Europe update, Turkey's election, Ukraine.

0:00 Speaker 1 With us today is Mario Gronomo, a former banker in New York, London, Zurich. And we haven’t had a report in what’s going on in Europe lately? And Mario, what the heck is going on?

0:15 Speaker 2 Yes, good morning, cats, roundtable. How is everybody today? So there’s a lot of things going on as usual. Whether they’re important or not, that depends on the person who’s listening to our update to determine. We know that the inflation in Europe is actually coming down now and that’s largely driven by the fact that energy prices have come

0:35 down dramatically. Food inflation remained stubbornly high, but eventually that too should pull back given the decrease and energy prices. Just to give you an idea, inflation now is just slightly north of six percent in the Eurozone. That’s down roughly one percent. The ECB itself has announced that it will continue to increase interest rates. They have a target

1:03 of three point seventy five. They could go higher. But the more interesting and alarming thing is that somebody from Holland, I believe it is that’s a part of the ECB, has announced that more likely than not, interest rate cuts will not happen at least through the end of twenty twenty four, meaning another year and a half in Mario Mario.

1:26 Speaker 1 My comment on that is, I think I think the European community is showing how stupid they are because what induces capital, nobody’s going to invest money where they cost the capital is very high. I don’t understand that. Do you understand that as a form of benka?

1:46 Speaker 2 No, I don’t understand it, And in fact, I can tell you that if they continue to do this, we will start to see tremendous pressure on people, on individuals who have mortgage rates which keep going up and mortgage payments which keep going up, with wages that are remaining essentially stagnant. So at some point you can’t burn the

2:06 candle at both ends and expect nothing to happen. At some point, people are going to start being distressed with respect to the payments they’re making to the banks, which will have an impact on the banks. I’m not sure what’s going on here. I think there is an agenda.

2:20 I can’t believe that there is not an agenda, but I suspect that the ECB is actually preparing for something. I’m not too sure what it is, but it makes no sense to continue keeping interest rates this high through twenty twenty four when you’ve already seen that inflation and specifically energy costs have come down dramatically.

2:42 Speaker 1 Let me ask you a silly question that you don’t expect in America. Anheuser Busch has been punished by people. The value of the stock has done down fifteen billion dollars. The value in Disney stock has gone down fifty percent.

3:00 Value of Target stock is done down significantly, and the people are saying the common sense, normal people saying, go woke, go broke. And these are the companies that were trying to advocate things towards kids and LBGQ, et cetera, et cetera.

3:23 Is that going on in Europe?

3:26 Speaker 2 Yes, it is. Europeans are not as divided as Americans are on this particular whole woke culture thing. Europeans are much more accepting of it. They don’t seem to be reacting as angrily as many people in the American population are.

3:47 Why the reasons, I’m not sure. I suspect it’s cultural, but I also suspect Europeans have other things to do, which is they’re trying to figure out how they can continue to make ends meet and to enjoy a life that they’ve largely enjoyed until now, which has in many places, for example in Britain and England come smashing down around

4:06 them given the very high energy costs that the Europeans have suffered through. So I think the short answer to that is there is not as much an alarm in Europe over the discussions regarding the woe culture as there is in the United States.

4:22 Speaker 1 Understood, carry on with your conversation. What else was going on? There was? There was, There was I guess elections in in Turkey and you call it differently, and there was elections in Greece. Which way is the trend going in European community?

4:45 Speaker 2 Okay, so, yes, it’s actually called Turkeia. Now that’s the official name that needs to be addressed by UH And yes, President ertigon I, but that was not a surprise to many people who have studied him and who know and understand what’s happening in Turkia. You have to understand the majority of the people in Turkia do support him. He’s

5:05 viewed as a strong leader. It doesn’t matter what the West thinks, and in fact, when the West actually throws around terms like dictator, demagogue, dangerous Islamic person. Those titles actually go a long way in Turkeia with the people.

5:21 They actually like strong leaders and they like the image that he’s projecting on the world with respect to that country. It looks like he’s going to be changing his cabinet completely and he’s going to be appointing a gentleman by the name of mister Colleen, who’s a very very sharp, intelligent, well spoken person educated in the US who’s going to

5:42 head his foreign ministry. And that’s actually a good thing because mister Colleen is not that aggressive. He’s reasonable, he’s practical, and he’s very approachable. So I think that’s a very good thing that the President Aragon is doing. Does it mean that Turkey Turkia will actually accept Sweden into NATO U.

6:05 The short answer to that is, I don’t know, but I suspect not. We know that mister Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, will be traveling to Turkia to meet with President radigon Uh and he will be discussing having a Turkia stop the veto that it keeps putting up with respect to Sweden joining NATO.

6:25 Speaker 1 Talk about Sweden. There was a headline. I didn’t read the whole story. There was a headline that all the gangsters have gone to Sweden. What does that mean.

6:38 Speaker 2 When you refer to all the gangsters, all the gangsters from where?

6:42 Speaker 1 I don’t know. I mean, I just read the headline and you mentioned Sweden’s how you mentioned it?

6:48 Speaker 2 I haven’t heard anything.

6:49 Speaker 1 All right, next week’s report.

6:52 Speaker 2 So let’s also touch on what’s going on in Greece. That’s an important situation there as well. The polls were complete wrong in the last election. They actually did not predict the very high the voter turnout and the very high amount of people that were going to vote for the city government of New Democracy. They were also very low.

7:14 They made a mistake. They didn’t predict correctly. They in fact overshot, they didn’t undershoot the amount of percentage of the opposition party was going to get. This means we have another runoff election essentially now in Greece at the end of June, on the twenty fifth, I believe it is, and that election more likely than not the current the

7:33 former government, New Democracy will once again win the parliament and they will continue with their program. The bad news is, of course, the opposition will be very weak in that parliament, which will allow the Greek Party of New Democracy to essentially push through all the reforms that it has in mind.

7:51 The bond markets overall are pleased with the performance Greece, and I don’t suspect there will be any tremendous economic shocks there. It’s worth pointing out that in Spain, the center left government that was the prime minister was with the parliament there. He essentially called new elections because in regional elections the center right party and the far right

8:17 party actually won very overwhelmingly. So he decided he needed to essentially go to national elections in order to determine whether or not the current government that was running Spain is going to continue or whether the people are going to want a center right far right government combination. We should also just touch on the Ukraine, and this is

8:39 very important. If you remember, there’s going to be.

8:41 Speaker 1 A one minute Mario.

8:45 Speaker 2 Tell us, yes, there’s going to be a NATO meeting this summer, and they were going to be discussing at that NATO meeting Sweden joining and Turquia going there. There was also going to be a discussion about Ukraine joining NATO, and I think this has now pretty much been put into the deep freezer because Germany’s foreign minister, Missus Bairbach

9:06 has announced that no country that’s currently involved in a war is allowed to join NATO. So I think that if they in fact do that and say that, that in a way is a form of appeasement to the Russians, which is not a bad thing, because then we can look to September when there is the G twenty in

9:27 India and see if all the countries consider around the table and reach an agreement to end this war, which so far all it’s done is killed a lot of people on both sides, destroyed completely the dawn baths, the infrastructure and the buildings and people’s lives, and accomplished very well.

9:44 Speaker 1 The budget the death said in the Ukraine is up to one hundred and twenty four billion. And will the United States have to pay for it someday?

9:54 Speaker 2 Well, you’re an American and that’s for you people in America to vote and decide on.

9:58 Speaker 1 Mario Conomo, Thank you, God bless you, stay safe and we’ll talk to you again real soon.

10:04 Speaker 2 Thank you for having me on. Enjoy your day.