Speaker 1: Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Bonnie Quinn. This week they've
Speaker 1: been very, very slow to move towards this. Jonathan Bernstein
Speaker 1: on the public hearings from the House January sixth Committee,
Speaker 1: which start Thursday, and the impression the six Countom six
Speaker 1: sessions will make. Later, we'll speak with Ruth Pollard in Colombo,
Speaker 1: Sri Lanka which defaulted for the first time since it
Speaker 1: won independence from Great Britain, and the country is a
Speaker 1: potential bellweather for investors on developing economies post pandemic. First though,
Speaker 1: to the intensifying and global food crisis. Here's the U. S.
Speaker 1: Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week. Russia's war against Ukraine
Speaker 1: has exacerbated the issue of food security for people around
Speaker 1: the world, particularly in emerging and developing countries. I spoke
Speaker 1: with David Fickling for an overview of just how bad
Speaker 1: the situation is for global economies, particularly those dependent on
Speaker 1: food imports. I think we're approaching a quite unusual turn
Speaker 1: in the sort of history of global food security. To
Speaker 1: be honest, if you look back at the long history
Speaker 1: of this, you know, one of the crucial things that
Speaker 1: helps keep the world fed over the past fifty years,
Speaker 1: while the world population has doubled, is actually trade. People
Speaker 1: talk a lot about the growth of sort of chemical
Speaker 1: fertilizers and farm machinery, which have both been very important
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century in keeping the world fed, but
Speaker 1: trade is a really important part of that because, of course,
Speaker 1: if you have drought and crop failures in your region,
Speaker 1: then there's no amount of fertilizer or farm machinery that
Speaker 1: will solve the fact that your crop just won't grow.
Speaker 1: So a really important thing that I think is underappreciated
Speaker 1: is that the cost of ocean trade in the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century dropped by about and so you suddenly have this
Speaker 1: global trade in grains and about a quarter of all
Speaker 1: the calories we consume it and now traded across borders.
Speaker 1: So it's very important that this is a global trade.
Speaker 1: But I think something's undappreciated is that it's quite a
Speaker 1: concentrated trade. The world's bread baskets are rather few. There's
Speaker 1: probably about six of them the US Midwest, the South America,
Speaker 1: sort of Argentina, Brazil, that area, areas of western Europe
Speaker 1: and the Ukraine and the former Soviet Union and Russia.
Speaker 1: And I think most importantly the plain between the Indus
Speaker 1: and the Ganges in northern India and Pakistan and eastern China,
Speaker 1: between the Yank Sea and the Yellow Rivers. Those six
Speaker 1: red baskets are absolutely crucial to the world's growth. Of
Speaker 1: these relatively few number of crops that we depend on, wheat, rice, corn, soybeans.
Speaker 1: More than half of wheat and rice and corn are
Speaker 1: grown if you put those those areas together soybeans described Now,
Speaker 1: for most of the time, that's not too much of
Speaker 1: a problem because although there's just half a dozen of
Speaker 1: these bread baskets, if you get a drought in one region,
Speaker 1: it tends to pair with good rainfall and another region
Speaker 1: that leads to higher crop yields, because essentially the rainfall
Speaker 1: has to go somewhere. It evaporates on one side of
Speaker 1: the ocean, it tends to drop on the other side
Speaker 1: of the ocean, and when we talk about things like
Speaker 1: El Nino and Landinia, that's essentially about rainfall ending up
Speaker 1: in different places. However, as the climate is changing, a
Speaker 1: lot of va is getting a lot less secure than
Speaker 1: it has been in the past, and I think that's
Speaker 1: really putting pressure on some of the fairly sort of
Speaker 1: shaky system that we have there in place over the
Speaker 1: stage of half a dozen bread baskets to keep the
Speaker 1: world said, were seeing several weather events right now, even
Speaker 1: just in the United States alone, where Montana is suffering drought,
Speaker 1: North Dakota can't get anything seated because of rain. So
Speaker 1: weather has a lot to do with the fact that
Speaker 1: there's going to be a shortage. It is not just
Speaker 1: Russias war in Ukraine. Absolutely, And of course you know
Speaker 1: you see that weather event in the US. Prices for
Speaker 1: spring red wheat in Chicago here fourteen year high in March,
Speaker 1: So there is a wheat problem in North America. Now,
Speaker 1: in normal times you would look to the world's other
Speaker 1: big wheat producers. Now one of the world's top three
Speaker 1: wheat producers may be slightly surprising in fact, is India.
Speaker 1: You don't think of India as a big wheat producer.
Speaker 1: It's not a big wheat exporter normally because it's almost
Speaker 1: all consumed at home for chapaties. And now, well, exactly
Speaker 1: what we've seen in India over the past couple of months.
Speaker 1: We've seen this very extreme heat wave and that has
Speaker 1: caused India to embargo exports of wheat places like the
Speaker 1: Middle East, they were very dependent on wheat from Ukraine.
Speaker 1: That's obviously been damaged by the war in Ukraine. The
Speaker 1: places they were hoping to get their wheat supplies from
Speaker 1: with India, but now injuries not supply that either. Obviously
Speaker 1: you see these high prices in the US as well,
Speaker 1: So you really see how some relatively small changes, and
Speaker 1: especially if you throw geer politics in the mix, as
Speaker 1: with the war in Ukraine, suddenly what looked like a
Speaker 1: decent spread of food baskets can very quickly that are
Speaker 1: rather short. You also point out on a recent piece
Speaker 1: food dependent nations can import nutrition, but they must have
Speaker 1: the foreign exchange to pay for it, and we know
Speaker 1: that because of the dollar strength, that's in short supply
Speaker 1: in many of these countries. Yeah. Absolutely, and of course
Speaker 1: a wheat currency becomes a problem for especially the poorest
Speaker 1: in the country, even if there is the availability of
Speaker 1: imported nutrition. I mean, another interesting example you look at Brazil.
Speaker 1: Brazil recently not a country that you really associate with
Speaker 1: a sort of open trade policy, but they've been drastically
Speaker 1: cutting the tara frights essentially to zero for all food imports.
Speaker 1: The idea of values. Of course, that inflation is very
Speaker 1: high in Brazil, and it is a problem for people
Speaker 1: in Brazil that they can't afford to eat. Well. That
Speaker 1: is a decent policy approach, but the problem is it's
Speaker 1: not nearly sufficient, because if you look at the way
Speaker 1: that the real the currency has fallen in recent years,
Speaker 1: Brazili the big food producer anyway, and it's probably not
Speaker 1: going to lead to any increase in food imports because
Speaker 1: Brazilians simply can't afford the market global price of food. Now, David,
Speaker 1: how bad does this get in terms of people actually
Speaker 1: starving people in places you might even associate balmon and
Speaker 1: food and security with I mean, the past few decades
Speaker 1: mostly have been an extremely successful period of bringing down
Speaker 1: rates of under nutrition under nourishment. That progress continued to
Speaker 1: slow down through but then just in and then particularly
Speaker 1: since of course the code pandemic, we've really started to
Speaker 1: lose ground on that. Now, part of that is essentially
Speaker 1: driven by the pandemic and driven by incomes. People don't
Speaker 1: have the money to spend on food that they used
Speaker 1: to have, but it's not just because of that, and
Speaker 1: I think particularly at the moment, we see all sorts
Speaker 1: of factors are leading to a much more insecure environment
Speaker 1: for food. Clearly, you have the crop failers that we're seeing.
Speaker 1: We're in the third year of a Landinia event, which
Speaker 1: causes all sorts of disruption to the food system in
Speaker 1: that way, that's why you see a lot of these
Speaker 1: low yields on crops from Latin America. That tends to
Speaker 1: be the case with that with a landing near event.
Speaker 1: On top of that, of course, energy prices are very
Speaker 1: high and that pushes up the cost of fertilizer, so
Speaker 1: that's another thing that decreases yield. And then you throw
Speaker 1: into the mix the war in Ukraine is a factor.
Speaker 1: Ukraine and Russia are both big food exporters for that matter,
Speaker 1: and then led up at ports in Ukraine and Russia
Speaker 1: that just won't get out now absolutely absolutely. Then you
Speaker 1: can add some of these export embargoes obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: an interesting one was India's wheat embargo follows very rapidly
Speaker 1: on the heels of an export embargo in Indonesia for
Speaker 1: palmer which has actually now been revoked, but went on
Speaker 1: for a while injuries. One of the biggest importers of
Speaker 1: palm oil. India needs palm oil for basic nutrition for Indians,
Speaker 1: they lose that nutrition from Indonesia, they embargo their wet
Speaker 1: exports elsewhere, and you see these knock on effects everywhere.
Speaker 1: Malaysia embargoing exports of chicken. But of course you've got
Speaker 1: an avian influenza atbreak around the world at the moment,
Speaker 1: and the price of corn, which is essentially the price
Speaker 1: of raising chickens, is also very high. So there are
Speaker 1: all sorts of impacts like this, and the World Food Program,
Speaker 1: for example, do much about this. Well. Traditionally, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what the World Food Program is for, and in fact,
Speaker 1: it's its origins essentially are as a US export program.
Speaker 1: It's deep origins are in World War One when Herbert
Speaker 1: Hoover was seeing sort of famine in Belgium and decided
Speaker 1: to use some of the US's significant agricultural surpluses to
Speaker 1: solve that problem. So that is what the World Food
Speaker 1: Program does. It uses the agricultural surpluses from from the
Speaker 1: US and to a lesser extent, Europe as a way
Speaker 1: of applying supplementary nutrition around the world. That works as
Speaker 1: long as you don't have these simultaneous bread basket failures
Speaker 1: and as long as they don't come repeatedly. But that's
Speaker 1: the risk with climate change. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: a key instance here in ten you had very dramatic
Speaker 1: heat waves and drought in Russia that caused a real
Speaker 1: collapse in the agricultural production there, and they were paired
Speaker 1: with flooding in Pakistan. Normally, of course, the rainfall it
Speaker 1: was the same climate system. Normally, you would say, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a drought one place, there's rainfall elsewhere. But the
Speaker 1: flood in Pakistan was so severe that Pakistan also suffered
Speaker 1: a collapse in production. So two of the world's big
Speaker 1: wheat belts collapsed at the same time, which is not
Speaker 1: something that we've seen before, but it is something that
Speaker 1: as global warming increases the risk of that. And remember
Speaker 1: that only you know six or some of these red
Speaker 1: baskets around the world, the risk of that goes up
Speaker 1: quite substantially. Is easter in China at least a functioning
Speaker 1: bread basket for the world at moment. China is an
Speaker 1: interesting case, but it also an interesting case around geo politics.
Speaker 1: You see occasional reports out of China saying that you know,
Speaker 1: they're the agricultural yields are not as good as expected,
Speaker 1: and there are you know, there as of food problems,
Speaker 1: but I would say China is pretty well supplied with
Speaker 1: food at the moment, and actually over amplic supplied. If
Speaker 1: you look at the stockpiles that they have of key grains,
Speaker 1: they are extremely high. They've got enough stockpiles to last,
Speaker 1: you know, in most cases well beyond a year, when
Speaker 1: a lot of other parts of the world are very short. Now.
Speaker 1: I think in part that is actually a product of geopolitics.
Speaker 1: You know, China is less sure of its trading relationships
Speaker 1: than it was a few years ago, and there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a sort of fortress China approach to that.
Speaker 1: So it is stockpiling this stuff at home and it
Speaker 1: is not available for its its trading partners and other
Speaker 1: nations to feed their own shortages. Yeah, it's terribly how
Speaker 1: many billions are at least hundreds of millions of people
Speaker 1: are looking at a spectrum all the way from just
Speaker 1: food and security, which is bad enough on its own,
Speaker 1: all the way through to famine. Yeah, well, it's very concerning.
Speaker 1: You know, if you look at some of the numbers
Speaker 1: that have been coming out of the world's food program
Speaker 1: in a typical year, they feed I think, around about
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty million people, or they they ensure
Speaker 1: that there's food supply to about a hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million people. And I think I think there was a
Speaker 1: report they did a couple of months ago. They're saying,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's about fifty million people around
Speaker 1: the world who are in an emergency situation in terms
Speaker 1: of food food security. So um, so that is a
Speaker 1: sort of ongoing problem. It's something the World Who program
Speaker 1: deals with all the time. And in terms of a
Speaker 1: sort of lower level of food insecurity, the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that leads just to um, you know, growth stunting
Speaker 1: among children. Um, we're talking about significantly more, you know,
Speaker 1: you're talking sort of hundreds of millions. UM. The world,
Speaker 1: I should say, has been very good at dealing with
Speaker 1: this over the twentieth century. It's it's nothing short of
Speaker 1: a modern miracle that we have managed to feed so
Speaker 1: many people, and we've seen hunger decline so dramatically, But
Speaker 1: it is a year after year struggle. If there was
Speaker 1: a famous economist, Thomas Malthus sort of two years ago
Speaker 1: who predicted that there would be massed starve because population
Speaker 1: growth was faster than than agricultural output growth. And it's
Speaker 1: it's a it's a miracle for the past few centuries
Speaker 1: that not only has population growth not been as fast
Speaker 1: as as he predicted, but also agricultural yields have just
Speaker 1: risen and ritten and continue to rise at an astonishing pace. Um.
Speaker 1: That gives me a lot of confidence that actually we
Speaker 1: are seeing temporary problems here, but human ingenuity will be
Speaker 1: able to solve it. Um. But I don't think we
Speaker 1: should underestimate the how much we're sort of dancing on
Speaker 1: the edge of the precipice here. Every every year that
Speaker 1: you know, the growth of agricultural yields doesn't match the
Speaker 1: growth of population is a year year that brings the
Speaker 1: world population closer to starvation. And we need to keep
Speaker 1: increasing that. Finally, David, if there was to be a
Speaker 1: letter up on Russia's war in Ukraine, if there was
Speaker 1: to be an opening of some of the boards that
Speaker 1: have been blockaded, for example, how much would that alleviate
Speaker 1: the situation. It wouldn't happen immediately because actually, to some extent,
Speaker 1: a larger problem with Ukraine at the moment is of
Speaker 1: course that we've we've missed the planting season largely for
Speaker 1: for a lot of the crops for this year, and
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty significant. And if you look at some
Speaker 1: of the US Power of Agricultures projections, the bigger supply
Speaker 1: crunch for wheat, if I remember rightly, is actually for
Speaker 1: the for thecoming marketing year, not the one that's you know,
Speaker 1: not the wheat that's just done its way to port
Speaker 1: for the coming marketing year. They lose about a third
Speaker 1: of their fair output. So that's that's going to be
Speaker 1: the more significant one. Um. Of course, you know, a
Speaker 1: big factor on behind this is what happens with the
Speaker 1: global climate. We are three years into a landinio event
Speaker 1: and the sort of climate shifts that that causes. It's
Speaker 1: likely that we're going to see a shift into an
Speaker 1: alnnio event, which favors different bread baskets um. But when
Speaker 1: we move into that, we have the the you know,
Speaker 1: the real core of the high prices that we're seeing
Speaker 1: for agricultural produced is that stocks are low um, and
Speaker 1: stocks have been running down essentially over this three year
Speaker 1: learning neer event UM. So we need to rebuild those docks.
Speaker 1: And that's not going to come overnight. That will that
Speaker 1: will be the product of a number of years um
Speaker 1: I suspect um climate change. Notwithstanding um that we will
Speaker 1: again see very cheap prices for food over the next decade,
Speaker 1: but it will it will be a number of years
Speaker 1: before things really get back on track. David Fickling there,
Speaker 1: and don't forget to get in touch. All thoughts and
Speaker 1: opinions very welcome. I'm at Vanney Quinn on Twitter or
Speaker 1: email v Quinn at Bloomberg dot net. And by the way,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Opinion is also available as a podcast on Apple,
Speaker 1: Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts. I feel for
Speaker 1: the people of Sri Lanka. This is a tremendous shock
Speaker 1: for them. We would like to see progress made and
Speaker 1: we are already engaging with Sri Lanka's creditors to appeal
Speaker 1: for fast action on that restructuring. Of course, to help
Speaker 1: a country, the country needs to help itself first. Christian
Speaker 1: your Gafa. They're managing director of the i m F
Speaker 1: on efforts to restructure of Sri Lanka's sovereign debt. The country,
Speaker 1: which is needed sixteen i m F agreements since ninet,
Speaker 1: is officially in default for the first time since independence.
Speaker 1: In let's get to Ruth Pollard in Colombo. Ruth details
Speaker 1: some of the chaos and trilina for us, what does
Speaker 1: a country in default look like? Well, one thing that
Speaker 1: is really obvious is very very long queues for fuel,
Speaker 1: and that's petrol, diesel and also LPG cooking gas. People
Speaker 1: are standing in line or sitting in line in their
Speaker 1: cars or their bikes for days at a time trying
Speaker 1: to get this most basic commodity, and that of course
Speaker 1: has flow on effects because people can't get to work,
Speaker 1: children can't get to school, people can't get to medical
Speaker 1: appointments or get to hospitals. Patients are telling their doctors
Speaker 1: that they've started rationing really important medications like heart medication
Speaker 1: and diabetes drugs because they're running out and they don't
Speaker 1: know when the next ship shipment of medication will arise.
Speaker 1: And of course there's armed soldiers on the streets. Some
Speaker 1: of them are controlling accused at petrol stations, but others
Speaker 1: are just making their presence felt to try and implement
Speaker 1: some kind of order into Sri Lanka. It's deeply disturbing
Speaker 1: to watch. We of course saw all of the protests
Speaker 1: in the streets and now we're seeing that there's government
Speaker 1: being formed and trying to put some order on all
Speaker 1: of this, but it seems to have happened extraordinarily quickly.
Speaker 1: Is that the case was it post pandemic, it just disintegrated.
Speaker 1: It's been disintegrating for some time. This all started way
Speaker 1: back when the Rudger puckss were in power from two
Speaker 1: thousand and five onwards, when they started doing a lot
Speaker 1: of borrowing and establishing credit lines that have subsequently become unsustainable.
Speaker 1: And now Sri Lanka is facing the prospect of its
Speaker 1: principle being the same amount as the interest rate payments.
Speaker 1: So obviously this is an unsustainable situation for the country
Speaker 1: to find itself in. Now. It has had extein I
Speaker 1: MF bailout packages since x five, so now it's going
Speaker 1: for one. But the I m F and the World
Speaker 1: Bank are going to want to see some significant progress
Speaker 1: in macroeconomic policies in Sri Lanka before another package will
Speaker 1: be entered into and it's difficult to see how that
Speaker 1: happens without tourism resuming, which of course has really fallen
Speaker 1: away because of the pandemic and other reasons as well.
Speaker 1: Now investors are looking at Shri Lanka and saying this
Speaker 1: could be a bell whether for other economies in Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia and other developing economies. More broadly, give us a
Speaker 1: few economies that investors are comparing Sri Lanka too well.
Speaker 1: The most obvious one is Pakistan. It too is going
Speaker 1: through a political crisis. Now we have a new prime minister,
Speaker 1: Shebaz Sharif. But the question for him is can his
Speaker 1: government be brave enough I guess to implement the austerity
Speaker 1: measures that the IMF requires of it to access I
Speaker 1: m F funding. And now those austerity measures are very
Speaker 1: similar to those in Sri Lanka. Her the I m
Speaker 1: F wants the governments in both those countries to stop
Speaker 1: very high fuel subsidies and remove other subsidies that are
Speaker 1: sucking up a lot of the public money and adding
Speaker 1: to the economic crisis. Now, once you remove fuel subsidies,
Speaker 1: that in turn makes feel unaffordable for the population, which
Speaker 1: in turn runs the risk of creating civil unrest, and
Speaker 1: that brings with it a whole host of other problems.
Speaker 1: So these countries are facing very very complex situations to
Speaker 1: sort of try and dig themselves out of these crises.
Speaker 1: The latest inflation reading was closed to thirty percent and
Speaker 1: there are forecasts that the next one might be forty percent.
Speaker 1: How does somebody live with an inflation read at forty present, Well,
Speaker 1: they live by cutting back on absolutely everything, and that
Speaker 1: includes food. So daily wage journalists, who make up a
Speaker 1: very large part of Sri Lanka's workforce, are seeing what
Speaker 1: little they're managing to earn just get completely eroded by
Speaker 1: very high food cost very high fuel costs, and also
Speaker 1: very high medication costs. As the generic version of medications
Speaker 1: run out, doctors are having to prescribe to patients much
Speaker 1: more expensive versions of drugs, and so they can't afford them.
Speaker 1: What happens is parents are now saying that they're going
Speaker 1: to only take one meal a day so their kids
Speaker 1: can have three meals a day. Now, that's going to
Speaker 1: have long term consequences on a population if this continues
Speaker 1: much longer. Is the current Prime Minister, who by the way,
Speaker 1: has been the Prime minister at least half a dozen
Speaker 1: times in the past, running with we're messing a is
Speaker 1: he qualified to let Sri Lanka out of this mess?
Speaker 1: You know, Sri Lanka only has one day of fuel
Speaker 1: left each day, and so you know, trying to manage
Speaker 1: that as a government is incredibly difficult now. While he
Speaker 1: has the respect of the international community and the i
Speaker 1: m F and the other international agencies, his appointment hasn't
Speaker 1: calmed the mood of the protesters who are down on
Speaker 1: Goldfaced Green in the capital Colombo. They're satisfied with renewal
Speaker 1: Riquam Singer as Prime Minister. They see him as part
Speaker 1: of the political old guard. They want a slate claimed
Speaker 1: whole new government in place that's going to do or
Speaker 1: not just with the economic crisis, but also look at
Speaker 1: the future and make sure that Sri Lanka isn't going
Speaker 1: to be back at the I m F looking for
Speaker 1: an eighteen bailout package. Ruth Pollard in Colombo. The January
Speaker 1: sixth Committee is due to finally start public hearings this Thursday.
Speaker 1: Six of them to prime time hearings, four morning hearings.
Speaker 1: It took eighteen months to put these hearings together, and
Speaker 1: in comparison with hearings passed, the effort seems well a
Speaker 1: little slim. I spoke with Jonathan Bernstein on how these
Speaker 1: hearings compare with successful hearings of eras passed, such as
Speaker 1: the Watergate hearings. So Jonathan next week, we see the
Speaker 1: start of the public hearings on the January sixth events.
Speaker 1: It seems insane that it's taken this long for public
Speaker 1: hearings to happen. But give us a little bit of context.
Speaker 1: How do public hearings end up coming to the table. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it depends on the event. They're all different.
Speaker 1: One of the things about Congress is that they can
Speaker 1: do whatever they want hunt in terms of format, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, it's been different over the years. Generally, Congress
Speaker 1: has moved away from public hearings. Overall, there's way fewer
Speaker 1: public hearings of every type of committee than there was
Speaker 1: twenty thirty years ago. But in particular on the January
Speaker 1: six committee, they've been very, very slow to move towards this.
Speaker 1: And you can compare it to Watergate and the Senate
Speaker 1: Watergate Committee hearings went on. There were fifty one hearings
Speaker 1: that went on for six months, and they really did
Speaker 1: capture the imagination of the nation. It's questionable how much
Speaker 1: effect they had in terms of President Nixon's approval ratings,
Speaker 1: but it was an important thing in people's lives. We're
Speaker 1: going to get here. Six hearings over two weeks, and
Speaker 1: it's just not sufficiently after whatever it is eighteen months
Speaker 1: after the event, and in a very different media environment
Speaker 1: in which these are also competing against things like the
Speaker 1: Johnny Depp amber Heard trial. You know, the thing about
Speaker 1: Watergate and the Watergate hearings is that occurred at the
Speaker 1: peak really of central eised television. Most people in the
Speaker 1: country had at most five TV channels. They had three
Speaker 1: networks ABC, NBC, and and CBS. They had a PBS channel,
Speaker 1: and they had one independentization, and and medium size and
Speaker 1: small towns didn't necessarily have even an independent stations. Some
Speaker 1: sounds only had two of the three networks, so an
Speaker 1: enormous number of people watched them. Now, at this point,
Speaker 1: we've already had a lot of digestion of what the
Speaker 1: January six Committee has been doing. We've had a lot
Speaker 1: of the members of the January six Committee come on
Speaker 1: and do interviews, I mean constantly. In fact, what's different
Speaker 1: about a public hearing than private hearings. Well, one of
Speaker 1: the things that's happened, unfortunately, because of the way that
Speaker 1: this has developed, is that most of the publicity has
Speaker 1: been on the fights between the committee and the witnesses,
Speaker 1: and so we've had a series of subpoenas and then
Speaker 1: people fighting subpoenas and the Committee deciding whether the issue
Speaker 1: subpoenas and court cases about it, and sentary stuff almost
Speaker 1: although extremely important, of course, yeah, and and and the
Speaker 1: thing is that people don't care about the fight over evidence.
Speaker 1: People care about they might care about an attempt to
Speaker 1: overthrow the government of the United States. And so yes,
Speaker 1: a lot of the details are out, but proper hearings
Speaker 1: would lay them out in a way that was compelling,
Speaker 1: that would be interesting. You would see the people involved,
Speaker 1: and we're getting at some of that. We just don't
Speaker 1: know how much we can get in only six hearings.
Speaker 1: You know, see some of these people who have pled
Speaker 1: guilty to criminal acts, who were involved in leadership roles
Speaker 1: in organizing this event of people from some of these
Speaker 1: fringe groups that Trump was encouraging to come to the capital.
Speaker 1: The Committee wants to spend a lot of time, and
Speaker 1: rightly so, connecting the dots of these groups Proud Boys
Speaker 1: or whoever it is, with signals sent by the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: And we don't know to some extent whether we're going
Speaker 1: to get not just connecting dots, but some very serious
Speaker 1: lines between them, and some of that has been reported.
Speaker 1: Some of it we just don't know yet, and we
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to be coming out in the hearings.
Speaker 1: But I think that, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that it's hard to do were only six hearings, is
Speaker 1: to sort of develop the storylines and get people to
Speaker 1: sort of get involved in the unfolding story of it
Speaker 1: and the characters. And you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that happened with Watergate is you had some just wacky
Speaker 1: characters who would come and and get give testimony for
Speaker 1: a day, and people pay attention. People knew who these
Speaker 1: characters were, and they were talked about on the Johnny
Speaker 1: Carson Show back then, and they would be quoted on
Speaker 1: the evening news and all that kind of stuff. I
Speaker 1: hesitate to compare this to a trial, because we obviously
Speaker 1: don't want to be judge an executioner before any of
Speaker 1: this happens. That's not really the point of this anyway.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, it does feel like the
Speaker 1: private hearings were to prepare the public six days. Is
Speaker 1: that what happens? Yeah, And some of that back in Watergate,
Speaker 1: And I keep going back to that because those were
Speaker 1: generally recognized as an extremely successful set of hearings that
Speaker 1: the Senate Watergate Committee that was set up basically a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks after the original cover up collapse. The
Speaker 1: cover up held back in seventy three for about six months,
Speaker 1: then it collapsed. Then the Senate authorized this committee two
Speaker 1: months later. They started holding heres not eighteen months later.
Speaker 1: But what the Senate Watergate Committee group did is they
Speaker 1: would pre interview everybody, they would take the positions, and
Speaker 1: then the witnesses that they thought would be compelling they
Speaker 1: would put on not on the as you say, it's
Speaker 1: not a trial, but but it has you know. It
Speaker 1: was the kind of compelling thing. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that I wonder about. You know, people say, well,
Speaker 1: these days we don't have an attention span, and but
Speaker 1: the truth is people love trials absolutely, and there's something
Speaker 1: about the sense that you don't know what people are
Speaker 1: and it's live and it's it's real, you know, in
Speaker 1: the same way the reality television is real. So even
Speaker 1: if the Watergate Committee had a pretty good idea of
Speaker 1: what where the testament was going, or in some cases
Speaker 1: where it wasn't because some of the witnesses were hostile
Speaker 1: from the administration. Um Famously, the former Attorney General John
Speaker 1: mitchell I didn't remember anything that happened in the year
Speaker 1: of nine and that was good TV too, and that
Speaker 1: was good for the committee because it showed the depths
Speaker 1: that people were going to not cooperate. And so it
Speaker 1: seems to me that this particular committee, rather than thinking
Speaker 1: of the public side of things as one of their
Speaker 1: major things to do, they seem very focused on the
Speaker 1: report they're writing, and I don't quite understand why, because
Speaker 1: it could be important to turn over evidence to the
Speaker 1: Justice Department. It does seem that there are crimes that
Speaker 1: were committed by people who have not yet been indicted,
Speaker 1: and they've collected information that will be relevant to that.
Speaker 1: But people don't read government reports for the most part,
Speaker 1: So who will we here from most It's gonna be
Speaker 1: up to the committee. They've talked a lot about having
Speaker 1: multimedia presentations, about having a lot of videotape, and they
Speaker 1: seem to be afraid of dry question and answer hearings.
Speaker 1: One of the huge advantages that this committee has is
Speaker 1: that because of the way it was put together, because
Speaker 1: Republicans boycotted it after Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed two of
Speaker 1: the Republican suggestions to be on the committee. It's a
Speaker 1: small committee with two or publicans who are dedicated to
Speaker 1: take their job seriously. So there are no people here
Speaker 1: whose job is going to be to disrupt things. So
Speaker 1: the committee is pretty united in taking seriously what happened
Speaker 1: on January six. And what I wonder though, is whether
Speaker 1: they're going to present something that's too polished and too basic,
Speaker 1: as the kids say, to really have the kind of
Speaker 1: effect that it should have, especially with it only being
Speaker 1: over a short period of time. I mean, there's also
Speaker 1: the question of timing. So it seemed like there was
Speaker 1: a lot of delays. I mean, as you said, eighteen months,
Speaker 1: it seems a little crazy, and at the same time,
Speaker 1: sort of we're in the middle of primary season now,
Speaker 1: we're also going into summer, and it's sort of a
Speaker 1: pandemic summer. You have to wonder is there anything that
Speaker 1: we should read into the timing of this. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not worried as much about that a lot of
Speaker 1: big hearings have happened during summer, is possibly because there's
Speaker 1: not a whole lot of other news to compete with them.
Speaker 1: But Senate Watergate Committee hearings were in the summer. The
Speaker 1: Judiciary Committee impeachment hearings in nineteen seventy four during the summer,
Speaker 1: and people paid attention to. Of course, that's impeached of
Speaker 1: a sitting presidents, a little bit different. But the Iran
Speaker 1: Contra hearings were a summer story also and did well.
Speaker 1: And we've had some Supreme Court justices, quite a few
Speaker 1: of them actually, because they tend to announce their resignations
Speaker 1: at the end of the term in June, and so
Speaker 1: we've had a bunch of those happened from Bork up
Speaker 1: through some of the recent ones. So some of those
Speaker 1: hearings have been the summer, and they don't capture the
Speaker 1: imagination of everybody, but they've gotten pretty good play in
Speaker 1: the media. So watch people be watching out for I mean,
Speaker 1: if they are interested in watching. It does feel like
Speaker 1: we've heard everything that there couldn't possibly be anything new,
Speaker 1: could there. I think we're gonna get a lot of
Speaker 1: new details, But I think what matters is the big picture.
Speaker 1: There's a question of how much of a story do
Speaker 1: we have in terms of a deliberate plot involving the
Speaker 1: White House, possibly members Congress and other people working with
Speaker 1: some of these fringe groups. But I think even backing
Speaker 1: up from that, some of it is just getting a
Speaker 1: perspective on Hey, this thing really happened. The President United
Speaker 1: States attempted to overturn an election. He called state legislators
Speaker 1: and said, throw out the vote from your state and
Speaker 1: pick collectors loyal to me. As you say, even with
Speaker 1: all that, it may not change anything this time around,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we have to see what Attorney
Speaker 1: General says in terms of nitaments all that. I don't
Speaker 1: think any of this has much to do with midterm elections,
Speaker 1: but I think that it's at least possible that it
Speaker 1: could bring the Republican Party as a whole back from
Speaker 1: the brink. Does the Republican Party really want to oppose
Speaker 1: democracy is really one of the big questions here. Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is not in favor of democracy. Some of the
Speaker 1: Republicans seem to think democracy less important than US ruling
Speaker 1: or than some policy. Well, it seems to be popular,
Speaker 1: so they're going with it. Right. Well, it's not clear
Speaker 1: how popular, you know, but but most people in their
Speaker 1: everyday lives, they're not thinking, should we be a democracy?
Speaker 1: Should be an authoritarian state. They're thinking, you know, what's
Speaker 1: the price of gas? They're thinking, oh, you know, I
Speaker 1: have a job, that kind of stuff. But I think
Speaker 1: if you think about it, yes, most Americans actually support
Speaker 1: democracy and are very happy that the United States is
Speaker 1: a republic and not a dictatorship. And actually hear you
Speaker 1: say that sentence, and I think that it's possible that
Speaker 1: as a result of sort of just facing this, that
Speaker 1: some Republicans could take a step back and realize, you
Speaker 1: know what, this isn't the path that we want to
Speaker 1: go down. I hope that happens. I don't know if
Speaker 1: it will, but I think that's what you would hope for.
Speaker 1: And I think that people are very quick to move
Speaker 1: on from things and to say, oh, well, the parties
Speaker 1: are sort of pretty much alike, and we really don't
Speaker 1: have that. We have a Republican party that has as
Speaker 1: apparently their dominant faction that is perfectly happy to leave
Speaker 1: democracy behind. And that's a scary thing. But it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily have to stay that way. But it's best to
Speaker 1: call it what it is. Jonathan Bernstein, There, and don't forget.
Speaker 1: Public hearings start this Thursday at eight p m. Eastern
Speaker 1: We're now choosing to end all conversations. Not with you, though,
Speaker 1: do get in touch. All thoughts, opinions and comments very welcome.
Speaker 1: I'm at vanniy Quinn on Twitter or email v Quinn
Speaker 1: at bloomberg dot net and don't forget. Bloomberg Opinion is
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