Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keane Jay Ley.
Speaker 1: We bring you insight from the best in economics, finance, investment,
Speaker 1: and international relations. Find Bloomberg Surveillance on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot Com, and of course on the Bloomberg Robert
Speaker 1: Caplan is the president of the Dallas FED. He is
Speaker 1: also a big Kansas City Chiefs fan. And we thank
Speaker 1: you for getting up and continuing on, even though that
Speaker 1: was a rough one. Well, it's always next year will
Speaker 1: be well. There's a debate on their way about what
Speaker 1: kind of inflation dangers are out there from additional government spending. UH.
Speaker 1: And if inflation does break out, you heard John call
Speaker 1: you the elephant in the room, you gotta deal with it.
Speaker 1: So what is your estimation if we get the kind
Speaker 1: of additional stimulus there talking about from Washington, what kind
Speaker 1: of inflation danger does that present? There's no question that
Speaker 1: if we're able to get people brought i'llly vaccinated. UH,
Speaker 1: if we're able to defeat the variants of the virus UH,
Speaker 1: and we have a reopening as we go through this year,
Speaker 1: that along with fiscal support, is going to mean that
Speaker 1: that we have strong GDP growth. We're gonna we're gonna
Speaker 1: make big improvements on unemployment. And it wouldn't be surprising
Speaker 1: to see the cyclical elements of inflation build. Uh. And
Speaker 1: and I think that you're gonna have some supply outages.
Speaker 1: We're already seen evidence of it. UH, semiconductors, metals, would products. Uh.
Speaker 1: You may see a little bit of even in in
Speaker 1: oil markets. But but I don't think those are going
Speaker 1: to be persistent. I don't think those are going to
Speaker 1: be long term. But I think there's no question the
Speaker 1: cyclical forces we will build and over time. The question
Speaker 1: for me is how strong are the accelerating forces of
Speaker 1: technology and technology enabled disruption, which have been muting inflationary
Speaker 1: pressures for some time. How do those two cyclical instructural
Speaker 1: forces play out over time? That's what I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: watching for the The The temporary jump been inflation or
Speaker 1: rise won't surprise me. The question for me will be
Speaker 1: how persistent is it? And I for me, I think
Speaker 1: the jury is out on that right now. Well, they're
Speaker 1: talking about a package that would be three times the
Speaker 1: size of what the CBO projects the output gap to be.
Speaker 1: Is that too much? So I'm gonna not surprised, won't
Speaker 1: surprise you. I'm gonna deliberately stay away from that topic. Uh.
Speaker 1: What right now at the Dallas FED, before any new
Speaker 1: package is enacted, we're already our forecast for GDP growth
Speaker 1: this year is approximately five percent. Uh. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: again loaded towards the latter parts of the year. And
Speaker 1: it assumes that we're able to vaccinate the the population
Speaker 1: broadly and uh and defeat these variants and get more
Speaker 1: mobility and engagement. I think what I'm hearing in my
Speaker 1: district is what we need first and foremost, which is
Speaker 1: being discussed as you know in these package debates. We
Speaker 1: need more money to help achieve these vaccinations. That's the
Speaker 1: key right now. Uh. And it's gonna take mobile units,
Speaker 1: it's gonna take more personnel. But if you can get
Speaker 1: people broadly vaccinated and get more mobility engagement, that's what
Speaker 1: will open the small businesses and get a lot of
Speaker 1: these a lot of these people that are out of
Speaker 1: work back to work, and more money to reopen schools.
Speaker 1: In person, schools I'm talking to need to be retrofitted.
Speaker 1: And we've got a historically high level of women who
Speaker 1: have left the workforce working mothers uh. And we need
Speaker 1: schools to be reopened. Uh. And and some investment also
Speaker 1: in childcare to get those women back into the workforce.
Speaker 1: That's critical. So those are some of the priorities I
Speaker 1: hear about. Obviously, extended unemployment benefits to bridge when we're
Speaker 1: until we're able to get people back to work. That's
Speaker 1: another priority I'm hearing. But those are some of the
Speaker 1: things I mentioned. I'll stay away from the debate in Washington.
Speaker 1: We've got three trillion authorized so far for COVID relief
Speaker 1: and another two trillion is what they're talking about. The
Speaker 1: argument has been from Federal Reserve officials that that's sustainable
Speaker 1: because interest rates are so low and as long as
Speaker 1: we keep the economy growing faster than the debt will
Speaker 1: be okay. Are you confident that that can happen, that
Speaker 1: the economy will grow faster. Uh. We're gonna get a
Speaker 1: strong boost to GDP growth in which I just talked about,
Speaker 1: and above trend growth excuse me, and most likely above
Speaker 1: trend in two. The issue over the horizon, UH is
Speaker 1: what are we doing to improve sustainable GDP growth? And
Speaker 1: what do I mean by that? Once we climb out
Speaker 1: of UH and recover from the whole we're in and
Speaker 1: recover from COVID. We're gonna get back to some real
Speaker 1: challenges we had pre COVID. Slowing workforce growth, aging of
Speaker 1: the population, and productivity growth has not been sufficient to
Speaker 1: off set that, and so what would help with that?
Speaker 1: Find ways to improve labor force growth Again, I talked
Speaker 1: about women reentering the workforce, but also early childhood literacy UH,
Speaker 1: improving secondary education, skills training, closing the skills gap, more
Speaker 1: widespread WiFi in the United States. I would love to
Speaker 1: see more investments in education and some infrastructure items, particularly WiFi,
Speaker 1: that will help create more sustainable growth. But that will
Speaker 1: be the challenge that we're gonna be talking about of
Speaker 1: the horizon, how to improve workforce growth and improve productivity
Speaker 1: and so will we grow faster than deck grows UH.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to find ways to improve GDP growth
Speaker 1: or otherwise the answer to that. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: the answer to that will be yes or no otherwise. UM.
Speaker 1: I know that you and all of your colleagues basically
Speaker 1: have said it's too early to talk about when you
Speaker 1: might taper QUE, but I'm wondering how you assess the
Speaker 1: danger of inflating a bubble in financial markets, which is
Speaker 1: what a lot of people on Wall Street are talking
Speaker 1: about now. Uh. And the hundred and twenty billion you're
Speaker 1: buying a month to keep markets functioning when markets are
Speaker 1: functioning just fine. Uh. Is there a point at which
Speaker 1: you think the danger of the markets bubble is bigger
Speaker 1: than the danger of pulling back just a little bit?
Speaker 1: So the way I make that trade off. While we're
Speaker 1: in the teeth of this pandemic, uh, and until it's
Speaker 1: clear we've weathered the pandemic, I think it's appropriate to
Speaker 1: be aggressive with our tools. However, once it's clear that
Speaker 1: we've that we've weathered this pandemic, and we're not out
Speaker 1: of the woods yet by a long shot. But once
Speaker 1: it's clear we've weathered the pandemic, and we put this
Speaker 1: pandemic and the effects of it in the rear view mirror,
Speaker 1: and we're making substantial progress toward our toward full employment
Speaker 1: and price stability, I think we'd be far healthier to
Speaker 1: be weaning off these extraordinary measures. Uh. So that's the issue. UH.
Speaker 1: And I think as soon as it's clear we've gotten
Speaker 1: past COVID, which I don't know when that will be.
Speaker 1: I think would be far healthier to be weaning off
Speaker 1: these extraordinary measures. Well, Uh, speaking of questions about bubbles
Speaker 1: in the markets, your initial career was as an investment banker,
Speaker 1: and now we've got this spack I p O mania
Speaker 1: going on? What do you think of that? Does that
Speaker 1: tell you something about where we are in financial markets
Speaker 1: or or this economic cycle. So I won't comment on
Speaker 1: any individual situation because there's a lot of factors that
Speaker 1: go to into any any one of them. But I
Speaker 1: would say broadly, when you're when you're keeping rates at
Speaker 1: zero and you've committed to keep rates at zero for
Speaker 1: an extended period, you're buying eighty billion of treasuries and
Speaker 1: forty billion of mortgage backed securities, we should expect that
Speaker 1: that's going to have a material impact on liquidity financial assets.
Speaker 1: And UH, that's why I've said we'd be wise, as
Speaker 1: as soon as we're able to uh to wean off
Speaker 1: these extraordinary measures, because these measures certainly have an impact
Speaker 1: on financial assets, and we'd be wise at the FED
Speaker 1: to acknowledge it, and and uh and be very sensitive
Speaker 1: to it. And and I'm I'm very concerned UH and
Speaker 1: and watching UH, you know, excess risk taking and excessis
Speaker 1: and balances, particularly in the non bank financial sector. The
Speaker 1: issue is, while we're fighting this pandemic, and until it's
Speaker 1: clear we're out of the woods, I think we've got
Speaker 1: to be aggressive. So UH. The challenge will be after
Speaker 1: we it's clear we've weathered it, we've got to we've
Speaker 1: got to move away from these extraordinary measures, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: and I think will be far healthier for it. I
Speaker 1: know the FED doesn't regulate equity trading except for your
Speaker 1: control over the margin rate, but what do you think
Speaker 1: of the sort of meme UH enthusiasm that's been going around.
Speaker 1: Does that worry you in terms of potential effect on
Speaker 1: the economy. So I, again, I won't comment on any
Speaker 1: individual situation. UH. I don't at the moment see UH
Speaker 1: systemic risk UH in these markets. But I do think
Speaker 1: you're seeing, and I'll speak broadly, not about the situation asked,
Speaker 1: but broadly, you're seeing the effects as you'd expect of
Speaker 1: of again UH eighty billion of treasuries and forty billion
Speaker 1: and Morgan back securities. I think it's necessary while we're
Speaker 1: fighting the pandemic, but again, as after we get beyond it,
Speaker 1: I think we need to wean off some of these
Speaker 1: extraordinary measures. And I'm watching non bank financial markets very
Speaker 1: carefully and what I would call excess risk taking. What
Speaker 1: I mean by that positioning that when um, when vol
Speaker 1: volatility is relatively low and credit spreads are tight and
Speaker 1: liquidity is good, look benign. But in hindsight, when you
Speaker 1: get a vault spike and credit spreads wide and volatility
Speaker 1: tends to drive up drop, you find people realize they're
Speaker 1: over risk and they've got a d risk and they've
Speaker 1: got to do it quickly. We saw some of that
Speaker 1: in March, by the way. Uh, And and I'm concerned
Speaker 1: that we we should watch that carefully because there's uh,
Speaker 1: there's always uh, that's always something we are we need
Speaker 1: to be aware of it. And I am watching that carefully.
Speaker 1: Before we let you go, I gotta ask you quickly.
Speaker 1: You're our oil guy, Um, how's the pandemic left the
Speaker 1: oil patch? And UM, I know that President Biden's energy
Speaker 1: plans are somewhat controversial in your area. Have you modeled
Speaker 1: the effect of moving away from fossil fuels and the
Speaker 1: impact on your district? Yeah, we have and and most
Speaker 1: participant in the industry have also modeled it. And so
Speaker 1: you've got an industry that's far more consolidated UH and
Speaker 1: you've seen a number of failures, bankruptcies, consolidations, UH, de leveragings.
Speaker 1: And I think that you've also seen an industry that
Speaker 1: is going to spend a lot more money on sequestration,
Speaker 1: carbon capture and reducing their their greenhouse gas emissions footprint.
Speaker 1: And also an industry that is committed now when they
Speaker 1: have excess cash flow, to returning more of it to
Speaker 1: shareholders and less of it to drilling. So because of that,
Speaker 1: we think that UH supply UM and production in the
Speaker 1: United States will be flat with this coming year. UH
Speaker 1: and even though prices are are moving up, UH, people
Speaker 1: may be surprised that supply does not move up like
Speaker 1: the way they would have expected to in the past.
Speaker 1: So the challenge in the United States is to keep
Speaker 1: a healthy oil and gas business understanding that a smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller percentage of energy consumption is going to go
Speaker 1: to fossil fuels and much more aggressive energy consumption to
Speaker 1: win solar other alternatives. And the challenge is going to
Speaker 1: be to make that transition Robert Catlan, Dallas Fed President,
Speaker 1: oil patch leader, thank you very much for joining us
Speaker 1: this morning here on Bloomberg. Troy sky Bridge Morning, Troy's
Speaker 1: about the spread, still is about the come on. It's
Speaker 1: it's really about just an overwhelming amount of monetary stimulus
Speaker 1: in the system, right and to your point, negative yields,
Speaker 1: real yields and sovereigns that keep getting more negative as
Speaker 1: inflation comes back and rates can't haven't caught up yet,
Speaker 1: and there's just the dearth of income. I mean, the
Speaker 1: only markets in the world that have still meaningful cash
Speaker 1: flow or in structure credit because they got hammered so
Speaker 1: back in March and they haven't come back fully, and
Speaker 1: the fundamentals still look fairly attractive. Um, but from our perspective,
Speaker 1: and not to back up Lisa and Tod by the way,
Speaker 1: thanks for calling me a steamed um. But you know,
Speaker 1: if you're gonna make a choice right now where you
Speaker 1: want to be in the capital structure, at least in
Speaker 1: the equity part of the capital structure, you still have
Speaker 1: meaningful upside that this waterfall of waterfall, waterfall of cash
Speaker 1: and fiscal STEAMUS can drive higher. Yes, you can get
Speaker 1: spreads to tighten more. But high yield hasn't been high
Speaker 1: yield for the last six months at least right it
Speaker 1: wasn't even that highving yield coming into the prices. So
Speaker 1: you know, from our perspective, you have massive money supply,
Speaker 1: massive fiscal stimulus that's just driving all risk as that's
Speaker 1: highed Troy. But dying to ask you this question then
Speaker 1: the two model the last what three weeks, what have
Speaker 1: you learned as an observer of hedge funds about game
Speaker 1: stop and all that, Robin hood and all that and
Speaker 1: the long short structure of the hedge fund world. Is
Speaker 1: it forever changed? You know, forever is a strong term
Speaker 1: tom um. You know much of the you know, obviously
Speaker 1: game stop in m C and stocks like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've behaved very similar to what happened in the late nineties,
Speaker 1: but just on steroids, like everything else is on steroids
Speaker 1: in this post pandemic period. And so what long SHORECTY
Speaker 1: managers are doing across the board is they're moving up
Speaker 1: in market cap in terms of the shorts that they
Speaker 1: have on. They're getting even more diversified. Typically their short
Speaker 1: positions are a quarter to a third dat of their
Speaker 1: lungs just because of the asymmetry in your face. Also,
Speaker 1: when in doubt, if you're concerned about systematic risk or beta,
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with using STP futures or an et
Speaker 1: F to take that risk out. But most importantly avoid
Speaker 1: crowded shorts. That's kind of shorting one on one U.
Speaker 1: I understand the you know, profit motive, but you should
Speaker 1: never be in shorts with more than short interests outstanding.
Speaker 1: So that's some of the changes that are taking place
Speaker 1: right now. But try to build on what Tom was
Speaker 1: talking about. There's sort of a larger question here. Can
Speaker 1: hedge funds get really outsized value? Can they really find
Speaker 1: alpha in a world dominated still so much by central
Speaker 1: bank liquidity, a world that has proven inauspicious I should
Speaker 1: say for hedge fund performance over the past decade, well,
Speaker 1: inauspicious is a strong term. I mean, the hedge fund
Speaker 1: industry has a holded very well last year, particularly particularly
Speaker 1: protecting capital in March. It's always been challenging to make
Speaker 1: money on the short side um most investors expect to
Speaker 1: lose money through shorts over time, but one of the
Speaker 1: key to have in short positions is to stay in
Speaker 1: the game right to mitigate downside in months like March
Speaker 1: or Q four of two thousand eighteen, or during the
Speaker 1: Eurozone crisis, so you can protect the downside and then
Speaker 1: go on off ends. Um that being said, and we
Speaker 1: talked about this last time I was on, the industry
Speaker 1: is certainly more net long than they've been in quite
Speaker 1: some time, because again of that cocktail of you know,
Speaker 1: fairly good virus news, powerful money supply never ending, the
Speaker 1: fiscal stimulus that many would argue is too large the
Speaker 1: stage of the game. Um So yeah, alpha on the
Speaker 1: short side has always been hard, but fortunately there's been
Speaker 1: both the past year and so far this year there's
Speaker 1: been more alpha on the longside and obviously negative alph
Speaker 1: on the short side. Final question for LSA drum roll,
Speaker 1: if we got this is this is four LASA. This
Speaker 1: is dedicated that do we have an asset shortage? Do
Speaker 1: we need to wish you more Detroit. You know that's
Speaker 1: a great question, John, because you know, when people look
Speaker 1: at deficits, what they always look at is the liability
Speaker 1: side of the balance sheet, and they don't look at
Speaker 1: the assets side of the balance sheet. So you know,
Speaker 1: as the FED reflates right, and the FED also um
Speaker 1: prints more money um in the government issues more debt.
Speaker 1: What's happened particularly past year is the value of assets
Speaker 1: has gone up far more than the value of debt.
Speaker 1: So you could argue that one way to cure that
Speaker 1: is to print more debt. However, you know the best
Speaker 1: argument is to have targeted fiscal stimulus that goes after
Speaker 1: those that are in the most pain and doesn't continue
Speaker 1: to create mini bubble lefter mini bubble after mini bubble
Speaker 1: that will ultimately lead to, you know, quite a hangover
Speaker 1: when the feed is forced to tie you. Now, we
Speaker 1: don't expect that to anytime soon. It's toltly not this year,
Speaker 1: but at some point, you know, the think of a hangover,
Speaker 1: there's a hangover. After late nineties we had a housing bubble,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, oh five till six um, there
Speaker 1: was a mini oil bubble. In a way, these things
Speaker 1: always end in tears, and so for the time being,
Speaker 1: you want to monetize that. But you have to have
Speaker 1: an eye on money, supply growth and fed policy. Troy
Speaker 1: right to catch up, Seth. I want to see you guys.
Speaker 1: Look always applies. Thank you. Set The Bloomberg Intelligence Michael
Speaker 1: mcclog has done the best work on Bitcoin. He's looked
Speaker 1: at the dynamics of it, he's looked at the modern
Speaker 1: market features of it. He's clearly been way out front
Speaker 1: and the vector moving higher from the lower left to
Speaker 1: the upper right. As a skeptic Dennis Gartman would say.
Speaker 1: Michael mcgloane joins us this morning with Bloomberg Intelligence. Michael,
Speaker 1: I want to go back to first principles. In a
Speaker 1: Bloomberg article today on coal and western China. There are
Speaker 1: things called miners from Butch Cassidy. Who are those guys there?
Speaker 1: It's a global decenturized network following any place they can
Speaker 1: find cheap energy. From a strategy standpoint, the bottom line
Speaker 1: is there's nine coins that can be mined today. That's
Speaker 1: the max come. They'll drop to four fifty. So I
Speaker 1: analyze it as the miners don't matter and manners to them.
Speaker 1: But from a strategist predicting price, this is a set
Speaker 1: supply schedule. It's declining in terms of image, so only
Speaker 1: thing that matters is demand. The key thing is it's
Speaker 1: only day. Come to page one of every economics textbook,
Speaker 1: including the ones Janet Yelling studied, is about scarcity. It
Speaker 1: is a manufacturer the critics would say contrived scarcity. That
Speaker 1: always means nefarious elements come in to force the scarcity away.
Speaker 1: Who are those nefarious elements that could take the scarcity
Speaker 1: built into the price increase. Well, there's eight thousand want
Speaker 1: to be cryptocurrency bitcoins out there. There's eight thousand all coins.
Speaker 1: So they've tried. There's been many forks, everyone has worked,
Speaker 1: but they have gotten nowhere near the robustness and adoption
Speaker 1: that bitcoin has. So it's been through many deaths and
Speaker 1: yet it's keeps surviving. So that's the key thing about it.
Speaker 1: It's been killed many times, it keeps coming back. It's
Speaker 1: gained that global robust nous. It's the the go to
Speaker 1: reserve now digital asset. I will say, Tom, I just
Speaker 1: have this image of Butch Cassidy behind a computer, plugging
Speaker 1: in algorithms and used remember and it's it's it's really
Speaker 1: quite an image, I will say, Mike. There is also
Speaker 1: a question about just how much institutional adoption there is.
Speaker 1: This is raised of course by Tesla yesterday coming out
Speaker 1: and saying that they will soon accept a bitcoin as
Speaker 1: a form of payment. Can you give us a sense
Speaker 1: of truly how widespread this idea is in major corporations.
Speaker 1: Whether you actually expect to hear some announcements in the
Speaker 1: near future from other major companies about doing the same. Well,
Speaker 1: initially it was a wave, now a tsunami, and that's
Speaker 1: just getting started. Remember we're talking about a US corporations
Speaker 1: based in the reserve currency of the Dollar's think of
Speaker 1: the rest of the world that doesn't have that reserve currency,
Speaker 1: they have maybe much greater incentive to alligate some of
Speaker 1: their treasuries to bitcoined. So to me, this is just
Speaker 1: part of what's happening. It's being adopted on a global scale,
Speaker 1: and it's part of the reason I think, remember when
Speaker 1: you at the thirty thousand that health support, I think
Speaker 1: this reason forty is going to hold support. Now it's
Speaker 1: just going to continue. Something has to go wrong, which
Speaker 1: I knocked myself around every day for I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is right now, but it's on that it's
Speaker 1: in that unique phase where sometimes it technicals don't matter
Speaker 1: as much as what's the next support should it hold
Speaker 1: and just focus on your next resistance, which we all
Speaker 1: kind of know is around fifty number. The more institutional
Speaker 1: buying we get, do you think it makes it more
Speaker 1: complex more difficult for the government to step in and
Speaker 1: do something. Oh yes, they're going to continue regulate. Remember
Speaker 1: we just had a theory and futures launched yesterday. We
Speaker 1: have bitcoin futures. So bigcoin's under the purview of a government.
Speaker 1: When you felt your tax, that's not government, that's the
Speaker 1: establishment of a market. John's talking about government regulation of
Speaker 1: a non financial, non coin. When does that happen? What
Speaker 1: might happen to something like it has happened to gold.
Speaker 1: But the key thing about bitcoin is no one's else,
Speaker 1: no one's project, no one's liability. Like ripple x RP
Speaker 1: was someone's project and liability, and the government's cracked on
Speaker 1: in them. Here's the key thing about that. The government,
Speaker 1: the New York d a crackdown and tether. Tether's the
Speaker 1: number one stable coin that was an April two nineteen.
Speaker 1: Market cap then was about three billions, So they've been
Speaker 1: under that purview since two thousand nineteen. Now the market
Speaker 1: caps around twenty nine billion. So do you think they've
Speaker 1: done anything a legal sense? It's pure organic, organic demand.
Speaker 1: What I see is the world wants a digital digital
Speaker 1: currencies and digital dollar, and it's getting it. And the
Speaker 1: government's getting regulations getting in there. My final question, how
Speaker 1: close do you think we are to a very well
Speaker 1: known American company that is not run by Ela Musk
Speaker 1: doing exactly what Ela must announced yesterday. It's inevitable. I
Speaker 1: don't see what's gonna stop it. Wow, Mike McLean. Great
Speaker 1: to catch up, sir, Thank you. John Gets from Bloomberg Intelligence.
Speaker 1: This is an important interview. Julie Norman is at the
Speaker 1: University of College in London. She is a political science professor,
Speaker 1: but is truly one of the world's experts on political
Speaker 1: activism and social movement. A different take on what we
Speaker 1: will witness in Washington today, Julie Norman, if you look
Speaker 1: at the Republicans, the Grand Old Party, the path from
Speaker 1: Lincoln to where they are right now, there seemed to
Speaker 1: be partitions, and one of them is militia and some
Speaker 1: of the violence we saw January six as well, tell
Speaker 1: us about the social movement that defines a more assertive,
Speaker 1: a more aggressive Republican Party. Well time, I think there
Speaker 1: are different movements going on right now in the Republican
Speaker 1: Party and that's pretty clear and across the left as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, part of what we're seeing in the Republican
Speaker 1: Party is people who have very legitimate grievances who saw
Speaker 1: Trump at somewhat of a channel for that and are
Speaker 1: just kind of getting into more of this populous way
Speaker 1: of thinking. But I think that's a longside, much more
Speaker 1: long standing groups like some of the far right extremist
Speaker 1: groups that we saw at the Capitol, those groups have
Speaker 1: been around for a long time. They will continue to
Speaker 1: be around in the future. Um. They really took advantage
Speaker 1: of that historical moment and have been pretty savvy about
Speaker 1: recruiting some other individuals into their into their ranks these days.
Speaker 1: What can be the institutional response to the reality of guns, weapons, rifles,
Speaker 1: whatever in a legislative branch, whether republic Republican, or Democrat,
Speaker 1: What is the expected or best outcome for the institution? Well, Tom,
Speaker 1: I think our institutions and this you know this is
Speaker 1: true for Democrats and Republicans, that most individuals, most lawmakers,
Speaker 1: and even most American citizens have pretty strong respect to
Speaker 1: our institutions. They want to see them function well. They
Speaker 1: don't want to see them the coming new places of
Speaker 1: brawls and violences, even maybe as they were in our
Speaker 1: in the past in our history, and so I think
Speaker 1: it's just makes sense that certain safeguards are put in
Speaker 1: place to make sure that happens. When that said, I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone in Washington wants to see the more
Speaker 1: militarized state that it's in right now continue forever. Those
Speaker 1: precautions were put in place, obviously for a reason following
Speaker 1: January six, but they will be you know, it will
Speaker 1: go back to some kind of normal in time. But
Speaker 1: try with more security measures than we had in the past,
Speaker 1: did you. In addition to the highly apartisan discussions around
Speaker 1: impeachment around the stimulus package, there has been an international
Speaker 1: effort to regain ties with some of the allies of
Speaker 1: the United States. One interesting note is that President Biden
Speaker 1: has not yet had a conversation with j and Ping,
Speaker 1: even though he has had a conversation with Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: of Russia. What do you make of that, Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's a couple of different things, Lisa. For first
Speaker 1: and foremost that with Biden, we can expect him to
Speaker 1: really continue some of the policies of Trump administration in
Speaker 1: terms of being taught on China. Biden is looking to
Speaker 1: really change that relationship that much, even though his approach
Speaker 1: might be a little bit different. I think with that
Speaker 1: phone call, Biden is also trying to show that the U.
Speaker 1: S School stand up to Russia as well, in a
Speaker 1: way that was different from the Trump administration. But there
Speaker 1: were just certain UH situations of urgency there that required
Speaker 1: that call and that engagement. The you start treating for
Speaker 1: one that would have expired the past week if they
Speaker 1: hadn't had that call and that kind of engagement, as
Speaker 1: well as trying to put some pressure on Russia around
Speaker 1: Novoldi and the demonstrations around his detention. Judy always wantedful
Speaker 1: to catch up with your Thanks for him with us,
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