Inflation Data Outlook, Fintech, SALT, Ukraine Latest

Federal Reserve which is adamant in fighting inflation. So a lot of moving parts here that are gonna play into, uh, what we may hear from the Federal Reserve next week. And when we talk Federal Reserve and interest rates and policy, we need to go to Danielle di Martino, Booth CEO and chief strategist for Quill Intelligence, former advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. Danielle, thanks so much for joining us here. Again, a lot of inflation data we're

gonna get today. What do you think the Federal Reserve is really going to be focusing on? Well, I think that they're gonna go ahead and fade what they see in in the headline CPI. I think that that has been so well broadcast across so many different channels that they're gonna be They're gonna really have their eye more on the stickiness of the core and whether that is as as if as it's expected ticks up to six. Um My buddy, Ivy's Elman, who has been a longtime

veteran of the housing industry. She sees housing shelter both O E R and rent. She sees that peaking at seven in the fall year over year. Now, that's that is that's a good hundred and fifty basis point above what it was. Yeah, Ivy's the best. I used to work with Ivy back in today on the housing biz. Um So if you're the Federal Reserve, I mean, alright, seventy five basis points as we get to next week.

But I guess that's that that's baked in. Is it more just kind of the body language we get about whether we pause and see if this stuff actually works or whether we just keep moving higher. Well, I think what we're going to be focused on are the things that are less in the Fed's control, and that would be what our food price is going to do. I was seeing a report on on the terminal last night that really really hot, blazing temperatures out west. That's affecting

how much we're paying for produce um. I think a lot of it is going to depend on on how sticky rents are. Rents have begun to peek out. But even in a shorter LAG world, which I argue and I think that's one of the things that people should be paying close attention to. The effect of LAG has

been compressed monetary policies working faster. But that being said, if Annie May figures, it figures it takes five quarters to see shelter inflation move its way through the c p I, we still got high housing inflation for several more quarters. So I've got a listener writing in Danielle and asks is if we get a five percent print, is that high enough to get the Fed to continue hikeing into a weakening environment? Or or what what cp

I print matters in terms of the actual numbers? Well, and look, until the job is done, I mean, how much more explicit can J Powell be? I don't think. I don't think four is going to be acceptable. So until we're until we're back headed back down towards two percent, which I guess we all interpret as three is headed towards two. Right. Yeah, well, I mean that's that's kind of what the European Cential Bank alluded to its communications last last week, is that three might be the new two.

And but but in order for us to get there, most of the work that's been done shows that you have to have an appreciably bigger bump up in your unemployment rate. And I think that that's where the focus is, and it's it's intriguing that, um that only Layle Brainerd so far vice chair has said, you know, there are risks if we begin to slow the economy too much. You had to pay pretty close attention to what her

comments were last week, but that's what she said. Otherwise, everybody's just a bunch of former dubs who are now bowls in China shops. So, Danielle, I mean, aside from the fact that we've already had two quarters of negative g d P, what is your UH recession outlook and maybe what are some of the parameters that kind of kick you into recession and maybe keep us out of it, or maybe make it deep versus not deep? How do you think about that right now? I think about the

recession in terms of it being long. And what people don't appreciate is that the National Bureau of Research Economic Economic Research, they they time recessions based on the level of GDP. SMP Global came out on Friday. They reduced their third quarter GDP as of it two point six per cent. I'm getting wonky here, but that means that it's not sufficient to offset the negative point eight percent they're anticipating we see for the final print for the

second quarter. What that means is on a level, the n b e R could come and surprise investors who are like, woo, it's a happy you know, we're seeing positive growth. The n b e R could come out and say, you know what, we're still in recession and surprise people because it gauged off of the level. That's what the arbiters, that's how that's how they do it.

I want to finally ask you about political pressure. How much do you think, Danielle, the FED is going to feel um if we start to get unemployment at four and a half five five and a half percent, or I should say, when we start to get unemployment around five percent, and how will that affect this independent body. Well, I think that the winds will shift violently, um from we're concerned about inflation to oh my gosh, our constituents

are losing their jobs. So it won't take the Beltway crowds very long to go from eight point A to point B. We saw news out of Goldman that they're uh that they're pursuing laughs just this morning. That being said, this J. Powell sounds like a different person. And until something breaks in credit, and I don't mean just bankruptcies rising, our defaults increasing, but until something fundamental breaks that threatened systemic risk. I see this J. Powell was pushing forward.

All right. Danielle, thank you so much for joining us once again. We always appreciate getting your perspective. Danielle d Martino Booth. She's the CEO and chief strategists at Quill Intelligence, and she's a former advisor to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. And she brings up that Goldman Sacks news. Goldman Sacks prepares for layoffs as soon as next week.

That's according to the New York Times. Let's check up with our next guest, David dts And managing Principal and senior portfolio strategist at Peacock Private Wealth Management based in Summit, New Jersey. David, thanks so much for joining us here. We're gonna get a bunch of inflation data UH this week with CPI and p p I, and we know our Federal Reserve is paying attention to that. How are you going to parse some of this data we're gonna

get this week? So absolutely, I think that's the number one issue is where is inflation uh in America today? And of course last month we saw that headline inflation was flat. Uh, it still gave us an eight point one percent year over year, which is far too high, worse than like forty years, and the feder over Service

is reacting. But remember investors are always looking forward, and what we're thinking we're gonna get come tuesday is actual actually a dip about ten basis points in the therems of headline inflation as we're gonna see softer gasoline prices at the pump, some softening and rent with the strong dollar, um export prices are coming down to and so that will help the narrative that perhaps for past peak inflation and things are going to start easy. So what does

that mean for stocks? Does that mean the S and p UM continues this rally that we've seen the past few sessions. Yeah, it's a great question, very hard to make a short term call. I think the the skeptic would say, hey, you know, we've been buying. You know, we're at four point one percent since last Tuesday. We've been buying on anticipation that this is gonna be a

better print. And there could be what we say, you know, buying the rumor and then selling the news, and people take some profits if it just comes in as as I mentioned. Having said that, of course it could be a little bit better softer inflation, or that could give investors greater confidence to continue to push prices higher. That wouldn't be surprising, because you know, we're down eight on

the SMP five since the high point in January. We still should seek positive corporate earnings for Q three up nearly four percent. We've got strong employment, the consumers continues to spend very resilient UM, so the reasons to be upbeat. David Cratty Gupta brought up something at the top of

the program which I thought was really interesting. She said that the gains that Ukraine is making in the war against Russia, are UM allowing the dollar to kind of let some of the pressure out, and the Bloomberg Dollar index is down against UM. You know, the euro is gaining, the Pound is gaining. You think a positive turnaround for Ukraine in this war, a positive outlook would be good for stocks as well. Yeah, absolutely certainly. You know, the concern of cources with any kind of you just don't

know where that geopolitical situation is going UM. And the recent good news, well we already see now European natural gas prices are UM now at a one month low UM, the euros starting to gain a little bit of momentum, the dollars down three percent from where it was last week. That certainly can take the pressure off global inflation. That certainly can give investors confidence. Is obviously too early to

say we're out of the woods. I don't think Putin's gonna go down without a fight, but the news is good and I think that could provide a tail win for stocks going forward. Here I'll just say that I do see t t F natural gas down almost eight percent just today and UK natural gas down six and a half percent just today, So one month low, and when we're going lower here on the exact crisis exactly.

And hey, how about the bond yields, David, I mean, you know, if I want to put my money in a ten year bond, I'm getting three point three percent. That's nothing to sneeze at. Him. That's actually a kind of a return. Well, it is, and it isn't. Certainly it's a lot better return than at the start of the year. Has been one of the worst years on

UH in history, for for for bond investors. But you know, the fact of the matter is with the headline inflation last month was eight point one percent year over year, three point three percent is kind of something to steeze at. And of course, and of course when you look at history, three point three percent is not that great. You know, you've got the the earnings yield on the SMP about seventeen, which is going to give you what five and a half percent, So I'll take five and a a half percent

over three point three percent. I think most retireason I worked with they can't live on three point three percent for the next ten years. Yeah, but you're happy to get any kind of return, especially relative to other bonds. Um but do you think we're going to see the tenure yield go up or was three and a half percent the peak? It's harder to call the bond market it is the stock market, you know. It all really

depends on inflation. If inflation does get out of control, if the geopolitical developments worse in um, you're gonna see bond investors running for the hills. Bond investors hate inflation if, on the other hand, recession concerns come back. Although the equity market hates recession, bond investors love it because that brings down the inflation. So we're gonna have to see. At this point, I still think it's a good deal for investors to be in stock drilled to to three

point on the tenure. I hate inflation too, Yeah, who doesn't. I hate it more than you do. Well, you say you're fine with a two percent target? Yeah, I like zero percents. Not realistic. David Deed's managing principle and senior portfolio strategist at Peacock Private Wealth Management. He got his undergraded Dartmouth way back in the day, and I'm dating Mr d uh and his law degree from Universe Chicago.

That's not bad. That's a nice combo for sure. Combo. Now, folks in our listeners, I am holding a load of cash in my hand because that's what I do as all street guy, that's what we always does. We came up, we had wads of cash. But I am increasingly the exception to that rule because everything's going digital now on the payment side, and I have to bed over the pandemic. I'm doing a lot more stuff of financially uh digitally, you know. So it says nobody wanted to touch your

dirty cash. Exactly take exactly, yeah, exactly. Jeff Sloan he's at the point of all this. He's the CEO of Global Payments. Global Payments is in New York Stock Exchange traded company GPN is a symbol you type into your Bloomberg Professional terminal like a market cap at thirty eight billion dollars. I mean, these guys aren't small. They're based down in Atlanta, Georgia employees. Jeff, thanks so much for

being on our Bloomberg Interactor Broker Studio. Talk to us about your business, Global Payments, over the last two and a half years of this pandemic. How is your business evolved? Well, I think you touched on with what you said with your dirty cash example. The first trend coming out of the pandemic is really increased digitization. So for many decades here in the United States and globally, people have moved away from cash and check toward digital, but the pandemic

really brought that forward by three to five years. Great example this is in our business. We do a lot of real estate payments. So it used to be you'd write out of check to your landlord for the rent. You'd walk down to the office or mail it. If something was broken, you'd fill out of a form. In the pandemic, no one want to touch a pen, a pencil,

a check. So what you do now is you go on your phone, you click pay with your thumb your face, You pay the account you know from your bank account, and if something is broken and we want to pull up your car, you type in the valet thing and they put your car around the front. No one touches paper anymore. It's a great example of what we've seen.

So um I've been since I've moved back to the US, missing the ability that I had in Germany to do that because it's much easier they're used to making payments UM digitally. Uh, how do you work with this market? And I know you're active in those markets as well in terms of avoiding fraud, because if you use Venmo or zell or crypto UM, it's impossible to reverse those those payments. That's a great question. So um Uh listen,

we're a technology company. We have six thousand people doing nothing but building software all day and actually most of the major banks in North America and Western Europe use our fraud prevention screens. So we're constantly scanning UM these transactions to make sure they're good. We're looking for nominalies and kicking them out. But beyond that, if you step back,

every country is really different. The US is primarily a credit and debit card, but increasingly kind of credit in the current environment, and they're very active fraud protections, both as a regulatory and also as a legal matter for use of those cards. So not only are we scanning for those anomalies, but the banking regulators, legislators, they're doing all the same thing. And I would say by and large,

consumers are protected UM in those markets from fraud. The easiest uh, the ways to transfer money are also fairly expensive. I mean PayPal, for example, UM takes a pretty big cut. How do you keep costs down? So the United States, interestingly, the Federal Reserve came out last week with a movement towards what's called FED now or real time payments account to account transfers, which we saw in Europe as you

described a number of years ago. UM. I think if you have a Federal Reserve UM and a regulatory sponsored intervention in the markets where you can provide for faster, more reliable payments in a way that's auditable, UM, that avoids the type of fraud that you're referencing, that's nothing but good news for merchants, for consumers, and really for global payments. Were in the business of moving money digitally. If you want your money faster now, I actually have

to borrow to provide that to you. I'm not gonna have to do that. In the Brave New World, we hear a lot more are a lot, most recently about buy now, pay later. What does that mean to you? By now pay later, and how does that impact your business? So by now pay later, or I like to call as layaway moway, I'm obviously revealing my age right by saying, because I'm obviously not a gen z Er, by saying, back in the day, you go to service merchandise, you said I want this bicycle, and you put a hundred

dollars a month or whatever until you get it. But of course this is you get the thing first. So it's more like a credit card, really, isn't it. In's debt. Yeah, that's right, that's exactly right. And what I think people are worried about here is what we call debt stacking, which is taking out multiple bmp L applications and no one knows that you have a big pile of debt open here doing something else. But to answer your question, um,

really it's not any different than installment lending. So what we're doing is doing it on a very responsible basis, meaning we don't balance sheet that's not our decision. That's a decision that traditional financial institutions make from an underwriting UH and know your customer point of view, and we

do it through the regulated banking system. So we're working with a number of financial institutions that West, for example in the United Kingdom, as well as Barclays, as well as number of retailers where it's an adjunct to your bank hard lending. So those banks know you because you have an account there, They know your credit profile, they know that you have outstanding Um. I would say the bnp O guys have done a really good job in technology and bringing innovation to the point of sales. You

go on a website, it's pinging you. Do you want to buy this? I'll give you five percent off, picking you now while you're shopping, paying you when you're checking out, packing you after we brought that kind of technology traditional regulated institutions, which is much safer for everybody. How what does the competition look like? Because, as Paul said, you're a huge business, but a lot of businesses and payments are huge. This is kind of one of the most

popular Wall Street darlings, I guess really globally. So who are you going up against? Well, really varies by market, and our business has always been highly competitive. I don't expect that to change the word technology company. We simply build better software and more markets and do a better job selling it. That's really, build better software than Klarna, than Adin, than a firm, etcetera. Right, that's exactly right. How do you how do you get an edge? On

those guys. Sure. So I think one of the things that we're really good at is listening to the market, listening what we're hearing from our customers and where they're going. Let me give you a great example, so pre Pandemic, we do a lot of quick service restaurant um point of sale devices as well as online. So pre Pandemic we did twenty million remote orders in the United States and nine team, which means you buy your burger king Hamburger on your phone, pay with your face, it gets

delivered through Uber Eats. Last year we did those same things true in teledocts. So what we've been able to do is really identify trends like remote delivery and bridging the physical as well as the virtual world, and we compeet by way of vertical markets restaurants, quick service restaurants, retail, healthcare,

real estate. So while there are plenty of people competing in things like e com, the answer to question is we're very focused on competing in those vertical markets by way of GDP that we think are growing more quickly than the average and are also lesser penetrated. Financial news websites they do, yes, exactly right, Bloomberg dot com. How do you look at crypto Because Matt loves crypto, I could care less. Well, I think it's fascinating. I don't

think it's fair to say I love it. I think he's fascinating, the earliest, one of the earliest guys in media. You know, I bought bitcoin back when it was six dollars and promptly lost my passwords. So I understand the benefits and the drawbacks to it, um. But the blockchain technology is really the biggest benefit. Right do you do you use it? Are you going to? We do? So? For example, if you buy crypto and your PayPal wallet today and you're training it with somebody else, or you're

using it, that's actually our technology. UM, that's allowing you to buy it, settle it, that kind of thing, and we do that globally. That's not just a US comments. So I think crypto is a series of use cases. Let me tell you first where it doesn't work. So there's almost no acceptance at the point of sale, a

physical or virtual point of sale. And the reason for that is there's so much volatility and stable coins in blockchain maybe the solution, but for right now, there's so much volatility and ethereum or bitcoin and like it's very hard to procure at the point of Sale'll think about a grocery store. How on earth those guys can take? But I would say in the case of use cases, um, having loyalty points paid in crypto, having payroll if you like, paid in crypto, those are good examples of use cases

where things work. All right, Jeff, thanks so much for joining us. Jeff Sloan, he's the CEO of Global Payments, joining us in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. We're gonna have more coming up. Got green on the screen where you're off our highs, but again still a nice start to the week. Let's see what what's going out there with pretty Goop to cheese on markets correspond and she joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Pretty

what are you looking at? Yeah, well, I wanted to take a quick minute and it she's my chart of the day actually because I think it's really important bringing it back full circle. Um, but it is European. Matt, close your ears. Um, this is significant because we're looking at a chart nineteen fifty two g hashtag BTV nineteen fifty two. When you guys get to your terminal um at your desks, what's important to note, and I'm going to describe it. You're looking at German and French power

prices over the last two years. Basically they go straight up into come back down just a little bit, and then this massive parabolic move into well right now, really they've come back down from their August peak just to touch, but they are still at historically high levels. This is something we've talked about a lot. When it comes to the European energy prices. They've come down tremendously, tremendously, but historically they are still extremely high. And here's why this

is important. This has everything to do with what you're seeing gas prices. And ordinarily for Americans we would think that well, electricity has nothing to do with natural gas. That doesn't really make sense. But in Europe, the grid work so that all the renewable energy sources um the gas prices or gas up driven power prices go from the highest price right and gas power plants have the highest price, so they drive the market and it all feeds into this one grid, which is um why gas

prices are affecting power prices. Um, what's significant here is the ripple effects over the weekend. I read these stories that now to deal with this, the Eiffel Tower is going to close their lights off earlier. Yeah, so the glittering spectacle will not be that long. Yeah. London Underground has been dealing with some really severe delays. Then they don't have any uh, they go on strike every couple

weeks anyway, So true, but severe delays based on power crunches. Specifically, basically there's no power to run the actual train, which which is which is pretty extreme. Um. So those were the two that I thought were really interesting examples of people of country that you say that are actively dealing with this. And there you're seeing that also in I mean in local, in a local way across Germany. So you'll have towns like Hanover that previously you know, we're

doing just half of their lights at night. Now they're just no more lights at Berlin forever has not turned on the street lights at night, just because I don't know that it's super lefty town and they want to save electricity and they're also mega mega poor. That's the thing about Berlin. The mayor once said, we're sexy but

poor you know that that was their tagline. But yeah, you see it all all over the place, like, uh, you know, the town swimming pool will only be operating six hours a day instead of because they want to save on power. Yeah, cratty Bloomer Markets carresponding, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Speaking Jess Mett and she covers equities for Bloomberg News, And Jess, you've got a story out talking about corporate America. Is corporate America seeing

peak inflation? And what do they look at to kind of determine that? What do you got? So the big thing is looking at and this is data I pulled from Bloomberg Intelligence was talking to you, right, so taking a look at there's some positive signs that have been emerging. So it's taking to a Jillian Wolf over there as

well as Windy Song. And so they were saying that in the second quarter, the S and P five hundreds free cash flow fell again for the second straight quarter on a ruling four quarter basis, but when it came to capital deployment, it's actually surging, and that suggests to them that companies don't expect that rising costs are actually

going to continue to last. And also they're taking a look obviously, let this inflation distress and how that's been picking away at the different cash flows, but they don't see that necessarily being a detrimental thing because they're still seeing balance sheet cash still above those pre pandemic levels. So that could be a positive sign obviously ahead of

the CPI data that we're going to get tomorrow. But ahead of that, we did just get a few minutes ago an update from the New York's Fed consumer expectations when it comes to inflation projections, so on the longer term, rizon, medium term, in short term. Again, those expectations came down for the month of August, continuing those declines that we did see in July. So that could be an optimistic sign ahead of that CPI data that we're going to

get tomorrow. All Right, what are we expecting tomorrow and what does a beat or a miss mean for the Federal Reserve? Well, that's the crucial thing, right because even a slower inflation print seems unlikely that it's going to end up swaying the Federal Reserve. And that was something that was echoed with They love the pc reportedly, they prefer the PCs and tomorrow's CPI, Right, So when it comes to and especially looking at the core numbers that's

going to strip out volatile components. If we're looking at food and energy, it's projected to be six point one percent on a year over year basis, but then remain unchanged at three tents of a percent when you're looking month over month. So I feel like that is really the core number when you're looking at those month over month differences. But then if obviously, if you're going to look more on an annual basis, it's projected to rise about eight percent in August from your earlier versus about

eight and a half percent in July. But again, looking at those month over month numbers are usually the key when I'm talking to strategists. Interesting, I mean, again, we've got a nice move in the market here past couple of days. You just wonder kind of where are we here?

Maybe this market just really needs to get a sense of where this Federal Reserve is not necessary going to go with their next their meeting wednesday, but maybe some of the language, the body language about do we wait to see how this stuff plays out or do we just continue to signal that we're in a rising, great move and that big meeting obviously happening next week. It begins on Tuesday, but we'll get the decision on Wednesday, and obviously here from Chairman Pale about a half hour

after that. But this week is a blackout period for the Feds. So last week was the last sort of phase of parade of Fed speakers that we were going to hear, and clearly a lot of them still sticking with that hawk is stance. But what was interesting about last week it didn't necessarily when you were hearing from them, they didn't change their hawk is tone. But we did see a bit obviously of a rebound with the US

stock snapping three consecutive weeks of declines. But looking more ahead, it's interesting because more technically speaking, we're kind of where we were if you looked a month ago when we were going to get those New York Fed inflation expectations right ahead of the CPI numbers, And now we've looking at the SMP five hunted a cross back above the fifty day moving average, the one hundred day moving average, but still below the two day moving average, which is

about two. So that's really key right now, good stuff. We appreciate it. Jess Menten, equities reporter for a Bloomberg News Texas, A and M. How did they do this weekend? You know, pretty pretty good, as good as one could expect. But I am an but a lot of people were obviously focusing on what was happening at the University of Texas, which they did not beat Alabama. They came close, but I feel like that was kind of a big key, the fact that they did not win, So that was

hopeful good stuff. We have Salt in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio because it's Monday and we always want to kick off the week getting a sense of what's going on on Wall Street, and Cheese are expert there. I gotta start shanally with the Goldman News about cutting some people. I guess it's just part of their you know, as Matt was just saying, kind of their annual culling of people.

But it seems like it was just fifteen minutes ago when every story coming out of Wall Street was how much more do we have to pay these kids to take a job on Wall Street? And now we're turning around and laying them off. Only the worst ones though, right, yeah, and this year went by fast because that conversation ended last year right when you turned into this year. It's

a much tough for economic environment. And you have to say, I have to say it, you know, if you're there, if you're making it to five per cent of head count reductions, that's what's typical. If it's less than that, which is what we expect, then it's not so bad for a year that is facing a significant downturn. Now it's still painful because these banks have hired massively last year in the year before, and they have not seen

these types of cuts for two years. So this is a return of a strategic review that hasn't really happened in the last couple of years. That will be fought again now. Alright, So I thought it was interesting when I heard you're gonna go to Assault. That is the

Mooches conference, right, yes, yes, it is right. It is in New York, it's at the Javit Center, but they also have some around the world, in the Middle East, in Europe, and you know, I think you guys were talking about it, the idea that they sold of Skybridge to x where I was going to go. So okay, Anthony Scaramucci, who was who worked for President Trump for like eleven days, speaking of stars like a cup of coffee. Right, Um, he has a pretty successful conference business. What else? What

else does salt do? And why does Sam Bankman freed Um, the child billionaire who owns f t X, why does he want a piece of the movie. He's a millennial billion there, but you know, obvious, how old are you? Total genius? And he did really well? Um at Jane Street. From your point, what does Skybridge do? They they've traditionally invested in a lot of hedge funds, a hedge fund funds, business alternatives, but they've also recently pivoted very strongly into crypto.

So about eight hundred million dollars of their two point five billion dollars at the end of June were in digital assets or digital asset linked companies, including f t X. Are you are you going to this car? I am. I'm interviewing Wedgewaters Greg Jensen. I'm interviewing Greg Jensen in the three pm hour today. You can find it on the term at all. Yeah, Greg Jensen, He's from Bridgewater Bridge awesome, world's largest hedge fund. And so you do

still have a lot of traditional investors there. And when I talked last week to Anthony Scaramucci about this FTX investment, what he told me was two things. He's going to be sixty in four in January. The mooch is going to be sixty. He looks good. And he told me that he doesn't want to be Shakespearean figure looming over

the firm. He wants to think about the next ten years of Skybridge, the next generation, which includes his deputy John Darcy, as well as you know, folks like f t X and Sam bankmen Freed that can help Skybridge get more into crypto and conversely, this is important f t X get more intraded into traditional finance. So those worlds are emerging and they're certainly gonna merge its salts today. Greg Jensen's only I know. I know he's a kid

snappers seventy four one to Dartmouth good stuff. Loves poker apparently. I guess he likes to take risk and read six hundred pages a weekend. From what I USPF is a good poker player too. You know, I'm going to ask him about that today. I want to get in on this game, y'all. Want to join. Oh, there's a poker game of the players. I think we should have it here at ower. Yeah. Also, yeah, I can get you into a really really cool poker game because I know

our friend Mindy Grossman. She has a poker game that's like a it's a women's center. I don't know if it's women women who play poker these days. It's a huge thing in finance at it's a big deal. I think Caroline Hyde plays as well. She does, she indeed does. We well got it all together here, all right, very cool looking forward to that. What else is going on? When I when I saw you coming into work this morning, you were listening to an ethereum podcast, she was listening

to crypto podcast. Now, but you have you made some interesting points about it. I mean, um, I was like, man, crypto, what a joke? And you were like, no, there's real returns here. There are. And remember, over the last ten years, they're having significant returns, even in the crypto winter that you see now. But this is a moment of truth

for theoryum. Remember if bitcoin was the original, Ethereum is supposed to be the newer age, eco friendly younger brother's about to get really eco friendly right, because they're gonna reduce the energy needed um to verify transactions by they're going to go to proof of steak from proof of work. Now as people put up more, more of their own ethereum to steak, because that's how they are validating new nodes.

As people put up more money to the steak. Is this an inflationary or deflationary force for ethereum which does not act as bitcoin does? Where bitcoin has a fixed supply, Ethereum is not fixed. So by staking more assets, are you then able to control kind of that inflationary force that's embedded within ethereum. I think it's so fun that this kind of new age of technologists are really thinking about this in macro terms, and it's a collision of

the worlds. Whether it works out or not, On Thursday, we will see the ethereums block chains much anticipated software upgrade, the so called Merge, is expected to take place around all Thursday, September fift Sarah Mussouli from Bloomberg she sent some stuff out that saved my bacon. Now be could have reduces the crypto show. I mean, this explains everything, So thank you, Sarah, thanks for listening. To the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews with

Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller nineteen seventy three. Put on Fall Sweeney. I'm on Twitter at p T Sweeney. Before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio