You're listening to Strictly Business Podcast with Lindsay Williams. The JSC has closed its doors for another day, so it's time for the 5 o'clock shadow with David Shapiro from Sasson Securities and Viv Govender from Rands Swiss, both in Johannesburg. And Viv, I'm going to start with you with economics now because we've had the ECB cutting rates by a quarter of a percent to three and a half percent. It's almost like the supporting act for the Fed next week.
We've had US inflation data coming out this week at the target rate of 2.5%, the Fed's target rate, that is. We've got China stocks down at around about four and a half year lows. So an awful lot going on, Viv. How do you assess it all? Well, I look at the oil price, just as Bill aside. Red crude is about $70 a barrel. You know what I mean? And this is despite the fact that most of the things you look at in terms of what supply looks like. doesn't seem to be that bad for the oil price.
I think it's the fear around what's happening in demand. I think there's real fear that the Fed waited too long. I think that we are seeing signs that the global economy might be a bit weaker than we had hoped. And we had the Japanese GDP that was coming out earlier this week that worked great as well. And look at Germany, the problems they're having and how that's translating into issues as well in our country. I think...
There's a serious danger that we are going to have a bad period of time because we may just have waited too long. And remember, when it comes to monetary policy, any economist will tell you that there's a lag in monetary policy. Some say it's a year, some say it's two years, but it's more than six months. You start cutting interest rates right now, you're going to get the effects coming to you by the middle of next year. And in that period of time, you could easily have got into a recession.
So, yeah, I think we are in real danger of having a slowdown because the Federal Reserve and the ECB... We just have waited a bit too long to start cutting interest rates. David will attest to this, Viv, because I said around about 10, 11 days ago that I'd looked at an oil graph, Brent crude oil graph. I looked at it and I thought this just doesn't look right. And immediately it fell 8 percent. I mean, immediately it was the next two, three days fell 8 percent.
And that coincided, of course, with OPEC saying, sorry, revising their demand forecasts. And when they revise their demand forecast, they know what their future orders look like. Let's make no mistake. And I think that the oil price is a great indicator of future economic activity. And I think that it's a good predictor of either an economic slowdown or even worse, recession. David, I mean, as I've said, we spoke about this.
You know, there's two parallel kind of universes in the market at the moment, if that's the right word. And the one that is a worry for me. Because we always know when commodity markets start to fall and go down as fast as they have, and we were talking about this on Monday, it is a sign that things are slowing down dramatically. And there wasn't one area where there was anything that looked like, you know, any area where it really looked like booming. And a lot of it is around China.
So you've got that happening. And the oil price is always... kind of the mainstay or the proxy. On the other hand, you've got this tech universe. You've got these tech shares just going through the roof and screeching. And a lot of that comes from the Goldman Sachs conference yesterday where Jensen Wang and all people spoke. And they're in a different world. When you listen to Larry Ellison talking about the demand and where things are going, and this is going to last decades.
You know, you say, well, how do we match the two? You know, there's nothing in between. There's just clear area between these two different markets. And so I'm trying to, in my own mind, reconcile the two. I'm saying, okay, I'm happy. I love the way that tech shares have rebounded, and even today they continue to go up. Jensen Wang was telling about the demand for black, what's it black oil chips?
And also the TSM are going to be producing them, which means ASML is going to benefit and blah, blah, blah. And things just turned around wildly, which thrills me. But on the other hand, I look and I say, OK, so how do I look at this together with the rest of the market, which is not quite reacting? And you can always tell when you watch the Dow. I always look at the Dow because the Dow is made up of different kinds of stocks. You know, it's not heavily weighted towards. any particular sector.
And, you know, even if you look at the Dow yesterday, at one stage... it was like 29 down one up you know and then as the day progressed it kind of settled it's settled so so yeah lindsay you know we we've got these two different markets well it's two different worlds actually david because i think viv couldn't come in on this one because your world viv world it's a different world to main street world and dow world and s p world i mean it
doesn't matter if there's a recession the fact is that the future is these incredible chips And Viv, you're almost cocooned in the space that you've chosen to analyze so well. Yeah, more than that. I mean, I think that it doesn't matter what the rest of the world could do. You could put every single of the negatives that we have out there, declining populations, you know, rounded deficits and blah, blah, blah. If AI is real, those things blow away like, you know, dust in the wind.
It's like nothing. It doesn't matter at all. Robots will take care of the population. Increased productivity will take care of the deficits. The example I'd use here, really interesting, I saw a recent interview with Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, right? That man has, I think he has like a massively high chance of getting Parkinson's. So we're talking about somebody that has an illness. I don't think he's ill at the moment.
I think genetically his ex-wife's sister runs 23andMe, you know, the DNA place. And apparently he has like a Parkinson's issue that might come and like, you know, get him later in life. But so he's basically, you know, obviously... in his mind to be on borrowed time. He's working full-time again at Google. You know, he retired basically. He's not back working full-time at Google. Why? Because he saw AI coming about and he's so, you know, enamored by the thing. He's working every day at Google.
Matt has unlimited money, unlimited, a very limited time. And he's using that time to work. So it just shows you the level of optimism that there is around this particular sector at the moment. You see, and also, I mean, the confidence it's giving to people. You've seen Mark Zuckerberg says he apologizing to Congress was one of his bigger mistakes. He's saying that his days of apologizing are over.
The confidence that's coming for you to be able to say that as Facebook CEO, I think the tech sector right now really believes that they are on the verge of a really big change in the world. And so that's why they're pumping all this money in. Unfortunately, it does not work out. There's massive problems. Not just we're talking about demographics, we're talking about debt issues, Japan, China, you could name them all.
Okay. But anyway, I think you'll agree that there are, David called them parallel universes, and they are. There's one stock market world, and there's another. There's one tech world, and there's the real economy, which isn't touched by, mostly not touched by the AI world yet. It is touched, but not quite as much as it will be in the future, I'm sure. David, I want to come to you now on the local stuff. Truist, Bell, Sibagni, Discovery today.
Truist was a bit late, so you probably haven't seen that yet. But Sibagni are having a terrible time, up 10% today. Discovery up around about 5%. Any comments that come out of the analysis, even though it might be a flimsy analysis for now anyway, any comments that have come out of those numbers? Look... I think Subbanya is so far down and they've got the balance sheet to get through this. In other words, a lot of borrowings there that can help them overcome the issues.
And I think there must be a lot of praying as well going on at the same time because I think things look very flimsy. I'm going to go backwards a bit as well and say why am I saying this. I cannot understand why Amplitz... did what they did yesterday. That was extraordinary, wasn't it? And why I say that, Lindsay, is that if you're going to place 5%, first of all, 5% is nothing for them from 78. But what they did by putting the shares on the market is really whatever tested.
I mean, you took down the share price 12%. You didn't take only for 5% of the company. But what happened to the other 95%? You took it down as well. And you took it into levels that it hasn't been since COVID, at the depths of COVID. Now, from my point of view, that was first of all, I think this was they needed the money. They needed the money, so they had to sell off a bangle or a bracelet or the diamond ring or something at a pawn shop, P-A-W-N shop.
So for me, it was an indication of that market and how fragile. the platinum counters are at the moment. It didn't fill me with confidence. I know there are traders who make money out of it, etc. But it also highlighted how flimsy and difficult it is because to have placed it at $5.15, which was way down a huge discount, was a very troubling... level and it gives you an idea of what's out there. Exactly. So I'm going back to Subania on that basis.
You know, that's what worries me about the platinum counters. Things are, it's going to take some time for, you know, for this to turn around. There are a lot of deep value investors out there, David. You know who they are that are saying this is the opportunity of a lifetime. The Anglo-American platinum price. I think it's closing high in recent years has been 2,250 rand a share. Yesterday it was 515. That is a really, really big move. But, Viv, I don't know what you think about this.
I mean I want to say one thing. Just, Lindsay, if I was using your money, I'd be very brave. Do you know what I mean? Good luck with that. I mean, if you I'm saying if you if it's not my money, yes, I'll be very brave with yours and say, yeah, it's a long-term and I'm a deep value investor. My question to you, David, is this. Yes, if platinum was gold, I would say, okay, that's fine. But platinum is something very different. Platinum is a technological metal that's used.
The largest source of demand for it is this catalytic converter. And I looked at the market about last year, and it looked terrible. Basically, what's happening is not only do you have electrical vehicles coming in and replacing the demand for petrol and diesel vehicles, which is where the demand comes from for catalytic converters. The second thing is that recycling technology has gotten significantly better.
So you... old vehicles, you can pretty much get enough platinum, or in some cases more platinum than required to build a new vehicle because of the fact that first-aid recycling is almost like 90% for the newer technologies and the efficiency of the catalytic converters is significantly higher and engine sizes are better and it's getting better across the board. So you don't even need new platinum to build new vehicles, you can just recycle the old stuff.
At the same time you don't need as many new vehicles because they're making electric vehicles instead. How does this market survive? On jewellery? You know, it isn't, I think, a feasible thing for platinum. So, yeah, that's my issue with platinum going forward is that, yeah, you could say, but, you know, there's obviously it's very cheap and whatever. But what who's going to buy the stuff and for what are they buying the stuff? You know, this leads me to my next question to both of you.
I mean, yesterday I thought to myself, 2250 down to 515. It's got to be an opportunity. You know, South Africa is a 76 percent monopoly in the reserves of.
platinum group metals it's not just platinum it's palladium and rhodium and all the other ones with the end in um but i tell you what it's starting to wear thin a bit this is a great opportunity and david bring you in on this one because as you said if it was my money that you were handling you'd say yes of course it's a great opportunity look at the graph stick it in there williams and well done and i'll look forward to your quarterly statement coming through your
but you don't think it's an opportunity and nor does viv apparently For the reason that Vivis has mentioned, you know, we're going backwards and projecting forwards on platinum uses, you know, to our great metal. It'll come back. Well, I don't know. You know, I'm really not sure. I hope we're wrong and I hope we go into a very strong growth phase in the global economy that lifts the mind for anything. But I read reports that copper. is in short supply or will be in short supply.
I read all these reports about the uses of platinum, and no one's buying the story. So why isn't anybody buying the story if this is true? That's my concern is that there's so many positive stories about the need for these metals and minerals, but no one's buying them. So that concerns me. That's where my okay, I'm not I'm not going to commit. I'll stand back. I always have an open mind, and if I'm wrong, I'll admit it, and I'll go in. I might miss 10%, 15%, whatever it is.
Okay. But I'll benefit from the rest. But it's not listening to the market. Markets are not listening to the commentators or analysts or whoever. So I'm with Viv with this side of saying, okay, I can pass this one for the meantime. Okay, there's plenty of other things to look at. Let me give you some prices now, gentlemen. Dollar-Rand is 1787. British Pound against the Rand is 2336. Euro-Rand is 1971. Euro-Dollar, 110.30. The Fed, of course, next week.
ECB, we know about today, having cut rates to 3.5%. And British Pound against the Dollar is 130.75. Gold price, this is doing well suddenly. I mean, look at this thing. Suddenly up $38 an ounce to $25.50, which must be approaching all-time record highs in US dollar terms. Platinum price is also doing okay. It's up $23, but still mired below $1,976. But palladium is now above $1,000, $1,035. So maybe this is famous last words when ignoring the PGM Group producers. Yeah, we'll see.
What else have we got here? Brent crude oil was below 70 yesterday. Look at it now, 72.50. It could be to do with the interest rate scenario where maybe the economy comes back, or it could be to do with the hurricane season in the United States. Anyway, whatever it is, 2.8% higher for Brent crude at 72.55. Natural gas up 3.3%. In fact, it's green across the board. Copper up 0.6. Soybeans and wheat and everything else doing well. Steel down a couple of percent. Anyway.
Generally a pretty good day for commodities so far. US 10-year Treasury bond yield has not come up on my screen, so I'll give you the South African 10-year, and that's not coming up either. So Bitcoin, that's always pretty reliable, but even that's not doing well. The S&P 500 always pops up. 5,557, which has barely changed. That's the September futures. We must be coming up to expiry date and moving to the December futures quite quickly.
Yeah, the other ones are not... coming but anyway it's an okay day as people wait for the fed next week uh viv they're gonna cut aren't they will it be 25 or 50. 25 that's what the market filed yesterday i believe uh is because they were hoping for some news that's going to make it uh 50. uh i saw the chances i mean there's still a chance that it's going to be 50.
uh but i think it really you know fell substantially after that uh after the uh the interesting announcement came through i think before the announcement there was a minority a significant minority chance it was just uh I think it was like a two to one ratio for 25 versus 50, and then it fell significantly from there. But there's still a chance. And I think you could argue the Fed might not be unjustified by cutting by 50.
A lot of the stuff that we are seeing right now in terms of the economy may justify saying, OK, we need to have a slightly looser economy because we can see this trade heading towards us. They're slowing down. And you have to be proactive. You can't just be reactive to everything. You know, I hope. If I was Powell, I'd just say, listen, we're going to start cutting rates. Let's cut. Let's cut. What do you want to fiddle around with? 50? Is it 25? That makes absolutely no difference.
You can decide later on what happens. And I think the market would be thrilled with a 50-point cut, particularly in response to what Lindsay said in the opening about how things are slowing down. And the same thing here as well, our central bank. If you're going to start cutting, cut. You know, don't fiddle around and then, okay, we'll wait. What's the difference? Well, you spook people, David. That's the difference.
If you say suddenly you're bumbling along, doing your normal thing all the time with your clients, for example, and suddenly you go a little bit rogue and you get a bit reckless, then the client says, wait a second, what's happened to Shapiro? It's like the market will say, wait a second, what's happened to? Well, now he knows something we don't. That's why it's cut by 15 basis points. You've got to be consistent, David. Yeah, well, you know what happened?
I just got an inquiry now on NVIDIA and about, you know, at one stage it was X percent of my portfolio. I said, sir, what do you want me to do? If I sell it, and this is what I'm trying to reason with you and try and say the personality. I said, well, if I sell it, I've got to pay huge capital gains tax. And I'm going to take the money and buy something that's similar to NVIDIA, a similar stock that's going to maybe not even grow as fast as NVIDIA. So why not just stay with it?
So take those decisions, bold decisions. You've done your homework. I know the background. That's the same thing with Powell. Either you're going to cut rates or you're not.
you know what is a 25 basis point cut it's neither here nor there it is if you take 25 basis points as a percentage of what the current rate is then it's decent and then another 25 basis points will even be a bigger percentage of the whole if you see what i mean you can't speak the markets david It's like my wife with a pill. What pill? The dose says, take two. She takes one. I say, it says take two. Don't take one. One's now. I don't want to take two. I want to only take one.
I say, you may as well not take. That's the same thing. Take two pills. You know what I mean? What pill is this? That's the tip. That's the, I don't know. What do you call it, Don? I don't know. Not heavy stuff. It's not even, it's not even, and to get it, to even take is impossible. What do you call a pronada? You know, something like a pronada. Oh, okay, yeah. I said, take two. Can you read? Definitely with pronada. Take two. Yeah, two 500 milligrams. One does nothing to you. It doesn't.
She's a slight woman, David. I mean, she's not like me, a great big lump. She only needs one, maybe. Like, you only need one. You're a stick of a thing. I'm saying to pal, take two, you know. Take two, Jerome. Viv, you were trying to interrupt there. Please go ahead. Yeah, I have a theory about this stuff. Often, like, when you get to someone like Jerome Powell or you get to, you know, some of these guys that are, you know, in the markets, also in politics, and they don't really need the money.
I mean, I think Powell is worth, like, $50 billion or something. Oh. Yeah. Okay, so basically, if you look at these kind of people, what do they do? They do it for legacy. If you had to think back, who's the most legendary of the central bank governors for the US? Greenspan. Obviously, it's Falkner. Who? Falkner. Falkner, yeah, from the 80s, yeah, late 80s. Whose reputation is last until now? Yes, you know Greenspan, but Greenspan's reputation is dirt. Instructors, yeah. Yeah, instructed, yeah.
So I wonder sometimes that he thinks, not in terms of the economy, but in terms of his own personal legacy. would you rather err on the side of basically being too slow, being too fast cutting interest rates? And that is sometimes you see the side. Guys don't do what's best for their so-called duty, but what's best for their reputation. And I think hold interest rates down because he's always had the argument, I'm fighting inflation. You know what I mean?
And if he gets inflation down with the recession versus maybe not getting inflation down, not causing a recession, I think he probably will err on the side of that. Because.
like i said paul volcker he is the legendary like you know central bank governor you know 40 years and he's like still like looked at us with such a uh a reputation and his last degree span was very popular at the time but nike yellen uh these people were popular at some points of time but i mean they don't really like said like head and shoulders above the rest i think he basically managed to get inflation down from nine down to say two percent even with a recession i think he'll take that
Yeah, but it's got nothing really to do with him. It's got to do with extraneous factors. And David and I had this chat on Monday, politicians, and I consider Jerome Powell to be a politician. I mean, it's easy. Interest rates are at this level, inflation's at this level, you start to raise rates in order to get inflation down. I don't think it's a very difficult job, actually. I mean, you have to make a few speeches in front of Congress and that sort of thing.
But you've got three decisions, unchanged, up or down. I'd love my life to be like that. Three decisions every day of my life. Okay, let's have a look here. Sibania still water up 9.9%. Harmony up 9.3%. African rainbow minerals up 6.8%. Impala platinum 6.3%. DRD gold up 5.8%. Anyone notice a pattern here? Diggers doing well. Downside. Growth point down 2.5%. They came out with their results this week.
Pick and Bay down two and a third, Carew down 1.4, Advertec down one and a third, and Spa down 1.2. Suddenly people are snapping up bargains in the digging department, David. Probably you're in that area where a lot of people feel very strong about it. And that's why I'm saying if you get a 50-point cut, yes, you might get that turnaround that we're waiting for. But I think everything will turn around. It will draw people back into the market, no doubt about that.
So we're waiting for something, Lindsay. You know, we need growth. We don't realize it. We haven't had growth for, what, four years or anything there that's really brought us into the market. You know, we're not talking about false stimulus that came with COVID or issues like that where there was always something at the back of your mind, the concerns about inflation and so on. We haven't had really good, decent growth markets, you know, with broad gains across the board.
And If you want evidence of that, you can look at the bank results that came out in the US yesterday from JP Morgan's warnings of nothing happening. Goldman, it's more trading side. If you look at first round as well today, as you know. In our market, it also gives you an indication of how tough things are in an economy that's not doing anything. That's not giving you the foundation on which to really grow and do things. We want those markets.
I love those markets where people are pumping and companies are pumping and borrowing and M&As and so on. And you know, my time is limited, Lindsay. What do you mean? I need a bull market before I go. David, you're trying to get sympathy for myself and Viv now. I mean, Viv, you're the youngest of the three of us now. You've got Shapiro on top of the pyramid. You've got me in the middle. We've got a couple of decades to go. We'll have a bull market and a depression and a bear market.
You know, a whole bunch of stuff to put all over. David, you're far too vain to die in the next 10 years. So, 20 years it will be. This morning, I scared the hell out of the audience. I said, you know what? with Ozempic and Regovi and Zepdown and all these other drugs that have been coming onto the market. You're going to live to 90. I said, people are going to live beyond 90. I said, the problem is you want to retire at 65. That means your savings are going to last you 25 years.
And those savings have only been accumulated over 40 years of working. So you've got 40 years of working. Savings over 40 years to last you another 25 years of retirement. You better find a good stock broker. It's a very sobering thought what you've just said, actually, because South Africa, of all countries, is not prepared. Now, talking about age, when you get to a certain age, you'll be, I mean, apart from having young children at your age, there's another thing that wakes you up.
You need to go to the loo between 3 o'clock and 3.30 every morning. This is a fact of getting older, and there's nothing wrong with it at all. if you're able to go back to sleep. I woke up at 3.27 on Tuesday morning, 3.27am, and I thought, gosh, I've missed the first 27 minutes of the debate. I turned it on and I spent the next hour in raptures.
And the split screen had obviously, Kamala Harris had been really well schooled on how to handle the split screen, how to look when Trump was looking like the buffoon that he is. And it was a glorious hour of television. It's all gone poof now because, you know, it was a very short-lived triumph. But it really was good, Viv. You probably saw the highlights. What is your assessment of this? Did it change the election? No. Let me tell you why.
You know, the last time Trump, I think he won by 30 plus points in terms of the, like, the bidders to losers in terms of the thing, right? I think… It is kind of the Biden-Trump one, of course, because Trump won that by more. Yes. But the last time we saw someone win by this much in a debate was, guess who? Go on. Romney versus Obama. Romney beat Obama in the first debate by, I think, 37 points. Please don't depress me, Viv. So here's the thing. This is amazing stuff, right?
By this point in time, the people that are left to decide are the least informed people around. It's not going to be all these things. This is like, I want to point something out here. The stuff they do with the Haitians, that is disgusting. I'm just saying straightforward. It is just plain, straightforward disgusting. But those that don't know, right, they are making these stories up.
There was a video of some African-American woman, and she was African-American, not Haitian, who was killing a cat. I think she had some mental issues, right?
And it turned into the whole xenophobic, racist thing about Haitians killing pets and eating cats and... you know disappearing and whatnot and there's a whole kind of thing about that right now i mean you can you you can make arguments with immigration you can make arguments whatever firstly the haitians that they're talking about are primarily illegal immigrants in the status springfield who are there because there's a demand for labor and there's no evidence from the uh from the police
or whatever that these guys are actually doing the things that they have been accused of uh you know There's no evidence that these guys are, or the Haitians that are there, are putting crime at a higher rate or doing all this kind of stuff. But they are using like the most vile stereotypes. I mean, I've seen stuff about like, you know, Trump's talking about the rapists and stuff coming over the border. But you talk about illegal immigrants and that thing.
I think this is the case of like targeting a group just for the pure political benefit of it based on nothing, absolutely nothing. And the thing is that even like Elon Musk and stuff are getting into it. And they're making the excuse that, no, this is more of a joke than real or whatnot. No. But you can't make these kind of jokes. You can't. These are literally racist jokes that you're making. We don't really recognize them, but these are literally racist jokes.
You would not make these jokes about other groups or even similar groups, but using different racist jokes. You know what I mean? And this is like, yeah, I'm just going to say that's a very bad thing. Yeah, that's the point of this fact study. Sorry about the rant. No, no, you can rant away because I said something about racism because I've been doing some reading and doing some watching about the Trump family racism, and it's quite startling.
And I will mention it, an abbreviated form of it, in a moment. But you know what, David, that Trump did say as well? He said during that debate, he said that there was 168 countries that have been sending their criminals to America. He came up with this number. 168 countries. And he said, you know, they're sending their prisoners and their people from their mental institutions to America. And in those 168 countries, in each one, the crime rate has fallen. But in America, it's gone up.
Complete fabrication, complete fantasy. And people vote for this freak. I know, I know. You know, that's why I loved what Taylor Swift did. And I'm so glad she came out. And just the statement, you know, it's time. I don't know how she said it, but just wanting calm amongst all this chaos. Yes. You just want someone who's calm, which whether you like Kamala or not, you know, it's up to you because I know I have a family. My daughter just can't stand it, but she can't stand Trump.
So it puts her in no man's land. But I just want. I want to go into a country where there's calmness, where there's decency, where there's respect. Not this grumpy man. Did you see his face throughout the whole debate? He was contorted that whole time. He's snarling. He's full of hatred and anger. You know, there's nothing fatherly about him or I just, I don't know, I just, I hope she takes it, you know, regardless of what the the polls say or what? She will.
She may not be the best candidate, but she will take it. I really hope so. I really hope they have a ring, Viv. And just on the racism thing, an abbreviated version. I think there's a guy called Nate Silver. You don't know if you know him. He's the preeminent poller in the US. He's got people up against him and stuff, but if you look at historically, he's been better than most people. He's the guy that gave Trump the 30% with other key eyes will give you 1% in the 2020 election.
He's some of the company called FiveThirtyEight, which is like the... premier polling company he's left it and his polling has trump i think it's like before the debate as a two to one favorite uh and the problem is that it comes down remember last time we spoke about it on the previous time it's it's it's literally the democrats racism against jews is why they may lose the election because if you want pennsylvania pennsylvania according to his model gives you a 91 chance of winning the election
guess who's governor of pennsylvania shapira I guess he did not choose as a running mate because he was Jewish? Shapiro. You know, it is such, like, honestly, if he loses because of that, that's almost like, you know, he deserved that, you know what I mean? Because he made a choice based on racism, and that is why he lost. If he had just chosen Shapiro, largely, if he had chosen Josh Shapiro, this guy is incredibly popular. The race would be in the bag. Well, we'll see.
I still think Waltz is a contender. But anyway, just on to the racism thing before we go. Whenever Donald Trump speaks about Barack Obama, he doesn't talk about Barack Obama. He says Barack Hussein Obama. He emphasizes Hussein, and that's obviously because he's anti-Islam. Okay, it's the first thing. And then the other thing that he said at one of his rallies, he said, they're sending their millions of prisoners and mental patients to us. They're coming from Central America.
South America, the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East. Now, I mean, and he talked about the Congo specifically. Now, I have to point out there's no such place as the Congo. It's split into the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of the Congo. So Trump doesn't know that, of course. But he says that what they're doing, he's there sending people from the Democratic Republic of Congo, let's say, they're letting them out of the prisons and sending them to America.
Now. I don't know about you, but when you go to America, you probably have to go to the embassy to get a visa. And the chap from the DLC says, I'd like to go to America, please. And I said, certainly, sir, could you fill in this form? Have you got a criminal record? He said, yes, I've just been released from jail. But more importantly, the stupidity of it is that it's partly true because people do want to get to America. They want to be trafficked, right?
And they have found over the last couple of years that all you do is you get to South America. And there's cases of guys from Bangladesh stuck in the Amazon, I believe, because they were getting to South America and they take this route. And it's absolutely a horrible thing. I watched some stuff on it. And these coyotes that are these cartels are trafficking people from Central America to Mexico, into North America, into the U.S., right?
And these guys who are from India, from Bangladesh, and from Africa to a certain extent, from China, a lot of Chinese people. are actually doing this. They're trafficking, they're paying these guys like tens of thousands of dollars and they're going across the border to the south and from, apparently from the north as well, from Canada. But it is a silly thing.
But it's one of those things which is like, you know, it's not a major, like, you know, thing because if you look at the actual numbers, right, and this is weird, even illegal immigrants, even people that are in the US illegally commit crime at a lower rate than people that are in the US, that are, they're just poor people. Why? Because, you came to the US, you're not here to commit a crime because if you commit a crime you get deported, especially if you're illegal.
A guy that's basically driving without a license is much less likely to speed because he's not going to be caught. If he gets caught, he goes to jail, you know what I mean? And the same thing here, it's one way it's true, the weird thing with Trump is he mixes half-truths with half-lies, you know what I mean? And the truth part is that there is this weird thing happening at the border where you do find a lot of people from Asia and Africa going through the southern border, that's true.
But these guys are not committing crime at a higher rate. That's the other thing that's true. The other thing that's true, and this is where we end this now, because I get very passionate about this rabid racist pig who is Trump, and I make no apologies for saying that. He talks about people coming from Central America, South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. And there's one thing that really stands out there.
All of those people from all of those countries, have one thing that is different to Donald Trump before he came orange, and that is their skin colour. They're not white. He never mentions the people from Britain and Germany and Spain and Portugal and Eastern Europe who are all white. He doesn't mention those immigrants coming into the country. He ignores it because he's a racist. And lest we forget, his wife arrived in the United States of America as a young child in the early
1970s. He never mentions that. He's a rabid racist. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time this evening. That was great fun. David, safe travels next week and back whenever you can. I will. Please do. David Shapiro is a assassin of securities. He's a frequent flyer. Viv Govender is from Randsuisse, both in Johannesburg, and that was the 5 o'clock shadow. The views and opinions expressed in these podcasts are those of Lindsay Williams and various contributors.
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