EMERGENCY DEBATE: They Lied About The Economy Recovering! Is A Financial Apocalypse Coming?

Gary Stevenson (0:00)

I'm sick of multi-millionaires telling kids who can't afford to turn the heating on, you just need to be more entrepreneurial. It's sick, Dan, it's sick.

Daniel Priestley (0:07)

Well, your video where you talk about if you don't have a rich dad, you're screwed. Well, to me, if I had have come across your content at 19, 20 years old, I would have been screwed.

Gary Stevenson (0:15)

My friends can't feed their kids, okay? If it was that easy, why is everybody not doing it?

Daniel Priestley (0:20)

I'll tell you why people aren't doing it.

Gary Stevenson (0:21)

It's because... You're not going to say one thing back on that.

Steven Bartlett (0:26)

Today's debate is fiery to say the least, but important nonetheless. As I sat down with two leading experts in wealth and entrepreneurship, and the economy to discuss the state of the US, the state of the UK, and the Western world.

Gary Stevenson (0:39)

Do you think the reason the average Brit or American are getting poorer is because they don't know how to create wealth?

Daniel Priestley (0:44)

No. The reason people are getting poorer is because of big governments, record levels of taxes, an outdated schooling system, technology, and remote work.

Gary Stevenson (0:52)

Are you sure about that?

Steven Bartlett (0:53)

How do you disagree with those opinions?

Gary Stevenson (0:54)

Living standards are falling because of growing wealth inequality. If you and other rich to get richer, they squeeze the middle class and the poor class out of things like housing. Let's cut tax on people who are working hard, and let's raise tax on the richest and most powerful people in the world.

Daniel Priestley (1:06)

That's an overly simplified view of things. We now have a thousand millionaires a month leaving, which means every ordinary person who pays 10 grand a year in tax will now have to pay 20 grand a year in tax. You end up cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Gary Stevenson (1:18)

If we are a country that don't try and do things which are necessary because they are hard, then our kids will live in poverty.

Daniel Priestley (1:25)

What do you want people to do?

Gary Stevenson (1:26)

There's a lot of different ways.

Steven Bartlett (1:27)

Buckle up. Gary, Daniel. Daniel, you've been on the show a few times before, so I want to start with Gary and understand a little bit about your backstory and who you are. And having been through The Trading Game and read and watched many, many of your videos over time, I have a sort of deep understanding of that. But for anyone that doesn't know you, can you give me a picture of the context that has brought you to where you are today, writing about the things you're writing about today and running the YouTube channel and speaking to the subject matter that you're speaking about today? Take me right back and give me as much as you possibly can.

Gary Stevenson (2:02)

Okay, so my name is Gary Stevenson. I was born in a place called Ilford, which is in outer East London. Quite a poor family, a little terraced house by the railway, playing football in the streets kind of stuff.

Always very good at maths since I was a kid, very talented maths student. Eventually able to get into the London School of Economics, which is an extremely elite university, economics university in the centre of London, which is basically a kind of investment banking boot camp. Got a job as a trader, started working full time as a short term interest rates trader at Citibank in London in June 2008 I went on to be one, obviously exactly that's just before the big credit crash, the big Lehman crisis. And I watched the Lehman crisis happen in front of my eyes. I was short term interest rate trading is basically like short term loans. And during the credit crisis, what a credit crisis is, is nobody can borrow any money. So like short term loans become really, really important. My desk, which was like historically unfashionable area of trading, became like the center of the crisis. Well, one of the centers of the crisis, people started making tons of money. I was working with all these crazy people. And you can imagine me, I turn up 21 years old and then like within three months, like everyone around me is making a ton of money during the credit crisis. But what really interested me was what happened after the crisis itself, which was, so we're betting on interest rates. Long story short, interest rates come down when the economy is weak, and they go up when the economy is strong, when the economy is overheating from an inflation perspective. In 2008, all the interest rates go to zero. So suddenly, our job is basically predicting and betting on when will those interest rates go back up, which is when will the economy recover. And this is super interesting. In 2008, because all the interest rates went to zero so quickly, before 2008, it's important to remember, rates would move from five and a half to five and a quarter. And then here in 2008, everywhere in the world slashing to zero.