Last Week in Denmark
Welcome to Last Week in Denmark's official podcast, featuring the Founder of Last Week in Denmark, Narcis George Matache and co-host Arun Prakash.
Last Week in Denmark
LWID #6 - The future of this podcast and thoughts on geopolitics
Note: This podcast episode covers discussion around the Last Week in Denmark (03.11-10.11) Episode 38 Year 4 newsletter update.
In this episode, our two hosts finally met up in Aalborg to discuss the ongoings in Denmark in person, for some unscripted thoughts on Aalborg, updates on LWID and the political landscape of Europe and North America in general.
Topics covered in today’s podcast:
- The future of Last Week in Denmark (01:10)
- The upcoming Trump presidency, and what that means for Denmark (03:07)
- Potential impacts of tariffs on European products from the Trump administration (05:52)
- The upcoming EU presidency and the war against doomscrolling (18:00)
- Thoughts about rising interest rates and inflation (20:35)
- Calling our listeners to join the podcast! (28:14)
If you would like to be a part these podcasts discussions, or if you have any suggestions on the themes you would like to hear Arun and Narcis discuss. If you're interested, please send an email to lastweekdk@gmail.com!
The Last Week in Denmark podcast is now also available in both audio and video! And of course, you can always find the full newsletter here.
Want to stay updated with our latest news and events? Find us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or visit our website.
[Music] Hello folks! Hello! Long time no see! Well, since last week at least. This is the first time ever we tried something new, completely new, that I am actually showing up on a face-to-face interview with the man himself, Narcis. Well, welcome to Aalborg. I mean, I know it's hard for you guys down there in the capital to come and see the rest of Denmark, you know. There's more to Denmark than just a couple of seconds. But I'm happy that you got the chance to come and see Aalborg. I hope today you will get to see it a little bit and understand why he has been called for so many decades Paris of the North. Paris of the North? Yes. Do we really see that? Yeah. Okay. Do you really see the audiences out there? Aalborg is a really nice city. I've been on my first-ever journey with the purpose. And today I guess this is going to be a raw conversation. As usual, the agenda is simple. How was last week? How was last week for me? Well, we are, we worked really hard to start this referral campaign for last week in Denmark because now before Christmas, before okay, we stand in a really good space in the sense that there is a chance that the Ministry of Culture might see us as available service and then provide us with funding so that we can actually have some sort of an income, have some people hired. Then the last week in Denmark doesn't depend so much on my person moving forward. If we have some people hired who will be running it, then they'll simplify things because right now it obviously depends on me. So if someone rolls over me with a car tomorrow, then I don't know what's going to happen. So that's why we are now trying to get more people to subscribe to last week in Denmark because it will matter when they assess our case. They'll look, okay, is this something that people really want? Is this something that people really need in Denmark? Is it worth spending taxpayers' money on this project? So thanks to BlumTree Technologies, we got some donations of really cool iPads and laptops that we can give to people. That's an amazing initiative by the way and thank you for enlightening me. Today I would say I had a busy week but despite the fact that I had a busy week, I also really feel being in Aalborg and meeting Narcis is a good feeling that I have meeting you in person and also doing this on a physical setup than the virtual ones with the headphones and floodlights and whatsoever that I've been doing in the past couple of episodes. We will start with for the users the big story of the week which was Trump's election, the US election, Trump being elected as a president and what impacts do we in Denmark could feel and that was the first point of the topic we would like to touch. Well as I said to you earlier when we were discussing before we start filming, it really depends if Trump will actually put in practice from January when he starts his Monday if he will actually put in practice any of the promises made because it's maybe it was just promises during the campaign to get the Republican voters to support him and get him elected as president. Will he actually make them reality? Maybe, maybe not, maybe he'll be more focused on they say that he has an revenge plan against all those people who try to imprison him. Okay, so he's planning probably to go after them and if he's going to be busy with internal wars and witch hunting, that'll be good for us because then he doesn't have time for real policy. So, but yeah simply the question is if you do what he promised there's one situation if you not do what he promised, that's good for us but if you do what he promised then then we have issue and what could that issue be? Is it going to hit us in the economy or is it going to hit us in terms of relationship with NATO? I don't know what to think about. There's really because of aspects. Yeah, because I as an expert I actually read an article about Trump challenging the amount of funding that is being invested in Europe especially and she was challenging about we spend four percentage in the US and rest of the Europe is spending only certain percentage and he hates that. So, let's start with NATO for example. Will that be a hit because he is not a president? Well, in NATO to be honest European countries have for long kind of depending on US for military protection. They knew that US is more hawkish, they are more willing to invest a lot of money in their developing their army and that meant that in Europe we didn't have to try so hard. So, that meant that money that normally have gone to developing the military, investments in the army, went instead in schools, in healthcare. So, yes, it's US is a very capitalistic country with a lot of money they put into military but at the same time thanks to that we were able in Europe to develop this welfare societies where we focused more on people's development and less on armies and other things that don't because think about it money invested in armies is about managing risk. You don't know if those money are going to anything right? Let's say I invested now in a hundred tanks but those tanks might never be used. Is that a good or a bad investment? Bad investment, absolutely. But if you don't have those 100 tanks and then Russia is gone. But yeah, it's managing risk. I mean, yeah, but prevention is better than cure but in this case it's a expensive prevention I would say. At least seen from my perspective though. Okay, now one is NATO. Let's talk about the other aspects. What about economy? Well, in terms of economy they're the most concerning thing for us actually for us for Denmark has more than one but the first one will be tariffs. So if Trump really puts 10% on European products like he promised that means that European products sold in the US market will be 10% more expensive and for some 10% is all the margin they have actually after all the costs and everything they only remain with 10% so if you take that 10% away then many small and medium companies for start they cannot export to US anymore because will not be sustainable. That's one. That means they lose an important market so now they have to find a different way or to stop that activity or to fire people. That's why there is we're talking about the losses in the billions and the losses of jobs because people have to be fired. They don't work anymore with that market. Then you have to think of the larger companies who are selling a lot of products on the US market. For example, think about the pharma industry. They depend on the US market severely. Now imagine that because you know that Novo Nordisk for example right we then marked the pendulum out on Novo Nordisk. It became like our Nokia you can say. Yeah, Nokia Finland. Exactly. But the problem is that if Ellie their competitor in the US gets cheaper because of these tariffs then Novo Nordisk will have a hard time keeping up with Ellie. That means the whole development stage of Novo Nordisk hiring more people opening new factories unless they switch focus to Nokia. Not there, not that fast. So maybe who else has problems with obesity in the world and affords because actually the price for the same medicine in Europe is three times or four times cheaper than what they sell price. That is true. Because well it's a European company so of course they're going to be biased towards their own right. But can you say Europe is more regulated in terms of pricing strategy and US on the other hand has let's say the policies that doesn't help these pharmaceutical companies regulated better. I don't know. No, you can that could be reason why they have maybe there is a lobby in between or layers in between that goes with insurances or agreements. There are rules about how high you can price something. Unfortunately those rules are not very strict. But in Europe what we have is the fact that the state pays part of your medicine especially also in Denmark. So in Denmark you never pay the real price of medicine. Yeah, I might think but no. It's a lot cheaper than what you should be paying. Yeah, that is because the state pays part of it. Correct. Not because you have insurance or anything anyone to pay medicine buys discounted medicine already by the state. And then if you have all sorts of better conditions it can be even get to zero because it is that is true because I I frequently buy a medicine and then I get some points added up at some point the amount of money that I spend is seldom that I feel like why do I have to lower because the points for me has added up so I could get it in a completely like zero cost at certain certain frequencies and that that goes by how Denmark lives with this example of welfare society. But it's not just Denmark. Well to be honest I think medicine is discounted all over Europe. Two is different in their roles depending on the state affordability. But the point the idea is that first of all the price is lower because it's produced in Europe and when he was produced in Europe I'm pretty sure nobody's had some support from the state state grants EU grants and so on and and most likely they have signed some gate like let's say okay we will use your money to make this but we will not sell it over this. Yeah, that's a threshold. There is there is some deals that most likely we don't know and probably will never know about. But the point is that that's why in Europe is cheaper than is in US and if they lose the US market that can be a huge impact for us right because think about Denmark right now Denmark stays above the the fact like it actually has a growth economic growth thanks to the fact that we have this very strong farming industry. Yeah, absolutely. Otherwise we will be sinking like Norway and Sweden is doing right now. It's not going to operate for them. Not even for Germany. Look what happened now with Volkswagen. They had to close two factories cut salary by 10% to all the employees. Is it also for the electrical company not old? I guess it's also for the EV market in Sweden that is going a bit below. Yeah, I mean think about what there was this discussion about the fact that there is in Sweden there's the only European producer of batteries right and we Denmark and especially the pension funds. I mean there's a lot of money in that because well it's batteries I mean it's no brainer. Well no brainer or not we lost billions already because they're not selling. Simply the batteries made somewhere else cheaper. So it's not going that great and talking about green and batteries. Another thing that can be problematic is not just the tariffs is the policy of US regarding green transition. Think about it we in Denmark besides pharma are second or almost equal let's just say. Thing is that we keep innovating on green transition which is coming up with new technologies with innovations on this field and we sell them to the rest of the world especially to US. Is it the largest market by far for Europe or is it also the Asian market? It is bigger than Asian one. Okay, so then we make sense. The time hour is higher. The regulations to the market are this year and it's one market. You cannot call Asia one market. And I know there's a green strategy partnership with countries like India right? Yeah and they have set up a lot of eco greener parks and restorations offshore wind farms for example and that goes by let's say looking at the landscape of India. There's eastern southern eastern coast where I come from and then northwestern coast which is also like ideal investment for scaling the businesses right and I could imagine if that is the case with the US it is a huge business selling sustainable solutions and. Exactly but you have to think about that now Trump said we will not allow any more windmills to be erected on the US territory. How true can it be because policy is not specific that he makes but he also mentioned about EV. He himself one of his campaigns mentioned we will not allow EV we want to sell fuel and what did he say? Yeah can you repeat and he has a point though but I'm not completely denying the fact there's a lot of jobs where people are working in oil rigs and people that produces let's say even today there are jobs being allocated for thousands of people. They could be hit they won't be able to find employment. He was the same when they closed the coal mines yeah yeah thousands of people lost their jobs. Yeah but he can't just deny the fact that EV is the future and he can't just glorify the fact that. But he can he has the power to influence policy and he has the power to take US out of any like international agreements on climate change. Yeah it can be for four years maybe only but four years is a huge time it's a long time in business. It is and it is his last term hopefully the one way it is good that we only have four years but it's still four years and four years without selling windmills without selling green technologies without selling electric cars that means a lot of loss for the companies. Yeah so most likely everyone has to find well again only if he actually puts anything that he says in practice true. He might be so blinded by revenge I hope to God that he will be more focused on hunting his own enemies that he's busy. He'll be busy so by the time he actually finishes hunting the people that he wants to revenge on and start doing policy work time has passed. So but again the risk is real because unfortunately this time he actually has a professional team running his campaign and that professional team will be putting key positions in government in the federal government. So if he gives them mandate to play with policy that's not great for us. Because last time he had a chaotic team all sorts of right wing media legends but they had zero policy knowledge those people were good at talking to people they were good at making people like excited but they had no idea how policy works but unfortunately this time he actually has policy people who nobody knows who they are you don't know who his stuff is before you could know it was Steve Bannon he was everyone next to him had a name but think about now do you know anyone that's next to him? No I know only one person I think she is the second woman who has an Indian descent and that's the only information I have. You don't even remember her name. Sorry that's how it is. But there are a few people. I know Elon Musk is a conversation. You know the funny conversation with him and Elon with North Carolina's flood issue he was having a teleconference with Elon to just fix that issue which is great that there is a satellite the starling connection to all these areas but that is a sensational news that a potential president is talking before even he is getting elected as a president and he's trying to make a deal with North Carolina to fix things and I was like well Elon was kind of the only let's just say tech entrepreneur or tech billionaire who was willing to kind of make himself a joke because that's what he became on the global stage. No yeah I mean come on well like you dignity just took a I was surprised. I was surprised. But he's sad because he inspired a lot of people to go into the tech entrepreneurship he inspired all people to dream and put their dreams in reality and now he's just destroying that image. He's simply taking it and just crushing it down with every occasion he gets. Look let me remind you social media there's a huge role in this campaign. Guess what podcast are huge influencers. X is another platform where he could actually spread information like forest fire and these two things became reality of why Trump won this election to be honest. That's a strategy that they actually plan for I guess. Why he won to be honest why he won is is is connected to the fact that we developed algorithm on social media and we have taught those algorithms to only promote and put in front of people things that will make them react and what makes them react is things that make you either angry things that can controversial right. Controversy yeah and that means people like to see controversies. And that meant that people that normally in the old society before the internet would have never had a chance to be even will be the joker of the town right. To be that crazy man that keeps talking in the corner of the village some bullshit about I don't know the world is coming to the end. Yeah it was always they were always there but now they were empowered by the algorithm and out of nowhere from being the the joke who always keeps telling people that the world is coming to the end now they are the ones talking and now exactly and then whatever they are saying they are kind of getting the problem is like this. Imagine that we are kind of establishing our own reeducation programs in our own phones right. So first we hear one person one line crazy line okay but then we hear two three four five six ten the same because algorithm is giving us the same thing that I like before even though it might be different people it just keeps reinforcing the same statement again and again and then without even one thing in the back of your head. So consciously you're trying this yeah you're attracting it and okay that's how it is and then you wonder why I mean the algorithms right now are a problem. The fact that we are in this curse of endless scrolling on our phones is a problem and I'm happy that in Denmark we we realize this is a problem. I think Denmark now that we're gonna have the EU presidency next year we're gonna have a chance to try because our digitalization minister said very clearly we want to handle and put an end to endless scrolling. So basically they want to kind of terminate the fact that the social media companies are able to give you another video after one is done. So basically the moment you have seen a video you should search for the next one it shouldn't come automatically but isn't it against the theory of feeds in social media in general because that is actually defying the algorithm but I guess what where it is either that or right now I mean look we are in this war against screens in Denmark like drugs used to be in the 80s now it's screens and let me tell you screens are more dangerous to human mind than drugs. Yeah yeah any think of any drug that you want you will not be us god damn disturbing look at it ask how many people take their phone in their hands sit down on the couch and three hours later like what the time? What have you done nothing just scrolling it's called doom scrolling yeah you doom it's dangerous we never really understood it's hard to binge watch anymore no it's even worse but listen god damn binge watch maybe the tv goes off or it's you know at least there are more people so you can fight over okay I want to watch now and now it's your turn to watch and you also have a safe distance so it's not like back to the ice and that's another story by the way yeah but yeah it had its own issues as well we've been watching I mean I'm not saying it's safer or something but I'm just saying that we need to understand that the algorithm yes it has brought a lot of technological advancement but anything a lot of technological investments in the past have brought a lot of positive growth for humanity but at the same time every technological advancement we've had has also brought negative things absolutely the only reason why we have climate change today is because we industrialize ourselves if we didn't do that we will not have this issue today it was great for us because it took us out of medieval times yeah but what was the price but the point is every every developing nation for example like now in developing countries industrialization is part of the development and we are bound to take that route but at some point developed countries realize what fucked up life we had now we have to go back and then revisit our policies and revisit what is good for the society and I think it's time for also for developing countries to keep in mind that they can't just do the things that they're doing right now which which will which will be taking its own course to reform but yeah that is one aspect now talk let's talk about housing house we did talk a lot about housing in the previous episode I want to dive deep into mortgages specifically and something that popped up in the article could you enlighten us with no what I mentioned in the elastic in the market the news letter is that well obviously people buy houses whenever they want to buy houses regardless where the interest rate is that right so a lot of people have both more houses when the mortgage rate was at six percent that was in 2020 ish 2020 after the pandemic yeah it was all along ago it was maybe nine months ago was it six percentage nine months ago wow okay okay that's a I mean when I moved to Denmark 2019 I saw one two percentage and then within three years and after the pandemic especially the the price went like crazy people are talking about five percent it's still comparatively low compared to India but then five percent big number yeah and I heard stories people say it was a negative interest back in the day yeah now it's five but that's a lot and now you say six okay so what what do we do so what's what happened that's those people who go there with six now they have the chance to uh re just a refinance their loan with a four percent how is that possible because now you can just uh take a new loan with four percent and pay the old loan off ah it can be with the same bank or you have to find a new bank the same man what is the benefit of the bank then why would they do this when they already have a good six percent they cannot stop it yeah so there's a choice that they have given to the consumers if they it's not I mean I'm pretty sure it was regulated quite a bit that's sure let's say to the banks I'll give them the choice to the consumers no it's a curiosity because you know they want to make less money oh god no I mean yeah the point is that a lot of people now are waiting because a lot of people also took loans with five percent because after six it came five obviously so now for them switching to four percent is now worth it because you also have to imagine that they have to pay the difference interest difference so it has to be long like large enough for you to make this investment because it'll take part of your loan go just to pay interest rates for the whole loan yeah yeah so so right now a lot of people are waiting for 3.5 and the chances were that we should be able to reach 3.5 by December how certain are you like problem is now that depends on how certain the tariffs are going to be in us problem is US market the or the US dollar to be more precise defines most of them more or less the world so let's say that if the if the treasury of the national treasury in the US the central bank you call it Federal Reserve when they decide to lower interest rates then what happens next is that we in Europe at the European Central Bank lower interest rates and then the Danish National Central Bank lowers interest rate if the US market does not just the tariffs but also the tax cuts because they Trump promised that he's going to cut all taxes which means so people have more spending money what happens when people have more spending money inflation yeah so if inflation is pushed back up then US has no reason anymore to keep cutting down the interest rates so that means it could be frozen at four percent as it is now so we then the central bank in Europe also will not do that further either even though our interest our inflation in Europe is close to zero so so that's the problem right now that we that we have is that we depend on the Americans I don't know why to be honest but that I think we need the financial specialist to explain to us but we depend on them that's the reality but this election result could also heavily impact from let's say January for example or not that year released too early okay whenever the first policy let's just say he decides to actually go for it if sets up a policy strategy he makes put some people in charge and then then it's real so and then it could go up and that's the concern he closed the door yeah yeah so that's the problem like if you refinance yourself to a four percent from six percent and then you wake up that you will be smart because then you're at four percent and then it goes back to six percent if you are a fixed rate yeah but if you go from some people for example you could be in ties to go from a fixed rate six percent to a variable rate three percent now you can find three percent variable rate but variable rate means that the moment the market goes crazy you also go with it yeah I have a mortgage that's variable so I had to live through going from one percent to five years and lows yeah that's how it is it's the risk I assumed but that's also a calculated risk for example if things are going smooth then you're probably going to pay less yeah much less people because people who are in fixed they're fixed so they have to refinance their loan to keep switching from one point that's expensive correct while I'm just following the wave variable interest yeah variable interest can be dangerous but can also be beneficial so it just up to your level of how much are you willing to take a risk again and and and when you say risk taking it's also like a matter of being able to be also future perspectives we take 10 years from now it could be a huge difference in terms of four percent in 10 years to two percent or three I can always wish to a fixed one if I feel like I don't want to take the risk in here but there's also a little volatile period that is also why it becomes like a topic of discussion because there's a lot of global politics elections in US war and a lot of things it is your political situation is impact huge right you can feel that oh we are in our own country we make our own lows and we have our own life now and what could be the next pandemic that could also challenge the state and that's also another debate it is always the case at least every 15 years we live in a connected human global society anything that happens anywhere that's large enough to affect the whole planet you will affect the whole planet the the borders that we keep finding some people find Friday they will not stop the pandemic they will not stop our financial crisis they will not stop the war you know that's how it is the reality of things so that's why we have to be as citizens of the world we should care do I care enough if the situation is unstable in the part of the world yes you should because if it gets to unstable it could affect your own economy why because many people in Denmark not only that they have mortgages and maybe have variable loans which can go up and down based on how the global economy is but also they have investments many people can afford in Denmark to have investments that's the reality of things so many people do have an investment account but that means also that our actions and the value of the actions follows also the global market and the global happenings right so if you have investments you also should care okay okay it's not going that great in that situation so to be honest I feel like we as Europeans had more to lose or to gain in the US elections than people from US almost we think about it because for us it's it backs our pocket directly no matter depending on what policies they do there it's crazy yeah and that's what's dependency on these two different continents that's very that's very interesting from seen from my Indian perspective of course it affects India also if you also connect to them yeah very connected like trade for example of course we have a lot of exports happening to Europe which is which is a really good number and of course we have a lot of solutions that come and we have a lot of workforces Indian workforces outsourced we are also connected in that way so we are not in the different world okay now since that was it was interesting to have two different conversations and we managed to pull this out for the listeners out there I probably would wish to let's say include a third speaker if anybody is interested yeah reach out to me and Narcis you could have a good discussion if you have good interesting topics we could also have a debate kind of a setup of course it has to be somehow related to the week that has passed exactly it has to be something relatable to the content that is made in last week in Denmark or something that helps audiences learn about let's say current affairs or geopolitics or and remember if you want to write for last week in Denmark we always welcome people who want to write any topics that could be beneficial for the international community in Denmark because in the end the reason why we make all this content is to empower international that live here in Denmark and to have let's just say an easier sailing than the rest of us who came many many years ago in here that being said thank you so much for listening or watching if you're in your home have a nice week and see you in another episode next week. Bye!
