Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad streets in New York City, you're inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's 12 exchanges and six clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE House. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange
Josh King:
Nature or nurture? It's the age old question. You grow up in Gaza in the Palestinian territory, your opportunities are going to be dramatically different probably than if you grow up 44 miles to the north in Tel Aviv. You grow up in Chelsea, Massachusetts a little north of Boston, which was constantly beset by economic distress and in 1973, as I recall, suffered a conflagration that burned 18 acres to the ground. Your chances of success might be dramatically different than if you grew up in Newton, a perennially affluent suburb a little west of Boston, just about 10 miles away from Chelsea. Nature versus nurture. Our guest today, Ian Bremmer was one of those kids from Chelsea, I was one of those kids from Newton. After getting his PhD in political science from Stanford in 1994, Ian at 25 became the youngest ever national fellow of the Hoover Institution.
Josh King:
At 25, I was selling cellular phones in the British Virgin Islands, listening to Jimmy Buffett and wilding away the full moon at the Bomba Shack. So nurture counts for a lot. In his latest book, Us Vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism, Bremmer writes, '"A kid born on the hard edge of a great American, the child of a single mother, my dad died when I was four, who with uncommon singleness of purpose walked two boys passed every trap and pushed us towards success. One small sample of the American dream." That's from Ian Bremmer in Us Vs. Them. Nature versus nurture, Us Vs. Them. The American dream, the Chinese dream, the European Union dream, the Middle East dream. When you're Ian Bremmer, you're constantly on a plane, on the phone, on the air, analyzing the current status of these and so many other geopolitical dreams and the risks they entail. As the year wines to a close Ian's passport is put away for the final week of 2018 and he's sipping a cup of eggnog with us in the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Our conversation with Ian Bremmer right after this.
Speaker 3:
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Josh King:
Our guest today, Ian Bremmer, is the President and Founder of Eurasia Group, a leading global political research and consulting firm. He's the author of nine books, including Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World, and his latest, which I talked about earlier in the introduction, Us Vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism, which is a New York Times, bestseller. Ian's a regular contributor to news networks and several publications, including Time Magazine, where he is the foreign affairs columnist and editor at large. He's also a professor at NYU, so a neighbor of mine in Greenwich village. And today the bell ringer of the New York Stock Exchange celebrating the first full year of G-Zero Media, which I was late to until I saw my friend Ben White do 60 seconds on the midterms and thought so cool. I can miss three hours of Morning Joe, and get smart on the midterms in just about a minute. Welcome Ian to the ICE House.
Ian Bremmer:
Good to be with you.
Josh King:
I saw the bio on your Twitter page. Interesting reference, if you lived here, you'd be home now. Perhaps a reference to that sign we saw as kids waiting in traffic on Storrow Drive, as we crawled our way toward the Callahan tunnel.
Ian Bremmer:
Oh my God. You're the only person that actually gets that initial reference. And it's funny because as a kid that grew up in the projects, I remember it was right across from the Museum of Science at the other side of Charles River. And I would see that sign and I would go, "Oh my God, can you imagine what it would be like if you lived here, you'd be home now." But of course it's much more-
Josh King:
We all thought that.
Ian Bremmer:
But it's much existential than that. It's also, especially where we all live virtual lives and digital lives, and we're all getting our heads blown up by things we don't agree with. If you lived here, meaning if you also lived on this Twitter feed, you'd be home now, it'd be okay. You wouldn't take yourself so seriously, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But yes, exactly it was that sign that-
Josh King:
Not enough Bostonians are reading the bio on your Twitter page unfortunately, of a certain age. I don't know is the sign still up there?
Ian Bremmer:
I don't know, it's not exactly. It's been gone for at least a decade.
Josh King:
It is a decent metaphor for us versus them. Those who live in the gleaming condos along the Charles River, versus those who tough it out on the mean streets of Chelsea.
Ian Bremmer:
This was a book I should have written 10 years ago. After the financial crisis, I thought about writing this book. And I didn't, because it was pretty clear that the Occupy Wall Street Movement, right across the street from where we are right now, was not going to be around for very long. And I'm like, "Well, I can write this book and by the time it comes out, no one's going to care." And that was analytically correct, but it was a really bad reason not to write the book because of course these issues are getting worse. And this environment of us versus them is becoming weaponized both in our country and around the world. And it made me feel enough already, I have to get a little more personal with this message.
Josh King:
Your high school offered a program, Teach a Kid How America Works, as you write you leaped at the chance to join. What did you learn once you were inside one of those buildings of Boston's green and gold skyline, except that it had the deepest carpet you'd ever seen?
Ian Bremmer:
Just the fact that there was such an environment out there. When you're a kid and you've never been in a city and you've never been up a fast elevator and you don't know what these people in these offices do, you've maybe seen them on TV or in a movie, but they don't really exist in real life. And then suddenly along with high school friends, I'm brought into this environment every week and I'm experiencing something that is completely different. Not that I necessarily wanted to become a banker or a corporate executive, but simply that I was then suddenly had a few people around me that said, this is an option for you, this is something that you could potentially do. My mother did everything for my brother and I to have every possible opportunity, but she wouldn't have known how to articulate that potential path because she'd never experienced it.
Ian Bremmer:
So I think maybe the fact that it was really deep carpet sounds stupid, but I'd never had really deep carpet. I remember that just because it was so obviously different. It reminded me as much as the first time when I read 1984 by George Orwell. And when the main character suddenly finds out what it's like to be a part of the elite and has a glass of wine or real coffee for the first time, that feels very dystopian. But the fact is that all of us experience sudden moments in our lives where we're exposed to something completely different from everything that we've been brought up to believe is possible. And for me, that was one.
Josh King:
So in 1984, John Silber is president of Boston University. He'll eventually go on to run for governor of Massachusetts, but along the way, while at BU he has this ambitious project to remake Chelsea. I don't know when the last time you visited Chelsea was you write about it a little bit in Us Vs. Them. But as history, looking back in hindsight, John Silber hero or goat for Chelsea?
Ian Bremmer:
Oh, I guess a little of both. Look, the fact is that we lost our right to have a mayor in Chelsea. And I go back quite a bit actually, because it's where I'm from. In fact, one thing that I did was Sergey Kiriyenko, the former prime minister of Russia during the crisis in 1998, I invited and brought him to the United States right after I started my company, he was a friend. And he had just gotten pummelled at an event we did at Harvard because there was suddenly a default and a devaluation at the same time. So the markets were not treating him kindly. And I told him he needed a roast beef sandwich at Kelly's Roast Beef. And so I brought him to Kelly's Roast Beef, not much-
Josh King:
Not Santarpio's Pizza, that's where you got to bring him.
Ian Bremmer:
No, the Newbridge Cafe I could've done that too. But the fact is here he is on Riviera beach and he was not expecting much. And he had the first one and then he had a second one and things felt a little bit better. So you have nostalgia for your places. Why am I talking you about that? Chelsea, Silber, because when I was in high school, I was the aid for mayor James D. Mitchell in high school. And I was something like 12 or 13 years old. And Mitchell he's a smart guy, he liked me, he had a temper, he drank a lot. And at one point we had some bomb threats and there was big flooding and there was a family that only spoke Vietnamese. And I had to find a translator because there were live electrical wires and we didn't want them to die. It was crazy. And I remember there was supposed to be a press conference and he was deep in his cups and did not want to talk to the press. So he gave me the talking point-
Josh King:
All at 12 years old?
Ian Bremmer:
At 12. And so I remember there were a bunch of folks from the media, including R.D. Sahl, who was one of-
Josh King:
The great R.D. Sahl.
Ian Bremmer:
The great R.D. Sahl. And I came out to give the talking points and I explained that the mayor was not going to be there. And he was not going to put me on camera and he demanded to talk to the mayor. I'm like, "Well, this is all you're getting my friend." So he took my statement and that was that and they put it out, but I unfortunately did not manage to deliver his live on television.
Josh King:
It is now 10:15, so 45 minutes after you've rung the opening bell. What brought you to the New York Stock Exchange today?
Ian Bremmer:
Oh, we've worked together with the New York Stock Exchange for I think about 15 years done a lot of events with the listed company CEOs, the board, Davos, you name it. I rang the bell about 10 years ago for Eurasia Group, a company I started back in 1998 and now having the first anniversary of G-Zero Media, a new media company that we've started because if you watch the media these days, it doesn't feel good. It feels inauthentic, it feels increasingly like they're telling you and us versus them story. And I didn't think that was okay. So that's why I started a year ago, and I'm delighted to now have all of these new content delivery vehicles. We can help have a conversation with particularly young people all over the world, we've got almost 5 million followers. We've got a show on public television. And one year in we've announced we've got our first anniversary and we're celebrating it right here with you on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. What a great place to do that.
Josh King:
We're going to talk a lot more about G-Zero in a few minutes, but you and I, when we were kids, I think we had our first glimpses of what we started to learn was the G7. And there was Ronald Reagan and Francois Mitterrand and Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney and the other leaders of the industrialized countries, and then there was the G20. And here comes Ian Bremmer with G-Zero. Just give us the origin of this name versus the G's that we've grown up with.
Ian Bremmer:
I remember, I'll tell you the exact origin as I was watching a morning show before work, I was on the treadmill and I saw the former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski after a G20 meeting, and the G20 where the world's most powerful 20 economies, their heads of state meet. And it was a fairly dysfunctional group because they don't agree on much. And that was true back then, it's certainly even more true now. You've got countries like China and Saudi Arabia who have state owned and run economies who have authoritarian political systems. Then you have the United States and France and Canada, which are free market representative democracies and Republican democracies.
Ian Bremmer:
So it didn't work very well. And he said, "It's not really a G20. What it really is, is a G2." It's really the United States and China that behind the scenes are running things. And they can't really admit to that, but that's what we're evolving towards. And I could not have disagreed more with Zbigniew Brzezinski. I thought it was so ridiculous that this man who always had a B in his bonnet about the Russians, the former Soviets, and so anything he could do to put them down and put the Chinese up. And he was being ideologically driven to say that actually it's all about the US, China.
Ian Bremmer:
And I can't stand it when really smart people use a platform to spin a story, to be ideological, to analytically deceive folks. So it upset me. And I thought to myself, how ridiculous? He didn't even get the right number that the G20 isn't working, but he picked the two, as opposed to what it really is, the zero, that there isn't leadership there increasingly is an absence of global leadership. We're going through this unusual vacuum that post American order, and no one runs it. And it's going to take some time before we figure out what the next order is, and he's not admitting that. So then I thought to myself, G-Zero, that's cool. Let me look up who else has been talking about that.
Ian Bremmer:
So I get back to my house an hour later from the gym and I go online to look up who else has used the term, G-Zero, and in what context, what other political scientists thought that was correct and proper. And it didn't exist, it literally didn't exist. And that's when you have this direct bifurcated analytic moment that really it's a horrifying and exciting moment when you realize on the one hand, "Oh, damn. I have to write a book. And wow, this is extraordinary. I've got this really cool idea that I need to, I can be the first to actually write about it." The best ideas are the ones that are really obvious after the fact, but no one actually thought about them until then. And that was the way G-Zero came to mind.
Josh King:
So still sweating from the treadmill you're in front of your computer, how long does it take you to crank out G-Zero?
Ian Bremmer:
Oh, it was at least by afternoon. I wasn't done. No, I immediately took an hour and wrote out everything I could think of that was in my head around what that would mean. That was eventually the structure for a book that came out a year and a half later. But in this case, the first time I've ever done this with a book, I actually wrote a big article that became the cover Foreign Affairs Magazine a solid year before it, because I recognized that anything that was that obvious, at least to me, was probably going to be obvious to more people as the world moved in that direction. And I just wanted to get it out there, have people start talking about it.
Josh King:
You're such a prolific and fast writer. I was just reading your newest weekly note this morning. You're fresh off the plane from the Arab Strategy Forum in the United Arab Emirates, your last trip of the year as you write and perhaps a hopeful meeting this year as you seem to detect more willingness to talk and negotiate than you've seen on your prior trips. What did you learn and what's the state of play in the Middle East?
Ian Bremmer:
So the big change, of course, since the last time I visited some six months ago is the extraordinary now almost two months of constant media around the murder of Saudi journalists, Jamal Khashoggi, who was a writer for the Washington Post. The Emiratis are the Saudi's best ally and I met with pretty much their entire leadership while I was there, they were deeply disappointed with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince who very credibly has been now pointed as having known about, indeed probably ordered that murder. And what's interesting is that everyone in the United States is writing about this as if it is a, "Oh my God. Can you believe that the United States is sticking with the Saudis, given all of this da, da," because of course the journalists are writing about a fellow journal, you understand that. But actually there's a lot going on as a consequence of this. First thing is that Mohammed bin Salman was doing a lot of stuff in the region that America did not like. Number one, he actually started a block, diplomatic and economic block.
Ian Bremmer:
In fact, he's even building a moat between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. And the United States has its most important military base in the Gulf in Qatar, so we obviously don't like to see that. Secondly, you have a war going on in Yemen, which has been discussed including by the United Nations as the worst potential humanitarian crisis in the world. The Saudis have been pursuing that war with their military equipment, but the Americans have been helping them and providing a lot of support, Intel, drones, you name it. And we do not want them to do either of those two things. And now that Mohammed bin Salman is under all this pressure, they have invited the catteries to a Golf Cooperation Council meeting in Saudi Arabia. Mohammed bin Salman met with the cattery state minister for foreign affairs directly while they were there. The Kuwaitis said that we need the media to calm down in the region about this.
Ian Bremmer:
There was a communicate at the end, signed unanimously by of the members, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar saying that we want to work together economically diplomatically. This is a big step forward, a win, even for the Americans. So too in the last several days, we now have a ceasefire that has been agreed to in the Port of Hodeidah, which is where 80% of all import gets into Yemen. So the people will not starve literally, and they'll be able to get medical equipment. That is a big deal, the Americans have wanted that to happen for over a year. So we have suddenly two really good new stories coming out of Saudi Arabia because of pressure on Mohammed bin Salman. Unfortunately, Trump can't take credit for those things because he's been publicly out in front saying, "This is my guy, and we're selling him a lot of weapons," but the Republicans and Senate-
Josh King:
But our very own us Senate as a hero toward the end of the year.
Ian Bremmer:
That's right. The Republicans and Senate look like a hero and very much on top of this issue at the end of the year. The other side of this story, if you want to just follow up on it quickly, is that domestically Mohammed bin Salman has been a revolutionary reformer. He's the one that got the religious police off the streets, he's the one that pushed to get cinemas open for young people so that they have something to do more sports and let men and women actually watch those sports together. There's a big event with a DJ that actually had Saudi men, young women together celebrating, you never see this in Saudi Arabia. So he's at actually been moving a lot. And a lot of those reforms are truly not popular inside the elites, the older elites in Saudi Arabia don't want to see that happen. I now suspect that they will be stillborn or at least stalled for some period of time because he's lost a lot of support. So dramatic changes coming out of the kingdom in and the Middle East, but not the ones that most people are talking about right here.
Josh King:
So perhaps a little bit of good news coming out of the Middle East toward the end of the year. While you're in the UAE, a couple thousand miles to the Northwest in London, a calamitous week.
Speaker 5:
British Prime Minister, Theresa May, is safe, at least for the moment. Just a few moments ago May survived a no confidence vote from her own party. Backlash had been growing for a while from pro Brexit lawmakers frustrated with her negotiations to leave the European Union, criticizing her for not making a completely clean break in the negotiations. CNN's Bianca Nobilo was in London for us, and Bianca, despite the fact that prime minister May is safe for the next year, the Brexit plan is still in chaos, March 29th is the agreed upon date that England will leave the EU.
Josh King:
Theresa May cancels her vote on Brexit. You say in your note, "She's declared she'll work on further reassurances from the European Union, but they've no incentive to change their position." My favorite quote of the week came from the prime minister of tiny, wealthy and indifferent Luxembourg, which shrugged off a question of a potential no deal Brexit crisis with a look of amusement and replied, "Brexit was a choice of the UK, not of us." So what next? A huge implications for so many companies involved in trading in London, in the futures market, in the oil market, and perhaps prime minister May, who was originally, as you write, a person who voted to remain, she's now carrying this on her shoulders. Are we going to see another people's referendum?
Ian Bremmer:
It amuses me greatly that they're calling it a people's vote because it does make you beg the question of what the hell was it the first time around?
Josh King:
When 52 voted the other way.
Ian Bremmer:
52% voted the other way. I think they should at least have a two out of three, a four out of seven. It doesn't seem fair the next one suddenly counts, but look, the point is that there are a lot of good reasons to support Brexit. There are a lot of reasons to believe that look, Europe is falling apart, it's governance is poor, it's getting harder, it's too big. And there are issues of sovereignty in terms of the way that migrants are dealt with and the rest that increasingly large numbers of the European population as a whole do not like. So I understand why many Brits would support a Brexit referendum. That is very different from a credible belief that you would be able to implement on Brexit in a way that would allow the UK economy and political system to thrive.
Ian Bremmer:
They could not. It reminds me of Steve Bannon when he became chief strategist in the United States for Trump. And he had very good reasons to believe that the US and China were heading for tensions. And his argument was that means we should hit them now while they're weaker, as opposed to later when they're strong, which makes sense if you think you can execute on it. But when you have an electoral cycle every two years, that lasts for roughly two years and when the corporations aren't on your side and when you have a government that strongly disagrees about what to do with China internally, between hard liners and soft liners, and Trump just looking for the next deal that he can cut, irrespective of whether it's good for the American strategically, that it doesn't matter, if you have the right theory, you can execute on it.
Ian Bremmer:
And that is the problem that the Brits have right now. They can't get a vote through, they can't get a deal through. And because it is not knife edge urgent going to cause a calamity in the British economy, until it does, until you are at that point where if we don't vote for this now, we're going to experience a massive recession or worse. You can't get British political figures to do what's in the long term interest of the country. They only do what's in the short term interest of their party, of their constituency, of themselves. And anyone in a democracy knows how this feels, particularly in a larger democracy that feels increasingly rigged. And that's why a lot of people in these countries are saying we're really sick of all of these truth tellers that may have book smarts. They may know their science, but they don't care about me. And I'm sick of voting for people that tell the "truth" but don't do anything for me in my family. I'd rather vote for someone else
Josh King:
And you begin in Us Vs. Them, with this rhetorical question. Why do Palestinians throw rocks? You might as easily ask why do kids from Chelsea throw rocks or Ferguson Missouri, or migrants approach the US border or people in the UK angry about immigration, why do they throw rocks? So tell me why do Palestinians and so many others throw rocks?
Ian Bremmer:
Kids from Chelsea did throw rocks, the problem was it was at me. But Palestinians, why do Palestinians throw rocks? They throw rocks because they feel like they've been lied to for decades. They feel like the system is rigged against them. And by the way, when I say they've been lied to for decades, I don't just mean by Israelis or Americans or the UN or the Europeans promising boycotts or the Saudis or the Egyptians saying they're going to help them. I mean even by their own government, their own Palestinian authority that hasn't gotten it done for them. And so I think that if you are Palestinian and you see an Israeli Defense Force member, you throw a rock not because you think it's going to make your life better. Once you throw it, you run away. You understand that this is a dangerous thing to do, but it gives you agency, it gives you a voice, it says that you matter.
Ian Bremmer:
I could have been even more urgent and desperate about it. Why do prisoners go on hunger strike? Because it tells themselves that they still matter, that they still have the ability, their free will. Human beings, no matter how tough your situation is, will not give up their free will. And I think that when Trump ran for office and said, the system is rigged, that was probably the truest words he has uttered in his entire life. I think that the system is rigged to something that my mother, if she was still alive today, she would've voted for that. And my brother did, by the way, and I write about that in the book too. And I'm deeply empathetic to people that feel like for decades, those in power have found ways to make the system work much better for them and their family and their friends and forgotten about out the average American so much so that the American dream today does not feel real for a majority of our co-citizens.
Josh King:
So if president Trump is right and the system is rigged, how do you square with the words that he speaks when he orders the 82nd Airborne to the border of the US, Mexico and says, "If the immigrants do throw rocks toward our troops, treat them as bullets and respond with rules of engagement thusly."
Ian Bremmer:
Oh, I think if you want to effectively ensure that your people are going to rally for you and you don't have long term solutions for them, you're not really going to turn their economical lives around. And that's when the economy doing well, by the way, nevermind when the economy takes a downturn, as it eventually does or will. It's very important to dehumanize the other. It's very important to say that Haitians are coming here to bring AIDs, that Mexicans are coming to rape and pillage and criminalize, that Nigerians will never go back to their huts if we let them into the US. All things that Trump has said, does he actually believe them?
Ian Bremmer:
I doubt it, but it's an effective rhetorical flourish because if you don't do that, then human beings are more likely to see these people as fellow human beings and make connections with them. It's much harder to treat them in ways that feels inhumane. I'd have a much harder time eating battery chickens if you forced me to see the way we treat them. But as long as I go to a store and pick them up in a way that seems prepackaged and fine, then I have no problem continuing. That doesn't make me a bad person, at least fundamentally, I don't think it does, but it does make me a little lazy and weak. And I think that political leaders know how to play on that.
Josh King:
So we've been at this conversation now for a little bit. We've just scratched the surface of half dozen issues so far in. And I said in the introduction that I was just turned on to G-Zero Media a few weeks ago, because I was watching my friend Ben White's Twitter feed, I see him analyzing the midterm elections in 60 seconds.
Speaker 6:
Hi, it's Ben white, chief economic correspondent at Politico with your US politics in just 60 seconds. All right, let's start the clock. Number one, should Democrats use their new House majority to investigate or legislate? They've got to strike a fine balance of both democratic voters want vigorous oversight of the Trump administration, but they also have to show they have an agenda on healthcare, taxes, infrastructure. They may not pass anything, but they've got to try. Number two, will new attorney general, Matt Whitaker, try to wind down the Mueller Probe? Of course, he will. That's why Trump put him in the job. The question is how will Democrats react in the house and will Republicans in the Senate next year move to protect Robert Mueller.
Speaker 6:
Number three, what was the most surprising upset on election day? I'd say it was Staten Island where democrat and Max Rose surprisingly won that race. Staten Island's been the red beacon in Blue New York, and Democrats managed to turn it Blue. Number four, who else should receive the medal of freedom award from president Donald Trump? I'd say he'll give it to a toaster oven, which is done about as much or probably much more for America than Miriam Adelson, the wife of the GOP mega donor, who Trump gave the medal of freedom to. All right, that's your US politics in just 60 seconds. I'm Ben White from Politico.
Josh King:
How do you square the need to dive so deep into these issues to travel all the way to the UAE for the meeting, to write nine books, and yet being able to encapsulate such a big issue as the midterms in 60 seconds, The premise behind G-Zero Media?
Ian Bremmer:
The premise behind G-Zero Media is that young people will respond to authenticity. You can be wrong, they can disagree with you, but you have to be honest with them, you have to tell them what you really think. And that every single thing we will put out in G-Zero Media will reflect that. And if that means that people get angry at us, if that means that some people aren't going to follow, they're going to turn us off, that's absolutely fine. And you have to recognize that as much as I would like to have serious in depth conversations all the time that we don't have the temperament, the mood, or increasingly the technology for that.
Ian Bremmer:
So you have to put it out in every format, which means 60 seconds so that if you don't have time and you're on the fly, I can give you the top line of what some of the smartest people in the field are thinking and it's a takeaway. And maybe we engage you enough, the next time you'll dig a little deeper. And we have puppets and those puppets are funny, but they have to be educational. We won't run a segment with the puppets, unless there is a message you can take away that actually expresses how we honestly think about a topic, whatever that topic is. And then I have a weekly show that's on Public Television and on Digital called G-Zero World. It's 30 minutes long, and I'll have an in depth conversation with a global leader just like you and I are having right now.
Ian Bremmer:
So I think you can do all of these different formats, but you've got to have clarity of message. Your content has to not fool with people. Because one thing that is making young people turn off, make them feel disenfranchised, not want to bother to vote, just become incredibly cynical is because they understand that the corporates and the political leaders and the media are advertising to them, that they are the product and that's not okay. And I think that when you have more respect for your audience and say, okay, these people actually are thinking human beings just like me and they want to hear it from me in a legitimate, authentic way. I think then they relate and respond in a much better way.
Josh King:
Let's dwell on the puppets for a second. In depth analysis of the topics that are shaping the future of the world. It is such serious business, but it's clear that there is room for some humor when you talk about these issues. This is Ian Bremmer announcing the launch of the G-Zero World PBS Show, let's have a listen.
Ian Bremmer:
Hi folks. Now the G-Zero World is on Public Television. That means bleeping out some of your favorite four letter words, but to make it fun, we're going to let you guess what they are. First up a discussion between Donald Trump, Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin.
Speaker 7:
Look, the fake news media, they always attack me whenever I say what I think about-
Speaker 8:
But maybe you shouldn't be so bullish when you talk about-
Speaker 7:
You're not such a great example of yourself, Angela.
Speaker 8:
I don't like this type of locker room talk.
Speaker 9:
Donald, please, the least thing we need is for her to be more committed to-
Josh King:
What were we just listening to and why puppets?
Ian Bremmer:
That was of course NATO, the missing word and why puppets? Because everyone loves puppets. You asked me at the start of this interview about whether, "If you lived here you'd be home now," is from that sign that you and I used to drive by. You and I used to watch the Muppet show. I don't know that about you, but it would've been weird if you hadn't-
Josh King:
Along with Zoom.
Ian Bremmer:
Zoom, which was of course right there on WGBH Channel Two in Boston. Yes. And I was never on Zoom, I tried to get on Zoom once.
Josh King:
Of course, you did.
Ian Bremmer:
I failed.
Josh King:
You wanted to wear one of those stripe shirts.
Ian Bremmer:
Yes. It was kind of orange and red stripe jumpers, which back in the '70s-
Josh King:
Big turtleneck.
Ian Bremmer:
Big turtlenecks. Yeah, the whole thing I didn't-
Josh King:
They did not go to the Hoover Institution, the Zoom alumni, maybe some of them did though.
Ian Bremmer:
I'm willing to bet that none of them did, but they might have graduated some [inaudible 00:35:58], for example, that would be possible. Look, the Muppet show was a fantastic in my view, the most fantastic show, because it was completely accessible to young people, but it also was politically aware, it was intelligent. And you could talk about anything using puppets. It also wasn't cruel, it wasn't mean, it didn't take itself so seriously. It took the world seriously, but it didn't take itself so seriously. And I love that. And that resonates really quite a bit with me. I take my work very, very seriously, I don't want the work I do to be crap, but I don't take myself that seriously. And if somebody wants to take a piece out of me or they say they don't like something, it doesn't crush my self-esteem it's okay. And I think that being a political scientist with a PhD and a company and writing books and da, da, da, that needs to be leavened with puppets.
Josh King:
How do you actually draw the line between the tone of these various channels? We just heard the puppets talking, but there's also your personal writing, the weekly note that now I've been receiving, Eurasia Group's signal newsletter, the website, the social channels, the segments like Ben White in the 60 seconds. It takes a different part of the brain to speak with humor, but also intellectual rigor.
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah. I guess they all have to feel authentic to me, ultimately I need to know that that voice is consistent. And you can say it's hard to do, it would be maybe hard for me to come up with rules of engagement that someone that didn't have any connection with me could then suddenly follow. If I were to get hit by a bus and someone else had to take this over, I suspect you would lose some of that voice because I'm so personally invested in it. But it's not hard for me to know what that voice is.
Ian Bremmer:
And I think the culture that we have in the firm, my CEO, Alex Sanford, our chief creative, Alex Clement, Willis Sparks, who's worked with me for 16 years now, Macro Guy. We know this voice, we can do this. And when someone comes in and is spewing a line, it suddenly becomes very dissonant. It's like fingers on a chalkboard, you can tell when you have a piece of content that doesn't work. So lots of different formats, absolutely, puppets and Ben White doing world in 60 are different formats, but they're functionally the same kind of content.
Josh King:
So Ian, I am looking at the image of you and your colleagues on the podium of the New York Stock Exchange. The big sign behind you, G-Zero Media, a Eurasia Group company. You founded your company in 1998 to help investors and businesses understand how politics are and will impact foreign markets. Before you got to all of the different tracks for your authentic voice, what made you realize that political risk historically isolated to government affairs may have additional usage in the business world and academia?
Ian Bremmer:
It wasn't really a strategic plan, I didn't intend to start a company. I finished my PhD I was 24 years old. I wanted to have a job, not just be a professor, but have a job. And my advisor convinced me to stay at Stanford for a couple of years and called my mother when I said no and said, "This guy's crazy. We're offering him to stay at Stanford, why would he say no?" So I did it, but I didn't like it. When you've been in school for your entire life and you've grown up with people that have jobs that actually work, my grandpa was maintenance man, that was a job, I wanted to have a job. And so I quit, I moved to New York and I met a whole bunch of people that were very nice to me that could have, I thought, give me a job.
Ian Bremmer:
I met with Bob Hormats, who had been former assistant secretary of state, but also was vice chairman of Goldman Sachs. I met with Frank Wisner who had been ambassador to China and all these other countries, but then was vice chairman of AIG again, right down the road. I met with Teddy Roosevelt IV who was Teddy Roosevelt IV and vice chairman of Lehman Brothers. I remember all of these older white men who had these extraordinary positions and experiences and they found what I did really interesting. They would take me for lunches. It was really nice, but they didn't have a job for me, at least not as a political scientist. They might hire me as associate in investment banking, but I wanted to go work as a political scientist in their companies.
Ian Bremmer:
And after a year of all of this great access, but no job, I finally went to one of them and said, "Look, you don't have a job for political scientists, but you clearly find what I do interesting. If I were to just put a shingle out, would you hire me as a client?" And I don't even remember who it was, but whoever it was said sure. And that rang a bell in my head said, "Oh, this is obviously the way I should have approached it." I went to all these other people and within a week I had commitments of all of these big companies like Goldman Sachs to become a client of my own little company that I didn't know exactly what I was going to do was going to have some access to me. And they were generous with me with their time.
Ian Bremmer:
And I was very responsive and listened to them. And as a consequence, I started a company. So first of all, you can say that I haven't an entrepreneurial spirit, but I wasn't an entrepreneur because I wasn't really taking risk. There was no downside, I didn't hire any people. So it wasn't like I had a burn rate. Until I figured out the things that were going to make them happy as clients, I did not hire anyone. And if I didn't make a lot of money myself as I didn't for the first several years, well, that was okay, there are plenty of ways to make a couple bucks. In fact, I used to do expert testimony for people from the former Soviet Republic seeking asylum.
Ian Bremmer:
And the judges would want to bring me in as someone credible. And that was like 250 bucks an hour. I could do that for a day or two a month and that would pay for my rent and my food. And I didn't really need new clothes And so that was enough. So literally there was no pressure on me to make this more successful than it was. And if you had asked me back in 1998, would it be successful? The answer is, of course it will be. I just don't know exactly what it will be. If you told me that in 2018, I was going to have the company I now do, the companies with this global reach, that's a little bigger than I would've expected.
Josh King:
So mentors like Frank Wisner, Teddy Roosevelt IV, Bob Hormats that's 20 years ago, but between 1998 and 2018, what are some of the pivotal turning points for the Eurasia Group and Ian Bremmer that went from couple hundred bucks expert testimony on Soviet emigres to where you are now?
Ian Bremmer:
Well, one early one was later in August, 1998 when the Russians defaulted and devalued the fact that I had a pretty strong sense of why that was a possibility politically. They had the money to pay, they could pay, but they had very strong reasons not to given a prime minister that was in his thirties and in the job for weeks and a president that was increasingly absentee and drunk all the time. There were political reasons to believe this was a problem. And a lot of people knew me and my work on Eurasia that's why I called the firm back then Eurasia Group. Suddenly I was in the news around this issue and people paid attention, so that certainly helped, I mean it didn't.
Ian Bremmer:
I don't know if you'd call it a turning point for the company, but it made a whole bunch of market participants on Wall Street and in London suddenly recognize that they should probably take a call from someone they hadn't heard from, that was working with Goldman Sachs and Lehman and Bear Sterns, da, da, da. Another one would have been when I did my book, The J Curve, in 2006, which was my first trade book, as opposed to academicy books. And it was a pretty wonky book, it was talking about how countries do and don't fall apart. And basically one takeaway from it was that a country like North Korea, some countries are stable because they're open like the US. So Trump can be president, but two years after Trump is president, the biggest takeaway should be that the institutions in America are really strong, that he's constrained, he can't do most of the things he tweets about. It's a witch hunt, but he has no ability to slow down or even limit the Mueller investigations.
Ian Bremmer:
That should be your takeaway. So America is strong and stable because it's open, but there are some countries that are stable and strong because they're closed like Cuba and North Korea and even Iran. And that countries that are stable because they're closed, have very strong incentives to stay closed. So when you say that you're going to punish them by isolating them, that isn't necessarily a useful punishment. So the book was about that and about this dynamics around how and why countries fall apart. And I thought it was important to get out there, but it became like this mini cult thing. John Stewart had me on the daily show and the BBC did this big feature on it and the Economist Magazine named it book of the year and all of this stuff from a political scientist that was known in a boutique kind of way by these market participants.
Ian Bremmer:
But I was by no means a household figure and Eurasia Group was by no means a household name. Suddenly we got a hell of a lot better known. And I would say that also over the period of these 20 years, I've been really fortunate in finding other people that have been really willing to mentor me and mentor us and help provide a lot of support for the work we've done. I look at someone like Christine Lagarde at the IMF, I look at Yoriko Kawaguchi back when she was foreign minister of Japan, I look at a number of heads of state from all over the world, Antonio Guterres, the UN secretary general. Just people who have for different reasons decided that someone who's willing to speak truth to power and an organization that supports that is useful, is valuable, deserves to be promoted, deserves some of their time and their advice.
Ian Bremmer:
And as you know, if you're in a position like that, the single most valuable thing that you can offer, it's not money, it's not power, it's time. That these are people everyone is trying to just get it on their schedule. And so if you make sure that every single time you meet with them, whether it's for 10 minutes or an hour, that they're getting value from that, irrespective of whether you get no value at all, that's the most important thing you do. You cannot waste these people's time. And I think that that was a lesson that I learned early on from people like Frank Wisner and Teddy Roosevelt IV, and even from people like Tim Hansbury back when I was a high schooler, traveling into Boston as part of my junior achievement.
Josh King:
How do you and your staff take a global trend like the erosion of institutions and parse it out into actionable advice for the current investors or companies that are part of your stable?
Ian Bremmer:
We work with AI and we do native language social media scraping around elections that we've developed in house. We certainly have a lot of data that we've collected in models, we've developed methodologies. But ultimately the way you do this work, you require people that really know the folks on the ground. They have to understand, they have to be immersed in the cultures, in the political systems, in the way that these places work. So in the former Soviet Union, I speak Russian, I've lived there for three years. When I started the country, I was probably one of the best analysts on Kazakhstan. Who cares? Very few people, but I would've been able to tell you who the best locals were in Kazakhstan.
Ian Bremmer:
I could find them, I could train them, I could hire them and I did. And that really mattered if you were, let's say Shell Oil corporation or if you were AIG and you had business in Kazakhstan. Now I can't do that anymore. I haven't been to Kazakhstan in years, but my lead Kazakh analyst can and does and same true with Indonesia and Brazil and all the rest. So I really think it matters to spend a long time developing your in-country credentials, bonafides, network. And that expertise... There's a reason why Malcolm Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours and overtime. If I spent 10,000 hours doing jiu-jitsu, I would probably be pretty good at it. And if you're not, you should do something else. I've now been a political scientist, I got my PhD 25 years ago. That's a long time. And I've been at this firm for 21 now.
Ian Bremmer:
I don't think it's arrogant to say that I actually have picked something up over that period of time. You're better at understanding how to do research it, how to recognize patterns, how to anticipate when something is plausible or not plausible. You don't have a crystal ball, but you do know the constraints on political drivers and decision making so that you can actually decide that certain things are just off the table. That other people say this could happen. No, it can't happen. Are you predicting that? No, I'm just telling you the given what we know about these political actors, this series of events is not plausible. So take them off the table. And here are the important things to pay attention to that'll be benchmarks for whether the politics are playing out the way you might presently be anticipating, which are very relevant to your economic exposure.
Josh King:
So Ian, as we close and as you leave the New York Stock Exchange, it is now about two weeks left in 2018, you tease us that the 2019 top risks list is coming out. What can you share with our listeners about what we might see?
Ian Bremmer:
Well, what I will share with you is that the week before it comes out, which is next week, I always go back to what we said about the year, last year. And I look through the entire report, we keep it on our homepage all year long and we ask, how did we do? Where did we get it right? Where did we get it wrong? Why? And I think that's really important. I think the most important thing we can do as we get into a new year is a little bit of reflection and be honest. Because no one out there expects you to be right a hundred percent of the time, but they do expect that you're going to actually learn from your successes and learn from your mistakes. And actually to the extent that you can share that with people, I think it's extremely valuable. So we'll find out where we are for 2019 at the beginning of January. But for now I promise you, we do our damned just to make sure that we're hot washing 2018.
Josh King:
Ian, thanks so much for joining us in the ICE House.
Ian Bremmer:
My pleasure, man.
Josh King:
That's our conversation for this week. Our guest was Ian Bremmer, Founder and President of the Eurasia Group and G-Zero Media, which today celebrated its first anniversary here at the New York Stock Exchange. Follow Ian and his goings on @IanBremmer and @EurasiaGroup and @GzeroMedia or use Mr. Google to put your fingers on all of the content that we've been chatting about this morning. And if you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected] or tweet at us @NYSE. Our show is produced by Pete Ash and Ian Wolf with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven Portner. I'm Josh King, your host, signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Have a very happy holiday season.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor approve or endorse any of the content herein. All of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing here in constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the proceeding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.
