1
00:00:03,120 --> 00:00:08,640
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

2
00:00:15,600 --> 00:00:19,200
Speaker 2: The question was put to me in late twenty sixteen

3
00:00:19,400 --> 00:00:23,520
Speaker 2: after the election, and I went to Trump Tar and

4
00:00:23,560 --> 00:00:27,160
Speaker 2: I met a number of the key protagonists in a

5
00:00:27,280 --> 00:00:33,440
Speaker 2: very surreal afternoon. And after I had met Anthony Scaramucci

6
00:00:33,800 --> 00:00:37,680
Speaker 2: and Mike Flynn and Steve Bannon and Michael Cohen, I

7
00:00:37,800 --> 00:00:40,120
Speaker 2: phoned my wife up and I said, this will end

8
00:00:40,120 --> 00:00:43,320
Speaker 2: in a welter of litigation. We're going to have nothing

9
00:00:43,320 --> 00:00:44,680
Speaker 2: to do with it. Good call.

10
00:00:47,440 --> 00:00:51,440
Speaker 3: Welcome to the first episode of voter Nomics, where politics

11
00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:55,400
Speaker 3: and markets collide. This year, voters around the world have

12
00:00:55,440 --> 00:00:59,840
Speaker 3: the ability to affect markets, countries, and economies like never before,

13
00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:02,600
Speaker 3: so we've cooked up this series to help you make

14
00:01:02,720 --> 00:01:05,920
Speaker 3: sense of it all. I'm Stephanie Flanders. I lead our

15
00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:09,959
Speaker 3: government and economics coverage at Bloomberg, also our economic research,

16
00:01:10,280 --> 00:01:13,240
Speaker 3: and back in the day, I was once BBC Economics editor.

17
00:01:13,680 --> 00:01:17,760
Speaker 1: I'm alegra Stratton, I author Bloomberg's read Out newsletter. And

18
00:01:17,800 --> 00:01:21,199
Speaker 1: I used to work in Number ten, but also number eleven,

19
00:01:21,480 --> 00:01:26,520
Speaker 1: number nine, and then also actually sorry number twelve downing steeks.

20
00:01:26,880 --> 00:01:29,760
Speaker 3: Anyway, we'll maybe get into that later.

21
00:01:31,080 --> 00:01:33,520
Speaker 4: And I made rim Woodbridge I've never worked in Downing Street,

22
00:01:33,600 --> 00:01:36,319
Speaker 4: but I'm an opinion columnist and I'm an author, and

23
00:01:36,400 --> 00:01:39,679
Speaker 4: for thirty two years I worked for The Economist. I

24
00:01:39,680 --> 00:01:43,200
Speaker 4: wrote the Lexington column, the Schumpeter column, and the Badget column,

25
00:01:43,600 --> 00:01:46,600
Speaker 4: and I can sense them not all at once successively.

26
00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:49,480
Speaker 3: This is already chaos. It's going to be so much fun. Okay,

27
00:01:49,480 --> 00:01:53,680
Speaker 3: So you just heard from the historian and pundit Neil Ferguson.

28
00:01:53,880 --> 00:01:55,840
Speaker 3: Later in the episode, we're going to chat with him

29
00:01:56,080 --> 00:01:58,600
Speaker 3: about the state of the world, the state of the US,

30
00:01:58,640 --> 00:02:00,920
Speaker 3: and what he thinks about it all. You won't want

31
00:02:00,920 --> 00:02:03,520
Speaker 3: to miss it, you, Allegra, particularly since you weren't part

32
00:02:03,600 --> 00:02:06,720
Speaker 3: of the interview, and I'm sorry. Also on the show

33
00:02:06,760 --> 00:02:10,480
Speaker 3: this week, we have Bloomberg senior reporter in Washington, Nancy Cook,

34
00:02:10,600 --> 00:02:13,760
Speaker 3: who tells us everything that's going on in US politics,

35
00:02:13,760 --> 00:02:16,400
Speaker 3: and also a little bit about the upcoming White House

36
00:02:16,440 --> 00:02:20,320
Speaker 3: Correspondence dinner. That that invitation that at least some people

37
00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:24,120
Speaker 3: would like. Maybe've established that Adrian wouldn't like that. But

38
00:02:24,200 --> 00:02:27,040
Speaker 3: before we get into it, I guess we should just

39
00:02:27,080 --> 00:02:30,680
Speaker 3: explain to people why on earth we're doing this. Adrian.

40
00:02:31,080 --> 00:02:32,960
Speaker 3: I mean, at first, I guess we should say that

41
00:02:33,040 --> 00:02:36,079
Speaker 3: you know this Bloomberg News Agency. We haven't just stumbled

42
00:02:36,120 --> 00:02:38,280
Speaker 3: on the fact that there were a lot of neglections

43
00:02:38,360 --> 00:02:41,440
Speaker 3: this year or that they were going to affect economies.

44
00:02:41,680 --> 00:02:43,959
Speaker 3: But the more we listened to what everyone else was

45
00:02:44,000 --> 00:02:45,799
Speaker 3: saying about them, the more we felt like there was

46
00:02:45,840 --> 00:02:47,799
Speaker 3: a bit of a gap we could fill. What do

47
00:02:47,840 --> 00:02:49,960
Speaker 3: you mean everyone else? All the other podcasts, There are

48
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:52,560
Speaker 3: other posts by men. I'm told there are other podcasts,

49
00:02:52,639 --> 00:02:54,200
Speaker 3: many of them hosted by men.

50
00:02:55,720 --> 00:02:58,440
Speaker 1: Bloomberg has a unique take on these elections because of

51
00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:01,440
Speaker 1: the welter of economic analysis. I when we're sitting in

52
00:03:01,480 --> 00:03:03,960
Speaker 1: the podcast recording studio and if I look out at

53
00:03:04,400 --> 00:03:07,120
Speaker 1: of the glass windows, I can see screen upon screen

54
00:03:07,160 --> 00:03:10,480
Speaker 1: of data and economic analysis going on. So we're absolutely

55
00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:12,680
Speaker 1: in the belly of the beast in the city of

56
00:03:12,680 --> 00:03:16,040
Speaker 1: London looking at the economics and how they might impact

57
00:03:16,160 --> 00:03:18,000
Speaker 1: on how people will vote.

58
00:03:18,200 --> 00:03:19,840
Speaker 4: And the other thing I think is that we're truly

59
00:03:19,880 --> 00:03:23,200
Speaker 4: a global news service and these are global elections. I

60
00:03:23,200 --> 00:03:26,400
Speaker 4: mean there are elections, really big elections in Written in

61
00:03:26,440 --> 00:03:29,160
Speaker 4: the United States, in South Africa, every corner of the world.

62
00:03:29,480 --> 00:03:31,480
Speaker 4: They're taking place. So we want to bring a global

63
00:03:31,600 --> 00:03:34,480
Speaker 4: perspective as well as an economic and business perspective to it.

64
00:03:34,520 --> 00:03:36,640
Speaker 3: And it speaks to one of the reasons that you're here, Adrian,

65
00:03:36,760 --> 00:03:40,040
Speaker 3: is that that sort of politics and geopolitics has been

66
00:03:40,840 --> 00:03:44,760
Speaker 3: forcing its way onto the agenda for businessmen and people

67
00:03:44,960 --> 00:03:49,000
Speaker 3: and politicians and policy makers all around the world in

68
00:03:49,040 --> 00:03:52,000
Speaker 3: a way. I mean, I certainly noticed doing Stephanomics, a

69
00:03:52,080 --> 00:03:55,360
Speaker 3: sort of previous partial version of this that that just

70
00:03:55,440 --> 00:03:58,400
Speaker 3: kept we kept on having to talk about geopolitics and

71
00:03:58,640 --> 00:04:00,840
Speaker 3: history in a way that I don't think would have

72
00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:02,520
Speaker 3: been true if we were doing a sort of narrow

73
00:04:02,560 --> 00:04:04,320
Speaker 3: show on the global economy a few years ago.

74
00:04:04,360 --> 00:04:07,520
Speaker 4: Absolutely, if you look at companies, there's always been some

75
00:04:07,600 --> 00:04:10,960
Speaker 4: sorts of companies that have had to take geopolitics into consideration.

76
00:04:11,240 --> 00:04:13,560
Speaker 4: If you're an energy company, you have to do that,

77
00:04:13,680 --> 00:04:16,200
Speaker 4: and you put xpis and you put ex ambassadors on

78
00:04:16,240 --> 00:04:18,359
Speaker 4: your board and all sorts of things. Now it's an

79
00:04:18,440 --> 00:04:23,600
Speaker 4: extraordinary range of companies, pharmaceutical companies, it companies, even if

80
00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:26,480
Speaker 4: you're in the food business. You're being impinged upon by

81
00:04:26,600 --> 00:04:30,279
Speaker 4: JEOE strategic tensions, threats by politicians in the way that

82
00:04:30,320 --> 00:04:33,440
Speaker 4: we've never seen before. In every single way, you can't

83
00:04:33,520 --> 00:04:37,480
Speaker 4: understand politics without understanding economics and business and vice versa.

84
00:04:37,520 --> 00:04:39,560
Speaker 1: And the phrase that I keep coming back to, which

85
00:04:39,720 --> 00:04:43,240
Speaker 1: I hope that this podcast will sort of interrogate over time,

86
00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:45,960
Speaker 1: is it's the economy stupid, because I don't know if

87
00:04:45,960 --> 00:04:48,880
Speaker 1: it is anymore, and I want this podcast to help

88
00:04:48,920 --> 00:04:52,160
Speaker 1: me because sometimes I think, yeah, you know, you can

89
00:04:52,200 --> 00:04:54,680
Speaker 1: see the economics driving people to vote in certain ways.

90
00:04:54,720 --> 00:04:56,520
Speaker 1: And then in America, which we're going to talk about

91
00:04:56,560 --> 00:04:59,040
Speaker 1: in depth in a second, it's more complicated, isn't it.

92
00:04:59,200 --> 00:05:01,920
Speaker 3: No, in a very I remember, even just a few

93
00:05:01,960 --> 00:05:05,760
Speaker 3: years ago, sort of wise economic policy maker saying to me,

94
00:05:05,839 --> 00:05:07,080
Speaker 3: I think it was just sort of in the wake

95
00:05:07,160 --> 00:05:11,320
Speaker 3: of the Eurozone economic crisis, but saying, you know, we

96
00:05:11,360 --> 00:05:15,039
Speaker 3: often say, we economists often say old politicians they don't

97
00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:19,120
Speaker 3: understand the laws of economics, they don't understand basic arithmetic,

98
00:05:19,200 --> 00:05:21,400
Speaker 3: and that's why they get into these troubles. And then

99
00:05:21,440 --> 00:05:23,280
Speaker 3: he paused and he said, though, I have to say,

100
00:05:23,320 --> 00:05:25,880
Speaker 3: I think quite a lot of us don't understand the

101
00:05:25,920 --> 00:05:28,839
Speaker 3: laws of politics, and we tend to ignore that too much.

102
00:05:28,920 --> 00:05:30,960
Speaker 3: And that's I've had that running through my head quite

103
00:05:30,960 --> 00:05:34,719
Speaker 3: a lot the last two is. So that's what we're about.

104
00:05:35,040 --> 00:05:36,599
Speaker 3: I think we're going to go off. You can already

105
00:05:36,640 --> 00:05:38,599
Speaker 3: tell we're going to go off in a number of

106
00:05:38,640 --> 00:05:41,480
Speaker 3: different directions. Who knows, especially when we have the three

107
00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:44,760
Speaker 3: of us sitting in this room. But I think there'll

108
00:05:44,800 --> 00:05:49,120
Speaker 3: be some sort of common threads for each episode, one

109
00:05:49,160 --> 00:05:51,560
Speaker 3: of which is we will have a conversation with someone

110
00:05:51,600 --> 00:05:54,520
Speaker 3: we think is interesting, maybe someone you've heard before, but

111
00:05:54,560 --> 00:05:56,919
Speaker 3: we'll be asking them much better questions. It may also

112
00:05:56,960 --> 00:05:59,640
Speaker 3: be someone that you had not realized you ought to

113
00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:03,120
Speaker 3: know about. And so more of that in the coming weeks.

114
00:06:03,320 --> 00:06:06,160
Speaker 3: And we'll be checking in with one of our colleagues

115
00:06:06,360 --> 00:06:09,200
Speaker 3: from around the world on a pretty regular basis to

116
00:06:09,279 --> 00:06:11,479
Speaker 3: get a sense of what they're seeing on the ground

117
00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:14,040
Speaker 3: and how it feeds into this sort of big picture,

118
00:06:14,120 --> 00:06:17,600
Speaker 3: grand thoughts that we are hopefully having occasionally or hearing

119
00:06:17,720 --> 00:06:21,120
Speaker 3: from other people. And in that vein, I wanted to

120
00:06:21,320 --> 00:06:25,839
Speaker 3: introduce you to Nancy Cook, one of our senior reporters

121
00:06:26,320 --> 00:06:29,080
Speaker 3: in d C. Writes a lot about economic policy, but

122
00:06:29,120 --> 00:06:32,599
Speaker 3: we've also had her out on the campaign trail quite

123
00:06:32,600 --> 00:06:35,920
Speaker 3: a lot in the last few months because obviously, you know,

124
00:06:35,960 --> 00:06:38,920
Speaker 3: things are hotting up in the US presidential race. See

125
00:06:38,920 --> 00:06:41,120
Speaker 3: thank you, Thank you so much. For doing this. You know,

126
00:06:41,160 --> 00:06:45,039
Speaker 3: we tend to look at the US election partly for

127
00:06:45,120 --> 00:06:48,800
Speaker 3: the sort of horse race aspect of who's going to win,

128
00:06:48,880 --> 00:06:51,919
Speaker 3: but also thinking about how important it is for the

129
00:06:51,960 --> 00:06:55,080
Speaker 3: rest of the world. How are you seeing the rest

130
00:06:55,080 --> 00:06:57,720
Speaker 3: of the world figure in what you're writing about day

131
00:06:57,760 --> 00:06:58,880
Speaker 3: to day on the campaign trail.

132
00:06:59,240 --> 00:07:01,599
Speaker 5: I think that's act will be hugely important for the

133
00:07:01,600 --> 00:07:05,720
Speaker 5: rest of the world, and it will just present dramatically

134
00:07:05,760 --> 00:07:09,400
Speaker 5: different outcomes based on who's elected. And we're already seen that.

135
00:07:09,440 --> 00:07:12,680
Speaker 5: We're seeing a bunch of foreign leaders already make pilgrimages

136
00:07:12,720 --> 00:07:16,880
Speaker 5: tomorrow Lago or Trump Tower to meet with the former president.

137
00:07:17,200 --> 00:07:19,440
Speaker 5: You know, even world leaders are really trying to get

138
00:07:19,440 --> 00:07:22,080
Speaker 5: their hands around what this election will look like, because

139
00:07:22,160 --> 00:07:25,000
Speaker 5: based on who wins, it will have very different outcomes

140
00:07:25,040 --> 00:07:29,520
Speaker 5: for trade, for foreign policy, just for general US alliances,

141
00:07:29,640 --> 00:07:33,000
Speaker 5: for the future of NATO, for what will happen in Ukraine.

142
00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:35,880
Speaker 5: And so I think that people are wise to really

143
00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:37,240
Speaker 5: sort of pay attention to this.

144
00:07:38,320 --> 00:07:40,800
Speaker 1: Can you take us inside the mind of the average

145
00:07:40,840 --> 00:07:43,480
Speaker 1: American voter. They are for us, certainly for me, this

146
00:07:43,680 --> 00:07:47,280
Speaker 1: curious thing where they are living in a booming economy,

147
00:07:48,440 --> 00:07:50,440
Speaker 1: but they are not happy.

148
00:07:51,160 --> 00:07:53,400
Speaker 5: So I think that the average American voter at this

149
00:07:53,520 --> 00:07:57,080
Speaker 5: point is pretty disengaged from this election. You know, the

150
00:07:57,160 --> 00:07:59,960
Speaker 5: majority of Americans are not really happy with their choices.

151
00:08:00,480 --> 00:08:03,840
Speaker 5: They're not enthusiastic about Biden, They're not enthusiastic about Trump.

152
00:08:03,960 --> 00:08:07,360
Speaker 5: They think they're both too old, you know, too problematic.

153
00:08:08,600 --> 00:08:09,200
Speaker 2: Are they right?

154
00:08:10,880 --> 00:08:13,200
Speaker 5: I mean, I think that they're right to some extent,

155
00:08:13,320 --> 00:08:15,480
Speaker 5: and that you know, these are, you know, two of

156
00:08:15,520 --> 00:08:18,040
Speaker 5: the oldest candidates we've ever seen, and I think a

157
00:08:18,040 --> 00:08:20,720
Speaker 5: lot of Americans feel like we've we know them well,

158
00:08:20,800 --> 00:08:23,120
Speaker 5: we know their flaws, well, we know what they're good at, well,

159
00:08:23,920 --> 00:08:25,800
Speaker 5: we know what they're you know, and so I think

160
00:08:25,800 --> 00:08:28,920
Speaker 5: people really would have been more excited to see sort

161
00:08:28,920 --> 00:08:31,320
Speaker 5: of fresh, new candidates, but that's not how it ended

162
00:08:31,400 --> 00:08:34,000
Speaker 5: up working in the US primary system, and so the

163
00:08:34,040 --> 00:08:37,680
Speaker 5: average American voter is wildly disengaged. I'm not expecting them

164
00:08:37,679 --> 00:08:41,079
Speaker 5: to become you know, start paying attention really until the fall,

165
00:08:41,120 --> 00:08:45,280
Speaker 5: most likely. And I think that, you know, they're very

166
00:08:45,320 --> 00:08:48,079
Speaker 5: worried about things as I was talking about, like the economy.

167
00:08:48,160 --> 00:08:51,040
Speaker 5: I think women and young people are very worried about

168
00:08:51,080 --> 00:08:53,720
Speaker 5: reproductive rights in the US because you know, the state

169
00:08:53,760 --> 00:08:55,800
Speaker 5: by state there's so many states that are sort of

170
00:08:55,800 --> 00:08:59,839
Speaker 5: banning abortion or doing a lot of restrictions on reproductive rights,

171
00:09:00,360 --> 00:09:02,480
Speaker 5: and I think the average American voter has just kind

172
00:09:02,480 --> 00:09:05,120
Speaker 5: of tuned out at this point, which is wild, because

173
00:09:05,480 --> 00:09:07,680
Speaker 5: you know, I think this election A will be very

174
00:09:07,679 --> 00:09:10,640
Speaker 5: close and B will be decided by a very small

175
00:09:10,720 --> 00:09:14,520
Speaker 5: number of people in seven swing states, and so it's

176
00:09:14,600 --> 00:09:17,079
Speaker 5: just a wild thing to feel like there's a US

177
00:09:17,160 --> 00:09:19,280
Speaker 5: election that no one in the US is actually excited

178
00:09:19,280 --> 00:09:21,800
Speaker 5: about and there will be like maybe sixty thousand people

179
00:09:21,800 --> 00:09:22,920
Speaker 5: that ultimately decide it.

180
00:09:23,280 --> 00:09:25,640
Speaker 3: Nancy, we've got a good taster of what we are

181
00:09:25,640 --> 00:09:28,720
Speaker 3: going to have from you over the course of many episodes.

182
00:09:28,760 --> 00:09:30,079
Speaker 3: We will be coming back to you. I hope you're

183
00:09:30,120 --> 00:09:32,320
Speaker 3: not going to sound just more and more tired as

184
00:09:32,400 --> 00:09:35,360
Speaker 3: the campaign goes on. But before I go, I mean,

185
00:09:35,440 --> 00:09:37,360
Speaker 3: we're going to try and be very lofty and global

186
00:09:37,360 --> 00:09:39,720
Speaker 3: and also think about the kind of broader you know,

187
00:09:39,880 --> 00:09:43,760
Speaker 3: at the real America. But there's a very unreal Washington

188
00:09:43,800 --> 00:09:47,640
Speaker 3: event happening this weekend, which I did go to last year,

189
00:09:47,640 --> 00:09:49,240
Speaker 3: and then I just couldn't go this year because my

190
00:09:49,360 --> 00:09:51,720
Speaker 3: liver needed at least a year more than a year's

191
00:09:51,760 --> 00:09:54,280
Speaker 3: rest and that. But I did want to go once

192
00:09:54,320 --> 00:09:57,000
Speaker 3: so that I could relive the broadcast news the movie.

193
00:09:57,040 --> 00:10:00,680
Speaker 3: But the Washington Correspondent's Dinner is this week? Can Nancy

194
00:10:00,800 --> 00:10:03,000
Speaker 3: are you looking forward to it? Is the whole of

195
00:10:03,080 --> 00:10:06,240
Speaker 3: the Washington wishing they had an invitation? Or is it

196
00:10:06,320 --> 00:10:09,080
Speaker 3: more everything around it that people are now going to.

197
00:10:09,280 --> 00:10:11,600
Speaker 5: Well, people who have lived in Washington for a long time,

198
00:10:11,720 --> 00:10:14,320
Speaker 5: like myself, always roll their eyes at it, but then

199
00:10:14,360 --> 00:10:17,479
Speaker 5: they are SVP to all the parties and go to everything,

200
00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:18,880
Speaker 5: you know, willingly.

201
00:10:20,080 --> 00:10:20,840
Speaker 2: You know it is.

202
00:10:21,000 --> 00:10:24,120
Speaker 5: It'll be interesting this year because President Biden is speaking.

203
00:10:24,240 --> 00:10:26,680
Speaker 5: He went last year and it's always interesting to see

204
00:10:26,720 --> 00:10:29,119
Speaker 5: sort of how he interacts with the public and the media,

205
00:10:29,200 --> 00:10:32,679
Speaker 5: particularly during a campaign year. And you know, basically it's

206
00:10:32,720 --> 00:10:36,319
Speaker 5: a lot of Washington networking. The parties have now expanded

207
00:10:36,320 --> 00:10:38,720
Speaker 5: to basically Thursday through Sunday, So.

208
00:10:38,880 --> 00:10:42,280
Speaker 4: Who can that be? One night is enough? I mean

209
00:10:42,360 --> 00:10:44,080
Speaker 4: it's horrible, That's why how can it go on for

210
00:10:44,160 --> 00:10:44,800
Speaker 4: four days?

211
00:10:44,880 --> 00:10:46,120
Speaker 1: That's why the economy's growing?

212
00:10:46,400 --> 00:10:49,040
Speaker 5: So you know, it's a chance to kind of catch

213
00:10:49,080 --> 00:10:50,920
Speaker 5: up with a lot of people in Washington in a

214
00:10:51,000 --> 00:10:53,680
Speaker 5: very short period of time, efficiently by going to many

215
00:10:53,720 --> 00:10:54,760
Speaker 5: many cocktail parties.

216
00:10:55,120 --> 00:10:57,640
Speaker 3: What is the best party in town. That's the hardest

217
00:10:57,640 --> 00:10:58,880
Speaker 3: thing to get an invitation too.

218
00:10:59,240 --> 00:11:02,479
Speaker 5: I think that there and there's several parties at embassy's

219
00:11:02,520 --> 00:11:04,840
Speaker 5: that the ambassadors throw, and I think that those are

220
00:11:04,880 --> 00:11:06,080
Speaker 5: always the hot parties.

221
00:11:06,679 --> 00:11:08,400
Speaker 3: The Parrot, the French Embassy, yeah.

222
00:11:08,240 --> 00:11:11,880
Speaker 5: There, you know, there's the Swiss Embassy. The British ambassador,

223
00:11:12,080 --> 00:11:14,040
Speaker 5: you know, is very social and likes to throw parties.

224
00:11:14,080 --> 00:11:16,560
Speaker 5: So there's a bunch of different ambassador parties over the

225
00:11:16,559 --> 00:11:19,000
Speaker 5: next four days, and I feel like those are kind

226
00:11:19,040 --> 00:11:21,080
Speaker 5: of the or Thursday through Sunday, and those are the

227
00:11:21,080 --> 00:11:24,400
Speaker 5: hot tickets because going to an embassy.

228
00:11:25,120 --> 00:11:25,680
Speaker 3: I have that saying.

229
00:11:25,720 --> 00:11:27,600
Speaker 4: The best one used to be, although I have very

230
00:11:27,760 --> 00:11:30,680
Speaker 4: very vague memories of it, was the Christopher Hitchin's party,

231
00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:32,880
Speaker 4: which was absolutely fantastic.

232
00:11:33,280 --> 00:11:35,120
Speaker 3: You probably had fake memories of it the next day.

233
00:11:35,880 --> 00:11:39,200
Speaker 3: Absolutely all right, Nancy, we'll let you go, but thank

234
00:11:39,240 --> 00:11:40,600
Speaker 3: you and we'll listen to you again.

235
00:11:40,960 --> 00:11:41,960
Speaker 5: Thanks so much for having me.

236
00:11:46,960 --> 00:11:49,200
Speaker 3: Before chaos breaks out again. Let's get to our guest

237
00:11:49,360 --> 00:11:53,320
Speaker 3: this week, Neil Ferguson, Bloomberg opinion columnist. He's a Millbank

238
00:11:53,360 --> 00:11:57,040
Speaker 3: Family senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University

239
00:11:57,160 --> 00:12:01,120
Speaker 3: and the author of gazillion books, but most recent Doom

240
00:12:01,320 --> 00:12:04,760
Speaker 3: The Politics of Catastrophe. As we were saying earlier, the

241
00:12:04,800 --> 00:12:07,960
Speaker 3: whole idea of voter nomics is to take stock of

242
00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:11,400
Speaker 3: the way that geopolitics is overturning a lot of long

243
00:12:11,440 --> 00:12:16,080
Speaker 3: standing assumptions about economics and indeed business around the world.

244
00:12:16,280 --> 00:12:19,480
Speaker 3: So Neil seemed like an excellent person to start with

245
00:12:19,720 --> 00:12:24,800
Speaker 3: to get a very intelligent mashup of economics, geopolitics and history.

246
00:12:25,040 --> 00:12:29,800
Speaker 3: So let's get to that conversation. When we look at

247
00:12:29,840 --> 00:12:34,439
Speaker 3: the US election from the UK, although we talk a

248
00:12:34,480 --> 00:12:38,640
Speaker 3: lot about the economy and why isn't Biden doing better

249
00:12:39,200 --> 00:12:44,360
Speaker 3: from the surprisingly strong economy, it does feel like international

250
00:12:44,400 --> 00:12:46,839
Speaker 3: events are looming larger than they usually do in a

251
00:12:46,960 --> 00:12:49,720
Speaker 3: US general election. So I'm just wondering, from your perspective,

252
00:12:49,800 --> 00:12:51,800
Speaker 3: does this feel like a foreign policy election?

253
00:12:52,400 --> 00:12:55,120
Speaker 2: I doubt it. I think if you look at the

254
00:12:55,240 --> 00:12:59,360
Speaker 2: key voters in the swing states and that those are

255
00:12:59,400 --> 00:13:05,520
Speaker 2: the not very committed independence and the people who flip

256
00:13:05,880 --> 00:13:10,320
Speaker 2: between elections, I doubt that they're sitting with maps of

257
00:13:10,360 --> 00:13:15,000
Speaker 2: the Middle East pondering whether Prime Minister Netanya, who should

258
00:13:15,040 --> 00:13:18,880
Speaker 2: make a move against Hezbollah. They are probably more interested

259
00:13:18,880 --> 00:13:23,800
Speaker 2: in Trump's New York criminal trial, because when you look

260
00:13:23,840 --> 00:13:27,840
Speaker 2: at the polling, that's very interesting. If you ask people

261
00:13:28,080 --> 00:13:32,200
Speaker 2: how would you vote tomorrow? Trump wins in the swing states,

262
00:13:32,640 --> 00:13:35,360
Speaker 2: But if you ask them if you had a criminal conviction,

263
00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:38,960
Speaker 2: how would you vote tomorrow? It flips and so much

264
00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:43,280
Speaker 2: more hinges on the law fare than the actual warfare

265
00:13:43,679 --> 00:13:44,320
Speaker 2: in this election.

266
00:13:44,360 --> 00:13:47,880
Speaker 4: As far as all, let me push back on that mail,

267
00:13:47,960 --> 00:13:51,560
Speaker 4: because what's handy at Columbia University at the moment seems

268
00:13:51,600 --> 00:13:56,760
Speaker 4: to be extremely polarizing and motivating and voters. And when

269
00:13:56,840 --> 00:13:59,079
Speaker 4: I was in New York last week and the Columbia

270
00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:04,839
Speaker 4: University stuff massively occupied people's minds as compared with the

271
00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:09,360
Speaker 4: Trump trial, which basically was boring to people. Isn't this

272
00:14:09,520 --> 00:14:13,160
Speaker 4: sort of protest something that annoys swing voters? When't we

273
00:14:13,200 --> 00:14:15,920
Speaker 4: see more of it in Chicago at the Democratic Convention?

274
00:14:16,000 --> 00:14:18,200
Speaker 4: That perhaps? And would it shift quite a lot of people?

275
00:14:19,080 --> 00:14:21,240
Speaker 2: As last I heard New York as one of the

276
00:14:21,240 --> 00:14:26,720
Speaker 2: swing states. I have to say that the Trump campaign

277
00:14:26,880 --> 00:14:31,440
Speaker 2: is basically the twenty sixteen campaign, and it's about economic issues,

278
00:14:31,480 --> 00:14:36,840
Speaker 2: it's about immigration, It's really about the same themes of

279
00:14:37,040 --> 00:14:41,120
Speaker 2: that twenty sixteen election eight years ago still works for

280
00:14:41,200 --> 00:14:44,400
Speaker 2: the base. They're still motivated, especially on the idea that

281
00:14:44,920 --> 00:14:49,240
Speaker 2: there's an open border criminal gangs are pouring through. That's

282
00:14:50,200 --> 00:14:54,280
Speaker 2: the Trump campaign. The Trump campaign isn't really about woke

283
00:14:54,680 --> 00:15:00,520
Speaker 2: Columbia student that exercises the chattering classes enormously. But between

284
00:15:01,000 --> 00:15:03,920
Speaker 2: New York and California, where I also spend time, I'm

285
00:15:03,960 --> 00:15:08,240
Speaker 2: struck by how much conversation on those subjects is irrelevant

286
00:15:08,240 --> 00:15:10,680
Speaker 2: to this election because those states are not in play.

287
00:15:10,800 --> 00:15:14,600
Speaker 2: You gotta ask yourself the question, Adrian, which counties in

288
00:15:14,640 --> 00:15:17,360
Speaker 2: which states are in play? And what do people there

289
00:15:17,440 --> 00:15:20,600
Speaker 2: care about? And I honestly doubt that they care about

290
00:15:20,640 --> 00:15:24,520
Speaker 2: campus politics. I'm exposed to it at very close quarters

291
00:15:24,560 --> 00:15:26,360
Speaker 2: because I have to tell you, Stanford hasn't been a

292
00:15:26,360 --> 00:15:29,240
Speaker 2: whole lot better than Columbia, and I just don't think

293
00:15:29,280 --> 00:15:30,880
Speaker 2: it's going to be decisive in this election.

294
00:15:31,200 --> 00:15:34,640
Speaker 4: I still feel that it matters, and the person who

295
00:15:34,720 --> 00:15:37,320
Speaker 4: comes to my mind is Richard Nixon. And the way

296
00:15:37,320 --> 00:15:42,000
Speaker 4: that you got this backlash against student protests student radicalism

297
00:15:42,400 --> 00:15:46,280
Speaker 4: really feeding into Middle Americans feeling as though this wasn't

298
00:15:46,280 --> 00:15:47,520
Speaker 4: the sort of thing they could go with.

299
00:15:48,080 --> 00:15:50,640
Speaker 2: There's one thing I'll agree with you about. If they

300
00:15:50,680 --> 00:15:56,160
Speaker 2: have another Chicago convention of the sort that undoubtedly damaged

301
00:15:56,200 --> 00:15:59,920
Speaker 2: the Democratic cause in the Nixon era, then yeah, because

302
00:16:00,080 --> 00:16:05,560
Speaker 2: that will put it in squarely in the national political debate.

303
00:16:06,120 --> 00:16:09,720
Speaker 2: So if in August it's a complete fiasco in Chicago

304
00:16:09,800 --> 00:16:12,680
Speaker 2: and there are pro Palestinian protests disrupting the convention, then

305
00:16:12,720 --> 00:16:16,440
Speaker 2: I think that will undoubtedly help Trump, But I'm skeptical

306
00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:18,960
Speaker 2: that it's the key issue at the moment. Look, if

307
00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:21,960
Speaker 2: it were, Trump would be pulling ahead. But as far

308
00:16:22,040 --> 00:16:24,600
Speaker 2: as I can see, Biden's closed the gap in the

309
00:16:24,640 --> 00:16:28,080
Speaker 2: last couple of months for two reasons. One that people

310
00:16:28,080 --> 00:16:30,480
Speaker 2: are beginning to come round to the view that the

311
00:16:30,520 --> 00:16:34,960
Speaker 2: economy is actually quite good, and that's taken a while

312
00:16:35,120 --> 00:16:39,360
Speaker 2: because there was so much disillusion with the inflation spike

313
00:16:39,680 --> 00:16:42,960
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty two. The other thing that's interesting is

314
00:16:43,000 --> 00:16:47,760
Speaker 2: that for most Americans we began by discussing, I don't

315
00:16:47,800 --> 00:16:51,480
Speaker 2: think foreign policy is at all a top priority in

316
00:16:51,760 --> 00:16:55,720
Speaker 2: this election. It's not ranked highly in the issues. But

317
00:16:55,840 --> 00:17:00,520
Speaker 2: in the last couple of months, Republicans have been entirely

318
00:17:00,560 --> 00:17:04,840
Speaker 2: divided on the Ukraine question. One part of their party,

319
00:17:04,960 --> 00:17:09,000
Speaker 2: especially in the House of Representatives, is isolationists and wants Ukraine

320
00:17:09,240 --> 00:17:12,200
Speaker 2: essentially to be thrown under the nearest available Russian bus.

321
00:17:12,760 --> 00:17:14,280
Speaker 2: And then there are a whole bunch of other people

322
00:17:14,880 --> 00:17:20,239
Speaker 2: like Mike Pompeo and Mike Gallagher and Matt Possenger who

323
00:17:20,320 --> 00:17:25,040
Speaker 2: are more hawkish than the Democrats on every major conflict issue,

324
00:17:25,119 --> 00:17:29,960
Speaker 2: and I think that's actually somewhat damaging to the Republican cause.

325
00:17:30,520 --> 00:17:33,280
Speaker 2: We haven't mentioned it, but abortion is the one issue

326
00:17:33,280 --> 00:17:37,399
Speaker 2: where the Democrats have an edge over the Republicans, that

327
00:17:37,760 --> 00:17:41,359
Speaker 2: reproductive writs, whatever you want to call it. Frankly, I'll

328
00:17:41,400 --> 00:17:46,920
Speaker 2: be surprised if the antics of work college students really

329
00:17:46,960 --> 00:17:49,600
Speaker 2: show up in the polling. We'll know in a guess

330
00:17:49,640 --> 00:17:51,639
Speaker 2: in a few weeks if you're right and I'm wrong.

331
00:17:52,960 --> 00:17:54,760
Speaker 3: Just to finish this off, the obvious place where people

332
00:17:54,760 --> 00:17:59,800
Speaker 3: do point to a cost to Biden of the dynamics

333
00:18:00,160 --> 00:18:02,040
Speaker 3: the Middle East and that strong feelings on that is

334
00:18:02,040 --> 00:18:06,040
Speaker 3: somewhere like Michigan. Do we overstate the impact that some

335
00:18:06,119 --> 00:18:08,919
Speaker 3: of those sort of the marginal voter who may just

336
00:18:09,200 --> 00:18:13,040
Speaker 3: not turn out for the Democrats, actually they're out campaigning

337
00:18:13,040 --> 00:18:14,640
Speaker 3: and they don't feel like he's on the right side

338
00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:15,159
Speaker 3: of history.

339
00:18:15,880 --> 00:18:19,320
Speaker 2: I think Michigan's very important in the sense that you

340
00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:23,639
Speaker 2: have a substantial Muslim vote, which was not something Richard

341
00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:28,320
Speaker 2: Nixon had to worry about. And you also have the

342
00:18:29,000 --> 00:18:33,560
Speaker 2: kind of fellow traveler sympathizers with the Palestinian cause on

343
00:18:33,680 --> 00:18:37,879
Speaker 2: the progressive left, not only in Michigan but everywhere and

344
00:18:37,960 --> 00:18:40,879
Speaker 2: everything since ex Ober the seventh has been tricky for

345
00:18:40,920 --> 00:18:43,240
Speaker 2: the Democrats from that point of view, because they have

346
00:18:43,320 --> 00:18:48,600
Speaker 2: on one side they're traditionally strong support amongst Jewish Americans

347
00:18:49,240 --> 00:18:54,119
Speaker 2: saying you're not doing enough, you are not supportive enough,

348
00:18:54,160 --> 00:18:57,320
Speaker 2: and then you have the Michigan Muslims and the woke

349
00:18:57,680 --> 00:19:01,119
Speaker 2: fellow travelers saying you're being far too helpful to Israel.

350
00:19:01,160 --> 00:19:05,240
Speaker 2: And this is a very difficult issue for the Biden campaign,

351
00:19:05,359 --> 00:19:08,000
Speaker 2: and it's going to continue to be difficult right through

352
00:19:08,080 --> 00:19:10,960
Speaker 2: the year because it ain't over in the Middle East.

353
00:19:11,000 --> 00:19:15,760
Speaker 2: They're certainly going to be a further round of conflict there.

354
00:19:15,920 --> 00:19:19,000
Speaker 2: I would imagine that the IDF will go after Hesballa

355
00:19:19,119 --> 00:19:23,040
Speaker 2: at some point on the Lebanese border between now and

356
00:19:23,119 --> 00:19:25,760
Speaker 2: the election, and so the issue is not going to

357
00:19:25,760 --> 00:19:27,199
Speaker 2: go away. And that's why I think Adrian has a

358
00:19:27,200 --> 00:19:30,560
Speaker 2: really good point about the Chicago convention, because if if

359
00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:34,720
Speaker 2: the Charkago convention coincides, then is really offensive against Hesballah,

360
00:19:35,760 --> 00:19:39,080
Speaker 2: it's going to get pretty great for Biden. Yeah, that

361
00:19:39,119 --> 00:19:40,960
Speaker 2: could be a that could be a problem, But I

362
00:19:40,960 --> 00:19:43,800
Speaker 2: don't think Columbia students are a problem for the Democrats,

363
00:19:44,080 --> 00:19:44,840
Speaker 2: not yet.

364
00:19:45,040 --> 00:19:50,080
Speaker 4: Why is Biden not walking this as an incumbent president

365
00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:53,920
Speaker 4: with a booming economy, a really strong economy, How does

366
00:19:53,920 --> 00:19:54,680
Speaker 4: it look so close?

367
00:19:55,920 --> 00:20:00,880
Speaker 2: That's an easier question. Larry Sommers came with a paper

368
00:20:01,600 --> 00:20:05,560
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago now saying, yeah, it's true

369
00:20:05,560 --> 00:20:08,800
Speaker 2: that inflation has come down since the spike of twenty

370
00:20:08,840 --> 00:20:12,080
Speaker 2: twenty two. Remember, inflation got up to nine percent consumer

371
00:20:12,119 --> 00:20:15,479
Speaker 2: price index inflation, and of course people didn't like that.

372
00:20:15,600 --> 00:20:18,000
Speaker 2: Been a long time since anybody saw nine percent inflation

373
00:20:18,080 --> 00:20:22,560
Speaker 2: in the US, and there's a lot of resentment that persists.

374
00:20:22,680 --> 00:20:26,120
Speaker 2: People are also sensitive to food inflation, and they're sensitive

375
00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:28,679
Speaker 2: to gasoline inflation, and there's still a sense that the

376
00:20:28,680 --> 00:20:34,239
Speaker 2: Federal Reserve hasn't got this under control. Larry's argument was,

377
00:20:34,880 --> 00:20:37,920
Speaker 2: you have to remember that although mortgages can be set

378
00:20:37,960 --> 00:20:40,400
Speaker 2: for very long periods in the United States, the land

379
00:20:40,440 --> 00:20:43,640
Speaker 2: of the thirty year mortgage. There are lots of other

380
00:20:43,680 --> 00:20:46,479
Speaker 2: forms of debt that are far more sensitive to interest rates,

381
00:20:46,680 --> 00:20:50,080
Speaker 2: and he argues, you've got quite a lot of pain

382
00:20:50,640 --> 00:20:54,560
Speaker 2: in auto loans and another short maturity consumer debt. I

383
00:20:54,600 --> 00:20:58,760
Speaker 2: think that's an important point. I think if you look

384
00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:02,440
Speaker 2: closely at the labor mark, the first signs of that

385
00:21:02,560 --> 00:21:08,160
Speaker 2: long awaited and now no longer believed in recession can

386
00:21:08,200 --> 00:21:12,199
Speaker 2: be seen. So the nightmare scenario for Team Biden is

387
00:21:12,280 --> 00:21:14,920
Speaker 2: that the economy looks terrible by the time we get

388
00:21:14,960 --> 00:21:18,720
Speaker 2: to labor Day, and then people will I think, revert

389
00:21:18,760 --> 00:21:20,879
Speaker 2: to a negative view of the Biden economy. When I

390
00:21:20,960 --> 00:21:23,560
Speaker 2: heard that the Biden team wanted to run on the economy,

391
00:21:23,560 --> 00:21:26,200
Speaker 2: which was like last year's story, I'm like, good luck

392
00:21:26,240 --> 00:21:29,320
Speaker 2: with that. That that will lose the election. So they've

393
00:21:29,359 --> 00:21:32,240
Speaker 2: had to flip to a different strategy, which is running

394
00:21:32,280 --> 00:21:35,080
Speaker 2: on Trump and then desperately trying to get Trump to

395
00:21:35,119 --> 00:21:38,600
Speaker 2: say something about abortion that they can then run against.

396
00:21:38,760 --> 00:21:41,679
Speaker 2: But yeah, the economy doesn't work for them as an issue.

397
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:43,640
Speaker 2: If they had stuck with that plan, then I think

398
00:21:43,680 --> 00:21:45,639
Speaker 2: Trump would have had a good shot at winning.

399
00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:47,800
Speaker 4: When I was in New York Las week. I notice

400
00:21:47,840 --> 00:21:52,160
Speaker 4: talking to money people, to finance people, and the rest

401
00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:56,439
Speaker 4: of it is how many people are leaning to Trump,

402
00:21:56,560 --> 00:21:59,840
Speaker 4: saying that we could really lower corporate taks a bit

403
00:21:59,840 --> 00:22:02,800
Speaker 4: more deregulation and the booming economy will boom even more.

404
00:22:02,840 --> 00:22:06,840
Speaker 4: I hadn't expected so many, as it were respectable, educated

405
00:22:06,880 --> 00:22:09,600
Speaker 4: people who happened to be rich, to be pro Trump.

406
00:22:09,800 --> 00:22:12,119
Speaker 4: Is that a distorted impression of what's going on? Or

407
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:15,119
Speaker 4: is there a sort of shift amongst the wealthier people.

408
00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:18,679
Speaker 4: This is in New York, which is not exactly democratic stronghold.

409
00:22:19,040 --> 00:22:23,800
Speaker 2: I think that there are a number of issues that

410
00:22:24,160 --> 00:22:28,200
Speaker 2: matter a lot to the wealthy elite of New York,

411
00:22:28,760 --> 00:22:36,239
Speaker 2: and those include elite universities and the culture conflict that

412
00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:39,120
Speaker 2: has been going on there since October the seventh. Wall

413
00:22:39,200 --> 00:22:43,000
Speaker 2: Street had not noticed, despite my attempts to point it

414
00:22:43,000 --> 00:22:46,200
Speaker 2: out over the past ten years, that the alma mater

415
00:22:46,880 --> 00:22:52,160
Speaker 2: they felt so warmly towards had gone bananas. But after

416
00:22:52,160 --> 00:22:56,120
Speaker 2: October the seventh, they noticed, and that was when Wall

417
00:22:56,160 --> 00:23:00,960
Speaker 2: Street began to care finally about what happened to the

418
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,400
Speaker 2: hundreds of millions of dollars that they chuck at Harvard

419
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 2: and Columbia. So I think that's part of what's going on.

420
00:23:07,920 --> 00:23:10,480
Speaker 2: When you talk to the Wall Street crowd, A lot

421
00:23:10,560 --> 00:23:14,200
Speaker 2: of them have had the scales fall from their eyes

422
00:23:14,640 --> 00:23:18,000
Speaker 2: about work academia a bit belatedly in my view, but

423
00:23:18,080 --> 00:23:21,880
Speaker 2: they finally got the message. There's also a sense that

424
00:23:22,840 --> 00:23:27,080
Speaker 2: the economy was an absolute home run for Donald Trump.

425
00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:33,600
Speaker 2: People forget, but the Trump administration's economic outcomes were among

426
00:23:33,640 --> 00:23:37,320
Speaker 2: the best of any presidential term since Ron Reagan, and

427
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:40,360
Speaker 2: one might even go back further and say about as

428
00:23:40,400 --> 00:23:44,679
Speaker 2: good as the post war period has seen because after

429
00:23:45,000 --> 00:23:49,560
Speaker 2: a period of what seventeen years of flatlining, median household

430
00:23:49,600 --> 00:23:52,560
Speaker 2: income in real terms went up by more than ten

431
00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:55,600
Speaker 2: percent in the first three years pre COVID of the

432
00:23:55,640 --> 00:23:59,560
Speaker 2: Trump residency, and even after COVID was still substantially up

433
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:03,200
Speaker 2: where it had been between nineteen ninety nine and twenty sixteen.

434
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:06,320
Speaker 2: By the way, it's in negative territory under Joe Biden.

435
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:09,960
Speaker 2: Last I checked, Wall Street would love to have a

436
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,800
Speaker 2: repeat of the Trump rally that kicked off pretty much

437
00:24:13,840 --> 00:24:17,920
Speaker 2: on election Night in November twenty sixteen. Now, I'm sure

438
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:21,879
Speaker 2: that this is a flawed analogy, because I don't think

439
00:24:22,320 --> 00:24:26,080
Speaker 2: a second Trump term will be anything like the first

440
00:24:26,080 --> 00:24:29,840
Speaker 2: Trump term because the conditions, the initial conditions are so different.

441
00:24:29,920 --> 00:24:34,240
Speaker 2: But there's definitely a perfectly straightforward view that the Trump

442
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:37,280
Speaker 2: administration was pretty good at the economy, and so why

443
00:24:37,320 --> 00:24:39,600
Speaker 2: not have the Trump administration two point zero?

444
00:24:39,840 --> 00:24:42,280
Speaker 3: Because we are also we're going to be very global

445
00:24:42,920 --> 00:24:48,280
Speaker 3: on this podcast, and we are also specifically thinking about

446
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:52,000
Speaker 3: how geopolitics is intervening in the way everyone thinks about everything.

447
00:24:52,080 --> 00:24:53,679
Speaker 3: And I was struck by something you said in a

448
00:24:53,720 --> 00:24:56,280
Speaker 3: recent column that you seem to be saying that that

449
00:24:56,440 --> 00:25:00,040
Speaker 3: isolationism was just not going to win out in US politics,

450
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:03,520
Speaker 3: and that President Trump had recognized that or was likely

451
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:08,800
Speaker 3: to recognize that having seen a bipartisan consensus develop over

452
00:25:08,840 --> 00:25:12,640
Speaker 3: the need to confront China in this kind of new

453
00:25:12,680 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 3: Cold War. Is that sort of wishful on your part,

454
00:25:15,200 --> 00:25:18,439
Speaker 3: or you think genuinely isolationism is not going to be

455
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:20,800
Speaker 3: a winning strategy in the US for either party.

456
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:26,240
Speaker 2: I don't think it's plausible, and I think it's very striking.

457
00:25:26,600 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 2: The Speaker Johnson Mike Johnson, relatively recently installed House Speaker,

458
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:37,600
Speaker 2: went from being opposed to funding Ukraine's war effort to

459
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:43,280
Speaker 2: arguing passionately for doing so. Why was that because the

460
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:47,000
Speaker 2: intelligence briefings scared the hell out of him, And I

461
00:25:47,160 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 2: just wish that Marjorie Taylor Green could have had those

462
00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:54,480
Speaker 2: briefings too, because if you let Russia win in Ukraine,

463
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:58,199
Speaker 2: that is no bueno from almost any vantage point that

464
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:02,040
Speaker 2: is rational. I'm excluding the Tucker Carlson position that it

465
00:26:02,080 --> 00:26:06,239
Speaker 2: would just be fine if Putin won. The interesting thing

466
00:26:06,240 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 2: about this is that Trump himself changed the conversation on

467
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:16,879
Speaker 2: US national security strategy, which for the entire period, really

468
00:26:16,960 --> 00:26:20,080
Speaker 2: after the end of the Cold War, had been a

469
00:26:20,240 --> 00:26:25,840
Speaker 2: sleep walk towards Chinese ascendancy, culminating when Susan Rice was

470
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:30,400
Speaker 2: Obama's National security advisor and the national security strategy basically

471
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:35,679
Speaker 2: said China's rising, Oh well, it's okay, why worry? And

472
00:26:35,800 --> 00:26:40,920
Speaker 2: Trump campaigned against China was as important as the border issue.

473
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:44,840
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, he came in, he talked about tariffs

474
00:26:44,880 --> 00:26:47,520
Speaker 2: and China. He'd been really fueled by the policy elite,

475
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:51,240
Speaker 2: which has been up until the Trump presidency on critically

476
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:55,560
Speaker 2: pro free trade. And the Trump administration completely changed the

477
00:26:55,600 --> 00:27:00,520
Speaker 2: conversation because they imposed the tariffs, they stood up to China,

478
00:27:00,640 --> 00:27:03,439
Speaker 2: they rewrote the national security strategy as one of competition

479
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:07,359
Speaker 2: with China as the main US rival along with Russia.

480
00:27:07,800 --> 00:27:12,679
Speaker 2: HRC Master Nadia Shadlow nailed it fantastic document set a

481
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:15,880
Speaker 2: new course for American strategy that the Biden administration did

482
00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:19,760
Speaker 2: not dare change. And on this issue, it seems to

483
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:23,960
Speaker 2: me Trump has a lot of credibility because everything that

484
00:27:23,960 --> 00:27:27,480
Speaker 2: the Trump administration said about China has turned out to

485
00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:33,000
Speaker 2: be right. I think the isolationist position is inherently stupid.

486
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:36,399
Speaker 2: It's like being an apologist for the Ttalitarians in the

487
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:39,720
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties and nineteen forties. You're just getting it wrong

488
00:27:40,160 --> 00:27:44,480
Speaker 2: because they clearly aspire to a world in which American

489
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:48,200
Speaker 2: privacy is over. That's the one thing that brings Jan

490
00:27:48,320 --> 00:27:53,040
Speaker 2: Ping and Vladimir Putin and the Iatolis in Tehran and

491
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 2: Kim Jong In together. They don't have anything in common

492
00:27:55,560 --> 00:27:58,760
Speaker 2: except that they really quite against democracy, the rule of law,

493
00:27:58,800 --> 00:28:03,760
Speaker 2: individual freedom, and primacy. An isolationist positions, such as Tucker

494
00:28:03,800 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 2: Carlson staked out after he left Fox, is as big

495
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:09,800
Speaker 2: a loser in my view as the same position was

496
00:28:09,840 --> 00:28:12,919
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties. That all the Republicans have to

497
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:17,159
Speaker 2: do is as Mitke Pultinger and Mike Gallagher argue in

498
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:20,400
Speaker 2: the latest Issue of Foreign Affairs is be more hawkish

499
00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:24,000
Speaker 2: than the Democrats, who have been really bad at foreign policy.

500
00:28:24,240 --> 00:28:27,520
Speaker 2: It's like how not to do deterrence one oh one,

501
00:28:27,680 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two, total failure to deter Pudin from invading Ukraine,

502
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:34,280
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three, total failure to Iran from unleashing its

503
00:28:34,320 --> 00:28:38,120
Speaker 2: proxies against Israel, and twenty twenty four they can't even

504
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:42,480
Speaker 2: deter Bibi from finishing off Hamas in Gaza. And so

505
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:46,640
Speaker 2: this administration is terrible at foreign policy. It's really woeful.

506
00:28:46,640 --> 00:28:49,440
Speaker 2: After it makes Jimmy Carter look like one of the

507
00:28:49,480 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 2: masters of geopolitics. If the Trump campaign could focus on that,

508
00:28:53,360 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 2: if that was what the electorate really cared about, then

509
00:28:56,080 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 2: Trump would win the way Reagan won in nineteen.

510
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 3: Eighty without all the deals. I think I would absolutely

511
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 3: agree with you that President Trump was the one who

512
00:29:06,760 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaker 3: did most to provide a wake up call and a

513
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:12,720
Speaker 3: recognition that the China strategy of those many years had

514
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:17,200
Speaker 3: been completely wrong, or at least been disproved by Shijinping's

515
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,120
Speaker 3: approach to government. I was sitting in US Treasury when

516
00:29:20,160 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 3: we let China into the WTO, and that the view

517
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:25,400
Speaker 3: of how that was going to go just turned out

518
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 3: completely wrong. But the problem I find when I think, okay,

519
00:29:29,000 --> 00:29:33,440
Speaker 3: is President Trump going to be ironically a less scary,

520
00:29:33,840 --> 00:29:37,280
Speaker 3: potentially more constructive force on the international stage if he's

521
00:29:37,320 --> 00:29:42,120
Speaker 3: reelected than these as you described incompetent President Biden and

522
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:45,479
Speaker 3: Tony Blincoln. I've got two problems with that. One is,

523
00:29:46,240 --> 00:29:51,480
Speaker 3: although President Trump has often sounded very belligerent about China

524
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:54,200
Speaker 3: and raised the alarm, he's also come across as quite

525
00:29:54,280 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 3: liking dictators, wanting to do deals, and he's very against

526
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:01,040
Speaker 3: underpinning a sort of packs America if there's a threat

527
00:30:01,080 --> 00:30:04,760
Speaker 3: on Taiwan. It's not clear to me looking at Trump's

528
00:30:04,800 --> 00:30:10,400
Speaker 3: previous pronouncements, some of them suggests he would underpin Taiwan's security,

529
00:30:10,520 --> 00:30:12,880
Speaker 3: quite a lot of them suggest otherwise. And the other

530
00:30:12,880 --> 00:30:16,160
Speaker 3: thing I would say is his clientalism, whether it's over

531
00:30:16,280 --> 00:30:19,680
Speaker 3: TikTok Ban or other things. He seems quite keen to

532
00:30:20,240 --> 00:30:23,680
Speaker 3: respond to kind of business lobbying and business pressure. It

533
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:25,520
Speaker 3: doesn't seem to take much to get him to kind

534
00:30:25,520 --> 00:30:27,200
Speaker 3: of roll over on some of these things. So I

535
00:30:27,280 --> 00:30:30,080
Speaker 3: just I take a lot of what you're saying. But

536
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:33,160
Speaker 3: I just wonder on those two points, is he going

537
00:30:33,200 --> 00:30:37,040
Speaker 3: to want to underpin the security of Asia and isn't

538
00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:38,640
Speaker 3: he going to be quite easily bought off.

539
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:43,920
Speaker 2: That's a reasonable question to ask, Stephanie. But one has

540
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:48,800
Speaker 2: to remember that the president isn't the king. In practice.

541
00:30:48,840 --> 00:30:53,280
Speaker 2: The president sits a top a complex national security bureaucracy,

542
00:30:53,880 --> 00:30:57,160
Speaker 2: and it's only got more complex over the last fifty years,

543
00:30:57,920 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 2: and it has to be staffed by people who know

544
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:05,320
Speaker 2: what they're doing. And you just can't make Tucker secondary state.

545
00:31:05,520 --> 00:31:08,080
Speaker 2: That's not an option. So you have to look around

546
00:31:08,120 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 2: and ask who will staff up the second Trump administration,

547
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 2: and the answer is people like my Pompeo and Matt

548
00:31:15,440 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 2: Pottinger and maybe Mike Gallaher, and those people are all

549
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:23,640
Speaker 2: much more hawkish and much more convinced that behind every

550
00:31:23,720 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 2: threat to democracy, whether it's in Ukraine or in Taiwan

551
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 2: or in Israel, is the Chinese Communist Party. So although

552
00:31:31,640 --> 00:31:35,680
Speaker 2: Trump himself is transactional and has a kind of level

553
00:31:35,680 --> 00:31:40,760
Speaker 2: of cynicism, but that is always somewhat staggering in practice.

554
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:46,520
Speaker 2: Or Republican administration is unlikely to sell Taiwan for a

555
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:50,680
Speaker 2: bunch of golf courses or casinos with John Bolton's passage

556
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:53,719
Speaker 2: that everybody should And in that passage, Adrian you may

557
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:57,360
Speaker 2: have read it, Trump is explaining the significance of Taiwan

558
00:31:57,440 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 2: and he pulls that He's sitting in the Oval office,

559
00:31:59,440 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 2: and he pulled it's a sharpie, these pens that he

560
00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:05,720
Speaker 2: likes to sign his name with. And he says, you

561
00:32:05,760 --> 00:32:09,080
Speaker 2: see this, sharpie, this is Taiwan. You see this desk

562
00:32:09,360 --> 00:32:12,200
Speaker 2: of the Resolute, this is China. Are we really going

563
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:15,320
Speaker 2: to send the US Navy across the Pacific to rescue

564
00:32:15,320 --> 00:32:18,320
Speaker 2: a sharpie? That's how Trump feels. And by the way,

565
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:21,560
Speaker 2: it's not a stupid position, because actually going to war

566
00:32:21,640 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 2: over Taiwan, in my view, would be the single stupidest

567
00:32:25,000 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 2: thing an American administration can do at this point, because

568
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:30,280
Speaker 2: there would be a non trivial chance that it would lose.

569
00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:34,520
Speaker 2: So I don't disagree with Trump that staking the future

570
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 2: of American power on a naval expedition to run a

571
00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 2: blockade of Taiwan is a bad idea. But if you

572
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 2: talked to Mike Pompeo or Matt Pottinger or Mike Galpher

573
00:32:45,120 --> 00:32:47,560
Speaker 2: or Elbert Tolby, for example, who might still be in

574
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:50,200
Speaker 2: a Trump administration. They will all tell you that this

575
00:32:50,280 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 2: is the make or break decision of their lives. So

576
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 2: I don't think it's possible to imagine a fully staffed

577
00:32:56,600 --> 00:33:01,280
Speaker 2: isolationist administration or a fully staffed trump is administration that

578
00:33:01,400 --> 00:33:04,000
Speaker 2: we just do deals on all of these Nash.

579
00:33:05,120 --> 00:33:09,040
Speaker 4: Isn't there a case for Trump's transactionalism and for his

580
00:33:09,160 --> 00:33:11,360
Speaker 4: lack of consistency in the sense that we need to

581
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 4: have two sets of policies towards China. We need to

582
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 4: stand up to it, but we also need to trade

583
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:18,800
Speaker 4: with it and engage with it. And just because liberal

584
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 4: engagement didn't work all the time when Stephanie was in

585
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:24,560
Speaker 4: the Treasury, it doesn't mean that he can't work at

586
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:27,719
Speaker 4: some point in the future. She didn't pink May at

587
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:30,280
Speaker 4: some point will at some point die. There is a

588
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:35,640
Speaker 4: liberal faction within liberal in loose terms, within China. We

589
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 4: need to give them some sort of off ramp whereby

590
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:40,480
Speaker 4: we can say, if you behave in a different sort

591
00:33:40,520 --> 00:33:44,200
Speaker 4: of way, you're in a more liberal way, we will

592
00:33:44,240 --> 00:33:46,280
Speaker 4: engage with it. We will have a different sort of

593
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:48,840
Speaker 4: set of policies. So I'm not sure that the consistency

594
00:33:48,880 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 4: of Pompeo is better than the inconsistency and opportunism of Trump.

595
00:33:53,640 --> 00:33:56,040
Speaker 2: I'll just imagine a scenario like in November the sixth,

596
00:33:56,920 --> 00:34:00,160
Speaker 2: No sooner have we got the results in than we

597
00:34:00,240 --> 00:34:02,720
Speaker 2: hear that there's a blockade of Taiwan, which the Chinese

598
00:34:02,760 --> 00:34:05,040
Speaker 2: could do tomorrow, but they might wait until after the election.

599
00:34:05,800 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 2: What then, what do you do? Because if you send

600
00:34:08,160 --> 00:34:12,200
Speaker 2: the naval expeditionary force, like I don't know, two or

601
00:34:12,280 --> 00:34:16,280
Speaker 2: three aircraft carrier strike groups, there's a non trivial risk

602
00:34:16,520 --> 00:34:20,959
Speaker 2: that you are rerunning the Cuban missile crisis with the

603
00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:24,640
Speaker 2: real risk of World War III, and we're not particularly

604
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:29,040
Speaker 2: well positioned for that war as things stand. It is

605
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:31,439
Speaker 2: not nineteen eighty, it's not the mid nineteen nineties. Either.

606
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:34,600
Speaker 2: The Chinese can sink US aircraft carriers. They've got missiles

607
00:34:35,040 --> 00:34:37,879
Speaker 2: that can do just that, and we would run out

608
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:41,240
Speaker 2: of precision missiles in a week, and the war games

609
00:34:41,239 --> 00:34:44,160
Speaker 2: are pretty clear on that. So I think the US

610
00:34:44,200 --> 00:34:47,640
Speaker 2: should be speaking a lot more softly about Taiwan and

611
00:34:47,680 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 2: trying to find the big stick that it currently doesn't have.

612
00:34:51,120 --> 00:34:53,800
Speaker 2: And until such times as you have that big stick.

613
00:34:54,160 --> 00:34:57,440
Speaker 2: The right strategy is they don't negotiate with them, engage

614
00:34:57,480 --> 00:35:03,360
Speaker 2: with them, whatever it is, arms control, economics, exchanges, just

615
00:35:03,800 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 2: talk about it. European security talk about it is better

616
00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 2: to be engaged in those conversations with the other superpower

617
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:13,919
Speaker 2: than to risk a Cuban missile crisis, which is way

618
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:17,240
Speaker 2: too dangerous. And I think that's what the Biden people

619
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:20,920
Speaker 2: wanted to do. I think that was definitely Jake Sullivan's instinct.

620
00:35:21,320 --> 00:35:23,480
Speaker 2: I think that was what they were trying to achieve

621
00:35:23,680 --> 00:35:25,560
Speaker 2: in the run up to the meetings in November. The

622
00:35:25,760 --> 00:35:28,600
Speaker 2: problem they had was, as in the First Cold War,

623
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:31,120
Speaker 2: you're doing daketall when the midd least blows up and

624
00:35:31,160 --> 00:35:34,400
Speaker 2: you weren't expecting that. He certainly wasn't expecting that, and

625
00:35:34,480 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 2: it happens, and it's greatly weakened the national security strategy

626
00:35:39,160 --> 00:35:42,080
Speaker 2: of Team Biden. That's why they're in trouble at the moment.

627
00:35:42,160 --> 00:35:44,840
Speaker 2: Not their China policy, which I think was quite smart.

628
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 2: In fact, the China policy of the Biden administration was

629
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:52,439
Speaker 2: especially smart because they found the Chinese Achilles Heel, which

630
00:35:52,480 --> 00:35:55,080
Speaker 2: turned out to be high end semiconductors.

631
00:35:55,600 --> 00:35:58,800
Speaker 4: As somebody who jumps from one side of the Atlantic

632
00:35:58,840 --> 00:36:01,400
Speaker 4: to another. What do you say I'm seeing in Britain

633
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:04,960
Speaker 4: in terms of ourcoming election, which may well be almost

634
00:36:05,000 --> 00:36:09,200
Speaker 4: the same time as the election as the Trump Biden election,

635
00:36:09,360 --> 00:36:12,719
Speaker 4: that you've seeing any interesting patterns emerging that might cast

636
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 4: light between the two.

637
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:20,680
Speaker 2: There's all almost complete disconnects. But itcause Britain's rerunning the

638
00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:27,120
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies, like some brilliantly executed BBC costume drama in

639
00:36:27,200 --> 00:36:30,200
Speaker 2: which everybody talks as if it's the nineteen seventies. Ah well,

640
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:34,879
Speaker 2: mustn't grumble. Nothing works and you go from a weak

641
00:36:34,960 --> 00:36:38,920
Speaker 2: conservative government or a weak labor government. They'll make it worse,

642
00:36:39,040 --> 00:36:43,160
Speaker 2: won't they. I mean, pretty kear Starmer as he enters

643
00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:49,959
Speaker 2: Downing Street. The predicament is really dire from the point

644
00:36:49,960 --> 00:36:54,040
Speaker 2: of view of the fiscal situation and all the wonderful

645
00:36:54,080 --> 00:36:58,200
Speaker 2: things that Rachel Reeves said in her much lauded speech

646
00:36:58,800 --> 00:37:01,919
Speaker 2: reminded me of the white heat of technology. And it's

647
00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:07,320
Speaker 2: going to be just Wilson Reducts with the inevitable consequences.

648
00:37:07,920 --> 00:37:11,640
Speaker 2: So Britain's going to rerun the seventies and it's going

649
00:37:11,719 --> 00:37:15,960
Speaker 2: to be probably good for sitcom and music and terrible

650
00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:17,320
Speaker 2: for just about everything else.

651
00:37:17,440 --> 00:37:20,560
Speaker 4: But we had this surge of populism that generated Brexit

652
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:23,000
Speaker 4: and Boris Johnson, and we had a surge of populism

653
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:26,239
Speaker 4: in the United States that generated Trump. Why have they

654
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:29,920
Speaker 4: moved in such different directions in terms of politics, Because

655
00:37:30,040 --> 00:37:37,360
Speaker 4: trump Ism had a serious and credible case that if

656
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:41,359
Speaker 4: you changed your attitude.

657
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 2: On taxation, which they did, and on China, which they did,

658
00:37:46,960 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 2: and tried to toughen up border policing, which they did,

659
00:37:51,080 --> 00:37:55,360
Speaker 2: they would be meaningful economic benefits to the average American household.

660
00:37:55,600 --> 00:38:01,840
Speaker 2: That was a serious and well executed platform. The problem

661
00:38:01,840 --> 00:38:05,319
Speaker 2: with Brexit was that it contained a good deal of

662
00:38:05,440 --> 00:38:09,040
Speaker 2: rhetoric and high quality marketing. Don Cummings very good at that,

663
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:13,440
Speaker 2: but the content was utterly vacuous. I'm afraid to say

664
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 2: that if one looks back on the economic critique of

665
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:20,520
Speaker 2: the Brexit of the Leave case, it was right that

666
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 2: it was simply going to be very costly for Britain

667
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 2: to exit the European Union. It was a divorce with

668
00:38:27,120 --> 00:38:30,320
Speaker 2: a pretty high price tag, and that price tag would

669
00:38:30,520 --> 00:38:34,120
Speaker 2: take the form, amongst other things, of the serious decline

670
00:38:34,120 --> 00:38:37,880
Speaker 2: in investment. So the problem with Brexit was that it

671
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 2: was not really economically serious. I love you, but you're

672
00:38:41,760 --> 00:38:44,200
Speaker 2: not serious people. That's how I feel about all my

673
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 2: friends who supported Brexit. I love you, but you're not

674
00:38:47,760 --> 00:38:50,800
Speaker 2: serious people. When I read the case for Brexit, just

675
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 2: as an economic historian, I was like, this is stupid.

676
00:38:53,880 --> 00:38:56,400
Speaker 2: This is stud I wouldn't give a graduate student a

677
00:38:56,480 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 2: B for this. It's like a C paper. So I

678
00:38:59,640 --> 00:39:01,680
Speaker 2: was wi. I was a remainer, not because I have

679
00:39:01,920 --> 00:39:04,759
Speaker 2: warm feelings towards Brussels, but just because I can see

680
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:09,719
Speaker 2: stupid when I see stupid written down. Bit was economic stupidity,

681
00:39:09,840 --> 00:39:12,200
Speaker 2: and it shows Look at the UK today.

682
00:39:12,120 --> 00:39:14,920
Speaker 3: Sadly we begin to live it. You see it, and

683
00:39:15,040 --> 00:39:15,880
Speaker 3: we get to live it.

684
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:20,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's Mississippi. It's Mississippi. Is the economic outcome. You

685
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:22,520
Speaker 2: look at it. You look at the rest of the

686
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:25,359
Speaker 2: country outside London, which remains a prosperous city, and it's

687
00:39:25,400 --> 00:39:27,839
Speaker 2: really quite I mean, I've spent most of the last

688
00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 2: quarter century working in the US and now I'm spending

689
00:39:31,239 --> 00:39:33,360
Speaker 2: much more time in the UK for family reasons, and

690
00:39:33,400 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 2: it's pretty provincial. Britain is a shockers Mississippispi.

691
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:41,240
Speaker 4: Mississippi is rich compared with a lot of provincial Britain.

692
00:39:42,560 --> 00:39:45,840
Speaker 3: That opens a whole other Neil, you have. You've given

693
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 3: us a fantastic start to this series and plenty of

694
00:39:49,120 --> 00:39:52,960
Speaker 3: topics to return to. And I'm sure there will be

695
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:56,319
Speaker 3: people spluttering over their tea or anything stronger as they

696
00:39:56,360 --> 00:39:58,399
Speaker 3: listen to or trip over the dog lead as they

697
00:39:58,680 --> 00:40:01,160
Speaker 3: walk the dog. I guess the only the obvious question

698
00:40:01,280 --> 00:40:04,239
Speaker 3: that arises from some of what you've said, if there

699
00:40:04,280 --> 00:40:06,080
Speaker 3: are going to be grown ups in the room in

700
00:40:06,120 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 3: our next Trump administration, is Neil Ferguson available for any

701
00:40:09,640 --> 00:40:10,360
Speaker 3: of these roles.

702
00:40:10,600 --> 00:40:13,919
Speaker 2: The answer to that question is the question was put

703
00:40:14,000 --> 00:40:19,200
Speaker 2: to me in late twenty sixteen after the election, and

704
00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:23,680
Speaker 2: I went to Trump Tar and I met a number

705
00:40:23,680 --> 00:40:30,759
Speaker 2: of the key protagonists in a very surreal afternoon. And

706
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:35,719
Speaker 2: after I had met Anthony Scaramucci and Mike Flynn and

707
00:40:35,760 --> 00:40:39,520
Speaker 2: Steve Bannon and Michael Cohen, I phoned my wife up

708
00:40:39,560 --> 00:40:42,400
Speaker 2: and I said, this will end in a welter of litigation.

709
00:40:43,080 --> 00:40:46,680
Speaker 2: We're going to have nothing to do with it. Good call.

710
00:40:47,080 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 3: Who knows you might still get another knock on the door.

711
00:40:49,200 --> 00:40:50,839
Speaker 3: But thank Neil fergus and thank you so much.

712
00:40:55,840 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 1: I read that transcript. First thing, this morning. I didn't

713
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:01,920
Speaker 1: listen to it just now, and it was like drinking

714
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:04,560
Speaker 1: ten shots of coffee in one go. And I don't

715
00:41:04,600 --> 00:41:07,080
Speaker 1: drink caffeine anymore. So can you imagine that my poor

716
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:10,800
Speaker 1: body from the paper? It felt like he thought that

717
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:14,160
Speaker 1: that Trump was. I think he thinks he's going to win.

718
00:41:14,560 --> 00:41:16,800
Speaker 4: I think he would probably consider, as most people would,

719
00:41:17,000 --> 00:41:19,160
Speaker 4: that you can't really tell with Trump. He's such an

720
00:41:19,200 --> 00:41:22,240
Speaker 4: unpredictable figure. He might go in all sorts of directions,

721
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:26,440
Speaker 4: but nevertheless that there is a possibility that for economic reasons,

722
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:29,879
Speaker 4: for business reasons, and for foreign policy reasons, he might

723
00:41:29,920 --> 00:41:32,080
Speaker 4: not be the disaster that most of the sort of

724
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:33,920
Speaker 4: global establishment is.

725
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:36,960
Speaker 3: I was quite strong that well, but I was quite

726
00:41:37,000 --> 00:41:39,120
Speaker 3: struck that, you know, especially when I was sort of

727
00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 3: pinning him down a bit on sort of can we

728
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 3: really count on Trump to quote unquote do the right

729
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:49,880
Speaker 3: thing when it comes to Taiwan or other things that

730
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:52,040
Speaker 3: he fell back on saying, oh, there'll be grown nuts

731
00:41:52,040 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 3: in the room. You can't bear a secretary of State

732
00:41:54,239 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 3: job to you know, any old person. Whereas actually the

733
00:41:57,120 --> 00:42:01,040
Speaker 3: impression you get very much of trum two point. Oh,

734
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 3: it's precisely that it will be the people who Trump

735
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 3: can absolutely rely on who will defer to him, and

736
00:42:08,600 --> 00:42:10,400
Speaker 3: all the people who were the grown ups in the

737
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:13,200
Speaker 3: room often didn't last very long in the first Trump

738
00:42:13,200 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 3: administration will be nowhere to be seen. So I thought

739
00:42:15,239 --> 00:42:17,440
Speaker 3: it was interesting that he was still sort of relying

740
00:42:17,520 --> 00:42:18,359
Speaker 3: very heavily on that.

741
00:42:18,480 --> 00:42:21,880
Speaker 4: It was very much a twenty sixteen mindset. You know,

742
00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:24,960
Speaker 4: we've got this crazy guy, but there's lots of responsible

743
00:42:25,000 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 4: people who can hold him back. Now we learned We've

744
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:30,920
Speaker 4: learned a couple of things in recent years. One is

745
00:42:30,920 --> 00:42:34,280
Speaker 4: that those responsible people can't necessarily hold him back because

746
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:38,640
Speaker 4: he's this sort of extraordinary figure, unpredictable figure. But secondly

747
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:43,440
Speaker 4: that you're getting the emergence of a real sort of

748
00:42:43,480 --> 00:42:46,799
Speaker 4: populist policy, established populist intelligence, so that it won't be

749
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,440
Speaker 4: just the old Republican wise men who will be in

750
00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:52,640
Speaker 4: the room, the whole group of new intellectuals, of new policy,

751
00:42:52,640 --> 00:42:55,919
Speaker 4: people who really believe in this populist agenda, who really

752
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:59,520
Speaker 4: believe in isolationism. You've got groups like the Heritage Foundation

753
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:04,360
Speaker 4: who this enormous policy document which is all about strong governments,

754
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:06,720
Speaker 4: about getting rid of checks and balances, which is about

755
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 4: empowering true trumpst believers, and they've got binders full of populists.

756
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:16,120
Speaker 4: They've got a whole set of people that they want

757
00:43:16,160 --> 00:43:20,880
Speaker 4: to populate the White House who weren't available before. So

758
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:24,640
Speaker 4: I think he's thinking applying a twenty sixteen paradigm to

759
00:43:24,680 --> 00:43:26,440
Speaker 4: something that's going to be a very different thing. I

760
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,200
Speaker 4: just wanted to say one other thing about the nature

761
00:43:29,239 --> 00:43:33,200
Speaker 4: of our conversation, which I think really illustrates the world

762
00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:36,120
Speaker 4: that we're talking about. We're talking about Taiwan. Now, what

763
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:39,319
Speaker 4: has Taiwan been since about nineteen eighty It's been this

764
00:43:39,480 --> 00:43:44,720
Speaker 4: place where you produce cheap stuff and then you produce semiconductors.

765
00:43:44,719 --> 00:43:47,600
Speaker 4: Everybody has seen it as a fantastic place where you

766
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:50,000
Speaker 4: can get all this manufacturing skill, you can produce all

767
00:43:50,000 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 4: this really cheap good stuff. It now produces ninety percent

768
00:43:54,120 --> 00:43:56,440
Speaker 4: of the world's semiconductors. This has one of the world's

769
00:43:56,440 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 4: great companies, the world's greatest semiconductor producing company in the world.

770
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:05,920
Speaker 4: There everybody had seen it through that lens. Now in

771
00:44:05,960 --> 00:44:09,000
Speaker 4: this conversation with seeing Taiwan through a very different lens,

772
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:12,040
Speaker 4: is it somewhere that we should go to war to protect?

773
00:44:12,120 --> 00:44:14,680
Speaker 4: Or is it somewhere that we might concede to China

774
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:19,239
Speaker 4: because they care more about it. That's a dramatic demonstration

775
00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:20,839
Speaker 4: of the theme that is at the heart of this.

776
00:44:21,040 --> 00:44:21,600
Speaker 2: You called it a.

777
00:44:21,520 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 1: Sharpie pen, didn't he.

778
00:44:25,080 --> 00:44:28,200
Speaker 3: And it's a sort of example of parts of the

779
00:44:28,239 --> 00:44:32,720
Speaker 3: world that you know, not just the sort of foreign

780
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 3: policy makers or indeed sort of foreign correspondents need to

781
00:44:37,160 --> 00:44:42,400
Speaker 3: know about, but even potentially you know, suppliers of things

782
00:44:42,640 --> 00:44:45,200
Speaker 3: you know in different parts of Britain or different parts

783
00:44:45,200 --> 00:44:47,480
Speaker 3: of Europe. You know, just like the Red Sea. Everyone

784
00:44:47,560 --> 00:44:49,200
Speaker 3: going to the map to work out where the Red

785
00:44:49,200 --> 00:44:51,000
Speaker 3: Sea is that they haven't had to think about quite

786
00:44:51,000 --> 00:44:51,200
Speaker 3: a long.

787
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:53,919
Speaker 1: Absolutely, that's it, and I thought the challenge from both

788
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:56,520
Speaker 1: of you was very important around hold on a second.

789
00:44:56,760 --> 00:44:58,960
Speaker 1: From the American perspective, it might be one thing to

790
00:44:59,040 --> 00:45:02,719
Speaker 1: be so tough on China and tariffs and goods coming

791
00:45:02,719 --> 00:45:05,200
Speaker 1: over part because they make so much. It is different

792
00:45:05,239 --> 00:45:07,160
Speaker 1: from the UK's perspective, and again from a sort of

793
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 1: voteromics perspective, thinking about what is it what does something

794
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:14,680
Speaker 1: mean to voters if you are thinking about prices going up,

795
00:45:14,680 --> 00:45:16,799
Speaker 1: because as you say, so much is being made in

796
00:45:16,840 --> 00:45:19,360
Speaker 1: that part of the world that has been consumed by Brits.

797
00:45:19,440 --> 00:45:22,239
Speaker 1: It's not always true for Americans. So you've got you know,

798
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:24,920
Speaker 1: UK potentially in the next year, if there's a President

799
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:29,800
Speaker 1: Trump the second where we are having to watch this this.

800
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:32,440
Speaker 3: Is it a trade war?

801
00:45:32,480 --> 00:45:34,480
Speaker 1: I don't know what it would become become if you know,

802
00:45:35,040 --> 00:45:36,440
Speaker 1: not just the tariffs we have at the moment, but

803
00:45:36,480 --> 00:45:38,879
Speaker 1: there's more tarists put on goods and then the UK,

804
00:45:38,960 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 1: which is more economically dependent on China. What happens to

805
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:45,280
Speaker 1: those to that relationship. If we've got a prime minister Starmer,

806
00:45:45,360 --> 00:45:46,200
Speaker 1: how does he navigate?

807
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:50,000
Speaker 3: And I was quite struck by what he's sort of

808
00:45:50,000 --> 00:45:54,520
Speaker 3: referred in passing to the unsustainability of US fiscal policy

809
00:45:54,560 --> 00:45:56,680
Speaker 3: and the fact that it's even with a booming economy.

810
00:45:56,719 --> 00:45:58,560
Speaker 3: You know, you're not supposed to be borrowing a lot

811
00:45:58,560 --> 00:46:01,239
Speaker 3: with a booming economy's supposed to be when you're sort of,

812
00:46:01,280 --> 00:46:03,719
Speaker 3: you know, having running some kind of budget surplus, even

813
00:46:04,520 --> 00:46:06,759
Speaker 3: as we did when I was in the Treasury. Had

814
00:46:06,800 --> 00:46:10,200
Speaker 3: nothing to do with me, but so the US Treasury.

815
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:12,799
Speaker 3: But I was thinking of you, Allegra when he was

816
00:46:12,840 --> 00:46:16,799
Speaker 3: talking about I think he has often made Neil often

817
00:46:16,880 --> 00:46:19,720
Speaker 3: makes something of this rule that you a great power

818
00:46:19,760 --> 00:46:22,799
Speaker 3: doesn't stay great for long if it's spending more on

819
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:26,879
Speaker 3: debt interest than it is on defense. And of course

820
00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 3: that sent me sort of scurrying to see whether we've

821
00:46:30,560 --> 00:46:33,120
Speaker 3: lasted through that, you know, years ago, as we ran

822
00:46:33,160 --> 00:46:35,960
Speaker 3: down the defense budget and now we've got very fast

823
00:46:36,080 --> 00:46:39,360
Speaker 3: rising debt interest payments and it's striking that. You know,

824
00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:43,400
Speaker 3: this was the week that the Prime Minister decided to

825
00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:47,560
Speaker 3: to kind of echo what Kirs Starmer has said about

826
00:46:47,760 --> 00:46:49,640
Speaker 3: wanting to get to two point five percent, and of

827
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:51,680
Speaker 3: course he's because he's Prime minister. People take it a

828
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:55,600
Speaker 3: bit more seriously. Is the Conservative Party fully on board

829
00:46:55,600 --> 00:46:57,880
Speaker 3: with doing that relevant instead of tax cuts?

830
00:46:58,600 --> 00:46:58,799
Speaker 2: Right?

831
00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:01,680
Speaker 1: Not in that, I mean on the so, I think

832
00:47:01,680 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 1: there is a slight difference between the government and labor.

833
00:47:05,360 --> 00:47:08,040
Speaker 1: I don't always say that, and in fact, a lot

834
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:09,440
Speaker 1: of us aren't saying that very much at the moment

835
00:47:09,480 --> 00:47:11,759
Speaker 1: because they're sticking the labor is sticking very much to

836
00:47:11,840 --> 00:47:14,120
Speaker 1: government plans. But on this I think it is different

837
00:47:14,120 --> 00:47:16,839
Speaker 1: because they're not saying when unless I'm mistaken, And I

838
00:47:16,840 --> 00:47:19,279
Speaker 1: think that matters because the threat is now, and the

839
00:47:19,320 --> 00:47:22,239
Speaker 1: threat is is is you know, is ramping up week

840
00:47:22,280 --> 00:47:24,120
Speaker 1: by week. So I think the timing question is an

841
00:47:24,120 --> 00:47:27,279
Speaker 1: important one. I wouldn't have thought that Labour's position on

842
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:29,799
Speaker 1: not saying when losts I would have thought they'll feel

843
00:47:29,840 --> 00:47:32,160
Speaker 1: they have to move because otherwise they will be accused

844
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:34,279
Speaker 1: of you know, tell that to Donald Trump that you

845
00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:37,840
Speaker 1: don't know when right. So one, there is a slight difference,

846
00:47:37,920 --> 00:47:40,640
Speaker 1: but you're right, they're now essentially camping on two point five.

847
00:47:41,719 --> 00:47:44,000
Speaker 1: It is less than the amount we spend on as

848
00:47:44,080 --> 00:47:46,799
Speaker 1: you of all people know, definitely it does not be

849
00:47:46,880 --> 00:47:51,920
Speaker 1: the exactly it doesn't. So we flouted Neil Ferguson's rule

850
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:53,560
Speaker 1: that you have to spend more on defense than you

851
00:47:53,600 --> 00:47:55,960
Speaker 1: do on your debt interest repayments. So we flatted that

852
00:47:56,040 --> 00:47:59,319
Speaker 1: rule a long time ago. Two point five has it

853
00:47:59,400 --> 00:48:04,960
Speaker 1: seems like may Richie's soon next. Critics inside his party

854
00:48:05,040 --> 00:48:07,319
Speaker 1: go quiet. So the people that were calling for it

855
00:48:07,440 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 1: seem happy, probably because any higher has an impact on

856
00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:15,680
Speaker 1: other public spending. As you say, you said tax cuts,

857
00:48:15,719 --> 00:48:19,000
Speaker 1: but I would say, actually NHS welfare, you know, pockets

858
00:48:19,040 --> 00:48:23,040
Speaker 1: of huge, huge budgets that there are constituencies within the

859
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:26,880
Speaker 1: Conservative Party who would not want them touching. So I

860
00:48:26,880 --> 00:48:28,839
Speaker 1: think people are I don't think also, I don't think

861
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:31,040
Speaker 1: people saw it coming, correct me if I'm wrong. So

862
00:48:31,080 --> 00:48:33,359
Speaker 1: I think there was We knew that he was going

863
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: to Europe at the beginning of the week, but I

864
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:36,920
Speaker 1: don't think people thought that there would be a new

865
00:48:36,960 --> 00:48:40,279
Speaker 1: statement on the amount of GDP that would be spent

866
00:48:40,320 --> 00:48:41,960
Speaker 1: on defense. So I think I think he's had a

867
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:44,719
Speaker 1: decent few days. But next week's going to be very

868
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:49,479
Speaker 1: tough because it's these these May elections that for many,

869
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:52,160
Speaker 1: many months now people have been saying will be the

870
00:48:52,160 --> 00:48:54,919
Speaker 1: moment when his critics decide to move again.

871
00:48:55,400 --> 00:48:57,239
Speaker 4: I think there'll be a number of D words which

872
00:48:57,280 --> 00:49:00,880
Speaker 4: we'll keep talking about as this podcast developed. One is debt,

873
00:49:01,320 --> 00:49:03,600
Speaker 4: which is something people have been pretty quiet about for

874
00:49:03,640 --> 00:49:05,600
Speaker 4: a long time, but it's now coming back. The second

875
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:09,320
Speaker 4: is defense, again something that people weren't talking about enough,

876
00:49:09,560 --> 00:49:12,440
Speaker 4: but is moving back to the center of British politics,

877
00:49:12,480 --> 00:49:15,000
Speaker 4: just as it has been debated very vigorously in the

878
00:49:15,120 --> 00:49:18,880
Speaker 4: United States. Demographics with an aging population, with different groups

879
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:22,720
Speaker 4: shifting and some interesting shifts going on, particularly the United States,

880
00:49:22,440 --> 00:49:26,800
Speaker 4: with some black voters and and some Latino voters perhaps

881
00:49:26,880 --> 00:49:31,680
Speaker 4: shifting to Trump in interesting ways, and just disaster, there's

882
00:49:31,719 --> 00:49:34,600
Speaker 4: probably going to be another disaster like the disaster of

883
00:49:34,640 --> 00:49:39,399
Speaker 4: the you know, Hamas atrocity, which will reshape politics yet again.

884
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:40,440
Speaker 3: And de escalation.

885
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:42,240
Speaker 4: I forgot that.

886
00:49:42,280 --> 00:49:44,399
Speaker 3: I'm here all week. That's the optimistic one. I thought

887
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:46,040
Speaker 3: you were going to add decarbonization.

888
00:49:46,120 --> 00:49:47,000
Speaker 2: O my god.

889
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:50,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm ashamed to say I hadn't even thought of

890
00:49:51,000 --> 00:49:55,520
Speaker 1: that's definitely, but you are always that. Definitely decarbonization and

891
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,560
Speaker 1: that awful, terrible one. Digitization is the other.

892
00:49:59,600 --> 00:50:02,960
Speaker 3: Really and next week so be brought to you by

893
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:08,760
Speaker 3: the letter. All right, Well, that's just a taste of folks,

894
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:11,520
Speaker 3: and for those of you who liked it, they'll be

895
00:50:11,520 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 3: more like that, and for those of you didn't, we

896
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:16,879
Speaker 3: will get better as the weeks go on. But it's

897
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:20,600
Speaker 3: it's great fun to sit down with these fine people,

898
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:29,440
Speaker 3: and we will be doing many more. Thanks for listening

899
00:50:29,520 --> 00:50:32,840
Speaker 3: to this week's voter Nomics from Bloomberg. This episode was

900
00:50:32,880 --> 00:50:37,280
Speaker 3: hosted by Me, Stephanie Flanders, Adrian Wildridge, and alegra Stratton.

901
00:50:37,560 --> 00:50:40,799
Speaker 3: It was produced by Samma Sadi with help from Thomas lu,

902
00:50:41,080 --> 00:50:45,880
Speaker 3: Chris Marklu and Julia Manns. Editorial direction from Victoria Wakeley.

903
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:50,640
Speaker 3: Sound design by Blake Maples Brendan Francis Newnham is our

904
00:50:50,680 --> 00:50:55,520
Speaker 3: executive producer and Sage Bowman is head of Bloomberg Podcasts.

905
00:50:55,840 --> 00:51:00,680
Speaker 3: With special thanks to Neil Ferguson. Please, if you like it, subscribe, rate,

906
00:51:00,719 --> 00:51:07,160
Speaker 3: and review this show wherever you listen to your podcasts.