Jon Stewart on Israel, Lebanon & The Widening Mideast War | Christine Lagarde

You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalist at Comedy Central's America's only source for news. This is the Daily Show with your.

Homes So Star.

Walking with down Jolean to Goma. My name is Jacques Steart. We have a fabulous show for tonight. Christine Lagard, president of the European Central Bank, is going to be here. We'll be talking about her new movie, Beetlejuice. Beetlejuice Three Sisters. By the way, speaking of Europe, let's talk about the Middle East. As you know, October seventh marks the one year anniversary of the horrific attack against Israeli citizens, the kidnapping of hostages, many of whom have died, many of

For weeks I've been advocating to pause in the fight.

You know, I've been working tirelessly and relentlessly focused.

I've been working nonstoff.

I'm engaged in this day at night, we're working around the clock.

We are closer than we've ever been.

We're very close.

We're close. We're close. We were stopped to get ice cream once, but other than that, it was all seasefire all the time. Now, if you don't mind, I'm I'm seeing what's going on over there, and it's making me a little bit hungry. I think I'm gonna grab myself.

In this one.

Myself. I'm gonna take a little I just shot ice cream into my eye. Ice cream is I give the president credit very dangerous treat. I'm gonna take a big bite of ice cream cone as I find out how are ceasefire efforts are paying off? Israel launching it all out of salt On, Hesbala and Lebanon over the weekend. What let me take so worth it? Wait, we've been working tirelessly for a ceasefire in Gaza and the Lebanon. The whole point was, we're going to downgrade Amas. We're

No country can accept the wanton rocketing of its cities we can't accept it either.

But you've also been wanting rocketing. What kind of rocketing are you doing in Gaza if not wanton? And by the way, really that's how little criticism they faced. By the way, Lebanon is also a country. What makes you think they're gonna accept your rocketing or whatever other James Bond shit. You've been up to thousands of wireless pagers simultaneously exploding across Lebanon. Exploding pagers. Ah, Lebanon infected Israel to attack from the south, but instead they attacked from

Since October seventh, it's been one of our primary objectives to prevent the conflict from escalating, from spreading other places. Prevent an escalation or widening or deepening of this conflict.

We have been laser focused on trying to prevent that wider war since October seventh.

I don't think we need a wider war in the Middle East.

That's not what I'm looking for.

Why would you be looking for that? You know what, I'd love a wider war in the Middle East. Well, now that a wider war has broken out in the Middle East, this is President Biden yesterday talking about what we're going to do about it. We're going to do everyone, return to people a wider war from break the war? How fucking wide does this war have to be before we call it a wider Without Turkey, it's still technically in the margins. Look, as far as I'm concerned, it's

It continues to be a very dangerous situation, a very difficult situation to a very difficult, volatile situation, and the situation could could escalate at any moment.

Oh, I'm sorry, Okay, So it's not a war, it's a volatile situationship of friends with bomba fits if you will. But what what if what if you really want to experience the full cognitive dissonance and language calisthenics that have to be deployed to describe the Middle East over the last I don't know four five, six, ten thousand years how we're describing what I give you the golden sound bite brought down from Sinai to explain how fucking convoluted. This has to be.

What the Israeli government is said, and the biden A demonstration is in many ways subscribed to this idea. Is the escalation through escalation.

Or as that is sometimes called war, that is World War two. Look at the subhead de escalation through escalation. I mean, do you even hear yourself? My god, the de escalation through escalation that phrases whereby it's right out of Hold on a second. Let me see if I can find hold on, I know it's not in there. Hold on, let me see if.

I can find well, it's not in there.

Let me see if I can find Oh, my god, John, that cat has wrecked havoc on your bachelor lifestyle. Although I do take issue with one of Garfield's bromides, I happen to love mondays it's the start and end of every work week, though I hear Fridays are nice. But here's the worst part. The country that's providing all the bombs to the Middle East or I guess now we have to call the bombs escalators seems to have no

The United States did not know about, nor was it involved in these incidents.

Oh, I'm telling you anything. Have you checked your pager? I mean, my god. There have to be other ways of achieving de escalation without all this respectful exchange of missiles. Historically that part is generally followed by years of sorrow and bloodshed. And we know there have been opportunities for de escalation, but net and Yao did not seem particularly interested in it. Oh my god, I've criticized it, Yao, what have I done?

Go ahead, the people who are criticizing the Prime Minister.

It is shameful, it is pathetic.

We should be standing shoulder to shoulder with our strongest ally in the Middle East instead of launching this criticism. They criticize them for going too far constantly, and that gives a Moss comfort. I'm sorry, criticism of the war is shameful and it gives comfort to Hamas you know, who might be surprised to hear that the Israelis who are unbelievably critical of the war and that yahoo.

Shima, butler, shoe lawyer.

What you're gonna say? Now, get off my back. You heard what he said? He said? Does anyone have a Google translate on what he said? Osim? The Prime minister did not look the public in the eye and tell the truth. Sure, you won't bring the hostages alive.

It's a total selire the government, no strategy, no vision.

He is trying to do everything to prevent a d You don't have any intent to end this war. Nathaniel is lying as he believes what anti Semites the former Prime Minister of Israel and Defense minister are. But still people are going to see this segment and go all right, maybe Israel isn't perfect, but criticizing them feeds the fire. Don't you worry about anti Semitism? And to that, I

We just need.

Orthotic, that's all. Anti Semitism will survive this war like it survived all wars, going back to the brave Hebrews at Masada. Do you see, Rabbi I was paying attention in Engles? You know what? You know what they am all?

This is the most important election in the history of the United States, not going to I call this as a prediction, but in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss. If I'm at forty p son.

Of a bitch, we come back French Monday, Lady Christine Lagard will be here. Don't go away. Oh what about my guest tonight, the President of the European Central Bank. Please welcome back, Christine Legard. Thank you so much for

That's right.

And you lowered interest rates as well.

Yes, we started a little earlier in Jude.

Okay, I didn't know it was going to go there right away. I didn't know we were going to do this right away.

We only did twenty five. He did fifty.

You only did twenty five.

But then we did it again, so that's fifty to fifty.

Do you guys talk. Do you say I'm about to do twenty five and he's like, well, I'm going to do fifty two months later and make you look silly. They don't. You don't coordinate.

No, we talk to each other. We don't coordinate. We don't.

Now is this the basis points? And we all now there's a certain oracle nature to we wait to see what the central banks will do. And they always talk and kind of coded mysterious language, and then they say twenty five basic points and we're like, yes, what is that? But but is it now? Is that the signal inflation has been defeated?

It's not quite. We are getting there, we are we are almost at target.

What are you pointing at my target?

What's my target? Is two? Two percent? I want to get to two percent?

What is it now?

It's two point two? But I want to make sure that we are at two and that we stay at two percent, because that's regarded as sort of stable inflation, and we look at that in the medium term. So we don't want to have one month at two percent and then another month at two point six percent. We wanted to be steady solid at two. At two and we're getting two.

Who's who's the two chooser?

You know? Interestingly enough, that was way back and I think New Zealand was one of those that started.

And we're all following New Zealand now that's what this is New Zealand. One day when you know what would be a good number?

Two now, I think then all central bankers around the world thought, well, two percent, because then that leaves a little wiggle room to negotiate wages increases. We're not exactly sure the statistics are perfect, So there is, you know, a room to maneuver on all accounts, and two percent is something that you know goes reasonably unnoticed as long as we just progress as well.

Right, although when we say two percent, we've faced kind of a pretty large inflationary spike. So it seems like these higher prices have a certain stickiness that the corporations have gotten accustomed to, like, well, the supply chains are a little better and things of east, but now it's for a taco and people still paying it, so what not.

But that's a big difference between the level of prices and the increase in prices. I say, so, when you've had regular increases in prices, generally it doesn't move down. It stays at that level. And that's where when you talk about a level of prices, Now, why is that?

Because so what caused the inflation in the first place? Do we have a handle on that?

Yes? Okay, shall we take the last big, big inflation wave that we had exact no, no, but no, okay, yes, but as an example, okay, so what caused it? You had three components. One is you had the worst pandemic ever since the twenties, the last twenties.

That's right.

Then you had so.

A shutdown of shutdown of Now that would seem to be deflationary because it would seem like demand would disappear.

Well, some demand disappeared in some demand state, particularly when people continued to receive you know, checks in the mail.

And had the mod that was keeping people alive. No no, no, no, no, no, I get it now, no, I get what's happening here? All right?

Okay, So supply chain completely disrupted. Yes, first, Second, we had, at least in Europe, the worst war since the forties.

Still in Ukraine, still going on, in energy.

Terrible energy wat All sorts of commodity prices went down, especially given that dear mister put In anticipated that and weighed on energy prices, so they weighed on energy supply, so that prices started going up even before the war started. He had planned that all along. So energy prices were a big component in.

The supply chain disruption. Energy energy, Now, that's in Europe. We we did not have that to the same extent.

You had some of it, but not rrect because because you have energy on site in the country. We don't have any energy.

You know what. Drill, baby drill. That's that's did you know that's our national anthem. That's what we we sing it before every ball game. So that's two. We got two. What's the third?

I would say three? The pandemic, the war, and the energy prices. So the three of them just pushed prices up in a big way, and more so in Europe than in the US. We went up on average in the EU area area prices went up to ten point six percent. You never hit the double digit.

Right strichen. I would imagine certain commodities would go up faster than others that they don't. It's not linear, I wouldn't imagine.

No, But it has a dribbling effect. So if you have oil prices going up is going to have an impact on pretty much all other products because you find energy everywhere.

So give me a sense of oil prices go up, how long does it take for that to insinuate itself into the supply chain system and create that inflation.

That inflation, it moves relatively fast, so in a matter of you know, for six months, it's into the various prices where there is a lag which is much longer. It's on wages. Wages take more time to respond to that increase in prices, and it's you know.

I don't know if you know, there's in America wages have yet to respond. We're talking about from the fifties, Like it's really wages don't keep up. It brings up uns important. So since the eighties, it feels like the economy flipped over to an investment economy rather than a labor much.

More capital intensive, and the remuneration of capital was higher than the remuneration of labor. You're right, it's been a long time. It's not just in the last ten years.

No, it seems like the eighties were really that period of deregulation and then it's ped up there. But our tools that we use, whether it's the FED or you know, quantitative easing or those kinds of things, are still working at that supply side level. In other words, like in two thousand and eight, we bailed out more on the corporate side rather than the people side.

Well, we secured the financial system to make sure that depositor, all the customers around the world were not completely lost. So that was the key, key proposal, make sure that the financial system doesn't collapse, and then then you're right. There was particularly in the last you know, six years, five five years since twenty nineteen when we started we had COVID. We tried to keep the economy afloat. We tried to.

Avoid more demand stimulus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, certainly in this country.

Yeah, And that's where maybe the rubber meats the road. It feels like from what I've heard of economists.

You want to depen demand if you want to keep inflation down, right, but at the same time you increase demand by putting some fiscal But.

On the flip side, we kept people alive and in their homes, like in two thousand and eight when they decided on the quantitative easying and to give sort of that zero percent interest window, and people were able to come in and borrow money at at the corporate level.

Right at all levels, household as well as household.

But there was a horrible recession, a ton of people lost their home, you know, was crushing. The lesson to me is stimulating on the demand side was a more efficient use of capital and also had the moral bonus of covering like the people human needs. Yeah, Rather than So why does that seem now so controversial.

It's not controversial in my books.

Well, because you're human. But these guys I'm talking to, they give me a whole like that last trillion really screwed us for the next ten years, And I'm like, what are you talking about.

Well, everything has to be reasonable and sensible. You don't want to overdo it to a point where you then have to sort of withdraw and you know, sponge the liquidities that are out there. And that's the reason why at some stage you have to stop quantitity easing, and you have to also stop the fiscal stimulus and support that you've given to the economy in hard times because times are getting better.

Do the central banks have mechanisms that can be more responsive on that demand side, as you said, rather than it having to filter through the system more on that supply.

So the first tool that we use is interest rates. Okay, that's the most efficient one, and it's the one that has been traditionally used.

You talked about certainly, if you raise, it will dampen the label.

Yeah, yeah. And if you tighten, which is if you reduce the interest rates, if you cut, then it should stimulate the economy, and it should encourage people having lower financing cost to go out borrow, invest and buy houses and things like that.

Right, that's right. I wonder is there any school of thought that thinks, boy, we've got this thing flipped on its head, and we would be such a more efficient and humane society if we stimulated more like I'm thinking about and you tell me if this is the wrong way of thinking about it. Trump came in one point seven trillion dollar tax cut. Most of it went to rich people. Cut the corporate tax rate from I think thirty five percent to twenty one percent, so that's a

I'm a little bit scared when you talk about pandemic because I watched the interview that we did together in two thousand and nine. What did I say, Well, you said at the time, because we discussed the stunning of the economy, and I kind of said things are getting better. And then you close the interview saying, unless we have a global pandemic, and you.

Adjusting the figure to the camera. I just want to address something very quickly when she says, I said that, she is not suggesting all Jews gave us all that we're trying to do if a man and I only say that because there has been some confusion here in the United States. But exactly right, I'm wondering, as a central banker, is there is there a way to look at the economy less on the supply side. How do we get labor to benefit more efficiently from all that money.

You have to you know those things. You have two components capital labor, and you bring this together and you create value. The two have to be compensated. And for decades, capitalist to be has been better remunerated than labor. Yes, and the labor share in the value production has been reduced. Then it's a matter of give and take. So if the labor market is tight as it is now, it is for the labor to actually say excuse me. I think that should be remunerated as well, and probably better

Is there a way to do.

It negotiations, discussions and persistence.

Right, is there a better way? Because it seems like for corporate subsidies they don't have to fight so hard, Like it seems like labor has to really fight for that seat at the table, whereas the larger entities don't.

The balance of lobbying forces is obviously skewed to one side right right in most countries.

So you would recommend poor people get better lobbyists. That would be what about this? How about this? Is there anything in corporate like when you talk about buybacks and it's all in stock, what if workers were automatically invested in that? I mean some companies do that. I think the tech industry does a pretty good job of that. You know, when you get hired there.

You're way is one way to deal with it. But it's a very small and not very component to be a lot bigger.

Right do you think when you forecast out? What I worry about is labor is kind of been on the back foot, and it seems like AI is going to further eroad. Labor's position is that something that you guys have.

A hearing that is a big concern. And I think that's the discussions that are taking place now actually in New York concerning the governance of AI around the world and how it should be enhancing workers position contribution to the economy rather than replacing workers is a vital discussion to be had.

Who's having there.

It gets engineered by the United Nation, and there's a group of you know, thinkers and philosophers and experts in AI who are saying, watch out because if there is no global governance on that, just as we have global governance on nuclear not perfectly complied with, but at least generally respected. Yeah, at least.

There is still here. I'm worried about that. I happened to run into a couple of like leading lights of the AI movie and I said, globalization, you know, really hit American manufacturing and we're still feeling it. And that's something that took decades to really play out.

It also benefited the consumers.

Don't forget no question that when you do that, we did get much cheaper. But you know, that played out over years and there are still areas where it's decimated and haven't been back. It seems like AI will do the same thing to the more white collar movement, but it's going to do it much quicker. And I said, are you guys concerned about that? And the guy goes and he's one of them big hitters in that and he goes, uh, no, it will be good. And I was like, oh, we're all going to die, like this

I don't think. I don't think we're going to die, but I think you completely well, we will at some stage.

No. No, And by the way, maybe for a lot of people, but.

We should really be concerned about AI because where you are totally right is that it will affect all jobs and those sort of white, white colored jobs which were not affected will be affected. Right, And we have to be prepared. We have to improve our skill set. We have to be able to master that tool and not be the servant and the object of that tool. Because it is fast and it's transformative.

Do you know what, It's already smarter than us because it is what they do is it takes the ten thousand sort of years of human achievement, and it's.

I'll tell you something. This morning, I wanted to check the price of butter because I thought you were going to ask me, where do you do you do you do your grocery shopping? And did you notice that prices in?

What kind of an animal do you think? I am Christine Legard?

I how dare you?

If I may say so? So I know your butler does the shopping.

So I check and I checked with one of those terribly smart AI engine. I said, what was the price in twenty nineteen? What was repriced in twenty twenty four? I get the answer and it's totally skewed. I mean, it's cheaper now than it was in twenty nineteen, and my recollection is h So I tell this guy, this AI engine, I said, are you sure about your numbers? Can you check? Dot La comes back and says, well, terribly sorry, we made a mistake. Yes, you're right, it's

It tell you that we can or does it tell you that AI is so far ahead of us that the plan was I'm going to give the head of the European Central Bank the wrong butter figures absolutely plummeting our career. She's in charge of stability of Europe. Europe is then plunged into chaos five hundred years of black death. Oh ay, I has got us by that.

You must be behind that.

I probably am the final question. So we're coming on to a period people, we're talking about the soft landing. It's still been rough for consumers. Do you foresee within the next you know? Because I know these things take time, twelve months, eighteen months, twenty four months, a better stability building into this obviously got without some sort of terrible catastrophe.

Yes, I should think, So, Okay, why do I say that? Because I think that the tools have improved, the analytical models and tools that we used to anticipate and to try to measure our better, and because we've learned in the last two years more than we had in decades and the state and we know that uncertainty is going to be with us and we have to factor that in and make sure that we have tools to anticipate uncertainty, which is a big, big challenge.

Sure, we're anticipating uncertainty here in about eight weeks. So I feel you, I feel you. Thank you so much for joining. It's always such a pleasure to see.

You're tak you back cloth and to fill on the gold we got believe fight away.

All right, that's on top of tonight. Before we go, we're gonna check in with your host for the rest of the week, Miss Dazzy lighting Guzzie by Gussie.

What are you?

What are you going to bring to the people this?

Oh?

So many scandals. There's RFK Junior, Matt Gates, Mark Robinson, which which reminds me, John, I need to look through your phone?

Hand it over, yep.

Why is the Why would you need to look throughly?

Well, we got to make sure there's no scandals brewing here. Okay, who knows which nude continent porn site you've been commenting on the phone?

Now, come on, I don't have anything to hide.

Jesus.

How big is your font?

John God? Okay? Selfie? Selfie, selfie?

Oh my god, John Stewart, is this real?

You? Postmate? An entire fudgie.

The whale cake every single day? Oh, disgusting, disgusting.

I was hacked. I was doing research.

Oh my god, what is this?

This is like everybody will be right he is.

The moment is that the problem with another debate is that it's just too late. Voting has already started. She's done one debate. I've done too. It's too late to do another. I'd love to in many ways, but it's too late. The voting is cast.

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