#243 Scott Adams on the Coronavirus and the Upcoming Presidential Election

Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, and business. His recent books include Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America (2019) and Win Bigly (2017). In this conversation, Anthony and Scott discuss the Coronavirus, the impact on the healthcare system and the economy, how he evaluates President Trump's response, what his current thoughts on the November election are, why he recently sold Bitcoin, and what his best advice to business leaders is during the current environment of uncertainty. =============================== CRYPTO. COM-----The only all-in-one platform that allows you to BUY / SELL / STORE / EARN / LOAN / INVEST crypto all from one place. Join over 1 million users currently using the Crypto.com app. Download and earn $50 USD using my code ‘pomp2020’, or use the link http://platinum.crypto.com/r/pomp2020 when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. TAXBIT-----Refund-maximizing, cryptocurrency tax software you can depend on. Visit taxbit.com/invite/pomp and receive 10% off your tax plan today by signing up for a free trial. LEDGER----- Ledger hardware wallets empower you to optimally secure, own and control your crypto. Visit ledger.com and give yourself peace of mind by knowing that your cryptocurrencies are safe.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off the Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off.

• 0:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Scott Adams is the creator of the Dilbert Comic Strip and the author of several nonfiction works of satire, commentary, and business. Some of his recent books that I would recommend are Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter, and Loser Think: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America. In this conversation, we discuss coronavirus, the impact on the healthcare system, and the economy, how he evaluates President Trump's response, what his current thoughts on the November election are, why he recently sold Bitcoin, and what his best advice to business leaders is during the current environment of uncertainty. I really enjoyed this conversation, and Scott didn't disappoint. But before we get into the episode, I want to talk about our three sponsors. The first is Crypto.com. You guys

• 0:55Anthony Pompliano?

  know them as a longtime sponsor of the podcast, and they've got a great URL. They're an all-in-one platform that allows you to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, and invest crypto all from one place. You can join over 1 million users to buy, sell, store, earn, loan, and invest crypto in the Crypto.com app. That's right, they've got a mobile app. Go download it, and you can earn $50 US dollars with my code POMP2020, or use the link in the description when you sign up for one of their metal cards today. Those metal cards are Visa cards, and what they allow you to do is now you can use them in the United States on mobile devices, Apple, Google, Samsung Pay, etc., to pay in a fast, easy, and secure way. It will work with most

• 1:37Anthony Pompliano?

  of the devices that you use every day, and card details are never stored on your device. They also added Tazos to the Crypto.com Earn product, which pays interest in Tazos, so go check that out. Deposits and withdrawals are now enabled, they've got the Visa card, and they've got Crypto Earn. So go check them out, Crypto.com. Now, our next sponsor is TaxBit. TaxBit makes paying your taxes super easy. They do it in an automated fashion. In 2019 tax year, the IRS requires that you file an IRS

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Taxbit.com/invite/pomp. Now for the third sponsor, we're going to do something new. We're going to play a pre-recording that Ledger did as a new sponsor. Once you listen to it, we'll then get into the episode with Scott. I hope you guys go and check out Ledger and then enjoy the episode with Scott.

• 3:13Speaker 01

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• 3:55Speaker 01

  Control, scalability, agility, because security is not enough.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:27Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Mr. Scott Adams here. Thanks so much for coming to do this during these chaotic times.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  Well, what else am I going to be doing? I'm not going to the stores, not going to the bars. I got a little time. Let's do some podcasting here.

• 4:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. So let's just jump right into the coronavirus or COVID-19, which everyone is freaking out, sitting at home, wondering, you know, how important and real is this? What are just your general thoughts? I know you've shared a lot online, but just kind of give us kind of, you know, what are you thinking today as we go through this?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  Well, of course, the scariest part is the fear of the unknown, you know? I have this weird situation. I think most of you are experiencing it, which is I'm in the middle of a crisis. But by eight o'clock at night, you know, if I turn off my phone, I'm not really in a crisis. I'm just home like every other night, petting my cat, getting ready for bed, you know, watch something funny on YouTube. So it's a weird kind of crisis where there's this floating unknown. Is there some doom coming toward me? And let me, let me give you some thoughts to make you feel a little more comfortable with it. The basics of food and electricity and wifi and all that stuff, it'll be fine.

• 5:48Speaker 03

  Because those are the priorities and we have plenty of capacity to take care of the priorities. The stuff we don't have, and it's only temporary, is to, you know, make some widgets and, you know, you know, make your, let's see, your commemorative plates and stuff that really isn't going to affect your life that much for a month or so. So most of us are going to get some much-needed time off. We're going to spend some more time with our families and the experts of the world are going to get this under control. Now, I've been watching the events very carefully and it's not something I advise for everybody.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  Because it takes a, it takes a big psychological, mental load to expose yourself to all of the news about this and sort of live with it in your mind. So much so that I'm forcing myself to take, you know, one hour breaks during the day, you know, spacing the mount because I don't like to, you know, be more than an hour out of the news, just in case something comes up I need to know about. But you need to, you need to, you need to really take care of yourself. And in so doing, you're taking care of the rest of the world. Because if you can keep yourself out of a hospital bed, you've, you've saved a life. I mean, honestly, it's that, it's that simple at this point. So I'm taking care of myself, but here's, here's the hopeful part.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  And good news is often invisible until it appears. And that's what's happening. And I try to remind people that we, all we're talking about is what the virus is doing. Now, what the virus is doing is scary if it were the only thing happening. In other words, that virus starting small and then ramping up and going crazy all of a sudden, that's all we're talking about, and that's super scary. But at the same time, we've never seen the situation that's happening on the human side. You know, the virus is one story, but that's half the battle. The humans are, are building weapons right now. This feels a lot like World War II. You know, World War II, Europe is getting ravaged, but the United States is off and we've bought ourselves some time.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  We know we're going to be in it, but we have time that Europe didn't have to prepare. And so we convert our factories and we, you know, we go into war footing. And we start building weapons culminating with the actual, you know, a nuclear weapon, atomic bomb. And we're really good at this when the smartest people have enough time. And, and I think the president bought us some time with the closing of the airports. But when the best people in the world are working on something, what you should expect is nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, until there's something. And it might be an atomic bomb, you know, it might be, did you know we made 100,000 tanks on Wednesday, you know, Hello Hitler? So.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  What you should expect is not hear a ton of great news until it turns. And when it turns, it'll probably turn quickly and then the markets will return, et cetera. And the things we're already seeing is a lot of news about drugs that are working in the lab. And anecdotally, they're working great on patients. Now, I'm not an expert, so I won't talk about what they are, but they're known existing drugs. And here's the good news. Because they're drugs that are already used for other things. One was used for AIDS, one is used for, I think malaria.

• 9:13Speaker 03

  We have a, we have an understanding of the risk because they were, went through the FDA for those things. If they also work for this new thing, the only danger would be there's something special about this that, you know, that has some extra complication, but we're not seeing it. So already, the smartest people in the world, and we're seeing lots of reports on it, have tested things that clearly work. And there, there are several candidates and they, they need more information about it. But here's, here's the main inspirational thought here. We've had big problems in the past. I mentioned World War II, of course, there was a Spanish flu in 1918. But we've never had a situation like this that was a global problem

• 9:56Speaker 03

  when, when all the smartest people could talk to each other instantly. Because the, the smartest people in the world, the scientists, the doctors are learning. So they're in the, the acquisition phase now, where they're learning as quickly as they can. And I saw today, there was a call from, from doctors to get a website spun up really quickly, where all the doctors working around the world can share what they found out. Now, at first, it's anecdotal, but that tells you what to, what to look at. And that call went out yesterday. Already companies have stepped up. There probably will be a thousand different websites that do that.

• 10:35Speaker 03

  I think the government's gonna have, gonna have to say, okay, thank you, thank you, 999 of you who did this without even being asked. But we're gonna pick this one. This one's, this one's solid. And, and that problem was solved. Now, you know, I thought we were already there, but just having the internet doesn't mean that the right people have the right platform. That's the platform is one of them. And meanwhile, other platforms like this are being, you know, built all over the place. So imagine the power. For the first time in human history, it's never happened. The first time in human history, all the smartest people in the world are focused on the same problem at the same time and can communicate. And it's the "and can communicate" part that was spotty,

• 11:19Speaker 03

  but it's going to go into hyperdrive by the end of the week, I would guess. I mean, it's going to happen really quickly. A website isn't that hard.

• 11:28Speaker 03

  So we're going to get a handle on this really quickly. And I don't know if the handle starts in one week or two weeks or three weeks or four weeks, but we can hold on because our basic services will work. I do think the government will respond with something like universal basic income temporarily, people who can't get paid. I see people all over who are stepping up to help. I don't want to be too specific about what I'm doing in this domain, but I've stepped up in the people in my personal circle, make sure everybody's cool. Other people are doing the same. We're definitely going to get through it. One of the things that nobody smart is questioning is that we can get through it.

• 12:11Speaker 03

  We're talking about how much pain it will be, but we know we're going to get there. And we know the markets will recover because there's nothing systemically that's wrong with them. This is just this new foreign invader, the virus. And we'll get it under control. We always do.

• 12:29Anthony Pompliano?

  We've been around us versus them and then being other humans or another country, et cetera. This is one of the first times, to your point, where it's us as humans versus an outside threat in the age of information. How much of that plays into the psychological element of the response versus something that's more of, hey, we can just shoot it, we can drop bombs, et cetera?

• 12:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's an invisible invader that makes it scarier. If you're going to do a scary movie, having the monster sneak up on you, you don't see it coming, that's always the scariest thing. So by its nature, because you can't physically see it, it just makes it a little bit scarier and harder to deal with, of course. But that brings also the question of President Trump. Because I I've been saying forever that he's the best I've ever seen in persuasion. But what good is persuasion against a virus? So this is a mismatch between a talent stack, which is, in my opinion, the best we've ever seen in terms of communication, mass communication to the crowds and persuasion. But it doesn't work on something that doesn't have a brain.

• 13:36Speaker 03

  So if this were a robot invasion, or an alien invasion, or in this case, a virus, those are all unthinking foes. And this is a case where I think the president has come up to speed on this now. I mean, the public and the government are very connected with social media and everything else. And the public said very clearly, it's great that we're hearing from the president. It's great you're putting the resources on it, but your messaging is a little off. And and I've said that as well, and I'm a big supporter of his communication skills, as I said. But he's not quite the right fit for a brainless foe.

• 14:16Speaker 03

  And and that makes sense because all of his life, he built an expertise about convincing people. So he has learned, you know, from the quick, he very quickly learned that he needs to be shown so that the public knows he's fully focused and he's doing that. But quickly turned it over to the experts to to give us the details. This is just one of those rare situations where salesmanship is the wrong tool. And it's hard for him to break the habit, I think, at this point. But we're in good shape. All the decisions, I would say, are solid. Even things later, people will say, you should have done X, Y, or Z sooner. Sure, you know what else you could have done sooner? Everything that's a good idea.

• 15:00Speaker 03

  You know, it it's the weakest, lamest. I actually wrote a chapter in my book about it, Loser Think, about how the person who says you should have done it sooner is the most useless person in the room now and later.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Everything could have been done sooner. In the context of an emergency, you don't want to be looking back yet. I mean, you can glance back, but keep focused on the future. We'll have plenty of time to dissect it later. But for now, let's just say that the nature of an emergency is acting, acting wrong, correcting, acting again, not quite right, correcting. So emergency responses are fast corrections. So everybody who says you should have done it sooner doesn't understand the nature of emergency response. You take your best shot, but you got to do a lot of improvising and we're seeing that happening successfully.

• 16:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I guess part of this really is, you know, he, in the book that you wrote, Win Bigly, which is actually very well done, and I'm a huge fan and recommend it to people all the time, you talk about that weapons-grade persuasion. And what I wonder is, normally that weapons-grade persuasion is pointed at the constituency. But how much of that can be used to kind of cooperate resources or move those resources internally to actually make this a non-political issue and to kind of work with other countries, et cetera? Is it possible to take that salesmanship and almost use it internally in government and geopolitics? Or is it only something that works on the constituency?

• 16:47Speaker 03

  You know, this crisis is so big and so important that persuasion is almost a useless tool. We've reached a point where there are good ideas and there are bad ideas, but persuasion is just sitting on the sidelines. And anybody who tries it, you know, you're seeing people try to get a little political, hey, I'll get a little edge, and you see them getting slapped back hard. I mean, the people who cross that line that do, let's talk about politics today. Honestly, I blocked James Woods on Twitter for talking politics. And he's one of my favorite follows, you know, one of the most fun people to follow on Twitter.

• 17:27Speaker 03

  But not this week, you know, not today. I want to hear zero about AOC's problem or whatever the problem. I want to see Ted Cruz tweet out something that AOC said, which he just did, agreeing that we need to get out of the politics. I forget what the message was, but it doesn't matter. It's the point that Ted Cruz agreed with AOC. That's the world we're living in. So I'm getting suggestions and ideas coming into me from, you know, Democrats and Republicans. I'm sharing them with Democrats and Republicans. None of this matters. And I believe that the president is, surprisingly, because, you know, I'm criticizing the communication, but I think the decision making and I think

• 18:11Speaker 03

  the resources are probably getting directed just about the way they need to. We see him trying to get rid of some red tape. That seems to be happening. So, you know, everybody will do the should have happened sooner stuff, the lowest level of criticism. But we're heading in the right direction. So you should be happy about that.

• 18:35Anthony Pompliano?

  There's almost this element of like, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? And I think that's kind of what you're talking about here. One of the ideas that you had around the virus, though, that I found very interesting was, there's a lot of regulation and red tape in the healthcare and pharmaceutical world. Some of that for very good reasons, some of it's just pure bureaucracy. But you had talked a little bit about this idea of, well, if we know healthy individuals have a very low mortality rate when they get infected with this, especially young people, is there some sort of, you know, kind of sandbox where we say, if you would like to volunteer as a healthy young person to actually have the

• 19:16Anthony Pompliano?

  virus affect you or infect you, and then we can use them as a kind of testing patients for vaccines, etc. You know, one, I'll caveat the whole thing with this is an idea, and I think every idea should be explored. It's not necessarily you saying that this is the perfect solution, but it's just an idea. Maybe you can explain a little bit more about what you're talking about there and kind of pros and cons as you see them.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  So I'm discovering this as we talk about different topics on the virus. Whenever there's a good idea, I try to put it out there just in case nobody thought of it yet. So I feel like I'm a sort of an idea curator at the point, you know, it's just something I can do. And everybody's jumping in and doing what they can do. But that idea, very quickly, people said, already happening. So here's the good news. People are, and I think in Great Britain, they're paying them. We're maybe we're paying them in this country for ethical reasons. But apparently that's already happening. So the idea here is that you take somebody who maybe wants to take the vaccine.

• 20:20Speaker 03

  You give them the vaccine and you just say, look, the only way we're really going to find out in a quick time, if this works, is we're going to have somebody who's infected slobber all over you. Now, they wouldn't do that. They would just take some lab sample and expose them to it. But the point is that they, the normal way you would test things is you would just give somebody a vaccine and let them live their life. And then you check back in a year and you say, well, these, you know, thousands of people, how many of you got this disease just living your normal life? We don't have time for that. We need somebody to step up and say, look, you know, I'm in good shape. I don't think I'm a high risk. You know, give me the vaccine and then slather that stuff on me and let's see what happens.

• 21:04Speaker 03

  If I get infected, I'm taking that risk knowingly as a patriot for whichever country you're in. Really for the world. I mean, it's not even a patriot thing anymore. It's, it's a world citizen thing. And I speculated that we would have no shortage of patriots, again, patriot for the world, who would say, yeah, let me go first. I mean, I'm in, I'm in a, you know, sort of the target zone. I'm over 60, you've got a little asthma history, so I'm just, I'm just hiding. But even I would step up to that if it were necessary. Like, like if that moved the ball forward, I'd say, yeah, I'm even in the high risk group.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  But I'll go. So I think you're, there's no shortage of heroes. I call them ordinary heroes. Just, just people who would say, you know, the whole world is at risk. Take me, take me first. The great thing about human beings is that, you know, in a crowd of a hundred, you know, ninety-seven will run away from the danger, but three will stand up and just start walking directly at it. And you'll never see an exception to that. There's no civilization, there's no, no tribe, no town where you don't get three out of a hundred, and that's a low estimate. It's way more than that. Who would say, yeah, I'm gonna run toward that danger. Because it's good for the ninety-seven who ran away.

• 22:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and this brings the point that the ninety-seven that are quote-unquote running away, right? In some cases, they actually are running away. In some cases, they're, they're just simply the ones who are most affected. And I think what we're seeing in the healthcare industry is we're exposing the flaws, right? So the hospitals can't handle this many cases. There's tons of supply chain issues around personal protective equipment. All of these things, even I saw you tweeting about the telemedicine is being overwhelmed with people who don't actually want to go into a physical location, but can't keep up with demand. Like, how do you think the world changes on the healthcare side, kind of, once we get out on the other side of this? So right now, it's kind of, let's solve this problem. But how does healthcare in that industry really change over time

• 23:12Anthony Pompliano?

  because of it?

• 23:14Speaker 03

  Well, a bunch of ways that are predictable, and then a bunch of ways we can't predict. One of, one of the things that I'm most excited about is that there will be a whole bunch of good news coming out of the bad news. You know, even World War II produced a number of inventions. I think radar was one of them. I'm not good on history, but I think that was one. And what we just did, and we're doing right now, is we're putting the best minds in the world, medical and scientific, together. And they're working on, on a problem that's sort of a class of problems, you know, they, they won't just learn about this, they'll, they'll learn about, you know, the larger group of this. And what that produces, you can't predict.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  But we're putting the smartest people in the world together. We're networking and they'll know each other after this is done. They'll probably create platforms for a better sharing of information. That is, has almost unlimited potential for where that can go. And it's just because you, you know, put the brains in the same places. I mean, it's, it's the same, uh, it's the same thing that happens with Silicon Valley. It's the same thing that happens with a Microsoft town. A bunch of geniuses move there and then you've got the right situation for startups. All right, maybe they came to work for Microsoft, but now they start dating each other and, you know, cross pollinating and suddenly, hey, I got an idea, it doesn't fit in Microsoft. I'm gonna, gonna start my own company.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  So you're gonna see something like happened in the startup world by having them all in one place. Really important. You know, the cross pollination is just essential. That's why you don't see a startup community like spring up in the middle of Idaho or something. It's, it's the people connection that makes it happen. So we just did that by necessity with, with the top smartest scientists in the medical community. That's gonna turn into something. The other thing is that, um, I feel as though it's close to guaranteed that there will be some, um, red tape that's removed. Because we're removing some red tape temporarily in a number of ways. And some of it, we're gonna say, you know, it'll work better without that red tape. Let's just keep it that way. So some of it will be that kind of improvement.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  We'll certainly be toughened against pandemics. We'll certainly have better plans for the next one. We'll certainly have better ability to flex. We'll, we'll certainly be moving our, um, drug pipeline from China to the United States guaranteed. There's just no chance that's not happening. And by the way, if you hear that your government is not making that happen, change your president, find one that will. That, that's not optional anymore. All right, but I think you can count on President Trump doing it and, and whoever else. If we get another president, I think you could count on them doing it as well. Any party at this point is just a given. Uh, so that'll happen. And then, um, I was early on, I was suggesting that we drop the, uh,

• 26:11Speaker 03

  the licensing requirements across state. So that telemedicine people, a doctor in Utah that is not yet, um, has a big problem.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  Could take some calls from people in, let's say, New York City who are. At the moment, it's illegal. Why? Is it because New York City thinks that a doctor in Idaho is not qualified? Well, maybe you should talk to his patients because they think they are. They think these doctors are qualified. I don't think in the context of an emergency, there's any argument whatsoever that makes any sense that you should keep that restriction. So at least temporarily get rid of it. And what will happen if they temporarily get rid of that restriction? I will answer the question. People will realize there was no reason for it in the first place. You know, it had to do with, I don't know, lobby groups or the AMA or some damn reason

• 27:03Speaker 03

  that had to do with the economics of doctors, but not the well-being of patients. So I think you'll see things like that that are temporary reductions in regulations, but they'll become permanent. So I would expect actually a pretty big gain. Now, consider also the fact that we're all getting trained for hygiene. What is the world going to look like with all these habits we've developed for good hygiene? I'll be washing my hands immediately after this because I just coughed in my hand. I don't have the virus, by the way. I just, if I talk too much, I, it's just my normal baseline, so don't worry about it. So hygiene, better hygiene, what's that going to do to the normal flu?

• 27:48Speaker 03

  What are we gonna, how are we going to treat the normal flu now that we found all these treatments that apparently are going to work for this specific coronavirus? Do they work for every virus? You know, will we end up taking hydroxychloroquine? That's the official name. I think I nailed it. Hydroxychloroquine, whatever. Will we start taking that for regular flu? And then people will say, well, it's a good thing we had this other flu because we wouldn't have known this really helps. And the regular flu is whacking people by the, you know, tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands. So if I had to guess, we're going to come out of this with all kinds of new capabilities and streamlined processes, things we didn't know we needed, and we're going to be hardened for the next challenge.

• 28:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I'm generally with you in terms of there's like these regulation improvements that we'll get mainly because in times of emergency or necessity, we just will kind of ignore regulation and then realize, oh, wait, that could have been not there in the first place. I actually think the way people work is very similar, right? All of a sudden, people realize, wait a minute, I don't think we all actually need to go to this office, right? And some of this remote work or work from home and the tools, etc., could actually suffice. I saw a joke on barn that said, maybe we don't actually need all those meetings. They could have just been emails, right? And then people realize that not only just work from kind of how they work changes, but then there's the economy as well. And obviously, I think there's a lot of people who are kind of worried at the economy is

• 29:21Anthony Pompliano?

  going to grind to a halt, mainly because people are being encouraged to not leave their homes. So it's not a, hey, I don't know if I have enough money. It's more of a, you can't leave your home and therefore your economic activity is going to fall off a cliff. How are you thinking about coronavirus impact on the economy and kind of where we are right now?

• 29:39Speaker 03

  Well, here's where people who don't have any background with economics are at a great disadvantage because they have just less vision on the problem. And so I would think it looks scarier because you hear people who don't know much about economics say, hey, it's all falling apart. And if you don't know any better, you might believe them. But I have a degree in economics. I've got an MBA from a top school, and I've talked to lots of other people who have similar credentials. And let me tell you, there's one thing that 100%, and when do you get 100% of people agreeing on anything, right? But I would say that 100% of economists, 100% of big finance and economic people, people really

• 30:22Speaker 03

  understand it, 100% of them say it's temporary and with good reason because they've seen other shocks. I saw, I think it was Morgan Stanley or somebody, I forget, who said that this is more like 9/11 than it is like the slump of 2008, 2009, meaning that there was an external shock, but it didn't really change all our resources and systems, except in that little area. And then our security got tighter. But basically, the economy was still the economy when we woke up and shook it off. That's our situation now. So this virus is like a neutron bomb. It's affecting people, but it didn't break any machines, didn't break any processes. The internet's going to work

• 31:07Speaker 03

  fine. So the moment that we get the word, the uptick is going to be just breathtaking. You know, the moment your government says, you know, we got a handle on this, it's safe to go back to some of your other things, or even if we just figure out how to do the other things better in different ways, the recovery will be just breathtaking. The only thing we don't know is when we're going to get the green light to take the country back to full health. You know, the moment the president says it's go time, people are really ramped up. The other thing I've suggested is we've got a whole nation that's going to be stuck at home for, I don't know, a while. And take some classes. If you come

• 31:51Speaker 03

  in at the end of this and you haven't developed a whole new skill, well, you did it wrong. You know, if you were out in the job market and you had, let's say, some job that got removed, you were a server, whatever, well, pick up a new skill. Find a skill that you can learn in a few months that adds well with whatever you do, or whatever you're going to add later, that makes you more valuable. So as your income comes down, you can compensate by building your skill up while you're waiting. Because when you go back, you're going to go back with a higher skill and a higher income, it will pay for itself. So think of this time off as a little bit an opportunity for investment in yourself. Take an online course, they're cheap and widely available.

• 32:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it's great advice. And, you know, it'll be one of those things where when we get out the other side of this, people who use their time wisely will be very obvious, and people who didn't, I think, will also be very obvious. So hearing kind of you talk about the economy, it sounds like you subscribe to the idea that this is temporary, we get this kind of shock, really out of uncertainty and fear. The second that that uncertainty and fear gets removed, we kind of go back into this raging bull market. Are you worried about any kind of what I'll call ancillary damage, meaning that that economic slowdown, it pops the credit bubble, or there's any other issues that could cause kind of a more prolonged recession or financial crisis? Or do you really just look at it as this is

• 33:15Anthony Pompliano?

  a self-contained around coronavirus, once that's gone, then we're off to the race?

• 33:20Speaker 03

  My guess is that certain industries will get just completely whacked, but our main industries won't. So if you're invested in cruise ships, I think that's a risky thing. I don't, I'm just not sure how that comes back. But if you have any kind of a normal business, I mean, is Apple gonna sell fewer iPhones a year from now? Probably not. Now, is Google not gonna get advertising for their searches? I think they'll be fine. So the biggest, most important and robust parts of the economy are not affected by this. But there are definitely some pockets. Restaurants are gonna get whacked, you know, hotels, travel. All that stuff's gonna have some trouble. But they're gonna adjust and they'll, they'll figure out how to make it work.

• 34:04Speaker 03

  And I think in the long run, we'll be fine. But it's your specific question about credit. It's not gonna be a near-term problem because you can, you can run up the debt to create, you know, loans. Now, and by the way, the banks are gonna do amazingly well, which is weird. So they'll take losses in those few industries that, that are getting hit. But all the people who simply had to pause their business and they're in a cash crunch are gonna go to their bank and this is, this is every bank's dream. I was a banker once. I used to make loans to businesses. That was one of my past jobs. And here's, here's the customer that never comes in.

• 34:48Speaker 03

  You want them to come in, but these are the ones that will come in. Here's my business that's been operating profitably for 12 years in a row. You can tell, here's my statements. I would like to get a loan because I have a temporary cash flow problem because I had to shut down for a few months. A bank, their eyes will get as big as, you know, plates because they want that business. That's like free money because not only does it make sense for the business owner because they know they can pay for it, they just spin back up and they're back in business. And the bank says, I can't make a better loan than that. You can't make a better loan than somebody has a temporary, specific problem that's already solved, but otherwise their business model has been demonstrated.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  So people probably will have access to credit.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  Banks will probably be the most top performing industry is my guess, at least for a little while. The energy, energy, energy part of the, I have to tell you, I have, I'm having a psychosomatic itching problem. It's because you're watching. If nobody were watching, this wouldn't be happening. But there's a part of my nose on the outside that there's itching and there are a couple of other places in my faces. And I'm quite aware that they're entirely psychosomatic because I'll just use this to,

• 36:09Speaker 03

  I'll wash my hands as soon as I'm done. But the point is, we're probably all having the same little issue. We're all in this together. Yeah. Nothing embarrasses me anymore. So, you know, I'll, I'll do what I have to do.

• 36:25Speaker 03

  I don't know. I think I made a point there and I forgot.

• 36:28Anthony Pompliano?

  A true legend. No. So, so I think all of that makes a lot of sense in terms of how, you know, kind of the ancillary reactions, if you will, on the economy. But then that brings us to kind of the response of the government, right? And so forget about kind of the lawmaker side. Let's just think about kind of monetary and fiscal stimulus and the potential things that could happen there. We're already seeing what I've been calling kind of monetary stimulus bombs being dropped, right? Kind of the, the emergency rate cut within two weeks, all the way down to zero, the $700 billion. It looks like Trump is prepared to ask for about another $800 billion in all sorts of stimulus, et cetera.

• 37:09Anthony Pompliano?

  How are you thinking about, you know, kind of the various options people have at their disposal and what'll work, what won't work? Is anything kind of a sacred cow and we shouldn't go, maybe negative interest rates or something else? Just talk about that a little bit.

• 37:23Speaker 03

  You know, the more you know about economics, the more you realize you don't know anything. That's, you know, something that probably happens with a lot of experts. You know, you start digging down and you realize, wow, there's a lot more I don't know that I do know. And I'll, I'll tell you, I'm not sure anybody's smart enough to know. That some of these big technical changes like, you know, the changes to the interest rates, I'm not even entirely sure those have a a real world effect more than a psychological effect. But the economy is a psychology engine. So when they do things that boost confidence, that's the right thing to do. So I look at it, I tend to look at the big, um, hard to understand stuff like, you know,

• 38:07Speaker 03

  money supply and whatever, uh, as unfathomables. It's like, I don't know, but it sounds like something good. And if the public thinks it sounds good and if it builds their confidence, that is the thing you want to do. So, so there's that. But I, I agree with, uh, I think Tom Cotton is saying this now, a Republican. And I think Andrew Yang has said this repeatedly. And I think everybody in the middle is starting to say, you know, maybe UBI, universal basic income might not make sense as an ongoing thing. But boy, does it make sense now. You know, um, as one of the people who's going to be stuck with the, the, the problem of paying off the national debt.

• 38:50Speaker 03

  I don't see a better reason to run up the debt. Maybe I've never seen a better reason to run up the debt than what we have right now. So if you say to me, Scott, Scott, Scott, the debt's already in an emergency. We owe however many trillions. We can't add two more trillion to that. To which I say, compared to what? Compared to what? I mean, I'm one of the people who's going to have to pay off that debt. Right? Cause I have money. It's not poor people will pay off debts. It's people with money. And I'm here to tell you, I'm okay with universal basic income. People gotta eat. We gotta keep the lights on, right? Well, the lights will stay on, but you know, people who are temporarily without a paycheck, they still need to go to the grocery store or order their online groceries.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  And I don't think, for me, that shouldn't be even a discussion. Cause unless we have another way to solve that specific problem of getting those people who are staying at home, you know, a paycheck. If somebody doesn't have a better answer, and I haven't heard one, we should do that today. You know, I, I don't know why Congress hasn't already done that. It feels like a today problem, not, not next week.

• 39:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's really interesting you bring this up. Was it yesterday or the day before I got in an Uber here in New York City? And when I got in, the gentleman had on medical gloves, the driver, and he had a N95 mask on. And next to him on the console, he had a bunch of hand sanitizer and wipes. And we just started talking and I basically said, how's it going? Is demand going down? Do you think Uber will kind of shut down and Lyft shut down, etc.? And he said something really interesting. He goes, "A couple of people have gotten in and asked me, why am I still driving? Obviously, given the fact that I'm worried about the virus, given all the kind of personal protective equipment." And he said, "And I keep reminding them, I still have bills to pay. I still have to feed my family. I still have rent to pay, right? No one's going to kind of give me any help.

• 40:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And so I'm going to keep driving until they tell me to get off the road." And I thought it was just kind of the perfect example of somebody who that's what he has to do, right? That's his living and he's going to keep doing it until either they tell him to get off the road or he's got to somehow get through this kind of tough time.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, people are going to be making a lot of tough decisions. One thing that might be a little ray of hope is that the restaurants are going to become delivery kitchens, basically. And the existing delivery people presumably are maxed out. Because I used food delivery four times yesterday. You know, once was a supermarket order that we put in a week ago. It just took a week to get here. And three times I told my crew here that they could just use as much DoorDash as they want, as long as they use the, obviously, it's local restaurants. It's just to support the local restaurants.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  So I basically took the cap off for my family. It's like, you're hungry? I don't need to be with you. I don't need to, you know, you don't need to ask me. If you're hungry, go support a restaurant by going to your computer and push the buttons, you know, get a tip to the delivery guy. So I think you're going to see Uber people becoming food and product delivery people on top of whatever little bit of human cargo they have. So that could help a little.

• 42:17Anthony Pompliano?

  For sure. And then in terms of the UBI, I've got this friend Travis Kling, who always says that quantitative easing is just UBI for rich people, right? And kind of the idea that if we're going to quote unquote bail people out, or we're going to inject kind of this liquidity into the Wall Street finance world, is there really that big of a difference between handing that money directly to people? And I think you get into some semantics between, you know, UBI versus MMT, you know, and people have different versions of this. But at the end of the day, it's the concept of the government getting money to individuals so that they can put that money in their pocket and hopefully stimulate that economic activity.

• 42:59Speaker 03

  Do you mind if I curse?

• 43:02Anthony Pompliano?

  You're free to do whatever you want.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  So you've been warned if you're listening. The idea of doing any kind of a trickle down approach in this emergency is batshit fucking crazy. Anyway, we should just cut it out. Like, you know, unless there's some economist who's going to disagree with me, I don't think so. You got people who need a check today so they can buy some food, you know, whatever they need to buy.

• 43:36Speaker 03

  I think UBI, we should be past the argument on that. You know, at least for the temporary version, the permanent one, I think, is out of the question at the moment. But we can trial it, see what happens in the emergency. Maybe we learn something also, although it's a unique situation. So probably we wouldn't learn what we need to learn about a normal situation. But I'm watching Congress and I'm saying, you know, I'm very forgiving about the issue of when did you start? You know, because everything could have been done sooner. But I don't think there's a pushback on this basic idea that you can't wait for it to trickle down. And I'm real unhappy if there's any politician saying something like that.

• 44:20Speaker 03

  Be they Republican or be they Democrat, you're not qualified for your job if you're talking about waiting for it to trickle down and hope your, hope the business is kind to its employees and stuff like that. No, just give them the check, give it to them right now. Today is the day. You know, in the emergency, we're operating under what I call TV time.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  You know, for people who work on live TV, if you've ever been in that situation, I've been in it a lot, you know, waiting for the countdown and you'll be chatting with the host and there'll be seven seconds until airtime and the host will turn to me and start a conversation. And I'll be sitting there, you know, the first times it happened to me, I'd like, don't you realize there are only seven seconds? You can't start a conversation. What are we going to do in seven seconds? And then you realize that they they do the thing, you respond, you go back and forth, the the light goes on, they look at the camera and boom, it's game time. So there's this this weird sense of compressed time in the live TV world that we need to take to Congress.

• 45:25Speaker 03

  Because, you know, without exaggeration, the UBI thing should be done today. And I don't mean that hyperbolically. I mean, actually, Congress should get together and say, all right, let's just do this thing. Because we know we got to do it sooner or later. Let's just approve this thing. That's a today thing. They should be on TV time.

• 45:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I don't remember all of the details, but I think it was in 2008 under George Bush. I can't remember if it was a tax credit or an actual check. But as part of the financial crisis, I think there's like a $450 thing. It wasn't exactly UBI, but but it's not like this has never happened before. And to your point about this kind of being a bipartisan thing at this point, I saw a bunch of headlines yesterday that Mitt Romney is even supporting, you know, kind of a $1,000 check for for individuals. And there was a lot of kind of, you know, kind of excitement that Mitt Romney is saying this.

• 46:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, we've got, we've got, you know, AOC, you know, Andrew Yang, Mitt Romney. I think Tom Cotton is somewhere in that neighborhood. I'm there. It's the whole spectrum. If you can't get that done today, when people in the entire spectrum agree on it,

• 46:42Speaker 03

  I got some questions about Congress. That's a today thing. I hate to harp on that, but it's not a tomorrow thing.

• 46:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so that brings me to, let's get away from the individuals and kind of the UBI. Now, what we're seeing is a lot of industries going to government and saying, hey, we need assistance. We need bailouts, you know, kind of a whole spectrum of how people are articulating what they're asking for. But essentially, what they're asking for are bailouts, and whether it's the airlines or other industries. And I think what's quickly becoming a somewhat controversial debate is a lot of these companies that are asking for help are also companies that had very high percentage of their free cash flow devoted to stock buybacks. So any ideas kind of around how you evaluate the bailouts of certain industries? And kind of how do we pick which ones get help, which ones don't?

• 47:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And then also, does the stock buyback stuff play into any of this, in your opinion? Or is that kind of a separate issue and shouldn't enter the discussion?

• 47:39Speaker 03

  Well, you're raising the question of what's fair, in a sense, as opposed to what is possible. It's probably possible to bail out these industries, you know, given running up our debt, but we know we can do that. So it's possible. What is it fair? That's really the question people are going to ask. And let me give you my emergency crisis answer to the question of, is it fair? Don't care. Don't bother me with that. The last thing I'm going to even engage with you is on the question of fairness during an emergency. And I had to have this conversation yesterday with somebody, not Christina, but somebody in my life,

• 48:20Speaker 03

  where I had to explain that fairness is just nothing that will have any weight. Don't tell me that argument. Don't tell me what's fair. Don't want to hear it. We're in a position of you have to do what you have to do. So it's a greater good situation. And if the greater good is that we have a airline that goes back to health, we just got to do that. All right? That's not a, you know, oh, it's so unfair, the stockholders of the airlines, you know, got some free cash. Hmm, don't care. You know, I'm not even going to have that conversation with you. The conversation is airlines, yes, or airlines, no. If it comes down to that, it's going to be airlines, yes.

• 49:04Speaker 03

  And don't tell me anything else. Just be quiet. Take your feelings about the fairness. Do whatever you need to do to process them, but they're not part of the decision. That's ordinary, ordinary world. In the ordinary world, we'll talk about fairness. In emergency world, it's not a thing.

• 49:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and it's interesting that you kind of position it that way of fairness doesn't enter the equation, because I think that's a pretty accurate way to evaluate it. The other thing that I've heard people argue is what I'll call more kind of the free market capitalism, which is, hey, if they've been bad allocators of capital, does that then mean that we should encourage more competition? Whether that is kind of in the extreme of let some companies fail and they'll get replaced by new challengers, or actually should we divert resources to help new challengers enter the market? How do you think about that balance between, you know, maybe not bailing out industries versus letting them completely fail versus bail out and then

• 50:08Anthony Pompliano?

  actually create a new paradigm or a new world for that industry moving forward? Whether that's new regulatory issues or encouraging competition.

• 50:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that conflates the long-term strategy with the short-term. The short-term is we can't have no airline travel. The long-term is how do you do it in the best possible way? And I think it's a mistake to mix those. We're in an emergency situation. How do we get back to something close to business as normal? That's the only thing I care about. If you're also trying to complicate that by, well, you know, let's not let this crisis go to waste. Maybe we could change some things and change the industry and tweak it. Well, every time you add complexity, you're slowing things down. You're adding a new point to failure, giving somebody else a reason to say no to what they should be saying yes to.

• 51:01Speaker 03

  So this is no time to get clever, at least in that way, in terms of adding complications and planning for something that, well, maybe that would be better in some way. It's just not the time for that. But yes, maybe we learn something from this that once we're past the danger zone, we can apply it in the future. But I don't want to look back, don't want to focus about what the airlines did in the past. Don't want to talk about fairness. We'll look at the future and the greater good. Focus on that, not the past, not fairness.

• 51:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, you've got a very kind of we're in emergency, let's solve the emergency, I think viewpoint, which frankly is not not commonly held by a majority of people. So it's kind of refreshing to hear that. Let's switch gears a little bit because I think coming out of this, you know, healthcare issue and then the the subsequent economic slowdown, attention at some point will shift back to politics and the election. Where do you stand? We're recording now kind of mid March of 2020. What are you thinking about election and kind of the various candidates probability of winning? And then also even do we have the election in November? Does that get postponed? Is that going to be kind of compromised in any way? What are thoughts there?

• 52:22Speaker 03

  Well, I've been saying for, I don't know, years now that the president was on a glide path to a landslide reelection unless, and I always added this, or at least I tried to always add it, unless something big changes. And then I also added, I tried to do this every time, and it will. So every prediction has the caveat that if things go the way it looks, this is where it ended up. But they never do, never. You don't expect it to. So don't straight line your predictions. That's always a mistake. I'd rather look at the tools and the big picture rather than straight lining my predictions. So that

• 53:01Speaker 03

  said, with that caveat in mind, here's what it looks like at the moment. The, I think the coronavirus took the odds of a Trump landslide from 100% basically, in my personal opinion, to something closer to 50 50. Because this is going to hurt him. And it doesn't mean that he did a bad job, because I don't see evidence of his decisions being suboptimal. I just don't see it. You know, the the people who don't like him do see it. We live in this world of two movies. So to the extent that people can say, see, that's what I was telling you all along. If, you know, we get in a crisis, you know, he might stumble,

• 53:43Speaker 03

  he should have done something sooner, or I'm a super genius and I would have done it differently. And they'll make claims like ridiculous things. You know, this is coming. People, his opposition will say, you know, he should have brought all the experts together and make people work. And to which, to which the rest of us are going to say. What exactly did you see happening? That's what I saw happening. You brought all the experts together and they did their job and we got, we got past it. Now, the big question is turnout. In November, are we still going to be worrying about crowds enough that people say, you know, I think, I think I'm going to sit this one out. And I think the odds are at least 50 50 that that will be the case.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  Maybe not for everybody, but let's say you have an election in which the advice is if you're above a certain age, rethink it, or do it, or you should do it by mail. Now, you see, hear that and you think, well, that, that's good. They still vote, they just do it by mail. But remember, you're talking about old people. I don't know how many old people out of 100 could be converted to actually voting by mail, even if they thought it were a good idea. Like, would they know how to do it? Would they, you know, it's just an extra level of complexity. So you could see turnout being the only thing that defines the election and the coronavirus could be a big influence on turnout.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  So that's one way it could, that's, that's the 50% odds, I'd say. The other 50% is that whether or not the virus is still with us, it took a hit over the summer and things returned to normal enough. And the, the polling places put in procedures to keep people away enough. I mean, you could imagine that there's a special polling place for seniors, you know, that we, we just wouldn't have needed before. And we say, look, you know, if you've been self-quarantining and you did a good job and you have no symptoms, use this polling place. It will still keep you separated, but you know, there's a little extra safety. So you're going to see massive, massive adjustments as people, you know, learn to

• 55:56Speaker 03

  do remote. Maybe finally we'll be able to vote digitally from our phones on an app. There's got to be a way to do that. I mean, seriously, if you can take a picture, me voting.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  How likely am I going to fake that vote? All right, like you should have an app where as I'm voting, it's taking a picture of me. So there's no question who's doing it when it's like, there's a picture of me. You don't have to look at it. You know, you could just store my, you know, store my image somewhere in case it ever comes up. But certainly we can, there's certainly got to be a way we can fix online voting and make that work. It's not, this isn't like a, you know, artist problem in the world.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  So I think you'll see that.

• 56:42Speaker 03

  Now let's talk about the candidates. I made a bold prediction that I felt a little bit bad about, but it was more to wake, wake people up. We've got three old candidates and if they keep meeting people and I don't know how they can turn it off really. Cause even if they don't do rallies, it's the nature of the job that you're just going to have a lot of human contact. We're not going to put Bernie behind a glass cage. You know, Biden, he's not behind glass and it doesn't take too much contact of, you know, remember the people that they have contact with are hyper social, hyper connected people. That's, that's who gravitates to these jobs. And I just can't see them not get infected.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  So I think we've got three, you know, elderly statesmen here, you know, counting Trump, Biden and Bernie. And they're really a risk because I don't, I don't know that people are going to be able to tell them to stand down. And I think that they might be willing to take the risk because they, they think there's a big game at the end, not just personally, but for the country in their, in their view. So we could lose it, we could lose one of them.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  And we can lose two of them. That's not beyond the, the realm of possibility. And that would be just an immense tragedy. So that's, that's a wild card. I wouldn't put the odds at that high, but, um, you know, is there a solid 10%? Then one of them doesn't make it to November. Now, of course, we'll, there will only be two that matter in terms of the election by, by that time. So that improves the odds that, you know, we've, we've got something to actually vote for. But the other, the other wild card is Biden's just capability. It looks like he's a lock to get the nomination. Anything could change, but it looks like there, you know, he's on that path because Bernie seems to have stopped fighting. I think Bernie is

• 58:38Speaker 03

  looking for the influence at this point, maybe get Biden to take on some policies. And he's already starting to do that. So it looks like it's going to be Biden. And we've all watched the videos. I thought his debate was unexpectedly good, surprisingly. I mean, he, he seemed vigorous and as good as you'd expect Joe Biden to do at this age. So he didn't show too obvious a signs of mental decline, but we have seen him in that mode. And we're not doctors. We can't diagnose him, but to the public, it looks that way. And if it looks that way to the public, they will treat it as a truth, even if they're

• 59:20Speaker 03

  not doctors either. So the Biden, I don't think there's more than a 30% chance he's going to seem completely competent by election day, even to his own team. So I think the most likely outcome is Biden runs, he gets slaughtered by Trump as we're getting off the coronavirus. And that's the most likely path. But I think even the most likely path is 50% at this point. Let's, let's take it to 51% to make it the most likely path.

• 59:53Anthony Pompliano?

  No, I, I, I think that it's really well articulated kind of path through how a lot of this could potentially unfold. One of the things that you said was one of the candidates contracting or being infected with coronavirus. And I'm with you there in terms of just the, the high degree of social interaction, the, the societal pressure to shake hands, especially when you are kind of especially the president and you're meeting constituents, et cetera. What do you think would happen? Let's say if Trump actually Was infected with coronavirus like, you know, one, would they even tell us or would they hide that for, you know, as long as they could? And then two, kind of how does um maybe the the uh everyday,

• 1:00:37Anthony Pompliano?

  you know, work of a politician or the government, does it change at all? Or is it just something that's more health related? Uh, and that would be the.

• 1:00:48Speaker 03

  Well, it sounds like the sound just cut off from you. Uh, I'm gonna assume that they can still hear me and and keep talking until that gets resolved. But um, my expectation is that um, the government will function pretty well, no matter what, because we have, you know, backups and backups. And most of it's done by, you know, career people. And, you know, some people can be on vacation or call in and it'll work just fine. I don't think there's any chance that Trump would hide a positive diagnosis, only because there's too much um, and too many people would know. And you'd notice if he was staying away from people in a different

• 1:01:28Speaker 03

  way. Um, we haven't seen that. So if he disappears and they say, well, he's, he's a self-quarantiner or something, then start asking some questions. But if you don't see that, I think you're safe, safely that he doesn't have that diagnosis. Uh, the other two, I think, would play it straight. You know, you have your question, because there's a legitimate reason for the leader of a country to maybe not show weakness. You know, you could make an argument, there might be some case where that makes sense, but it will never make sense for a candidate, because, you know, the news would get out, you'd lose trust in them, that that's the end of it. I think they just have to say they

• 1:02:07Speaker 03

  had it, might even help them. You know, I think nobody's on the campaign trail. So if somebody is uh going through the coronavirus and recovering on camera, you know, and the public's watching it or or watching as it unfolds, and they do recover, they're gonna get the best healthcare, obviously. Yeah, um, maybe it's an advantage. You know, there, there certainly is such a thing as a sympathy vote. If somebody battles through it and recovers, you might say, well, that's one leader that's not gonna get it, you know, in all likelihood, because they already got it. So I'm not too worried about the ongoing operation of the government. I'd say that's a very low risk, not one that I'm even entertaining.

• 1:02:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 1:02:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Go ahead.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  Oh, I just wanted to check to see if your audio was working, but it is. So go ahead.

• 1:03:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, we're still good. You've talked a lot about, or maybe not a lot, but you started talking about Bitcoin, given the recent crash and kind of the economic situation, etc. What are you kind of thinking about that today? And I think you even had some Bitcoin, but sold it at some point. Is that right?

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I owned it in a fund, so I didn't own it directly, but I got rid of the fund. Before any of this, this business started, I just got rid of it for Bitcoin reasons, not for, not for coronavirus reasons. But I'm no expert on Bitcoin. I'm no, and I wouldn't give you financial advice, even if I were. But I'll just tell you what I did. What I did was I held Bitcoin as sort of a hedge because it seemed like it might go up. I laughingly said that I was going to own it to stop other people from getting rich without working. Because I was watching all these people getting rich without working. And I thought, well, I could stop that right now. I'll just, I'll just buy a bunch. And it was the last day it went up, basically. I mean, it's bounced around.

• 1:04:06Speaker 03

  But, and I actually sold it for, I don't know, 20 or 30% gain when it was, it popped up for a little bit. But it never really was the Bitcoin of old. It wasn't the Bitcoin that was doubling every few days or whatever it was doing. So yeah, in a jokey way, I say I killed Bitcoin by buying it. And I actually announced it when I did it. I actually said, this is the end of Bitcoin. I just bought something. I wasn't even joking. Because I think I somehow had an uncanny ability to sense the end of a good thing.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  Sometimes I realize it and sometimes I invest, but I have this uncanny ability to say, yeah, now's the time. Oh, based on my experience, when I'm saying now's the time, that would be a good time to reconsider being in this at all. So I knew I was getting in late, took a little game, got out. I don't recommend you get in or get out. I was, I was interested to see if it tracked gold as a, you know, a safe harbor, but it didn't. And it didn't do it in such a visible way that it would be hard to maintain the argument that it's a safe place to put money in a crisis. It's definitely a different place to put money.

• 1:05:24Speaker 03

  So if you're just somebody who wants to diversify, you can make an argument for diversification, but I'm talking about 5% of your portfolio, not 50%. So that's the only financial advice I like to give is diversification because that's universally just always a good idea.

• 1:05:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So the one thing I think that it's not so much convincing people, the one thing that I think is happening, again, kind of how you caveat and say, not with 100% certainty, but I think that the liquidity crisis that a lot of the investment community has gone through over the last, you know, really two, three weeks. I did this research on what happened to gold in 2008 and gold over the summer of 2008 went down about 30%, but it ended the crisis up from kind of start to finish up about 3X. And what it looks like when you kind of look with hindsight bias and, you know, 2020 visions, you know, in hindsight

• 1:06:27Anthony Pompliano?

  is that the liquidity crisis, anything with a liquid market got sold, everything went down in, in kind of value as those sellers tried to, to exit. But then when the government responded with all the monetary stimulus, et cetera, people then ran back to gold, right? And it kind of ended the crisis up. Again, history doesn't always

• 1:06:48Speaker 03

  But that's the opposite of how it's supposed to work. And gold should have gone up during the crisis. But when the government made good moves to end the crisis, gold should have gone down, but it went up. So that tells you it's not a safe storage in an emergency. It's just operating the same as stocks. In your example, I'm not giving anybody advice here. I want to be clear on that. I'm just saying that your example proves that gold is not a safe storage. It doesn't prove the opposite.

• 1:07:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and I think my point here being that, if you kind of look at what's happening now, right? What happened in 2008 liquidity crisis, gold draws down. We're seeing gold draw down again now. It's down 10, 12%, whatever it is. Bitcoin's obviously down about 50%. So again, it doesn't mean it's going to happen again, but it looks very similar to that liquidity crisis in 2008. So we'll see what happens. But how do you think about your other investments? So take out the highly speculative stuff like a Bitcoin, et cetera. How do you generally think about investing, given you've got multiple income streams and building a business and books and all of that? But I'd just be interested in how you, at least framework wise, think about.

• 1:08:02Speaker 03

  Well, in terms of stock investing, diversification is the only word I like to use. And it's the only thing you need to do. So if you're buying an unmanaged stock fund or a spider, as they're called, it's a different forum. But if you go for a low fee, a large grouping of stocks that you can buy with one purchase and you own the whole basket, if it's a broad index like the Fortune 500, that's where I put most of my money, then you have the same fate as the country, basically. So you wed your success financially to the United States. So if the United States does well, you're going to do well, guaranteed. It can't go any other way.

• 1:08:44Speaker 03

  The stock, that basket of stocks just moves with the country. Now, historically, that's always been a great investment. Now, of course, you know, the person who invested in that one stock and they made a lot of money and you think, well, I can do that too. No, you can't. No, you can't. But if you don't believe me, because you know cartoonist, I get it. I do have a degree in economics and MBA, as I said earlier. But if you don't believe me, just Google it for yourself. Do a little research. Should you, as an independent investor, buy individual stocks? A hundred percent of experts, and again, this is rare to get a hundred percent of experts in the same place, but a hundred percent of experts will say, no, you shouldn't do

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  that because you don't know anything about these companies. These are, that's a risky thing to do. There are some exceptions. A company like Apple or Amazon or Berkshire Hathaway, they sort of operate like a fund themselves, or they might have a monopoly. In the case of, you know, Amazon, I hate to say it, but it's basically a monopoly. You know, iPhone is basically a monopoly, you know, not illegal monopoly, but it works that way. So if you have something that's gigantic and distributed and acts like monopoly, maybe a little bit of your money there. But even Apple could have some kind of shock that takes it out of business that didn't

• 1:10:12Speaker 03

  affect your other stocks. Anything could happen. You know, name the number of successful computer companies that don't exist. Hello, Gateway Computer? I mean, you could be surprised even by big companies. So diversification period. But if you're in a position where, you know, you have a good sized portfolio and you want, you want to see if you can get some kickers, you know, with your, let's say, the 10% that isn't going to ruin you if you, if you guess that wrong. Then you might go into some funds of some industries that you know will be good in the long run. I recently sold off some biotech fund I had, you know, before this ugliness started. So it was good timing, just got lucky.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  But is biotech going to be a smaller industry in 10 years? Probably not. I mean, but, but you should still diversify within that industry. And I call them the kickers. It's the thing that could go up 400% and it did. I think I had a 400% gain on that, that fund. But that's rare. You know, I also had for a while a fund of the oil companies. Because here's my thinking, and this, this perfectly displays why people are bad at investing. I said to myself, well, You know, there's one thing that's not going to change. Oil is going to be hard to get and, you know, will be expensive. Supply and demand, we'll always need more of it. It's hard to get.

• 1:11:39Speaker 03

  Supply might be more restricted. It's the easiest investment in the world. I'm not even betting on a individual company. I've got a group of companies. Of course, that industry is going to be fine. Except that it isn't. You know, and then Putin decided that oil should be $20 a barrel or whatever the hell he's doing. And suddenly the shale business collapses and the industry starts, you know, melting. Now, could I have seen that coming? Maybe some people were smarter and saw it coming. Maybe it's possible, but it was a hard one. So that's why it's so important that even if you're getting a little, you know, 10% of your portfolio, if you're putting in these even funds of an industry

• 1:12:24Speaker 03

  that's the most solid industry you've ever seen in your life, can all change tomorrow. So that's where diversification is your friend.

• 1:12:34Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that makes a lot of sense. Last thing before I let you go. There's a lot of people, when I ask, kind of what questions do you have for Scott? They were asking some version of business leaders today, especially in times of uncertainty and fear and obviously the coronavirus, the economic impact, et cetera. Kind of how would you, if you were talking to them, how would you kind of either coach them or guide them through these times, right? Both in terms of externally, maybe how they communicate with customers or, you know, other partners, et cetera. But then also internally as a leader of a company with employees and kind of all of that going on, just how do you think about that as either the CEOs of these businesses should be thinking?

• 1:13:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Or actually any execution type stuff?

• 1:13:22Speaker 03

  Well, the good news is, I think that by the time you've become a CEO of a major company, you don't need my advice. And that means that they're taking the position of employees first. You know, maybe customers first, depending on the nature of your business. But if at the end of this crisis, your employees think, wow, they really cared about me. In some cases, they paid me to not go to work. They were flexible. They did everything. They said the right things. That company is going to be stronger after this because the employees are going to remember that. People remember when you do them a favor. It's a basic principle of reciprocity. So people who feel like they got treated well are going to be really good employees

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  because they're going to be paying back sort of every day just by their actions, their loyalty, et cetera. So the smart CEOs, but of course, only the ones who have the wherewithal to be able to do this, are going to be real kind to their employees. And that's a good investment right now. It's a good investment for the country, but it's also good for the company. So I think anybody smart enough to be a major CEO knows that they're all going to be compared. And if, you know, if Amazon, I'll just pick random companies. But if Amazon did a great job for its employees and you didn't, they're going to know and it's going to cost you.

• 1:14:46Speaker 03

  So I think people know that there's a big price to be paid in a national emergency if you don't step up. People are also expecting their companies to help with the emergency. So it's not enough to just, you know, help your employees, but they're going to have to, you know, build a factory, convert something, help something, be part of the answer. It's not a spectator sport. If your CEO is not taking care of the employees first, but then also seeing what can be done to help on the larger problem for the country and the world, they're probably not doing it right. So those are the things you need to get right. You know, first empathy, empathy first, then, you know, then say what you're going to do.

• 1:15:31Speaker 03

  You know, play it straight. Don't scaremonger. Don't play it down. You know, play it as straight as the government is, at least Fauci. Take your lead from him. And I think you're set. It's not really a complicated thing, but if you lead with empathy, take care of your people, it'll come back to you.

• 1:15:53Anthony Pompliano?

  The best solutions are usually the simplest, which is definitely true right now. I end each conversation with two questions and then let you ask me one to finish up. The first is, what is your favorite book or the most important book you've read, but it cannot for you be one that you have written?

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say that the book Influence by Robert Cialdini is a must read for anybody in any kind of a business or organization, anybody who deals with people and needs to influence them. So to understand the world and how irrational people are and how easily they're influenced by things you wouldn't necessarily think were influential. So I would say that's the number one book and everybody should have read that if they're in the business world at least.

• 1:16:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And then aliens, are you a believer, non-believer, think they're real?

• 1:16:53Speaker 03

  Well, I'm a believer of simulation theory and believer, of course, I'll put that in quotes. The idea behind simulation theory, just for anybody listening who doesn't already know, is that the odds of us being a real civilization versus someone else's computer simulation is very low. Because for every civilization that will be able to build a simulated software, let's say civilization, and then look at it, let it run out, run out its evolution, for every one that can do that, they're not just going to make one, they'll make lots of them. So the odds of us being the original species versus something that

• 1:17:36Speaker 03

  the original species created that is more of a virtual, you know, hologram and software and we think we're real, but we're not, the odds are that we're a simulation. And you know, if you calculate the odds, it's probably a trillion to one, which doesn't mean it's true. But at least as we see the world, it looks like it's probably a trillion to one in favor of it. So I like the odds. So when you say, that's why I put a quote on belief, well, I don't believe it. I simply observe that these things are true and that would give us an odds of, I don't know, trillion to one that we're not real. Not real in the sense of being an original species. So if you were a software simulation, would the simulators build worlds that you weren't

• 1:18:21Speaker 03

  going to visit? And the answer is no. You wouldn't use resources to build an alien planet that nobody in your Earth simulation could ever see, unless it's just for fun, you have some other simulation going. But probably it's just us, because that's the way a programmer would make it. They'd say, "I'll build one world. I'm not building two worlds. That's just somebody else's simulation." But in your world, this is it. So probably we're a simulation and probably we're programmed like a human programmer would program, and there are resource constraints, and you would not build worlds that you did not visit. And so, no.

• 1:19:05Speaker 03

  Under the simulation theory, it is unlikely that there would be aliens, but could be? Yeah, maybe it's maybe we're like a video game where you have to go up to another level. You have to win this level and beat the coronavirus before you see the aliens. So I guess anything's possible, but I'm not betting on aliens.

• 1:19:26Anthony Pompliano?

  As soon as you said, "Get to the next level," I thought coronavirus may be the end of this level.

• 1:19:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, when we beat it, we'll be the end of the level. It's not going to beat us.

• 1:19:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. What one question do you have for me to finish up?

• 1:19:43Speaker 03

  I do have a question for you. So you asked me to be on because you've been following my work for a while. Pick out the one thing that I've said or you've read about me that made the most impact in a real-world way that changed something you did.

• 1:20:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, I think that my favorite thing you've ever written is the book Win Bigly. And I think that you, in a very clear way articulated this idea of weapons-grade persuasion. But one of the things that I took out of there that I think previously many people debated was, is this something that is innate in somebody, kind of they, you know, nature versus nurture type thing? And the anecdotes that you used in terms of, you know, I think there was an example of the logo or the mottos for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And kind of one was very data-driven and testing. The other was kind of just, you know, make America great again.

• 1:20:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Those types of things or the Rosie O'Donnell example at the debate, et cetera. What I think that it really showed me was there is some people, right? There's probably a small group of people, but some people who have more of an innate ability or inclination to have that persuasion. And it's probably more nurtured over time, their experiences, you know, where they grow up, who they interact with, et cetera. But it really made me think kind of critically about the idea of what happens when those people then also focus on becoming better at what they're already good at, right? Kind of if I'm good at something, could I become great at it? And it really made me think through, there's probably not that many people

• 1:21:31Anthony Pompliano?

  who are good at something that focus on it enough to become great, because being good at it means that they get by just good enough. But people like, you know, maybe it's a John F. Kennedy or a Martin Luther King, who kind of already have the charisma and have the ability to be persuasive, et cetera, and then actually focus on improving it. You know, it turns them into kind of world-class, if you will. And so I think that just those anecdotes really kind of said, well, what if you use the innate ability and then overlay it with kind of the professionalism of trying to be great at it? It just really made me think a lot. And you were one of the only people who I think has talked about that in detail.

• 1:22:11Speaker 03

  Great. Yeah, I think of persuasion like any other skill. You know, people have a natural ability, but everybody can be better at it. So sort of like learning to write, you know, you won't necessarily become Shakespeare, but everybody can learn the technique of writing better. So persuasion is just that. And you're right. If you start with a with a President Trump personality, it becomes weapons grade because he's he takes bigger risks. He goes bigger than people in that. That accentuates his his technique. But for a regular person, you know, you could be an introvert, and it would still be really helpful stuff because everybody's persuading all the time. Thank you for that answer. I appreciated that.

• 1:22:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Where um, where can people go find you online? Where would you like them to go visit to to find out more about the books and all the work that you've done?

• 1:23:02Speaker 03

  Well, the good news is I'm a minorly famous. You could just Google my name and everything will pop out. But Dilber.com for the comic and for other commentary. Scott Adams says, all one word, Scott Adams says, on Twitter, and that'll get you to everything else.

• 1:23:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Well, Scott, listen, I really appreciate you doing this, especially during the chaotic coronavirus times. But I think people are really going to enjoy this one. So I appreciate you taking the time to do it.

• 1:23:34Speaker 03

  Thank you. Thanks for having me. Like I said, I'm gonna have a lot of time in the house. So might be doing some extra podcasting. So thanks for spending some time with the I enjoyed this and let's do it again.

• 1:23:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, everyone. Pop here. If you like this episode of Off the Chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple, Spotify, and other podcast charts, please do us a favor and rate, review, and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off the Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off the Chain.