Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at seven am Eastern on Apple car Play or Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
We welcome James Bianco. I will make it as clear as I can. No one with a not an exception of Mohammad Aalerian. No one nailed resilient inflation coming out of COVID like Jim Bianco. He joins US today with Bianco Research. Jim published moments ago at Apollo Global Management. Torsten slocked that huge respect from his time at Deutsche Bank.
I quote Jim.
Container ship departures from China to the US are collapsing. When consumers cannot get the the products they want from abroad and the products that are imported are more expensive. The outcome is a slow down in US consumer spending. Gim you know consumption seventy percent of GDP. Are you modeling out of tepid real GDP?
Yeah?
I think that the real growth in the economy is going to slow. I don't have it going anywhere to like a recession. I also think the other thing you got to keep in mind that gets very little discussion is the closing of the US border, because most of the population growth of the United States comes from immigration, whether it's illegal or legal, and that's going to dramatically slow and that's also going to slow down the economy
as well. But again, I don't think these numbers are going to produce anywhere near an inflation or excuse me, a recession. And also I don't think that cutting interest rates is going to solve these problems. All cutting interest rates are going to do is try to inject what we have with steroids, and it's just going to produce more inflation.
It's not going to produce higher growth. I'm not going to mince words, folks.
The conversation that John Farrah yesterday with the Secretary of Treasury was the single best conversation I heard because it allowed us to hear best in theory. John Authors is quite critical. He'll be on later in the show. And now we have Jim beyonco. What does Bessen get wrong? Jim bionco about four or five, six, seven rate cuts?
Everything? Could I say that he's basically he says such a gentleman.
Yeah, he basically said, any model suggests that that interest rates should be cut by one and a half to one and three quarter percent. I'll come back and say to you that there's no model that says that if you have a three percent interest rate, that you should be cutting interest rates by that much. And John Author's authored does something about that yes esterday, and he'll.
Talk more about that.
That the idea that interest rates should go below the inflation rate when the inflation rate is this high is unprecedented.
It's never been there when it's been above three percent.
It should stay above the inflation rate by some premium. And that's why I think that the current funds rate at four and a quarter to four and a half is very close to neutral. And that's why I was saying earlier. If you want to cut interest rates and the FED looks like they're going to, you're not going to get the desired economic growth outcome.
You're going to get an inflationary outcome.
So Jim going back to the labor and again we're going to get initial jobs claims today, what is a reasonably I guess, decent growing economy. How many new jobs per month does an economy need that's growing in a decent clip.
This is the question that economist seem to be skirting within. Population growth slowing as much as it has, and the President putting out a truth social post last week saying we might have net net negative immigration growth, more people leaving the country than entering for the first time in American history.
The population growth might be down around zero.
If that's the case, you can make the case that anything and now you quote the American Enterprise Institute is put pen to paper on this, anything around ten thousand jobs a month might be enough. So when we freaked out about nineteen thousand jobs, fourteen thousand jobs, seventy three thousand jobs, what we were doing is we were assuming this is the way it was when we had the border open and we needed eighty or one hundred thousand
jobs a month. We're now in probably a ten thousand job a month range.
And that is enough jobs.
And again, if you're going to cut rates because ten thousand jobs is too small.
You're just going to produce inflation. Bottle it, folks.
What you just heard there from James biancle paul I hereby call it the Great Reset That yeah, I'm stealing that from Lisa Matteo. She has a great reset with on ustibles, but I'm calling it the great reset. People don't understand what mister Bianco said, and Paul, you know, I got a bunch of questions on this. Please step forward to your Paul and continue this discussion, Folks, this is so important in honor of Angus Madison about a changing America.
Jim, as a result of kind of what we've just been talking about here is, are we in a world of just elevated inflationship?
People get used to what they're paying in the supermarket.
For example, I think we are.
I mean, the Fed has a target of two percent. They cut interest rates last year, when in September of last year, a year ago, when the cornflation rate was over three, the cornflation rates three point one. Right now, they're about to cut interest rates again with it over three.
Forget what they say. Forget that, you know, j Paul, you.
Know, will say in a September press or that we're strongly committed to our two percent target.
They're cutting interest rates with it above three.
So they're telling you that the two percent target is no longer the target is closer to three.
Now why does that matter.
Indeed, the website that does jobs did a study and they said something like thirty five or forty percent of the American public is not getting raises equal to the three percent inflation rate. So that's probably the bottom thirty five or forty percent of income. So we're just going to tell those people, sorry, your job is going to continue to give you raised increases above the inflation rate. So every time you go to store, you have to buy less things because prices are moving up faster than
your paycheck. And that's where that becomes important. I know a lot of people want to stroke their shoulder. Ah two, make it three. What's the difference for a third of the country. It's a big difference if you can't get the inflation Jim, let me ask you the question again, folks.
An interpolation is where you have a belief and you have something else to look at and you try to guess or interpolate what the numbers should be. So, Jim Bianco, if I have flat population growth as a general statement, and.
I've got the way we frame.
The unemployment rate, let's call it four point two four point three percent to pick a number when you when we do a Bianco interpolation is four point five percent the new five percent unemployment rate.
No, I don't think it is at least in that regard because you know, not to get tu wonky, but the UH unemployment rate is measured on a household survey and that's one of the reasons why I think you saw with the payroll report falling, the unemployment rate didn't rise. We don't have with slow population growth, every month thousands of people entering the workforce, either they're turning eighteen, which is one way you can enter the workforce, or they're
coming into the country new looking for a job. So that's why you could have slow imp payroll growth and not high unemployment. And I thought it was kind of interesting because Chairman pol has mentioned the supply of labor, which is their phrase for, you know, slowing population growth, and said he's more interested in the unemployment rate than he is in the payroll report, because if nobody's coming into the country and no one's looking for a job,
these slow numbers may not produce higher unemployment. So I think that you know, the four point two number is what it used to be, and that's.
Why it's not going up. The unemployment rate.
It's four point two a year ago when we were still producing one hundred thousand.
How do you carry this over to the equity market.
If we talk about a flatline demographics, does that mean a more tipid demure stock market.
Not initially. I mean the stock market is all about cheap money. And if they sees the FED is going to be cutting rates and it's celebrating the idea that cheaper borrowing costs are coming, and it's going to.
Keep going from there.
But over time, yes, it will take away some of the growth of the country. Nominal GDP will go down. That's real growth plus inflation. That should over time herd earnings and over time, let me go on another direction here for you, it should help to correct housing because one of the problems with housing is there's not enough houses. Everybody talks about the affordability crisis. When we have home
prices at all time highs, we don't have enough houses. Well, if you slow down the number of people that meat houses over time, that should correct itself too.
Now it's not all good.
I mean, you'd rather have growing population faster than slower, But those are some of the immediate effects.
If this continues, jim are you surprised that US dollars not rebounded like the US equity markets have rebounded.
Not really, because I think what the dollar did was after Liberation Day, when it disconnected from interest rates, it reconnected, and so when you get lower interest rates in the US, you tend to get a lower dollar. When you get higher interest rates, you tend to get a higher dollar. So I think the big driver of the dollar right now is back. It wasn't for a while, but it's back to being interest rates. So as long as they're headed down, I think that's going to keep the dollar relatively weak.
Most currency traders are playing this relative interest.
Rate game, where can I get the highest interest rate, and if our rates are going down, it becomes less attractive.
Hey, Jimmy, we pretty much three with the second quarter earnings here, How did they look to you? Hou's corporate America dealing with this current economic environment.
It's looking great.
I mean, more than eighty percent of the S and P five hundred companies beat. The guidance that the companies have given has been the most positive in four years. The outlook for the second half of the year looks very good.
So at least in the interim.
It looks like if you were to judge of Corporate America as an economic indicator.
They're telling you that the economy is doing very well.
Jim, I think your comments on the Secretary Treasure are apt and against John on authors is scathing, and we have them on here later. At the beginning, I thought
John Farrell was brilliant. At the beginning, Jim Bianco, the Secretary walked through his belief of the diffusion of tariffs from the export country to the importer at the shore, to the consumer, and to me, with all I've read, including Douglas within the classic at Dartmouth, it was all Greek to me, critique the Trump vestent theory that the consumer won't pick up the burden of these tariffs, and the zeitgeist. This morning, folks, is Michael Barr. He is
every morning in the food court, folks. Michael Barr has a bowl. It's a bowl of raisin bran with a banana on it, but it's actually a bowl of bananas with some raisin brand I mean, I mean, Jim Bianco, the bananas alone are already killing us. Are these tariffs going to pass on to the consumer unlike what the Secretary of Treasury says.
I think eventually they are.
You're right, there's three people that can Let's bear remind that terraffs are up by about a quarter of a trillion dollars, So to put it in the vernacular, somebody's paying an extra two hundred and fifty billion dollars for product that we weren't because of tariffs. Who's paying that? We got three choices? The export country. That means China cuts its rates, cuts its prices, Japan cuts its prices
of things that they ship to the United States. That might have been happening in the first thirty or sixty days after Liberation Day.
But it looks like it's reversing right now.
They did it as a panic right away, didn't know what to do, but now they're starting to reverse that and bring it up. The other one is the importer, the company that imports it. They're going to cut their prices to the consumer. Well, as I mentioned with Corporate America, margins are fine and Corporate America earnings.
Are doing fine. There's no sign that they're eating a quarter.
For trillion dollars worth of prices. So that leaves the price at the store that will eventually start to go up, and there's some evidence that those prices are starting to remember in May, June, July what you were paying for with stuff that was already imported without tariffs. But as you get into August, September, October, and further now, the stuff that's going to be on the shelves have that tariff price embedded in it, and that's going to start to creep higher.
Jim, this has been absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much Jim Bianco with us today. I really appreciate it. Bianco Research can't say no, folks, this is what surveillance is about, the conversation back and forth, not to say someone's.
Wrong or right, but to engage the debate, and we see that right now. Stay with us.
More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Catch us Live weekday afternoons from seven to ten am Eastern Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
This is Joy And as we were talking earlier about options of Greek letters, the movements of the market, we continue you with Dean Kurrent and scrilled that he could be with us today with macro risk advisors.
Know I'm kid about it.
I mean my father said, we are almost named Greek letters alpha, beta, gamma, delta.
You didn't do that to your children, did you, No, you just spare them, Spare them the Greek letters.
One of them is theta, which is the guestiment or misjudgment of the time function.
How badly do.
You see us misjudging our economics now with a tariff overlay that completely screws up our theta, completely screws up our exxes.
Well, I would first want to start with the reality that Theta has very much been on the mind of those who have paid money to own options.
Options are valuable assets.
I always say the right to change your mind is at the heart of options, and that's valuable bud you pay for it. And Theta is a reflection of the decay of that option price as time goes on. And in an environment in which the S and P is realizing ten, there was a stretch for the triple Q even over the course of a month where they realize was just eight.
That's a lot of data.
Your option, your insurance that you've paid for is decaying over time when you're not getting the moves, And I think, you know, that's an important thing you're looking forward. In terms of thinking about tariffs and trying to understand the lags with which they operate. I think that's a big thing. You know, people say monetary policy operates with lags. I think the same can be said for tariffs.
I should advice with Dean Kerner.
The amateur piles into an option certain that they're certain, and they lose their money. Nassen teleb is one example, says bet little bits of money farther out. Discuss those two hugely different approaches, right.
So, I think in an environment of shortening attention spans, where it's just the latest tweet, it seems everything is happening on a very compressed time horizon. And I think investing is an example of that, where we've got this proliferation of zero days to expiration options, and I think there's with that, there is a misjudging very consistently by investors where they look at the nominal price of an option and they think, oh, that's a very low price,
but it's only got one day to expiration. And so it's just not worth that much. The opposite's also true. Investors misjudge the value of time with respect to longer term options, and so you know, as an example with the private credit, really what you're doing there is you're clipping some coupon some excess yield, but you have given away a lot of optionality. And that optionality is the right to change your mind, the right to unwind your portfolio.
So when time horizons get extended without the ability to make decisions very quickly, you're effectively in some way short optionality. And it's a big reason why I think at this moment where I see uncertainty really building and uncertainty being inconsistent with the price of insurance, I think it's very
important to do two things for your portfolio. One, as you need to stay long in the S and P. I say, it's a benchmark that's very easy to track, very difficult to beat, but overlay some insurance basic put spread insurance on the S and P five hundred, and then also really search for diversifying assets. For me, those are gold and bitcoin. I think those are valuable overlays on a portfolio.
At this time in.
Your market, the futures and options market. Are your clients are they buying protection these days? Are they buying risk these days? What are they doing well?
I think it's impossible not to be long risk.
Boy.
That S and P is a beast of a bench markets. You know, it's long the capex cycle, it's long the megacaps, which are delivering so much you know, return, they're delivering so much of the of the earth earnings twelve percent year over year earnings. But they are buying protection and they're frustrated. You know, Tom used that word theta. There's an old saying in markets. Theta is the rent on gamma, which is gamma is the good part. Gamma gama is
what you want. It's the convexity that Tom talks about. It's the right to change your mind. Theda is the tough part. That's the bleed, and there has been a.
Lot of it.
You know, we have had gone through a period. Just to give you another statistic, the HyG right, which is the junk bond ETF This is moving over the last month less than twenty basis points a day. It's it's as if the index was closed for a month. And again, what happens is option prices get pulled down.
When there's that little movement.
And so the setup here as we enter what I think is a seasonally valuable time to own options. As we come back from vacation, people sharpen their pencils after Labor Day, and it just tends to be the case with some consistency that there is a little bit more of a risk off character to the market late September through October. So I think this is a time when at least our advice to our clients at Macro Risk Advisors is, let's take a very good look at your
portfolio what it's exposed to, and overlay some protection. Don't break the bank, because you can over insure yourself.
That's for sure.
You can buy too much protection and if it doesn't pay off, your left sacrificing return. But there are easy to do basic and I would argue cheap option overlays.
To do that can protect the portfolio.
What's the one you like the most, really simple, something like a two month put spread on the SMP struck it five percent out of the money is your top strike. And then to reduce the cost of it, which is important because again the realized volatility is low, so you can't spend too much. So sell something like a twenty percent out of the money put that's going to get you through October, which is again that seasonal period of higher evolve.
Can you hedge MAG seven?
Listen?
The MAG seven is forty percent of the sub or at least the top ten stocks. That's not the MAG seven, but the top ten stocks are forty percent. They're also remarkably twenty six percent of the MSCI World Index.
That's the top ten.
I did not know that.
That's the American MAG seven are one quarter of the ginormous global index.
It's incredible, you know, I think I just saw a statu was probably on the Bloomberg terminal. In Vidia is bigger than the entire German stock market in terms of marketing.
How do you hedge that?
I mean, you know, you know, I know everybody out there owns Nvidia and you're never going to sell it. Adults in the pro market can't do that. How do you hedge protect yourself?
Yeah?
And I think this is a really important point. It's something I keep coming back to, is that these stocks have hedged themselves. The correlation between Microsoft and Google or in Vidia and Amazon, they're just, you know, unbelievably low, and so I think people that's a that's a blind spot for investors is that because these things are uncorrelated, they're very low in terms of the overall volatility S
and P five hundred. And if we've learned one thing, it's that missizing is your biggest risk, and that comes from underestimating volatility. So honestly, back to the the put spread on the S and P five hundred, because these things are such a big part of the market cap, just don't put spreads on the S and P.
Did I see some Beata come in here?
I mean you got sometimes I name him Ebsalon.
You got your key there in terms for you?
Right?
You make them work? I do.
We've he's on the terminal, he's doing spreadsheets. It's been it's been really fun. It's been a great summix generation coming up.
This is just great. How you do it?
I wish Bernard de Pierre was here, one of the giants of derivative mathematics, wanders through our food court from day to day. There's this thing called Eto's dilemma, which burnandapere. That'd be great for your son to be plun I'm going to figure that out. Dean Current, thank you so much, really really wonderful.
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Kim Dawson briefs Now with NEWIG. What does an under fifteen vix mean to you?
It means calm waters that this market has been extraordinarily resilient in digesting headlines that we might have thought could cause more volatility, mostly in a month like August where trading volumes are lighter, But this market continues to just power on. And we think it's driven by two key things. The first one being that liquid remains very abundant, and the second thing is that earning sestaments are going up. Risk assets love it when earning sestaments and growth estimates
are going up. So when you dis sill it down to those two things, you can see why we've been resilient. But of course it makes you raise an eyebrow. If we're thinking we could becoming complacent.
Any rotations out of what's really been working, what's always seemly been working. The big cap tech names that we've seen any are people trying to broaden that at all.
Yesterday was a big rotation day.
Under the surface, it looked calm on the surface of the S and P five hundred, but kind of like a duck spinning its legs under the water, we were seeing huge rotations where you saw the Nasdaq AI trades all trade off rather sharply, and things like Russell two thousand doing all a lot under yesterday.
But that could be a one off, right, I mean in this environment, yes, how does someone like you bet on a rotational shift?
Well, I think the one thing that we've been noting over the course of the last few days is that growth versus value has gone parabolic in the last month or so, meaning that growth is outperformed value almost in a straight line up. And what we see is after each of those parabolic moves we had one in December of last year, we had one in July of last year, that you typically see a correction, meaning just a reversion
back to the means. So We wouldn't be surprised if you saw growth take a breather because it's been so strong, But that doesn't mean it's not still in the nuptrend, which it still very much is.
How much do we eat? Does this market need the FED to cut? Do they need a gradual cut, did they need something more aggressive? We've had talk of a fifty basis point cut kind of creep into the conversation, not just twenty five in September.
It's the why they're cutting, which is so important.
If they are cutting because growth is much weaker than expected, we're marking down forecasts, then then doing a fifty basis point cut because the economy.
Needs the stabilization. That's not good for markets.
If they're cutting because they can they want to get to this idea of neutral inflation, has moderated, growth is slowish and still healthy, then that's a place where markets tend to celebrate.
But it's two very different scenarios.
I know you weren't listening to the show earlier, Kim, because you're outside in autographs.
But the bottom the bottom line is off the best.
In the interview with Jonathan Farrow yesterday, this idea of cutting rates massively has a massive ambiguity to I mean, you know, on a microeconomic basis, it could cut either way.
Well, there was a line down Lexington for the autographs if you were wondering. The second one is that it really depends on where economic surprises go. For the response to rate cuts last year, when the Fed cut rates by one hundred basis points and the ten year went up by one hundred basis points, is because economic surprises were going straight up, data coming in better than expected, as well as GDP forecasts being revised higher.
They were being revised hired by almost seventy basis points during those months.
Do you have a.
Clue what earnings are lending? Nine to thirty, were going to be ten sixteen, ten seventeen, ish, technology will be November one?
Did any clue? How do you do it?
Well, we're in the two seventyish range for twenty twenty five. We do know the earnings have continued to come in better than expected. Look at the second quarter eleven point eight percent growth versus the four point nine percent that was expected going into the quarter. But then as you turn your eyes to twenty twenty six, there's about a three hundred dollars estimate for S and P five hundred earnings. That includes not only an acceleration in the top line,
but over one hundred bases points of margin expansion. So there's some optimism. That's are you being contemplated?
So we come down at least I had the right language. Crater captures it. And then we come back a little bit here and we stagger economic data to economic data. Cam, what's someone with a portfolio supposed to do?
Do you ignore this? Yeah?
Well it does feel kind of staggy.
It's we've been calling it stagflation light, where we're saying that doesn't taste great, less filling this idea that it's not your full stagflation heavy that you got in the seventies with higher unemployment and soaring inflation. But this is an environment that is harder for earnings growth to operate in.
It's one thing when earnings.
Are strong because you have strong real GDP plus inflation, but weaker real GDP plus inflation is something that is harder for risk assets. So with valuations trading so high, we are not surprised to see this be a cause for volatility.
Yeah, I mean you see this again, This inflation data on the PPI level, the producer level well higher than expected, well higher than the last period. It suggests that maybe somewhere in the machinery out there there is a.
Higher price pressure.
And then the question, I guess, becomes, at what extent, if ever, does it get to the consumer.
We're run rating at over three hundred billion dollars of tariff revenue raise, so at this point someone is paying for it. And in the CPI data it looked like the consumers aren't paying for it yet they saw the business pan, but the PPI is telling you that businesses are paying for it.
This is really important, Cam. I mean, I got nothing to do tonight, and I'm looking. I'm looking at Newark, New Jersey, and for five thousand, four hundred dollars, me and missus Kan can sidle up really close the infinity circle to see one Catherine Perry.
I'm going to that.
Unbelievable, What a what.
A small world Perry.
I mean, she's just like what she did with Greg Wells is just amazing, the songs, how they've endured.
Look, I'm considering dressing up as a shark, specifically love shark.
Okay, do you have Rockstar Infinity Circle seats.
I doubt that, Yes, I doubt that.
It's almost sold out. I mean he's killing it. Newark Prudential Center, Newark. Cam Dawson will be there.
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This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at seven am Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.
Tina Fordham joins now for a good conversation to find the moment here and frame not only Alaska, but after Alaska.
Tina, let's start with Helsinki. They're older.
I think we have a good understanding of mister Trump being older. In what way is Vladimir Putin older as compared to Helsinki in the first Trump administration.
Well, in fact, I've just returned from Helsinki for the Geoeconomics Week where there was a lot of discussion about this meeting. And you know what lessons my have been learned since twenty eighteen when President Trump last met with Putin again didn't have others.
In the room.
No one is exactly sure what was said, but have both sides learned to understand each other better. Well, you can see what President Trump is coming into this meeting with. There's both, you know, more bad cop than we're used to from from Trump to Putin. He's insisting that a ceasefire emerged from this, but he's coming in with some some.
Carrots as well.
And so for Putin, who has been you know, running Russia for twenty five years and does think in geopolitical terms more than in transactional terms. You know, Putin's playing a long game and he has said, you know, one of his most famous quotes is that the greatest catastrophe geopolitical catastrophe was the collapse of the Soviet Union. So you have one leader coming in with a transactional perspective. He wants to do a deal and then go straight
to a second meeting. I think Putin is going to do a bait and switch on this one.
So, Tina, what are the expectations here? Usually when you get a summit of the leaders of Russia's left Soviet Union in the US, it's months and months of preparation by underlings and then the two principles, come in and sign a couple of documents and take photographs and claim victory.
That's not the case.
Here, is it, Well, not at all, And so it strikes fear in the hearts of diplomats and foreign policy types, because you never want to put your your leader in a position where he's not sure what's going to come out of the discussion. Right. You want to you know, game out the possibilities. You want to have your you know, your your responses in reserve. You don't want to leave a chance. That's not the way that Trump works. He said before that he likes to decide at the last minute.
He likes things to be less scripted, less choreographed. The risk for Ukraine and for Europe is that Trump wings it and accepts something that Putin suggests, which maybe sounds reasonable, but Putin will have an ulterior motive behind it.
So, Tina, how unusual is it for this type of discussion to take place without one of the principles? That being Ukraine there? What can how limit? How much does that limit? What can I actually get done?
Well?
Putin likes this construct right, It returns him to the position of Russia being a great power, as it was during the Soviet era. And I said before this that he was never going to allow Zelensky to be in the room for two reasons. One is that would elevate Zelensky to being his peer, which he doesn't accept. And second because he doesn't accept that Ukraine is a real country. So it is going to be difficult to have this
trilateral meeting ever take place. But what Putin wants to happen is to get hold of the concessions that that Trump is ready to offer him. There's been some talk of sanctions removal on aircraft for example, and you know, kind of get on that new trajectory that will allow Russia to you know, rejoin the international financial system across.
The nation and worldwide.
Tina Fordham Fordham Global Foresight with us this morning here on the summit, and Reardon landing momentarily in Alaska, will have complete coverage starting early early tomorrow from Anchorage. Tina, Mister Trump has to calculate his term.
He's legacy building. I think Paul had a great phrase for that.
I guess there are there midterm elections, there's senatorial elections. We have a presidential election in twenty twenty eight. Putin's serving two terms. He just had an election last year. So is he a lane duck president or is he president for life?
In Russia?
Well, he's president for life. I mean, I think that's an easy answer. There's there's no bench, there are no successors. You know, everyone always talks about the lifespan of Russian men. Clearly, you know, Putin has the the you know, the best in medical care. He seems very robust. He's not going anywhere, and no one else is authorized to take decisions.
So he loves this idea of he.
And Trump together mano amano, you know, the freight, the fate of the free world. That's a very comfortable position for him, and likes it too, because he doesn't like middlemen.
Okay, but Trump has to face American politics and the reality of what I believe is still a democracy.
What is the incentive for.
Vladimir Putin to do anything here except a photographic moment.
So the US has been very clear that they want an agreement of a ceasefire. The reason why I said my prediction is for a bait and switch is that I think that Putin has to say yes, I'll agree to a ceasefire. But with a bunch of conditions that won't be met. And so what he wants is to get to that second meeting, to start to get sanctions reversal, and to bank on Trump's impatience with the duration of
this conflict. The other thing he wants to do. Putin wants to do is is roll the clock back to that meeting with Zielensky in the Oval office, you know, being told off for not saying thank you you. It was after that that that that Trump started talk to talk about secondary sanctions. I don't think that Trump wants to sanction Putin. We saw what his preference is to sanctioned countries like India, ostensibly for buying cheap Russian gas. So you know, markets have got themselves convinced of taco.
Switzerland didn't get taco, Indian India didn't get taco. But China and Russia keep getting a pass to your points about the midterms. You know, it's it's quite evident what the play here is to generate you know a lot of wins, a lot of you know, uh peace deals agreed, whether that's between Armenia, AzID Bai John or or elsewhere. To have a strong record to to run on. But history suggests that that the Russia Ukraine conflict will will most likely wear on Tina.
Yesterday there was a call between President Trump and the leaders of the European Union, including Presidents Landscape. Presumably I guess the preview President Trump's plan for the summit.
Do we know what was said on that call?
Do we know of any agreements came from that call?
Well, what we know is that the European leaders certainly feel like it was a good conversation. Maybe they're putting a brave face on it. Jd Vance has been here in the UK. There's lots of talk in political circles that he understands the context more than he did before.
And there is a sense that.
They the US will not kind of sell the farm when it comes to the terms of a deal. But you know, Land for Peace is going to be very concerning for Europe because the strong sense is that after Ukraine, next come the Baltic States.
Yeah, okay, thank you, let's let's end on that. I think I just mentioned this with Leona fix over in Germany. I mean to me, it's okay, let's bring it up, folks, Tina Fordham, are we essentially heading towards a European Domino theory with Vladimir Putin.
Not yet, not yet, but you can see who's building up their military and who's meeting and exceeding that NATO two percent target to five percent. It's all the countries that are closest to Russia, and that is something that I think if you're outside of this part of the world, it can be very perplexing. It's not just a matter of ending the war. It's about the terms, because a bad peace deal in Ukraine is a green light further Russian incursions.
Tina.
One final question. We've got to get back markets. But I just think this is just absolutely critical. Do you assume is a grizzled pro of international relations, that we're onto some new regime or after Trump, do we find ourselves back somehow?
To name your theory the.
Washington Consensus, zacharias post American world, I'll let you name six other theories.
You're better than I am.
But are we like beyond what we grew up with or do we revert back to that somewhere out there?
I think that I interpret President Trump's positions on changing the US role in both the security and the economic order as something that capitalized upon maybe a vague sense amongst the American population that the system wasn't working for them. So for the US to withdraw itself the global order that it created post World War two is dramatic. But we saw this in microcosm here in the UK with Brexit.
It's very difficult to unscramble the egg. You know. Trade data tells us that globalization is continuing, but the world is a security first world, and I think that is the part that market participants and business leaders have had trouble coming to terms with.
Terrific brief Thank you, thank you, Thank you, Tina fordham Ford and Global Foresight.
Stay with us.
More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this.
This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at seven am Eastern on Apple, Cocklay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Term And all.
Ladies and gentlemen, missus Matteo the New.
Space Popular Demand. Okay, I want to start with Walmart. Okay, they're the country's largest private employer. As you know, right, but it's making this move to keep and attract new workers because it is extending this popular employee perk. It is a ten percent discount are nearly all grocery purchases at its stores and online. That's huge those prices of
groceries now nowadays. So in the past, what they did is that it applied to like fresh produce, general merchandise, but it didn't include things like milk, which is big, you know, pasta, frozen pizza, meat. It didn't include except during the holidays like November and December. So now they're
bringing that back. And what it also does, it brings it back closer to the competition because, for example, you have Whole Foods, who's owned by Amazon, and they offer workers a twenty percent discount you know, on their items. Obviously their items are more expensive, but Target offers a twenty percent discount on fresh and frozen produce for their workers too, So this is really people are struggling to pay the grocery bill and this is a huge help
for families. So that was a big, big, big, big move by Walmart.
I want to make clear, folks, you don't we make jokes about it.
There's nobody around the table here that's worried about the marginal banana.
But the answer is this is serious stuff. I mean, particularly for children.
Remember you used to look at a bag of groceries and go, that costs me, you know, like eight dollars or twelve. Now you look at a bag of groceries and go, it's like.
Rent yep, yep, it's it's big.
And we saw that.
Yeah, the prices went up during the pandemic, and we said, are they ever going to come down?
And they kind of knew they were.
They're not next.
Okay, Paul, when you go to Italy you can actually bring your pup with you at a pet hotel.
I don't think they want anything to do with Shamus.
Shamus can live in luxury.
Okay.
This is a new trend in Italy because apparently families have been having fewer kids, but the number of pets in households in Italy have been on the rise. So the country's pet service industry has really been exploding. So in Rome Airports its newest luxury hotel. It's called dog Relay. I'm sorry if I'm not pronouncing it right. It's r E l Ai S.
Thank you. There you go.
It can house about forty pets, but they get underfloor cooling, air conditioning, lavender oil sense, Arnica massages.
Okay, this communal garden.
They even have large screens so.
You can video call your pet when you miss them.
I'm looking to bring Fido here. It's a cap sig. Yes, I want to know. Can we bring that bill and canal fee to the hassler next time? Okay, here's the answer.
Hassler Roma does not allow dogs. Please choose a different pet friendly hotel in row An Crush.
Now, as far as the price, though, I'm not sure what you pay when you when you board your pets because I'm not familiar with it, but their prices are from about forty six dollars to seventy dollars a day.
Is that expensive?
Is that?
Is that fun?
Okay, Well, it's cheaper for me to pay the pair to come over and take care of the beasts then to go to the kenmel Kemel Fee's outrageous.
This last one, yeah, quick one. David Ellison he wants to make more TV shows and movies. He plans a boost film TV production. Yes, Paramount sky Dance more content for Paramounts streaming and produce as many as twenty movies a year. He's putting on the list of priorities. He wants a third film in the Top Gun series. He wants more Star Trek. So this is what he's talking to. This the film studio, it hasn't turned an annual profit since like twenty twenty two, so it's a big thing for them.
Yeah, it's tough, you know, you have to have these. You have to scale, You have to put out a lot of films, like maybe a dozen big budget films if you're more and more hits, no, just to get you know, three or four that get you that billion dollar global box office. And they didn't have they weren't doing that, and they don't have the franchises that that Disney has.
But maybe Top Gun at three.
Look at how many.
Mission Impossible cruises put out, like you know, six, seven, eight of those did sing with Top Gun.
Do the sequels still do? Like I know there's like Jurassic Park eight or whatever else?
You know, they trend down for the most cases.
Yeah, but everyone a while you get a top you know, a Drastka Park four that that's great.
You know, newspapers let us go by email, by text, by live chat on YouTube.
Should we do Newspapers Tomorrow? With Lisa Mateo.
This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday, seven to ten am Easter and on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal