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Speaker 3: This morning, The New York Times supporting on concerns within
Speaker 3: the White House about another escalation with Iron that would
Speaker 3: put golf use US and golf allies at risk.
Speaker 5: Excuse me, that's right.
Speaker 2: The Times is reporting that President Trump could be holding
Speaker 2: off on a larger strike in part due to a
Speaker 2: low supply of anti missile defenses. Now, US Ambassador the
Speaker 2: US when Mike Walls is on NBC right now or
Speaker 2: will be soon. It looks like this was a pre
Speaker 2: recorded interview pushing back against that report, saying the US
Speaker 2: has all the equipment it needs, so to help us
Speaker 2: break this down, We've got Beca Wasser, she's Bloomberg Economics
Speaker 2: Defense lead, and Chris Kennedy he is the lead for
Speaker 2: Economic statecraft. Butck, I want to start with you because
Speaker 2: I know you've been covering the stockpile and its depletion
Speaker 2: and where we are with these numbers. How real is
Speaker 2: the concern over the defensive missile supply for the US.
Speaker 2: It seems interesting if these reports are accurate, that the
Speaker 2: US is now prescribing policy based on the integrity of
Speaker 2: the supply.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I think we're at a really interesting inflection point where
Speaker 6: right now, in the course of the conflict, there is
Speaker 6: a huge strain on US air defense interceptors. That's not
Speaker 6: to say that the US does not have any left,
Speaker 6: but rather that there's a clear strain on the existing stockpiles,
Speaker 6: which are running low after this extended conflict with Iran,
Speaker 6: in part because of the sheer need not only from
Speaker 6: the United States, which is trying to protect bases and
Speaker 6: troops and some US allies in the region, but also
Speaker 6: the allies themselves, who have depleted most of their air
Speaker 6: defense stockpiles and have been asking the United States for more.
Speaker 6: So at the end of the day, it's a pretty
Speaker 6: stark place to be in, but it's not necessarily the
Speaker 6: only thing that is dictating US military policy. We've seen
Speaker 6: this song and danced before where President Trump has threatened
Speaker 6: high escalation only to step back at the last moment
Speaker 6: to leave some room for diplomacy. We've also seen President
Speaker 6: Trump enter into faints in the past where he said
Speaker 6: that there will be no strikes, only to go ahead
Speaker 6: with that large operation. However, from my experience, if I'm
Speaker 6: looking at things right now, the US does not have
Speaker 6: sufficient defenses to weather the blowback that would likely come
Speaker 6: from Iran if the US were to rapidly and extremely
Speaker 6: ramp up this conflict.
Speaker 3: You get Chris Kennedy here in just a minute of Becca,
Speaker 3: one more question to you as I look at your
Speaker 3: most recent piece for Bloomberg on all of this, you write,
Speaker 3: the US lacks the munition's depth to bomb around in perpetuity.
Speaker 3: The bigger risk is the US may run low of
Speaker 3: the right kinds of missiles. Help me understand what we
Speaker 3: know and what we don't know. My understanding is the
Speaker 3: size and scale of these arsenals is classified.
Speaker 5: We have some sense of what the US has.
Speaker 3: How blind are we when it comes to kind of
Speaker 3: assessing what the US has at its disposal, We're.
Speaker 6: Pretty blind, but I think there are a few different
Speaker 6: rules of them that we can always rely on. We've seen,
Speaker 6: at least in the initial fighting during Operation Epic Fury,
Speaker 6: US officials said that there were over thirteen thousand munitions
Speaker 6: that were expended, and most of those were some of
Speaker 6: these higher and long range missiles that are in demand
Speaker 6: all over the globe. And so the US is likely
Speaker 6: having wound down some of its stockpiles for those critical munitions,
Speaker 6: which means that it is either likely going to need
Speaker 6: to pull some of those missiles from other regions like
Speaker 6: the Indo Pacific, which could leave a potential gap for
Speaker 6: others to exploit, or try and find ways to bolster
Speaker 6: the production of munitions, which the US is doing. But
Speaker 6: that's a slow moving effort. We are talking months, if
Speaker 6: not years, to try and just produce a few more
Speaker 6: of some of those most advanced missiles and munitions.
Speaker 2: Wow, Chris Kennedy, thank you for hanging in there. We
Speaker 2: do want to ask you more about the economic impact
Speaker 2: of all this. Because oil hit one hundred dollars a
Speaker 2: barrel for the first time in weeks. We now have
Speaker 2: concerns not only about what's going on in the Strait
Speaker 2: as it seems to drag on, and just the cost
Speaker 2: of doing business with this level of instability. But now
Speaker 2: you have these threats from the hou this which is
Speaker 2: compromising exports not only in the Red Sea but possibly
Speaker 2: production within Saudi Arabia. You know they can and have
Speaker 2: before hit refineries and facilities there. What is your take
Speaker 2: on that second front and if we're going to see that,
Speaker 2: if we have seen that start to pry in the markets.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so it's definitely a challenge. So the Red Sea
Speaker 7: has now been the subject of several different attacks by
Speaker 7: the huthis looking at I just looked at the recent
Speaker 7: tanker traffic through the Red Sea and it is dropping
Speaker 7: over the past few days. Of course, many ships might
Speaker 7: be traveling without their transponders on, so it'll take a
Speaker 7: few days to really see what the impact has been
Speaker 7: on traffic. But we are getting anecdotal reports about ships
Speaker 7: turning around having to traverse the Cape of Good Hope
Speaker 7: at the southern tip of Africa, and that just adds
Speaker 7: time to get oil to market. On top of the
Speaker 7: Middle East conflict, we've also seen Ukraine ramp up its
Speaker 7: attacks on Russian oil export infrastructure tankers, and so that's
Speaker 7: another bit of pressure that's been growing in the background
Speaker 7: as this conflict has continued.
Speaker 3: Becka, you gained out sort of what the president his
Speaker 3: team might be thinking about when it comes to the
Speaker 3: future of this war, and you came up with three options.
Speaker 3: The US could continue Bomberan, could intensify the blockade and
Speaker 3: guidance of ships, or could launch an operation to forcibly
Speaker 3: reopen the Strait of Hormuz. I wonder if you could
Speaker 3: kind of put those in order of likelihood as you
Speaker 3: see it, maybe order of difficulty as well, and where
Speaker 3: you think the administration might might be headed right down.
Speaker 6: I think the administration is firmly in that first bucket.
Speaker 6: They're looking at ways to potentially intensify the air war,
Speaker 6: to launch additional air and missile strikes against Iran, because
Speaker 6: that's the playbook that the president has relied upon. But
Speaker 6: at this juncture in the conflict, the president is starting
Speaker 6: to feel pressure where he probably needs to do something different,
Speaker 6: in part because some of those economic pressures that Chris
Speaker 6: has mentioned. So if that's the case, there's you know,
Speaker 6: the two additional options. One would be to try and
Speaker 6: enforce the blockade even further, but really with that try
Speaker 6: and make it so that the US can get more
Speaker 6: ships through the Strait of Hormuz, which is becoming even
Speaker 6: more of a choke point than it already was. That
Speaker 6: means that the US military would need to shift to
Speaker 6: a direct escort mission, which is something that is incredibly
Speaker 6: resource intensive and may not necessarily be on the table
Speaker 6: at this point in time. And then the last one
Speaker 6: is a operation to open the street, and that requires
Speaker 6: putting boots on the ground in Irani and soil. It
Speaker 6: is high risk, it is resource intensive, and once that happens,
Speaker 6: the escalation in this conflict is likely to go sky high.
Speaker 6: And that's where the conversation that we've been having about
Speaker 6: air defense interceptors is so important, because those troops would
Speaker 6: need to be protected as best possible, as well as
Speaker 6: other US forces and allies across the region. In addition
Speaker 6: to that, the US could also potentially look at entering
Speaker 6: the freight in the Red Sea that would further overstretch
Speaker 6: US forces and assets, particularly some of those air defense
Speaker 6: missiles too.
Speaker 2: Chris, we also have another front that has really impact
Speaker 2: the price of oil and that's the war in Ukraine
Speaker 2: and the conflict in Russia, and how Ukrainian drones are
Speaker 2: penetrating Russian defenses and getting to hit these manufacturing and
Speaker 2: refining facilities. But now also you have reports potentially of
Speaker 2: Ukraine going after an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea.
Speaker 2: Everything is connected when you look at global economies, but
Speaker 2: also when you look at politics and as the economic
Speaker 2: state craft lead, those seem to puld in nicely together.
Speaker 2: What is your take on how these two conflicts are
Speaker 2: antagonizing each other and working together to kind of make it,
Speaker 2: at a hard time for oil prices kind of even
Speaker 2: more difficult. Where do you see this going?
Speaker 7: Well, yeah, as you mentioned, the Iritims did not respond
Speaker 7: well to Ukraine's targeting of this particular ship, which I
Speaker 7: believe Ukraine said that it was involved in the transfer
Speaker 7: of weapons between the two countries, Russia and Arad. I
Speaker 7: do think what we're seeing is this pressure building on
Speaker 7: the global energy system. So, just stepping back, the US
Speaker 7: published weekly updates on energy inventories oil inventories. We're probably
Speaker 7: going to see a sixteenth straight week of oil stocks
Speaker 7: falling in the United States. We had a little bit
Speaker 7: of respite from this MoU period, we saw commercial stockpiles
Speaker 7: rise a little bit, but these releases from the Strategic
Speaker 7: Petroleum Reserve have continued unabated, so we're estimating that those
Speaker 7: releases will essentially run out by October. It's possible the
Speaker 7: US could offer another release, but these these stocks are limited,
Speaker 7: and so the additional pressure. You know, Russia has banned
Speaker 7: the export of diesel because of these attacks. Russia historically
Speaker 7: has provided about ten percent of the global exported diesel supply,
Speaker 7: so that's a pretty significant hit. It hits the real
Speaker 7: economy everywhere. You know. Another unknown is how long China
Speaker 7: can continue to effectively pause many of its oil imports.
Speaker 7: And we don't really know what's going on in China,
Speaker 7: but they've certainly helped to act as a buffer for
Speaker 7: the global energy system over the the past five months
Speaker 7: by essentially dropping off forty percent of their imports from
Speaker 7: the world. So, you know, there are all of these
Speaker 7: different variables. Some are uncertain, many of them are outside
Speaker 7: of the control of this president certainly, and they're going
Speaker 7: to be adding pressure to his decision making.
Speaker 3: Becas I'm listening to Chris, I'm still stuck on something.
Speaker 3: You said, which is about the US kind of engaging
Speaker 3: with the Houthis, And my mind wanders back to April
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty five when we saw the US do that,
Speaker 3: and there was that moment when I think a super
Speaker 3: hornet fell off the USS Harry Truman into the ocean.
Speaker 3: It was a difficult fight that they were waging there,
Speaker 3: and I wonder sort of what that pretends about the
Speaker 3: US kind of re engaging in that way.
Speaker 5: How difficult would be for the.
Speaker 3: US to fight the Houthis who've kind of reared their
Speaker 3: heads here several months into this conflict.
Speaker 6: That's a great question. Let's think about what happened last time.
Speaker 6: You mentioned that there were aircraft that rolled off the
Speaker 6: deck of a carrier and were lost at sea, but
Speaker 6: there was also over one thousand US air strikes on
Speaker 6: Yemen at that time, which eight into munition stockpiles. Additionally,
Speaker 6: US air and naval forces shot down over four hundred
Speaker 6: and eighty Hoothy drones and that left stockpiles pretty low
Speaker 6: for some of the important air defense interceptors as well,
Speaker 6: with US Navy officials saying that they cost in the
Speaker 6: billions of dollars and that stockpiles were nearly depleted, and
Speaker 6: that was just from some of these one off attacks
Speaker 6: from the Houthis during that time period. Right now, if
Speaker 6: the US were to enter the Fright, it would be
Speaker 6: like that once again. But that also means that that's
Speaker 6: occurring at the same time that the US is prosecuting
Speaker 6: a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and using munitions
Speaker 6: and equipment and readiness to conduct that, as well as
Speaker 6: continuing its air campaign against Iran, which has been paused
Speaker 6: for two nights but could pick up at any moment,
Speaker 6: which again is depleting critical readiness, using u US WURSS
Speaker 6: and using up some of the most important munitions that
Speaker 6: the US might need in a potential future conflict.
Speaker 2: And Chris is not just complicating supplies of munitions and oil,
Speaker 2: but other commodities as well. I see you retweeting from
Speaker 2: of the show Steven Schasinski, who we had on yesterday
Speaker 2: him talking about LNG. He said, a global fight for
Speaker 2: LNG is brewing and Europe is losing. Europe strategy of
Speaker 2: delaying LERG purchases until her those reopens is backfiring, threatening
Speaker 2: efforts to refill storage for winter. What is going on
Speaker 2: there and how critical.
Speaker 7: Is this This is a really serious issue for Europe.
Speaker 7: Of course, the US is in pretty good shape for
Speaker 7: LNG and if we could export more, but we're really
Speaker 7: capped out at how much we can export right now
Speaker 7: and help to backfill for Europe and other economies. I
Speaker 7: think the challenge right now is that Europe is competing
Speaker 7: with Asian economies that are also trying to ensure that
Speaker 7: they have sufficient supplies of LNG, which goes into everything
Speaker 7: from power generation to petrochemical manufacturing. So Europe is in
Speaker 7: a position where they need to start, you know, resupplying
Speaker 7: their stocks before the winter. They can't count on Russia
Speaker 7: of course, and there's limited amounts of export from the US.
Speaker 7: So you know, if this conflict doesn't resolve, if we
Speaker 7: don't get these LNG uh, you know supplies coming out
Speaker 7: of the golf again, that's gonna it's going to cause
Speaker 7: some pain in Europe. And I'll also note that we
Speaker 7: saw early in the war that are on targeted some
Speaker 7: of Qatar's LNG facilities, and these are very sensitive facilities
Speaker 7: and if they are subject to significant you know kinetic attacks, uh,
Speaker 7: that could cause you know, long periods of them being offline.
Speaker 7: So that's I think one of the bigger risks for
Speaker 7: the escalation.
Speaker 5: At this point, there's been to a couple of seconds.
Speaker 2: But before we go is it we can't export more
Speaker 2: because we lack the trains or the facilities to convert
Speaker 2: it into a movable quantity or is it shipping or
Speaker 2: where is the where's the rub there?
Speaker 7: It sees export facility, these lergy export terminals. So between
Speaker 7: now in the next five years, we're expecting to be
Speaker 7: able to double our export capacity. But right now the
Speaker 7: US is drowning in l enge and we just can't
Speaker 7: get it out fast enough.
Speaker 5: That's really interesting to my favorite people, Bloomberg Economies. That's
Speaker 5: Chris Kennedy. Becka Watser is joining us this morning. Becka
Speaker 5: the defense lead at Bloomberg Economics, Chris the economic.
Speaker 3: State craft lead. And whenever I'm in the DC Bureau
Speaker 3: always fund to wander over to their.
Speaker 5: Massively smart department. Thank you, guys, absolutely, thanks again.
Speaker 3: Stay with us for more on Bloomberg this weekend right
Speaker 3: after this. Russia famously known for its vodka and its
Speaker 3: culture of extreme intoxication. But just as vodka is central
Speaker 3: to the lives of many Russians and it is also
Speaker 3: central to understanding Russian history and politics.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 2: In the book Vodka, Politics, Alcohol, Autocracy, and the Secret
Speaker 2: History of the Russian State, author Mark Lawrence Strod explores
Speaker 2: original documents and archival evidence to analyze how vodka is
Speaker 2: hardwired into the Russian political system. And markjoins us now
Speaker 2: live on set. You are also an assistant professor of
Speaker 2: political science at Villanova. We're so happy to have your
Speaker 2: I stumbled across this book a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 2: It's absolutely fascinating, But you preface it by saying, this
Speaker 2: is not about an ugly stereotype. This is not and
Speaker 2: that's almost led to why people don't dive into how
Speaker 2: much of an issue this has been for decades, from
Speaker 2: Czars to Medvedev, people have tried to tackle this problem
Speaker 2: and come up short, what's going on here?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 8: And thank you for having me a fascinating topic and
Speaker 8: obviously something that's observed a lot of my time since
Speaker 8: I was a student back in Russia in the nineteen
Speaker 8: nineties when the economy was in the tank, and you know,
Speaker 8: and just living there for a long time, you're just like, Okay, well,
Speaker 8: there's something about this stereotype, and we've all heard the stereotype.
Speaker 8: But then you're sort of living in You're like, Okay,
Speaker 8: there's a lot of alcohol going on right now, a
Speaker 8: lot of vodka, and so I kind of wanted to
Speaker 8: hammer at why, you know, rather than just sort of
Speaker 8: avoiding the unpleasant this diving into it, you know, and
Speaker 8: a lot of the times it's just prefaced as some
Speaker 8: sort of cultural stereotype.
Speaker 9: Oh, Russians just love it and they don't write.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's not like they're just like sipping a
Speaker 8: vodka and then going, oh, what a greater roment, No,
Speaker 8: having a hard time choking down, just like anybody else.
Speaker 8: But actually, I think it has to be more of
Speaker 8: a legacy of political and economic decisions that are at
Speaker 8: the heart of autocratic statecraft, kind of putting the interests,
Speaker 8: the financial interests of the autocratic state ahead of the
Speaker 8: well being of their own people for generations upon generations,
Speaker 8: through the Czars, through the Soviets, and unfortunately straight on
Speaker 8: through their present day.
Speaker 5: Explain that a bit more so. I mean, the level of.
Speaker 3: Consumption is huge, like fifteen to sixteen leaders per person
Speaker 3: per year I think is what I read. So people
Speaker 3: are consuming an incredible quantity of hard alcohol. You know,
Speaker 3: in another country that might be seen as kind of
Speaker 3: a public health issue or concern there, it's not.
Speaker 8: It was so during a peeriod of time between you know,
Speaker 8: Putin's first two terms and then there was that interregnant
Speaker 8: where Dmitri Medvedev swap positions for four years.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Well, one of his big initiatives was an anti
Speaker 8: alcohol campaign, because he acknowledged that this is this is horrible.
Speaker 8: This is decimating our society, it's decimating our ability to
Speaker 8: field troops, it's decimating our tax base, and and all
Speaker 8: those sorts of things. So they tried to clamp down
Speaker 8: beginning about two thousand and nine on alcohol consumption, using
Speaker 8: what I would say are fairly progressive policies informed by
Speaker 8: public decision, by public health professionals around the globe, and
Speaker 8: you know, very incremental approaches, very well thought out. Little
Speaker 8: did he know, though, perhaps that on the other side,
Speaker 8: was that his presidents of Vladimir Putin had actually been
Speaker 8: buying up and taking control of, personally a very large
Speaker 8: percent of the Russian vodka market. And so a lot
Speaker 8: of those public health initiatives ended up focusing in on
Speaker 8: putting higher taxes, not on vodka, but on beer, which
Speaker 8: is lower alcohol, probably better than passic loka. So it's
Speaker 8: just completely upside down. So even the public health initiatives
Speaker 8: were pushing more vodka on people, which is just bizarro land.
Speaker 8: It's topsy turvy.
Speaker 2: But that almost kind of fits with what you talk
Speaker 2: about in the book, and that's throughout its history kind
Speaker 2: of due to the way this was set up with
Speaker 2: grain production and with the admin of the tavern, vodka
Speaker 2: was used as a tool of the state. It was
Speaker 2: a big financial boom. Can you explain how that works?
Speaker 2: I mean so much so that Tolstoy was a teetotaler,
Speaker 2: which I didn't know, and the Bolsheviks were vehemently anti
Speaker 2: booze because it was such a weapon of the state.
Speaker 8: Right, And this is something actually is not just it started,
Speaker 8: you know, my interest started in Russia, but kind of
Speaker 8: expanded out globally in subsequent research. But it's fascinating how
Speaker 8: many people throughout history, including American history, are noteworthy prohibitionists.
Speaker 8: So Tolstoy Lenin in the United States, Frederick Douglass, I
Speaker 8: would say, Abraham Lincoln, you could say Thomas Jefferson was
Speaker 8: America's first prohibitionist. So it's it's it's fascinating because ultimately
Speaker 8: that the key to understanding sort of that anti alcoholism uh.
Speaker 8: And you definitely saw it in the the autocratic regimes
Speaker 8: in Russia was that this is how the and it
Speaker 8: didn't take like a rabid Marxist to point this out.
Speaker 8: This is how the rich got richer and the poor
Speaker 8: got poor.
Speaker 9: And so it was very easy.
Speaker 3: Trade for it.
Speaker 2: Right, you had to pay for vodkan hard currency, right.
Speaker 5: You had to uh.
Speaker 8: And it was it was strictly forbidden to make your
Speaker 8: own outside. This was part of the czar's monopoly on
Speaker 8: the tavern trade. And so the the tavern keepers were
Speaker 8: known as selavalniki, which means the kissers.
Speaker 9: They kissed across to vow that.
Speaker 8: They would not dilute, that they would not interrupt the
Speaker 8: revenues of the state that we're going to the czar,
Speaker 8: and so that they were sort of the main interference
Speaker 8: points or point of interface i should say, between sort
Speaker 8: of Russian society and the Russian government. And that's you know,
Speaker 8: essentially how you paid money into this this whole system.
Speaker 3: So you wrote this book before Russia's first incursion into Ukraine,
Speaker 3: and some years have passed since then, and here we
Speaker 3: are in the middle of this war, and I'm curious
Speaker 3: through the person through it you've you've written this books
Speaker 3: of how you're looking at this current conflict and the
Speaker 3: difficulty that we've seen reported that Russia has kind of
Speaker 3: fielding its army to continue to fight this war.
Speaker 5: Through this lens, what can we.
Speaker 3: Glean or what can we learn just about the kind
Speaker 3: of state of the conflict itself and the way that
Speaker 3: they're able to recruit people to fight.
Speaker 8: In it, right, And it's been interesting to kind of
Speaker 8: sort of watch it in through that particular lens. In
Speaker 8: the early years of the conflict, the Donbas War in particularly,
Speaker 8: you had the Euromaidan Revolution in Kiev, and then you know,
Speaker 8: obviously the annexation of Crimea and the sort of this
Speaker 8: low scale war in the.
Speaker 9: Dawn Bass region.
Speaker 8: It was a sort of a study in contrast because
Speaker 8: the Ukrainian side, which also has afflictions with alcohol and
Speaker 8: sort of the vodkas, part of that that historical trajectory,
Speaker 8: but also has a lot more sort of European cultural influences,
Speaker 8: historical influences from the Austro Hungarian Empire in the areas around.
Speaker 5: Levive and so on.
Speaker 8: Uh, the protests that were going on there were very orderly.
Speaker 8: In fact, they had, you know, the areas that were
Speaker 8: self policing in terms of making sure that we have sobriety,
Speaker 8: we don't want anything going wrong here. By contrast, uh,
Speaker 8: the the sort of inauguration of these rebels republics in
Speaker 8: the dawn Bass region, by these pro Russian separatists were
Speaker 8: just drunk, drunken bacchanal's, uh, you know, and and you
Speaker 8: had you know, reporters on the on the scene reporting
Speaker 8: how everybody's drunk, everybody's falling apart on these these sorts
Speaker 8: of things, and so yeah, it was it was kind
Speaker 8: of an interesting contrast. It's like, all right, we've got
Speaker 8: it very very clearly here that these are not the
Speaker 8: same protests and they're bringing different sort of historical baggage
Speaker 8: in those cases.
Speaker 5: But at some.
Speaker 2: Point, I mean, it impacts the functioning of the state,
Speaker 2: because when you look at a military it's got impact readiness.
Speaker 2: And when you talk about historically even the function of
Speaker 2: the Soviet state, you write about these insane dinner parties
Speaker 2: that Stalin used to have in which he used to
Speaker 2: insist his ministers who had work to do, would stay
Speaker 2: very late in the night. They would fake drunkenness early
Speaker 2: so they could try to go home and salvage the
Speaker 2: rest of their day. Talk about the work of this
Speaker 2: as almost a state craft and an internal monitoring system,
Speaker 2: because what was the goal getting people drunk enough that
Speaker 2: they would spill their secrets or they would tell them
Speaker 2: if they were a spy.
Speaker 9: Yeah, there was certainly an element to that.
Speaker 2: And I remember they even don't do this to me,
Speaker 2: I'm not telling you my sor.
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Yeah, No, like the opening scenes of the movie A
Speaker 8: Death of Stalin was the book. Yeah, when I saw
Speaker 8: that movie, I was like, did they read like those
Speaker 8: chapters of this book because it was but literally talk
Speaker 8: about it in the book. It was it was like
Speaker 8: a you know, like a frat party with the devil.
Speaker 8: I mean, he's forcing everybody to drink with the intention
Speaker 8: of maybe divulging some secrets if they were secretly plotting
Speaker 8: to overthrow you know, sort of loose lips, sync ships
Speaker 8: kind of things. So so yeah, so there was kind
Speaker 8: of this idea of keeping one's potential opponents off bait,
Speaker 8: whether that's Orf off base a little bit, whether that's
Speaker 8: in the Kremlin.
Speaker 9: But also if you want to project that out in
Speaker 9: terms of sort.
Speaker 8: Of state society relations, there's something to be said about,
Speaker 8: you know, keeping the people sort of drunken and off
Speaker 8: base and unable to sort of mount a challenge to
Speaker 8: your own authority in that way. So so it works
Speaker 8: a little bit both ways.
Speaker 3: In the last few minutes we have here, let me
Speaker 3: just take a event of you being a scholar of
Speaker 3: Russian politics, and just to ask you how you're thinking
Speaker 3: about reviewing Vladimir Putin at this moment in time. I
Speaker 3: think there are a lot of folks who see him
Speaker 3: as maybe getting closer to having his back up against
Speaker 3: the wall, and I'm curious, looking at that kind of
Speaker 3: in the complement of history, how you're thinking about him
Speaker 3: in this moment.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's you know, it's where I can't claim to
Speaker 8: have a direct line of Vladimir Putin, and I'm very
Speaker 8: suspicious of anybody who does claim to have that. But
Speaker 8: one of the things I constantly notice, especially in sort
Speaker 8: of Western media coverage, is this notion of I'm calling
Speaker 8: it it's like a village literature on sort of.
Speaker 9: The beginning of the end of Putin.
Speaker 5: Interesting, and I wrote a.
Speaker 8: Piece I think for Foreign Policy a number of years ago,
Speaker 8: kind of tracing these and I was finding beginning of
Speaker 8: the end of Putin, you know, stories going back to
Speaker 8: the course disaster in two thousand and two, so you know.
Speaker 9: You can go all the way back. Oh, covid, this
Speaker 9: is the begat parts of my.
Speaker 2: Death have been greatly exact.
Speaker 4: Second.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but I think my position was always like, well,
Speaker 8: it's a betting person, you know, you can always say, well,
Speaker 8: this is the beginning of the end, this is the
Speaker 8: beginning of the end. Well, every time you're going to
Speaker 8: be wrong, except for once. So it's better to be
Speaker 8: and take the opposite approach and say this is probably
Speaker 8: not the end of Putin, and that way you can
Speaker 8: only be wrong once, which is the one way to
Speaker 8: to to look at it.
Speaker 5: There.
Speaker 2: But as you look at the drivers that have femant
Speaker 2: to change in the past, what finally gets it to
Speaker 2: that breaking point? There's so little opposition left in that country.
Speaker 2: Even if Putin falls, what replaces him? And could that
Speaker 2: be worse?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 8: And that's that's the key I think to a lot
Speaker 8: of This is that I think we take, especially in
Speaker 8: the West, we kind of project our notions of popular sovereignty.
Speaker 8: The sovereignty lies with the people, and then we have
Speaker 8: to keep the people play cadd at least, you know,
Speaker 8: some degree of public approval, maybe not you know, expressed
Speaker 8: through you know, direct democratic initiatives or whatnot. But there's
Speaker 8: still is a sense that, well, you know, if we
Speaker 8: can't push the Russian people too far or else they're
Speaker 8: going to rebel. I think we've passed that point where
Speaker 8: we're the sovereignty is linked to the will of the
Speaker 8: Russian people. So nowadays you're seeing these lines of cars,
Speaker 8: you know, lining up queuing up for gas, and now
Speaker 8: the attacks on other ones, and everybody's just saying, well,
Speaker 8: where's the Russian people's breaking point. I don't think the
Speaker 8: Russian people are going to break anytime soon.
Speaker 2: All Right, We're gonna have to leave it there. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much. The book is Vodka Politics, Mark Lauren Shad,
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for driving in.
Speaker 5: We appreciate.
Speaker 3: Stay with us for more on Bloomberg this weekend. Right
Speaker 3: after this, For the first time on record, the city
Speaker 3: of Miami the metropolitan area more expensive than greater in
Speaker 3: New York City.
Speaker 5: I'm going to repeat that again, Miami more.
Speaker 2: Expensive than for our radio listeners. My face is not
Speaker 2: by stupefied.
Speaker 3: With South Florida's consumer price index jumping thirty six percent
Speaker 3: since the year twenty nineteen, and according to the US
Speaker 3: Bureau of Economic Analysis, Miami's cost of living has surpassed
Speaker 3: New York's, with private school tuition, insurance costs, and restaurant
Speaker 3: spending higher than they were one year ago.
Speaker 2: All right, for more on how Miami allegedly got so pricey,
Speaker 2: We're joined once again by our resident.
Speaker 5: Miami in Miami in that's the right dominum.
Speaker 2: You can correct me if I'm wrong, Senior Commoditie stratus,
Speaker 2: Mike McLoone. Mike, you used to live in New York, Right,
Speaker 2: you're meeting these people who defected to Florida. What is
Speaker 2: your take on all this?
Speaker 10: Well, the bottom line is, from the top down. In
Speaker 10: New York, if you get one hundred thousand dollars bonus,
Speaker 10: the state of New York and the city New York
Speaker 10: off the top take sixteen percent. In Miami it's zero.
Speaker 10: That's an unstoppable force. So everything else is kind of
Speaker 10: catching up to that.
Speaker 2: Okay, but there's other I'm sorry ahead, no, no, you
Speaker 2: go ahead, and you say, there's other costs associated with
Speaker 2: living with Florida, like our reporter found, you got to
Speaker 2: think about things like property insurance. And also you have
Speaker 2: to have cars, and you have to have multiple cars
Speaker 2: because you can't get away get around anywhere else. And
Speaker 2: if you're trying to be cool, you're probably spending a
Speaker 2: lot on the cars. Aren't there all these other little
Speaker 2: expenses that add up.
Speaker 10: Well, I think you nail it there. If you're trying
Speaker 10: to be cool, it's expensive. But if you're like me,
Speaker 10: you just try to go under the radar and you
Speaker 10: commute on a bike to the office. That's nine miles
Speaker 10: on bike pass. It's ideal. You don't have to pay tolls,
Speaker 10: you don't have to worry about traffic, and you get
Speaker 10: to look at all those people city in traffic say yeah,
Speaker 10: it flexed to be you. I'm good and I'm not
Speaker 10: in traffic. But the key thing is bottom line though
Speaker 10: it's also it's the weather for six months of the
Speaker 10: year is nice. But one thing I think is really
Speaker 10: happening mi me is and I noticed it's really catching
Speaker 10: up Obviously there's the traffic. But one thing I also
Speaker 10: I've heard from a real estate standpoint, looks like we
Speaker 10: somewhat peeked hair starting head lower and I had lucky
Speaker 10: enough Bloomberg let me come here in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5: The thing is we're expanding.
Speaker 10: But the bottom line, also from our standpoint is this,
Speaker 10: we're a lot of sales. We're getting more and more
Speaker 10: sales there, and the reason is things like ken Griffin
Speaker 10: County is because the tax treatment's better.
Speaker 3: I look here at the cost of insurance a huge
Speaker 3: consideration as well, because of hurricanes there and in this
Speaker 3: piece the highest home insurance premiums in the nation an
Speaker 3: average of eight thousand, two or ninety two dollars last year.
Speaker 3: That's according to in Surify estimates. Mike, I know you're
Speaker 3: very familiar with Coral Gables in South Miami and Pine Crest,
Speaker 3: all the hi high tone neighborhoods in Miami.
Speaker 5: Bikes bikes around around. You probably do.
Speaker 3: But your observation just about how much property prices of
Speaker 3: skyrocket here. I saw it out and an analogy in
Speaker 3: the piece here that you if you're buying one of
Speaker 3: those houses on a square foot basis now it is
Speaker 3: kind of comparable to what you might pay here on
Speaker 3: the Upper East Side in Manhattan.
Speaker 10: The quote I heard from a prominent real estate person
Speaker 10: I heard his quote was if I could short Florida
Speaker 10: real estate, I would. I think it's very peakish. The
Speaker 10: one thing you also noticed, the construction cranes are everywhere.
Speaker 10: I noticed that I travel a lot lately to Chicago
Speaker 10: and Philadelphia, and there's no construction trains. But to hear
Speaker 10: there everywhere, that's usually a classic sign. But pink, so
Speaker 10: I think we're there. It's near very.
Speaker 5: Peak type activity. But also key things.
Speaker 10: Remember, Miami and Florida kind of leads the country. If
Speaker 10: it starts heading lower, it's a high beta. The rest
Speaker 10: of the country heads downward. But for now, it's also summer.
Speaker 10: It's not the time to be here. Come to when
Speaker 10: the weather gets bad, and like it did last winter
Speaker 10: in New York, people flock down.
Speaker 5: The snowbirds will flock down. Christina.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm kind of arguing against myself here as
Speaker 2: I look at some of these numbers, because I having
Speaker 2: just moved to New York from DC, which I thought
Speaker 2: was a fairly expensive city. I grew up in Colorado.
Speaker 2: The price of things here has just really caught me
Speaker 2: off guard.
Speaker 3: But when you look at what.
Speaker 2: Miami is now charging, I mean, the CPI in Miami
Speaker 2: has jumped thirty six percent since twenty nineteen. When you
Speaker 2: look at home falls, this article says, until recently, if
Speaker 2: you moved like Mike did from New York to Florida,
Speaker 2: you could expect this huge windfall from selling whatever your
Speaker 2: property here was and investing it down there. But that's
Speaker 2: getting harder and harder to do because you're getting premiums
Speaker 2: on these.
Speaker 5: Florida Florida real estate.
Speaker 2: The one thing I will say, though, is you get
Speaker 2: more square footage show in Miami for the price. And
Speaker 2: if you are trying to afford New York, even if
Speaker 2: you own your place, you are still paying these astronomical
Speaker 2: condo fees. I mean, I know somebody who owns their
Speaker 2: place outright, but their condo maintenance fee is like five
Speaker 2: k a month, which is insane to me. Is that
Speaker 2: still the case in Miami? You still are not dealing
Speaker 2: with homeowner fees while the homeowner fees. Yes, But I
Speaker 2: mean what Mike form words, I'm clearly up warming them,
Speaker 2: But like, what's your take on that, is it still
Speaker 2: better to get an apartment in Miami it's cheaper or
Speaker 2: it's not.
Speaker 5: I like the year round factor.
Speaker 10: I can I can live by a beach and commute
Speaker 10: nine miles and year round, I don't have to wear
Speaker 10: like boots and the hat and gloves all the time.
Speaker 5: But one thing that.
Speaker 10: Happened right away handed on it is I did get
Speaker 10: hit with assessment. And first we moved in partly because
Speaker 10: of what happened to surfside. Fully expected that. But now
Speaker 10: it's like, where do we go from here? And I
Speaker 10: think one thing has the thing is we've leveled out
Speaker 10: and the bottom line is where's the migration most that's
Speaker 10: happening in this country. It's not just New York. I'm
Speaker 10: you know, actually originally from Chicago. It's a migration employee
Speaker 10: from high tax states towards lower tax states. To me,
Speaker 10: that's an unstoppable force. It looks like Miami's someone's probably
Speaker 10: peaked for a while at such high levels.
Speaker 3: Mich Let's talk about food in this piece on the terminal,
Speaker 3: there's a great line it's either carbone or a cubano,
Speaker 3: that there's not much when the way of kind of
Speaker 3: mid grade options here. When it comes to food, so's
Speaker 3: you've kind of navigated your new city.
Speaker 5: Do you find that to be true?
Speaker 3: Has the kind of have all the ancillary things kept
Speaker 3: up with the building of residential towers and commercial towers?
Speaker 5: I think so.
Speaker 10: I have never had a problem getting good food at
Speaker 10: a decent price. So everything's gone up, but I guess
Speaker 10: some kind of lower ends. I don't wait in line
Speaker 10: at restaurants typically if I have to make a reservation.
Speaker 10: My wife does that. But no, I'm good with that.
Speaker 10: I haven't fought a major difference, and it's just the
Speaker 10: the it's I don't find that much if it's also
Speaker 10: depends on your level, like if you're not trying to
Speaker 10: be cool, which I'm not.
Speaker 5: I find no problem with the food.
Speaker 2: I just I love that you ride a bike. I
Speaker 2: would not have had that on my on my pegword
Speaker 2: for you. I'm wondering. It is a fun story, but
Speaker 2: I'm wondering what this rise and gentrification is almost the
Speaker 2: wrong word, but you know these high rises and this
Speaker 2: higher standard.
Speaker 5: Of living in Miamia.
Speaker 2: Growth, Yeah, urban growth, it has done for We're talking
Speaker 2: on a very high end here. I'm wondering if this
Speaker 2: is putting the squeeze even more on medium income and
Speaker 2: lower income families and communities that make Miami kind of
Speaker 2: what it is.
Speaker 10: It certainly is one thing that's fuirly clueing Miami that
Speaker 10: I actually love is I am a gringo in many
Speaker 10: parts of Miami. I mean language, the first language is Spanish.
Speaker 10: Now you go to Fort Lauderdale, the first language is English.
Speaker 9: But I do enjoy that.
Speaker 10: I enjoy the multicultural environment. But it's getting much harder
Speaker 10: for your average person if they don't own a place.
Speaker 10: If they own a home that's from twenty years ago.
Speaker 10: Those homes have gone up a lot. But if you're
Speaker 10: just renting, yeah, they're starting to fall behind. It's getting
Speaker 10: more and more difficult.
Speaker 4: Stay with us for more on Bloomberg This Weekend. Right
Speaker 4: after this, Welcome back to.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg This Weekend or BT dugs. I'm Christina Raffini with
Speaker 2: David Gerra and Lisa Matteo is here to run you
Speaker 2: through some of the stories you might have missed this week. Lisa,
Speaker 2: what'd you got for?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 4: So what age did you guys start putting into retirement?
Speaker 5: I was not more. I thought that person was Oh
Speaker 5: my goodness, let's keep it light.
Speaker 2: Okay, Sunday, drink my coffee, David, you want to do
Speaker 2: you want to take this one.
Speaker 4: Like thirty twenty twenties. Okay, when I start.
Speaker 2: When I got my first full time job at my
Speaker 2: old network, one of the old guys said, you will
Speaker 2: max out that four oh one k contribute contribution and
Speaker 2: he was right, and so I've done.
Speaker 5: It twenty excellent.
Speaker 4: Well, this is the topic of our latest Bloomberg article.
Speaker 4: It's called gen Z's retirement max or Yes two axes, Yes,
Speaker 4: choosing savings over doom spending. So a lot more gen
Speaker 4: z Ers they're they're putting away half their income and
Speaker 4: they're living cheaply and half there is half their income
Speaker 4: to telling you, and you know what New York I
Speaker 4: will say, they're starting at nineteen. Wow, this is what ages.
Speaker 2: Somebody of them are living at home.
Speaker 4: It's because a lot of things. They think Social Security
Speaker 4: is going to run out. They think that AI is
Speaker 4: going to take over a lot of their jobs. So
Speaker 4: they want to be financially secure. So maybe they don't
Speaker 4: have to take a job. They don't want to stick
Speaker 4: with it just because they need the money, So they
Speaker 4: want to have the money started and banked away now,
Speaker 4: So it's something that they're doing, maxing.
Speaker 5: Maxing it is it is. I'm getting tired. If that
Speaker 5: was all out here, Yeah, wow, that's so this must
Speaker 5: be a change. This hasn't been happening for long. It has.
Speaker 4: It's part of a movement. Okay, it's called fire, which
Speaker 4: stands where financial independence, retire early.
Speaker 5: Some adherence to the really really well, but it's not
Speaker 5: even I.
Speaker 3: Think it's like they really want to retire extremely early
Speaker 3: in their forties forties.
Speaker 5: Really, yeah, what are you going to do?
Speaker 3: Whatever in the world's your oyster? If you've saved like
Speaker 3: what like eighty percent or.
Speaker 5: Something like that, it's it's tough. It's tough.
Speaker 4: But the only thing they're doing wrong, which experts are saying,
Speaker 4: is that they're focusing so much on the saving, is
Speaker 4: that they're not paying their debt, their credit cards, oh,
Speaker 4: on the living.
Speaker 5: They're focusing on the saving.
Speaker 2: But that's the other thing is like you're only young once,
Speaker 2: Like I do think you shouldn't spend recklessly, but there
Speaker 2: are some times where you should just buy that ticket
Speaker 2: and go, Like life is short and it is hard
Speaker 2: to plan, especially in the world we're in today, so
Speaker 2: you just never know.
Speaker 5: All right, balance is okay? All right?
Speaker 4: As a kid, did you get allowance? Yes, yes, all right,
Speaker 4: we're always fighting with mom and dad for this allowance.
Speaker 5: Okay, because no.
Speaker 3: It was a set amount.
Speaker 5: I got it, and.
Speaker 9: You get what you get.
Speaker 5: You don't get up one k. See this one is
Speaker 5: from New York magazine. Okay, this is for New York.
Speaker 4: When it's barely enough money for boba. New York City
Speaker 4: parents and teens tussle over how much allowance is enough?
Speaker 5: Okay, so definitely not enough. It's not enough.
Speaker 4: For boba, and kids are having to, you know, struggle,
Speaker 4: they're struggling. They can't get their boba because they're getting
Speaker 4: five dollars a week.
Speaker 3: We're seeing video here of Mimi's, which you'd brought up
Speaker 3: in a previous set, which is like thir.
Speaker 4: Very expensive frozen yogurt. But they're getting five but the
Speaker 4: bucks a week. Some kids are though, getting like two
Speaker 4: hundred dollars a week. So it's putting a lot of
Speaker 4: stress on the kids. Parents are experts are.
Speaker 5: Saying stress on the kids a week. Well, think about it.
Speaker 4: You know you're going out and you're going for your boba,
Speaker 4: and then you have a kid next to you who
Speaker 4: gets two hundred bucks a week and you're sitting there
Speaker 4: with your Measley five. So it's pretty the kids the life.
Speaker 5: I mean, the parents have to fork over the money.
Speaker 5: Just saying it's a big fight in our house talking
Speaker 5: about boba.
Speaker 4: I think my daughter gets about fifteen a week, but.
Speaker 2: She's eighteen fifteen dollars getting.
Speaker 5: All right, I do like boba, but I don't like
Speaker 5: it for it.
Speaker 4: Yes, Okay, company retreats, right, if some companies do that,
Speaker 4: You go on the picnics, you going whatever? Would you
Speaker 4: like a beachy dumb You have to do one because
Speaker 4: it's a hot new thing. Okay, this one is in
Speaker 4: the Wall Street Journal. Don't kill corporate retreats. Make them
Speaker 4: more like a kid's birthday party. So instead of doing these.
Speaker 2: Things you know, nightmare.
Speaker 4: Okay, you don't like the natsapp rates or the egg
Speaker 4: things all those. Yes, it's three days and Cape pod. Okay,
Speaker 4: you're roasting marshmallows, you're potato sack racing, you're building human pyramids. Okay,
Speaker 4: you're doing all the fun things like kids do and
Speaker 4: cross falls exactly doing things right now?
Speaker 5: Kids, do you how do you think that will end
Speaker 5: for you, David Garra.
Speaker 4: Well, so they're saying, forget the lunches, forget the dinners
Speaker 4: with the cocktails. People get out of hand and people
Speaker 4: don't know how to behave Do something like this and
Speaker 4: then you know you can have a good time and
Speaker 4: you can bond with your co workers.
Speaker 5: I say, we do adult summer camp. I mean, let's
Speaker 5: talk about ault summer camp. Like, I'm happy to go
Speaker 5: and do some potato sack races, potato.
Speaker 4: Sack golf and ski trips or sometimes they try to
Speaker 4: do those, but they're not good because some people are
Speaker 4: not good at golf.
Speaker 2: I would be I'm not going to but I'm really
Speaker 2: good at after skiing, I'm really good at like but yeah, I'm.
Speaker 10: The prodo good at it.
Speaker 5: All right.
Speaker 4: Big movie Weekend. Okay, so movie theaters is from the
Speaker 4: New York Times. They're embracing the lucrative business of buckets.
Speaker 4: We're talking about the popcorn buckets, okay, and they're they're
Speaker 4: there'se big things. Sometimes they're designed for major movies. It
Speaker 4: can sell as much as seventy dollars. Okay, sure, there's
Speaker 4: a couple behind you have the replica of I'm extra
Speaker 4: of Director's iMX camera for fifty buses.
Speaker 5: Are not just a cardboard No, these are like okay tech.
Speaker 4: This is a twenty two inch rendering of the Trojan
Speaker 4: Horse for seventy dollars, filled to the brim with popcorn,
Speaker 4: epic and they're collecting people collect.
Speaker 5: Them, so it's it's a cooling. They're so greasy, they're
Speaker 5: very faked.
Speaker 2: Butter, some soap and a sponge.
Speaker 5: What do you do with it after that dishwashing? I
Speaker 5: don't know.
Speaker 4: But there's a few companies, actually three that make these
Speaker 4: different buckets, so it's a little bit of competition there,
Speaker 4: but they're making good money. I'm telling you I would
Speaker 4: not fork over the seventy dollars.
Speaker 5: I guess maybe the popcorn is not the point.
Speaker 2: You guys went to a movie.
Speaker 4: I'm going this week?
Speaker 5: Are you? Finally? I'm not getting the.
Speaker 4: The Trojan Horse.
Speaker 5: I'm not doing it. Put it on the company card.
Speaker 5: I'd like to see that.
Speaker 2: I'd like to see if someone were too sneak into
Speaker 2: your house using a Trojan Horse style object, what would
Speaker 2: what would trick you?
Speaker 5: I guess maybe popcorn bucket?
Speaker 2: At least I feel I give you some sort of
Speaker 2: like expensive workout equipment, David.
Speaker 5: Maybe somebody's in the treadmill hiding away.
Speaker 2: He's a really large, nine handmade tie youse.
Speaker 3: Leave you with that amazing image, all those amazing images.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on today's Bloomberg This Weekend Podcast.
Speaker 2: Don't forget to tune in live for the show every
Speaker 2: Saturday and Sunday morning, starting at seven am Eastern.
Speaker 3: We're on Bloomberg Television, Radio and the Bloomberg Business App,
Speaker 3: bringing you unique takes and in depth interviews on news, politics,
Speaker 3: lifestyle and culture.