April 28, 2023 • 43 mins
Dambisa Moyo is an economist and board member of Chevron and 3M. She’s also author of the 2018 book Edge of Chaos. In this week’s episode of Merryn Talks Money, Moyo and host Merryn Somerset Webb discuss whether the world has finally slipped off the edge.
Moyo says it feels that way. Most economies were already stagnating before the pandemic struck, she says. Growth was trending downwards, productivity was a problem and it was hard to see how countries could all grow their GDPs at 3% a year.
Now there’s a new and urgent question, she says: what to do with people who won’t have work in an AI dominated economy. It won’t be long before pretty much every country—even the UK—has too many workers, she warns. There are, however, some easy wins Britain can notch, she says. Namely, lowering taxes and loosening regulations. The UK has gotten a bad rap thanks to Brexit and political uncertainty, Moyo says, but that doesn’t mean it can’t take advantage of its intellectual base and prime location.
Sign up to John Stepek's daily newsletter Money Distilled. https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/uk-wealth
And as promised, Baroness Moyo's Maiden Speech.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
John, Hello, Hi man, how's it going.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
That's good feeling, I hope.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Well. I was going to say, I'm worried about a
couple of things. But one of these things is the
way that I'm beginning to accept that I'm just getting poorer.
Are you doing the same? Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Absolutely? I mean the case from the Bank England told
me to do it, so I may as well just
lie down and deal with it.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And what with their record of being absolutely right and
their instructions being something that you should always follow, I've
resolved never to ask for a pay rise again just
to get poorer and poorer and poorer. So it's to
help the Bank of England meet their inflation targets, because
you know, those poor guys, someone's got to help them
out right, So you me all that listeners, never ask
for a pay rise again, because it's not fair on
(00:46):
the men at the Bank of England. Yeah, you asked
for a pay rise, Yes, to write a letter to
the Chancellor? Is that fair? Is that reasonable? Unacceptable? Unacceptable?
So all your people out there just take it on
the chin. Ten percent, how much poorer than you were
last year?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I think exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
That is that I've got a bit of paper in
front of me. Actually, that's six hundred pounds per household
poorer than you were this time last year.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I mean more. There you go. It's not our much.
You can take it in the yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Anyway. So what mister Pill, the chief economist at the
Bank of England, was trying to say, I mean, what
he wasn't saying is, by the way, here at the
Bank of England, we have only one job, and it
is to keep inflation in check. And our job, our
only job, is to make inflation hidden around two percent
a year because that's what we need to oil the
wheels of an economy. We dedicate ourselves to that. Boy,
oh boy, have we really messed it up. Looks like
(01:44):
our models don't work. Really sorry, guys, let me do
everything I possibly can to make that work out for you.
What he's actually saying is general population. This is your
fault because you won't accept where we are and you
keep asking for more money, and that's why we have inflation.
Nothing to do with me, mate, being of there, I
am I'm being a fair John. John is much better
(02:05):
at moral stuff than I am. I'm really sorry, but
I've been afid to thank of England I'd like to
take it all back. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, mister Bill.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You're not being unfair. But the I think the problem
with this stuff is that I'll be actually, there's there's
a whole load of problems. In a really clumsy way.
He's sort of turned around and saying inflation is going
up because and I think the fundamental problem here is
just that he is wrong about what's caused this inflation,
(02:32):
and whether that's deliberate or not is another issue. But
he's basically saying, so gas prices have gone up, so
there's an external shock. The whole of Britain is having
to pay more for energy. That means we're poorer. Therefore,
all that's happening now is is a fight over how
it gets distributed. And therefore, like me and you ask
for more wages, so our employer then turns around and
(02:55):
puts its prices up. So me and you ask for
more wages, our employer puts his prices up. And it's
that kind of They call it past the parcel where
you get an inflationary spiral because nobody wants to take
the hit. But overall, the whole economy is poorer, and
my main I mean like, I've got a fundamental problem
(03:15):
with that, which is that I don't think it's correct.
But there's also the problem of although lots of people
are turning and saying, well, no, you're not being entirely
fair to mister pill as I just did there. The
fact is the Bank at England job is it is
a commons job. You need to be good at communicating
to do it. I mean, it's not you know, this
is not and this is not new when Alan Greenspan
(03:36):
used to go on about this all the time, and
Melvin King talks about it a lot as well. It's like,
you have to be aware that, for God's sake, you
are the second in charge of the Bank at England.
Journal inflationary crisis. Whatever you say on whatever podcast, regardless
of how obscure it is, what country is in, it's
going to get picked up and it's going to be
a lesson too, and it's going to be this is I.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Need to interrupt him. This is not an obscure podcast. Well,
I don't be podcast.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
That podcast is you know, very high profile. But the
podcast on which he was speaking, I mean, I say,
Columbia Law School will make it annoyed at me if
I say that is obscure, but it's certainly not one
I'd heard of. Maybe this is my point. It's like,
if you owe me your mouth and you're at the
Bank England just now, you should be prepared to see
headlines based on that, and therefore you should be thinking, well,
(04:21):
how am I coming across just now? And if you're
coming across as.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
A then be aware of it, yes, and be aware
of the fact that you know, presumably hear old people
on this know that inflation is very much a bad
inflation expectations because it's inflation expectations that drive a wedge demand.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You would think you would think a long stand to
wonder because you know, it took the Central Bank so
long to start reacting to this, and most of them
are just following the FED because that's what they do.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
They start there like, oh, no, jer own pills doing something,
We better do something as well. I'm not sure that
I like the confidence that this lot actually to have
a proper grip or an open mindedness about what's caused this,
you know, I think that actually maybe they genuinely believe
(05:16):
that the vast majority of this is down the world
in Ukraine, even though though all of the inflation happened
before that, and certainly blaming it all in kind of
energy prices going up? Is it kind of points to that,
And I think that's that's the more fundamental issue I've
got with this, that.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
They didn't realize or refused to realize, that it was
the vast level of money printing that's driven a lot
of this.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, yes, you know, I guess what it was. Partly
your fault, partly Eh, that's been kind.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But it does seem, doesn't it, that there's an extraordinary
amount of groupthink across central banking across the world. They're
all a bit to be, all using the same kind
of model. That model doesn't work, but no one gets
around to changing that model. I mean, although I feel
bad talking about central bankers like this, because you and
I know that they're much more highly educated than we are,
and hopefully much cleverer than we are, that much higher IQs,
you know they must be. They're central bankers for a reason, right,
(06:09):
But somehow, but possibly it shows us that however clever
you are, have well educated you are, however numerate you are,
have a good you are at math, something to remember, Rishie,
you can still get caught up in group thing.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Well, I think the problem is you just believe what's
convenient to believe at the time. And we have said
this before, but central banks is that they, like anyone else,
they'll take the path of the least resistance. And for
a long time, you know, it's been quite nice to
be a central banker because all you needed to do
was either print money or cut interest rates, and everyone
(06:42):
was quite happy because those are those are happy things
to do. That's giving out stuff. And now they don't
have any raised interest rates. That is not a fun
thing to do, and it makes you unpopular and everyone's saying, oh,
why the interest rates need to go up?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Now?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
What's the point when putting up mortgage rates to tackle inflation?
And you can say, well, actually, yeah, you know that's
not necessarily an unfair point. But in that case, why
did we lower interest rates so much thinking that that
was going to make the economy better? You know, I
just we like to have it both ways. But you
can't have your cake and eat it, as I believe
(07:19):
Boris Johnson would say, you.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Kind of can if you're a central banker, because you
know what if you've got an RPI link defined benefit pension,
you aren't getting any poorer. There's a small group of
people out there who are not getting any poorer, and
the majority of those people are have well public sector pensions,
because even private sector defined benefit pensions tend to have
(07:45):
an inflation cap of some kind, and lots of them
are capped at sort of three percent. So there'll be
a lot of private sector pensioners who, even though they
have a defined benefit pension. My dream, by the way,
as regular listeners well know my dream, even those people
will be getting poorer. There's a very small group of
people in the UK at the moment who are not
getting poorer.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
It's true, and I mean it's you know, I don't
think people think en off a bit of the pensions
to understand this, even the central banks. But you know
the fact that the Bank England has the vast majority
of its pension find it was invested in index linked points.
You know, it does sort of like think, well, somebody
(08:26):
knew something somewhere along the line.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Someone had a sneaking suspicion those Bank of England models
weren't working quite right. Yeah, clearly it wasn't. Mister pill.
Now listen, I just want to mention one more thing
before before we move on to talking to our rather
brilliant guest today, and that is that, you know, you
and I have been writing for so long about the
cheapness of the UK market and how everyone must pile
(08:49):
in because there's lots of cheap stuff in there. And
we've also been saying and listen up, guys, if you
don't get in there and buy UK equities, somebody else
will and it's going to be private goody, and you
won't like it. And that is really happening. And people
keep talking about how it will happen, but it is happening.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
There are so many bids coming in for UK companies.
It's beginning to get slightly disturbing, isn't it. You know.
I speaking to a fun Energy the other day in
the middle small cap space. He told me that the
biggest risk for him, or the biggest risk that he feels,
is that lots of the companies in his portfolio are
going to get bought out by private equity at a
price that is way do relative for the value you
(09:26):
would expect them to build up two over the coming years.
So there's a genuine risk here to the UK market
that not only are we is our equity market shrinking,
but it's shrinking at the wrong price.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I think that's a really good point. And on the
one hand, you know, I sort of say, in the
short taim as an investor, that's an opportunity because at
the end of the day, if someone else is going
to value this stuff properly, you may as well take
advantage of it. But in the long one, yeah, it's
over your pain in the neck and all the lots
(09:58):
of in the all days, lots of microcap one managers
used to complain about that with Aim and things like that,
where any half decent company would either get taken private
by its founders before it got to its massive growth
stage or get bought out by something else. And it
was always a frustration because Okay, you made a quick
bump on the bid, but in the long run you
(10:20):
then had to find another decent company and doing that
is hard. And the problem is I.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I mean, you've written a book about this, which is
a lots of good ideas and how to resolve this,
but I don't know how we end up getting to
a situation where there is that environment where the public
markets because at the moment they're not competing with the
private markets effectively, especially not at the small cap and
it's better for are in the US.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
You know, the stop market in the US are not
shrinking in the same way. How as this company still
list in the US. You know, and we might argue
about the American market is too expensive and the UK
market is too cheap, etc. Etc. But nonetheless, if you're
going to list, why would you do it in the
UK not in the US. List in the US you
can double evaluation and as people keep telling me, your
(11:12):
CEO can also get properly paid. If you're the CEO
of a tech company in the UK and you're thinking, well,
I want a list, you've got two choices. You can
go list in the US, get a significantly higher premium,
and then pay yourself four or five times what you
would in the UK and not be subject to all
the sort of rules about having to stay on the
board for nine years and then leave and all this
kind of thing worries about founder control, all of which
(11:35):
you have in the UK. Or you can go to
the US and have none of that worry. An a
whole power more money, So what do you do. Of
course you go to the US. So there's a lot
of work to be done in the UK to try
and make our our market attractive again. I think both
of us will write columns on that. What do you think.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I think that's good because I mean, I agree, I
can see why it's heartening and I can see why people.
You know, of course you would go to the US
if you had the chiants so and it's much much
cheesier tho than at Wine Sports. But at the same time,
other certain things about the US that we really don't
want to follow on Lake found us having all of
the vote and shares regardless of home watching, the actual
(12:10):
capital they own, and things like that. So it's a
really interesting topic. I think it's one that's it's will
run and join and join.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Well, it may run and run and run, but we
can't let it run too long because without deep liquid
and active public markets shoulder democracy dies and it takes
a little bit of democratic capitalism with it. So we
don't want this run to run and run. We wanted
to run just for a little while and then be
sorted out. Welcome to Marin Talks Money. The podcasting it
(12:52):
is people who know the markets explain the markets. I'm
there in some set web this week the conversation with Baroness,
Dandees and Moyer. Now Dan Lisa is extremely busy, but
a few of the things that she does. She's a
global economist, she speaks all over the place. She's an author.
She's written a couple of fascinating books that I assist
you go and buy and read. She says on a
couple of boards of listed companies, including three and Chevron
and Condo. Now and she says on the investment committee
(13:15):
at Oxford University, so super interesting, Denbi, So thank you
so much for joining us today. I hugely appreciate it.
Thank you, good to see you. You and I we've
talked quite a lot before, and I think the last
time we talked properly was just after your twenty eighteen book,
Edge of KOs came out. Yes, that sounds right. Yeah,
And I have this feeling looking around us now that
(13:36):
we're no longer on the edge anymore. We've slightly slipped
off the edge everything. You know, since we last talked,
so many things have changed, the financial world has changed,
the political world has changed. The peace dividend that we
lived with so long, for so long has gone. Globalization
has slightly turned around. It feels like deglobalization is is
(13:57):
well underway. So so much has changed. And when we
look at that reflected in our oath, so I forgot
to mention the pandemic that was that as well. And
we see that reflected in it in our growth rates.
And you know, Stee, I believe, and I think you
believe as well, that economic growth is the most important
thing we should strive for because everything else comes from
that in the end. But yet we're not really seeing it. Oh,
(14:19):
everything around us is fairly sluggish, and it's hard to
see how that can change. And in the UK and
in particular, things feel just a little bit more sluggish
than in other places. Is that right?
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Well, I think the most important thing is to put
these things in context. You're right, You and I spoke
some time ago, and since then, we've had inflation come back,
we've had a war, we've had a pandemic, and you know,
we continue to grapple with a whole list of other
geopolitical challenges that you've talked about, rise of China, deglobalization,
(14:53):
et cetera. But putting this in context, Even before the
pandemic hit in earnest in twenty twenty, many economists, policy makers,
academicians were already worried about the structural growth decline. That's
to say that we were worried that growth was trending
downwards again before the pandemic, and organizations as varied as
(15:18):
the World Bank and the Congressional Budget Office in the
United States, as well as many economists in the UK
and elsewhere, were worried that actually the engines of growth
had started to stall in the post financial crisis era,
but even before the pandemic, and in that sense, the
pandemic was really an accelerant to a lot of the
(15:40):
problems that were already foreseen. You know, we were worries
about debt, the sheer amount of debt that the global
economy was carrying. Obviously that's become even worse the post
the pandemic. Worries about demographs, you know, in terms of
the population growth around the world. That has also become
(16:00):
rather problematic, with disordered migration that we continue to see
not just in places like the United States but also
very much so in the UK. We were also worried
about things like the advent of technology, what that was
going to do to jobs. Again, with AI, we're now
in a world where that is becoming much more of
(16:22):
a realistic situation. So I think, Maren, just to maybe
to put this into one sentence, the great worry we
have and we continue to have.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And just in the last couple.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Of weeks, the World Bank and IMF have had their
Spring meetings and they have published reports saying that the
growth trends over the next ten years will continue to
go downwards. What do we mean by downwards? And this
is my one sentence, that growth is going to be
below that magic three percent number. We need to be
growing by three percent per year in order to double
(16:56):
per capita incomes in a generation. But developed and developing
countries all over the world are way below that number
and struggling to attain that number. Perhaps one last thing
before I send it back to you, you know, I
think a motivating framework not only in identifying where the
problems lie for growth, but also thinking about how do
(17:21):
we think about solutions. I think is going back to
basics and appreciating that a lot of the modeling that's
been done around growth, certainly over the past century, has
identified three key drivers of growth, which are capital, how
much money you have, labor, the quality and the quantity
(17:44):
of your workforce, and the third item being productivity, which
has always been a catch all for everything from rule
of law issues around regulation and taxes, which I know
will come to in a moment, but really that is
the framework from which we should identify the problems in
the UK and around the world and then start to
think about solutions.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Well, one of the main things to look at here
is a supply of labor, isn't it. And we can
get onto productivity in a minute. But we've been through
this lengthy period pretty much since China was ascended to
the WTO and became a major part of the global economy.
We've lived in a world, and particularly in the UK
because we our mass immigration from Eastern Europe, but we've
been able to rely on a steady and seemingly infinite
(18:27):
supply of global labor to take on every job you
might think of, and that is definitely reversing. We see
it in every major economy. We see people talking about
a shortage of labor, and that's partly because of a
falling supply of people overall, but also a falling supply
of people prepared to work.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
That is correct, but also related to that, it's not
just people's wish to work, but ability to work. If
you recall, you and I are now of a certain age,
we'll remember the era of Terry Leehy and others who
were talking about need snow education, employment or training. There
was massive discussion around For those of you who weren't around.
(19:06):
I believe Terrany was at Tesco, if I'm not mistaken,
but Jewett Rose with that was at Marks and Spencer
back in those days, and they at that time were
talking about a skill shortage. There was a massive mismatch
back then. You know, Frankly is serving in the boardrooms
in which I serve. I think that the sort of
(19:26):
bigger discussion now is, you know, in the here and now,
you're right, there's a skill shortage, but there's a bigger
question coming very quickly, which is what are we going
to do with the labor that will exist educated and uneducated,
or I should say skilled and unskilled in a world
where it seems we're going to need less labor. Yeah,
(19:47):
and this is what I'm hinting at the AI Revolution,
which by most calibrations, people who like Elon muscor Bill Gates,
who are very steeped in the technology debate, is going
to be as at least as transformational as the Internet,
and these AI models are really much less human, you know,
(20:10):
in terms of labor required, and we have to start
thinking it from a policy framework, but from a business framework,
also starting to think about what happens to that labor
because it may be a shortage in the here and now,
but I think there's a bigger societal question that's emerging
as we move away from this sort of dependent on
labor markets.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
That's interesting. This is the kind of question that comes
up every generation. Also, doesn't it we're making these huge
technological leaps forward, what's going to happen to our labor?
But even though we always ask this question, the answer
always provides itself in the sense that jobs exist that
you and I would never have imagined could have existed
twenty thirty years ago, when we were being told by
(20:51):
our school career service that if we like to read books,
we should be lib librarians, remember that, or gardeners or
whatever it was. Those career services now lists of jobs
that simply didn't exist and we had no concept could exist.
Twenty years ago. I mean, there are now universities in
the UK dedicated almost entirely to gaming, for example. This
is entirely new. So when I look at this kind
(21:13):
of thing, I wonder if we should not worry about
the employment side of it, because in a way there's
a you know, people make their own jobs somehow. But
what we should think about is the productivity side of it.
In that sense, it could be our great savior. The
thing that has been our big problem, particularly in the UK,
where we've got used to having low wage people do
all the jobs that may be elsewhere they may they
(21:34):
may be using more machinery, robotics, etc. For productivity has
been very low. And if AI does all the things
that it is promised to do, our productivity problem could
just go away.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Well, so you know, you've said a number of things.
I'm less sanguine than you are because I do think
some of the AI modeling that I'm seeing not just
in sort of shall we call it lower skilled jobs,
but it really the ability to disrupt business models, even
for established corporations which are probably going to need less capital.
(22:05):
You know, one person with a machine will be able
to do the work of forty thousand sort of the view.
You know, I think that certainly we can go back
and forth and debate, but you know, we should not
lose sight of the facts that what has bailed us
out in the historical context that you're just alluding to
was that people did have skills. And what is going
(22:27):
to be demanded of us now as labor in the
future is much more of a skilled workforce in science
and technology ability to run these models, and that's where
I think that risk becomes much more pronounced than in
the past. But to your point of productivity, and I
think again, just to frame it for the listeners here,
(22:49):
I mentioned that growth is a function of capital, labor,
and productivity. Productivity explains about sixty percent of why one
country grows and another one doesn't. So crucially important that
we have productivity, and it's essentially how we're able to
transform the capital and labor into growth. How do we
convert this into growth? And this is one of the
big worries because we've lived in a technological era for
(23:12):
twenty years and there was a lot of expectation that
living in a world of computers and the PC and
iPhone was going to drive greater productivity. But you and
I both know that actually productivity has declined and continues
to be very challenged in both developed and developing countries.
And so you're right that I think a lot of
(23:34):
us are hopefully quite optimistic about productivity gains being an
offset to job losses in an ai world. But for now,
we have not seen those productivity gains, even with more
nascent types of technology over the last twenty years. So
I think it would be somewhat full hardy for policymakers
to sit back and say, oh, well, we think technology
(23:54):
is going to bail us out. That has not been
the case, And if the past is a predictor of
the future, we could end up with a situation where
we're losing a lot of jobs, which again is heavily
forecasted from the World Economic Forum and others, even though
there are potential net gains to your point earlier, but
we might not just see a loss in jobs. We
might also see not the productivity gains to offset the
(24:18):
growth that we need.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Can we connect this failure of productivity levels to improve
and super low interest rates Over the last twenty years,
we've had this environment where we've developed extraordinary technologies that
we look at and we think could be used to
increase productivity, but perhaps because of the availability of easy
money and the lack of stress and pressure that comes
(24:40):
from correctly priced money, so interest rates at reasonable levels,
we've used that technology badly. So we've done all sorts
of things that add nothing. I give you TikTok dancing nurses,
and the end is looking at cat pictures, etc. Etc.
We've used that technology, but we've used it in ways
that don't bring us anything as a society. But with
(25:00):
interest rates rising and that kind of non useful economic
activity possibly no longer being possible, might we see a shift?
Might rising interest rates be the thing that bring us
the productivity we've been after? And we're already seeing, for example,
business failures at four year high as in the UK,
which is terrible in one way and slightly encouraging in
(25:22):
another in that we do need non productive businesses to disappear.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Yeah, it looks I think you're absolutely right that being
in a world where we actually have interest rates at
the correct equilibrium rate will definitely wash out some of
the bad capital allocation decisions that we have seen. But
I think it's also quite a risky proposition. First of all,
(25:47):
the reason rates were low were in response to market dislocations.
We had a financial crisis, and then we've had a pandemic,
and that's being remedied right now. But I think there
are more fundamental questions about where we'll it'll be allocated
in a high interest rates environment, and at this stage
it's not clear to me that that will necessarily lead
(26:08):
to higher productivity gains.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I would like it to, and as.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
You rightly pointed out earlier, technology has bailed us out somewhat,
as have labor markets, not just China coming into the
World Trade Organization and bringing in all that into the
global market, but also the convergence of emerging market countries.
But add to that, if you go back into World
War two era, certainly women coming into the workforce was
(26:32):
also a massive boost for growth because we started to
bring in not just more workers, but also more demand
for products. So look, there are lots of moving parts here.
I think that you've picked on one plausible explanation for
productivity declines, which is the low interest rate environment, But
I could list out three or four other ones. I've
(26:53):
published papers on this, and I don't think we actually
yet know with specificity in terms of balancing which one
has the most influence. What exactly the problem is with
technology or with the productivity not responding to technology as
much as we would have liked to see.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Okay, let's talk about the UK a little. And there's
lots to talk about the UK being growing more slowly
than elsewhere and about us not getting back to our
pre pandemic levels at the same speed in other countries.
Is that actually true? And if it is, what do
you think is driving it?
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Let me just start by saying that, you know, I
think that there's a lot of structure problems that are
true across the board. So I already mentioned that many countries,
developed and developing countries have been dealing with the issue
of structural declinents and growth. Really, if I take a
step back and I think, what is it in the
UK that makes it more unique or it puts it
(27:49):
in a unique position to be grappling with these with
the post pandemic period in a way that's different.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
From other countries. I think there are a handful of things.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
So we could sit here and say COVID was felt
by all, the current war implications are being felt by
all many countries have debt to GDP ratios that are
incredibly high, sometimes even higher than the UK. And you
could also argue that everybody's facing inflation. But what makes
the UK situation unique and this is not going to
(28:20):
be a surprise, but certainly, in one word, it would
be uncertainty. Where's that uncertainty emerged from Brexit? Absolutely, And
I should just be clear that I although I spent
quite a considerable time writing articles before twenty sixteen saying
that we should remain, you know, that becomes immaterial when the.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Decision was made.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
We ought to have gone headlong into making sure and
by we I think society but also policymakers as well
as business leaders.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
We should have gone.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Headlong into making the country as successful as possible in
this new regime, and I think we have not done
that for a whole host of reasons. There's also not
just uncertainty from Brexit. There's also been enormous uncertainty from
the political environment, partly because of response to the pandemic
and war and inflation that I touched on earlier, but
also a uniquely political volatility. You know, obviously most manifestly
(29:18):
what we saw last year with three prime ministers in
just a several months and these what is the consequence
of uncertainty of Brexit, end of the political environment, absolutely
less investment And you know, maybe as a finer point,
going back to something we touched on earlier, which is deglobalization,
(29:38):
the Brexit move was in a sense de globalization, and
I think what has happened if you look at the data,
is that we have not been able to yet fully
capture the eighty percent replacement with free trade agreements that
we had thought we would have by now. I was
a partner in parcel with the in the the IT
(30:00):
Department of Trade, International Trade. So I'm very much aware
that in particular, just to again put a finer point
on it, we've not yet done a deal with the
United States, and that alone is about twenty percent of trade.
I know we're all working furiously to get that done.
But just as a specific example of bringing the uncertainty
(30:22):
that came from Brexit, the uncertainty that's come from the
political volatility, we have not yet been able to sort
of fill in the gaps both in terms of trade
and investment, but also in the mind's eye of investors.
We've not yet convinced them that the UK is a
place where you can generate real returns above the cost
(30:43):
of capital.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, a lot of this is people looking in and going, well,
I'm not one hundred percent convinced yet. Is when you
ask international investors, it's hard for them to put their
finger on exactly what it is. They just know that
it's not quite the same and they feel uncertain about it.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Correct and look, there's a lot more regulatory morass that
needs to be dealt with. Okay, we see now out
of the EU. Great, Well, what's the new regime for
everything from the green economy but also the financial services economy.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
How do we think about rebuilding.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
The UK to be purpose built in an environment where
the new rules and the new landscape is not yet clear?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Do you expect and just wank briefly back to the
global economy and deglobalization. I'm assuming that that's something that
you expect to continue with the rise of protectionism globally
and ongoing. Well, you can call it a cold war
or trade war, whatever you like, but that's not going
away at it. It's not.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
It really isn't. And I mean I think if anything,
it's accelerating. You know after Jenney Yellen, the Treasury Section
in the United States, it made a statement that seemed
to be taking the air out of the stress between
China and the US. See there's a bigger statement coming
from the US saying that South Korea should not sell
microchips to China. I mean, these are very very aggressive moves,
(32:04):
both by China and the United States. I know because
I spend a lot of time in investing space that
there are many American investors who have received letters from
the government saying we do not want you to invest
in China. This is true for endowments and other pools
of capital.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
I don't think this is just about trade, It's about
capital flows.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
I think the immigration flows will start to see a
lot more of people leaving these different regions. Seen I
was just in Singapore, a lot of much more aggressive
pro Singapore anti I'm using shorthand, anti immigrant, anti expat
type moves. I think we're going to continue to see
(32:47):
it in the breakdown of multilateralism. These are the big
pillars trade, capital, immigration, technology, multilaterals, and these are the
big pillars of globalization, and all of them are certainly
under threat.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Are there positives in there for the sectors, for example,
of the UK economy that were the big losers from globalization,
So our industrial sector for example, and you know the
areas of the Midlands, et cetera that used to be very,
very globally active and haven't been as a result of
long term globalization. Is there a possibility that we might
see a reindustrialization of the heartlands of the UK, for example.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
So I think the the that's a complicated question for
two reasons. The world has moved on. So when we
say a rejuvenation and industrial heartland, even if they talk
about places like the United States, you know, the world
is no longer an industrial lead economy in the way
that it was twenty or forty years ago when globalization
(33:46):
really took off. So the one piece of it is
do we even want.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
To go back to that?
Speaker 4 (33:51):
Really really the way the world economy is shaped, And
you're just to give you some statistics. You know, we
now many developed economy have about eighty percent of the
economy and services and eighteen percent twenty percent in manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
But that that has basically flipped.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
If you went back in history, you had sixty percent
of people working in agriculture and working in manufacturing, but
that's been declining precipitously over the last generation. So point
one is when we say we want to reindustrialize, what
are we really talking about, especially within a technology space.
But the other point is that we've lost a lot
(34:30):
of these skills.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You know.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
One of the things that has been talked about quite
a lot is that, you know, in the UK, with
Brexit happening, we had to go back to the drawing
board and think about negotiation, thinking about free on board
and imports and exports and how do you calculate all
this stuff that was It's a lost skill, you know,
(34:52):
it's we've had forty fifty years when we didn't have
to think about having these unique contracts in that sort
of way that we we had many many years ago
when we were a separate country and not part of
the sort of EU construct, a free trade construct. And
so I think these are two questions. Do we want
(35:12):
to go back to what does that mean? Are we
going to be back to pick and shovel, you know,
to use shorthand? But second, secondarily, what do we do
with the missed skills we've.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Had forty years?
Speaker 4 (35:23):
People have not been investing in that skill we've been
doing something else, and so I don't think it's as
easy as we might like it to be. And reskilling
and retraining is with an older population, as you and
I both know, is a very challenging thing, no matter
how much we'd like.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
To see it. I think I could reskill if I
really try. Yeah, not quite sure as what, but I
could give it a go. Well, let's talk a bit
about then, what can the UK do? I mean, here
we are and there's a slightly difficult global situation. We
have our own domestic problems. Our economy is grotesquely unbalanced,
we have this insane level of debt. How can we
(35:59):
how can we build a better future? You say, rebuilding
Britain or making Britain from the beginning? Again? What can
we do? What is politically and economically plausible as opposed
to what would you and I really like, which I
suspect it is probably not politically or economically plausible. What
can we actually do here to improve things and to
give the UK the growth it needs? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (36:19):
So I think you know, Rather than give you a
laundry list of ten things which I could do, I'm
going to point to my maiden speech in the House
of Lords and say, look, there are two things that
we should be thinking as a frame of mind, which
is to say, you're not going to grow if you
have high taxes and high regulation. Impossible. You have to
be one or the other in these types of environments. Now,
(36:42):
I you know, it's the proverbial teaching policymakers to suck eggs.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
They know that.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
And I think there is a lot of effort and
people are leaning in to recalibrate the tax regime and
recalibrate the regulatory regime. But we are not going to
be competitive if we have taxes which we do and
high regulation, which we do. And so just in terms
of really low hanging fruit, go and just do these
two things. Focus on these two things. That's what I
(37:10):
would do. Everything else in terms of investment in infrastructure
and thinking about new sectors and how Britain can lead
in the bio and technological spheres, all that stuff is fantastic,
and we want to see all those sorts of things
thinking more again, less about the industrial economy of the past,
(37:30):
but thinking about the technological economies of the future. That's
all wonderful, but before you get any even to that place,
people need to feel like they can invest in any economy,
they can feel like there's a lot of visibility and
in policy making, it's not going to be time inconsistent
where they're putting a policy today and five years later
they decide to unwind it and change it. You know,
(37:53):
those types of things are very unattractive, especially in a
world which is deglobalizing and deglobalizing and where the rules
are much more attractive elsewhere. Just take the green economy.
The United States, not just their chip announcement but also
the announcement around inflation reduction, really has made many European
(38:15):
countries sit up and say, why are we investing in Europe?
We should be investing in the United States. I mean,
that is not the sort of thing we should just
sort of navel gaze at. I mean, where is the
response And if you look at the responses, they've been
pretty weak thus far, not just from the UK but
across Europe as well. And so it's those kind of
things that are not going to get anywhere. People always
(38:38):
feel that the first thing they think about when they
think about investing in the UK or Europe is tax
and regulation. Maybe just one last finer point there and
if I may. The other thing is as we think
about these complex things like the green economy. As a
specific example, I think Europeans and I'm afraid I'm going
to put ourselves as Brits in there.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
We tend to be very rules based.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
This is the rule, this is what everybody has to
abide by. The US tends to be much more principles based,
and I think balance for businesses understanding we want to
get to net zero without these being hard and fast
rules gives many more degrees of freedom to think about
innovating to those to those goals as opposed to, you know, risk.
(39:24):
When you have these rules, you start to risk mitigate
so aggressively, and I think that means that you get
less innovation, less job opportunity. I was just looking at
a statistic. In the past decade, the US has doubled.
It's the size of its market caap as doubled as
compared to Europe. And a lot of that is because
(39:45):
there's a lot of innovation. People are interested in all
sectors biotech. It's not just in in cars, it's also
in in in food production, it's in pharmaceuticals. All that
type of motivating the business community to work hand in
hand with government and the third sector in trying to
(40:06):
find solutions.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
I think leads much.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Better for an economy than risk mitigating and thinking about
downside risks only.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
It's interesting, though, isn't it, Because I think it'd be
hard pressed to find very many people who disagree that
we should do something about a sort of fairly overwhelming
regulatory burden and about our tax burden. But every time
we talk about cutting any taxes, everyone gets hysterical about
the debt and about our deficit, etc. And say, well,
you know, we have to deal with that before we
can cut taxes. So it's a little bit chicken and egg,
isn't it. And it's the same with the regulations. Yeah,
(40:37):
and look, let's see what happens.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
I mean, we're definitely in a high tax environment with
that argument that you've just laid out. We need to
pay our obligations and we need to be in more
balanced budgets, et cetera. That's reasonable, for sure, but there
is absolutely an expectation that at some point before too long,
we need to get ahead of this. Otherwise, what we're
missing out on is people are still making capital a
(41:00):
location decisions. They are still investing, and they're not going
to sit around and wait for the UK to decide
when it's going to cut its taxes. If it doesn't
happen relatively soon, people will decide to invest in other
countries and other regions and we are seeing some of
that already.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah. Interesting, Can I just ask you to finish up?
Dunbee said by saying that this is it might not
be easy, but let's give it a go anyway. But
it's saying the most optimistic thing you can think of
about the UK economy. What are all big positives? Location?
Speaker 4 (41:30):
For one, I mean, really to this central location. It
absolutely has a great intellectual base, which for the AI
the sort of future world scenarios and technology and biotech
and pharma, et cetera, which are touched on a moment ago.
We've got a better hand than many other countries. I mean,
(41:51):
I think the whole leap frogging that we saw from
emerging markets, that's a big at risk because they don't
have the ability to leap frog because of the technological
and sort of education background.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
We have that in the UK and that needs to
be fostered.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
I do also think that there's a lot of scope
to do much more in terms of orderly migration. Really,
there's a lot of reasons people want to live in
the UK, why they want to invest in the UK,
but a lot of that has to come from understanding
and having proper plans around orderly migration and thinking much
more strategically, I think, then reactionary in an interreactionary way,
(42:30):
which you know, for a whole host of reasons we've
ended up in that situation.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Okay, thank you. So the future can be very, very bright.
We just have to grab the opportunities that we've already
got sitting waiting to be taken absolutely. Dunbiesa, thank you
very much, and I'm going to put in the podcast
notes the link to your maiden speech, which I've listened
to and I think everybody else should as well, so
that will be there, and listeners please do click on
that and listen to it because you get more of
(42:55):
Dunlie's ideas there. Thank you, Denbiesa, thank you so much
for joining us usually it and everybody else, thank you
for listening to this week's Maren Talks Money. We'll be
back next week. In the meantime. If you like our show,
rate it, review it, and subscribe to it wherever you
listen to your podcasts, and do make sure that those
reviews are positive, because the better the reviews, the more
listeners we get, and the more likely you are to
(43:16):
have people of Danbysa's Calibra on my podcast rate positively.
This episode was hosted by me Meren Somerset Well. It
was produced by SOMEERSADI additional editing by Blake Naples and
special thanks of course to danby Simayo and to John Steppik,
and of course our weekly reminder to sign up to
John's daily newsletter, Money Distilled. The link is in the
show notes and as I say every week, you won't
(43:38):
regret it. It's very, very good
John, Hello, Hi man, how's it going.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
That's good feeling, I hope.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Well. I was going to say, I'm worried about a
couple of things. But one of these things is the
way that I'm beginning to accept that I'm just getting poorer.
Are you doing the same? Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Absolutely? I mean the case from the Bank England told
me to do it, so I may as well just
lie down and deal with it.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
And what with their record of being absolutely right and
their instructions being something that you should always follow, I've
resolved never to ask for a pay rise again just
to get poorer and poorer and poorer. So it's to
help the Bank of England meet their inflation targets, because
you know, those poor guys, someone's got to help them
out right, So you me all that listeners, never ask
for a pay rise again, because it's not fair on
(00:46):
the men at the Bank of England. Yeah, you asked
for a pay rise, Yes, to write a letter to
the Chancellor? Is that fair? Is that reasonable? Unacceptable? Unacceptable?
So all your people out there just take it on
the chin. Ten percent, how much poorer than you were
last year?
Speaker 2 (01:07):
I think exactly.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
That is that I've got a bit of paper in
front of me. Actually, that's six hundred pounds per household
poorer than you were this time last year.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
I mean more. There you go. It's not our much.
You can take it in the yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Anyway. So what mister Pill, the chief economist at the
Bank of England, was trying to say, I mean, what
he wasn't saying is, by the way, here at the
Bank of England, we have only one job, and it
is to keep inflation in check. And our job, our
only job, is to make inflation hidden around two percent
a year because that's what we need to oil the
wheels of an economy. We dedicate ourselves to that. Boy,
oh boy, have we really messed it up. Looks like
(01:44):
our models don't work. Really sorry, guys, let me do
everything I possibly can to make that work out for you.
What he's actually saying is general population. This is your
fault because you won't accept where we are and you
keep asking for more money, and that's why we have inflation.
Nothing to do with me, mate, being of there, I
am I'm being a fair John. John is much better
(02:05):
at moral stuff than I am. I'm really sorry, but
I've been afid to thank of England I'd like to
take it all back. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry, mister Bill.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
You're not being unfair. But the I think the problem
with this stuff is that I'll be actually, there's there's
a whole load of problems. In a really clumsy way.
He's sort of turned around and saying inflation is going
up because and I think the fundamental problem here is
just that he is wrong about what's caused this inflation,
(02:32):
and whether that's deliberate or not is another issue. But
he's basically saying, so gas prices have gone up, so
there's an external shock. The whole of Britain is having
to pay more for energy. That means we're poorer. Therefore,
all that's happening now is is a fight over how
it gets distributed. And therefore, like me and you ask
for more wages, so our employer then turns around and
(02:55):
puts its prices up. So me and you ask for
more wages, our employer puts his prices up. And it's
that kind of They call it past the parcel where
you get an inflationary spiral because nobody wants to take
the hit. But overall, the whole economy is poorer, and
my main I mean like, I've got a fundamental problem
(03:15):
with that, which is that I don't think it's correct.
But there's also the problem of although lots of people
are turning and saying, well, no, you're not being entirely
fair to mister pill as I just did there. The
fact is the Bank at England job is it is
a commons job. You need to be good at communicating
to do it. I mean, it's not you know, this
is not and this is not new when Alan Greenspan
(03:36):
used to go on about this all the time, and
Melvin King talks about it a lot as well. It's like,
you have to be aware that, for God's sake, you
are the second in charge of the Bank at England.
Journal inflationary crisis. Whatever you say on whatever podcast, regardless
of how obscure it is, what country is in, it's
going to get picked up and it's going to be
a lesson too, and it's going to be this is I.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Need to interrupt him. This is not an obscure podcast. Well,
I don't be podcast.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
That podcast is you know, very high profile. But the
podcast on which he was speaking, I mean, I say,
Columbia Law School will make it annoyed at me if
I say that is obscure, but it's certainly not one
I'd heard of. Maybe this is my point. It's like,
if you owe me your mouth and you're at the
Bank England just now, you should be prepared to see
headlines based on that, and therefore you should be thinking, well,
(04:21):
how am I coming across just now? And if you're
coming across as.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
A then be aware of it, yes, and be aware
of the fact that you know, presumably hear old people
on this know that inflation is very much a bad
inflation expectations because it's inflation expectations that drive a wedge demand.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You would think you would think a long stand to
wonder because you know, it took the Central Bank so
long to start reacting to this, and most of them
are just following the FED because that's what they do.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
You know.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
They start there like, oh, no, jer own pills doing something,
We better do something as well. I'm not sure that
I like the confidence that this lot actually to have
a proper grip or an open mindedness about what's caused this,
you know, I think that actually maybe they genuinely believe
(05:16):
that the vast majority of this is down the world
in Ukraine, even though though all of the inflation happened
before that, and certainly blaming it all in kind of
energy prices going up? Is it kind of points to that,
And I think that's that's the more fundamental issue I've
got with this, that.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
They didn't realize or refused to realize, that it was
the vast level of money printing that's driven a lot
of this.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, yes, you know, I guess what it was. Partly
your fault, partly Eh, that's been kind.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
But it does seem, doesn't it, that there's an extraordinary
amount of groupthink across central banking across the world. They're
all a bit to be, all using the same kind
of model. That model doesn't work, but no one gets
around to changing that model. I mean, although I feel
bad talking about central bankers like this, because you and
I know that they're much more highly educated than we are,
and hopefully much cleverer than we are, that much higher IQs,
you know they must be. They're central bankers for a reason, right,
(06:09):
But somehow, but possibly it shows us that however clever
you are, have well educated you are, however numerate you are,
have a good you are at math, something to remember, Rishie,
you can still get caught up in group thing.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Well, I think the problem is you just believe what's
convenient to believe at the time. And we have said
this before, but central banks is that they, like anyone else,
they'll take the path of the least resistance. And for
a long time, you know, it's been quite nice to
be a central banker because all you needed to do
was either print money or cut interest rates, and everyone
(06:42):
was quite happy because those are those are happy things
to do. That's giving out stuff. And now they don't
have any raised interest rates. That is not a fun
thing to do, and it makes you unpopular and everyone's saying, oh,
why the interest rates need to go up?
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Now?
Speaker 2 (06:59):
What's the point when putting up mortgage rates to tackle inflation?
And you can say, well, actually, yeah, you know that's
not necessarily an unfair point. But in that case, why
did we lower interest rates so much thinking that that
was going to make the economy better? You know, I
just we like to have it both ways. But you
can't have your cake and eat it, as I believe
(07:19):
Boris Johnson would say, you.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Kind of can if you're a central banker, because you
know what if you've got an RPI link defined benefit pension,
you aren't getting any poorer. There's a small group of
people out there who are not getting any poorer, and
the majority of those people are have well public sector pensions,
because even private sector defined benefit pensions tend to have
(07:45):
an inflation cap of some kind, and lots of them
are capped at sort of three percent. So there'll be
a lot of private sector pensioners who, even though they
have a defined benefit pension. My dream, by the way,
as regular listeners well know my dream, even those people
will be getting poorer. There's a very small group of
people in the UK at the moment who are not
getting poorer.
Speaker 2 (08:05):
It's true, and I mean it's you know, I don't
think people think en off a bit of the pensions
to understand this, even the central banks. But you know
the fact that the Bank England has the vast majority
of its pension find it was invested in index linked points.
You know, it does sort of like think, well, somebody
(08:26):
knew something somewhere along the line.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Someone had a sneaking suspicion those Bank of England models
weren't working quite right. Yeah, clearly it wasn't. Mister pill.
Now listen, I just want to mention one more thing
before before we move on to talking to our rather
brilliant guest today, and that is that, you know, you
and I have been writing for so long about the
cheapness of the UK market and how everyone must pile
(08:49):
in because there's lots of cheap stuff in there. And
we've also been saying and listen up, guys, if you
don't get in there and buy UK equities, somebody else
will and it's going to be private goody, and you
won't like it. And that is really happening. And people
keep talking about how it will happen, but it is happening.
Speaker 3 (09:06):
You know.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
There are so many bids coming in for UK companies.
It's beginning to get slightly disturbing, isn't it. You know.
I speaking to a fun Energy the other day in
the middle small cap space. He told me that the
biggest risk for him, or the biggest risk that he feels,
is that lots of the companies in his portfolio are
going to get bought out by private equity at a
price that is way do relative for the value you
(09:26):
would expect them to build up two over the coming years.
So there's a genuine risk here to the UK market
that not only are we is our equity market shrinking,
but it's shrinking at the wrong price.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I think that's a really good point. And on the
one hand, you know, I sort of say, in the
short taim as an investor, that's an opportunity because at
the end of the day, if someone else is going
to value this stuff properly, you may as well take
advantage of it. But in the long one, yeah, it's
over your pain in the neck and all the lots
(09:58):
of in the all days, lots of microcap one managers
used to complain about that with Aim and things like that,
where any half decent company would either get taken private
by its founders before it got to its massive growth
stage or get bought out by something else. And it
was always a frustration because Okay, you made a quick
bump on the bid, but in the long run you
(10:20):
then had to find another decent company and doing that
is hard. And the problem is I.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
Don't know.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
I mean, you've written a book about this, which is
a lots of good ideas and how to resolve this,
but I don't know how we end up getting to
a situation where there is that environment where the public
markets because at the moment they're not competing with the
private markets effectively, especially not at the small cap and
it's better for are in the US.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
You know, the stop market in the US are not
shrinking in the same way. How as this company still
list in the US. You know, and we might argue
about the American market is too expensive and the UK
market is too cheap, etc. Etc. But nonetheless, if you're
going to list, why would you do it in the
UK not in the US. List in the US you
can double evaluation and as people keep telling me, your
(11:12):
CEO can also get properly paid. If you're the CEO
of a tech company in the UK and you're thinking, well,
I want a list, you've got two choices. You can
go list in the US, get a significantly higher premium,
and then pay yourself four or five times what you
would in the UK and not be subject to all
the sort of rules about having to stay on the
board for nine years and then leave and all this
kind of thing worries about founder control, all of which
(11:35):
you have in the UK. Or you can go to
the US and have none of that worry. An a
whole power more money, So what do you do. Of
course you go to the US. So there's a lot
of work to be done in the UK to try
and make our our market attractive again. I think both
of us will write columns on that. What do you think.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
I think that's good because I mean, I agree, I
can see why it's heartening and I can see why people.
You know, of course you would go to the US
if you had the chiants so and it's much much
cheesier tho than at Wine Sports. But at the same time,
other certain things about the US that we really don't
want to follow on Lake found us having all of
the vote and shares regardless of home watching, the actual
(12:10):
capital they own, and things like that. So it's a
really interesting topic. I think it's one that's it's will
run and join and join.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Well, it may run and run and run, but we
can't let it run too long because without deep liquid
and active public markets shoulder democracy dies and it takes
a little bit of democratic capitalism with it. So we
don't want this run to run and run. We wanted
to run just for a little while and then be
sorted out. Welcome to Marin Talks Money. The podcasting it
(12:52):
is people who know the markets explain the markets. I'm
there in some set web this week the conversation with Baroness,
Dandees and Moyer. Now Dan Lisa is extremely busy, but
a few of the things that she does. She's a
global economist, she speaks all over the place. She's an author.
She's written a couple of fascinating books that I assist
you go and buy and read. She says on a
couple of boards of listed companies, including three and Chevron
and Condo. Now and she says on the investment committee
(13:15):
at Oxford University, so super interesting, Denbi, So thank you
so much for joining us today. I hugely appreciate it.
Thank you, good to see you. You and I we've
talked quite a lot before, and I think the last
time we talked properly was just after your twenty eighteen book,
Edge of KOs came out. Yes, that sounds right. Yeah,
And I have this feeling looking around us now that
(13:36):
we're no longer on the edge anymore. We've slightly slipped
off the edge everything. You know, since we last talked,
so many things have changed, the financial world has changed,
the political world has changed. The peace dividend that we
lived with so long, for so long has gone. Globalization
has slightly turned around. It feels like deglobalization is is
(13:57):
well underway. So so much has changed. And when we
look at that reflected in our oath, so I forgot
to mention the pandemic that was that as well. And
we see that reflected in it in our growth rates.
And you know, Stee, I believe, and I think you
believe as well, that economic growth is the most important
thing we should strive for because everything else comes from
that in the end. But yet we're not really seeing it. Oh,
(14:19):
everything around us is fairly sluggish, and it's hard to
see how that can change. And in the UK and
in particular, things feel just a little bit more sluggish
than in other places. Is that right?
Speaker 4 (14:33):
Well, I think the most important thing is to put
these things in context. You're right, You and I spoke
some time ago, and since then, we've had inflation come back,
we've had a war, we've had a pandemic, and you know,
we continue to grapple with a whole list of other
geopolitical challenges that you've talked about, rise of China, deglobalization,
(14:53):
et cetera. But putting this in context, Even before the
pandemic hit in earnest in twenty twenty, many economists, policy makers,
academicians were already worried about the structural growth decline. That's
to say that we were worried that growth was trending
downwards again before the pandemic, and organizations as varied as
(15:18):
the World Bank and the Congressional Budget Office in the
United States, as well as many economists in the UK
and elsewhere, were worried that actually the engines of growth
had started to stall in the post financial crisis era,
but even before the pandemic, and in that sense, the
pandemic was really an accelerant to a lot of the
(15:40):
problems that were already foreseen. You know, we were worries
about debt, the sheer amount of debt that the global
economy was carrying. Obviously that's become even worse the post
the pandemic. Worries about demographs, you know, in terms of
the population growth around the world. That has also become
(16:00):
rather problematic, with disordered migration that we continue to see
not just in places like the United States but also
very much so in the UK. We were also worried
about things like the advent of technology, what that was
going to do to jobs. Again, with AI, we're now
in a world where that is becoming much more of
(16:22):
a realistic situation. So I think, Maren, just to maybe
to put this into one sentence, the great worry we
have and we continue to have.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And just in the last couple.
Speaker 4 (16:34):
Of weeks, the World Bank and IMF have had their
Spring meetings and they have published reports saying that the
growth trends over the next ten years will continue to
go downwards. What do we mean by downwards? And this
is my one sentence, that growth is going to be
below that magic three percent number. We need to be
growing by three percent per year in order to double
(16:56):
per capita incomes in a generation. But developed and developing
countries all over the world are way below that number
and struggling to attain that number. Perhaps one last thing
before I send it back to you, you know, I
think a motivating framework not only in identifying where the
problems lie for growth, but also thinking about how do
(17:21):
we think about solutions. I think is going back to
basics and appreciating that a lot of the modeling that's
been done around growth, certainly over the past century, has
identified three key drivers of growth, which are capital, how
much money you have, labor, the quality and the quantity
(17:44):
of your workforce, and the third item being productivity, which
has always been a catch all for everything from rule
of law issues around regulation and taxes, which I know
will come to in a moment, but really that is
the framework from which we should identify the problems in
the UK and around the world and then start to
think about solutions.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Well, one of the main things to look at here
is a supply of labor, isn't it. And we can
get onto productivity in a minute. But we've been through
this lengthy period pretty much since China was ascended to
the WTO and became a major part of the global economy.
We've lived in a world, and particularly in the UK
because we our mass immigration from Eastern Europe, but we've
been able to rely on a steady and seemingly infinite
(18:27):
supply of global labor to take on every job you
might think of, and that is definitely reversing. We see
it in every major economy. We see people talking about
a shortage of labor, and that's partly because of a
falling supply of people overall, but also a falling supply
of people prepared to work.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
That is correct, but also related to that, it's not
just people's wish to work, but ability to work. If
you recall, you and I are now of a certain age,
we'll remember the era of Terry Leehy and others who
were talking about need snow education, employment or training. There
was massive discussion around For those of you who weren't around.
(19:06):
I believe Terrany was at Tesco, if I'm not mistaken,
but Jewett Rose with that was at Marks and Spencer
back in those days, and they at that time were
talking about a skill shortage. There was a massive mismatch
back then. You know, Frankly is serving in the boardrooms
in which I serve. I think that the sort of
(19:26):
bigger discussion now is, you know, in the here and now,
you're right, there's a skill shortage, but there's a bigger
question coming very quickly, which is what are we going
to do with the labor that will exist educated and uneducated,
or I should say skilled and unskilled in a world
where it seems we're going to need less labor. Yeah,
(19:47):
and this is what I'm hinting at the AI Revolution,
which by most calibrations, people who like Elon muscor Bill Gates,
who are very steeped in the technology debate, is going
to be as at least as transformational as the Internet,
and these AI models are really much less human, you know,
(20:10):
in terms of labor required, and we have to start
thinking it from a policy framework, but from a business framework,
also starting to think about what happens to that labor
because it may be a shortage in the here and now,
but I think there's a bigger societal question that's emerging
as we move away from this sort of dependent on
labor markets.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
That's interesting. This is the kind of question that comes
up every generation. Also, doesn't it we're making these huge
technological leaps forward, what's going to happen to our labor?
But even though we always ask this question, the answer
always provides itself in the sense that jobs exist that
you and I would never have imagined could have existed
twenty thirty years ago, when we were being told by
(20:51):
our school career service that if we like to read books,
we should be lib librarians, remember that, or gardeners or
whatever it was. Those career services now lists of jobs
that simply didn't exist and we had no concept could exist.
Twenty years ago. I mean, there are now universities in
the UK dedicated almost entirely to gaming, for example. This
is entirely new. So when I look at this kind
(21:13):
of thing, I wonder if we should not worry about
the employment side of it, because in a way there's
a you know, people make their own jobs somehow. But
what we should think about is the productivity side of it.
In that sense, it could be our great savior. The
thing that has been our big problem, particularly in the UK,
where we've got used to having low wage people do
all the jobs that may be elsewhere they may they
(21:34):
may be using more machinery, robotics, etc. For productivity has
been very low. And if AI does all the things
that it is promised to do, our productivity problem could
just go away.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
Well, so you know, you've said a number of things.
I'm less sanguine than you are because I do think
some of the AI modeling that I'm seeing not just
in sort of shall we call it lower skilled jobs,
but it really the ability to disrupt business models, even
for established corporations which are probably going to need less capital.
(22:05):
You know, one person with a machine will be able
to do the work of forty thousand sort of the view.
You know, I think that certainly we can go back
and forth and debate, but you know, we should not
lose sight of the facts that what has bailed us
out in the historical context that you're just alluding to
was that people did have skills. And what is going
(22:27):
to be demanded of us now as labor in the
future is much more of a skilled workforce in science
and technology ability to run these models, and that's where
I think that risk becomes much more pronounced than in
the past. But to your point of productivity, and I
think again, just to frame it for the listeners here,
(22:49):
I mentioned that growth is a function of capital, labor,
and productivity. Productivity explains about sixty percent of why one
country grows and another one doesn't. So crucially important that
we have productivity, and it's essentially how we're able to
transform the capital and labor into growth. How do we
convert this into growth? And this is one of the
big worries because we've lived in a technological era for
(23:12):
twenty years and there was a lot of expectation that
living in a world of computers and the PC and
iPhone was going to drive greater productivity. But you and
I both know that actually productivity has declined and continues
to be very challenged in both developed and developing countries.
And so you're right that I think a lot of
(23:34):
us are hopefully quite optimistic about productivity gains being an
offset to job losses in an ai world. But for now,
we have not seen those productivity gains, even with more
nascent types of technology over the last twenty years. So
I think it would be somewhat full hardy for policymakers
to sit back and say, oh, well, we think technology
(23:54):
is going to bail us out. That has not been
the case, And if the past is a predictor of
the future, we could end up with a situation where
we're losing a lot of jobs, which again is heavily
forecasted from the World Economic Forum and others, even though
there are potential net gains to your point earlier, but
we might not just see a loss in jobs. We
might also see not the productivity gains to offset the
(24:18):
growth that we need.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Can we connect this failure of productivity levels to improve
and super low interest rates Over the last twenty years,
we've had this environment where we've developed extraordinary technologies that
we look at and we think could be used to
increase productivity, but perhaps because of the availability of easy
money and the lack of stress and pressure that comes
(24:40):
from correctly priced money, so interest rates at reasonable levels,
we've used that technology badly. So we've done all sorts
of things that add nothing. I give you TikTok dancing nurses,
and the end is looking at cat pictures, etc. Etc.
We've used that technology, but we've used it in ways
that don't bring us anything as a society. But with
(25:00):
interest rates rising and that kind of non useful economic
activity possibly no longer being possible, might we see a shift?
Might rising interest rates be the thing that bring us
the productivity we've been after? And we're already seeing, for example,
business failures at four year high as in the UK,
which is terrible in one way and slightly encouraging in
(25:22):
another in that we do need non productive businesses to disappear.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Yeah, it looks I think you're absolutely right that being
in a world where we actually have interest rates at
the correct equilibrium rate will definitely wash out some of
the bad capital allocation decisions that we have seen. But
I think it's also quite a risky proposition. First of all,
(25:47):
the reason rates were low were in response to market dislocations.
We had a financial crisis, and then we've had a pandemic,
and that's being remedied right now. But I think there
are more fundamental questions about where we'll it'll be allocated
in a high interest rates environment, and at this stage
it's not clear to me that that will necessarily lead
(26:08):
to higher productivity gains.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I would like it to, and as.
Speaker 4 (26:12):
You rightly pointed out earlier, technology has bailed us out somewhat,
as have labor markets, not just China coming into the
World Trade Organization and bringing in all that into the
global market, but also the convergence of emerging market countries.
But add to that, if you go back into World
War two era, certainly women coming into the workforce was
(26:32):
also a massive boost for growth because we started to
bring in not just more workers, but also more demand
for products. So look, there are lots of moving parts here.
I think that you've picked on one plausible explanation for
productivity declines, which is the low interest rate environment, But
I could list out three or four other ones. I've
(26:53):
published papers on this, and I don't think we actually
yet know with specificity in terms of balancing which one
has the most influence. What exactly the problem is with
technology or with the productivity not responding to technology as
much as we would have liked to see.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Okay, let's talk about the UK a little. And there's
lots to talk about the UK being growing more slowly
than elsewhere and about us not getting back to our
pre pandemic levels at the same speed in other countries.
Is that actually true? And if it is, what do
you think is driving it?
Speaker 4 (27:27):
Let me just start by saying that, you know, I
think that there's a lot of structure problems that are
true across the board. So I already mentioned that many countries,
developed and developing countries have been dealing with the issue
of structural declinents and growth. Really, if I take a
step back and I think, what is it in the
UK that makes it more unique or it puts it
(27:49):
in a unique position to be grappling with these with
the post pandemic period in a way that's different.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
From other countries. I think there are a handful of things.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
So we could sit here and say COVID was felt
by all, the current war implications are being felt by
all many countries have debt to GDP ratios that are
incredibly high, sometimes even higher than the UK. And you
could also argue that everybody's facing inflation. But what makes
the UK situation unique and this is not going to
(28:20):
be a surprise, but certainly, in one word, it would
be uncertainty. Where's that uncertainty emerged from Brexit? Absolutely, And
I should just be clear that I although I spent
quite a considerable time writing articles before twenty sixteen saying
that we should remain, you know, that becomes immaterial when the.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Decision was made.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
We ought to have gone headlong into making sure and
by we I think society but also policymakers as well
as business leaders.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
We should have gone.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Headlong into making the country as successful as possible in
this new regime, and I think we have not done
that for a whole host of reasons. There's also not
just uncertainty from Brexit. There's also been enormous uncertainty from
the political environment, partly because of response to the pandemic
and war and inflation that I touched on earlier, but
also a uniquely political volatility. You know, obviously most manifestly
(29:18):
what we saw last year with three prime ministers in
just a several months and these what is the consequence
of uncertainty of Brexit, end of the political environment, absolutely
less investment And you know, maybe as a finer point,
going back to something we touched on earlier, which is deglobalization,
(29:38):
the Brexit move was in a sense de globalization, and
I think what has happened if you look at the data,
is that we have not been able to yet fully
capture the eighty percent replacement with free trade agreements that
we had thought we would have by now. I was
a partner in parcel with the in the the IT
(30:00):
Department of Trade, International Trade. So I'm very much aware
that in particular, just to again put a finer point
on it, we've not yet done a deal with the
United States, and that alone is about twenty percent of trade.
I know we're all working furiously to get that done.
But just as a specific example of bringing the uncertainty
(30:22):
that came from Brexit, the uncertainty that's come from the
political volatility, we have not yet been able to sort
of fill in the gaps both in terms of trade
and investment, but also in the mind's eye of investors.
We've not yet convinced them that the UK is a
place where you can generate real returns above the cost
(30:43):
of capital.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, a lot of this is people looking in and going, well,
I'm not one hundred percent convinced yet. Is when you
ask international investors, it's hard for them to put their
finger on exactly what it is. They just know that
it's not quite the same and they feel uncertain about it.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Correct and look, there's a lot more regulatory morass that
needs to be dealt with. Okay, we see now out
of the EU. Great, Well, what's the new regime for
everything from the green economy but also the financial services economy.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
How do we think about rebuilding.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
The UK to be purpose built in an environment where
the new rules and the new landscape is not yet clear?
Speaker 1 (31:23):
Do you expect and just wank briefly back to the
global economy and deglobalization. I'm assuming that that's something that
you expect to continue with the rise of protectionism globally
and ongoing. Well, you can call it a cold war
or trade war, whatever you like, but that's not going
away at it. It's not.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
It really isn't. And I mean I think if anything,
it's accelerating. You know after Jenney Yellen, the Treasury Section
in the United States, it made a statement that seemed
to be taking the air out of the stress between
China and the US. See there's a bigger statement coming
from the US saying that South Korea should not sell
microchips to China. I mean, these are very very aggressive moves,
(32:04):
both by China and the United States. I know because
I spend a lot of time in investing space that
there are many American investors who have received letters from
the government saying we do not want you to invest
in China. This is true for endowments and other pools
of capital.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
I don't think this is just about trade, It's about
capital flows.
Speaker 4 (32:26):
I think the immigration flows will start to see a
lot more of people leaving these different regions. Seen I
was just in Singapore, a lot of much more aggressive
pro Singapore anti I'm using shorthand, anti immigrant, anti expat
type moves. I think we're going to continue to see
(32:47):
it in the breakdown of multilateralism. These are the big
pillars trade, capital, immigration, technology, multilaterals, and these are the
big pillars of globalization, and all of them are certainly
under threat.
Speaker 1 (33:00):
Are there positives in there for the sectors, for example,
of the UK economy that were the big losers from globalization,
So our industrial sector for example, and you know the
areas of the Midlands, et cetera that used to be very,
very globally active and haven't been as a result of
long term globalization. Is there a possibility that we might
see a reindustrialization of the heartlands of the UK, for example.
Speaker 4 (33:22):
So I think the the that's a complicated question for
two reasons. The world has moved on. So when we
say a rejuvenation and industrial heartland, even if they talk
about places like the United States, you know, the world
is no longer an industrial lead economy in the way
that it was twenty or forty years ago when globalization
(33:46):
really took off. So the one piece of it is
do we even want.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
To go back to that?
Speaker 4 (33:51):
Really really the way the world economy is shaped, And
you're just to give you some statistics. You know, we
now many developed economy have about eighty percent of the
economy and services and eighteen percent twenty percent in manufacturing.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
But that that has basically flipped.
Speaker 4 (34:09):
If you went back in history, you had sixty percent
of people working in agriculture and working in manufacturing, but
that's been declining precipitously over the last generation. So point
one is when we say we want to reindustrialize, what
are we really talking about, especially within a technology space.
But the other point is that we've lost a lot
(34:30):
of these skills.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
You know.
Speaker 4 (34:31):
One of the things that has been talked about quite
a lot is that, you know, in the UK, with
Brexit happening, we had to go back to the drawing
board and think about negotiation, thinking about free on board
and imports and exports and how do you calculate all
this stuff that was It's a lost skill, you know,
(34:52):
it's we've had forty fifty years when we didn't have
to think about having these unique contracts in that sort
of way that we we had many many years ago
when we were a separate country and not part of
the sort of EU construct, a free trade construct. And
so I think these are two questions. Do we want
(35:12):
to go back to what does that mean? Are we
going to be back to pick and shovel, you know,
to use shorthand? But second, secondarily, what do we do
with the missed skills we've.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
Had forty years?
Speaker 4 (35:23):
People have not been investing in that skill we've been
doing something else, and so I don't think it's as
easy as we might like it to be. And reskilling
and retraining is with an older population, as you and
I both know, is a very challenging thing, no matter
how much we'd like.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
To see it. I think I could reskill if I
really try. Yeah, not quite sure as what, but I
could give it a go. Well, let's talk a bit
about then, what can the UK do? I mean, here
we are and there's a slightly difficult global situation. We
have our own domestic problems. Our economy is grotesquely unbalanced,
we have this insane level of debt. How can we
(35:59):
how can we build a better future? You say, rebuilding
Britain or making Britain from the beginning? Again? What can
we do? What is politically and economically plausible as opposed
to what would you and I really like, which I
suspect it is probably not politically or economically plausible. What
can we actually do here to improve things and to
give the UK the growth it needs? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (36:19):
So I think you know, Rather than give you a
laundry list of ten things which I could do, I'm
going to point to my maiden speech in the House
of Lords and say, look, there are two things that
we should be thinking as a frame of mind, which
is to say, you're not going to grow if you
have high taxes and high regulation. Impossible. You have to
be one or the other in these types of environments. Now,
(36:42):
I you know, it's the proverbial teaching policymakers to suck eggs.
Speaker 1 (36:47):
They know that.
Speaker 4 (36:48):
And I think there is a lot of effort and
people are leaning in to recalibrate the tax regime and
recalibrate the regulatory regime. But we are not going to
be competitive if we have taxes which we do and
high regulation, which we do. And so just in terms
of really low hanging fruit, go and just do these
two things. Focus on these two things. That's what I
(37:10):
would do. Everything else in terms of investment in infrastructure
and thinking about new sectors and how Britain can lead
in the bio and technological spheres, all that stuff is fantastic,
and we want to see all those sorts of things
thinking more again, less about the industrial economy of the past,
(37:30):
but thinking about the technological economies of the future. That's
all wonderful, but before you get any even to that place,
people need to feel like they can invest in any economy,
they can feel like there's a lot of visibility and
in policy making, it's not going to be time inconsistent
where they're putting a policy today and five years later
they decide to unwind it and change it. You know,
(37:53):
those types of things are very unattractive, especially in a
world which is deglobalizing and deglobalizing and where the rules
are much more attractive elsewhere. Just take the green economy.
The United States, not just their chip announcement but also
the announcement around inflation reduction, really has made many European
(38:15):
countries sit up and say, why are we investing in Europe?
We should be investing in the United States. I mean,
that is not the sort of thing we should just
sort of navel gaze at. I mean, where is the
response And if you look at the responses, they've been
pretty weak thus far, not just from the UK but
across Europe as well. And so it's those kind of
things that are not going to get anywhere. People always
(38:38):
feel that the first thing they think about when they
think about investing in the UK or Europe is tax
and regulation. Maybe just one last finer point there and
if I may. The other thing is as we think
about these complex things like the green economy. As a
specific example, I think Europeans and I'm afraid I'm going
to put ourselves as Brits in there.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
We tend to be very rules based.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
This is the rule, this is what everybody has to
abide by. The US tends to be much more principles based,
and I think balance for businesses understanding we want to
get to net zero without these being hard and fast
rules gives many more degrees of freedom to think about
innovating to those to those goals as opposed to, you know, risk.
(39:24):
When you have these rules, you start to risk mitigate
so aggressively, and I think that means that you get
less innovation, less job opportunity. I was just looking at
a statistic. In the past decade, the US has doubled.
It's the size of its market caap as doubled as
compared to Europe. And a lot of that is because
(39:45):
there's a lot of innovation. People are interested in all
sectors biotech. It's not just in in cars, it's also
in in in food production, it's in pharmaceuticals. All that
type of motivating the business community to work hand in
hand with government and the third sector in trying to
(40:06):
find solutions.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
I think leads much.
Speaker 4 (40:08):
Better for an economy than risk mitigating and thinking about
downside risks only.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
It's interesting, though, isn't it, Because I think it'd be
hard pressed to find very many people who disagree that
we should do something about a sort of fairly overwhelming
regulatory burden and about our tax burden. But every time
we talk about cutting any taxes, everyone gets hysterical about
the debt and about our deficit, etc. And say, well,
you know, we have to deal with that before we
can cut taxes. So it's a little bit chicken and egg,
isn't it. And it's the same with the regulations. Yeah,
(40:37):
and look, let's see what happens.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
I mean, we're definitely in a high tax environment with
that argument that you've just laid out. We need to
pay our obligations and we need to be in more
balanced budgets, et cetera. That's reasonable, for sure, but there
is absolutely an expectation that at some point before too long,
we need to get ahead of this. Otherwise, what we're
missing out on is people are still making capital a
(41:00):
location decisions. They are still investing, and they're not going
to sit around and wait for the UK to decide
when it's going to cut its taxes. If it doesn't
happen relatively soon, people will decide to invest in other
countries and other regions and we are seeing some of
that already.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah. Interesting, Can I just ask you to finish up?
Dunbee said by saying that this is it might not
be easy, but let's give it a go anyway. But
it's saying the most optimistic thing you can think of
about the UK economy. What are all big positives? Location?
Speaker 4 (41:30):
For one, I mean, really to this central location. It
absolutely has a great intellectual base, which for the AI
the sort of future world scenarios and technology and biotech
and pharma, et cetera, which are touched on a moment ago.
We've got a better hand than many other countries. I mean,
(41:51):
I think the whole leap frogging that we saw from
emerging markets, that's a big at risk because they don't
have the ability to leap frog because of the technological
and sort of education background.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
We have that in the UK and that needs to
be fostered.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
I do also think that there's a lot of scope
to do much more in terms of orderly migration. Really,
there's a lot of reasons people want to live in
the UK, why they want to invest in the UK,
but a lot of that has to come from understanding
and having proper plans around orderly migration and thinking much
more strategically, I think, then reactionary in an interreactionary way,
(42:30):
which you know, for a whole host of reasons we've
ended up in that situation.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Okay, thank you. So the future can be very, very bright.
We just have to grab the opportunities that we've already
got sitting waiting to be taken absolutely. Dunbiesa, thank you
very much, and I'm going to put in the podcast
notes the link to your maiden speech, which I've listened
to and I think everybody else should as well, so
that will be there, and listeners please do click on
that and listen to it because you get more of
(42:55):
Dunlie's ideas there. Thank you, Denbiesa, thank you so much
for joining us usually it and everybody else, thank you
for listening to this week's Maren Talks Money. We'll be
back next week. In the meantime. If you like our show,
rate it, review it, and subscribe to it wherever you
listen to your podcasts, and do make sure that those
reviews are positive, because the better the reviews, the more
listeners we get, and the more likely you are to
(43:16):
have people of Danbysa's Calibra on my podcast rate positively.
This episode was hosted by me Meren Somerset Well. It
was produced by SOMEERSADI additional editing by Blake Naples and
special thanks of course to danby Simayo and to John Steppik,
and of course our weekly reminder to sign up to
John's daily newsletter, Money Distilled. The link is in the
show notes and as I say every week, you won't
(43:38):
regret it. It's very, very good
Host
Merryn Somerset Webb
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