music

Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Friday, October 7th, 2022.

I'm John Pudhorets the editor of commentary magazine. This is probably the last time I'm going to tell you this because we are almost at capacity, but if you have been listening to me talk to you for the last two months about the Barry White's roast commentaries annual fundraising event in New York on Sunday November 13th and you want to attend to hear brilliant roasting comedians celebrity guests that you'll be very surprised by.

By leading American politicians and others, both celebrating and teasing Barry Weiss, pretty much you got to do it in the next couple of days or we're just not going to have any room left for you so go to commentary dot org slash roast for details Sunday November 13th here in New York City.

And with me as always have I introduced myself again I did right okay so with me is always executive editor and windwald hi a John media commentary columnist and American enterprise and suit fellow Christine Rosen high Christine and associate editor and author rise the new puritans no arotha.

Hi John hi Noah. So I thought I'd start today because of the nature of the news today, simply by reading off the items that are contained within what is one of the best morning aggregator newsletters on earth John Ellis's news items and look it up.

If you get a chance news items at sub stack dot com John Ellis a long time he ran the Fox news decision desk for many years and is an all around a great guy and he does this really fantastic newsletter every morning.

And I'm going to have it's about China a lot of it's about finance. So this is a way of deep diving into things that you might not otherwise pay that much attention to but today is particularly striking because.

Here, here are the items in I'm not going to read everything because it's too long item number one presidential Biden yesterday said the risk of nuclear Armageddon is at the highest level since the 1962 missile crisis number two from euro intelligence let us assume that Vladimir Putin and some desperate last to maneuver deploys a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

This would produce the mother of all financial crises says your intelligence no sane investors will continue to lend money to any European government at this point that's number two number three from Walter Russell meets column in the in the Wall Street journal from Mr. Putin's point of view and a war in which almost everything is going wrong nuclear blackmail is working why wouldn't he double down on the one tactic that works.

Number four, the head of the United Nations nuclear agency yesterday warned that staff at Europe's largest nuclear power plant, which is of course the as a zaparija plant in southeastern Ukraine are under increasing pressure after Russian authorities attempted to sweep to deepen their control over the plant, posing a heightened safety risk.

Five flush with recent battlefield successes Ukrainian officials are pressing their case for acquiring longer range missiles number six Russia's flandering invasion of Ukraine has produced an extraordinary browser of criticism from supporters of the war in recent days number seven Larry Summers and interview published yesterday with Martin Wolf of the financial times I can remember previous moments of equal or even greater gravity for the world economy.

Remember moments when there was many separate aspects and as many cross currencies are right are right now number eight a record number of Chinese cities reported COVID cases during the national day holiday prompting a new round of restrictions number nine overseas money continues to flow out of Chinese stocks and bonds is a rapidly cooling economy and interest rate shifts drive investment to other destinations number 10 investors poured the most money into cash since April 2020 on fears of a looming recession number 11.

The battle between Asian Europe to lock and gas supplies is stepping up a gear, heightening the risks of a further surge in prices that would add fresh fuel to the cost of living crisis number 12 also from your intelligence, the canary and the coal mine for the euro areas housing markets is starting to kill over number 13 the scenes that unfolded at Cheref University in Iran on Sunday afternoon where some of them was shocking in the three weeks of protest calling for an end to the Islamic Republic's rule that have convulsed.

Number 14 the US military yesterday announced that it conducted two ways in Syria within a day of each other killing two key ISIS targets and their associates number 15 a major hack targeting Mexico's defense industry has shed light on the country's most secretive and powerful institution number 16 Alberta conservatives elected a sovereignty advocate who wailed against vaccine mandates to lead Canada's biggest oil producing province number six.

Number 17 worried by an outbreak of Ebola in Uganda number 18 the hottest place in the solar system is not the sun this is pretty exciting but a machine there south a south Oxford surveillance called column where there is a nuclear fusion experiment going on called jet or joint European Taurus and apparently it's working.

Number 19 a new AI system can create natural sounding speech and music after being prompted with a few seconds of audio so that is just this morning in John Ellis's news items newsletter and I just want to go back crawl into bed pull the covers over my head and just wait for you know the sweet meteor of death when I go live inside a mountain that's so much.

So I want to go first I know where I want to go but I just want to say you know when when news metastasizes when you have China cracking down on COVID when you have investors fleeing to cash when you have the president of the United States using about whether he is now John if Kennedy yet again because he's facing a crisis that he stupidly is like an anxiety.

And he's stupidly is like an into the Cuban muscle crisis when you know when you have a Larry summer saying that there have never been these kinds of pressures on the world economy before when you have the Euro zone about to go into a terrible crunch between housing inflation and energy and all of that we are.

This is reminiscent of the opening pages in some ways of Henry Kissinger's White House years where Nixon comes into office and Kissinger and Nixon they look around and every place on earth is a fire.

I mean it's sort of like there's a border war between China and Russia there's a soccer war between El Salvador and Nicaragua there's I mean it's just like anywhere you turn embassies around fire but you know it's like they're like oh and of course we had mom was going on and it's like oh my god what have we gotten ourselves into okay.

Noah.

...