The Impact Of Liz Truss Resigning (Podcast)

Prime Minister of the UK. We need to get some perspective here of maybe some next steps, if we will. Marcus Ashworth, Bloomberg Opinion columnists. Uh joins us here, Marcus. Uh. It seems like every time we talk to you, there's some weird news coming out of the UK. It's going on over there with you guys. So I love I love speaking to you guys, but it would be nice to do it and something more measured way than uh.

I mean, we're all sort of flabbergasted here because you may have heard that there is a chance it seems that Boris Johnson, remember him him? Sure he may. He may put his hat in the ring again out of the national interests, which is one way of looking at it. Anyways, Um yeah, absolutely, Um. Up to up to then, it was thinking, well, you know, maybe it doesn't matter quite so much that Truss has gone because she wasn't really empowered.

Because the new chance of Jeremy Hunt, who is much more about physical stability and not quite the reversion to austerity perhaps that we've seen ten years ago under George Osborne, but certainly far less of this dash for growth which the previous Chancellor Quasi Kwarteng had obviously stumbled so badly, and we set off this whole guilt crisis. Um well, what seems years ago now, but it was only about three or four weeks ago. Um, so you know, trust going.

And if Hunt stayed at least in in as Chancellor or possibly even as as as leader, would would have been you know, it's fine. Um, I think it was Richie Snak, It's fine, Ben Wallace. This is the other sort of possible one who's the Defense secretary. Sort of fine again, as long as Hunt stays in in number of having the chance of things, which apparently said he's not gonna run for leader. Looks you know, looks quite

certain until um we get the Boris news. As ever, the wrecking ball so is that, you know, the programs that Jeremy Hunt has now shifted trust and am X too. Is that in line with what Rishi Sunac wanted to do in the first place. It's complicated, yes, but no, but maybe I mean largely largely year I'm gonna say yes, um, but I mean the way that the order in which you know, she said it was proposing to do it, uh is quite different. But then again, so much has changed.

Would you imagine someone like Sanak and Hunt thinking pretty much, very closely in line, yes, you would, whereas the Trust Hunt relationship was clearly, you know, very much diametrically opposite in economic viewpoint, but they were going through the motions for it, you know, just to keep her alive. She's

no longer there. But Marcus, would the I mean the would would the UK be in a much better place had they go was in soon act begin with oh oh yes, in a sense of Okay, if you don't want to risk premium into UK assets, the more the more on risk people exactly, if you want to keep the cost of borrowing down, and we need to borrow a lot more than optically, yes, Now you could argue that Richie Snack's view of of increasing taxes and into what like was certainly gonna be recession now, and you know,

penalizing both employers employees and indeed corporates on the tax rate was was madness. I personally thought it was a very ill decided guided approach. Nonetheless, uh, you know, his his views and what happened under his trust seemed totally precient. Now, I mean, in that sense, he's a logical candidate to take over. I would think, all right, so Marcus, you have your finger on the pulse of the city of London,

the markets. Well what do you think the markets quote unquote I would like to see over the next couple of days, a couple of weeks, and maybe a couple of years. That's that's he's I mean, that's you can see how guilt yields have dropped back again once Hunts in power, and that the fact that they barely reacted with trust going because they expect Hunter stay in number

eleven as in Chancellor. Then you know that I think that shows you very clearly Sterling has you know, slightly risen on the news, never a good thing for an upgoing prime ministers. Know that the markets take their demise

in as a bullish sign. So I think as long as we don't get you know, an unexpected result, I think markets you know, will will take this um as you know, look, the political side is so bad, as long as the economic management of the economy and the narrowing and the funding gap and the whole physical approach

is back on on a level playing field, they'll take that. Obviously, longer term you could argue a more growth centric approach as opposed to purely fixating on on on certain sort of types of austerity or cutting back of tax cuts um you know, may not benefit the UK and a long one, but that depends on what you believe in

capitalism mora or quas by socialism. So Marcus, if I were to walk the countryside of of England and stuff in you know, a pub every once in a while, what would the local folks tell me about the economy kind of their outlook here? How is it in the UK? Well, I mean, I think the Australians put it best is that the whining doesn't stop when the engines are turned off when a UK plane arrives in Sydney. So we are a bunch of windows. We talked about the weather.

Where we we we we we have certain fixations like chewing and as you need usually saw with the queenseral um So, I think most people are focused obviously on the cost of living crisis. I think they see this as a shambles, which evidently is in number ten where you've got a twelve year long government, you know, which has been through several iterations, not able to choose amongst itself who should be leading on what their policy should be. And therefore, um I think there is a state of

general disbelief that we are and everyone else's focus. We don't want to be where the heck is. David Cameron right now, you know he's I don't know. Marcus Ashworth, good stuff. As always, we really appreciate getting your perspective. There are Marcus Ashworth Bloomberg opinion columnists in London. I'm hoping he's gonna get out to a public later this evening, maybe you know, checking with the people, see how the

local economy is going out there. Again, we need some smart voices here to give us some context here for what's going on in the UK at price. Principle of ERGO, which is a global intelligence and Analysis consultancy. Is also a nonresident senior fellow at some little college downtown New York. I think it's n y U or something like that. He's also a former British Trade officials, so that makes him sound kind of official. He's done a lot of stuff stuff, right, So, ed, what's going on with you

guys over there? I mean, I we we look to the UK for stability to feel bad? What's going on over there? Right? I mean, you've introduced me as a smart person, but I'm like, have to disappoint you strike off the bat because again I don't know, and I don't think anyone knows. That's the nature of it. But you know, the headline is that the Prime Minister has resigned after twenty minutes, never a good look, and there will be a new prime minister within weeks, if not days.

The immediate question, I think for your listeners is what's going to happen with that new fiscal budget that the Chancellor Hunt was talking about? Is he going to write that and then it's going to appear and be a fair company for the new prime minister. It's coming in twelve days that he is supposed to present that right

at Cobra thirty one. I wonder and have been asking people would we be in a similar situation had Rishi Sunac been elected, or would we be in a much better situation, and therefore should the parliament now elect him as the new leader. Okay, so we would have been in a much better situation VISI V Markets visiby capital markets, I contend um, But it doesn't necessarily mean that now we can as a country get him in. Here's the problem. Rishi lost the popular election within the Conservative Party to

List Trust. If we now turn around and say, just kidding, the popular candidate is not the prime minister, You've actually got the candidate that lost to that popular candidate. What does that say about Well, the popular candidate almost drove you into a situation where the I m F may have had to come in and bail you out. I mean, the popular candidate did things so bad. I can't remember the leader of a Western world making such a huge error in terms of the economy. So she's clearly gone.

And I guess anyone except for those people in the Conservative Party that voted for Liz Trust Liz Trust should have a say and who the next leader is. Well, that you're talking about a general election, right. Essentially you're saying that if and I agree with you, if this disastrous piece of off road driving has ended, which it has right with a sort of triple slow motion role, Um, then you then you really do need to go back

and ask people, well, what do you want? The problem is I think that we've kind of broken the seal on Sterling, right. We've now got people in markets thinking about parity, cable rate parity, which, by the way, is going to happen. If not, you know it will be broken. Oh yeah, oh boy. But then the question is, well, what exactly is a pound anyway? And what's it worth? What are the fundamentals? I think that we're going to

be okay. I think that the democratic process has got rid of someone that clearly wasn't up to the job quite quickly. You can't do that in Russia. You can't do that in China, as we just saw. So I would say, I'm I'm medium long UK. I would say that, um, but we are talking about a general election, surely, all right. So if I talked to if I go into a local pub, which I tend to do when I'm in England and asked a local person. They're sitting on the bar stoll mining his or her own business. I would

think they would say, we just want stability. Boris Johnson, I'm not sure would fit the bill for stability. What do you think the odds are that he actually comes back and represents the Conservative Party? Hi, I think he would quite like to do that. Um, and I think that he he said, has he not that he will? He will appear and take another girl at least standing. But then, but then define stability because on the one hand, we've always say the Brits want I want that s

word want stability. That's almost the same saying it's the economy stupid. But on the other hand, we voted to exit the largest single market in the world, with all the volatility that yeah, well there's a question. Is there any possibility that that gets turned around or at least undone in some ways? Yes, I think the United Kingdom will join the euro within twenty years. Wow, that's what you both look shocked? Yes, Yes, well I am well.

I I was certainly against Brexit because I'm an internationalist as it were, but and that's not really in vogue right now arguably, But I mean you're globalist. I'm just I'm so sad that Hong Kong. What's happening to Hong Kong, because that is a great global financial love hung was exactly, thank you very much, And that's sad what's happening there? So what are next steps here? I mean the markets are kind of calm here. I'm looking at st not

out twenty years, next week, next week, next week. Yeah, the markets do look a bit calmer. I think guilt's armed down, um sterling calm down. I think it all depends now on the cadence and presentation of the new leaders. I think they will be watched in the manner of central bankers. I think Jeremy Hunt's actually doing quite a good job of, you know, presenting that stable, calm, rational

face that you'd like to see from any chancellor. But it does depend, I think who the next leader is and how markets extrapolate the a physical capacity and b fisical behavior of the United Kingdom on the basis of who that leader will be. And markets are essentially calling the shot. Is that fair to say shots? Is that fair to say? Absolutely? You can't buck the markets, but the markets can buck you. Yeah, there you go, that's are back. That's a headline for our podcast. Did you

coin that phrase? Because we could well, Margaret Thatcher coined the first half of that phrase. I think I just came up with the second. But now you know we have a podcast. I do know. I apparently I disappointed one listener to whom I've responded, Yes, that was very nice with landish comment that I made last week. But it's okay. Ed Price, thank you so much for joining

us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Worker studio. At Prices, a principle at ERGO, a global intelligence and analysis consultancy, is also a nonresident senior fellow at NYU and a former British trade official. Uh you know, kind of walking around making the Maya colpus to some various media outlets. So, but which is it's not actually Adds fault just because he's British. Asked him to explain it to what's been going on here big news of course out of the

UK or Liz Trust stepping down as Prime Minister. What we're trying to do this mornings. Just get some perspective, uh, some context? Uh so, I said one of the people we have to get in studio is John Author's Bloomberg Opinion calumnists. I mean when I think England, when I think proper England, when I think proper English, I think John Authors. I mean he went to this trade school over the Oxford. I think it's pretty good. I don't know. Um we think of we think of football a pint

of Vale the Union, Jack and John Author. That's what we do. So I'm throwing beetles and Shakespeare while we're maybe they're maybe they're I'm throwing the blame it you, my friend. What's going on over there? That's kind of been my question of the morning. What are you guys doing over there? I guess she was a quit or not a fighter. H First of all, no, it's not

my fault. We did it. We did a Twitter spaces conversation at the point in early in the summer when the fields to replace Boris Johnson had been narrowed down to two, which was Lizz Trust and pretty soon Neck And it was me and three other Bloomberg Opinion columnists, Marks Ashworth and Adrian Wildridge and Terry's Raphael. And it was a somewhat uninteresting conversation because all four of us

did think soon it should win. And the reason or four of us thought that was that we just didn't believe that this trust was equal to the job, that you just wasn't good enough to take this on. Um. And we were completely right. It's not. It's not as though anybody not as though it was difficult to see

this coming. Similarly, I and every other economic commentator, pretty much one or two sort of very ideological exceptions, was writing that, you know, the bond market isn't going to stand for it if you try to do what you wants to do. So so, I mean these are remarkable unforced errors. Um. Basically, I think, I think almost unprecedented, right. I mean, if you think it back to any other leader, world leader who has made such a huge economic own goal,

it's difficult to I have been trying. I mean, there are there are examples of forced errors, you know, emerging market finance ministers who devalue and things cut out of control. UM, you know Nevill Chamberlain at Munich. UM. I mean you know that there are some awful mistakes out there, but none of them were forced. I'm sorry, all of them were forced. The idea of there was no pressure to

do this, UM. I and that's quite such big unfunded tax cuts and give no detail at all of how you were going to favorite There was there was no pressure to do this apart from a pretty small group within the Conservative Party, and it was there's there's nothing ideological about this either, even if you do believe in a small states and lower taxes, which we let's due to an extent that this was not the time to

try and making a big leap towards it. So so, and the other thing is um, this is obviously a very juicy story for journalists and in some ways it's fun and amusing. But for the British people this has been awful. I mean, they were already in a tough spot and the mistakes that she made, along with quasi quar tang um, have very likely ruined the lives of thousands of Britons right who need people who need to re mortgage and can't afford to do it. They're then

forced to sell their homes at a lower price. The guilts market, moving into any conversation immediately gets a bit deader when you you say things like the guilt market. It is calming down, basically by Jeremy Hunt's coming in and as firmly as he did just say no, we're not doing any of that. Um. So it is possible that, you know, the shake up to confidence and the shock

won't go away. So I'm sure it has done lasting damage. Um. It shouldn't be necessary for the property markets to seize up as totally as currently seems possible because mortgage rates, you know, at one point, at one point long daily guilts were yielding more than five percent. Now they're below four. That's a very big difference to how much actual inter people need to pay each month. Um. But but in broader terms, yes, I mean it makes us look silly.

It happens immediately after, amazingly the co within days of the funeral of Elizabeth the Second, which I had a lot of people thinking quite hard about what was good and bad about recent British history. And yes, it's it's it's it's appalling. I actually feel sorry for plenty of small c conservative people who aren't particularly ideological did votes conservative and those are exactly the people who probably hurt most and let down the most. And that's a large

junk of British society. All right, Johnny, if we fast forward two years is an a fair assumption that the Conservatives will not be in power when the next election comes. Is it that bad that it will just be swiped out across the book. I'll stick to the wording I used in my column last night, which is that I don't think it's possible for the Conservatives to win the next election up Moore, it is still possible for Labor

to lose it. The big comparison here is with John Major in ninety two, took over from Margaret Thatcher in very messy circumstances, not of an awful lot more charismatic than than Liz trust Um, but he was a fairly safe pair of hands. And yes he is a decent man, and um I actually quite liked as a person the Labor leader Neil Kinnock who ran against him. But but you didn't look like a very credible prime minister. And in remarkable circumstances, very big turn up for the books

major one. But it wasn't so much that major one. He just avoided making serious mistakes and gave Labor the space to lose it. That's I think that's less likely to happen this time because Keir Starmer is if not he's not the second coming Winston Churchill, but he's a perfectly credible by as far as I can see. And the Labor Party is really determined to you know, this is what happens in parties has been out of power for a long time. They get really determined not to

mess up. John ed Brice was just in here and he said, now that markets have got the taste of it, the pound is bound for parody again. Do you agree? Probably the question. Probably one of the ways the British country, British economy moves forwards is by accepting the somewhat higher level of inflation and also therefore a somewhat lower level for the pound. It's one of the less painful options available to the country at this point. Parity, I'm not

predicting it next week. Parities certainly very possible. Interesting, So travel plans are including the UK and Europe. My friend we get a number of American friends have been asking me advice some where by the country and bring it back in the souvenirs exactly. John Arthur's great stuff has always John, to his opinion calumnists for Bloomberg News, he is the pride of Great Britain and he is on our blue but somehow he's an Englishman in New York, he's a Red Sox fan. I don't get that. We

have a situation in the UK. The Prime culture has resigned after forty four days in office. Liz trust becomes the shortest ruling prime minister in great British history, and as far as I can tell, um, her economic policy mistake is the worst own goal. Yeah. I like how you put that in recent memory. I can't think of anything. Um, you know, if you exclude like Latin America and dictatorships like Turkey, I can't imagine. I can't remember a situation

that that was worse than this. Let's bring in our editor in chief, John michel Thwaite. UM two, help me remember if it? Do you think that's the case? John? Is this the worst um at an amic blunder in the surest amount of time that you can recall in the Western world? Yes, I can't. I can't immediately. I have some dim reminiscence of I mean, I was Italian. Italian governments have changed incredibly quickly, but that all, to be honest, that was just sort of internal politics going

backwards and forwards. In this case, it's a very simple thing. There was an unbelievable own girl the extent it's like you and done so quickly. Sometimes again, to carry on the analogy, in soccer, people score an own goal because the other side is attacking and you do it. This was almost the opposite. It's like she started the match, turned round and hit it as hard as possible as our own goal. But almost you know, within the seconds of the kickoff that that and that alone is an

act of kind of that. That is the first I've never seen that. Yeah, so, and we were talking with John Authur's who said, you know, maybe Lehman Brothers fail, but that was something where you know, people in high office is deliberated with each other for at least weeks, if not months. This, as far as we can see, is something that Liz Trust and Quasi Quartang kind of just did without telling anyone. Yeah, it is. I mean, basically I said earlier, it's possible, you know, it's possible

to feel sorry for Trust. She's wanted to get this job all her life, She's done all that sort of thing. But the damage she has caused in that short time has been utterly extraordinary. I mean, to the country, most obviously to lots of people whose mortgage rates have now shut up, but also rather weirdly, you know, to the

party that elected her. Um too. You know, in some ways it's also made life incredibly difficult for labor because whatever whoever comes in, and this applies to the people running for leadership as well, whoever comes in, there's now very narrow there's a very narrow room for maneuver. You can't do that much because the markets have lost confidence in us. John Baris Johnson, is there an option? Really?

I know that's that's a question many people are asking themselves. Um. I think the simple answer is, in terms of stability, um stability and Boris are not words that go together, and indeed that has been the true all his life. It's like you'd rather sit on the back of that Miller's motorbike going high speed without a crash on it. You would be you would be better, you'd stand a better chance of getting through things. Boris has never been stable.

That's that's he's inventive, he's clever, he's all those things. The one argument for him at all is that he is possibly the one person in the Conservative Party who's shown an ability to make the current coalition of the Conservative Party work that taking these what they call red walls seats from labor in the north, persuading working class Brexiteers that he was the answer, whilst at the same time hanging on to most of the normal kind suburban

Tory heartlands as well. But but he did that by telling them both the same thing at the you know, the the opposite things at the same time, with a lot of charm. But I think everything went wrong. So I didn't and it certainly I was in Westminster last night and you did not get a lot of feelings of support for Boris. They got rid of Boris and and and he was I think people see him as a symptom of the chaos. He didn't do anything quite as terrible as Trusted, but he still made a mess

of a lot of things quite quickly. Why isn't Rishie Sunac the obvious choice? I mean, I still can't understand why he lost versus Liz trust, But at this point you can see that she was the wrong choice. And um, Jeremy Hunt is running some rather Sunakian policy, so why not bring him in? Yes, I mean that the it's difficult basically that the argument for Sunac is very simple is you know I told do you so? Is that he was the choice of the MPs. He was the

person who said this would happen, and it's happened. The difficulty this time around is that you have to get it sort of just through the MPs, and there there is a group of people who are still very cross from the right wing of the party about the idea that Sunac was somehow guilty of getting rid of Boris

Johnson and Hunt. By contrast, there generally more well disposed to Hunt ran against Buck Johnson for the leadership a long time ago, but then he behaved sort of relatively well from then on, and people look at they don't have the same animous towards Hunt that they do towards Sunac. So from that point of view, actually, you know, Jeremy Hunter has played that yet another very clever candidate card

by immediately announcing that he won't stand. You could imagine a situation that maybe in four or five days that will come back and not unlike Boris Johnson's heroes Cincinnatus, he gets dragged from the plow in the same way as people in this cool to run large editorial developments and be told to be told you know you're the only person who can do this right, and that that

there may be a bit of that in it. And the conservative partly a party writ large over you know, two years from now, do they have a shot of keeping power here or is it just gotten beyond the pall Here They have a shot, but only in the sense of you're sitting there on the par three there is a chance of you getting a hole in one, um, but the odds are generally not in your favor. Yeah, they do. There is a narrow room whereby they go through the following things. Number one is they do elect

probably either sac or Hunt. They elect someone who looks grown up and looks as if he knows what he's doing. Penny more than conceivably um if she had the other two next daughter. But they suddenly look much more stable, much more responsible. They somehow managed to keep the head bangers in order, and at the same token, the core bin Easta's inside the Labor Party goes slightly mad. And then finally some event happens that changes things, and that in the end it's almost like events as your hope.

You look at British politics, like politics in several other countries, to be fair, at least in this way, it is astonishingly febrile. You know, things change unbelievably. It was only probably a year or so ago, a bit more than a year ago, that we were talking about Boris Johnson being you know, definitely instable and definitely out of control, but being totally unbeatable, where he was then got rid of because he parties and all that sort of stuff.

So it's possible that something similar will happen, which makes whoever the incoming Prime minister is look very good and makes Starma look bad. But at the moment a people haven't seen a thirty point lead in British politics for a very very long time. John I might be old school here, but you know, when I look across the pond too, the you know, great Britain, I think of a world leader, stable, strong, uh you know, obviously a key, key, key partner for the United States. Is that feeling I mean?

But then you know, the last several years, I've seen Brexit boy, and then I've seen you know, kind of this, the volatility we've seen in the political circles here and are is Great Britain concerned that they have lost are losing that type of reputation. Yeah, I think they are. I mean most obviously because you can see what the way the markets are treating, you know, treating the economy.

We are looking to see what markets think of us in the same way as I can last remember that very kind of dimly obviously in the in the nineteen seventies. You know that was when you watched the British Chancellor going off to the I m F to see if they get some money. But more generally, you know, that was the type of thing that we imagined happened to

countries like Italy. Um. And that's two points. That one one is actually and I'm not trying to sound defensively British about it, but there aren't There are a number of other places that could make the same kind of mistake. Italy is a per absolute prize example. You go, not only coming in with a somewhat truscy and style of doing things, well, you know, Italy has got even more debt. So that's that be careful. Britain has a long record in politics of being a harbinger of of what happens

in other places. Well that there's a bit there, the bit which is different about Britain and which you mentioned the very beginning, that is Brexit. And the truth is that ever since Brexit it's got harder. And the part of the hardness is that you have a group of people in the Conservative Party who have exactly the same approach that people in the Labor Party. Some people in the Labor Party had in the nineteen seventies. Was the only reason why socialism didn't work was it hadn't been

done properly. Well, there's a group of people within the Tory Party who's only you've you were Brexit, as you know, the only reason why it hasn't appeared to work because it hasn't been done properly, hasn't been as radical and extreme as they would like it to be. That's that was what Trust came in sort of sucking up to, and it didn't really help. But the underlying point is really simple. We we are a medium upper medium sized economy on the edge of an absolutely gigantic one in

the shape of the European Union. And it's quite strong allies, as you pointed out to the you know, so it's strong historic links. But we trust Trust came in saying we are a big place. We can get away with this. Well, it's a bit like Sewers in the nineteen fifties. Is Britain is not as robust and independently as as it thought it was. I mean Britain. Of course, the Empire has shrunk dramatically over the last century, most most regretfully

in North America. But but but my point was going to be, you're London is still a financial capital, I mean, a huge hub of trade. And the pound has managed to recover from big problems before. Look at you know how strong it got even after Soros. So I wonder, you know it does the pound recover from this or are we headed for parody now? Or does it? Does it recover? There seems to be again, if I knew how to gamble on the pound, I would be richer

than I am. But that but basically I think the argument that we're in a kind of one ten to one fift against the dollar bit, which means that you know, there is there is definitely a cost of having had Liz Trust is that it's you know, the pound has gone down a slought. On the other hand, the idea that it's unlikely to get down further, largely because the government's the government in power can't do that much going forward.

So we sort of know. One of the interesting things about the drum the British and pitched themselves into is that actually, if if you divided yourselves into one is labor Sweeney Labor Miller conservative, there's not a lot of difference between what you could do, um that that that one of you might want to borrow a bit more to spend a bit more in terms of um social equality and stuff, and the other one might be trying to be a bit more entrepreneurial. But there's not a

big difference because there simply isn't much. There's not much money left and there's very little at the markets are going to let you do, and that people have just seen the cost of doing that. By any measure, Britain is going to have to borrow a lot of money next year anyway. Just start dealing with the problems. It's already paid for, alright. Great, great to get your time. You really appreciate your perspective. John Michael Waite, Bloombert News

editor in Chief, reporting from London. Let's stay on the geopolitical track here, Mick mulroy, cofan of the Lobo Institute, joins us. Mike Weird, we've been focusing on the uk here that the potential of the coming pending change in leadership there. It just kind of helps us refocus, you know, the attention on Europe. I mean, it's it's started with Russia and the Ukraine and that is still front and center.

So let's I'd love to just get your thoughts about where we are in Ukraine, how we should be thinking about it, and most importantly, how it might play out going forward. Yeah, so great to be with you guys. Um where we are in Ukraine right now. I think Russia has seen that they failed and they're objected to

take the country. Now they're failing, and they're objective to maintain the terrain essentially that they've taken to The Ukrainian counterfest is still being successful and he is he being president. Putin has resorted to just terrorizing the civilian population through MRS strikes and now drown strikes, and now it looks like wholesale hostage taking of civilians in the Kirsan region, both to cover their with jaw and potentially to force

into some kind of constricted service against our own country. So, uh, where we go from here? Where do they go from here? Um? You know without the US putting boots in the ground or apparently planes in the air. Um, does Ukraine have a chance? Yes? I think Ukraine has the initiative right now in the momentum I see them. Uh. It's gonna slow down in the winter, as you would expect due to the conditions, but they will continue to take terrain back. Uh. And it looks like the even the massive call up

is not going to turn that around. So Ukraine will take incrementally take terrain back from the Russians throughout the winter, and then when the spring heads, I can see the

counter offensive going in the full swing. The problem that everybody is most concerned about is what will President Putin do once he once he fully understands that he is not going to win this by the by staying within the bounds that he is right now, which is already uh, you know, essentially a series of war crimes that's masquerading

as a military campaign. You know, Mike, you know you've got the perspective here, your former US Marine, former power military operations officer, at c I A. You know how these things can play out. My question is in Russia itself, is there any scenario where Putin loses popular support and

there's a change at that level? You know, at first I did not think that, and I'm no Russian expert, but i do know Russian experts and I've talked to them, and it would appear that he is losing public support rapidly. Part of it is the fact that he's losing and you know, the citizens and uncertainly the elite. Uh, I don't want to see that. But also this massive called up turned everybody against the war. You know, before then, um, it was it was somebody else's war essentially for the

average Russian. Now it's Russia's war. So in that might be why he's not only created this martial law situation and the four illegally annexed areas of Ukraine, but he's also uh setting a martial law in and around Moscow and other regions. So he might know that this is something that could cause him to be removed from power. And essentially dictators don't do well once they're removed from power. I mean, they usually have a very short lifespan. So this.

This is something that's caused an issue back home. The biggest concern is that he'll he'll go up and and escalate this and potentially use uh tactic nuclear weapon or something like that. I am going to bring us back to the UK firm and in a way that maybe you wouldn't expect. But word has it. You've just come back from a philosophy conference in um in Athens, and Um, I've I've read your posed a case for a philosopher king on Modern Stoicism dot com. I was saying King

um all day about how rough this must be for Liz. Trust. Yes, it's her own fault, she brought it on ourselves, but she has just gone through what must feel like the ultimate failure. You know, this is not like just failing at your business or you know, making a mistake getting fired at work. She's gone all the way up to prime minister and has now lost and become the shortest ruling prime minister in UK history. And Um kind of reminded me a bit of Marcus Aurelius when he was

in a difficult situation. Um, how does a Stoic deal with this kind of horrific failure? With this kind of um, just humiliation. Well, first of all, thanks for reading my paper. Thank you, and my mom read that, so that's cool. Uh. And then I had a great time at the conference by the way, and not to get off topic, but they're about to escavate Plato's academy, which is currently right now park But it's super cool, very cool. So how

does it? How does I mean? The one thing that I would say, UM, from the stoic perspective is failures in life are expected. Um, They're going to happen. Sometimes they're completely outside of your control. Not that this was um, but it's part of it. Is not is not that you try to avoid those failures. It's how you deal

with the failure. Right. So you know, I used to be a boxing coach and I tell my boxers is not whether you're getting knocked down, it's whether you get back up, which I think is a very stoic way of looking at things. So she doesn't need advice from me, but I would you know, you know, the stiff upper lip and keep come and carry off. That's UK, that's the that's the UK saying, right, But it's also a very stoic I would just tell her to basically do that.

Winston Churchill also had some significant failures in his life, and you know what, he's going to go down as the most one of the most significant leaders in history quite frankly. So I'm not, you know, don't know how it'll work out for her, but I would certainly I would certainly have a broader perspective, uh and and ask her to consider that the UK is a significant major ally in the So this is obviously concerned for us when it comes to not only the war in Ukraine

but everything that we deal with internationally. Absolutely all right, Mick, thank you so much for taking a time to join us. We always appreciate getting your perspective. Mc mulroy, co founder of the Lobo Institute. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three. Pet On Ball

Sweeney I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio.