When you try to write good fiction, you need to be informed by reality so that you can give texture to the book, to the characters, to the plot. So, of course, it's informed by the few years I spent at the World Economic Forum, but it's not the World Economic Forum. You're listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network, where you get valuable information you just can't find anywhere else. To thrive in today's trying times, you need the Financial Survival Network, now more than ever. Go to financialsurvivalnetwork.com and get your free newsletter and gift, Financial Survival Network, now more than ever. And welcome. You are listening to and watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Lutz. Well, we've got a really interesting guest for you today. Probably one of the most interesting I've ever had on the show before, Dr. Thierry Malleray, a co-author with the World Economic Forum, founder Klaus Schwab of two books, The Great Reset and The Great Narrative. And he's also a novelist, and the latest book that he's come out with is entitled "Deaths at Davos" and Dr. Thierry, it's Dr. Malleray. It's great to have you on the show, so... Thank you for having me. Oh, of course. So, the book, "Death in Davos," tell us about what inspired you to write it. It's entitled "Death at Davos." It's a fictional place, of course. It's a work of fiction. It's a novel. It's a geopolitical and financial thriller. And what prompted me to write it, I'd like to write Thierry, first of all, because when you write a novel, a thriller, you are just born by one thing, which is a power of your imagination. You can go any way you like. And I want to address in the book two issues, which I think are absolutely vital for the markets. One is geopolitical risk, and the other is ESG and everything that attains to the environmental transition and green investing. So I thought, well, Davos could be an interesting place but to address these two issues because so much happens when you're other than him. Interesting. So it's kind of centered around a character who, a young, high-flying Ukrainian, she's come to Davos to promote her reconstruct Ukraine fund. And that's when the fund begins, huh? Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Is that based on somebody you knew or a totally fictional character? It's totally fictional, but when you try to write good fiction, you need to be informed by reality so that you can give texture to the book, to the characters, to the plot. So, of course, it's in by the few years I spent at the World Economic Forum. But it's not the World Economic Forum. I must emphasize that. Again, it's a work of fiction. Right. So Mark Twain once commented that truth is strange and in fiction, fiction is limited by the imagination, but truth isn't. Absolutely. That's a very good quote. Right. So if your prior works, like The Great Reset, a lot of people, myself included, have the impression that there's an agenda, a play to reduce the global population to a more manageable level. Is that a misconception or? Yes, yes, no, no, there is nothing. I've seen you start that in the book. The book is very simple, if I may say that. The idea when we wrote a book, Glass wrote it myself, was to shed light on where the pandemic would entail in macro terms, on the economy, on societies, on geopolitics, on tech, on the environment. And we just wanted to get a sense trying to imagine what the after effect of the pandemic could be. But no, absolutely, no, no, no. People put it on all these kind of scenes, which are silly of them. Conspiracy theories, you know, glass swab, it's gotten a bad rap. The quote that's attributed to him is, you will, you know, in the future, you'll own absolutely nothing and you'll be happy. Yeah, we'll see to do with Professor Schwab. This quote has been tracked and identified. It's, you know, the World Economic Forum is a big place to meet all sort of people. And I can't remember the name of the person who said that, but it was not in Davos as the board. It was one of the many gatherings that the World Economic Forum organizes. And I think she's an academic, a young academic. So it works in and out of context entirely. And neither a Schwab nor myself ever said that. OK, good. And nobody. You'd never said that we're all a bunch of useless eaters. How could that possibly say to you? But they are beautiful. I mean, some of it's crazy, like pushing. You know, a lot of stuff gets attributed to the World Economic Forum that has no relation. And a good friend of mine, his wife was high up. She organized it like every year. So I have a little bit of insight into it. And but it's like so shadowy to most people who think that really like all these plots are being hatched against the United States in particular and humanity. And that it's really us against them, if you will. What is the main purpose, though? So if you had to sum it up in one sentence of the W.E.F. Well, I'm the truth for me to respond to that question because I'm not a member of the staff anymore. - No, I understand. - For me, it's to make money. It's a very successful place that gathers global CEOs, digital makers, academics, media leaders, is activist. And they do so very successfully. So I don't think there is anything sinister. It's very simple. And to point about conspiracies and shadowy agendas, et cetera, we're even a place in which everything is now fully transparent. You can't do anything confidential anymore, but in such a place. We, everybody traveled there with a phone, with a mobile, where you can register anything that you're here in Davos. I think it's entirely apparent. Therefore, I'm very skeptical about these ideas. Important decisions are made in Davos. No, maybe important decisions are made as CEOs who go to Davos to do business, because that's a fundamental justification for going to Davos. You know, when you're a global CEO, you go to Davos because you put lines, you supply as your regulators, kind of state in the markets in which you operate and so on and so forth. So maybe these people make important decisions when they're in Davos, but it's on the margin of the summit itself. That's kind of the big networking event. Exactly, it's like a working event, like a husband, like a milk and so many that exist very successfully in the United States. Okay, so getting back to your book. So when you're writing a novel, like, what do you think the most important thing is? Because I'm in a process of writing one myself about a guy who's in witness protection, and he comes to Florida, and he takes over an HOA, a homeowners association. And from there, he takes over a bunch of them. And yeah, so when you're writing a book, what is the key thing that you focus in on? Is it characters? Is it plotline or dialogue? I'm just curious for my own purposes here. Well, I think when you write a novel, you try to focus on everything that matters. The plot, of course, if it's a very effective story, and we all have a innate desire to understand what's behind everything. So, good on it. So the plot is absolutely essential. Characters are, of course, critical, and it's a good story. We are storytellers. We like to hear stories. That's what we are with the tension as human beings. You know, nobody has ever had a decision based on a number. I think it's Carmen, who said that it's very crucial. Even when you invest, you need a story. Yeah, that's what I... You know, this is a wonderful book about narrative economics. We do need stories to exist, to understand what's going on. I'll show you a great book, which I'm reading at the moment, which is from an American author. I don't know whether you know... Oh yeah, I've heard it, I'm sure. This is very famous. That's a fantastic book. Great characters, great plot. And of course, everything could be true, because you know the organization inside out. So that's what it is. Nothing more, nothing past. Yeah, storytelling is definitely an art form. And I always tell people getting into podcast and learn how to tell stories, because all we have in the end are our stories. And really, to me, like, when I look at numbers on a balance sheet or income statement, it's just telling a story in numbers, really. But it's still a story. But you need something behind the numbers. When you do podcasts, you need a book, you need a constitution, you need a story, basically. Yeah, I think it's a very good attack. Yeah, and that's what entertains humanity, too, with stories, everything's its stories, right? It's cool, though, and even if they're old stories that they're told in a new way, they become new again, right? Yeah, of course. And you're at the moment where we see stories about tech and tech investing. I mean, it's based on stories. We all believe that they are going to change everything. Maybe, maybe not. We have a point. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty interesting. And it really is an art form. You know, they don't really teach it in public education. And they teach creative writing. But creative writing isn't really, that's how you tell a story. It's not how you, you know, it's the mechanics of the story. It's not really how you create the story, right? No, no, it is not, but it's very hard to disturb what compares people to buying two stories. And probably the book market into published market is the most ruthless market of the world because, you know, immediately, with the financial markets as well, but you know, immediately whether you're not a good story or not, whether people buy you to it or not. Yeah, so tell us, have you had some stories that people just didn't buy into? Bad stories and how did you feel about it? Well, I used to work in investment banking. I was an economist working on the trading floor. So you did start with your clients all the time. And of course, are you successes? I had also many failings, like everybody else. Books are different, books are different because they are a labor of love. You know, you spend a lot of time writing books and books don't sell very much. In fact, the publishing market is pretty much like the venture capital market. The publishing houses spend a lot on many different books and hope that one will stand out and that how it works. Well, you know, there's one key to success in life I found and I didn't know it till I was much older because learn how to tell a story. 'Cause people that could tell stories are really interesting and I remember one time, saw the late author George Plimpton and we were at a gathering for McCallen, Scotch. They were having these get-togethers all over the country, sit down with a glass of Scotch and some Scotch salmon, smoked salmon and you tell stories and have good evening. And it was a great brand building exercise for McCallen and George Plimpton, you know, he had to, he was the great poser. He was a baseball player, struck out like every time he was a bat, he was a football player, got half killed when they tackled him. He went in the ring against Muhammad Ali and he was one of the great recon tours and I'll never forget watching him and watching how he told a story, how he captivated people. And I was just in awe. I said, I don't think I could ever do that. Little knowing that at some point, maybe not as good a storyteller as him by any stretch 'cause he was one of the best, but able to communicate ideas through stories and somehow his skills rubbed off on me a little bit. You know, way greater intellect than myself, but he was a master at it, so. - It's very interesting to meet such people, people who can narrate, who can tell stories, the way that compels everybody to listen. I admire that. - Yeah. - And this is a great place, by the way, to discover people who are really, really good at telling stories. - Yeah, and it takes work. It really, so I was looking at hundreds of parents. It takes a lot of work. And that's the people who are incredibly impressive. - Yeah, so I agree. So we find your book. We can find it at Amazon, obviously, 'cause we're looking at it right up there and wherever fine books used to be sold. - No, on your Amazon, because what you need to be published at the time, I finished to write it. So it was during the meeting in Davos. And as you know, if you publish a book, you have to wait at least six, eight, nine months with Amazon, you do it all night. It's an incredibly efficient model. - Yeah, really? - So I published it on Amazon. So it's very short. It's a novella. It's 60 pages, 90 pages, because I think it's also very important to keep in mind that we live in a world in which we suffer from the economic of attention. People, yes. - Oh, I get this, yeah. We are inundated by this flow of information analysis. We don't know where to go. It's the same with books. So very few people have time to read a 600th page book. I don't know how long yours will be. In my case, I decided to make it short. All the pages you can read it one hour and a bit to us, maybe. - Yeah, I want it to be an audio book also. And I love audio books because then the story, you know, when you read a novel, you're creating the story in your mind. And when you're listening to an audio book, the story's told to you. So it's a little bit different, but sometimes you could be reading a book that's boring or that I didn't find interesting. Like there was a biography of Alexander Hamilton who is an incredible character in history. So much of the way the country is now is directly attributable to him. And the book was about 1,200 pages. That's neither here nor there. I can read 1,000 multi-thousand page books, but it just wasn't really well written. And then when I bought the audio book and I started it from where I left off, it was the most interesting book I had ever really encountered. It was amazing. - Interesting, easier to digest. - Yeah, because the narrator made up for the author's deficiencies. And sometimes, you know, he was a great narrator, way better than I could ever do and I've done a few of them, but he was spot on. It was, and I couldn't stop listening to it, whereas it took me six months to read half the book. I was done with the book in like less than a week listening non-stop. So, you know, sometimes certain stories need to be told orally and others written, I guess. - Yeah. - So, we really appreciate you coming on. We'll have a link in the show notes to this interview on Financial Survival Network to the Amazon listing of your book. Do you have a website that we could also follow you on? - Well, I give him a professional website and he actually has coopubromera.com website, but it's, again, it's about macro issues. It's not about the book. - That's okay. - No, I don't publish myself very much. - Not right as well. - I do some minimum. - All right, well, we wish you the best of luck on this book. I'm getting it as soon as hang up with you. I've got it right on Amazon and I'm buying the book to help support you and it sounds like a great plot and I'll write a review. - Thank you so much and I look for the reading yours when it's out. - I will send you a copy. Thank you so much. - Thank you for your time. - Bye. - Thanks for listening to Carrie Lutz's Financial Survival Network, your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to financialsurvivalnetwork.com. Financial Survival Network. Now more than ever. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
