Dennis Gartman
A CONVERSATION WITH...
fearful about what the North Koreans can do. As everybody says, Kim Jong Un is irrational. I say he is "rationally irrational." He has no intention of using his weapons to destroy South Korea, Guam, or the United States because – as I've written in my newsletter – we must remember he has no intention of being a martyr. This is not ISIL – or ISIS, as others prefer to refer to it. This is an atheist who has no concept, no knowledge, no understanding of an afterlife. Kim knows his only life is to be the leader of the North Korean society as long as he is able to remain alive. He's not going to put that in jeopardy. The only problem that will exist is if there is some untoward action – a ship bumps into another ship, an airplane bumps into another airplane – and things get out of control. But Kim has every intention of blackmailing us for as long as he can in the future. The Chinese want to make sure that his regime maintains power on the Korean Peninsula because they don't want to have a unified South Korea and North Korea with tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers positioned on their border. China intends to continue to hold North Korea as its buffer state. That's not going to change. We can put as much pressure as we want on China... But they're not going to do anything to remove that regime because they want that buffer. Throughout the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s, and '90s it was United States versus Russia using what was known as mutually assured destruction – or "MAD" – which kept us from going to war with one another. Now we have mutually assured rational irrationality that will keep us from going to war with one another.
the only people fracking and using seismic technologies efficiently. The Russians have just drilled their first fracked well. Guess what? There will be hundreds. The Chinese haven't even begun fracking yet. Guess what? There will be hundreds. Africa has not even begun fracking yet, either. Guess what? There will be hundreds. Maybe the most important person in the oil business is Prince Mohammad, the new crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He is convinced the crude oil is going to zero sometime in his lifetime because of the abundant supplies that still exist and the ability to get it and the changes in technology that will derive better fuels in the future. Remember, we were using crude oil to replace whale oil as a lighting instrument a mere 120 years ago. There will clearly be nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. There will clearly be better use of green technologies that will eventually replace natural gas and crude oil over the course of the next 30, 40, and 50 years. Does that mean that we can't get crude oil to go to $60 or so on some spike in geopolitical risks over the next five years or so? Of course we can. Is that likely to be sustained? No, because there will be so much hedging, so much production brought on line... And remember, Russia just had its first fracked well. There will be hundreds more. Q: Speaking of nuclear fission, will we see any of that over North Korea anytime soon? DENNIS GARTMAN: I hope not. My wife and I argue about this all the time. She's
86 | September 2017
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