Surveillance: U.S. Seeing Real Wage Growth, CEA's Hassett Says

look for oil called Xson as well. So we're gonna fold some cell side here on x on Mobile earnings up, the stock moves up three and jeff Curry here to rip up the script on Big Oil. How is amery

can Big Oil doing right now? Not so much sell side analysis, but from your purview, well, I think when you look at their ability to tract capital, one of the biggest issues right now is the E S G issue and how do they restructure themselves such that they be able to become more relevant in the de carbonized world. And we think big oil is going to turn into big energy, and they're gonna do that by buying gas sst assets from l n G um gas here in

the US power assets. I just did a fabulous seminar with Robert Litterman of great financial guides like Black Shoals. He did a huge amount of work with Fisher Black years ago, and he has led the study of climate change and all that, and he led our session of Sustained Bloomberg Sustainable Summit on XX on finally catching up. Is big oil gonna go green? I'm not gonna say they're gonna go go go green, but they're gonna put

a greater emphasis on green type assets. So they basically, instead of um letting go of their dirty assets, they'll add on more clean assets to balance out the overall carbon footprint and so they become big energy. Does natural gas factor into that as well? Oh, it's critical to it. L n G is a really important part of that

overall strategy. The reason I bring this up is because we've had a big deal, but it was three years ago and I haven't seen one since, and it was shall p G Right, So when is this stuff really gonna stop happening? You're seeing the the f I D beginning to happen that they're going to go out and build these capacity. Interesting because in terms of looking at where the marginal growth globally comes for energy, it's on the gas side, So you need to build these assets.

So what does that mean for crude supply? Jeff? If they're going to go out and spend a lot of money doing these other things, what does it mean for crude supply? It means that the supply crude is going to come from USC and p Saudi and Russia, you know, so it's a big OPEC plus plus the shale guys is going to be the ones that delivered crude at the marginal Jeff Curry, Golden Sex with so much of what you do in industry is what you don't do.

Did the Canadians get it right with the sands? In hindsight? Was that like smart investment? And was maybe excellents smart because they didn't do Canadian sands well. If you go back to two thousand and five, everybody thought it was the future, and part of that because we did not

know what shale was. And then we shifted around two thousand and ninth thought Brazil was the future and we still didn't know what shale was, and by two thousand and eleven, two thousand twelve, we realized, hey, shale is the future. So I don't think it was a mistake in the hind sighting it is, but at the back in two thousand and five it sure wasn't a mistake. Are the Saudis astute at those technological shifts or they

blind to them because everything is so perfect for their hydrocars. Well, again, there at the bottom of the cost curve, there there is intra marginal as one can possibly get. And so in terms of thinking about what how this impacts them, it just tells them where their support is going to be. So if you go back to two thousand and five, two thousand and six, we thought shale was a hundred

barrel propositions why we didn't think it was doable. We thought um oil sands was um So in terms of you know, thinking about how does that impact Saudi, it impacts where the price level is going to be. Now we think that that marginal barrel is a deep water offshore um platform, which is somewhere around seventy dollars a barrel, and that's where back in Brent is right now today, let's talk about the oil story of the morning. Iran. Now the message to anyone buying oil from Iran was

stopped buying gold from Iran. And then as it got to the deadline, was starting to find out from a senior Administration official. UM. According to the reporting Cabra Bloomberg, the United States about to let eight countries, including Japan, India, and South Korea to keep buying Irani and crude. What is going on? Well, I think a question is you alluded to is what was the market pricing it. I

don't think the market was pricing in zero Iranian exports. UM. I think it was probably closer to around eight hundred thousand a day. Our expectations were one point two to one point for you take if you go take that, you got those eight countries dropping by about going into uh the hundred and eighty day mark, then you would be talking to number around one point to That still gives you a deficit in fourth quarters. So it's still a bullish outcome in terms of thinking about the price,

which is why we think the market's oversold. Here, let's talk about how much Crewed has ruled out rolled out to what degree do you think it is? I've assault um looking at Brenton's WC this morning, going to hundred dollars barrel. It's gonna happen. D's there. That was two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, it was Jeff Carry two weeks ago, not us. We were eighty two weeks ago and we're eighty today. I think that the key point there is really that with you you have relatively strong demand.

And I think a lot of that sell off was demand driven because you saw it in the equity market. In fact, we when we do a decomposition of the run up, it was I ran and the sell off was demand until yesterday it became a run. But I think the key point is you've got three reasons why

you want to be long long oil positioning. Um the market, all the length has gone out of the market to inventories are finally beginning to draw, so that the impact of the decline in the Iranian exports is now greater than what that increase in production has been out of the US, Russia and China. And then the third reason we're seeing it in copper today, the e M environment

is probably not as bad as people think. The downside risk is that the Saudis need to buy some foreign policy favors some diplomacy um and that they need to keep the President of the United States on this side. Following the foreign policy crisis, the diploma diplomatic crisis of the last couple of weeks, what do you think of that?

I think that they have delivered on that promise. You know, you see if you look again the numbers that came out and in the last um several days, Russia, Saudi and the United States all massively increased production in anticipation of this Iranian decline. Now, I agree with you that that means they're more likely than not to be more cooperative with the US, But I think they'll also try to defend the seventy downside. I want to go back to the circle back here in the time we've got

left Jeff Curry again, someone to the cell side. I'm sorry for that. What did big oil learn from a hundred down to twenty nine dollars? Brent and one are the best practices of excellent right now? Or Chevron or BP Maybe there's a laggards, you know that I don't know, But what were the lessons learned enjoyed from a hundred down to twenty nine dollars a barrel. Well, I I'd say one of the big the big lessons is that cost support isn't cost support, and that you have many

macro variables that that are at play here. In fact, I like to give an example that that I learned on that is that if you took the cost bases of Canadian oils undred and twenty dollars a barrel in two thousand and fourteen, with an applied return of somewhere around, guess what they were when oil was at forty five dollars around? What were the return on those assets north the whole world be priced? And so that where they were on the cost curve continue to shift as you

move down. So when you have those big re pricings five, it's a macro price. Is that cross curve shifted up with the recovery in oil? Yes, it has. We've we've seen inflationary Why is that inflationary? Presstionary pressure? Labor a lot of it because yours now stressing the system at a rate we haven't seen it stressed since, you know, the the early part of this decade. So they go in tandem, there's symmetric they go down the same way

they go up. You know, that's always But people like to say, is that you know which one is a chicken and which one is the egg? Is that the cost or the We do that in surveillance every day it's Friday. Do we do chicken? Okay, we can't. But but I think that the broader issue here is it's strong global demand for oil increasing the demand for service activities that can creates the inflationary pressures like we're seeing

across the broader economy. Never enough time. Jeff Curry, thank you so much with his work in London over the years. So he's probably a page tips T. He's had pag tips T that needs a big fan of the city London. Jeff is going to catch up to see Jeff. Eric Ross is with us with great acuity, great granularity on Apple, Eric, I just looked at the fancy Bloomberg chart on Apple, and we're down something in the vicinity. Eric, we're down

something in the vicinity of three standard deviations. Three standard deviations on Apple. You know to TWI and you know you go down and two oh seven two o eight. Right now, it's been an abrupt move. Is it an opportunity to buy shares today. But we see it that Apple clearly missed what the guidance was being expected by analysts out there. So they do to get actors, they

have to get condished a small bit. But when you start looking at what's actually happening in in in their business overall, and the smartphones are a s owing growth type of business. But Apple continues to take more and more share there. But if you look at everybody else in the smartphone business, all the Android players, Sampson Hua show me they're barely making a profit. They're seeing their units continue to get ground down. It's it's a terrible market.

Apple is figured out the formula to make a tremendous amount of six years ago. I mean, they've always been the premium product, that's a fact they have. But they know more. They're they're pricing dramatically last year and that made a huge difference in the amount of money they were able to pull out of the the smartphone supply. If you don't some of the parts analysis, I know your targets to fifty, it's an opportunity for you folks.

Earlier this morning, Morgan Stanley cut their price target on Apple, and there's other dynamics out there as well, But has anybody done legit some of the parts, like what is services actually worth? Uh? As far as services being worth uh separately from itself, I mean it's trund It's it's basically about ten billion in revenues a quarter slap on something that's got Yeah, I mean a company that would

be separate by it's equivalent to that. What would be the name you would come up with that would be an equivalence to Apple Services? You can look at something like it's a little bit different, but something like a salesforce. You know, So you're talking about a multiple that's definitely north of twenty and that's probably north of thirty right now. We don't cover how does Apple price it right now? Again?

Compare that so you know, Apple you're talking about you know, earnings are probably on the order of five billion a quarter right now, so you're talking about roughly twenty billion a year times call it times. So you're talking about if I'm doing this right, you got a price target. It's way up. It's way way up, way way up there.

And we'll let you write that out before can you do with some of the parts force and get back to Monday by ten, and that's what they do in the real world, is absolutely that's what clients tell them. What did you learn in a conference call last night? There's nuances of media reports that I think the media

does a much better job than they used to. But what was the distinction you heard, Well, that the media actually does do a very very good job at pulling apart what's going on in the Apple report, even before the analysts get to to to do it. There's a lot more people covering it real time that what weren't doing it five ten years ago. But the thing that

we noticed most about the call are two things. One, Apple is moving very heavily into what they're calling the ecosystem, let's say, which is essentially they have a huge install base of their products, not just the products they are sold this quarter, but products they sold two years ago, and people are using it. There's still buying services, they're buying other things like Apple Watch, air buds, et cetera, wearables,

the home uh products, etcetera. And they're they're they're continuing to layer on more and more products there at Apple is becoming a sales channel into that huge install base. And because it's a very protected walled garden type of ecosystem. You can only get in with an Apple product. You can't go in by by logging on from an Android product. It becomes an incentive to buy Apple products and incentive to stay. It's kind of like the Bloomberg terminal. Actually,

I actually talk about this to clients. Bloomberg is built an incredible walled garden where if you're not in it, you don't have the ecosystem to be able to communicate back and forth with clients. And if you're not there then people notice then with That is what I call and I've written memos on this, folks. Annuity pricing. My great criticism of the last twenty four hours is the outrage and at times moral outrage of thousand dollar toys,

except they're not. They're perceived as fifty two dollar a month toys. Do you value a company differently if the linkages to the customer are monthly fees versus a one time cash payment. Yes, Again, moving more towards what I would call the ecosystem play, which is much more of an annuity type of payment system. How do you value

terminal value differently with an annuity type payment system? Well, I'm more looking at examples of what's been gone on in major tech companies before, as we look at Microsoft as being a great example of this. So right now Apple is looked at as seller of iPhones, but they're not necessarily as seller iPhones. They're now looked at as they're not trying to move into although I don't think analysts believe with them quite yet, into being an ecosystem

sale into their huge install base. Microsoft has made this transition in a very meaningful way where they're not just selling office products. They're now selling an annuity software as a service office products plus of all kinds of other products like that, and the stock has has really rocketed in the last three years since they made that transition.

I've got a forward p on Apple off the bloomberg of sixteen is seventeen ish, you know, folks, this is Friday chit chat, so don't hold me to that sixteen or seventeen. And I've got Microsoft with an equivalent twenty four. Yes, so basically that's a four. I'm off the top of my head, a fort lift of Apple valuation up to Microsoft valuation. If the street figures out the annuity benefits of that cashul right, absolutely, and if you look at it, the commarison is actually very good because I do three

three years ago Microsoft is doing very well. But you know, three years ago PC was considered a dead, dying platform. Microsoft was selling office products and operating systems into that platform, plus some other growth areas, but those are very small pieces of the business. Nobody really believed that that could happen.

But they knew that if they could sell that again as an annuity, as a software as a service type of product to be pushing the cloud, that they could get a better multiple, better understanding apples At the beginning of this process, I think longer term it's gonna be a bumpy ride. It's a bumpy ride for any company that's trying to change the way that Street values it. But I think that as we look forward, this is gonna be a much more uh predictable type of earning stream,

steady earning stream. What's the cash drama to come? Is there now a calendar date where they do massive share buy back or reaffirmed share buy back, or they do a real dividend lift. Is there, like we got through the holidays February March April kind of calendar date, where Eric Ross says, this is where we'll know what they'll do with that cash. This is unfortunately beyond the pure

view of the type of research that we do. We're not really very tight with the management team as far as their plans, not on speaking terms of really we're really pulling a lot of data from the supply chain of what's going on where the components. What do you see there right now, particularly China Dynamics. Well, actually, things look very good in the supply chain. So last year when we were looking at it this time, the supply

chain was barely growing at all. They were having a lot of problems get the product that and we could tell that there were problems with the display, problems with the sensing, problems with the fingerprinting, fingerprint measurements. And this year it's complete opposite. They had a nice steady ramp over the summer to release the excess and excess math or the tennis. Have you seen that. I haven't seen

it in person. I've only seen the specs. Have you had two children have their laptops break in the last seventy two hours? That would be me, Eric Ross, Thank you so much. We now turned far more towards the policy of all this and a better America with Betsy Stevenson of course at the University of Michigan and her work for the Department of Labor Ages Ago, Betsy, there is no other issue in America on this Friday, and

towards the selection that immigration. If you were standing with undergraduates in ann Arbor, what would you state to them in a class on our immigration dynamics right now? Well, I think what's going on with immigration has a lot more to do with, uh, you know, the sort of politics and how people feel about it than the labor market. And we have a very tight labor market um, and certainly you know we've seen over um the last year, they're they're certainly areas where um the red duction and

immigrants has left some businesses scrambling um. And that's you know, one of the big puzzles this whole year has been if we don't have enough workers, or if the labor markets tight, why aren't we seeing wage growth? So you know, we take strong rates wage growth in this report, so we're starting to see that some of us picking up.

But I think you know that was you know, the real puzzle, and you know, last summer, I saw a report of a landscaper who couldn't get enough low cost immigrant labor to do his landscaping services, so he canceled his contracts and shut down. And the real questions for economists is why not offer higher wages and try to hire that American labor? And that's the real puzzle's going to take to get businesses to pay the higher wages UM.

Which boat Betsy. We've got listeners out there saying, Professor, that's great, but that immigrant landscaper could be an American adult or a college or high school kid instead of that immigrant landscaper. How do you respond to that in the reality of the modern American economy. Well, I think the reality is that they aren't applying for jobs, right,

That's why we saw people shutting down UM. And I think that's what I was trying to say, is the question, you know, yes, we could pay much higher wages and try to try for Americans to those jobs, but that is going to push prices up UM. And the question is other people want to pay to have someone to their law and at those higher costs UM. Otherwise, the you know, people might say, I'm not gonna I'm not

it's not worth it. The purchasing services, so it was worth it when you know I could get them done cheaper, but these higher costs, I'm not gonna do it. Should we? It is you know the you know, when you think about the reality of the labor market, No Americans are going to college in droves because they want to get the kind of skills that generate higher wages. We've never seen a higher gap between the wages that college graduates GIP and those that UH and those that people who

don't have a college degree or getting. In the United States, it's a terrific time to get a college degree, and we're seeing students who do respond to those incentives and our increasing our educational payment, and that's going to leave us with a gap and these kind of jobs that immigrants scifically done. That's Stevenson with us of course, with Afford School, University of Michigan UH, and with their Department

of Economics as well. Professor. When we look at the debate of this election, as we engage the debate very presidential election, I guess it's a fully employed America. And yet I get more mail from listeners on professors and fancy pants Wall Street economists saying it's fully employed, and the people out there that I hear get letters from every day say you are out of your minds. How

did that divide come about? I think, you know, it really comes to not just can you get a job, but are you able to get a job to pay you a wage that you feel allowing you to earn, you know, to have the living standard that you're expecting given the investments you made in your skills. Uh, do you have a job that provide you a career path that you think you're going to be able to grow? I think Americans to feel like the labor market UM

is in a difficult play for them. It's not necessarily giving all workers access to those career career paths, and there's a lot of risks that's been shifted onto workers. Now you're not you know, you're responsible for figuring out your healthcare, your retirement UM. You know the fact that you know you may get more hours this week or less hours this week. You practice, you know your income is going up and down this week. We see a

lot of income volatility even when employement is try. These are the kinds of problems that matter for people are trying to pay their mortgage, pay their rent puictured on the table. One final question if I could, then, can we get back to a better full time America, employed, waged and benefited or do we just need to get used to a gig economy and its instabilities? Um, you know, I think that's a difficult question. I think you know. The real question is there's a lot of people, they're

doing really well. There's a lot of corporations out there doing really well. And what could we do? What should we be doing to make sure that those gains This strong economy has produced a ton of money for some people. How do we get that more broadly distributed? Are we getting at Betsy? This is critical. I wish we had more time. We got to do this again. Are we not seeing those gains filtered to labor because executives understand that any marginal wage gain comes out of their bonus

amount their bonus pocket. Is it just that simple? I can't tell you what they're thinking, but of course it is not simple. Of a link right now, you heard that the big corporate tax cuts were gonna lead to big games for workers. They didn't leave the big games for workers what did they lead. You know, they led to UH stock buy back, They led to big payments for the careholders. So we have seen the labor share of income has gone down. And this, you know, this recovery,

this strong economy, has not changed that. I talked that what labor is getting is a smaller share than what it used to be. And if you're growing the pie, put your shrinking labor share. Labors doesn't care that the pie growing what they wanted their share back. This has been wonderful, Betsy Stevenson, thank you so much. With the FOURD School, the University of Michigan, in the course republic service, with the Department of Labor, as well for the Trump administration.

Views on the jobs report were now joined on Bloomberg Television and on Bloomberg Radio by Kevin Hasset, Council of Economic Advisors Chairman, and he joins us from outside the White House. Good morning to Kevin. Oh, it's great to be here. Especially, had a great job to stay right, a really good job. Today. The economy is booming, gets running hot, Kevin. I guess that's a good reason for the Fed to keep rising interest rates, isn't it? Oh? You go right, to the thing that you know, I

can't talk about. You know, we respect the independence of the FED. Uh. The thing I can say though, as an economist is that not only was job growth really strong despite the hurricane, but wage growth was really strong too, going north of three over a twelve month period for the first time since before the Great Recession. And you know, you and I have been talking about this for more

than a year. I said, cut taxes will have a capital spending boom, and then with the capital spending boom, will get wage growth, but it will be supported by higher productivity, and so it won't be inflationary. And so we're definitely seeing the capital spending and now we're seeing the wage growth that everybody said was impossible. We've got this slow, quiet pick up in productivity and I think that's really important and not many people are talking about it,

but on CAPEX, I think this is interesting. And the last GDP report business investment didn't look good. It's decelerated by a fair bit. Kevin, what's the view from the White House as to why? Well, yeah, so, first, if you look at the source status, so the the advanced durables numbers have non defense capital goods shipments and orders. If you look there, then you you see you know, basically they were up something like six percent for the quarter.

Imports of capital goods were up a lot, and so we were expecting the capital goods UH spending in the in the two three number to be sort of seven to ten percent, and so the fact that it was so low as a surprise to us. And and all of the indicators like like capital spending plans, you know, n f I B sentiment, all of the indicators are much more consistent with the key source data. And you even saw it in the Job's report today. So so down down in the details, you guys probably didn't have

time to dig that deep yet. Cap the employees that make capital goods in this Job's report, they increase at a rate of five points. And so there's definitely a dissidence right now with all the data we see and the capital spending in the GDP release. Now, those guys are pros. I wouldn't want to say anything like they're making a mistake. No, they've got some nuanced micro data that we don't have or something. But everything we look

at says the capital spending trend is continued. So Kevin, I assume that is still in this bullish camp where you expect to supply side response, where we can have white growth but without the inflation repressions that come with that better output in America, right, And don't forget that. It's it's it's econ one oh one. Everybody who ever took an economics class, the very first chart they showed you was supply and demand. And if you shift the

fly out, then that puts downward pressure on prices. You know, we've got statistical models, macro models over at c A where we put a capital spending shock into an economy as big as our own, and we find that it's actually disinflation ary, just because that intuition from your first economics class is accurate. And we're so we're seeing right now,

right is real wage growth. So so not only is nominal wage growth above three we're looking at three point one from both the e c I wages and salaries and from what we got today, but the PC deflator is you know, more than a percent below that, and and so that means that we've got real wage growth, which means that you know, underlying productivity is what's driving wages Kevin, that's a bullish story. Here's another one for you. A report that the President has asked officials to draw

by potential trite dale with China. Is that true? You know, I've seen those reports that I can't comment one way or the other about what folks are working on for the president behind the scenes. That's all covered by executive privilege. But I can tell you that the President had a very promising call with President she. We're looking forward to him having a very productive meeting when they meet at the G twenty meetings. And you know, President Trump is

very very good at getting deals. That's something that we've seen over and over. I who wrote the Art of the Deal. But whatever the president's going to meet about anything. You know, if he was going to meet and talk about Tiddley Winks, then there'd be a lot of staff all over town helping prepare him for that meeting. And so that, you know, the fact that people would be helping him prepare for the G twenty meeting is not

really does well. I'm trying to understand, Kevin, if he's preparing for the G twenty or preparing for the mid terms. Is this campaign politics or make an economic policy. What could you be more clear about your question doesn't want to deal with now I can. I can say that there's a big, big incentive for the administration to get the market up and get the market route off the front page of the newspaper coming into the midterms next week.

And I think a lot of people would like real clarity as to whether some of this is disingenuous or not, whether there is a real effort to get a trade deal, let the G twenty, or just an effort to get some better stories ahead of the midterms. Look, if you look at the U s m c A deal, which

is a great, improved modern trade deal. If you look at the free trade talks that we've begun with Europe and with Japan, the progress that President Trump made with President Yunker, you can see that his objective in the trade space is better policy. Better policy is good for America. It makes growth go up, it makes markets go up. And better policy is you know, it's our objective, it's our long run objective. And the g TWITY meeting has

been on the schedule you forever. And the fact that Presidency and President Trump are going to meet at the g TWITY meeting has been something that's been considered for a very long time. And so the notion that we would consider great policy just because it will get us reelected, it's it's cookie. I mean, come on, we consider great policies because we're patriots, we love America. We want to make workers wages go up by even more than three

point present. Let's talk about something else. Let's talk about the deficit and the debt. Kevin John Bolton said the following, and I find this fascinating. Let me read it too. I'm sure you're familiar with the quote. It is a fact that when your national debt gets the level hours is that it constitutes an economic threat to the society. And that kind of threat ultimately has a national security consequence,

for it is the deficit and national security risk. I think certainly if you run, uh, you know, all the way forward out fifty years and look at the long run projections, then there are unsustainable policies that will have to be revised. Every economist will tell you. And if you didn't do that, then you'd run the risk of all sorts of things like not having enough money to defend our country. And I'm sure that that's the kind

of thing that John Bolton has in mind. Uh. You know, again, in economic models, there's a great opportunity in the US if we have a fiscal consolidation what economists call it, that it would be a big positive for growth. That's absolutely true. But is there a near term risk that the deficits are going to cause the economy to tank or something like that? Like, absolutely not. In fact, usually the near term models that model the near term effects

of deficit think. In fact, you know, even amongst the Kynesie and so, one of their metrics of stimulus is the deficit, right, and so they would say we're being stimulative right now. So I asked this question of mcmulvaney in the last couple of weeks as well, Kevin, I'd love your insight on it too. Is the g IP really still the Party of Fiscal Responsibility? Oh? Sure, sure? But no, no, okay, but let's think about it this way. So, so GDP growth was one point six percent where President

Trump took office. You agree with that. Wage growth was in the tubes. Every new factory was being built in Ireland instead of here. We had the highest corporate tax on earth, and a military that was really, really had worrisome readiness because so little money had been spent on weapons and taking care of our boats and so on, and you know, planes that couldn't fly because they didn't

have parts, all of those things. And so President Trump came in, he prioritized getting the taxes right, fixing the military, and the result has been what we're talking about that we've got a whole year of three percent growth, we've got north of three percent wage growth, we've got real wage growth, the capital spending boom, and a military that's

you know, got about set a step again. And so I think that after we have prioritized those objectives, that of course it's natural for us to then think about what the next step should be. And that's why President Trump, leading again like he does, has called on the cabinet agencies to submit budgets that are that show a five percent cut across the board, across all cabinet agencies, because he thinks that now one of the next priorities should

be deficit. But there are some contradictions here, Kevin. A lot of people want the GOP to be the party of fiscal responsibility. That were the military to have a bounce in its step, we all do. And then we see headlines and comments about sending fifteen thousand troops towards the border to protect the border from a migrant caravan that is, some estimates, is up to two months away.

Does that make sense? Is that fiscally responsible? Well, you know, I I'm not a border security expert, but I can say nor would anyone ever ask me for military advice, I can tell you. But the fact is that we've spent wisely in the military to repair the things that were broken and to up the spending to make sure that the folks that we go in harm's way have the materials they need so that they can win and

not be harmed. And I think that that that wasn't the state the President Trump thought that we had when we got here, and and so we've prioritized that fixing

that first. But now now that it looks like we've made great progress there and with the tax cuts to livering high growth and the revenues that come with it, now it's time to sit back and look at spending in other places and exactly all of this and this comes from a genuine place, honestly, Kevin Okay, I understand that you want to have this image of being fiscally responsible and you can't comment on national security. But last time I checked, John Bolton is not an expert on

the fiscal deficit either. And it just seems that a lot of people are commenting on a lot of things outside of their lane ahead of the midterms because politically it might make sense to say these things. And just before we go, I want a final word from you as the weather focus actually is and whether you can actually get things back together and just focus on this is my job. I'm going to do my thing instead of having all these other people comment on things outside

of their lane. It's kind of an odd question. I guess what's your lane? Right? I mean, your land is everything that I don't know. It's question you know what my lane is? You know, you know what my lane is, and and I stay in my lane. You know. I talked about the things I know about and try to, you know, to say, hey, I don't have extra information for you and that thing, and that's that's what we do,

you know. And uh So, anyway, this whole lane thing is not a conversation that I'm an expert in either. There you go. It's like talking about lanes is not in my lane? How about that? And then we got Kevin Hasset from that side of White House, right to have you with us. Kevin always a sport, and yet she's doing to be back. Always stand your line. I'm sure we'll talk to you again. So thanks for listening

to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or whichever podcast platform you prefer. I'm on Twitter at Tom Keane before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide. I'm Bloomberg Radio