 So what I want to talk about today is I want to talk about the Jerusalem decision the decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem the US Embassy to declare Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel. I want to talk about that decision quad decision, but particularly in reference to President Trump's President top speech about it, where he basically described what he's trying to achieve and what he's trying to do. And I also and I've got a few other topics. Let me just note that if you're interested in this Jerusalem thing and you want a longer analysis and more detail and kind of a step by step analysis of what of what happened and a little bit of the history of it. I encourage you to go watch Ilan Giorno's video that he put up today on the INREN Institute Facebook page. The INREN Institute Facebook page has a little session with Ilan Giorno, where he is talking about this Jerusalem decision I think has the right approach. Although, as we'll see, I think probably gives gives Trump a little bit too much credit for this decision. But I think I do. I do too. So it's easy to do because the decision abstracted away from the context is the right decision. Of course, the embassy should be in Jerusalem. It should be a no brainer. It should have been a no brainer for every administration since 1967 really going back to 1948. Jerusalem is the capital of the state of Israel. Israel is for the most part a white suspecting country for the United States not to recognize a white suspecting country, a free country and essentially good country for the United States not to recognize their choice for their capital is absurd, immoral, irrational, suicidal on the part of the United States. It is just a stupid policy and a policy that is completely, completely meant to compromise with every Arab dictator in the Arab world. It's supposed to appease every thug in the Muslim world. It is these kinds of decisions that the United States has engaged in over the last, I don't know, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years that have led to the rise of Islamic totalitarianism have convinced them that we are nothing but a paper tiger and have convinced them, convinced them that we are nothing and that they can easily destroy us. They can easily destroy us. Or they can easily, well not destroy us physically, but basically they can intimidate us. If they can intimidate us about Jerusalem being the capital of Israel, they can intimidate us about anything. There's no standard. So they can intimidate us about anything. So this has been for decades a crucial issue in which the United States is basically projected to the world that we have no foreign policy. We have no backbone. We have no spine. We have no principles. And we will not actually respect our one ally in the Middle East, the one free country in the Middle East, the one white suspecting country in the Middle East. No, we'll place the so-called pseudo interests of dictators, of thugs, of criminals, of rights violating monsters. Yes, I could go on and on. I said above and above the legitimate claims of the state of Israel, which is a relatively right suspecting country and a good country and a country in which, you know, if you went there and you walked around the street, you would feel completely like you in any Western country. You would feel completely at home because it is a Western country in the sense of respect for the individual. You know, it's not a utopia. It's not even close to an ideal. It's got a lot of problems. And I'm a huge critic of the state of Israel with regard to those problems. But in comparison to its neighbors, it is an amazing, positive, wonderful place. And in comparison to Europe and the United States, it's just as good. So if we respect the United States, if we respect Europe as rights-respecting places, we have to respect Israel as well. And therefore, the embassy should be there. Now, what did Donald Trump say? Now, part of what he says is good. See, he starts the speech off great. You know, when it came into office, I promised to look at the world's challenges with open eyes and very fresh thinking. I don't know about the thinking part of that. We cannot solve our problems by making the same fail to some sense and repeating the same failed strategies of the past. All challenges demand new approaches. Great. Absolutely. This demands a new approach. What's the new approach? He never says. I expected something in the speech to say, this is step one and here's the grand strategy. Here's the principles. Here's the new way we approach it. Now, I didn't really expect this because it is Donald Trump. But that would have been the appropriate thing to do to say this is the way in which it should be framed. This is our new approach to the whole Palestinian-Israeli issue. And, you know, this is step one in a multi-step process. He never says that. Indeed, after he says many, many, many times how much everybody's always promised us and nobody's ever fulfilled it. And he's the only guy who ever fulfills his promises, which is really, you know, the point of the whole speech at the end. He basically reaffirms long-term US policy about the Middle East. He talks about the need for peace, the need for a two-stage solution if both parties agree to it. He talks about, he ends the speech with God bless Israel, God bless Palestinians and God bless the United States, establishing kind of a moral equivalency. It's filled with moral equivalency after the one decision. So he makes a decision and then he makes it meaningless by not actually articulating what it is, what it is that has changed about the new US approach to the Middle East peace crisis. Which should be, and I'm not going to get into a big thing, which should be unequivocal support for Israel's right to exist. A demand, an immediate demand that Palestinians repudiate forever and for once. They're interesting using violence in order to achieve their aim. The immediate recognition of the state of Israel on the part of the Palestinians. Immediate respect for the sanctity of the state of Israel. And only on that basis should any negotiations, any negotiations begin. As long as the Palestinians refuse to recognize Israel, as long as they don't repudiate violence in order to achieve political means, Israel and the United States should not negotiate for one second with any Palestinians. So anyway, that would have been ideal if he'd said something like that, but he didn't say anything even close to that. He said this decision is not intended in any way to reflect the departure from our strong commitment to facilitate a lasting peace agreement. Which is meaningless or at best, you know, saying, yeah, we still believe in anything we told you we believed in before. All right, so that is, that is, you know, so it's an action that could have had immense meaning. A president that actually had a moral standing, even even a little bit, a president that actually had a foreign policy. This could really be a significant event. This could be symbolic. You could identify it symbolic. We are now unequivocally supporting Israel. And Palestinians, we are putting you on notice. But unfortunately, that is not what's happened here. It's a wasted opportunity. Shouldn't be surprised. This is Donald Trump. This is Donald Trump after all. Okay. One other thing to note about this, which is always fun is the panic of the media. This is going to cause a World War three. I saw some maybe that wasn't in the media. Maybe that was in Twitter, but the media is all apoplectic instability in the Middle East. The Palestinians, you know, they'll never be peace. Now, you know, this is a destroy any chance we'll ever have at peace. Absolutely untrue. If this were principle standard Donald Trump took, if this was actually a stand for or that represented a principle support of Israel and and was a reflection of the Palestinians saying to the Palestinians, shape up. Stop behaving yourselves or you are finished. If it had been that, then this, this is a prerequisite for peace. Indeed, moving the embassy to Jerusalem is a prerequisite for any kind of peaceful solution in the future. So it's very entertaining to watch the media all across the board, particularly in Europe, go apoplectic about this. So the only virtue of Trump is it causes the left to go bonkers. And it's enjoyable to watch the left go bonkers. All right. All right, a few other things, a few other issues to cover and a few other disturbing things, unfortunately, that I have to cover. This one is obviously enough on the French page, but is is from the tutorial page of the New York of the sorry of the Wall Street Journal. It's an editorial written by Peter Wallison, who who is excellent on a lot of things, not not perfect but but excellent, particularly in the financial crisis was very good on the role of the Afredi and Fanny and the government regulations and causing the financial crisis, the whole issue of housing policy. And he has written an op-ed. And it was in the journal today, pointing out the while Donald Trump seems to have appointed some people to positions. All through the regulatory branches of his administration that are deregulating. At the same time, the Treasury Department, the Treasury Department is doing is just come out with a number of decisions, recommendations that exact opposite that actually are going to increase regulations above and beyond what what even Obama administration was doing. And this relates to a report that the Treasury Department just issued about the federal about this is the FSOC, which is the Financial Stability Oversight Council. Financial Stability Oversight Council. This is a council set up by Dodd Frank to protect us to protect us because we need protection from systemic risk. The danger of systemic risk dragging us into another recession or even worse into a great depression like event. So we set up a group of regulators, central planners who are going to monitor the world, identify, identify the places where there's real risk for systemic collapse and catastrophe and take action. So our response to a crisis caused by the Federal by the Federal Reserve by the systemic risk associated by central planners dictating interest rates. And by housing policy, central planning with regard to mortgages and housing is to create a new entity of central planning. The Financial Stability Oversight Council that will now regulate, regulate what they call systemic companies, right? So it's a, this is part of Dodd Frank and remember Dodd Frank was something that Trump said he wanted to eliminate or shrink dramatically. And so there are two provisions, the two things that the Financial Stability Oversight Council can do. One, it can designate any company, right? Any large non-bank financial firm. It can designate as systemic, having systemic risk, right? Any non-bank financial firm can be defined as systemic risk and therefore be required to undergo intense supervision by the Federal Reserve in its capacity as regulated. So increased regulation on those firms that this council deems as, you know, systemically dangerous. And they've done this under Obama. They did this. They went after insurance companies. They went after, oh, they went after even non-financial companies. It was bizarre. And some of them, these things in courts and some of them they won and some of them they lost. But they basically expanded the realm of Federal Reserve regulation to go beyond banking, which is traditionally what they've done to other non-bank financial institutions. Now, there's a second power that they have, which Obama administration never actually used. And that is the ability to designate any financial company of any size for enhanced Fed supervision. If it's, quote, nature scope, size, scale, concentration, interconnectedness or mix of activities could threaten U.S. financial stability. In other words, they have the power to define any action that a financial institution takes. And I'm sorry I'm getting a little technical here, but, you know, what can you do? The news is technical. And you've got to understand the extent to which the central planners are putting their tentacles into every aspect, certainly of the financial industry. And this has consequences for fintech, for high-tech alternatives to traditional financial institutions. They're really to everything. So what they can basically do is they can decide that a certain activity that a financial institution of any size, systemically risky or not, any of those activities could be deemed inappropriate or dangerous to the U.S. financial stability. And therefore it falls under additional federal regulation, which basically kills that activity. So this means they could start regulating insurance companies about investing their long-term debt in things that this council deems as too risky. Or they could regulate broker-dealers, preventing them from underwriting securities of, you know, of, I don't know, institutions that the council doesn't like. Or they could regulate anybody who's in the financial sector, including fintech, new tech companies, if they deem their activities to be negative, to have negative consequences. Now, this is a Republican Treasury Department. This is a Trump Treasury Department, which is supposed to be deregulating. And yet they're the ones who are saying now, we need to start using this power. We need to start regulating all these financial institutions much more severely, much more intensely, than even Obama administration did. In addition, the Treasury Department has also said that it's in favor of an explicit government guarantee for whatever lands up replacing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. So Freddie Fannie, this government guarantee, the government guaranteed their bonds. So what they're saying is we're going to guarantee the bonds, we're going to guarantee the bonds forever. Now that government guarantee is partially what led, that cheap capital is partially what led to the financial crisis. So here goes a Trump Treasury Department is just going to do the same mistakes of Bush and Obama and Johnson and Nixon and Clinton and everybody else. So so much for Trump is going to deregulate. Yeah, he's going to deregulate some places and he's going to increase regulations in other places. And the combination is just going to be as disastrous as it ever was. So, you know, I've said some nice things about the attempts to deregulate of this administration and putting some good people in place and some of these regulatory agencies. This article by Peter Wallison has brought some reality to bear on my assessment, saying the Treasury Department is going in the opposite direction, more regulations, more controls. And it just proves that pragmatists are pragmatists are pragmatists that somebody as unideological, unprincipled as Donald Trump is. Nominate somebody as unideological, unprincipled as Mnuchin is for Treasury Secretary is ultimately going to result in unprincipled, un, you know, complete wasteful activities that are not going to increase freedom that are not going to increase prosperity that are not going to make any kind of substantial changes that are not going to drain the swamp. Indeed, what is more swamp ish than Freddie and Fannie? What is biggest swamp animal than Freddie and Fannie and yet Freddie and Fannie being protected by this Treasury Department under Trump who claimed he was going to drain the swamp. So more marks against Trump. What can I say? All right, a quick one here just just because it's horrible. I just noticed the story and it's so classical. You know this there's an app developer called Chow Now. And what it does is it it has a platform and then you could develop like an app on its platform. So in this case, different restaurants have their own apps on this Chow How platform. Apple has decided for whatever reason and I'm not getting into the business decision. Apple decided that it will not take a platform type apps. It will only take apps that it build for a particular purpose and not platform apps that then can other apps can be created on top of. I don't understand the technicalities of it. But the point is this, the Chow How didn't like Chow Now doesn't like this decision. So instead of, I don't know, I don't know what it could do. But instead of creating a new app or instead of going to shifting to another platform or instead of arguing with Apple. What Chow How has done is it's hired a band of lobbyists to go to Capitol Hill and lobby on its behalf as a consequence. And I'm a congressman have written Apple nasty letters demanding that Apple change its business model and be fair quote and and and make it possible for Chow How and similar apps to be on their platform. This is how cronyism happens. Why the politicians have any power over what Apple does or does not do with its platform. Stay out of our business stay out. You know, anyway, so it's it's it's just a just a little example from some page but you can imagine that these things. Dozens of these things are happening every day. All right. In like two minutes, I'm going to start taking calls. So if you want to call in it's 347-324-3075 347-324-3075. When you call in press one so that I know you want to ask a question. Press the one key on your phone so that I know you want to ask a question. Okay. The last point I want to make is just again kind of a, you know, interesting that the Democrats are going apoplectic because of this tax cut. I don't know why they're going so apoplectic. The tax cut is not so dramatic as to as to as to change anything. These are the Democrats are still sucking money from the rich and redistributed it massively. You're still living under this pretense that there is such a thing as corporate taxes and the corporations pay taxes. So now it's a 20% instead of what it used to be, but it's still absurd and ridiculous. I don't know what they Democrats upset about. It's still a massively progressive tax system. Anyway, they are upset. They're so upset that they they're blaming all kinds of stuff on on this tax cut. People are going to die is the latest one. And, you know, they just have these headlines. You know, economists predict that people will die because of tax cuts. Now, the main reason they think they're going to die because of this tax bill is because the Obamacare mandate is part is going to be repealed as part of the tax cut. It's one of the virtues of the tax cut that the mandate is going to go away. And the assumption is that if the mandate go away, people won't have insurance and they'll die. Now, even if that's true, that's not the tax cut killing them. That's the repeal of the mandate. So say repealing it. One aspect of Obamacare will kill people. That would be more technically correct. Now that's still not true because every study in the world shows that when people are in a sense forced to buy insurance, they don't perform any better than they did before they were forced to buy insurance in terms of health outcomes. So it's just, you know, typical media hysteria panic over the top nuttiness. So, you know, it's the typical left that once they instill fear, which is the key emotion and wants to just get people wild up. There are a lot of arguments you can make against this tax cut. It's just not very good. I mean, I'm for it, but I'm not excited about it because it's just not a very good. It's not a very good tax cut. The panic among the media is just entertaining to watch. It's similar to the panic among the media around the issue of Jerusalem. So on any of these issues, you can kind of just do Google News and just watch the stream of media on a particular topic. And it's just 90% of it is completely biased BS nonsense, complete garbage worthless. And, you know, it's it's it's worth knowing that a lot of what these people are waiting about these issues is just it just it's just worthless. That's it. All right. Last chance to call in. I'm going to count down in those of you who've called and use the phone to listen to the show. If you want to ask a question, press one because otherwise I think there's nobody on the line who wants to ask a question. I'm going to assume there is indeed no questions tonight. And we'll continue with these. We'll see how much value you guys gain from this. So how much value. All right, we got a caller. Let's let's take the caller. How are you on your own book show? Who's this? Hi, you're on. This is Mark from Michigan. Hey, Mark. How's it going? Good. I'm liking this, this new, this new format. I hope you keep it up. Yeah, I will. I'm just, I need to figure out these stupid technical issues that drives me nuts. I don't know what's going on. But anyway, what's up? Yeah, so I was just thinking about the tax bill that you were just talking about and the different ways people perceive it. Because I'm looking at the Wall Street Journal, their editorial board is really annoyed that it basically doesn't give a cut to the individual rates for the top earners. It even kind of raises it on the top earners. But that's just on the income taxes. But then the left is really obsessed with the kind of distribution of the corporate tax rate cut. And they just kind of assume that because it's rich people that own stocks, the rate cut for the businesses is just a big tax cut for the rich. But there's a lot of academic debate about exactly what happens when you there's no real academic debate about corporate taxes because it's pretty much being done. And I'll refer you to a show I did. I think a few days ago, I think it's on Sunday. No, on Saturday, I think it was my one of my shows. You can find a blog talk on a podcasting app on YouTube. It's on YouTube as well. We are analyzed the tax bill and the whole issue on taxes. But yeah, I mean, what what the Democrats love and what politicians generally love about corporate taxes is that it's a hidden tax. It's it's you can say, oh, I'm going after those evil rich people and evil corporations and we know our evil and bad corporations are and I'm going after them and I'm going to crush them. And yet all you are is taxing workers and you're taxing consumers. I mean, every almost every study shows that something about 50 to 60% of the taxes paid by workers. Another 30 to 40% of it is paid by consumers and maybe 10% is paid by taxpayers, not by taxpayers. Sorry, by by stockholders. So we all know this. This is this is but but nobody says it because it's too, you know, most politicians think the voting published is stupid. So they never try to elevate the discussion. They never try to make an argument. They never they never try to to present facts or actual information about these things. So so most people think, yeah, those those rich guys are paying it when actually it's them that are paying it. Now, the only the way in which Republicans are positioning the cut the cut is not to say it's a hidden cut. It's a hidden tax. It really should be zero. Corporations don't pay taxes because corporations are just this legal legal thing. It's not really individuals only people pay taxes. So the only good rate is zero. We can't do zero will do 20% but but the beneficiaries are workers and consumer and consumers. They're not saying that the same things like we have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world and therefore for competitive reasons we need to cut it, which is they are partially true and partially just silly and again not focusing on anything essential. So the Democrats upset because they love the corporate tax and they think this is a wedge issue. This is an issue where they can use what do you call it class warfare and get the American people wild up over class warfare. And the Republicans have no way to really defend the cutting corporate taxes. They're going to do it good for them but they don't they can't really defend it. So it's an easy one for the Democrats to attack. The Wall Street Journal editorial board are smart people. They know economics and they know that if you really want to stimulate economic growth, the most important tax rate to cut is the top marginal rate. So if you really want to get people investing, if you really want to get people saving and investing, then what you want is to cut as deeply as possible the top marginal rate. So this isn't they don't make a moral argument. They make a purely economic argument and they're right on the purely economic argument. The Wall Street Journal editorial board actually knows economics. But yeah, for full analysis, go to the show for a few days ago. All right, thank you. Sure. Sure. Thanks for calling. All right. Thanks everybody. I'm glad. I'm glad you guys are enjoying this new format. I hope you tell your friends about it. I hope you share. I hope you share share share. And we will put up video of this. I did make a recording of it so we can't put up video of this on YouTube or at least a portion of it. So that'll go up today tomorrow sometime. So share that share the podcast and let people know. And of course, don't forget to support the show on patreon.com. So go to Patreon and and show show your love show your love. All right, talk to you maybe tomorrow but certainly on the weekend talk to you all soon. Bye guys.