The Hale Report EconVue

You are going to be hearing a lot more about Iran soon. While geopolitical speculation has focused on Russia, China, and the United States, another country could be the locus of major instability —Iran. The US is increasing its military presence in the Persian Gulf, a move crowded out by discussions of other risks in these dog days of August.

On that cautionary note— Welcome to The Hale Report. My guest for our 46th episode is Trita Parsi and our topic is Iran.

The assumption that carbon fuel will recede in the rear view mirror of our electric vehicles just might be wrong. I first began to question the concept of peak oil when speaking with experts Albert Bressand many years ago, and then Daniel Yergin, both guests of this podcast.

Then at a meeting in Washington of the National Association of Business Economists, I wandered into a panel session with Mark Mills. His explanation of the resource issues associated with electrification of the global economy was revelatory. It is not just a matter of sourcing rare minerals such as lithium and cobalt for batteries, it is how we will dispose of those thousand-pound batteries when they come to the end of their life cycle. One thing he said really stuck in my mind: “There is no such thing as renewable energy.” There are realities we must deal with in terms of mineral availability and toxicity.

A physicist by training, Mark P. Mills is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and a Faculty Fellow at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at Northwestern University.  I asked Mark Mills to join me on The Hale Report to explain his views on the future of energy and to discuss his book The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and A Roaring 2020s 



Mark is an expert in all things energy, with a broader focus on the technology of energy and telecommunications. His in-depth knowledge crosses several domains, as you will soon hear. He is a first-rank iconoclast whose opinion I highly value-as do many others.

Although you might think Mark is a pessimist based on his views on electrification, he is actually quite optimistic about the future. The thesis of his book is convergence- microprocessors, materials and machines will symbiotically create a new economic boom. He believes that we are at what is called a Perez irruption point, the end of the beginning of a phase change, named after the economist Carlota Perez.

Lyric Hale talks to Mark Roeder, Australian author and futurist, about his book "What We Do Next Really Matters".

Hale Strategic will be releasing a new report on the implications of artificial intelligence, or as some are now calling it, augmented intelligence.

To mark its publication, we thought that you would enjoy getting to know more about its author, Mark Roeder. He challenges conventional wisdom about how the world works today, and discusses what we must do how to ensure its future.

Lyric Hughes Hale interviews Daniel Yergin Daniel Yergin, Vice Chairman of IHS MARKIT and founder of CERAWEEK. He is an expert in the geopolitics of energy and the global economy, and is a Pulitzer-prize winning author.

His latest book is The New Map: Energy, Climate and the Clash of Nations was published by Penguin Press last year. The book is actually about the convergence of several maps: America, Russia, China, the Middle East, and Road and Climate maps.

They discussed a wide range of topics, from climate change to cryptocurrencies to Ukraine-- even the Four Ghosts of the South China Sea, and the utter serendipity of innovation.

Lyric interviews Martin Wolf, the economics commentator for the Financial Times and author of a new book the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. The book is a deeply thoughtful exploration of some ideas that might be troubling, including whether the economic and political system we presently enjoy is sustainable.

Lyric interviews Brad Setser, an economist and Whitney Shepardson senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Lyric has long admired Brad for his deep knowledge of global economic data, and his ability to interpret that information.

Brad is one of our country’s most highly respected analysts of global capital flows, national tax competition, and trade imbalances and sovereign debt restructuring, a skill that I imagine is in high demand these days.