Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keene with
Speaker 1: David Gura. Daily we bring you insight from the best
Speaker 1: of economics, finance, investment, and international relations. Find Bloomberg Surveillance
Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Bloomberg dot Com, and of course
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg. It is always a celebration using on
Speaker 1: a thirty day basis, maybe a little longer they than
Speaker 1: Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs Magazine. I will state it directly.
Speaker 1: It's so good, you know, not only the obligatory modern
Speaker 1: digital copy. Excuse me, you have to pay up Gideon
Speaker 1: for the thick paper copy as well, with a beautiful, big,
Speaker 1: readable fund which is the article as you look at
Speaker 1: the deep State, as you look at Trump in our allies,
Speaker 1: which the article that's stuck out for you. So we
Speaker 1: have a great piece by a professor at d C
Speaker 1: Law School, um that is basically saying the problem with
Speaker 1: Trump in the deep state is not the deep state,
Speaker 1: it's just the state. Just like the administration's attacks on
Speaker 1: fake news, their problems aren't on fake news, it's just news.
Speaker 1: So their problems are this is an administration that doesn't
Speaker 1: really believe in governing the country or running the administrators.
Speaker 1: President doesn't believe much in running the US government, and
Speaker 1: the government is essentially uh returning the favor by resisting,
Speaker 1: and the the gap between a system set up to
Speaker 1: run the country run the government actively intervened for the
Speaker 1: public behalf is now being run by somebody who has
Speaker 1: us not just a separate agenda, but no real interest
Speaker 1: in the broader apparatus, and that is creating problems. But
Speaker 1: the fact is he got elected by a large body
Speaker 1: of people who don't want traditional politics. Do we want
Speaker 1: traditional foreign affairs? Well, so this is basically the kind
Speaker 1: of look I this ties in Trump and bregs it, right,
Speaker 1: So what's happening and bregsit. If you get elected on
Speaker 1: a stupid but popular program that doesn't really have a
Speaker 1: practical component to it, then when you get into office,
Speaker 1: you have to figure out what to do to live
Speaker 1: up to your promise. Right. That's what the problem with
Speaker 1: Brexit right now is they got stuck with an agenda
Speaker 1: and now have to figure out how to make that
Speaker 1: agenda work when nobody actually wants it to work or
Speaker 1: thinks it should work, except the people who voted for
Speaker 1: the people in power. Having to implement it, don't believe it.
Speaker 1: So now you have the same thing to a certain
Speaker 1: extent in the US in which the president got elected
Speaker 1: on a populist, nationalist agenda that he actually still obviously
Speaker 1: feels beholden to those constituents, as we saw from the
Speaker 1: Charlottesville type stuff. Um, and yet that's not really a
Speaker 1: possible agenda for governing the country. And so what happens
Speaker 1: when the campaign reality meets the governing reality is something
Speaker 1: that basically nobody knows. That's why we're in this weird
Speaker 1: state now in which nobody actually knows what's going on,
Speaker 1: because we've never seen anything like this. The exactly the
Speaker 1: degree of political this is the first time ever. Kind
Speaker 1: of stuff cannot be exaggerated, even as the economy seems
Speaker 1: stable and normal and markets are going up and everything
Speaker 1: has come So it really is a kind of where
Speaker 1: you're looking determines how freaked out you are but getting
Speaker 1: at the same time, you know, Donald Trump, your president
Speaker 1: was elected on a very clear agenda of policy, right healthcare,
Speaker 1: tax reform, and infrastructure. When is he going to focus
Speaker 1: on the actual policy that he can get through Congress? See,
Speaker 1: I don't actually think he was elected on those policy agendas.
Speaker 1: He never actually set out real policies on those things.
Speaker 1: They were urges, they were emotions. Infrastructure was I'm going
Speaker 1: to do something for the public. He doesn't actually care
Speaker 1: about infrastructure, else he would have turned to it. And
Speaker 1: even on some of the policy issues like healthcare, as
Speaker 1: we saw, there was a negative thing. We don't like Obamacare,
Speaker 1: but there was no actual positive program, which is why
Speaker 1: they had no actual health care legislation to put in place.
Speaker 1: I don't think they're going to get any significant legislation
Speaker 1: going forward. It's possible, but the same problems that bedeviled
Speaker 1: them with a real agenda and putting together a sort
Speaker 1: of bipartisan or even a single Republican agenda on major
Speaker 1: issues is going to continue to bedevil them throughout the fall.
Speaker 1: I know we've also is on radio, who does he
Speaker 1: listen to? Who does the president? First of all, does
Speaker 1: the president listen to anyone? At this point, Well, that
Speaker 1: sort of depends on who you talk to. Nobody actually knows,
Speaker 1: because what you tend to see is the president talking
Speaker 1: to lots of people and then changing his line to
Speaker 1: a certain extent depending on who he's talked to, and
Speaker 1: then finally bending to some reality, but then going back
Speaker 1: to what he was saying before. At this point, we
Speaker 1: do not know who the president listens to. You mentioned
Speaker 1: that you've said this many times that you know to
Speaker 1: use the cliche foggy about him is significantly understaffed right now,
Speaker 1: How does it actually play out? What does it mean
Speaker 1: for Secretary Tillerson? The there aren't the Richard Hasses beneath
Speaker 1: that can provide wisdom. What I've heard is that, um, look,
Speaker 1: the Secretary of State usually has two different jobs. There's
Speaker 1: managing the President and running U as far you know,
Speaker 1: running running the White House and the administration's foreign policy
Speaker 1: and working up there's also managing the building and the
Speaker 1: State Department and the organistration administration and running that. Uh
Speaker 1: I've heard essentially the Tillerson is focused almost entirely on
Speaker 1: the White House and the President and keeping things sensible
Speaker 1: on policy, and that the he's not paying much attention
Speaker 1: to the State Department. And the things they've said about
Speaker 1: the State Department, the lack of staffing, the budget cuts,
Speaker 1: the reorganization are scaring the crap out of everybody. Uh So,
Speaker 1: the State Department essentially is entirely the calmed uh and
Speaker 1: the lack of policy advice of people. There's no lack
Speaker 1: of people who could supply policy advice. The problem is
Speaker 1: that the people in the White House making the decisions
Speaker 1: don't well, the top person doesn't seem to care about
Speaker 1: that kind of policy advice. Getting do we understand if
Speaker 1: and Trump is losing a little bit of popularity with
Speaker 1: his base and actually if he does, does he change
Speaker 1: does that explain a little bit of what we saw
Speaker 1: in Charlottesville. Well, so this gets to this question of
Speaker 1: sort of a chipping point. Right. Clearly, the poll figures
Speaker 1: have dropped, but they've dropped minuscule le. They've dropped, you know,
Speaker 1: a point or two a month on the and the
Speaker 1: average in aggregate. And the question is if that continues
Speaker 1: going down from the high the low forties to the
Speaker 1: high thirties where it is now, If it continues to
Speaker 1: go from the low high thirties to the low thirties,
Speaker 1: at what point does the base become a sort of
Speaker 1: albatross rather than a source of support. And we just
Speaker 1: we're not there yet. Things have held, but another few
Speaker 1: months we may be in a different situation. I look, Giddan,
Speaker 1: where we are and I think it comes back to
Speaker 1: the base of its story. We're talking, particularly after Charlottesville,
Speaker 1: about nationalists. Forget about supremacies. It's not really foreign affairs,
Speaker 1: but the sense of nationalism. Where is the new conservative
Speaker 1: nationalism that is that is constructive? Well, this is actually
Speaker 1: the great question, and I think we're going to be
Speaker 1: looking more at this in years to come. There are
Speaker 1: some actual legitimate thinkers on the right, people like you've
Speaker 1: all live in or your m Hazzoni or elsewhere, or
Speaker 1: people like Basbis who are trying to think about what
Speaker 1: a positive and constructive civic nationalist agenda could be that
Speaker 1: ties the country together. But that isn't necessarily uh a
Speaker 1: nationalism directed against somebody, Right, the question is how do
Speaker 1: you have an inclusive nationalism. The problem with so much
Speaker 1: of the agenda of the administration is that it seems
Speaker 1: designed to provide communal solidarity for its team by creating
Speaker 1: an opponent or an enemy, whether it's Korea, whether it's
Speaker 1: illegal immigrants, whether it's Mexicans, whether it's god knows what.
Speaker 1: And the real challenge for civic nationalism in the you know,
Speaker 1: twenty one century is to figure out how you can
Speaker 1: get the benefits of tying your community together, how you
Speaker 1: can have social solidarity and a constructive sense of purpose,
Speaker 1: but in a way that is inclusive and that plays
Speaker 1: well with other groups, rather than having your solidarity generated
Speaker 1: simply by opposition in hatred of something else. And that's
Speaker 1: what we're still groping for. What is the positive American
Speaker 1: program that can lead the world, uh and lead the
Speaker 1: country rather than divide things. Francy Laqua in London. Francy,
Speaker 1: and we're now going to go to the smartest article
Speaker 1: I have seen in the last I'm saying seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: maybe it's four days. Was counting with Gideon Rose. He's
Speaker 1: the editor in chief of Foreign Affairs magazine. Another triumph
Speaker 1: of issue, unthoughtful discussion in different views, the power of
Speaker 1: Foreign Affairs, the many different views across the political spectrum.
Speaker 1: Gideon Jeff Greenfield in Politico has just wrote the best
Speaker 1: article I've seen on what happens if we don't know
Speaker 1: our history. It is just profound, alludes to the president,
Speaker 1: and it talks about Earl Butts, which is a name
Speaker 1: from another time and place. Um, the former Secutor of
Speaker 1: Agriculture were resigned in disgrace. How dumb are we Gideon
Speaker 1: Rose day to day away from the PhDs and the
Speaker 1: fancy experts, How dumb are we on our international relations?
Speaker 1: It's not so much that we're dumb. I think that
Speaker 1: most people are concerned with and follow carefully the things
Speaker 1: that matter to them in their daily lives, and they
Speaker 1: have a good sense of that. And most people are
Speaker 1: not directly involved in foreign policy and foreign affairs. One
Speaker 1: of the privileges of being the world's hedgem on the
Speaker 1: leading power is that our actions affect others more than
Speaker 1: their actions affect us. So it's kind of rational for
Speaker 1: Americans not to pay all that much attention. Unfortunately, they
Speaker 1: what the problem is not their ignorance or lack of
Speaker 1: knowledge or lack of concern. It's that the things they
Speaker 1: know that aren't necessarily true right and um, the this
Speaker 1: administration right now is increasingly becoming losing all credibility. It's
Speaker 1: it's becoming either a pariah or laughing stock. And the
Speaker 1: question that we're now facing is what is connected to
Speaker 1: what the great question of the day. We're learning tons
Speaker 1: of things right now about how the world works. The economy,
Speaker 1: for example, and markets seem disconnected from politics. We're now
Speaker 1: having a wonderful test in that, uh we we heard
Speaker 1: during the Obama administration during the red line with Syria crisis,
Speaker 1: if you remember, that was all this talk about, oh
Speaker 1: my god, the terrible negative consequences that are going to
Speaker 1: flow from the president not living up to his word. Right. So,
Speaker 1: critics of the Obama administration legitimately and appropriately slammed Obama
Speaker 1: for making a red line promise on Syria and then
Speaker 1: not living up to it. Right, And that was supposedly
Speaker 1: something that caused other powers elsewhere to uh take advantage
Speaker 1: of the US do other kinds of things. Academic experts
Speaker 1: in credibility said, no, you know that's actually not true.
Speaker 1: Credibility isn't universal. People don't actually look at everything in
Speaker 1: regard to the last thing you said and and and
Speaker 1: evaluate that. And I think we're seeing that play out now.
Speaker 1: The administration has no credibility. The pro rather, the president
Speaker 1: has no credibility, and even his advisors are seen as
Speaker 1: people trying to control him rather than actually speak independently.
Speaker 1: But the question of whether that affects anything real, why
Speaker 1: really in policy is something we've never seen before, right,
Speaker 1: But getting you could argue that this is why we
Speaker 1: have elections. Right, It's not up to me or Tom
Speaker 1: or anyone else to look at foreign policy. We elect
Speaker 1: people that know best and actually, you know, try and
Speaker 1: protect our our interests. If the president cannot do this
Speaker 1: is how does the GOP or the Republican Party keep
Speaker 1: that in line? Well, that's that's what we're watching, right,
Speaker 1: And you're right, this is ultimately a political thing. The
Speaker 1: American people, just like the British people chose Brexit, the
Speaker 1: American people chose Donald Trump in a free, unfair election,
Speaker 1: and uh, they're now getting the consequences. And the ultimate
Speaker 1: remedy will be a political one, right, in the sense
Speaker 1: that the administration has an agenda or it doesn't, It
Speaker 1: has a legislative track record or it doesn't. And eventually
Speaker 1: there will be new elections, both at the congressional level
Speaker 1: for Congress and then the presidential level, and life will
Speaker 1: go on. The American system will hold. This is not Venezuela.
Speaker 1: We don't just have Donald Trump. We have Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and James Madison. So we do have a constructive framework
Speaker 1: in which to keep politics going. The question is what
Speaker 1: the policy substance of that will be. And what you're
Speaker 1: saying with the Republicans. Nobody knows. And I would point out,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned Venezuela, one reason Foreign Affairs gets it done,
Speaker 1: a ship and O'Neil on Mexico and some of the
Speaker 1: challenges of Latin America as well. Gideon Rose, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for starting this one's issue of Foreign Affairs
Speaker 1: with Bloomberg surveillance. Bonus round, folks, it's uncommonly September thicker.
Speaker 1: It's got It's like it's like Hell or Vogue or
Speaker 1: Harper's Bizarre. It's it's it's it's it's that September autumnal
Speaker 1: issue fran scene. That's just thicker. No, no, not the
Speaker 1: swims No, no, We're not going to go there, Mr Tucker.
Speaker 1: It's not the swimsuit issue. It's like for Foreign Affairs
Speaker 1: is like Harper's Bazarre in September. They do more. And
Speaker 1: he was Gideon Rose, thank you, Neil sauce Ware. This
Speaker 1: was never boring and provided incredible perspective for its important perspective.
Speaker 1: In August of two thousand uh seven, and you know
Speaker 1: we have done this before, but in the tenth anniversary
Speaker 1: here of where we are in the in the trenches
Speaker 1: of credits, we see economics. You came up with this
Speaker 1: idea of ring fence. What are we ring fencing today?
Speaker 1: Is it the balance sheets of the central bank? Or
Speaker 1: are we ring fencing disinflation? Are we ring fencing the
Speaker 1: desire or investment by corporations? What is it? I think
Speaker 1: the answer is volatility. The most volatile financial instruments, Let's
Speaker 1: say in the US financial markets would include mortgages. Well,
Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve owns a fair amount of them. There
Speaker 1: at the threshold of reducing that holding. But while they
Speaker 1: were holding it, obviously that took volatility out of the
Speaker 1: markets and sequestered it, so to speak. Similarly with a
Speaker 1: longer term coupon holdings, bond holdings of treasuries in Europe,
Speaker 1: the peripheral debt, the corporate debt that the ECB has
Speaker 1: put onto its balance sheet in Japan, similar kinds of developments.
Speaker 1: It's one of the forces I think that has given
Speaker 1: rise to give the change your language, that has made
Speaker 1: a change of tense. It's given rise to the fall
Speaker 1: of volatility, I mean, the full of volatility is there.
Speaker 1: There seems to be a clearing call, whether in England
Speaker 1: or in the United States worldwide for further investment is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why we're not getting investment, why
Speaker 1: things are dampened, why we're a lack of volatility, is
Speaker 1: just too much stuff out there. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 1: been a cliche that you and I have avoided for decades.
Speaker 1: But are we in an age of oversupply? Oh? I
Speaker 1: think the evidence with respect to how difficult it is
Speaker 1: to get inflation to move is suggestive of that. You know,
Speaker 1: when there was a time when monitorists told us that
Speaker 1: inflation came from large central bank balance sheets, Well we've
Speaker 1: but we've been doing that for quite some time, and
Speaker 1: the evidence is that the inflation hasn't manifested itself. Then
Speaker 1: there were others who told us, well, if you get
Speaker 1: to near full employment, you're going to get inflation. Well,
Speaker 1: unemployment rates have been falling in the US for quite
Speaker 1: some time to relatively low levels, Similarly in the UK,
Speaker 1: similarly in Japan, remarkably in Japan, even in kind natal
Speaker 1: Europe unemployment at least and now down down to single digits.
Speaker 1: And there's no evidence in particular of of wage pressures anywhere.
Speaker 1: But but you know, you think about the technological change
Speaker 1: that was fracking for example, and yes we have more
Speaker 1: oil supply at any price than we used to have.
Speaker 1: That's a good thing, not a bad thing. Let's come
Speaker 1: back with Neil Sauce. Are gonna run of the time
Speaker 1: here and I went Fenstine to dive into the next
Speaker 1: block with us as well. For instance, you really wonder
Speaker 1: about the ring fence. What is the ring fence fend
Speaker 1: scene of Brexit? What is Prime Minister May trying to
Speaker 1: ring fence right now? Well, it's unclear at this moment.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of business leaders tom that have
Speaker 1: gone to see the Prime Minister saying please ring fence
Speaker 1: services financial services because they're so important. But as negotiation
Speaker 1: starts then for the moment we're not really clear on
Speaker 1: the rights also of your nationals living here. So it's
Speaker 1: very difficult to see, you know, her bargaining chips what
Speaker 1: they are and what she absolutely wants to preserve for
Speaker 1: the moment. We don't have an answer for that yet.
Speaker 1: But it's a very good question. Deal. One quick question.
Speaker 1: If I could the date calendar September twenty November one December,
Speaker 1: do you just assume a rate increase? Is that a
Speaker 1: dangerous assumption? Right now? I don't I don't think the
Speaker 1: market is expecting anything in September with respect to the rates.
Speaker 1: The markets expecting that September will begin the process of
Speaker 1: unwinding the Fed's balance sheet. Then thereafter you have a
Speaker 1: you know, quite a number of economic reports, including inflation reports,
Speaker 1: which will adjust the probability of an action in December.
Speaker 1: I think that's pretty much the open moment for this
Speaker 1: year that Bill Dudley and others at the FED have
Speaker 1: been alluding to, Neil, what happens to interest rates once
Speaker 1: they start normalizing. There's a line of thought saying that actually,
Speaker 1: because we're due a correction or you know, some kind
Speaker 1: of recession soon, then they need to either hurry up
Speaker 1: and high rates, or that they'll go further into negative Oh.
Speaker 1: I think that, uh, the structure of interest rates is
Speaker 1: likely to be much lower than in the past episodes
Speaker 1: for a long time yet into the future. Uh and uh.
Speaker 1: I think it's also the case that the central banks
Speaker 1: don't want to get too far out ahead with respect
Speaker 1: to interest rates. They don't want to provoke the need
Speaker 1: for a new easing cycle, and so their main adjustment
Speaker 1: is going to be the balance sheet over time. And
Speaker 1: I think it's quite remarkable that they haven't articulated a
Speaker 1: rationale for why they want to shrink their balance sheet,
Speaker 1: what harm has it done? But nonetheless they seem intent
Speaker 1: upon it here in the States. Of course, they've already
Speaker 1: said relatively soon for commencement. There's almost the universal expectation
Speaker 1: that draw from the e c B will speak to
Speaker 1: that at Jackson Hole and or announce it in the autumn.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I think it's the balance sheet that's going
Speaker 1: to be the main focus of this, and that gives
Speaker 1: rise to open questions about what does that due to
Speaker 1: the shape of the yield curve, what's priced in at
Speaker 1: the moment. Well, my own view is that, um well,
Speaker 1: let me say my own sense of the market's view
Speaker 1: is that balance sheet reduction will steep in the yiel curve.
Speaker 1: That is to say, longer term interest rates would tend
Speaker 1: to be under upward pressure. I'm not so sure that
Speaker 1: that's going to turn out to be the case. If
Speaker 1: you recall during the uh QE episodes in the past,
Speaker 1: interest rates actually tended to rise while the central bank
Speaker 1: was buying securities. We might get an episode here where
Speaker 1: interest rates would actually come down a bit as the
Speaker 1: FED is feeding the market these new security or refeeding
Speaker 1: the market these same securities, Sonia, What does it mean
Speaker 1: that the FED needs to watch out for? Is it
Speaker 1: in the communication? Do they need to have careful you know,
Speaker 1: telegrafication of this or how do they telegraph it to
Speaker 1: the market so that they don't freak out? Well, there
Speaker 1: are number of open questions that the Fed has not
Speaker 1: yet articulated anything about we have with respect to their
Speaker 1: interest rate expectations, for example, the so called dot plot,
Speaker 1: which tells you where they think interest rates would eventually
Speaker 1: get to. They haven't articulated anything like that. With respect
Speaker 1: to what size balance sheet they expect to have down
Speaker 1: the road. They said they're gonna cut it. It's gonna
Speaker 1: be bigger than it used to be. But how far? Where? Who?
Speaker 1: Who buys this stuff? I mean, I've I brought this
Speaker 1: up with a Swiss gentleman from Credit Sweez yesterday writing
Speaker 1: trendship notes. The name excapes you right now. I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry for that, folks, But the basic ideal, Neil sauce it.
Speaker 1: If SNB has a lot of apple stock, I guess
Speaker 1: at some point we understand other people will buy it.
Speaker 1: Who buys the stuff on the US balance sheet when
Speaker 1: they decide to unload it. Yeah, and let's think about
Speaker 1: the scale of that, because in round numbers, they fed
Speaker 1: uh reduction of its holding of mortgages would more or
Speaker 1: less double the amount of mortgages available to the market,
Speaker 1: and the FEDS reduction of its treasury holdings would be
Speaker 1: sort of the equivalent of asking the market to absorb
Speaker 1: four years worth of budget deficits over the next three years.
Speaker 1: How does that, brilliant brilliantly said, how does that happen
Speaker 1: in reality? And the answers, we don't know, right, that's correct,
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of details about this with
Speaker 1: respect to what the FED will let go of and
Speaker 1: sequence and so forth, I mean, freensy and I think
Speaker 1: this is absolutely critical. And this is something we've heard
Speaker 1: from Robert Kaplan of the Dallas FED and James Buller
Speaker 1: St Louis. There's a huge mystery at every central bank
Speaker 1: of what happens when they when they hurt the switch, right,
Speaker 1: And this is something that of course the you know,
Speaker 1: the ECB is probably more at risk of even you know,
Speaker 1: compared to the FED. Is is we have an economy
Speaker 1: here that's quite fragile. What is the biggest common policy
Speaker 1: mistake at this point for the FED? Would it be
Speaker 1: to keep interest rates lower for longer or to rise
Speaker 1: too quickly? Oh. I think the evidence of the last
Speaker 1: fifteen twenty years is that no central bank has actually
Speaker 1: succeeded at exiting from zero interest rates and then not
Speaker 1: having to go back to it in that direction. So
Speaker 1: I don't think going too too slow is a risk here.
Speaker 1: I think the risky prospect would be if they went
Speaker 1: too fast. Do you worry more about the ECB than
Speaker 1: you do the FED? Are not? Really um I think
Speaker 1: the ECB has a special challenge in the sense that
Speaker 1: they're dealing with with a number of different sovereigns, whereas
Speaker 1: the US and has the advantage, if you will, it's
Speaker 1: dealing with only one. But I think the FED. I
Speaker 1: think the FED is more central in this respect than
Speaker 1: the ECB. Why are companies not investing? I don't think
Speaker 1: they need to. The profit share is doing just fine
Speaker 1: all by itself. We live in a time when the
Speaker 1: benefits of economic activity seemed to flood disproportionately to capital
Speaker 1: and and maybe that's the answer enough. Niel Sauce, thank
Speaker 1: you so much so, Vice Chairman, of credit. Sweez, He's
Speaker 1: been a you know, on behalf of all of us
Speaker 1: at surveillance, at Bloomberg. On the economy, thank you for
Speaker 1: ten years of crisis, uh service to economics and to
Speaker 1: our global audience. James Trevidis joining us on our phone lines.
Speaker 1: And Saint James Trevidis barely describes the author of my
Speaker 1: book of the summer, The Leader's Workshop, another book out
Speaker 1: Sea Power as well, and the author of an exceptionally
Speaker 1: important essay for Bloomberg View uh angst written, Oh let
Speaker 1: me see eight. I can do the math, James seven
Speaker 1: days ago. The key to countering North Korea lies off
Speaker 1: shore EDIALD. Stevidus, Welcome back to the program. I am
Speaker 1: reading John Keegan The Face of Battle, and it is
Speaker 1: a very difficult read for people not steeped the duty
Speaker 1: of the U. S. Naval Academy. If President Trump was
Speaker 1: to read Keegan's The Face of Battle, what would should
Speaker 1: be or what would be? Is takeaway? Well two things.
Speaker 1: Tom One is The Face of Battle by Keegan is
Speaker 1: a is a book about great leaders in times of crisis.
Speaker 1: And I think the two big takeaways that the president
Speaker 1: ought to absorb is Number one, keep your cool, don't hyperboleized,
Speaker 1: don't shout out, don't try to trash talk your opponents.
Speaker 1: Stay cool, be less George Patton, more cool hand Luke.
Speaker 1: And the second thing that comes out from the face
Speaker 1: of battle is be prepared for the unexpected, because things
Speaker 1: will go wrong. And I think if he takes those
Speaker 1: two lessons into account, it would be better positioned to
Speaker 1: face what's coming with North Korea. But what is critical
Speaker 1: here and I featured over this ankst ridden weekend the
Speaker 1: sacrifice of General Maurice Rose in World War Two, who
Speaker 1: was under patent in the third Armored Division. Um, I
Speaker 1: think that the patent that others perceive, including perhaps the president,
Speaker 1: is a George C. Scott Patton. It's a Hollywood pattent.
Speaker 1: Patton wasn't his patenting perhaps, as would like to think.
Speaker 1: Am I right on that? You are absolutely correct? Patton
Speaker 1: was an intellectual, He was a reader, He was a
Speaker 1: fine strategist. Where he failed, and I fear our president
Speaker 1: is on the verge of making these same mistakes is
Speaker 1: over emotionalizing, as it says in The Godfather, that marvelous
Speaker 1: book on leadership by Mario Puzo, don't make the mistake
Speaker 1: of hating your enemies at clouds your judgment. We need
Speaker 1: leaders who stay calm, Tom, Can the president change Admiral?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think what we are probably
Speaker 1: going to have to count on, as we've all been
Speaker 1: saying for some months now, is a coterie of smart,
Speaker 1: stable generals at the moment around And maybe he should
Speaker 1: have a few admirals. Who knows, but uh, I think
Speaker 1: that people like General John Kelly, the Chief of Staff,
Speaker 1: General Jomatis, Secretary of Defense, Lieutenant General hr McMaster. I
Speaker 1: know him all well. I've known Kelly for forty years,
Speaker 1: Matters for twenty. These are stable actors who will put
Speaker 1: some kind of speed break on the president's more adventurous tendency.
Speaker 1: Fantsy don't want you to jump in here, but I've
Speaker 1: got to ask the news question. Have you spoken to
Speaker 1: General Kelly? And would you serve the president? Um? I
Speaker 1: would not choose to enter this administration, Tom. I don't
Speaker 1: think I'm a good policy fit. I disagree with many
Speaker 1: of the policies, and I'm not a particularly good personality
Speaker 1: fit either. I do email with John Kelly frequently, and
Speaker 1: I have the highest regard for him well, but I
Speaker 1: don't know, what would it takes for you to change
Speaker 1: him mind on that? And this is a critical question, right,
Speaker 1: There's still vacancies that need to be filled. So how
Speaker 1: does this administration and how does the White House specifically
Speaker 1: get good people on board? I think it will depend
Speaker 1: on the degree to which General Kelly can impose a
Speaker 1: sense of order and bring order out of the chaos
Speaker 1: that is in the White House. The other cabinet departments,
Speaker 1: particularly Department of Defense, I think are running along reasonably well.
Speaker 1: State is a little behind in terms of getting online
Speaker 1: because of those vacancies, Francine, But I think it's we
Speaker 1: need the trains to run a little closer to the schedule,
Speaker 1: if not on time, and that will not happen unless
Speaker 1: General Kelly has given real authority. And I think the
Speaker 1: jury is out on how that's going to play out.
Speaker 1: Will the President ever be on prompts? You know? Can people? Actually?
Speaker 1: I think that I think that's highly, highly unlikely. And
Speaker 1: you saw that play out in domestic politics of course,
Speaker 1: over the last three days, where he went off prompt um,
Speaker 1: blended himself in a extremely messy set of arguments and
Speaker 1: then had to walk it back. So that's I think
Speaker 1: what we're looking at. I doubt that will change, but
Speaker 1: you can still modulate the policies and make them more orderly,
Speaker 1: and I think that will be the task of those
Speaker 1: around him. I want you to help us, Admiral, with
Speaker 1: the people that are in the f in the Fletcher
Speaker 1: School classroom. They're like Ken Frasier, like Kevin Plank, They're
Speaker 1: like Brian Krasss. Folks, these are the CEOs of Mark
Speaker 1: under Armour and Intel. They've said goodbye to the president.
Speaker 1: It's a tough call, I mean, a given company. And
Speaker 1: Jeff m. L I thought was quite articulate on this
Speaker 1: was general elector. Of course Mr mL exiting Mr Flaherty
Speaker 1: takes over. What is your advice to CEOs? They're not
Speaker 1: wearing a uniform. They've each got their individual story, including
Speaker 1: the magnificent Ken Fraser starting on his father was a
Speaker 1: janitor and Philadelphia got independent state, got into Harvard Law
Speaker 1: and made a go of it. And there's another story.
Speaker 1: We got our own stories. What's your advice two CEOs
Speaker 1: who've got to make that decision on rights individual and
Speaker 1: bigotry and hatred versus what's good for the company. I'll
Speaker 1: give you two reactions to that Tom and they both
Speaker 1: sort of stem for my days as Supreme Alley Commander
Speaker 1: at NATO um A. And this is obvious. You have
Speaker 1: to follow your heart. You have to know where you're
Speaker 1: emotional and your absolute ethical personal redlines are, and that
Speaker 1: in the end has to trump everything. But then secondly,
Speaker 1: for a CEO or for a commander who's representing an
Speaker 1: enormous command, you have to as well look at how
Speaker 1: you're playing in the world and the impact you're having.
Speaker 1: In the case of a CEO, share price in a
Speaker 1: public company, and that matters. So getting at balance right
Speaker 1: for leaders is maybe the hardest thing. If I were
Speaker 1: going to name a book, it might surprise you, but
Speaker 1: it's To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. It's a
Speaker 1: book about taking the hard but correct course, not the
Speaker 1: easy row course. And I think those CEOs did the
Speaker 1: right thing, both for themselves and ultimately for their company.
Speaker 1: And Francine I sort of thought Kevin Planky sort of
Speaker 1: looks like Gregory Peck, so I think it's sort of yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure Francine is old enough to have seen
Speaker 1: that that's true. I am, I am, I'm a film buff.
Speaker 1: Admiral Francine, jump in here, please, Well, what will change?
Speaker 1: You know, I've been thinking about the North Korean crisis,
Speaker 1: and actually I was thinking about how the reaction of
Speaker 1: the world would have been different had it been another
Speaker 1: administration talking about fire and fury. Are we not taking
Speaker 1: the presidents seriously enough when it comes to geopolitics? Now?
Speaker 1: This is an absolutely correct observation, Francine. And increasingly as
Speaker 1: I travel around the world doing events for sending the
Speaker 1: Fletcher School, what I hear from Europeans, from Asians, from
Speaker 1: Latin Americans, from Africans is well, we're learning just not
Speaker 1: to listen to what the president says, but instead to
Speaker 1: watch the actions of the US government. That takes away
Speaker 1: a powerful tool from the US government. If you cannot
Speaker 1: reliably depend on the chief executive to transmit a coherent message,
Speaker 1: you are handicapped severely globally, and I think we will
Speaker 1: pay the price for that going forward. We're going to
Speaker 1: rip up the strip and script rather income back with
Speaker 1: James DAVIDUS of the United States Navy. I want to
Speaker 1: speak to him about our sailors and our officers at
Speaker 1: seat here in the Northern Asia Pacific Ocean. We will
Speaker 1: do that here in a bit off of his wonderful
Speaker 1: essay Bloomberg View, including that ship accident that we had
Speaker 1: a number of weeks uh ago. James davidis with US
Speaker 1: Admiral of course, at the UH the Fletcher School at
Speaker 1: Tufts University, Amerals davidus, you open Sea our your wonderful
Speaker 1: new book about our oceans, and there you are freshly
Speaker 1: scrubbed out of I believe Annapolis on the USS Jewet.
Speaker 1: So if the US S Jewet was off Korea, off
Speaker 1: off off Japan and the water is a little choppy,
Speaker 1: how does sailors not fall off the ship? What's the
Speaker 1: safety mechanism of our sailors and officers at sea around Korea? Now?
Speaker 1: So there's just something basic like they don't fall off
Speaker 1: the ship. Amazingly, we still have sailors occasionally fall off ships,
Speaker 1: and tragically we just lost a lieutenant just a week ago. Um.
Speaker 1: The safety measures are pretty obvious. We have railings that
Speaker 1: go all the way around that come up to about
Speaker 1: a bit above your waist. We have lookouts posted up
Speaker 1: above the decks to observe in case someone does fall
Speaker 1: overboard when the seas are especially unruly, will make an
Speaker 1: announcement will bring people inside tom what we call the
Speaker 1: skin of the ship. And finally we operate the ship.
Speaker 1: We sail it through the water in a way that
Speaker 1: minimizes turbulence heading into the seas, not off access and
Speaker 1: so on, so we take care about that. It is
Speaker 1: a real concern and occasionally happens, but we're well prepared.
Speaker 1: We're honored to Bloomberg surveillance of your attendance. Admiral Mullin
Speaker 1: was with us the other day. Let me ask you
Speaker 1: the same question I asked Mike. The idea here that
Speaker 1: we can shoot a missile out of the air. Is
Speaker 1: that science fiction? Is it something on TV? How do
Speaker 1: you guys actually shoot a missile out of the air? Um,
Speaker 1: It is not science fiction. We do this quite a bit.
Speaker 1: We practice it. As a younger officer, I commanded a
Speaker 1: guided missile destroyer that steamed around with a couple of
Speaker 1: hundred missiles that would do exactly that. And the way
Speaker 1: you do it is you have a radar that looks
Speaker 1: out two hundred and fifty miles. It can track something
Speaker 1: as small as a beer can floating through the air.
Speaker 1: We lock it up with a adar. We then alert
Speaker 1: the fire control team, We open up a hatch in
Speaker 1: the ship and the missile pops up vertically. It moves
Speaker 1: that many times the speed of sound. And yes, we
Speaker 1: can knock down incoming missiles. I have done it personally
Speaker 1: on many occasions, and it's something we practice and are
Speaker 1: quite capable of doing. Well. Can the US try a
Speaker 1: surgical strike on North Korea? We could do one, Francine,
Speaker 1: But if we did, Kim Jong un would interpret it
Speaker 1: as an attack on his regime. He would believe that
Speaker 1: we were coming to kill him and his family, and
Speaker 1: I believe he would respond aggressively against South Korea and
Speaker 1: in the process kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions
Speaker 1: of people. That's why even a surgical strike has deep,
Speaker 1: deep consequences and is probably not the option for which
Speaker 1: the president should reach at this point, right And this
Speaker 1: is because of the North Korean artillery installations right along
Speaker 1: it is it is, it is exactly, and they are
Speaker 1: on a here trigger. If you will a dead man switch,
Speaker 1: if signals simply stop coming from Pyunyang, you will see
Speaker 1: those artillery shells starting to land in the whole almost immediately.
Speaker 1: So it is a very dangerous situation for which UH,
Speaker 1: an initial military strike from the United States is not warranted, right. UH.
Speaker 1: One final question is you as you salvage your voice
Speaker 1: here and we thank you for your time today. If
Speaker 1: the President was the parachute into Annapolis one oh one
Speaker 1: and enjoyed eb Ned Potter in teaching the basics of
Speaker 1: our navy history, what's the number one thing President Trump
Speaker 1: needs to know from Ned Potter? He needs to understand
Speaker 1: that so many times in history it's a naval encounter,
Speaker 1: a maritime battle that truly changes the course of history.
Speaker 1: And this goes back to the Battle of Solemnus between
Speaker 1: the Greeks and the Persians, through the Battle of Actium,
Speaker 1: which decided to fade of the Roman Empire, to the
Speaker 1: Battle of Trafalgar, which saves the British Empire and pulls
Speaker 1: forward into our history tom in the Battle of Midway
Speaker 1: in World War two. Big doors swing on small hinges,
Speaker 1: and so often those small hinges are maritime and character.
Speaker 1: James Vidas, thank you so much. He's the author of
Speaker 1: Sea Power, which we've been talking about. Fabulous UH. Sprawl
Speaker 1: across the oceans of the world, including the South China Sea,
Speaker 1: which is where a lot of the tension is right now.
Speaker 1: And of course Tevitas has my book of this summer,
Speaker 1: the Leader's Bookshelf. I can't say enough about it. This
Speaker 1: is fifty maybe sixty books on leadership, and it's not
Speaker 1: what you think it includes. Is the add wible mentioned
Speaker 1: to Kill a mocking Bird? It includes Connecticut Yankee and
Speaker 1: King Arthur Court fancying. That was by an author from
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River from a few years years ago. We
Speaker 1: learn it here as well. Oh we do. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's good to know that it's actually what I gotta
Speaker 1: reread it, and I did that. I reread Talent Two
Speaker 1: Cities a couple of years ago, and that was a
Speaker 1: whole different take than when you were seven. Team we continue.
Speaker 1: Francie Naquat and Tom Keene thrilled you with this on economics, finance, investment,
Speaker 1: on international relations in Brexit. This is Bloomberg. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Subscribe and listen to
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Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at Tom Keene. David Gura is at
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Speaker 1: I'm Bloomberg Radio,