JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 1, Block A:  Elizabeth Peek, TheHill and Fox News; in re:   The (comparatively) roaring US economy, thanks to the consumer. Eventually, someone will have to manufacture the things that we buy.
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 1, Block B:   Elizabeth Peek, TheHill and Fox News; in re: Bloomberg’s biggest threat is to Buttagieg and Biden, so he has a shot at getting the nomination; although it’d be a tough row to hoe for him to beat Trump.  For one thing, many of the Democratic candidates loathe billionaires. Btw, Bloomberg funded many of the smaller races in Virginia, which has turned blue, so many of the electors are indebted to Bloomberg and are likely to vote for him at the convention.
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 1, Block C: Gregory R Copley, editor, Defense and Foreign Affairs, in re:    Stalin created irreparable water problems among the Central Asian republics and left a vast, toxic wasteland.   Shavkat Mirziyoyev called a meeting, with all five CA states invited, recognizing that all are under threat.  Called the meeting with thee days’ notice so Moscow and Beijing couldn't [horn in].  International water law in that region will be crucial.  The Aral Sea is an ecological catastrophe unequalled elsewhere on Earth.  A legacy of the Soviet creature.
Agreed a Schengen-type visa for the five CA states, both to increase travel and to create a huge market, as well as allow foreigners to come in and wonder among the five states.
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 1, Block D: Afghanistan is critical, for rail links to the world at large,  if trump can negotiate a peace in Afghanistan, can stabilize it and open the entire region such that Moscow and Beijing cannot dominate it.  Further, links through Azerbaijan to Turkey and Europe. The issue of Iran will be a problem for years, but ultimately the Central Asian states will be able to send goods south through Iran. Also, from Zahedan into Afghanistan.  American-Uzbekistan Chamber of Commerce, meeting in Washington:  Visa, Intl Harvester, Caterpillar, and other large firms were present. Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan were also present.  Beijing already dominates some of the old khanates in Central Asia.  Uyghurs.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: War with Russia?; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re:  Reds under the bed – McCarthyism permeates the UK.  In 1931, MIT was the US center of NKVD propaganda and espionage.  . . .  “We’ve gone from a Wall to a -gate.”  George Kennan said, “The Cold War will follow ___.” I asked a senior member of the Clinton Adm why the US was moving NATO up to the very edge of Russia. “Because we can.”  [This is a policy?]
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 2, Block B:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: War with Russia?; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re: The future will be the past – Reds under the bed. In high school I studied Russian from a Ukrainian refugee, then went to football practice.  Today, I’m told that the Reds won – are running things in Washington.  Lieutenant General Leslie Richard Groves, Jr., was the head of lend-lese; then ran the Manhattan Project. 
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 2, Block C:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: War with Russia?; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin;  in re:  DeGaulle visualized France as the great diplomatic power in Europe. Macron proposes that France pick up that mantle again.  East European countries worry, as they say they fear Russian invasion every day. Note that NATO brings in a deal of money – could be 7 to 10% of their GDP. Were there a Russian military build-up on the US’s Mexican or Canadian border, it’d cause an uproar. Trump seemed to have an instinctual understanding of how to deal with the NATO matter.  He also asked, with the USSR gone, who or what is NATO? Macron asks, what is the mission of NATO?  See the panic in the vast, greatly-funded NATO bureaucracy. 
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 2, Block D:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; American Committee for East-West Accord; author: War with Russia?; Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re: NATO, dating from 1948, doesn’t have a clear mission. Ergo, why should the US pay for it?
The current US president has been accused of being a Russian stooge. Will this continue forever?  Can we imagine thirty years from now a situation where every election the question will be asked, Are the Russians involved? Mrs Clinton, who lost, has just said, “Trump is not a legitimate president.”  No modern precedent for such an allegation.
No one has yet found any tangible evidence that Russia contributed in any way to Trump’s victory.  Now the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC say that the Russians elected Trump.  This is [seriously] dangerous.
Two woman testified, Fiona Hill and Marie Yovanovich. Their testimonies, their political cues about Russia and Ukraine, are the opposite of Pres Trump’s: they aver that Russia and Ukraine are the forward lines of the new cold war. Why were these people in the White House? They were pushing opposing views to those of the person who put them there. A president should never be surrounded by people who oppose his policies.  He may have hired them because they’re hard-liners and he thought that would [take the curse off] his policies, which are opposed by the left media. “The very model of a modern Major-General.”
 
Hour Three
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 3, Block A:  The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, by Gregory Zuckerman.   How the quants took over the Street. Jim Simons, the mathematician who made $23 billion, watched the market go down, down . .  .  He was born in Newton, Mass; went to MIT as a scholar, then taught at MIT and Harvard.  Under a few financial pressures, he was offered a government/DoD job breaking codes.   Here, he learned how to build an algorithm. Think of Turing.  1967.  In 1968, invited to run the Stony Brook math department. He turned the whole dept around, recruited the best talent in the country. Lured the top national talent to join his fledgling department.  The Simons Equation.  Holonomy is the parallel transport of  . . .  vectors.
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 3, Block B:  The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, by Gregory Zuckerman
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 3, Block C:  The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, by Gregory Zuckerman
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 3, Block D: The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, by Gregory Zuckerman
 
Hour Four
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 4, Block A:  John Tamny, They’re Both Wrong.  Negative interest rates.  Economists are confused.
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 4, Block B:  Bud Weinstein, SMU: North America — Canada, the US and Mexico together, are a global energy powerhouse.
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 4, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:  Long March 8, the Chinese rocket.  Local Council in Cornwall, UK, wants to build a commercial spaceport. Voted a $10 mil grant; interrupted by climate-change protestors. The proposal won 66-34.
Tuesday 3 December 2019 / Hour 4, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:  Hayabusa 2, in possession of pieces of an asteroid. (Phobosians?)  . . .  Heliosphere. New Horizons.