Europeans are being told that energy and food inflation to continue through the end of 2024.

0:00 Speaker 1 What is today? Is Mario Okonomo, a good friend, a banker in the big banks of Europe and in the United States, and he gives us an updated what the heck is going on in Europe? And Mario, you’re there now for a couple of weeks. Tell me what you have found.

0:24 Speaker 2 Yes, good morning, cats are out and round table. So let’s start with some information that was released regarding the Eurozone and specifically the core inflation is down. Everybody’s excited and is high fiving each other until you actually begin to realize that core inflation does not include energy or food costs, and those remain ridiculously hot, in fact, so

0:44 much so that in places like Greece, where olive oil used to be cheaper than water, it’s now kept under lock and key in order for so that people don’t actually steal it from the stores. There’s other crazy stories that’s circulating Greece as well, of people going into the super markets and going to the counters that sell cheese

1:03 and salami and ham, buying small portions of that, having it wrapped and asking where the bathroom is and actually going to the bathroom to eat that because they don’t have the money to pay for the food. Now, this may sound comical to people, but the reality is if you figure that in the United States, roughly thirty seven

1:21 million people are at or below the poverty line, which represents about just over ten percent of your population. In Greece that figure is twenty five percent. One in four people lives below the poverty line. And if you include all the disasters recently that have happened, from the forest fires to the floods in Greece and the impact that’s

1:39 going to have on the country’s GDP, the situation is actually very very alarming. In fact, I’d like to roll over to Germany and I’d like to put some information out there, and specifically, this is information which was provided on a recent visit by the head of the AfD, which is the far right part in Germany. The spokesperson

2:02 at the federal level of that party was in Austria and she gave a speech and she said that basically Germany is not the rich country that everybody thinks it is. Forty eight percent of the German population earns less than thirty thousand a year thirty thousand euros, which is just over thirty five thousand dollars.

2:21 Speaker 1 Well, Germany has made a lot of mistakes. It’s made mistakes on the amount of migrants that are coming into Germany, it’s made mistakes in their energy policy, and it’s going to hurt them big time.

2:40 Speaker 2 You’re absolutely right. It’s not only going to hurt them big time now like they’re hurting, but it’s going to get progressively worse. She went on to say that roughly fifty percent of the people don’t own their homes or property for that matter, and that more than twenty five percent of the retirees who paid for years into the

2:56 equivalent of their social security system, they’re only essentially earning the very basic level or amount of social security. This creates a huge problem for Germany, both in terms of consumer spending, but also these high energy costs are essentially leading to the de industrialization of Germany, which we’ve touched on in the past, and we now see that actually

3:20 construction housing starts are way down in Germany, and this is due to the high interest rates that the Eurozone is seeing and continuing to see. And even though our friends at the ECB are very happy the European Central Bank that core inflation is down and they’ve paused on hold increasing interest rates. The reality of interest rates are

3:39 too high. And again this is not a problem of too much money. This is an issue of not enough supply. And I said this before and I have to say it again. You folks in America need to decide what you’re going to do. But unless you open up the spigots and you start pulling out more oil and gas

3:54 out of the ground and shipping more down from Alaska and selling it to the European Union, there is going to be very, very big problems in the European Union in years.

4:06 Speaker 1 Mario. I’ve said that when Chairman Powell did not raise interest rates this time around and said that things are getting better, everybody laughed because he’s looking in the rear view mirror. In the last sixty days, oil went from the seventies to the high middle nineties. So that means is going to be a lot more inflation going forward

4:33 unless America opens up the spigots and brings down the price of oil. You know, China or Russia is almost acting like a terrorist country, cutting production and forcing the price of oil up. I mean, this doesn’t make any sense at all, and I’m sure Europe is going to suffer even more.

4:58 Speaker 2 Europe will suffer more. In fact, we saw the recent some more writings by SAMR. Hirsch with respect to the Nord Stream pipeline and who actually blew it up. Germany has made a huge strategic mistake. It will suffer and as a result it will the rest of the European Union will suffer as well. We know also that Russia

5:17 now is going to stop exporting diesel next month, and that’s going to be very interesting to see what impact that’s going to have across the European Union, especially as we’re getting into the winter season. Once you’ve got a situation where we’re not going to have enough natural gas to heat ourselves here, we’re also going to have a

5:34 situation without enough diesel to be able to move goods around. It’s going to be interesting to see what work around the Europeans are going to do this year. Remember last year was a very mild winner, which actually helped Europe quite a bit. I do want to touch on one other thing, and specifically in the Ukraine. There’s an analyst

5:52 there who’s come out and he’s basically said some very shocking and rather alarming things. He said that basically the weapons systems, the armor that we’ve given to the Ukrainians to fight the war against the Russians was primarily created for what he called low to medium intensity wars, not for an all out war, which I find kind of

6:15 alarming because I have to ask myself, what have all these think tanks in Europe and the United States been doing all these years when they’ve been preparing studies and doing analyzes on what weapon systems would be needed in the event of a war with the Russians. If in fact, the weapon systems we have have not been created for

6:32 what is called an all out war. So I think that that’s something that we’re all going to need to go back to the drawing board and ask ourselves and figure out why our side, our industry, our industry captains haven’t thought this through and decided to charge into what’s essentially an open ended war in terms of supporting the

6:50 Ukraine against the Russians. In fact, his statements were essentially supported by a German general who’s the director I believe, in charge of planning, who himself said that the reality is it’s not so much sophisticated weapons that a country needs in an all out war, but rather mass a lot of weapons, and right now NATO forces do not

7:13 have this type of amount of weapons that are necessary. And once again I think you know what happened was in terms of US charging out and supporting the Ukraine without sitting down and thinking through what our stockpiles really were were and what this war was going to lead to.

7:28 All we’ve essentially done is we’ve allowed the Russians now to get closer to the Chinese. Both of them are developing their military at paces that NATO cannot match, and that does not bode well for the future for the West.

7:44 Speaker 1 Well, thank you very much, Mario, and I have concerns about the United States. I have concerns about Europe, and thank you for raising the bar and telling us what the heck is going on. And we’ll catch up you again real soon.

8:01 Speaker 2 Thank you, enjoy your take your day. Thank you. Thanks you