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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Tom Keene with

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Speaker 1: David Gura. Daily we bring you insight from the best

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Speaker 1: of economics, finance, investment, and international relations. Find Bloomberg Surveillance

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Speaker 1: on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Bloomberg dot Com, and of course,

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Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg Where were you to a younger generation

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Speaker 1: in September eleven of two thousand one? To our parents,

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Speaker 1: without question, it was December seven of ninety one. There

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Speaker 1: are other dates, and one of them is in November

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three. He's given us great perspective on our

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Speaker 1: twenty anniversary of Bloomberg Radio on JFK. Here's Bob Moon. Bob,

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Speaker 1: what do you have? Tom? This is it. This is

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Speaker 1: the last batch, and for many of us old enough

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Speaker 1: to remember, this was supposed to be momentous. Historians, journalists,

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Speaker 1: and conspiracy buffs have waited more than half a century

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Speaker 1: for what's finally set to happen tomorrow. Barring any last

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Speaker 1: minute national security concerns from President Trump, thousands of documents

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Speaker 1: relating to the nineteen sixty three assassination of John F.

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Speaker 1: Kennedy will be made public. But here's the thing. It

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Speaker 1: seems most experts don't expect any bombshell revelations, but we

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Speaker 1: will look for new light to be shed on this

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Speaker 1: event that changed the very course of history, that would

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Speaker 1: see her itself into the consciousness of every American old

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Speaker 1: enough to understand the stunning news that day. There is

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Speaker 1: a bulletin from CBS News in Dallas, Texas. Three shots

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Speaker 1: were fired at President Kennaday's motorcade in downtown Dallas. The

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Speaker 1: first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded

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Speaker 1: by this shooting. I didn't hear Walter Cronkites flash that day,

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Speaker 1: but the news still registered with a permanent wallet that

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Speaker 1: stung as much as the dodgeball that had hit me

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Speaker 1: in the aced recess just a few minutes before. It

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Speaker 1: was Mrs Mann who delivered the bullet into my fifth

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Speaker 1: grade class. At that Threese frame moment that I was

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Speaker 1: bending over to take my turn at the drinking fountain

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Speaker 1: on the way back to class, a terrible thing had happened.

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Speaker 1: Our president had been assassinated. I remember thinking that that

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Speaker 1: big word I had never heard before was almost as

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Speaker 1: odd as the confused feeling I was overcome with trying

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Speaker 1: to understand why anyone would want to kill our president.

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Speaker 1: A lifetime later, the confusion lingers, Why would Lee, Harvey Oswald,

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Speaker 1: or the c i A, or the MOB or Cuba,

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Speaker 1: or a power hungry successor, or the military industrial complex

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Speaker 1: or any of the countless others have taken their place

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Speaker 1: on the list of possible conspiracists killed the president. Events

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Speaker 1: conspired to deprive Americans of the answers, so many still

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Speaker 1: yearned for the few initial words we heard from his

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Speaker 1: suspected killer answered, nothing at all. Representation of these police

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Speaker 1: officers have not allowed me to who have anything. I

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Speaker 1: don't know what this is all about. I'm I'm just

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Speaker 1: a patsy. Four words that would launch seemingly a thousand

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theories. Americans would be left with that one dimensional

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Speaker 1: view of a skittish twenty four year old murder suspect

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Speaker 1: captured in the killing of a Dallas cop, claiming to

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Speaker 1: know nothing. No, I have not been charged with that.

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Speaker 1: In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The

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Speaker 1: first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper

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Speaker 1: reports in the hall Uh asked me that question. There

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Speaker 1: would be no further questions, no trial to ferret out

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Speaker 1: the truth. He would never say why. Two months before

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Speaker 1: that day in Dallas, he traveled to Mexico City courting

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Speaker 1: Cuban and Soviet spies. Lee Harvey Oswald would be mortally

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Speaker 1: wounded before live TV cameras just two days after his capture.

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Speaker 1: His NBC's Tom Pettitt described the scene in the basement

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Speaker 1: of Dallas police headquarters. He's been shot. He's been shot shot.

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Speaker 1: The Oswald has been shot. There's a man with a gun.

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Speaker 1: It's absolute panic, absolute panic here in the basement of

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Speaker 1: Dallas play headquarters. And for those of us who watched

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Speaker 1: in utter disbelief, especially this impressionable fifth grader, the only

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Speaker 1: words that reporter on the scene could find served for

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Speaker 1: all of us, it is almost unbelievable. It's almost unbelievable.

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Speaker 1: What could we believe? Even what the camera and police

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Speaker 1: told us about that man who shot the man to

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Speaker 1: man we later learned might not be what it seemed.

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Speaker 1: If bar owner Jack Ruby, with known mob connections, shot

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Speaker 1: Oswald was organized crime trying to shut him up. Now

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Speaker 1: we would debate conspiracies on top of conspiracies, and the

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Speaker 1: questions would fester for decades until the Oliver Stone's movie

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Speaker 1: JFK put a wide range of questions on the big screen.

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Speaker 1: There are hundreds of documents that could help prove this conspiracy,

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Speaker 1: why they're being withheld or burned by the government, and

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Speaker 1: press the government to end its secrecy. Because the government

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Speaker 1: considers your children who might be too disturbed or distressed

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Speaker 1: to face this reality, because you might possibly mention those involved,

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Speaker 1: you cannot see these documents for another seventy five years.

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Speaker 1: It helped prod Congress to pass the President John F.

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Speaker 1: Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of man dating their release

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Speaker 1: twenty five years later with the President's okay. So the

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Speaker 1: decision falls to President Trump, who was recently his last

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Speaker 1: year's campaign, was pushing widely ridiculed claims about the father

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Speaker 1: of his Republican rival Ted Cruz. In a Fox News interview,

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Speaker 1: his father was with Oswald prior to Oswald being uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, is ridiculous. Experts speculate dusting off. These documents

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Speaker 1: may expose whether the CIA bungled any cues on Oswald's

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Speaker 1: plans when AT tracked him in Mexico. There could be

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Speaker 1: revelations about Soviet defectors and even personal notes from First

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Speaker 1: Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, some information could stay obscured, especially involving

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Speaker 1: anyone still alive. And there's already an online debate over

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Speaker 1: whether this is itself a government can spiracy. Perhaps the

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Speaker 1: only thing Americans might ever agree on is what I

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Speaker 1: learned that day in Mrs Mann's fifth grade class. A

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Speaker 1: terrible thing happened. Tom a lot of different memories, it

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Speaker 1: was extraordinary, Bob, you and I look back. I was

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Speaker 1: in sixth grade Dick Schleyer's class in Brighton, New York.

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Speaker 1: And what are we gonna see out of this? What

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Speaker 1: you and I remember is highly Selassie and Charles de

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Speaker 1: gaul two or three days. What are we going to see? Well,

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Speaker 1: that is the question. And you have to remember that

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Speaker 1: that these documents were sort of put away with the

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Speaker 1: label that they were they were inconsequential, that they that

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Speaker 1: they weren't, you know, anything that meant anything to the investigation.

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Speaker 1: And yet maybe in the light of these times, maybe

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Speaker 1: there could be some sort of tidbit in there that

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Speaker 1: will mean something. Now we just don't know. We just

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Speaker 1: don't know. And of course we remember. I remember as

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Speaker 1: a kid the Warrant Commission which went on, and um,

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Speaker 1: I've actually years ago, was forced to attend one or

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Speaker 1: two of these conspiracy meetings where you know, people make

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Speaker 1: a cottage industry out of this. But to your report,

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Speaker 1: the cottage industry is still huge, significant and could am

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Speaker 1: I right, could be recharged by what we see in

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Speaker 1: a few days. It could be. You have to remember

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Speaker 1: that most Americans, according to public opinion polls, do not

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Speaker 1: believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Most Americans a

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Speaker 1: sizable majority. And so that is what people have concluded

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Speaker 1: after all this time of basically questioning authority. It was.

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Speaker 1: It was a time that you know, it's it's a

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Speaker 1: trite phrase, but at time that America lost its innocence.

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Speaker 1: I go back to, uh, you know, talk to David

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Speaker 1: Rubinstein about it, and uh others of the Ford Theater

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Speaker 1: Museum across the street from where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated,

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Speaker 1: and they have their own conspiracy theories. I can think

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Speaker 1: every assassin, every assassination has that. Yeah, you can have

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Speaker 1: a conspiracy theory about just about anything. Yeah, Bob Moon,

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Speaker 1: thank you so much, greatly appreciate that. John Tucker, you

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Speaker 1: were too young in your YouTube remember this, but it

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Speaker 1: really just carries forward and has never gone away. It

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Speaker 1: says so much about the American psychology. When something really bad,

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Speaker 1: almost incomprehensible happens, that you have to come up with

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Speaker 1: some sort of theory that it just it just couldn't.

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Speaker 1: It's almost a human condition. Yeah, yeah, it is the

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Speaker 1: huge Bob Boon, I would suggest it is the human

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Speaker 1: condition to come up with theories of the unimaginable, which

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Speaker 1: you beautifully. It's also worth the trip to the National

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Speaker 1: Archives to see the exhibits there, which are absolutely remarkable

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Speaker 1: and sobering, and it may actually change your view if

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Speaker 1: you are one of those people who ascribes to the

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Speaker 1: conspiracy theory. John, you you really hit on something important.

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Speaker 1: I saw it speculated by one psychologist that what this

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Speaker 1: is America just doesn't want to accept that it lost

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Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy. And if you don't believe it, you

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Speaker 1: don't believe it. There is. Bob Moon, thank you so much.

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Speaker 1: Congratulations on your work celebrating the twenty five years of

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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Those pieces have been just hugely received by

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Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Surveillance audience. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Surveillance Podcast. Subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple podcasts, SoundCloud,

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Speaker 1: or whichever podcast platform you prefer. I'm on Twitter at

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Speaker 1: Tom Keene David Gura. Is that David Gura? Before the podcast,

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Speaker 1: you could always catch us worldwide. I'm Bloomberg Radio