The discussion is examining the potential for strong performance in the U.S. equity markets in 2025, despite the broader economic challenges. Key factors that could drive growth are highlighted, along with demographic and policy-related obstacles that may affect the outlook. Highlights: 📈 Projections indicate U.S. equities could see robust 8-12% growth in 2025, buoyed by increased capital expenditures from major corporations. 💰 Significant ramp-up in CapEx spending by leading companies is seen as a positive indicator for future earnings potential. 🌍 Concerns around global demographic trends, including declining birth rates and aging populations, pose challenges for sustained economic expansion. 🔄 Expectations of heightened M&A activity across industries could lead to significant reshuffling and restructuring. 🏦 The Federal Reserve's monetary policy decisions will be a critical factor in shaping market dynamics in the coming years. ⚖️ Despite global uncertainties, the U.S. is viewed as the most stable and attractive investment destination compared to other major economies. 📉 However, elevated corporate debt levels raise the specter of potential defaults, which could introduce volatility.
Key Insights:
📊 Equity Growth Potential: Analysts forecast a modest growth of 8-12% for U.S. equities in 2025, signaling a return to historical norms after previous strong performances. This reflects a cautious optimism amidst economic fluctuations.
💼 Corporate CapEx Surge: Major companies are significantly increasing their capital expenditures, which is seen as a positive indicator for future earnings and economic growth.
🌐 Demographic Headwinds: Declining birth rates and aging populations globally pose challenges for sustained economic expansion, requiring policymakers to address these demographic shifts.
🏢 M&A Reshaping Industries: Expectations of heightened merger and acquisition activity across industries could lead to significant restructuring and reshuffling, potentially creating new opportunities and risks.
🚀 Fed Policy Impact: The Federal Reserve's monetary policy decisions will be a crucial factor in shaping market dynamics and investor sentiment in the coming years.
🌍 U.S. as a Safe Haven: Despite global uncertainties, the U.S. is viewed as the most stable and attractive investment destination compared to other major economies, offering a relative safe haven for investors.
📉 Corporate Debt Risks: Elevated corporate debt levels raise concerns about potential defaults, which could introduce volatility and disrupt market stability.
Makes two of us, by the way,
say that again. Michael, in the beginning, I didn't like Stephen, I didn't like the sound of his voice, and I didn't like his firm. But that didn't last long. We've come to love him like nobody else.
Who else? Yeah, Andy, thanks, coming up you. Coming up mute.
There's nothing wrong with Stephen's voice. Puts a tremendous amount of effort into every week, which is and when I say every week, I mean discipline, consistent and obviously open to debate, which is what we're what we're here for, when, when everything, Steven's not right, which is infrequent, but once in one
never end. Thank you. Hey, Mark, yep, the what I delivered at the last, at the last celebration of Stephen was a riveting, interesting and insightful set of remarks that hopefully he remembers, because there's some possibility that none of the rest of us do remember what I said. Then I would, however, at this point, like to add some context to what does it mean to endure 250 straight Tuesdays, and he has out lasted, Jimmy Carter, George Bush Senior and Joe Biden, none of them could make it beyond the first four years, but Stephen has gone sailing by and and that's that fancy research the bill, bill does, it reveals that people want Him, him, Stephen to go another 250 oh my gosh, he's a two term. Er, he's our but he's our two term. Er, he doesn't belong to anybody. He doesn't belong to others. You know, they a his firm may manage 1.8 billion, but that's incidental to his intimate relationship with all of the people that that are on this call, or wish they were on this call.
Thank you, Jack. Actually, we had an idea that you're going to take over for the next 250 but we'll come back to that
a little just be one session, though. Yeah, it's funny how ideas work. That's an idea I've never heard
Yeah. Sara
hand up, yes. So in addition to all that, I also want to add I really enjoy also the Global Insight that Stephen delivers. And not only just focusing on just US equities, but how it fits the global picture, the how the industry trends move. And as you said, Marco is on top of every news and already knows it before everyone. So thank you again. Thank you.
Yeah, so had a question I thought originally about. Anyone,
anyone, anyone else? Want me to get himself together.
He's the he's the one and only uncle Stephen and everybody reads the headlines, but because Steven reads all the headline we get, we get the color. It's not just the black and white, but we get the full color edition every week. He's the man
Denise. You have your hand up, but you never even met Stephen, but you have a comment on already,
Yeah, but you're kind of projecting only positive things. So I cannot help myself, and as a new come and say that in my 12 year, kind of a VC focus career, this has been so far, the most interesting and fascinating rabbit hole I have ever taken chances with. So I really am looking forward to meet you all in person.
This all keeps going, but that's well said, though, yep, all right, hopefully
this is better. So I just
had a question, you know, final question about Naples and Miami. It looks like Naples is a three day event and Miami is only a one day event. They're priced the same. The issue is that the networking time available at Naples is significantly more than Miami. I may not
be right. Why don't I make a unilateral decision to increase my Naples? I should do that. Well,
I'm not. I'm not able to, you know, make. Make it to Naples, perhaps, right? So that's the So, I guess my question is, is there a way around that, right, if we're not able to leave Miami? And so that's, that's, that's, I guess, a question for after
we can talk about Miami, does have, you know, the slightly larger group. Oh, come on.
All right, we'll let we'll take it off like
anyone else.
Duncan, you're an OG on this, these briefings, any reflections on Stephen, yeah, or in general,
well, I mean, honestly, Marian, I've been, I've been, I've been in the industry, you know, for a very long time. I really think Stephen, what Steve puts together on a weekly basis, is unbelievable. I mean, I just feel like, you know, he hits changes in trends before other people. I mean, it's kind of like, I don't know how many times has this happened? I have this, like, sudden thought that hits my mind, that about something that's going on or something changing. We go to the Tuesday call, and Steve's got a presentation on it. Like, I know how he does it, very impressive. You do some of
that yourself. You so you talk to fixed income is sexy again. Back a couple years ago, before anyone thought it was you also, you know, you hit insurance before insurance is a you're in the Zeit guys, maybe you're
kind I hit and run. Steve is there every week, and it's amazingly consistent. So anyway, Steve, Michael, this thing. Michael
Hammer, oh, well, Stephen, I just have to say this is the first time I've heard anyone refer to you as a rabbit hole.
I think you he was talking about this. I'm fine with that. I wouldn't necessarily put him in the whole rabbit hole camp,
but I have to see I enjoy your Tuesday briefings. Always interesting.
Indeed. What
makes him is the group, though, it's the interplay and the wisdom and knowledge that this group collectively brings to the table. The in depth knowledge on so many subjects is awesome, because I don't have that. I just do the inch deep, mile wide, because the mile deep, and it's really fascinating, yeah,
but if we push you, you go, you go deep,
not of it, but you
know, it's like the time Bill Eichler, we someone mentioned blockchain, and then he took it over for 10 minutes. But yeah, so again, man, COVID. This happened. We did this 200 last year after Florida, Florida sort of dominated, because we had 30 cities and 10 countries, but we do have London. So Mariana is there with Martin charlina. Oh,
also here, but he just took a call. So yeah, we wanted to give you, Steven our support from London. Thank
you, Mary. What do you like about these brief what do you guys like about these briefings across the pond?
Okay, so it's very hard, obviously, not to be biased. And Stephen managed somehow not to be biased, over and over and over again, even though, sitting in America, he was always very objective in terms of rest of the world. So, yeah, opinions are what one thing and facts are the other. And he delivered both, but fact first, and then, when someone asked him about opinion, he was obviously save but that that's, I would say, one of the best traits of Stephen, but also his personality, so we love Him. Dear Lee,
thank you.
Strong tip of the hat to mark and Steven. Always find this interesting. You know you see behind the headlines and you're ahead of the curve, and really appreciate it. Keep up the great work.
Giovanni,
you know, luck be
we need Stephen in London more often, by the way, and we need equivalent of Steven here as well.
That's a harder one. Well, we have
issues here as well. Giv on.
Do you want to say something
so luck is preparation needs opportunity and so, you know, I. Think the time that I gained Mark's respect is when I predicted the impact of COVID 19. So Steven allows me to be prepared, so that I can be lucky. So I really appreciate Stephen's insights on the markets the economy, and allows me to make a far more informed decision for my allocations. Thank you very much, Steve, thank
you Giovanni. And Giovanni got the pandemic call in January of 2020, in Miami.
Yeah, it was a dinner. It was the
end of January, but still, it was a dinner. It was in January. That was really the first time somebody was talking about it as a pandemic level, not an epidemic level. So yeah, I never
went to the root of how he knew that, what to do that this year. And Giovanni, you wanted to talk about sports in Naples later today. Yes, I do anyone else what the comment,
I just want to echo what Joe said Steven, what I think you're acute ly brilliant at is explaining highly complex global Christ asset macro, distilling it down to what makes sense at a particular time, and saying it in a very lyrical degree of clarity that the broad bread of the group can understand, which is a rarity. You're not, you know you're not talking to Alan Greenspan or Bernanke, you're talking to normal people, and it's a pleasure, and you always do it with such grace and modesty, and thank you for that.
Thank Anthony, much appreciated.
Even though he didn't grow up in the Midwest. He went to school in the Midwest sort of, I'm
not sure the Pennsylvanians would consider Pennsylvania Midwestern these days.
The original Midwest
bar. Did you go to Midwestern school? Penn State? You got it.
We should be playing tonight, but I will,
yes, really night. Yeah, I know. I know when you're not playing, you don't pay attention. I get it,
I am paying attention for next year. So I just,
yeah, I just learned something about Ken state today that I didn't know they don't cancel classes until the wind chill is minus 20.
Okay? I went to Ann Arbor. I don't remember the Met for canceling classes. So there I was.
I was gonna say, an hour from the Ohio border and just south of Lake Ontario. Don't ever remember cancel classes. Ever
we don't cancel classes. Penn State cancels classes. That's right, we
do not cancel classes. Thank
you for that, that that comment,
supposed to cancel classes. Yeah, well,
I sort of like this, this live trivi, rather than the videos. In a way, a lot of people couldn't, couldn't make it, but we'll make it up at the 300 or, God forbid, the 500 God forbid,
is writing that should be retiring to. Let's think ahead,
because I was at arm and Sarkisian asked a question at his November conference about humanity in light of AI. All these we're talking about Hyper Sonic drones with this new universe we have. And we're also talking with de chi, talking about, you know, thinking of AI as is our children grooming it and our to be the best parents of these A is, rather than let them control us. But can humanity survive? Was the question, do we succeed or survive with this evolution? Do we make it to the 500 those are the some of the questions.
What do you think
he's a good politician, he led everyone else. But there were some, some real worry warts there, and then pollyannish people so, but it's, it's still, it's a, it's a, you know, maybe that's our question. That'll be our question is, how do we see the world? How do we get, let's just tuck these away. How do we see what topics will we be discussing? Bill deckler, are you there? Maybe that should be for. Our survey 19.
I was just going to say, yeah, that's survey 19.
Hey, Bill, put
to find survive. That's one of the questions
that is very true. We're going to switch over to learn about GDP, productivity, demographics and immigration. So with with that. Are you ready? Usually you need 30 seconds. Okay, go for it. I was
trying to get away from move on to the presentation quickly, so let me see if I can get my deck. Okay, there we go. If
anyone has any other questions about Florida, let me know. We'll address them after this. Alright,
so our current economic and social systems have been built on two primary forces. One is decades of growing populations, and the second is globalization, and both of those are under pressure right now due to conflicts and other issues that we'll touch on, but we've seen billions of people come out of poverty over the last 20 years, we've seen some of the most incredible economic growth in our history. But we're now in a world where the conditions that got us here, that drove global growth or are changing, add to that you have aI promising to change the way we live, work and govern. Climate change is here, and it's disrupting our world, and we'll continue to and to get out of the challenges that we're seeing today, we need a combination of higher productivity, effective migration policies and higher fertility rates to deal with some of the issues that we're facing. So let's just take a look at what growth looks like, and then some of the challenges around that demographics, and then we'll get into productivity. So as you can see here, we've been at a pretty steady state globally in terms of growth. We've managed to mitigate the economic cycles by throwing more monetary and fiscal policy stimulus in the last 15 years than we have, I think, ever in history, certainly on a scale unseen before. You have advanced economies which look like they're growing in a pretty steady state around just shy of 2% which is not great growth, and yet the developing economies in the three to four is what's this is masking. Is Big divergences underneath the covers here. So when you look back from 19 to last year, over that five year period, you had the emerging market, sex China, seeing some very strong growth. You had the US seeing some strong growth, but you had China take a big step back, advanced economies x the US going the wrong way, and Germany and China being the poster child for changing terms of trade and how the global economy shifting. And the two leading manufacturers are now seeing manufacturing move away and seeing the declining growth rates that go with that. So stepping back, what drives GDP growth per capita and GDP growth overall? It's really two things, population and productivity. Population is really two elements, the age mix, which is your fertility, how long people live and how much migration you see going on, as well as how much you get for each individual working, in terms of labor force participation, hours and the employment rate, productivity is really just the measure of how much you get for each hour worked. And really, we're in a very different world than we've been in for most of the last 20 years, because we're starting to see population peaking in some areas globally. It's not projected to peak until 2084 it's just shy of 10 point 3 billion people, and then it's starting to continue to slide down up to 2000 to 2100 but we're already seeing the first wave hit, and we're seeing that peaking in certain regions and nations already. We'll get into that. So the first wave is the early regions. The second wave is going to be other regions, X to sub Sahara Africa, and the third wave is sub Sahara Africa. And what you can see in this chart is that the dark blue at the top is the 65 and older. The next blue lines is the 15 to 64 which is the working age, and then below that is the under 15. And why are these charts so important? Is it saying that we are losing our working class? Group and rapidly aging out, and at the same time, you're not filling them back doing the working class group, because the under 15 is in decline. And to put it in perspective, I mentioned this last week, but the Japanese Center for Aging projected last week that in 695, years, which I know is a long way. 2725 they're projecting that there will be one child in Japan under age 15, so they'll be number one in their class. They won't have many people to play with. They will be the fastest and slows kid in the class. But it also speaks to how spending is going to go on, and we'll touch on this in a minute. Here's a different look at it from the first wave and from regions and then countries in the later wave, countries, and you get a sense between 2023 and 2021 China is projected to drop 55% the Greater China region, 56% advanced Asia going to see almost a 30% decline in their population during this time. So these are massive population moves, and it's really based on the fact that we have a fertility problem that's driving this, and we have migration issues or immigration policies that are flawed, that are adding to this. But you can see from this chart from the 1950s in the top boxes all the way through to 2023 a steady decline in fertility rates, where in the 50s, everywhere in the world was above replacement, above the 2.1% replacement rate. In 65 you started to see it a little bit in Europe. And then in the 80s, you had North America and Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Go to the 95 it's spreading. And then fast forward to 20 to 2023 and you have most of the world in decline, below replacement. And you have China below 1% which is actually a very troubling sign of things to come there. What this is leading to is big strain on governments, because the support ratios for the working population are declining and those who need the support are growing. So to give you a sense, in 1997 we had just shy of 10 people working for everyone over 65 that support ratio is projected to decline to today to around 6.2 on its way to under 4% and that's overall that's masking the underlying problems. 4% or under four. Under four, I'm sorry, under four people for everyone over so but if you go to other countries, look at Western Europe, you're going to be down below two. That's not a great number. Where's Japan? Japan? I have to go back into the report and get those numbers, but they're they're in a bad way, and Japan is already in decline. I think they are losing about a million people a year to their population numbers. So just gives you a sense that this is the this is a bad setup for governments who are already strength financially. And so what you're going to say is government deficits increase because you're going to have fewer people paying tax revenues, more people living off their income spending, and that's going to continue to worse. And you can see from this chart, Spain, the UK and the US. So the US has good demographics in this in this time period, so it just shows you how much strain is coming. The other thing that's an important shift of spending, and important for us as investors, is increases to health care spending, lower spending on education, because fewer people in the system will have advances in AI, making the potential for education much less expensive, but then we have more people that we have to take care of on the health care side, without income coming in. So a very unusual dynamic that's at play here. So you have this population problem, you have a demographic issue of people living longer. China and Japan are becoming North Korea and South Korea are becoming among the biggest nursing homes in the world, with population problems that are really straining the government finances, but also straining how businesses operate, how you think about your investments for the long term. So that's going to put a bigger emphasis on productivity, because we'll have fewer workers with big skills gaps and bigger problems in defining the skills, particularly of education spending, is going the other way. So what this chart shows you is age mix is going to be a problem everywhere in the world, from 2030 to 2050 but what you've seen from 97 to 2023 is that it's really been a problem through. Out and that it's been productivity that's driven any of the returns. And for the last five years, productivity has basically declined around the world because we had governments throwing money at all the problems that you weren't forced to be as productive as you needed to be, because the government stepped in and over stimulated the system. So they put 33% of GDP to work from 20 May of 20, or February of 20 to May of 2021,
so we put 23% of global GDP to work to south which was a 6% GDP problem, and that actually over stimulated the system. We didn't need to be as productive as a government or as a corporation, because you had the tail ones low interest rates and others. Now we're moving into higher interest rate environment. Productivity is going to be the key, because you can count on population growth to be the driver. Productivity has been a problem around the world, and it's you can see the gaps of productivity. This is a chart of the US versus Europe going back to the 1800s and it's really government, policy and technology that are the big drivers. And we had this big move with a massive rebuild in the US and around the world. After World War Two, we had an influx of labor that came in during that time, Europe lost some of the labor that they were experiencing. So they got the worst of both worlds. And then you fast forward to the 2000s and the big tech boom that was going on in the US was not as well participated in by Europe. So that's one of the problems that you've seen longer term productivity problems there. This is just an example of the gap for 2023 and what you can see is Europe, on a GDP per capita basis, was maybe half of what the US was. Their productivity contributions was much less, and their labor gap was also higher. This is part of the problem that exists between the US and Europe, and a problem for European competitors. And you add to that the industrial policies that were put in place by the US, which further worse in the gap, and then we have better access to energy. Here you can make the case of why capital continues to flow into the US and the FT had an interesting article, foreign direct investment and foreign dollars coming in are growing again in the US, the spread there. So looking at, you know, what does this all mean for the world? I think the demographic issue continues to win global growth. We're already seeing nations leading nations that are at peak populations already starting their decline. That's going to be a very different mindset. We keep thinking about it is out in the future, but it's here right now, and it's changing how businesses operate. Innovation and immigration are going to be the key to addressing the population, labor, both skills and availability and inflation concerns, productivity is the antidote for inflation, so we have to get our productivity up to bring inflation down, even with the potential concerns about tariffs and the other stuff out there, those are more one off issues we have embedded inflationary pressures that are going to do with the system for a while. I think aging and birth death rates are really making the need for sound immigration policies to be put out, and you have to get past, avoid the rhetoric and the ideology that's been driving immigration policies, the immigration debate, and get into what are the problems each country needs to solve in the US? We have major problems with workers, gaps in big areas, like home health aides for an aging population, construction workers for the homes that needed to be built to deal with the housing problems or to put up the factories. As we bring on shoring back, we need to design immigration policies to solve problems, not to deal with rhetoric and ideology. So we have to get past that. You have to move past immigration sentiment, and part of that comes around the world from foreigners coming in, not wanting to adapt to the cultural norms of the country they're moving to and the country they're moving to, not adjusting to the fact that they need these people to come in to grow so everyone has to adjust to what where the old norms become new norms and become become better countries. Because of that, the US is a great example of that with the waves of immigrants we've had from all over the world, each nationality brought something new to the table and made us a better place. I think conflicts have led to force displacement that continues to rise, and we have to make sure immigration policies provide asylum for those were being mistreated, and you can't ignore the problems. They're real. The persecution that's going on for all sorts of reasons continues to rise at a time we should have been passed a lot of this, but a lot of the politics and geo politics and. Worse borders and things like that in the Middle East, or what the or we're still living with those conflicts out of World War Two that are going to continue to lead to further conflicts going forward. But I think the other thing we have to keep in mind is that battle for talent is going to be critical to economic and national security and to social success going forward, and how we bring them all in is going to matter on a global basis, more specifically for the US, where should we be? I think the idea of closing the borders right now immediately is fully appropriate. Most countries have very strong border policies. Some make it virtually impossible to get in. We are very liberal in that area, and people are taking advantage of it, but you need to allow authorized immigration for social, economic and security purposes. Now, the flow of immigrants across the border right now uncontrolled is just inappropriate. Immigration should be managed to ensure that we get the best talent, get match labor supply, skills and availability to the gaps that we have, while providing asylum for those in need. The H, 1b visa program is 85,000 that is for students, undergrad and graduate. It 65 for undergrad, 20,000 for graduates, those should be expanded by multiples. If I was king for a day, they would be at 500,000 I would take the h2 Visa Program, which is for filling skills gaps that we have, or labor gaps that we have, an aggressively fill home health care and construction worker to do that and other skills gaps that we have. Health care is an area that we need more skills coming in, and we need to find a better way to get them integrated. I think these are the things that we need to look at in the US. We have a declining we have a fertility problem. Immigration is the answer for that. We're not going to change the birth rates here anytime soon, and even if we started today by 2050, and 2020, by 2100, we'd still have problems. China was one child policy is a great example of that. But there are one child policies being put in place by families today because they can't afford to compete. And I think we need to combine immigration policies with a clear assessment of the labor gaps and our national mandate for security and to continue to attract talent if you want to grow so it's there in front of us for the US. We could create a policy that would ensure that we don't have a labor problem or a growth problem from a labor force issue going forward for the long term, other countries can do it, but you need strong leadership, and you need to change the mindset of the existing population. And training is a big part of that, and how you help the people who are being disrupted to have creative destruction move forward is going to be key. So Mark, I'll stop there and open it up for debate and discussion. We avoided the really controversial stuff,
not yet so far.
So Fox questions.
Adam what's up? Quick. Adam, go
for it. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Steven, great presentation, one that is across the world and will be with us for centuries. Back to controversial. The first comment then my question, the immigration problem has been a problem in the United States for decades. Will my question is, Will Trump resolve this? And let me make one more comment here, Venezuela is the second largest nationality of illegal immigrants coming into the United States. And if Trump thinks he's going to be able to collect and ship them all back to Venezuela, that's going to be a matter of negotiations, and one of the negotiators in that will likely be Vladimir Putin. That's it. Thank you. Stephen,
so will trump solve the problem? No. Will he start to move us to fixing the problem? I think security, the borders, is fundamental to that, and getting the criminals, the people who have been here legally, who have committed crimes out, I think, well, that would be a win for the system. I think beyond that, you start to cut into workers that we need to drive the economy forward. So I think that's I think securing the borders is the first thing. Closing it down and then getting the criminals out. If he did that alone, that would be a success, because you would dial down a lot of the anti immigration rhetoric without hurting the businesses and being too disruptive on the families. I think the issue of how far this goes, and does it stay in the in the realm of not being too disruptive is how aggressive do we get in bring the military into it, and how much forcible displacement goes on that becomes headline making versus normal flow of things. So I don't think he'll solve the problem, but I think you'll start to get to a better debate, which is not the two ideologies fighting each other, but what's a practical solution to solving the problems that we have. I think we're moving towards that debate better.
Thank you. Stephen Andy,
Stephen, you're, you're 100% on with the whole immigration sort of bunch list. And to that, I would point out that a lot of the pushback in the world, first of all, without this, is looking back. Say our immigration problem has also been our solution. You look at the last decade, or even more, with our our internal negative population growth without immigration, we would actually be be shrinking. But to your point, though, let's look at what happened about those countries the rest of the world, Canada, Germany, Sweden, that took in a lot of these recent immigrants, the failure appears to be not that they open the doors, but they had no plan to do anything after they open the door. And we should, we should take a page out of that book you talk about. You know, deporting criminals is one thing. What about all the PhDs from Ivy League universities that have six weeks to get a job before their student visas run out and they're deported? It's kind of ridiculous that we're educate the world and then send them out of the country. So so 100% on board with all those things and fixing the problem isn't, maybe the wrong, the wrong terminology, is we actually have an opportunity. And those countries who took in all those Ukrainians had an opportunity that they didn't take advantage of. And all the Canadians had to do was check and record everybody that came in, and we wouldn't be complaining about them crossing the border. That's all to say.
No, yeah,
yeah. See, absolutely fascinating. Go ahead, just here, second back to Adam point. If, if anyone can look up the video of Mark Marco Rubio's questioning for his confirmation and his comments on Venezuela, I think, yeah, Adam, you posted that. I didn't. I had to search for a link, but that was extremely informative. Yes, it was what the situation is in the Latin America. And to not, not an easy one at all, say the least, but sort of getting, getting back this, this whole notion of of, kind of replacing the children that we're not having is, a really interesting one. And you kind of fast forward to shoot, it's like 2025 already. See, almost can't say 2030 that's too soon. But maybe, like, you know 2035 there's a, there's an interesting pilot project that's, I think, kicking off this week in Jacksonville, at the Mayo Clinic, where they they have fitted out robots to accompany all the nurses that, as I understand, all the nurses in in that hospital. So each nurse is going to have, like, their own robot to take care of administrative tasks and things like that. You know, that can be very interesting, and sort of begs the question in terms of what, what the real potential is for AI and robotics to replace essentially, what we're talking about is younger workers. As you know, the older workers are going to be around, but the younger workers are perhaps not going to be there. So that's something to ponder. I'll just leave that one out there. Yeah, I think
robotics is going to be a big, big part of the solution for countries and companies. But it doesn't sell the fact that the world is going to have a you have to have enough people making babies to keep going. So it's a really interesting dynamic. In some cases, we're over populate. In other cases, we're under populated. So it's it's a very interesting dynamic. And the other element is, how much longer do people work in the workforce than they have previously? How many of the retirement required? Retirement Age is at 60 start moving up around the world to much higher levels.
Interesting. So are we looking at at the wall, a movie?
So Rob,
thanks, Mark, thanks, Steve. I'm buzzing in from DC. I went to a lot of the inauguration this past weekend.
Immigration. Do any pictures of you? Not Mick Jagger, but like Elon Musk and all the rest, there was
a border picture. I see Mariana there. There was, there was a Boris picture I posted up. But the two thoughts, one is, with respect to immigration, you know, it the attack, and the sort of initial comments with respect to the border, south of the border, but I think Trump's support on HB one behind the musk and the tech initiatives was, you know, was pretty, was pretty specific and solid. So Steve, the thought is this, somewhat, you throw it a shot gun of things, but then you govern towards the mean, and then just kind of related, what are your thoughts about, thoughts of Canada and, you know, sort of, you know, the expansion and that being, sort of the 51st state. I mean, what are your economic and practical thoughts around that,
I would say, Leave national sovereignty to we have to respect national sovereignty. What is interesting about Trump's governing style is he does have countries reacting to his threats or his statements that are interesting and opening them up to doing things that you wouldn't get without those statements. So even on immigration, I think India came out today and said that they would take 18,000 people back that are here illegally to their country. You're seeing countries react to his statements with an openness to negotiate. So it's the whole what's what's reality versus what's negotiating ploy, and that's gonna be the hard part for us as investors for the next four years. Again, it's also the hard part for other government leaders, how they behave. He's already thrown a big monkey wrench in with the China tariffs. And xi is made some steps to say that he wants to dial down the rhetoric. And what if, all of a sudden you have the US and China working together to make the world a better place, dial down, stop the wars and get the economy back on track? That would be,
that was your one of the themes of yesterday or last week, last
week brief, and they're coming out. They sent a very senior guide to the inauguration. They are continuing to say the right things, to push things together. So I think it's really interesting. You have to watch Trump with his power of persuasion versus what his policies are actually going to be. I think the I think particularly on im he's going to close the borders. He's going to throw out criminals. Beyond that, he knows he's getting into areas that could hurt him economically. So he could hit his campaign pledges if he just does the first two. So I think that is, is the way he's going to play it. I think he will get other countries to react, but I don't think Canada is particularly worried about that. I think the Greenland issue is interesting from a national security resource issue, but that's just winning, you know, having a cutting a deal with them, and having a better security relationship. You don't have to take over the country. So I think those are all kind of the stuff you don't pay attention to.
Peter wants to be paid the security that he's providing in Greenland, yeah, with a call option that he can get the rear middles if he wants. But anyway, Stephen, just to stay on the immigration Do you have
any Anthony? Sorry. Sorry, Anthony, just hope. And I do. I know you have insight from your Danish side of your house, but Dieter and Tim and Roger got their hands up, so just a bullet. Peter,
yeah, hi, good morning, Steve, I would like to get your opinion about the h 1b, point. So during the event, we saw that the five top CEOs of the technology company have been invited and sitting there, which is a. Little time. I know they donated a lot, and this was their entrance ticket. But on the other hand, they are the biggest demanders for Hi 1b visa. Visa says a big battle for talents, for a for AI and robotics, Asia, India, Europe, everybody wants to have the talents form big development and and universities. You think he will listen to this guys and make a fast decision and raise 85,000 to whatever. So then we get the talents first. What is your opinion there?
I think he was sitting surrounded by the biggest cases for H, 1b, visas in the country. If you just think about who's running IBM, who's running Microsoft, who's running Nvidia, who's running AMD, who's running Google, who founded Google, and just go through the list, without h 1b visa students, we wouldn't be the country we are, just like we wouldn't be the country. Or without the Irish, the Chinese, every other immigrant that's come through, the Italians, everyone that's come through and made this country what it is. So I think that's the latest wave. If you want to be a leader in tech, you have to be attracting the best and the brightest minds from all over the world. And you know, it's Russia, Ukraine, China, other parts of the world that are driving it. We have to be there. So I think, I think his, I think that's part of it. I think there's a lot of emphasis on H, 1v, these is, I think you also have to think about the other, less skilled labor that's absolutely essential to moving the country forward, or the or the craftsmen that we need to be here, that we're short in supply of. We have a we have to rebuild our grid. We have to rebuild big parts of the country, the south east, California, LA, all that's going to require a lot of labor. You know, where there's food problems around the world, you need people who actually in the fields, picking. So those are the things we got to do. We just have to get the people in for it and have the right policies. You have to know what the numbers are you looking for. Tim, immigration should be very deliberate, not ideological or whimsical, as it's been.
So. Tim, how do we know the severity of the labor shortage here? And I point to every time the government sort of, sort of moves into a market, it distorts the markets and kind of MIS allocates capital in some instances. And I think the largest employer in the US economy are sort of federal, state and local government. So how do we not know that sort of these oversized governments? Shrug a little bit. You could, you could re deploy capital to fill some of these roles that are vacant. You know, they think of people who
but I'll leave it at that. Yeah, I think
the government's numbers. It's a big employer number on back, off top my head, the actual numbers. But when we downsize the government, you're going to re deploy people, but it's, I don't think that's going to be the driver for it. I think you have, you have a you have big gaps in areas that you know you have gaps, and we have gaps in the health, health care profession throughout major gaps, whether it's nurses, home health aides or even doctors, the hospitals are really well well short of what they need, and they move out the rural areas. Gets even worse. You have, you know, tech companies that are seeing big gaps in skills still, but you have construction throughout the country has gaps in labor. You look at the shape up crews. When you go to the east end of Long Island, look in the Hamptons, you know, they have the day workers lining up like crazy. So there's plenty of jobs. That's not the issue, and and that's how you know there's a skills gap problem when you try and get the work done and see how long it takes you to get anything done these days. So I think it's pretty obvious what areas have the biggest short falls. I think it's how do you get the people retrained and, and the other thing that we we have to deal with now is we have people who are going to be put out of work by the new technologies. How do you get them set up for the new world they live in? If they can be trained? I think those are all the things that really mess up the immigration policy. If you know they spend so much time protecting people, you shouldn't be protecting and you should be training for something else and missing out on the opportunities, I think that's where the creative destruction of the US place comes into play, and has worked for us. We just have to get better at training people. Roger,
Thanks, Mark. Hey, Stephen. Stephen, I know you mentioned one example. And you take him back 18,000 but how does the deportation of, you know, the undocumented people here work practically? So for example, I mean, I yeah, you can have a universal policy or in place, but practically with each individual country. How do you deport so many 10s to 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of people? Isn't it just a bilateral negotiation with that country? So for example, if you were to up and say, I think Adam mentioned part of Venezuela, if you're up and say, Okay, I'm going to deport 50,000 people back to Venezuela. If Venezuela says they're not taking it, what do practically? Do they not let the plane land? And even the plane lands, I'll take them back into the country physically. So I guess these practical logistics, I think, will impact the overall policy. If there is a standardized policy for 299 countries in the world as you deport people back. So I'm just trying to figure out how it works, because only unless the other country is willing to take those people back, then it works. Forget the practical rolling them up in the US and getting them on a plane or a boat and shipping them to that country. Because if that country doesn't play ball, then you have a then there's a big issue, so practically that it means that you then have to negotiate with 199 countries, all individual, all due to leverage, negotiating power. You know, it just becomes a mess. Is there a way around that, or is there? Am I reading too much into it?
No, I think you're reading it right the way my understanding of it is, I don't know if we have the immigration attorney on call the visa
any short,
the way I understand it right now, if you come into Kennedy, for example, and you don't have the Right documentation to come as a visitor, the airline put you on a plane back to that country, and that country has to take you, because they let you out of that country to the US without the right documentation. That's how it's supposed to work. You're right, though, on a practical basis, I don't think we're going to be sending, you know, planes and planes and planes back packed with people. I don't know how we do that, and don't know how they bring in the army to get this done and all that that becomes a legal issue, because the army is not supposed to do certain things inside the country. So I think you have to look at all those. But Roger, I think you're 100% right. That's why I think the practical issue will be close the borders and deport criminals subset of the criminals, not the whole group of them. I don't think they're going to get behind all this stuff that people are most worried about yet, because I don't think we can do that logistically. So I think you're right,
Adam,
yeah, a little bit of a plug for the LA tam panel in Miami, that that issue is going to be discussed on the panel, and that is going to be that is a serious issue. How do you get all these illegal migrants back to their home countries? And that's going to be a process of negotiations with Venezuela in particular. That is, that's the second largest group in the United States, and that is going to be negotiated, that very well may be part of the Ukrainian cease fire negotiation, because Putin can put pressure on Maduro to accept those migrants. So all of these in the center of gravity for the cease fire is going to be economy, and that's the same thing with Venezuela.
So maybe Putin should just take the migrants he needs, the people
he does. But you go right to the front then go right to the front lines. Yeah, that's, that's,
that's, right, they go to the front lines. But Russia is also having a problem, obviously, with with illegal migrants and working migrants. They've cracked down on on their source of migrants. That's Central Asia, and it's very difficult. Actually.
That's part of the pressure that Trump's trying to put on Mexico, is to stop them from coming up through the pest into Mexico and into the US so But China is that's how China is getting a lot of people into the country, is through Latin so it is really a China issue as well. And Trump, going back to his relationship with SHA, becomes even more important. I.
Michael and then Wanda Steven,
at the start of the conversation, part of today, you said that you avoided the controversial issues, and I'm just curious what you consider those to be
want to be written to now. I
that, listen, that I think pain the in the US in particular, this country is built by immigrants. Getting this right should be a no brainer for us. Of any country in the world, we should be getting this one right, and it shouldn't be this hard. Our politicians have made it much harder than it needs to be because they're trying to push for dollars and things like that, as opposed to trying to solve the right problem. So that's the reality. If we get better people in PC will be better off. WA, Moana,
so let's assume that we accept this thesis that Trump's outrageous statements are starting negotiating points, and let's leave aside the ethics, sovereignty issues, Trump gets the results, but meanwhile, his base that elected him is being energized by those populist ideas that the final deals may, may not be that close to So Steven. My question to you is, if we accept that negotiate, that Trump being a master negotiator, how do you expect the populism, including populism around immigration, to play out as the policies will be executed? Thank you. I
think it's going to be about the economy. I think if the economy does well, the base won't care. If the economy doesn't do well, the base will care. I think what really got Biden was immigrants coming in and inflation going up the way it did at that time, made people feel like things were worse than they actually were. So I think it's the perception of the economy as much as anything that will drive it. So I think that's it. I think it's perception, not reality, that's going to the perception of the economy that will drive his voter base. But the other thing is, his voter base doesn't matter to him anymore, because he can't run for office again, so just have to keep that in mind too. Is
what's the his succession annointment plan?
I don't, personally, I don't think he cares about a succession plan other than his agenda, the Trump agenda, going forward. But if it doesn't go forward, he'll just blame whoever went in after him, who's Republican or Democrat. So I don't think that's
really the driver for going to be a king maker.
I think he views himself as King already, so I don't know what's next for him.
Well, he could follow Putin and change the constitution. I Yeah,
I'm not in the I'm not in the worst case camp, but for our country. So
it's good, good. You pointed out that I wonder. Apparently, he made a lot of money on these coins.
I think they pull back better. They say he lost a lot of money in the coin.
Pull back from he
Sorry, I was gonna say you haven't made the money until you've exited. Yeah,
Stephen, when you
Steve, you talk to the
price sensitivities of of meat packing and, you know, vegetable picking and sense of to migrant labor. If you know, if you listen to sort of truckers and farmers and so and so forth, they sort of say that, you know their farm, or their meat packing place or whatever, that if they don't have the labor force, America won't have any vegetables in two or three days during the. Pandemic, a lot of meat packing places shut down because of COVID for very short periods of time. I didn't see that much of a so in ground beef and so and so forth. So could you talk a little bit about what will happen if migrant labor get scared about coming into America or picking letters or packing meat. What could you give us some sense of prediction as to what will happen to the price of meat and vegetables and so forth? How sensitive is the price?
Well, let's put it this way. I think there's roughly, by various estimates, 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the US. I think 40% of that total would be in various stages of trying to be here legitimately. So just say it's 6,000,005 and a half million people that are here illegally. They're still going to be working. We're not going to deport all them out in day one. So I don't think you'll see a big impact in the near term. If they were successful in getting a lot of people out very quickly, then you might see an impact. But people are here. I think closing the borders doesn't change the supply and demand dramatically in the near term. It's over time, so I don't think that's as big an issue as people think. And as I said, I agree with Roger. I don't think logistically, we'll get that many people out that fast. I think most. I think we had one or 2 million people go out in one year under Obama. I think that's been the high, highest we've gotten. So I'm not particularly worried about this in the near term.
Bill. Here we
go. I Yeah,
I think are you gonna play pickleball with us? I'm gonna try.
Probably may not be able to be there Saturday morning, but
everyone know on this zoom, he said he never played before, and he correct, and he played rather well. So I was, I was I'm better now, just saying
I I'm sure you are, and you're going to look me for sure. So no, now it's total pride. It's like I wasn't going to be embarrassed. So anyways, no, I actually mark. I wanted to go back to because I think it's an interesting point about succession. And I would throw out a phrase of, is Trump going to be the rising Tino that floats all burdens? And if so, and he's successful and all that, then I think the succession is, is almost independent, and it would probably boil down to the person who could best articulate the way, the way to continue pull from that point that this is assuming, like, best, you know, best possible outcome over the next four years. And, sorry, the rising tide in this case. Yeah, the rising tide. So, so this would be all the, all the wonderful things that Trump talked about in terms of, you know, a growing economy, growing incomes, better, GDP, you know, lower inflation, you know, the the true, the realization of the Golden Age that he's talking about. So what I'm, you know, we think about it, is that it's not, it's, I don't think the way that the program necessarily is structured, that it's going to favor one group or another. I do think that it could be a broad rising tide, you know, all income groups, Republican, Democrat, blue collar, white collar, etc, etc. You know that this is, this is an end point, but it's probably so. If that happens, then I think the succession is some, perhaps somewhat independent. And it all goes back to a statement of is, is Trump the Trump movement? Is it truly a movement and ultimately independent of his personality, and will it be enduring, or is it really just a lot of platitudes that are hitting people in the right places? I hope, I hope it's the former and not the last, that would be really good.
I suspect that by the midterm. Case, Trump's legacy will be less of an issue, and it will be who's who are the potential people that can lead the country after that. And both the Republican and Democratic parties have to decide what their platform is going to be for the midterms, and they're starting on that now, and I think whoever puts out the better platform for that mid term election will be the ones to determine what happens next. I think we're giving too much credit. And I would also just say the mandate that he had the day after the election is very different with all the votes in and how the House and Senate actually shook out. He doesn't have as much of a mandate as everyone thought day one. So I think he's in a different spot. I don't think the I don't think this is a whole new way of governing in the United States for the long term.
Mark Mark and Steve, just one quick comment on succession. Mark, this goes to something you laid down a great framework for. There's an enormous amount of power display this past weekend by the Vice President JD Vance and former senator. And then just the talk of, I think Vivek going from dodge to, I think the word is governor of Ohio, or is back up the the Senate seat Ohio is well more so Vance is really well positioned to ride the wave, and then also him having, you know, Peter Thiel backing and, you know, just it, and you th on the side, and having diversity as a as a wife. So I'd be curious mark as to you or Jack's thoughts on on vice president, be from Ohio, and your engagements with them. Out of curiosity.
I have to say, when we did our Ohio tour, he was running, and he was center, controversial at the time, this Trump, right? He just the poor, see, he, I don't know how he did it. He just, I know, I watched that movie the other night, the princes. But, you know, I don't think too many people, you know, can, you know, that's a that's a different kind of force. So I don't know. I think people can play a second fiddle nicely, but I don't know if they can play first fiddle. That's as far as Ohio's interesting plays the buck rides have to say from last night, I haven't seen the Cavaliers of Virginia in the championship route. But
the one other tidbit is, remember, he was endorsed and Don Jr, Donald Trump Jr put an enormous amount of political capital behind Vance. So there is, you know, concept of succession, and maybe this is part of the cover that he has and the strength, but yeah, like I said, there's, there's, there's a lot of respect going towards advance. And I think in some of the polls, he's, he's viewed as a clear number one for four years from now. So,
I mean, yeah, if I was saying, you know, the king maker says, you know, all right, stay with me. Like, you know, we've seen this before, where presidents hand off to their vice so that that could you. So I think if he has the king maker, then, yeah, he's a force, by the way, and Jack can weigh in on that, all this stuff. I thought it was really interesting. You know, really, there was a time where people didn't want to be associated with Trump, right? That's changed. I mean, I've been invited to co host something. We 316, months to co host something in Vegas, tech and health care. And you know, you know. And they have dinner with the Trump side, and you know. And people are open about it, like this is, you know, these are the vice take makers of a different sort. So I want to take the good without the bad, like, I want, like, the all those things that you speak of. But there was a question I think that was posed. I thought you were going to answer it, like, how do you do. Was it bill you were asking, or then you asked the question back to Jack. Jack, do you want to how do you see Ohio politics look
among, among the people that have flocked over to become a member of the flock? JD was was one of he was in the first tier, and it was remarkably close to all of his commentary about negative commentary about Trump. So it raised it. It raised some questions. Pardon me for even bringing this up in a political context, but raise some questions about his fundamental ethics. Me, he went he went from extreme Trump's Hitler like to gee whiz. Maybe I like him after all, particularly after his son visited recently, and maybe some promises that haven't yet been detailed. So Rob's point that
Trump's very transactional, apparently Vance is too.
Yeah, I think that's right. And I think Vance, you know, at age 44 for four or so years from now, Vance basically, will become a JFK running for the presidency and and so he gets the benefit of, he gets the benefit of
that reminds me of the debate with Dan coy, no JFK, but my daughter was asked me was, who is JFK? But I think what's, what's interesting is this back to Ohio. How about this company? Andrew, is anyone following this? Vlad posted in the chat that they're putting you know, why are they building their next wave of weaponry in Ohio? And and, and, I think it's an interesting you know, and it goes back to talent. The first time Senator Houston, he wrote to me, he was like, how do we keep the talent in Ohio, asking me in New York, like, I don't know, you know, I guess to have opportunities. That's that was an interesting development. Now everybody wants to invest in this company. Is anybody involved with this company?
I'm not conflicted, but this is a salute to Vance power and thinking about the future.
If I can make comment, and maybe Jack can chime in on this. I when I had a we had a chemical company. We were developing defense related products, and Ohio was very much a center, particularly University of Dayton
of as Okay, of the position the company, yeah,
that that's always been a center for development in materials, as well as for the m1 tank and other military products.
And that's that's largely influenced by Wright Patterson Air Force Base, exactly, that's right. Related military facilities that are in and around day and have been, have been for 100 years, right?
They have leading, leading materials science research centers in the country,
well and Jack, one of your friends that sold the company to Procter and Gamble. What's his name?
Sold. He sold the times dog food company to P and G.
Thank you. Sorry. Who any, any had your hand up then, Michael,
yeah, just Andrew, just two seconds. This guy basically is taking the space x approach to military. Instead of taking years and billions to create things, they're using the newest, best off the shelf, high tech equipment available, incorporating it into weaponry, and the off the shelf stuff has come so far that it's it's a rough equivalent of what the best of the best we're creating even five years ago. So so they're growing very quickly. They've got a lot of government support now, the next space x of weaponry, and they really just
on that point, they raised 1.5 billion. Is there an offering a foot right now?
I don't think it's open, because I was with some people that invested with them about a month ago, and I'm not sure there's anything left. I.
Right? Is there another one? Another offering happening? I'm
sure there will be, because they're going to grow like wildfire. I don't think sounds
like we should do a secondary then we'll take this off line. But I just that sounds like this.
Mark, the guy running it is a sort of Elon Musk type guy. He doesn't want to go public anytime soon lose control of this company.
But he was talking very differently in that band review, the Bloomberg interview that was on our chat and Vlad Kapustin put on. Yep, he's then he was also talking about democratizing access, which meaning pushing stupid money, but still, he's, yeah, I like. He's a can do guy. I'm interested. I'm intrigued. I don't know, I don't know enough.
There's a zillion Space X investors, not a public company.
Yeah, yeah, no,
you're absolutely right, but you can only go so far on numbers. The SEC, okay, other
Mark, I had something to say about the immigration thing, which I think ties into everything that's being spoken about, which is that
go back to green too. Yeah, but you want to talk about green
actually, I don't want to talk about that. It's a security and I don't want to breach any, you know, I don't want to be in a gray zone, but on a on the engineering thing, you've got about a 10 to one ratio, Asia, China in particular, and then us, and that's been dominant for a while, and it's not being spoke about it. And I also think it ties back into the visa problem, although there is the exception visa that if you've got particular skills, you can get through that, and they've allowed that to continue, but just to tie back into the whole tech thing, and to go beyond the idea that the presidency, the durations for years, in reality, one has to think way beyond that, which, I think is what Steve, you do, and what, what you know, what we all do here. And so going beyond that is that, from the Labor point of view, the engineer is just one of them. We are producing in the inverse of that, we're producing more lawyers than we are engineers, which is just part of the mantra and dogma that we've created here, how we transact in the US. I particularly, for 1am, not a fan of that. But do you have any any comments about that? Because that's pretty serious. And when I say attend to one, that's not an exaggeration. And then to the point which already came up in the call, you know, you you complete, and you got to compete to you complete. And you have to compete to stay in, you know, to stay in the US and be employed here, as opposed to shipping yourself back. So it makes no sense. And what it does, it means only a few people can be the next and your role, or Palantir, whatever it's going to be, only the fittest can survive, and everyone else is competing for you know, they're going back somewhere. So it's just something to think about.
Yeah, I think you I think the numbers of the numbers you write, there's more engineering students from those areas, which is why we need right policies. So I just think we I think it gets back to matching up. Is the jobs we need to fill and the talent we need to have with what our inventory is, and then we don't have enough inventory overall, and we don't have enough inventory in certain areas, just match it up. It's not that hard. It really, to get them up with a good policy. Is that hard to get the politicians out of the way. By the
way, Anthony did borrow a little bit of Shakespeare about lawyers. Did you see this that you know, basically AI can produce the s s ones and with 3% of the human talent
needed.
No, I'm not. I didn't see that. What?
So basically, the legal profession is kind of it also is, we've been waiting for this to happen, and a lot of the banking right? We're gonna in Naples in Miami, we're going to show you our AI platform. I don't need a big onboarding
form.
All I need is your website, maybe your deck. I can create an info memo. But what we need is collaboration, scoring Jack Wyant, like you know, QCA, processes of collaboration and relationship change, but the time of the human elements here, I saw very curious. More lawyers are going to have to change what their their value proposition. Patients and
a lot of professions, engineers,
computers are coding, the ads coding now.
Well, yeah, it's like the worst profession to have, in a way, if you can be replaced.
So I think all around the intuitive part of the process has not been captured yet. That may allude to the soul, the instinct, the rubber meets the road, experience, intuition, and all of that. And that's sort of the next thing, right? How do you, how do you? Can you replicate that? And if you can, how? And then obviously you get into a whole new conundrum. Of, it's pretty scary that, right? Because then, then you create the human robot, as in the word human, that's not really a good thing. You really want the human to still be elite and stay in control, except, in my at least, in my opinion, right? We want to maintain our autonomy and individuality and who we are as human beings and be rewarded for the life path that we've gone through. Right? You did a series of steps, and you hopefully you evolve, and now you're smarter, and hopefully the AI could be an application part of the program, like, how can you apply it to make yourself better. But what you don't want is for the AI to be to get too, too smart, too sexy, too feel, because then what used to we have. I mean, what, you know, how do we, how do we just exist at that point? I mean, this is kind of a George Orwell thing, but you know that that's, I think, the the question,
Oh, Michael, then Adam,
okay, boy, so many topics. I do want to comment, what's,
what's, what's different from any other week, right? Yeah,
well, I've been waiting patiently. I do. Oh, but as far as
different, you usually don't wait patiently.
Andrew, I all Columbus area is in actually a natural, logical place for them to locate. There's a lot of industrial robot activity going on, engineering, manufacturing capabilities, so it kind of makes sense. But going back to Ohio and politics and Vivek running for governor, I don't think he's going to get a super warm reception from people Houston. It's interesting that he decided to go for the Senate seat rather than wait and run for governor, because I think he would have been a pretty much a shoe in so that's that's kind of interesting.
I guess there's some, because he can really go back.
I don't think he will. I think that's one of the reasons that de wine waited in announcing the appointment. Is there were discussions going on?
I gotta reconnect with those guys.
Jack, we gonna have? Are we gonna have? JD against the mayor of Cincinnati for the presidency? That was your prediction. It,
yeah. Hope, hopefully, the group will still visit Ohio, even though we might have some Democrats speaking the the mayor, the mayor of Cincinnati, is a Democrat and will be, with respect to John Houston, the lieutenant governor, soon to be Senator. He, he, he was a shoe in, as was just referenced, absolute shoe in, he's, he's, he's hitting on all cylinders. He's in love with the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which has been somewhat of a new discovery for him and and he was integral to the the Intel project that attracted so much attention and funding to Ohio. So he he's a good guy, and along with Mark and others, I think very highly of them, even though I'm on the other team. But you know, what are team for anyway? I
don't think his love of entrepreneurs is all that new in tech. I mean, I want to say it was about three years ago I flew down with to Columbus, with Bernie Marino on his jet to meet with him on issues related to tech and entrepreneurship and whatnot, and that's been kind of his wheelhouse in the design administration. Yeah,
I give up. No, you right? My reference. To new and your your response illustrates the multiple decade, multiple decade age difference in our ages. I won't say I was thinking. I was thinking he showed up 20 years ago, but
he came to our New York Conference before COVID, right? Actually,
yeah, I think it might have been the January of 2020.
Now anyone knows it was fall, fall, September, September, September, October, November, 2019 he was, he was a co keyno
Because I just savage politicians with you. Then he came up, oh,
look it up. It's in our synopses,
since we're talking about Ohio, what's what I mean this. I mean he was, he was there right next to the one and only, and now he's on the out. Who Ramaswamy is there, is there? Is there an inside scoop yet that is filtered all the way to 361,
to this 6361, or anyone else. I mean, he's no Elon Musk,
but he's out of his he's out of the project
dodge. Now, yeah, as I think,
yeah, what do you mean? He started
the project, Jack.
Project, yeah, he, he is severed with the dodge, dodge, whatever it is. Project, I didn't know
that, if I may, you know, there's, it's hard to have room for two people with that kind of influence in one room, you know. So with Elon, he probably felt himself wanting all of the attention, because the one thing about ramaswam is he's an excellent speaker. I'm not really sure about how his experience shores up to what he looks like,
but so is he an excellent speaker, or is he an excellent parrot.
I think, well, no, I wouldn't say he's a parrot. I think that he is truly inspired by Donald Trump, and so I think his feelings are genuine, but I think that he's more of a Salesman. I'm not necessarily impressed with him myself, but with Elon. Can you imagine working with him? I don't think so. Not me, not as a leader, not a co leader.
Well, it won't it won't be long. It won't be long, and we'll be asking you to give us some insights into how Elon has taken over Donald's job. Well, let's
hope that doesn't you know that's the thing too. You know, especially people in Asia are talking about that right now. A lot of the in you know, the people that I work with that have a lot of money and are doing a lot of business, they talk about Elon and what his agenda might be, aside from what maybe Donald Trump is aware that it is so that will be interesting. Maybe he's so in line with Donald Trump. He's an open book, but who knows?
Well, Elon is also risking quite a bit regarding his China market. That's his second largest market. But if
you watched last night, I watched as he was signing some of these executive orders, he was so much softer on China, but not at the same time. Like he said that there should be a join venture for Tiktok, and that maybe the US is interested, and they would pay Tiktok half the value. So isn't that different? So I think he's way more flexible than I think a lot of people give him.
Well, there's another another guy was at our Miami event that's involved, right? Kevin O'Leary,
oh yeah.
Oh boy.
Oh boy. To Sue's point. That's why Elon is sitting right next to Trump. To Sue's point.
Look, I'm just as we're trying to figure out what we're what are we going to be talking about at our 500th briefing. I think we got day two, right? The rubber hasn't fully hit the road. I, I,
there's going to be a, there's
going to something's going to, you know, I'm, I'm going to, there's going to be some, there's some interesting alliances, but I think there could be some interesting divergences
that will evolve. And
was it? Was it by was worried about this oligarchic move, you know, in some ways rightfully so. I'm curious if how this could all you know, in a part in a two party system, how this all plays out. I'm. He has to play play ball. It's
interesting that I read a bed where somebody was saying I didn't overlook the Soros maybe being one of those oligarchy type billionaires the last four years. So it's just perspective. I think so getting we got to keep things a little bit more in line. I think we give these guys way too much credit because they have a lot of money.
Well, the interesting alliance is really quite interesting in that
back to the Latin panel. Adam.
No way, no, but I can talk about it if you want.
Fight for influence sources in Latin America, between us, Russia and China.
Well, actually, it's related in that, you know, Michael had the CO was at the inauguration, and that's interesting, yes, Tim, and there were some interesting other attendees at that particular cabinet Reception The day before rivals and the two of them were speaking so, well, I can't, I can't name names, but, um, quite interesting. How strange bed fellows all of this is creating.
Well, it's, you know what it is, it's very Kissinger, like Kissinger is very transaction, you mean, in a real politic
way, yeah,
yeah, that's right. I agree.
I don't. It's refreshing. You know, the Ukrainians are like, somehow happy with with this. You know, I would have thought,
no, but there's also this. There's
also this, dear regional thing is this carving up where Putin would be happy for for us to take over Pan Am on it. Maybe even sacrifice Venezuela. It gives long as he gets what he wants. It just, I don't know, but that back to to Rhonda point. Let's put ethics aside. But ethics have to be part of this too. So what
was put in saying today about changing his relationship with Belarus and creating a national security set up with him that Belarus could be used for conflict that Russia is involved in. Did you see that today that's
been going on for many years. Keep in mind that Belarus, in Soviet times, is also part of the anti missile defense system, and it still is. So you know, Belarus is basically a vassal of Russia, and the only reason Lukashenko is still in power is because of Putin, if he gets anyone inside of the Bela Russian government to capitalize on the civil unrest as what we had several years ago with the fraud elections, you're going to have you're going to have problems there. Putin's going to have problems there. Putin has lost global he's lost the ability to project power in projecting into Latin America without China. He can't do it. So, you know the it also the Iranian Russia document the company, by
the way, we have Hamlet in Miami,
yous, yeah, he texted me, just told me that the that that comprehensive agreement is, I I'm sorry, but 47 articles of rubbish. There's nothing in there that's really of any substance. It's just declarations. Anyway, enough.
That's never enough. Adam, we're that's we can pause, take a take a breath. There's a lot bottom. That's two and 50 of briefing. You know what I like about you know what I like is it Steven's power point slide skills. He gets visuals. Now he was always bullet points. He's bullet points and visuals. Now, I think he took that from you, Bill.
It was you keep saying you need more slides.
Always happy to share jack you
wanted to I think we know we should have guest briefing leaders or CO leaders perfect. And I think you know, Jack, you will be on the hook. Book at one point, but you have to give both sides. You have to do it in the Stephen Burke style that you don't just, you know, give the Democratic position.
Well, hey, that, you know, progress. He's established his style with a lot of witnesses, and we shouldn't impose upon it, or try to, or try to become Stevens ourselves. Let's, let's, let's let him be the one and only. And let's let him be the one who does briefing number 500 after the next election.
I Okay, well, on that notes, 1230 we have everyone showing their dogs. Stephen does have a dog, guide dog? On this actually,
we just turned our dog in at the beginning of the year to go out and work with a veteran or first responders. In three months, he'll be at the end of, beginning of April, he'll be assigned to a veteran or first responder and changes somebody's life. That's awesome. And my wife did all the work he
did. And those are, those are the best dogs, those golden retrievers, Stephen,
it was a black lab in this case,
similar demeanor, very
well, London, London looks like they're having fun over there. I'm not sure what they're doing. Happy, hard. We
are listening. We also have special guest,
nice. Who is that? That's
Coco Co Co but, yeah, my parents have retrievers. So we grew up with retrievers, so they are definitely the best,
amazing. Yeah,
I've had a I've had a black lab and a yellow lab. Time for a chocolate lab, I think. Thank you. Thank you all. We'll see you and many of you in eight bowls of Miami and places beyond. Thank you everybody for giving contributions. Don't forget the survey 1860 my firm, com slash survey 18 we have a lot from people that have done it, but I don't think you got the latest patch one sec, guys, it Jesus is doing so
thanks. Thanks, everyone. You.