've got lots of employees that are over 25 years of service, some that have got 50 years of service. And the reason they hang around is because they enjoy working in the industry. When the log comes to the sawmill, we use 100% of the log. Nothing leaves this site that goes to landfill or any other purpose. When the log gets in, we debark the log. That'll go into garden mulch or mulch that's used in parks or potting mix. The sawdust that's produced by cutting will go to our steam plant to produce energy to dry the timber. The chip will go to export. Some chip is actually used in local playgrounds as softball. An interesting stat is through the dry mill, which is the end of the process, the finished boards that we build for houses. In any given day, we make about 500,000 linear meters of board, which is 500 kilometers. So it is, if you put the boards end to end, you'd have enough boards to stack together to go to here to Adelaide.  Every day. Every day. I can't believe all of this happens inside the city of Mount Gambia. It's just amazing. This is one of the most interesting things I've done this year. Now, the cool thing is when you think sawmill, you might think deforestation, which nobody likes. But here in the Southeast, that's not the case. All of the pine trees are planted and grown, harvested in 30 years, and then a new seedling is planted. It's essentially a 30-year wheat crop, which I reckon is great. It's awesome for the environment. And like we heard earlier, there's zero waste. So a tree that comes in here, every single part of it is used. The forests in South Australia are so beautiful and such an asset to this state. And best of all, we, everyday South Australians, can actually visit them.


Hey, what's up YouTube? I'm Zeke and welcome to The Dream Green Show. This episode is brought to you by Weeble. Signed up now by clicking the link down in the description, deposit $100 and receive two free stocks valued up to $1,400. Now that is free stocks that you guys can receive right now just by clicking the link in the description. And this episode is going to be another banger guys. I'm comparing the top beverage companies in the world. I'm going to compare Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle. Now I own some Coca-Cola in my stock portfolio right now that pays out dividends. I own a little bit more of Pepsi, but I do not own Nestle. Nestle probably have the most popular bottled water in the world. And I'm looking to add another dividend stock to my portfolio. So for outperformance Pepsi and Coca-Cola in this video, I plan to pick up some soon. If Pepsi win this video, I'm going to continue to reinvest in that.  But enough talking, let's go ahead and get straight into this video. Before we dive into this video, make sure that you guys leave a thumbs up. It helps out this channel more than you can even imagine. I'm telling you, it helps me out tremendously. Welcome back, YouTube. Make sure you stick to the end of the video where we do our back testing so you guys can see which company performed the best in this video. Here we are over on Seeking Alpha. This is where we're beginning our data from. The companies that we're going to be comparing is K.O. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Tickle Cymbal P.E.P. and Nestle, Tickle Cymbal N.S.R.G.Y. The first one up is Coca-Cola. Coke is at $48.45 at the recording of this video. The dividend growth is 57 years. That means Coca-Cola is a dividend king. First there's dividend aristocrats and then there's dividend kings. A dividend aristocrat is a company that has been inside the S&P 500 and increased their dividends over the last 25 years. A dividend king is a company that has increased their dividends over the last 50 years. Coke has increased their dividends over the last 57 years. So this is a very dependable trustworthy company. You know they're going to grow their dividends every year. So this is another factor to decide on buying stock. There's many factors on deciding on how to buy stock and why to buy stock but this is a good factor being a dividend king. Coca-Cola pays our quarterly. That means they pay out every three months four times a year and their dividend yield is at 3.38%. Not bad, not bad, not bad. And Coca-Cola they pay out $0.41 per share every quarter. That means every three months you will receive $0.41 in dividends from Coca-Cola every three months. Okay the next one up is PepsiCo, tickle symbol PEP. Pepsi is at $137.56. That is a big leap from Coca-Cola when you're comparing prices. Their dividend growth is 48 years so they're almost dividend kings. You've got two more years in order to become dividend kings. Right now their dividend aristocrats that is great. They pay out, they also pay out quarterly and they have a dividend yield of 2.97%. So in Pepsi you will receive $1.02 every quarter from PepsiCo for every share that you own. So that's around $4.06 on the year. So for every three months you will receive $1.02 for every share that you own. In the last one we're going to compare is the Big Water Bottle Company with their most known for it. They have many products we're going to go over that right quick. But Nestle, tickle symbol NSRGY is at $119.26.  That means they pay out just one time a year okay guys. If you're looking at the dividend yield they have a 2.32% dividend yield. It's pretty good. And for Nestle you'll receive $2.76 every single year since they pay out annually. So for every year you'll receive $2.76 for every share that you own of NSRGY Nestle. So let's dive into what products they own right quick to give you a quick clear understanding. And then we'll dive into their numbers on their earnings, how much they made last year, and their cash on hand. All right so here's Coke looking at a couple products that they own. They own Coke, Sprite, Fan of Root Beer. And then we look at the water and hydration. They got the Sunny, Smart Water, Pyre, Vitamin Water. All right and then juices. They got Mini May Simply, a couple of other juices I haven't heard of. Coffee's, two coffees and then teas. I think they might have a couple of teas. Let's grow down. There we go, Peace Tea. Go Peak Unisfuse Tea and a couple of other teas that's probably overseas. So as you guys can see Coke is all about the beverage industry. They're investing two beverages that you can drink. Now Pepsi on the other hand, we can't even go over everything Pepsi have in one video. All right so just to be quick beverages. They got Pepsi, Gatorade, Orange Juice, Starbucks, Brisk, Sierra Miss. I'm going to be real quick. Foods, they got all the Frito Lays, Ruffles, Smart Food, Sun Chips. Just being real quick. Cracker Jacks, Fritos. I mean we can scroll for days for Pepsi, all right? Just to give you guys a quick understanding. To even make it more clear on how much PepsiCo owns, they don't just own items that you could drink. Let's look at all the things they have trademarked over in Russia and Spain. They have Aquafina, Cheetos, Chesters, Crunch, Mountain Dew, Dye Mug, Dye Pepsi, Gatorade, Gatorade Zero, Frito Lays. These are what they have trademarked. Just look at this long list right here. Ruffles, 7-Up, Smart Foods. This is just a long list of what they actually have trademarked. This is licensed in joint partnership. Trademarks, Doe, Lipton, Ocean Spray, Starbucks, Papa John's, a couple more products. Breakfast bars, Cracker Chews, Coffee Drinks, Starbucks, Energy Drinks. They have Rockstar, Starbucks, Bang, AMP, cereal to have. Pretty much if you ever ate cereal in your life, you ate a Pepsi product from Cracker Oaks. Aunt Jamama, Pancake Nicks, Side Dishes, Snacks. All right, so this is the list of Pepsi Cola. Okay guys, now you see Sports, Nutrition, Gatorade, all the Gatorade series, everything, Bottle, Water, Aquafina, Propel, Soap. All right, so that's Pepsi. Now you see the big difference in between Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Pepsi invests into everything. They're a part of everything. Coke is only about drinks. Now, if we're taking a look at Nestle, what do they have? Look like they have Perina, the dog food, Boosts. A lot of these things I've never heard of. That's the cat food, Cheerios. They don't chew, so you ate some Cheerios. You ate some Nestle products.  Nestle Chocolate Milk. I used to love that as a kid. Gerber, Gerber Baby. There you go. Hot Pockets. Oh wow, I did not know they own Hot Pockets. Jax, KitKat. Wow, they own KitKat. Of course they do. And just continue. This is the list of Nestle and then their most, and their most popular product is probably right here. The world's most popular bottled water brand, Nestle Pure Life. That is their water. So yes, they have a big portfolio as well. It's looking like they go into the food industry too. And chocolate in candy. So they make cookies, chocolate, candy, water, and a couple other drinks Gerber. So they don't just only make beverage products, like how Coke make. They make a bunch of different other products. Okay, so real quick, let's go over their revenue from December 2019. Coca-Cola brought in 37.27 billion dollars. That's Coke. Pepsi brought in 67.16 billion dollars. And Nestle brought in 95.97 billion dollars. So Nestle has brought in the most money December 2019. Let's look at cash on hand because like Warren Buffett says, whoever has the most cash on hand when in a recession is keen. Okay, looking at the balance sheet of Coca-Cola that have 19.83 billion dollars worth in cash. Pepsi has 9.12 billion dollars worth in cash. And Nestle has 5.57 billion dollars worth of cash. So that's something also to think about when comparing stocks to each other to see which one is the best buy. So let's go into back test these three stocks to see which one performed the best over the last 10 years to might help you decide on your decision on what stock to buy in the future. All right, here we are on the portfolio visualizer. Let's go ahead and compare the last 10 years. So from 2010 to 2020, include year to date. Let's say we invested $10,000 back in 2010. Cash flow, none, no rebalancing. Display income, yes. We're going to reinvest our dividends. And let's say the first one was Coca-Cola, KO. The second one was Pepsi. And then the third one was NSRG. Why? All right, there we go. Let's allocate 100% to portfolio number one. Portfolio number two is Pepsi. And portfolio number three is NSRG. Why? Nestle, let's rename these portfolios. One is KO. Two is PEP. And three is NSRG. Why? All right. So when I clicked this button to analyze this portfolio, this is us investing $10,000 back in 2010, with also reinvesting the dividends and letting that grow over the next 10 years to 2020. We will see how did they perform over the last 10 years to kind of help us decide on what are we leaning towards to invest in the future. So let's click this button. And there we go, guys. Coca-Cola is at $22,950. You will have in your final balance. Pepsi is at $30,848. And look at this. Look at this, guys. Nestle, I'll perform both of them with $33,083. That was a surprise, okay? That was a surprise. Actually, if we're looking at this chart right here, it is being a close tie over the last couple of years. One company's up, one company's down. Right here, Nestle was at the bottom over in 2016, caught back up. And then that's when Pepsi and Nestle just separated from Coca-Cola all together. Right here with that gap right there. And then towards the last couple of months, Nestle has just outperformed Coca-Cola and Pepsi at the same time. But not too long ago, like, but not too long ago at the end of January 31, 2020, Pepsi was above Nestle. But now Nestle is outperforming Pepsi by around $3,000. Let's scroll down to the dividend income. Okay, Nestle having paid out their dividends yet. So let's look at 2018. You received $707 from Coke. Not bad. Pepsi, you received $754. And Nestle, you received $670. So that's not bad. Pepsi still looks like a great company to invest into if you want to dividend invest, considering that they was right there neck with neck with Nestle back at the beginning of the year of 2020. So that's not bad. And you'll be collecting those dividends and you'll just be a little bit behind Nestle. But they just had a surge right here in July to help them surpass Coca-Cola and Pepsi. So let's go ahead and buy the dips, guys. How we're going to buy dips is reinvesting every single month into the stock market, whether it's high, whether it's low. We're going to reinvest $800 every single month to see if any change will happen at all. So we're going to scroll up and we're going to say we only invested $1,000 back in 2010. And if you guys have subscribed to my channel, you will know that I invest $200 every single week into the stock market. So $200 every single week is $800 a month. So let's put $800 right there and change that to monthly and go on and hit Analyze Portfolio. So when we hit this, this is us putting $1,000 into each one of these companies back in 2010. We're investing $800 every single month into these companies and we let it grow over the next 10 years. So let's analyze this portfolio. And there it goes, guys. Once again, yes, Nestle won there at $215,000. Pepsi is at $207,000 and Coke is at $160,000.  The worst year Pepsi had was down 4.81% and the worst year Nestle had is down 2.75%. Now that is a pretty safe company right there. If the most you've ever been down over the last 10 years was down 2.75%, that is amazing. You only had one bad year of negative 2.75. That is an amazing job for Nestle. So just looking at these numbers, I'm probably going to continue to reinvest into Pepsi and probably pick up some Nestle as well. And I'll probably just be buying some Coca-Cola drinks from here on out and not too much investing into that company. Since they only invest into beverages, it's not too good for me as an investor to only invest into a company that just does one thing. Pepsi does it all and Nestle also does it all. If we look at this chart right here, one smooth chart, that's why it's always best to reinvest, guys. It's going to stay consistent with your investing and you guys will grow your portfolio like this over time. So this is at the end of the year Coke, Pepsi. And the same thing happened back on January 31, 2020. Pepsi was above Nestle, but Nestle just outperformed Pepsi so far this year. It had a surge over the last couple of months, which made it outperform Pepsi and Coca-Cola at the same time. But Pepsi is a great company to invest into. So now I do own Coke and I do own Pepsi. So let's pull that up in my Robinhood to take a look at each one. Here we are on my Robinhood account. I have six shares of Coke for $290.70. It's about 1.28% of my portfolio. And I am down $27.94 since I bought Coke. Let's look how I got paid out in dividends. So far I received four payments in dividends from Coke, $1.60, 240, 246, and 246 for only six shares of Coca-Cola and they pay out quarterly. So I had Coke for a little over a year now. So let's go and check out Pepsi to see how have that been performing in my portfolio. Here we are with Pepsi. It's at $137.56. I own one share and I'm down $4.75 down 3.34%. So I did not lose as much in Pepsi as I did in Coke. I probably should have got more Pepsi. Here we go. Let's scroll down. If we're taking a look at my dividend history from Pepsi, I received one in April for $0.96 and one in June 30th for $1.02. So I have been getting paid my dividends from Pepsi. Now that I know that Pepsi is outperforming Coke on every level, I'll probably only reinvest back into Pepsi from here on out until Coca-Cola starts to pick back up and be innovative in the beverage industry. And that's all it is, guys. If you made it this far into the video, make sure that you leave a thumbs up. It really helps out this channel more than you can imagine. Also subscribe to the channel so you don't miss out on any future videos. I'm probably going to continue to buy PepsiCo and I'm also going to try to pick up a share or two of Nestle over the next couple of weeks or the next couple of months. I'm whenever I have some extra cash laying around so I can invest into these great companies that has been tested through times over the last 10 years to only draw down negative 2% over the last 10 years. That's a pretty good company if you ask me and they also pay dividends. So that might be another ad that I add into my Rybacool portfolio. Once again, if you guys want two free stocks, make sure you click the link down in the description. You sign up, deposit $100 and get two free stocks valued up to $1,400. But other than that, I'm Zeke, bringing you to During Green Show. And I'm out. Peace. Hit subscribe. Hit subscribe. It's right here. Thank you. Bye.