I am a third culture kid so I'm not exactly from one place where I think we started from about five people and grew to 25. We work with SMEs in Dubai. Too often I see entrepreneurs just spend a lot of money on the upfront without actually just doing the work. Hey guys, welcome to OxiVlogs. Today so many young entrepreneurs want to move to Dubai, live this beautiful lifestyle, work as a freelancer around their own agency but they don't know what is the best way to do it. So in this episode I'm going to interview my guest, she'll share her story, how she moved to Dubai, how she was working as a freelancer and now she's running her own digital marketing agency. So let's get started. Could you introduce yourself in a couple of words? Sure. So my name is Alina. I am a third culture kid so I'm not exactly from one place. I'm ethnically Pakistani but I grew up in Luxembourg, Bahrain, Dubai. Then I was in Canada for 12 years and then I recently come back. So I've been back now for less than two years. What did you do before you came to Dubai and why did you decide to come here? So before moving to Dubai I was living in Toronto in Canada and I was working at a health and wellness website where I was the content marketing lead. So it was a start-up where I think we started from about five people and grew to 25. And I recently moved back mostly because of family because me and my husband both have relatives living in and around the region and we just wanted to be close to them. How did the Dubai journey start and what's been the biggest change? So my Dubai journey, I guess this is part two of it because I finished high school over here. I was here for a couple of years but then I went away for 12 years and came back. So the biggest change for me has been the readjustment into the bi-culture. I'm more used to it now again that I've been here for over a year but definitely when you're living in North America, yeah it's different. You know I'm definitely used to the four seasons over there actually having a spring and a fall, more exposure to real nature I suppose as well. There's many things that are different just in terms of the professional culture over there as well like the business culture is pretty different over here. It's a bit more laid-back, a little bit more inshallah culture and in Canada everything is very principled and on time and efficient yeah. So those are some of the things that are different. What challenges did you face? I think the biggest challenge for me coming back was sort of the business culture. I think just everything operates on a very loose timeline over here and I found that a little bit difficult because I'm very hyper efficient and over here sometimes when I work with clients I find I'm so hyper efficient and I could kind of push that onto my clients but I just have to sort of come to terms with the fact that that's not how business is done here so you just have to learn to relax a little bit more and be a bit more patient.  Surprisingly I did have reverse culture shock I thought because I'm a Middle Eastern kid in a way. Bahrain I lived there for about 10 years and then finished high school here so you know I'm I'm a Middle East baby I'm used to this culture and there's things I love about it but and so coming back I thought it would be a breeze for me but no I definitely did have a bit of culture shock A in work that I've talked about B things like talking to strangers for example is very different you don't really talk to strangers over here everyone is in their own bubble and in their own zone which for me was kind of weird getting used to that again because in Canada you talked to anyone and everyone and you strike up conversations with them whether you're at a bus stop or you know I don't use buses here that's a big difference too but yeah you just there's more openness and friendliness I feel in Canada people here are friendly but once you sort of have to break the barrier and get to know them a bit too other differences definitely driving here is a whole other skill set that I've you know had to learn I drove in Canada but it's it's a little bit tougher over here but yeah those are those are some of the things otherwise I feel like I've reclimatized back to the culture pretty quickly what do you dislike about living in Dubai traffic finds it's really really hard to avoid them the extreme heat of course in the summer lack of nature sometimes like I love the beach and I love the parks but it is a little bit manufactured and manicured and sometimes I just want to be in a forest or by the mountains so I miss that but Dubai is a hub so you can always travel to other places and then the last thing I think the business culture I think it's not exactly my style but I've gotten used to it but it's a New York country so I can't expect it to be up to par with the New York's and the London's and the Toronto's just yet it's it's still a new or growing city what are you currently doing in Dubai I am currently the owner of a small digital marketing agency so I started it about a year ago as just myself and some freelancers and I've now brought on another person full-time so we're a team of two and we work with SMEs in Dubai specifically service-based businesses and we do lead generation campaigns for them via social media how did you start your agency I am fortunate that I came here with my husband and I was on a house wife visa so on that house wife visa if you have an NOC so non no objection certificate you can work as a freelancer with certain companies so that's how I was sort of trying out my business idea by seeing if I could scale it up into an agency so I did that for a year on a house wife visa and when I was getting enough business and clients I figured okay now I can license it and be a proper business can you tell us more about the license so I got my license from Raquez which is a Russell Hema free zone and they had a special business women package so I actually got a great deal and I just paid 6,000 theorems for a yearly license to run a marketing agency and luckily since I don't need a visa I didn't have to pay that cost and my employee doesn't need a visa she's a young grad whose family is here so I don't have to spend on her visa either so yeah worked out well what challenges did you face with setting up your company to be honest it wasn't that challenging it I think it really depends on what you're doing I know it must be harder for people who are maybe setting up like a cafe or a restaurant or something that's more labor-intensive and a logistical nightmare but for me all I need is a laptop and a cell phone so I don't really have very high overhead I work out of a co-working space it's me and my employee so it just wasn't that difficult I found a great co-working space through in five which is government subsidized and it's only a thousand theorems for the year and it's a beautiful amazing space with meeting rooms conference rooms workshops it's gorgeous and I love working out of there so that was great I think the only difficulty I had was perhaps finding one place for information you know like when trying to figure out how to set up it wasn't very clear cut there were just a lot of there's lots of different information everywhere so I just had to talk to a couple of people to figure it out and a tip I would have for your viewers to is try not to go to a brokerage for a license because they will charge a very high markup on top so I went to someone for us to sort of broker deals with free zones and I think it was close to 20 22,000 theorems that I was quoted and then when I went to the free zone itself to Raqqa's they're like no it's 6,000 theorems okay this is cheaper so that's something people should keep an eye out for if you had to start over again what would you do differently honestly I think I did okay is that bad to say you know but one thing I would caution people against and I didn't do this but I think I saw enough people doing this luckily that I didn't do it which is investing into an expensive license before you even know that your business idea works so there's some people who haven't even started yet and they will just spend very heavily on the licensing and getting an office and building like a really fancy website that's another thing too often I see entrepreneurs just spend a lot of money on the upfront without actually just doing the work and seeing that your business model is working so in a past life I had done something like that in Canada but over here I just yeah housewife visa I did it for a year freelance kept my cost super low worked from home until there was good enough money coming through the door that bit by bit I invested and I just I've still kept my overhead down so if you can keep your overhead down that's what I would say what is your daily life look like my daily life right now I wake up try to be early around 6 30 but usually be somewhere between 6 30 and 7 I'll head over to in 5 and get here for around between 8 or 9 and then I work till about 4 to beat traffic but honestly most days I usually have meetings as well so I'll be at the office for a bit and then sometimes go to a client meeting and then work out of a cafe for a little bit go home I do a boot camp in the evening so to work out how do you spend your free time and weekends free time I am involved in the theater and improv community over here so I take part in some plays I'm in an upcoming proff play I guess you could say as well improv musical it's like it's called Bollywood improv we put together a Bollywood movie on the spot so it's kind of fun I try to be outdoors as much as I can in this weather so go by the beach to the park if your friend was planning to move to Dubai what is the minimum budget would you advise him to have it's like an it depends answer because it depends if you're living solo or if you are going to live with a spouse who's also working it depends if you have kids and you're coming here so it's very different per person but I would say let's say if you're in my situation which is no kids but dual income I would say minimum minimum and you want to live like a you know you're not penny pinching and you have like a decent lifestyle to 10 to 15 thousand there it's like 12 to 15 thousand there I would say can you share your tips to make savings here my biggest tip which people will not like probably but and I think is sometimes tricky to do because the buy is a place of temptation I would say live beneath your means with everything it is very easy to not save over here but it's also very easy to save if you just let go of the need to keep comparing with others and wanting the newest and the fanciest of everything so buy a used car live in an apartment that's beneath your means which will allow you to save a bit more you know you don't have to live in the fanciest beachfront apartment don't do so many expensive brunches weekends there's like a big brunch culture over here minimize your time in shopping malls honestly because shopping it's there's such good deals on all the time over here I think it's very easy to just rack up that those expenses or that that so try to do activities that don't involve money all the time too that's also another reason I got into theater and improv because you're not spending money or just you're having fun you're doing something creative you're meeting people you're making new friends what had this international move taught you I've lived all over the world and always been traveling so I think in each situation I think I have become more and more adaptable as I moved across the cities but I think Dubai has again been a reminder that you can you have to adapt to the culture of where you are living in I did become a little set in my ways in Canada as well and you just instead of getting enraged or angry about all things aren't done the way they're done back home you just have to breathe and accept with open arms the culture that you are in and learn to adapt to that culture and it sort of brings a certain sense of humility as well back to you so I think that's what this move to Dubai has brought back to me if you were to describe your experience as an expert in three words what would that be I would say it's been fun I'd say it is definitely a little bit challenging at times and I don't know if this is the right word in this context but I just say it's got a lot of opportunity this is still a very new growing city compared to more saturated markets from London or New York etc so it's much easier to stand out here and there really is a lot more opportunity for growth so that's what I've personally found as well I think I'm more of a big fish in a smaller pond versus a small fish in a big pond in Canada so I'm enjoying that do you have any quote you live your life by or think of often I don't have one quote or anything in particular that I live by there's many quotes that resonate with me but I think if you're someone like me who sometimes has so much going on in their head and like a big task list or you start panicking about something what I just like to ask myself is is the world going to end like if this thing doesn't get done like is it the end of the world and the answer is usually no okay go home sleep see your friends I think just reminding yourself how insignificant you really are and what you do is in the grand scheme of things takes that pressure off and allows you to just relax and be less serious so actually I think I would sum it up as don't be so serious chill that helps thank you guys for watching if you have any questions to Alina leave them in the comments below will reply to you also you can get in touch with her on Instagram the link is in the description and don't forget to subscribe to my channel so you will not miss my next episode see you soon


All right, I think we're gonna get started. My name is Aaron Blaisdell. I'm a professor, for those of you who don't know me, I'm a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at UCLA. I'm gonna give some brief opening remarks to kind of kick this whole shindig off this morning. And what I wanna do is I wanna start by saying just a brief history of how AHS came to be and where we've come since we started. So back in 2009, I met Brent Pottinger who couldn't be here to this one event this year. And I guess getting a medical degree is kind of busy. But he was an aspiring medical student to be and I was an associate professor at UCLA and we got to get to know each other through the paleo and ancestral health movement that during those early years, the late 2008, 2009 period. And we attended an event at UCLA that was about physiology and new directions for physiology. And we were sitting there watching each talk and at the conclusion of each talk. And each talk was interesting because they were discussing latest research on physiology and human health and disease that all had implications for evolutionary mismatch, right? Which is the kernel idea from the paleo movement is that there's an evolutionary mismatch that is a source of many of our common afflictions, illnesses, chronic disease in our modern society. And so we're sitting there with that knowledge and seeing at the conclusion of every talk and now we have an idea of another target for a pharmaceutical intervention or a pharmacological intervention to be developed. And that's the status quo in academic and medical science. And we were thinking, man, if we just had a symposium of our own where at the end of each slide it's like, and here's what you can do to take matters in your own hand and take control of your own life. Not that everything's gonna be rosy but as a first line of trying to do something to help yourself, we thought that would be great. And that was the genesis of the idea of the ancestral health symposium. So we had our first symposium at UCLA in 2011. And so here we are five years later. We've had one every year except a little glitch prevented us from having it last year, which was supposed to be here, right? But do some scheduling things that were out of our control and we weren't able to do that but so we delayed it to this year but we are back and bolder than ever. I can't take credit for that one. And thanks. And so what I wanna say is that really what ancestral health is about is this idea of evolutionary mismatch and how we can look at our own lifestyle or our own modern life, how we feel, how we think, how we raise our kids, how we get food from and transport food, grow food, everything, every facet of our society, how we build social relationships and look at that through the lens of evolutionary mismatch with what do our bodies expect based on how they've been adapted by natural selection and that's not like a single easy answer. There's gonna be multiple scales and levels of analysis. There'll be different answers. And but that's the point is to start looking at our health from that perspective to bring evolutionary medicine into our own lives and into the practice and hopefully into the academic and science practitioner model as well. And that was the other idea about starting AHS was there was lots of talk in the blogosphere back then. All these ideas were floating around but at the time they were being shunned pretty much by the academic community. I had hit a lot of roadblocks talking to my colleagues about these ideas and a lot of it was considered woo-woo or it's just what's the point. And so we met a lot of resistance at the time and I think that I wanted to start this conference and the society as a way to bring academics in and show them and have them talk about their research but also see that there's a genuine interest out there in people wanting to address their own health issues through an understanding of evolutionary mismatch. And it looks like that the symposium's grown every year. I mean we were off to a little bit of a troubling start and early on with some of the contentious issues that we had like the notorious carb wars. But I think every child that's born goes through some stumbling blocks as they're developing and I think we're past the toddler stage even by this point. And I think that as you see the growth in the depth of the talks, the breadth of the topics that were present at this conference this year is just stunning and it's just gonna continue to grow as we continue to expand and view all aspects of the human condition, the world condition through this idea of evolutionary mismatch and human effect on the world. So with that in mind that's the spirit that I wanna start this conference today. So I wanna welcome you all here to AHS 16. Okay that was the rah-rah stuff. And in a moment I'm gonna hand it over to Amanda Oakley to talk a little bit about some of the logistics and then after that we're gonna kick off pretty much immediately with a little bit of a preview of all the posters. So if you're in the room stay in the room cause we're gonna keep rolling with that. But before we get to the poster previews just should go over some basics about how the conference is gonna run, what to expect. And what I'll tell you Amanda's gonna fill you in on other aspects of this but the thing I should say is that the way the talks are gonna run there are two rooms for the talks, this room and this is west and then east room which is just a few doors down.  So what they're gonna do is they're gonna start timing you from the time you start speaking and then at 25 minutes in when you have five minutes left for the talk part they're gonna flash the signs as five minutes. When you have one minute left into that 30 minutes they'll show a one minute sign and when your time is up for the 30 minute part they'll show you a sign that says stop. That doesn't mean you have to stop that means if you want to now bring your talk to a conclusion so you have nice 10 minutes to interact with the audience I've got to Q and A and we have microphones set up in the middle of the room for that we can do that. If you are on a roll and you're like forget it I'm just gonna eat into my Q and A time kind of finishing up what I'm gonna talk about that's your decision as a speaker you can do that. But what we're gonna do is when you're now because it's a 40 minute talk you've got to stop at the 30 minute point once it's 35 minutes and you really only have five minutes left till you have to leave the stage we're gonna again do the five minute and then when you're 39 minutes into the 40 minute talk we're gonna do the one minute and when it's 40 minutes we're gonna say stop and the chair's gonna get up and escort you off the stage. And in the kindest possible manner no big hooks don't worry but we know it's sometimes you get on a roll and it's hard to think about the time maintenance so we're there to help you with that. So I just wanted to make that announcement now to kind of explain how it is so even the audience members understand what we're doing up here and that everybody's being treated fairly in the same way to make sure that all the other talks speakers get their chance to give a full presentation. Okay and with that I will hand it over to Amanda. Okay hi everyone welcome we're really excited with a really really jam packed schedule this year. Can everyone hear me in the back? Yeah so I'm here with the non-ra-ra stuff just the quick housekeeping. So as Erin mentioned we have talks happening in both rooms at the same time. So you don't need to worry if you're unable to make it to one room or the other if there are two things happening at the same time. Everything's being recorded by RAV team and will be posted on YouTube. Possibly even the same day that the talks are happening but definitely within a couple of days. So you can take your time with our exhibitors or with friends or at lunch. AHS is as much about meeting people and building communities so if you choose not to attend the talks you can always catch them on YouTube after. So our poster presentations and book signings and exhibitors will all be taking place in the central ballroom so please go and visit them. The posters and book signings will be on Friday and Saturday. Movement sessions will be happening as well during the breaks so you can meet outside just outside of registrations for those. What else? Oh we have a completely digital schedule this year so you may have realized that we're not handing out anything at registration. We do have the link at registration so you can sign up for an account on the SCED website and get updates and a daily schedule sent to you if you choose. We did have one change already. Unfortunately Dr. Mark Barhana was not able to make it for his talk so you will notice that there is a gap in the schedule for his talk. There's Wi-Fi here so UCB Guest is our Wi-Fi. There's no log on you just click to join the network. There are fountains outside and bathrooms as well and a cafe downstairs for anyone who wants to go down and get coffee and tea. And any questions you can find us at registration. Volunteers are wearing green shirts so come and find us with anything we're happy to help and please put your phones on vibrate. So I'll hand it back to Erin and thanks a lot for joining us.


Mr. Speaker, the essence of the bill in front of us is a no-brainer as it relates to the support that should be given. However, Mr. Speaker, the member for Euphold North, he did thank and applaud the members of the board and other executives and my years of working in Euphold. I am familiar with all the names. While I am aware of the different persuasion, they all have good intentions, Mr. Speaker, and they are well-intended. Mr. Speaker, but as a representative for a community in the south, and now that government has been asked to intervene and to guarantee various obligations, Mr. Speaker, there is a concern that has continuously come to me as a parliamentary representative as relates to people who seek the services of St. Jude's. The member rightly said that in days of old, people would have brought provisions and other things, which is a fact, you know, and there would be that sort of battering system. But now, Mr. Speaker, you know, the cost of medical care is expensive. Obviously, the hospital requires the finance into operate. And then, Mr. Speaker, now we have a situation where people would come to the hospital, whether they undergo various surgeries, whatever. They are not in a position to pay the full amount. They are given, you know, certain payment plans, Mr. Speaker. God forbid, some of these same people may have to come back to St. Jude's before they have finished their payment plan, Mr. Speaker, and they are having difficulty accessing, you know, the services. And as a concern I have, Mr. Speaker, now that government has such direct intervention, whether there will be some sort of leniency because what do we say that they cannot pay and we just don't provide them with the service? And I'm sure all members here have at some point in time have come to deal with people visiting our constituency offices seeking assistance to, you know, continue with some sort of medical assistance from St. Jude's. So this is something we have to look at, Mr. Speaker, going forward until the universal healthcare or health insurance is put in place. And, you know, that in itself will take a little while, Mr. Speaker, as much as I know we want to accelerate it. But what do we do in the meantime, Mr. Speaker? We have the situation where somebody may have passed at St. Jude's and to get the death certificate for them to bury the person, they're asked, you have to clear the outstanding bill, Mr. Speaker. And sometimes the intervention of certain people is required. How do we address that? That's something that we have to start because some of the people really and truly, and they're the members of UFO South, somebody spoke to it earlier when you were speaking about the utility payment, some of the people really and truly just cannot meet it. And so this is one step where we assistance St. Jude's. How can it fall back to assist in the people who have these challenges, Mr. Speaker? So I fully support the bill, Mr. Speaker. It's necessary in the environment that we operate in, particularly under the new, I think, public finance management. Yeah, it is necessary, Mr. Speaker. But this is something we need to look at. And I'm sure members of the board are listening and maybe they could, you know, come to some other arrangement as to how some of these people can be assisted. I await for the prime minister to discuss St. Jude's as an entity. And I truly await that because I do have, you know, my own presentation I'd like to make on that. But as we deal specifically with this item, I support. Thank you.


Ladies and gentlemen, we are back here live coming all the way from a beautiful state of Denver, Colorado via the beautiful state of Honolulu, Hawaii. Guys, this is the Prince of Investing, and I got a lot to talk about. As we know, we always talk about investing in the market, and the hot thing on the market right now, the bull has came out of the cage with the coronavirus. So I don't have a lot of time, and I definitely know you guys and girls don't have a lot of time, so we're going to jump straight into it. The coronavirus has hit the market, the bear is out of the cage, the bear is coming out here with the flu. This is something I think this probably since this show has been on, this is probably the largest drop that we've seen from an all-time high. We have crossed over correction status, meaning that we've had a 10% drop from the all-time high. When you get a 10% drop, that's considered a contraction. The next step is a recession. Can we, and can we hear a recession with the coronavirus? That's the question of the day. The first thing we've got to ask is, first, I'm going to tell you what we're going to talk about today. So we're going to talk about fear, we're going to talk about greed, fundamentals, technical, can this happen, and how is this happening, how is this affecting everybody, and what you should be doing, and what can you be doing with your portfolio? Now, the first thing is, the coronavirus, what does that have to do with the sky market? The first step is, we know supply and demand, right? China is a company that manufactures everything. The US is in a trade deficit, meaning that we buy more than we sell, meaning that we import more than we put out, right? So with that being said, we were allowed other people to give us stuff to be able to sell. China, when people got sick, what started to happen was, when people got sick, they started to shut down manufacturing, slow down the manufacturing there, the factory stopped, people stopped manufacturing, and when people stopped manufacturing, that means that US companies don't have as much to sell. So when that happens, that can affect future profits. Now, the stock market is based off of what they're expecting to happen in the future, not what is happening today. When people are watching the stock market, they're thinking about what's going to happen in the future, not what's happening today. So now, for a prime example, Apple, take a company like Apple, a trillion dollar company that makes the iPhone, the iPhone, the iMac, MacBook, you guys all, guys and girls have all heard of Apple. Even these Beats by Dre headphones, they make a lot of things, right? They're the number one technology company that we have in the world, right? So China makes a lot of their products. What happens is, Apple comes out and says that, hey, China's slowing down factories is hurting our ability to make money, and this is going to affect our future earnings. Because a company like Apple has already predicted how much money they expect to make for the next year. They've already said, we're going to make this much money in the first quarter, this much money in the second quarter, this much money in the third. And what makes the stock goes up or down, or what makes the market goes up or down is Wall Street's expectations of what Apple is doing and their ability to meet or beat those expectations. So for a prime example, let's say, let's take your household, for example.  Now what happens is, let's say if you was to lose your job, if you was to lose your job, or you was to take a reduction in pay, or you used to have a layout or experience anything that can affect your pay is automatically going to slow down everything that you do in your house. Meaning, I eat, you're not going to go to the movies. You're not going to buy that cup of ice cream, so I need to stop doing it. But you're not going to go eat out as much.  So what did I just say earlier, the market is based upon what is going to happen in the future and the coronavirus can affect what happens in the future because a leading indicator, maybe when I said there's a leading indicator where the economy is going is manufacturing. Manufacturing tells you where the economy is going. Prince, how does that make sense? For a prime example, let's take this marker for example. For this marker to end up in my house on my desk, this has to start from somewhere. Someone had to make it. Someone in the factory somewhere probably made this marker. They simply shipped it to their vendor, the person who was buying it before it set on a shelf at a warehouse before it was sold. Meaning that somewhere in the factory it had to be made. So if the factory workers stopped working or slowed down working, that's the leading indicator of where the economy is headed. So this is why people always pay attention to manufacturing hours. Remember the previous episode, what I made on something called leading and lagging indicators. So remember when I said this, I said a manufacturer, we pay attention to manufacturing hours, manufacturing productivity. Why does manufacturing hours mean a lot? Because the manufacturer workers are working a lot of hours. That means they're making a lot of product. And if they're making a lot of product, that means somebody out there is buying that product. And if somebody is buying that product, they are expecting to buy that product to sell it for a profit. And if they're selling it for a profit, that means that the economy is doing well and that the company would make more money in the future. When you see manufacturing hours slow or cut or manufacturers or factories, factories just shut down, that's the first indicator because a company cannot have an inventory or build an inventory if they have no manufacturing. This is why manufacturing is so important. The coronavirus affected manufacturing, which affects the supply chain in the short term. So it brings fear. That's what it brings into the market. It brings a fear of what we're projecting to potentially happen in the future. So this is why you see the correction into the marketplace. Much needed correction, by the way. We haven't had a correction. This is the longest running bull market, a bull meet going up. This is the longest running bull market we've had in the last decade. So a correction, I am glad to see. I don't like seeing it because I'm a bull guy in the long run. I'm a long-term bull guy. I'm a long-term bull guy, but I'd like to profit from the bear. When the bear comes out and tiptoes out, you're looking for ways. But while this bear is out running wild, is there something I can profit from? And what do you think is going to happen in the long term? First question is, at any time this rubber band can pop back up, meaning that the coronavirus has sagged down the market. And we could just wake up tomorrow. And our next week in the coronavirus is not as serious as it was. And the manufacturer is going to get back up on his feet. And we're going to be just fine. I believe and I know that will happen in the future. Prince, why do you believe that? I want to share my thought process. The reason why is I used this earlier on a podcast where I say that if you made a million dollars a week and you needed a babysitter, your babysitter calls out with the flu. And in order to make this million dollars a week, you need babysitting. You need childcare. Will you find somebody else? Or would you let that million dollars go by the wayside? No. For the short term, you may have to strangle around and work some things out. But you will find another person. You will find some way to find childcare. Whether that could be another sitter, it could be family, it could be friends, shifting hours. You're going to figure something out because it's too much money to be made that you're losing. That's exactly what's happened to companies like Apple, companies like Nike, companies like Microsoft. Everybody has something coming out of China, right? Even Tesla. Tesla just opened up this shop out there in China. So immediately when workers are not coming to work, when manufacturing hours go down, I already explained how that affects the future economy. So people ask me the question, Prince, can this lead to the next recession? What is the recession? 20% drop in from an all-time high. We're 10% away, meaning that we're about 2,100 points from Dow Jones to hitting the recession. And what is the recession categorized by? Two or more months of a declining GDP. Can the coronavirus affect the GDP? So yes, because we're talking about gross domestic product, the gross domestic products of America, how many goods and services that we produce and sell around the country. If we have two quarters of a slow in GDP or we hit 20% downturn, we're not that far away from being technically on paper in a recession. Fundamentally, we have to have two or more months, two or more quarters of a declining GDP. And technically, we have to fall back off the Dow Jones. But what we have today, another 2,100 points. The Dow Jones has failed 3,000 points in the last couple of days, sitting in the frenzy. So with that being said, the question is, can it affect our GDP, our gross domestic product? Fundamentally, I find that very hard press to see that the coronavirus and those workers and things like that passing off into the market. My personal opinion, I think that this is fear what I see in the market now. You see a lot of fear coming to market because of the coronavirus. You're seeing people sell off stocks, people getting rid of things or whatnot.  I'm looking long-term into the future. Things that I always wanted to buy, I'm now snatching up for free or for a low price. I'm at a yard sale and I knew this would come. Now, if we were slipping to a recession, that's meant to, I don't know, I really can't say if we can slip into a recession, looking at the chart. The momentum we have, yes, we have broken the bear trend that we had. We had an upward trend, now the market is in a downward trend. So all my option traders, all my short-term people, people who want to profit from this bull, these are people that are buying puts. These are people that are buying leverage, bearish ETFs. These are people who are becoming bonding gold, silver investors. This is traditional what always happens when the markets become uncertain. Tomorrow, we don't know what the market is going to do. And if it continues to fall, people will look for safe havens to stop the bleeding. And when they do that, people run to cash, people run to bonds, people run to gold. Those are the same commodities. Now, Prince, what are some things that are recession-proof? Our recession-proof index is something called consumer staples. Consumer staples are the index. It's consisted of companies that are staples in the economy. What do I mean by that? These are staples in the economy, as far as no matter what happens tomorrow or whatnot, people will drink Coca-Cola whether they like it or not. Coca-Cola is a staple in the community. People will drink beverages regardless. Another staple would be Walmart.  Regardless, these are consumer staples. People will brush their teeth. People will use deodorant. At least I hope they do that. I always say that when I say that. But people will brush their teeth. They will shave. They will have beverages. They will smoke cigarettes. Those are things that are recession-proof. Those are considered to be consumer staples in a safe haven where the economy has a lot of uncertainty. Now, also, what is another recession-proof index is something considered utilities. These are things that we use every day, regardless of what the market is doing. We have light bills. We have water bills. These are utilities. Things that we have to buy every single day to keep our house, our business up and running. These are considered recession-proof because regardless of what's happening in recession, people will use these. So the companies, now, the things that will take the massive hit, the things that have taken a massive hit, a technology company, things like our Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, right? Those are companies, Tesla. Those are companies that are taking major hits, especially if they have connections to China. So I like to look at that area and say, if they're falling down and the index is a NASDAQ, if they're falling down the most, who do you think is going to rebound the most? Just something to think about. If the market goes back to where it was before all of this craziness started to happen, how much would your portfolio be up or down? So people, these are when the pessimists, the people are coming out, people are looking to take advantage of this big bear. I look at it as the bear sits in the cage and he comes out every eight to 10 years, where more sometimes it's mostly between three to eight. Having been out in the last 10 years, he comes out, he has the coronavirus, and he's growling, he's running all over the place. Everybody is scared, everybody is running. Nobody knows what's going to happen. I'm sitting up on that bull, I'm riding this bull, but I'm looking over at that bear saying, since he's out the cage, what are some ways I can take advantage of him? And man, I just wish I knew how long he was going to be out the cage and how far is he going to bring the market down? If I knew that, trillions of dollars I'd be making. But obviously I don't make trillions of dollars, so guess what? So I don't know where the bottom will be. There are people that are paid millions of dollars to pick bottoms and they can't pick bottoms, right? Now is the market in a downward trend? Yes. Can you take advantage of a downward trend? Yes, as I previously stated. But if you are a long-term person, meaning that you are five years or more into the market, you have to ask yourself the question. If I'm looking five years down the line, who do I think is going to win? Do I think this bear is going to win or do I think this bull is going to win? So now the question is, can the coronavirus lead us into the recession? On a technical chart, I believe so. Fundamentally, do I think they can bring down a GDP for two consecutive quarters? I don't think so. Can I see the market dropping to the two points built out of fear? Yes. But for it to be considered a recession, we have to have two quarters of a declining GDP and two quarters of course that's six months. That means we have to have a declining GDP for six months. And do I think the coronavirus by itself could do that? I don't think so. But I can see the market dropping out of fear. So on a technical standpoint, I can see it pulling us into a technical recession. But getting into a fundamental recession, I'm very hard pressed to see that. But what I would tell people out there now, I'm still riding that bull. I'm still long term. If you are five years of war, if you're a young majority of the listeners that listen and tune into this, you're someone who is looking at five to 10 to 20 years down the line. You should not be concerned about what's happening today or tomorrow. And if you are looking at what's happening today or tomorrow, you should be taking advantage of the downturn. Remember, corn by the greatest investment of all time, Mr. Warren Buffett, he said, be fearful when others are greedy. But be greedy when others are fearful. Right now, do you think people are greedy or do you think people are fearful? 3,000 point drop within three days in one week in the Dow Jones. Do you think that's fear or do you think that is greed that is running the market? I will say it's fear. Seeing the Dow Jones drop this fast, this is how it always happened in the history. You've seen me talk about this plenty of times. I studied the market crash of 1929, 1987, 2008, and 2000, of course, with the Black Fridays going all the way back to the worst one that we had, right? And with every market crash, it always comes out of the blue and it always hits fast. The market takes the stairs up and the elevator down. If you're new to investing, come in. Start dollar cost averaging and as the market takes dip, you're buying along with the dips as well. That's the best opinion I can give you of what I think is going on with the market right now. So I hope that cleared up a lot of things. We talked about what is the coronavirus? How is it affecting the market? How fear runs the market? We talked about can the coronavirus lead us into the next recession. What is the recession? Technically, we talked about what is the recession fundamentally and we also talked about ways to benefit from, for the bull, for the people that are long-term. We talked about ways for people to benefit from there and we also talked about the people who are pessimistic. Who believe the markets are going to drop even more that is bearing, is just getting started. We talked about ways you can profit there as well. So I hope that kind of put some tips into your notepad and maybe into your portfolio and help share some knowledge of what's going on out there in the world. If you say in print should I sell, should I move? I will say no at this particular time because guess what? Now that's how they'll attend, you're not smart enough to pick the bottoms and that's not me saying it for my personal opinion. I'm speaking for statistics. Guys and girls, I'm not smart.  But anyway, that's my time. My name is Prince Dykes. This is the Prince of Investing and as always until the next video, cartoon book or one of those crazy C.R.U.R. on the globe. Peace, be safe. I'm out and thank you.


Hi, this is your host, Subhan Bhatia and welcome to our early series on predictions. Today we have with us, once again, John Murtic, executive director of Open Mainframe Project. John is great to have you back on the show. Likewise, great to talk to you. I will, of course, ask you to grab your Open Mainframe crystal ball and share predictions with us. But before we go there, just quickly remind our viewers what is the Open Mainframe Project all about? The Open Mainframe Project is designed to be like a vendor-neutral home for collaborating on open source technologies, building open source software, and just really bringing the industry together to help produce tooling and products and insights that can benefit the entire industry. And this is similar to a lot of rather Linux Foundation initiatives that just focuses on this distributed collaboration. Our focus is, how can we do that within the context of the mainframe ecosystem? And so we put support at a dozen projects, working groups, a bunch of different efforts, and have a really nice cross-section of the mainframe industry that participates. Now it's time for you to grab your crystal ball and share with us your predictions for 2024. All right. Well, grabbing that crystal ball, and again, I'm always cognizant that I tend not to do a lot of predictions, but I'm going to do it for you here. The one trend that sort of hit us all by storm about this time actually last year was AI. Thanks to our dear friends at OpenAI that got chat GPT out there, and it really took the world by storm. And I think we have seen that pattern. We've seen just like in any other time where we've seen a new technology come out, it grabs everyone's attention, but then it also sort of leads us down all sorts of different paths. And I think we saw that with AI in 2023. Lots of exploration, lots of interesting ideas, lots of fear, lots of big concerns that have came with it. But what I'm seeing sort of under the hood start to happen, and I have a fortune enough of seeing some other industries for what I work with here at the Linux Foundation, is we're seeing them start to think about it within the context of how can it help them as an industry be more effective, scale better, really be able to tackle things that they weren't able to before. AI is not gonna replace anything in the near term. It's not gonna take us all over by robots in the near term. But I heard a presentation earlier this year where they really talked about within the context of artistry and it said, think of AI as a tool in your toolbox that helps you be more creative and helps you produce those results that you're looking for. So with that, I look at the mainframe world and there's tons of opportunities there. There's a growing set of systems administrators and programmers out there that are sort of getting towards the end of their career and there's knowledge that's stuck in their heads of the uniqueness of this platform. How can AI be a tool that can potentially help as we bring that next generation of folks on board? How can it be helping as folks are going back and looking at legacy tools and legacy programs and basically helping do things more efficiently and maybe looking at opportunities to bring in new tooling for different areas there. So I think we're gonna see, just like I think we're gonna see in a lot of different industries and a lot of different, you know, horizontals and verticals where AI is gonna start to really chip away at the block of the possible. I think we're gonna start to see that in the mainframe world and we saw it a little bit with Watson X from IBM back in Q3. And I think we're gonna start to see that here and what I do believe we're going to see is that collaboration happening in open source because if you think about it, biggest challenge with AI right now is the trust and this is where I think open source can come in and is starting to come in of being that area where these models, these data sets can be hosted, it can be transparent, it can be open, it can be collaborative and it can really start to lower those barriers of trust of getting these technologies adopted. On top of AI, like I said, I think that's gonna be one of the ones that we're gonna really see push here. I think another thing that we're really gonna start to see and this connects back to open source is more and more companies within the mainframe world and this is just as the same as we've seen in other industries, they're gonna start to look at their stacks and they're gonna say what are our opportunities to collaborate and what are our opportunities to bring folks together to build, these commodity lower level pieces of the stack which if you've been around cloud, this is something that happened a decade ago. This has happened in tons of industries, tons of horizontals and verticals and we've seen it here with Zoe, frankly. I think we're gonna see that sort of accelerate and mostly as we're sort of coming out of an area where economically there's some stagnation, we're seeing cost cutting happen all over the board, we are seeing sort of that retiring population happening on the mainframe administrator side, there's gonna be a push to be more efficient and that push is gonna mean of how can we collectively build these tools to help us get there, especially around not just legacy technologies but also future facing technology. So I think there's gonna be a huge push there especially as this ecosystem really starts to get their hands wrapped around how can open source truly help them? Like I feel like they're still on that early stage of it and I sense this year is gonna start to be a breakthrough. So yeah, my two big predictions, not AI rule the world but AI is gonna make a dent and we're gonna see more flories of things happening within open source on the mainframe side as these organizations, vendors and customers are really looking to become more efficient. Excellent, thanks for sharing those two predictions. Now, can you also talk about what kind of challenges that you see are going to be there for open mainframe ecosystem next year or opportunities that you see? So I think a combination opportunity and challenge is going to be helping educate and get the decision makers within mainframe shops but also within vendors to better understand how to leverage open source to help accelerate their businesses. I've seen this happen in other industries already so it's not like it's a thing that's not possible but I see one area of really important and this is especially for our projects to take off but also just open source in general is that double down on the education, getting past the fear aspects, helping understand the value to the business, helping understand the security aspects of it and helping understand where their position of investing in open source gets them. Just like we see in other places, what you invest in, you get multipliers back out of and that continues to scale over time. You put a half a million dollars of effort into there, you're getting 10, 20 million dollars back. You put a million, that continues to grow and grow and grow and that's sort of the model that we've seen other industries start to understand and adopt and this is why they continue to invest. This is an area that's starting to take hold in some areas of mainframe but to really help it grow that's gonna be where we need to be. So I would say that's gonna be probably one I would say is it's gonna be a challenge, it's not easy but I think it's also an area for opportunity for sure. I think the other thing that we're sort of keeping an eye on is the continual where we're seeing on tech trends spending. We've seen a lot of tech organizations that are downsizing, laying people off, right sizing, a lot of coming out of COVID, a lot of it with just some of the interest rates and things like that, techno nationalism that's happening out there. I mean, it's definitely an uneasy environment. It's something that we're really keeping an eye out on. I never wanna say open sources is recession proof but it does have really interesting ways of being able to be an asset in recessions, meaning as companies are looking to go look back at their portfolios, they can take a hard look and say, hey, maybe these are pieces here, we don't need to be maintaining this all by ourselves. We can be out there collaborating with companies and building this up. I mean, if you think about some of the major tech companies of our time, they were born out of the times of recessions. That's, and so you see those seeds that are early planted on at these stages are the ones that when things really take off, these companies are well positioned. So it's something we're thinking about. It's something we're keeping an eye on. It's obviously these things are not unique to mainframe. I think it's a cross-tech is a piece in there but I think that's one in there. And then I think probably third is gonna be on the security front. We're really, we know that, you know, the applications that run on mainframes have the utmost highest security requirements. I think one of the things that's on us as a project is how can we best position our projects to be able to be proactive in a security front?  It's just a security vulnerability waiting to happen. I mean, I've been saying that for years and years and years but to me the most important part is how are the processes and structures you have so that way you're able to react to those appropriately and be proactive in many cases. So I see that for the project as, and I see that just for open source in general and I think it's very unique to us as an opportunity for investment but I also see it as a challenge of there's work to be done.  They have been for the last year and I think there can be a lot looked at as an example. That's stuff that I think we're gonna need to see penetrated into many other of our projects and other areas in open source and in the mainframe world to really start to take off. And the good thing is, is there's work that's happening in the open SSF that I think is all things that we can pull from and learn from and derive. But that's really, I think we're a lot we're going. And I think another thing that we're really hoping and this I think kind of ties a lot of these pieces together is helping some of these mainframe vendors along with customers get a stronger open source, you know, program that they're going in with. We see really strong, it's actually interesting the financial services industry which is one of the stronger industries for mainframe has a lot of deep investments and they're doing a ton in building open source program offices. I'd say they're probably outside of the tech sector. There's some of the strongest for open source program offices that are out there. You know, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, Fidelity, a number of others are really, really building that out strong. We need to also help in the mainframe vendor area. Well, I guess twofold. One is we need to help make sure that we can connect the mainframe efforts back into that cause it's a great way to help sort of unify that story. But then secondarily, well, probably even secondarily, I would say probably equally as important is helping the mainframe vendors recognize the value that open source can provide on their product lines and you know, helping them get to market even faster. And you know, I think we, again, that's a challenge out there. I think there's some vendors that are doing a really, really, really good job of that. IBM has been for decades. I see Broadcom has a really strong open source, you know, program office and in way that they're approaching things at least on the mainframe side. Rocket's been doing a good job of it. There's a lot of companies that I don't think quite are there yet. And that's a challenge because if you don't have that, it's hard for these projects to get adopted. But it's also an opportunity as we're able to sort of go in there and help and help cultivate that and build off of the shoulders of giants that are already doing it. So yeah, it seems like every single one of my predictions is connected to an opportunity or I'm sorry, when I challenge the connected opportunity but it's sort of how I see a lot of this laying out. There's a lot of the head of us but it creates opportunities as we go forward. Can you also talk about what is going to be the focus of the foundation, the project in 2024? Yeah, so the biggest focus is getting this mainframe on board. We are a little bit behind of where we wanted to be. We hit a lot of roadblocks and just bumps along the road to get us there. We're moving really, really fast. We're getting a lot closer. So we're expecting that to be our number one focus. That's the number one focus our governing board has our technical communities have is getting that mainframe resource online. I think secondarily, it's going to be how do we better educate the mainframe world on open source? We're seeing that as I talked about in the opportunities and challenges. That's I think we're seeing a lot of the friction starting to happen. Our projects are getting more mature. They're getting more feature complete. They're getting to a place where they're adding a lot of value, but they're hitting that ceiling of uncomfortability with open source within the organization. That is going to be another huge area focus for us. I would say a third and we've done a really good job of this and I expect this to more is pulling out and telling the story of the mainframeer today. It's not to be direct here.  It's people of all ages, all races, all colors, all backgrounds all over that are doing that. I think we've been doing a really good job of telling that story and a focus is going to be continuing that because I think it is lowering that it's taking away those misconceptions and it's making this industry is one that's more approachable by others. John, thank you so much for taking time out today and share your predictions with us. As usual, we'd love to have you back on the show next year. Not only see how many of these two predictions turn out to be true, but also to get the set of next prediction for next year. Thanks so much and have a great day. Thank you. You too. Thank you.


Welcome to you all. This has been set up as a webinar technically, but actually we're supposed to be designed more as a Q&A session for everybody, so please do feel free at any point to just unmute your microphones and ask a question. Just very quickly, I'll go through the sort of high-level information around the call for proposals, and then we might just open it up and people can ask questions. So the key dates hopefully you've seen on the website. This is the first webinar, we're having another webinar in September. We hope to be able to address the questions which are on an FAQ form which is also accessible from the ARDC website. Address any of those in the next version of the RFP. We haven't had any questions so far which I think will affect the RFP itself. My colleague Paul Coddington is online as well and can correct me if I'm wrong there, but if you do have questions or you want some clarification then please let us know, send us through a request and we'll see if we can get the RFP changed. That second version will be released in a couple of weeks, and then we have another few weeks of consultation around the process with the actual RFP itself opening on the 24th of October. So we hope to have quite a short period for the RFP itself because we've had quite a long period to begin with in terms of socialising what the RFP says. If you could register your interest we changed that from a register of intent to a register of interest. There's absolutely no obligation for anyone to put in a proposal at all, but if you do register your interest then we're able to make sure that you do get the communications relevant to the RFP. Okay so in very high-level terms the Nectar Research Cloud is an infrastructure as a service cloud with various other bits on it, which has been provided by the Nectar project part of the Encriss program. A lot of that infrastructure is now reaching the end of its life and we were successful in getting some capital to maintain the capacity of parts of that cloud and so this process here is to make sure that we do in fact maintain that capacity. The implications are of course that it's Nectar equipment so it's not to set up new clouds, it's set up to refresh of the existing Nectar infrastructure so the capital needs to be part of that Nectar Federation. In addition it has to comply with the one-to-one co-investment principles which we've outlined in the proposal. Now in that we've described it there where we would provide for example 100% of the capital with the partner providing an operation commitment to make sure that that infrastructure remains available for three years. We can vary that so for example we have one or two partners who have in fact very recently invested in the capital themselves and it's the operation side which would be more appropriate for us to support them with there so we can blend that model a little bit but the intent is that the all of that infrastructure will become part of the Nectar Federation and it'll all become available for national merit allocation so the trick there really is to ask for what you need so you'd be able to locally define organisational requirements if you can define your local so I'm talking from the perspective of for example an institution if you can define your local compute requirement requesting that amount of capital for us with an operations commitment from your organisation obviously means that all of that infrastructure is being used for national merit allocation but you don't necessarily need to be supporting users outside your organisation. Alternatively for organisations who want to provide a broader spread provide the amount of the provider proposal which indicates the amount of capital which you're able and willing to support and around which you believe you can make a business model to support that operating model so we're quite flexible in that the original Nectar proposal resulted in a collection of organisations which we refer to as the nodes they're spread around Australia and we've had some amendments in that node community over the last few years this call is open to any organisation so either to partner with those nodes or if an organisation feels it's able to put up that infrastructure within the time period then they're more than welcome to put in a proposal also the proposals will close the 8th of November and we hope to have the results out to applicants by the 25th of November the contract the draft contract we're hoping to have through the new ARDC limited company rather than through a university which has been the historical method of doing the contracting those contracts aren't quite ready for circulation yet but you can see in the in the stub contract it has the general headings which the contracts will address and the details we'll hope to get that to people as quickly as possible and again that will just be shared on the website organisations are welcome to combine together so that applies both to our existing node community as well as new partners combine applications more than we can only contract with a single organisation so some structure needs to exist to make sure that we can contract with one entity through that but in terms of who's backing that entity more than happy for there to be a range of participants there I think there's a chat section here where people are welcome to put in some questions I might briefly hand over to my colleague Paul to see if I've missed anything or if there's anything extra he would like to add no I think that's that's pretty much covered it so I think we're really just looking for any questions that people might have around the RFP process all right so Paul and I are also available for anyone to communicate with any questions that are addressed to us we'll go up on the FAQ so while we won't be saying who asked the question just in terms of transparency we'll make sure that all of the questions do appear up there ask me anything yeah are you looking for any kind of domain focus from the submissions we're not specifically looking for a domain focus but we could imagine a domain focus would be one of the sort of organising constructs if you like for people to create that model around so the original applications in the first version of Nectar did have quite a strong domain focus in terms of what domain would your organisation be particularly targeting we have less of an emphasis on that for this round thanks I've warmed up someone else can fire a question now that would seem inappropriate for me not to ask a question hello and how are you Paul I wonder given that this is now going to what I would refer to as a retail model you're going to potentially open up to individual institutions and I do note my good friend Andrade here on the call how do you advise working with direct direct institution and what are the applications of any for the connection the cross connection with the New Zealand people please I might give that to Paul as we have already got a couple of for example Auckland which might be a way of addressing both of those at the same time yeah we're certainly not looking for applications for this funding round from New Zealand organisations but I think the the way we'd support them would be essentially the same as we're doing at the moment if the New Zealand organisations wish to federate into Nectar as they do now of what we allow that and if and we're trying to encourage you know trans-Tasman collaboration which we can do through through existing mechanisms of having projects that have New Zealand and Australian researchers part of them and sharing resources in that way but it's not expected that we would be taking an application from New Zealand organisations for for funding that's not allowed has to be for Australian organisation Hi Ian Paul it's Kieran here it says the intention of this to build buy and build infrastructure or is it also to think of more of the hybrid models of public cloud private cloud partnerships is that in your thinking as well or is that somewhere in the future so for this round the infrastructure needs to become part of the Nectar Federation so come into that same allocation and management model so that does make it difficult for a whole range of the hybrid models it's predominantly we envisage buy and build similar to the original implementation I mean it's probably possibly worth pointing out that you know we're certainly in the future interested in looking at commercial cloud and public cloud but that's not what this round is about anybody else we do have quite a lot of actually ARDC people on the call but if there are any non ARDC people who have no question I'll ask another one then what you mentioned that the when you're talking about applying for the amount of capacity and you also say you say it's national merit allocated but only apply for the amount that you you want yourself so is you suggesting that could be self assertion of national merit I mean how would how would if people apply for the amount of capacity they need themselves how do they ensure they get that capacity well they they can't there's no guarantee that anyone will get the capacity they asked for but nonetheless I think the so for example and organize an institution a university might say we need x amount of compute capacity could we please get that and we'll commit to operating that for our what essentially they're local users but which are still national merit awarded activities and so they fit within that guideline in other organizations which may span multiple organizations they could basically go through the same process and go to those member organizations and say well what do you envisage your demand being we'll apply for the aggregate of all of those demands and we'll create the business model around that that supports those and those members would in some form I guess provide that operating support there so it's really a question of and I mean equally an organization may say well we're not really sure how much we can support but we feel we can support multiple organizations across multiple domains we'd like to pitch for a certain amount of capacity which we will then try and expand the business in to fulfill and there if the organization has the operating model behind that that can support that and providing that infrastructure is being used for again that national merit activity then that's compatible with that model as well all right well that's all pretty quiet um if there aren't any other questions this mark do you have anything else no and you know I'm just trying to find a way to do this thing that's also so uh yeah my point being that to ask for the amount of capacity that someone thinks they need without being able to assure that capacity is uh is tricky if not impossible so I'm not quite sure how this works still anyway thank you okay do we have any other questions from anyone else on the call okay good like I said if you do have any questions that uh crop up then please feel free to give us a call um and also you can send in uh particular questions through the website otherwise I feel we may have covered all the ground that's useful just at the moment we will circulate the contracts as I said as soon as we've got the drafts uh we'll also be putting together um a little presentation to try and address some of the questions that mark's raising as in how does that actually work in terms of fully merit allocated uh commitment with an operations component for the home organization how do you get that to work uh in various different scenarios so we'll be putting that up fairly shortly as well if there are questions around the RFP itself what's involved what's in there what are the timelines when do things need to be made available then please do register them uh as part of the FAQ process uh and otherwise I think we might call that um a day okay thank you all very much


Our guest this weekend is none other than James Grant, the publisher of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, and also the author of the current cover article in Time Magazine, entitled The United States of Insolvency. But some critics, notably Paul Krugman, have weighed in against the article, and we even have Ben Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, telling us that the Fed could, in a worst-case scenario, directly finance the Treasury. Well, we're not buying it and neither is Jim Grant. So stay tuned for a great interview on his recent article in Time Magazine. So your current article in Time Magazine, The United States of Insolvency, Paul Krugman at The New York Times has weighed in very briefly in his blog on your piece. He was a bit unkind here. Did you have a chance to see what he said? Oh, yes. But you know, no matter how nasty he gets, he'll never be as tall as I am. When I read his blog and he talks about low interest rates creating a good environment for deficit spending, I just wonder in the minds of a progressive like Mr. Krugman, do you think that the federal deficit has ever repaid? Do you think the Fed's balance sheet has ever shrunken? No, I think not. I think that the people like Paul Krugman regard the desire to reduce the debt, if not to pay it off, they regard the desire to restore the Fed's balance sheet to something like pre-2008 normalcy. They would regard those things as ambitions of people who don't understand how the world really works. They think that the debt is a balance, a helpful thing. They think that low interest rates are the invitation to incur more of it. They think that the Fed's balance sheet is as large as it ought to be, and they observe in the measured rate of inflation that no one seems really to object to it, and that the burden of proof is in any who would have the Fed do less of what it has done. So I think that they are, as apologists for the fiscal and monetary status quo, they are fat and happy and self-complacent. And as far as the numbers they look at, they are entirely, they would be correct. The stock market is near a high, and the measure rate of inflation is less than 2%. So what's wrong? I think that's the way they reason. Well, some of the criticism of your time article was not simply about the United States government's ability to service its debt or its assets or its solvency, but there almost seems to be this tenor. And I wonder if this is trickling down from progressive, like Krugman, this tenor that it's somehow almost passe, are cliched to be talking about the federal debt because it's this amorphous thing we've lived with for so long. And Ross Perot was clamoring about it in 1992, yet here we are in 2016. I just wonder if there is not a measure of fatigue in the general public to the extent the general public pays attention. Yeah, well, the critics of the debt and of the post-1971 dollar have been sounding off for many years, and they have come to seem, we, I should certainly include myself in that, have come to seem like a Paul Revere without the British. There's been the alarm, but where exactly is the menace? You know, Vice President Dick Cheney came out many years ago and said that deficit has no, you know, no evident, obvious, or even as far as he was concerned, remote connection with the rate of interest. And he wondered what all the shouting was about. So yes, I think that the critics of this time article and of generally of the approach that I took in the time piece, regard my approach to things not only as wrongheaded, but also as anachronistic and indeed as risible. Well, if the debt represents a backward looking approach, what Lawrence Kotlikoff has been talking about in terms of the fiscal gap down the road, that is perhaps even more amorphous to people in terms of expected future tax revenues and expected future entitlement payments. Do you think that do you think that this means that there's that because we can kick the can down the road that there's not really a political solution to this, that the solution has to come from something unpleasant? Yes, I do think that I think that's also the case with respect to the post nine 2007 monetary operations of the Federal Reserve and other central banks, you know, the this almost breakneck pace at which what was once not only kind of unthinkable, but also unimaginable, the pace at which heterodox monetary policy has entered the world of plain vanilla orthodoxy that too, I think must play out until there is an obvious adverse consequence. So again, you know, if you if you just look at the at the basic vital signs of the composite American enterprise, look at the rate of unemployment, look at the measured rate of inflation, look at the stock market, look at mortgage rates. And if you look at those things with the I someone of someone, for example, who was around in in 1979 or 80, when Paul Volcker was just beginning his tenure at the Fed, you'd say, we have arrived at the King of Heaven. I mean, inflation is negligible, at least as they measure it. Rate of unemployment is at least defensible. The stock market certainly is frothy and and mortgage rates are on sale to people, you know, so it's it's it's kind of okay. And people see that it's kind of okay. And they wonder, well, what exactly are these critics saying? And I think that people who have read the Austrian masters and who have penetrated a little bit deeper under the surface of things, no full well that something is wrong and no full well that something is unsustainable. But I think that the critics, I'm going to talk to you about myself, must be patient and must buy their time and have arguments at hand when things do go visibly wrong as opposed to prospectively wrong. You know, on Wall Street, if you if you stake out a point of view that you think is is substantially correct and is in tune with theory and fact, and with value, and everyone agrees with you, you are suspicious of your own reasoning, because, as the man said, successful investing has been having everyone agree with you later. So the the critic of these fiscal and monetary arrangements can take some comfort in the fact that the great and the good are as one in shouting him or her down. I do take some comfort in this. You know, if Paul Krugman can come out and said, God, what a fabulous analysis in Time Magazine, so accessible, so down to earth, and the figures are just you really can't argue with any of it. That would have been worrying. But the universal outcry from people who with whom one would not here to spend much time and friendly discussion about economic matters, the universal outcry against is is is kind of okay, right? It's not exactly pleasant to read all of it. But it's it's it's what you would want if you were contrary minded and forward looking critic of contemporary arrangements. When it comes to contrary minded people, there's been almost a joke circulating for many, many years about Mr. Naki concerning helicopter money. But as you lay out in your article, grants interest rate observer, the road to confetti, you talk about this is is not just a joke about per Naki, but an actual concept called money finance fiscal program that he has forwarded as sort of a possibility between the Fed and the US Treasury. Can you just talk a little bit about this? Is this is this maybe a more honest way than the circuitous way that the Federal Reserve currently monetizes federal debt? Would it be better in a certain sense? Well, it's as you suggest, it's more straightforward. One gets a more honest. I mean, what what helicopter money means is, of course, not literally chucking the stuff out of offering low offering aircraft, but rather of journaling, you know, kind of book entry or digital script into the imaginary Treasury Department checking account. So the Fed, instead of buying securities in the open market, instead of crediting the selling banks with these digital dollars and having the banks lend them into the market, the Fed would cut out the middleman and just credit the Treasury's account with dollar bills. And there will be no addition to the public debt. It would just be creating the stuff out of the thinnest of air. And yeah, there's a certain base appeal to this. Certainly, you know, in a way, it kind of reminds me a little bit of Vivian Kellam's proposition that we ought to stop withholding taxes at the employee level and actually hand the full weekly paycheck to the employee and then take it back from his or her outstretched hand just to let that person know what has been done. And the helicopter money would answer the same, perhaps it would be as pleasing in its way because it would show for all the world to see what is happening, as it is now the Fed's open market operations are obscured and kind of a haze of magic and fairy dust. Well, one final question for you though is, so how did we become the radicals? In other words, I'm not sure that I can imagine Alan Greenspan calling for this, but Ben Bernanke, who's an esteemed person by all accounts and treated as a serious and sober person, is now seen as the voice of reason.  It seems like something that mainstream people ought to be raising serious questions about. Well, I think it's exactly that. And it's not just Ben Bernanke or the Council on Foreign Relations has advertised this idea and aired it for discussion as the Wall Street Journal did the other day, Greg Yip, its economics columnist laid out the merits as well as some of the demerits of helicopter money and page two of the Wall Street Journal. This idea has entered the mainstream. And again, to me, it's proof positive that radical monetary policy gets more and more radical monetary policy. And those who adhere to classical notions are marginalized as wild haired ones, whereas the exponents of never before proposed indeed hitherto unimagined nostrums. Well, I guess they were imagined, say, at the time of the French Revolution. But the authors of these new schemes are kind of the, they are the new mainstream. And this works until it doesn't work. And I've been around Wall Street a long time. And again, I comfort myself with the recollection of how safe and sound and sane did these subprime mortgage structures seem in 2004 and 2005 and 2006 and into the most 2007. So anyway, I have resolved to try not to lose my mind and retain my patience and measure it with humor and keep on going. Well, that sounds like good advice for all of us and on that note, Jim Grant of Grants Interest Rate Observer at Grants Pub is their Twitter feed. We thank you so much for your time and have a great weekend ladies and gentlemen.