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Shabana Versacci is with Bloomberg Television all of our media worldwide to say that she is someone doing Horizons, doing Daybreak Middle East. She is definitive on her Middle East, and as Robert D. Kaplan talks about from Morocco to Persia, we are honored that she would join us this morning from her Dubai Jubani. I think the war coverage, particularly over the weekend is almost wrote almost cursory in the
United States. Let us start with the airports. Do you have an airport in Dubai by the you have another airport towards Abu Dhabi being built out as well. The distance maybe it's a forty fifty minute drive to the two. What is a state of tension at the Dubai airports this morning?
Hi Tomboll, good morning, Good to be on your show. Let me just run you through what happened specifically with Dubai International Airport DXP. That is the main one that's operational right now. It was hit in the early hours of the morning. A fuel depot exploded into flames. Later on, the Dubai Media Office came out to say that it caused limited damage and no injuries. But for a while the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority moved to suspend flights temporarily.
They have resumed now, a lot of them have resumed. Many flights were canceled that the state owned airline Emirates has resumed travel now. But I think what you're referring to is the fact that some of those flights were redirected to a new air that's being built, as you say,
around forty five minutes away Dubai Mactoom. But again, you know, this is just part of parts of the bigger picture here, which is that Iran continues to strike not necessarily US assets in the region, but key transportation on the dist six hubs.
What is the tension in Dubai, I think within the media coverage in America, do we don't know the tension in Kuwait? We don't know the tension in Cutter across the United Arab Emirates. What is the tension in Dubai or is it just a random missile that may come in.
Let me tell you that UAE alone have received two thirds of the projectiles that Iran have fired over so more than any other Gulf nation. They have successfully intercepted around one thousand, six hundred drones around three hundred missiles. The interception rates is anything between ninety two percent and ninety four percent, depending on whether you're talking about drones
or missiles. So the interception rate is very high. But that's not to say that some debris or interceptions of debris is causing a damage to some Skyrise buildings, as you may have seen reports of that. But increasingly, I would say what has happened in the last twenty four to forty eight hours is Iran seem to be targeting a lot more strategic assets in the region that aren't
necessarily linked to US bases or US control centers. And this I think is perhaps marks a new chapter in this war, because they have attempted to strike at the Fugeaport a couple of times of the course of this weekend, a key strategic port not on the Strait. I should also remind viewers this is a port that is on the Gulf of Aman, a key outlet to get UAE
oil out of the region. The fact that they keep going after it suggests that not only is Iran focusing on that one choke point around the Strait of Hormas, but there also begins to target some of the key ports around the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Aman as well.
Jumana.
The Strait of Humus is clearly one of the areas of focus here. President Trump has asked other nations to help secure the passage through the Strait of Hormus. What do we know about any responses from any of our allies.
I guess.
That's right. So that was the main us overnight. He's calling on what he says around seven nations to join in on this coalition to help secure the safe passage of vessels through the straits, including the likes of UK and France, obviously NATO allies. In an FT interview, he hinted that there would be diplomatic repercussions if the NATO allies did not join in on these efforts. He's also suggested that South Korea Japan join in we've heard from
the Japanese Minister of Defense overnight. He said that the threshold for them to get involved is super high. And then the big one is China. Of course, the lion's share of the oil that's transported through the strait ends up in China's hands. From an economic perspective, of course, they have a prerogative to ensure the safe passage of vessels, but they so far have not put out any official commentary suggesting that they're willing to sign up to this.
Jaman One final question here into your busy afternoon and into the evening in Dubai. Are the Arab nations together in a you know, ancient view against Persia or is it every tribe for themselves.
Well, let me just point you to a call that took place between the Saudi Crown Princes Royal Highness MBS
with the President of the UEE MBZ. And you know, for anyone who's been following the news in the region, even before this war erupted, there had started to be some more regional friction between the UAE and Saudi Arabia over there differing objectives around the war in Yemen, also in Sudan, as well, what we see in since the inception of this war is a reproshment of sorts, and what you are getting are these United Communicats from GCC foreign ministers, more and more of these calls taking place,
all of them at condemning the attacks, the Iranian attacks, and in fact going so far as calling them terrorist attacks in their territory, also reiterating the right to self defense. But none of them, and I should say, have gone so far as to suggest that they would get militarily involved in this war. For the time being, they're just emphasizing their right to self preservation and to self defense.
And then of course later on down the track they're going to have to do maybe a little bit of soul searching about the types of strategic alliances that they have.
A terrific brief, Thank you so much. Giovanni Briscacci is shoes of course, driving all of our Middle East coverage with Bloomberg Horizon out of Dubai. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this.
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We agree with true Excellence and hydrocarbons at an LC operational research. Julian Lee is definitive with Bloomberg News and oil. What's the story Julian right now? In oil that's not visible?
I think what's not visible at the moment is exports out of the Persian Gulf. What we're seeing is a near total closure of the straight offor moves. Yes, there've been a couple of small Indian oil tankers going through over the weekend. They were likely carrying liquefied petroleum gases,
which are popular as a cooking fuel in India. One thing I think that's interesting about those vessels is that they took a much more northerly passage through Hormus than is usual, much closer to the Iranian coast, outside of the normal shipping lanes. They could mean a number of things. I mean it could mean that those shipping lanes have been mined, as the Uranians would like us to believe. It could simply mean that the Uranians want to keep
a better eye on what's going through Hormos. Most of the rest of what's gone through is either Iranian owned or linked to China, but that the movements to Hormus are very very small.
Paint the window in Singapore, the Straits of Malacca of the transformation of oil to naphtha, naphtha to ethylene in ethylene into all the plastics and petrochemicals that are out there. That sequence of what we do with oil is that shattered as well.
I think it's certainly coming under strain. You know, this is perhaps the other side of the oil market that we don't appreciate quite so much. We're very used to crude oil going into refineries being turned into gasoline and diesel fuel and jet fuel and heating oil. The other side of that, on the side where all the sort of longer term growth is is in feedstocks for plastics, but that is perhaps less the sort of base load
coming out of the Middle East. A lot of that is heavier crude that tends to go into refineries for processing into fuels. But at some point this is going to pinch perhaps, And you know, the big problem I think at the moment is just that the amount of oil that has been prevented from coming out of the Persian Gulf is bigger than the amount that can be divert elsewhere by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and to some extent to Rock Julian Lee.
Please stay with us right now. We've got to get to the market open, and we're going to come back with doctor Lee in London, of course, expert on all that we see here in hydrocarbons. And we do that with oil under one oh two barely one oh one point ninety three, generally signaling what we see in the equity markets, with futures up sixty one previcts under twenty five earlier. A better take on a Monday morning with our market opening, Alexis.
Christophorus, Thanks so much, Tom, And we had a nice rally for stock futures heading into this Monday morning opening bell and it looks like it's dipping over into regular trading. S and P five hundred up now about sixty points at sixty six ninety one. Dow Jones industrial leverage right out of the gate, up three hundred and seventy seven points level at forty six nine fifty four. NASDA composite climbing two hundred twenty eight points now twenty two thousand
and three twenty nine. The Russell two thousand coming along for the ride, up now thirty three points. We do have oil pulling back a bit. Brent is at one oh one ninety the barrel, WTI crewed ninety four to seventy one the barrel. We've also got precious medals mixed spot gold now at fifty twenty two the ounce, and
bitcoin at seventy three nine hundred and sixteen dollars. Early movers shares of Nebius up thirteen and a half percent after Facebook parent Meta said it's going to pay up to twenty seven billion dollars over the next five years for access to AI infrastructure from the Neo Cloud company. That's your Bloomberg opening bell report, Tom and Paul Alexis.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Right now around the world, across this nation, it is Bloomberg surveillance. Paul Sweeney with Julian Lee at Queenten Victoria Street.
Julian, just for argument's sake, let's assume they were ended today.
Where would Brent be, would Brent get back to its pre war levels and over what time frame might that occur?
Well, you know, fortunately I'm not in the business of price forecasting any longer. I gave that up twelve years ago and when I came to Bloomberg, so I you know, I can't give you a forecast. If you look at the market fundamentals, if you get the flow through hor moves normalized, the market was relatively weak. There's nothing significant that has changed in the supply demand dynamics other than
the closure of hor Moos. We haven't had significant damage to oil production installations in the Middle East or in Iran, thankfully, so you know, the supply side in time would get back to where it was. But I think that would take time. I mean, it's it's not a matter of simply turning on a tap and everything's back to normal. There's there's all sorts of logistics that have to be sorted out. And if we look at right at what's happening now, Saudi Arabia has said it will divert crude
to the Red Sea. It has a pipeline that has the capacity to take seven million barrels a day. The CEO of Saudi Aramco said last Tuesday that they were ramping up to that capacity. But that's a seven hundred and fifty mile pipeline. Oil doesn't move very fast through pipelines. I mean, you know, perhaps not much faster than a decent runner can run. So that means it could take anywhere from you know, four to ten days for an additional input into that pipeline to turn up in increased
volumes coming out at the other end. So that's the sort of logistical disruption or the sort of time frames that we're looking at just to make that switch from east to west. Putting the whole thing back together would perhaps take even longer.
Julian Ly, thank you so much in London, writing for Bloomberg News. 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 Apple, Karplay and Android Otto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Tricia Scarlatta joins us a diverse get out the calendar Paul March College admissions. If you're not early decision or whatever the other eight kinds of decision are. Tricia Scarlatta has the worst worst job at JP Morgan has Jamie Diamond ever called you up and said, how about that tuition I'm paying?
Jamie has not, but I've had have other senior executives who have called me for some advice.
For sure, for someone Jamie Okay, Jasuine Lee kills it in the Wall Street Journal this week and the four zillion East Coast brats going to Saint Andrews. They go out on the pier walk there with their red robes and all that give us an update on the insanity of the college process. As you see it at JP Markets.
The process is insanity. And I love that you mentioned the international schools because they are certainly more cost effective. And as I mentioned earlier, I had a nephew that went to Saint Andrews and did tremendously well. You know, I wish I could tell you that I thought costs were coming down. They are not coming down. They historically have never come down. They are up five to seven percent every year. Even during COVID, costs continued to go up,
So I don't see that changing. I think what we need to make sure we tell families is they need to start early and do it as often as they can. Make those contributions. You know, look The reality is we're getting less international students come to the US. Right those were the people paying the full vote because they didn't get aid. We also just have less kids, so that means less tuition being paid. These schools have created institutions that are so expensive because they have so many programs.
When we went to college, there weren't two hundred three hundred programs. They have to pay for that. They've got to generate revenue, so the costs are not going to come down, and unfortunately there's just not enough free money to go around.
And having sat on a university board, I'll tell you right now, cut your costs by fifty percent.
Start there. Then come talk to your students and the families. But they won't do that. Now talk to just about five twenty nine plans? What are they? How do they help parents?
Very very simple. The best thing about a five to twenty nine account is the fact that you can actually save on taxes. So you're going to take your after tax dollars, make a contribution into a five to twenty nine plan, and that's going to grow tax deferred over the lifetime of the account till you start making those withdrawals. And there are tons of qualified draw withdraws that you can make, and as long as it's qualified, there are no taxes to be happening.
Use a five twenty nine not enough?
So about forty percent now, so we're you're and if you look at it, about fifty percent of Americans don't even know what a five to twenty nine account is.
Can I just interject, because.
We're wonderful, here's the rule days. You just butt in. You don't ask the politenesses out here, ladies and johnman the rules.
I love the fact that you can roll over a five twenty like, let's say, yeah, since my kids don't use all the money in there, which fat chance, Yeah I can. I can send it to my grandkids.
Absolutely, Look, everybody worries they're going to overfund these accounts. Trust me, you are not going to overfund. We just all talked about it. You're not overfunding. The average account size is somewhere in the forty to fifty thousand dollars range. Families are not oversaving. But yes, you can change beneficiaries. There's so much flexibility in these accounts. And we just
did a survey on LinkedIn. What's your biggest reason why you're not opening a five to twenty nine account, And the biggest reason was because we don't think it's flexible. You've got tons of flexibility now you are. So if you have too much money, you can roll over to a roth Ira up to thirty five thousand dollars. There's so much flexibility in terms of the withdrawals. It's not just college anymore. It's K through twelve, it's credentialing, it's tutoring.
It continuously expands. Yes, can you use.
Five twenty nine for SAYT prep?
Yep, you can. You can think about all the money we spend as parents on SAT prep exactly.
How about just aid? A lot of schools offer a lot of aid.
If you know where to look for it, you bet talk to us about how that factors into the equation.
Listen, I adore the families that have the conversation and say we can't pay ninety thousand dollars a year. There are tons of state institutions that are wonderful that you could pay in state tuition. There are also things called a safety a safety school. So if you're somebody who because of your income level, which is probably somewhere around two hundred plus you're not really going to get anything.
It's probably a little bit lower than that. The key is to be to be applying to safeties because that school will give you money off the top because you're still more attractive than somebody getting financially Okay, just.
As a decide, she mentioned full Bote. I saw full Boat play at the Cave at Durham is a great band. The fact of the matter is there's all this media blather about schools giving out tons of scholarships. Anybody who makes over fourteen thousand a year gets to go see and all sort. What I hear from our listeners and viewers is at the travesty, we're all paying full tuition, room and board. What percentage of people that in your research are paying.
Full bote about about forty percent, forty to fifty percent. Yeah, what's the good percentage? Now that number is going to come down again because our international students are going to come down. International students coming up just because of the whole thing with people coming into the country, so I'll.
Feel comfortable coming that is correct.
When does this end? I mean I mentioned today at some point Marlborough cigarettes became too expensive. I don't know we at a point where this just becomes too expensive.
I don't know.
I mean I have not seen it. If we look at history, history has not shown it at all. And we're looking at now. So eighteen years from now you want to send three kids to college. I mean it's you know, you're looking at millions.
Have you ever had two pages in Jamie Diamond's annual report letter? You deserve that?
Oh well, thank you.
I appreciate that you'll work on that.
It's a crisis.
It for sure is a crisis. It is the family's biggest expense.
Within the Vatican. I mean you can get two pages in or two paragraphs in to his work. I appreciate that this has been great. Don't be a stranger. Tricia Scarlatti here full vote for Alexis Christopherus and everybody else. That's what she's going to ring out of education savings at JP Morgan Asset Management. 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, or live on YouTube.
Giving us a lighter touch, Miss Pistopherus, what.
Do you have this morning, I went, I went digging, and I found this one in the Wall Street Journal that says, when it comes to income tax red and blue states, they're growing further up.
So that yeah, don't choices little charts.
Yeah, it was, it's actually quite there's a love, lovely visual with this. So Republican led states are looking to entice new residents with lower taxes. Democratic led states are looking to hire taxes on top earners because they need to plug those budget gaps and also to fund social services. So in just the past five year, okay, twenty three states have lowered their top income tax income tax rates,
Mississippi and Oklahoma looking to eliminate it all together. And then, of course here in New York City, we've also got Washington State looking to raise income taxes on high income households. And here's another. I mean, I just looked at this stat. I think this says it all. According to the Tax Foundation, the middle ground is quickly disappearing. Twenty years ago, fifteen states had top income tax rates on wage income below
five percent, and just one exceeded ten percent. Today, more than half of the states have gone below five percent over the week, and.
The guy I can't pronounce it runs uber dearra. I just can't. Yep, Yeah, I can't. I gave up. Okay, you know Mark Crumpton yelled at me Dari's movement. He's moving in California some point.
That's right, another executive.
You just see it.
You're fleeing from Seattle from California, and they're actually thinking New York is a haven. I mean that's telling you something.
Why is New York a haven? I think that would be surprised to people at Bloomberg eleven three yo.
Yeah, well, because I think relative to where income tax can go. When the states of Seattle in California looks.
Like and we turn to a gentleman from Seattle, yeah, and he said, it's tangible.
I mean, if you take there's state taxes down that, that's great, But how do you plug that hole? So if you're in Mississippi, where does I guess you just lose that revenue and there's less money for schools and social services and stuff like that.
I don't know.
It don't help.
I don't know how they've thought it out.
Asta has all different types of things that can take.
You know it.
It's definitely on the ballot in the midterm elections, that's for sure.
Yep, all right, you had another one, of course I do.
This is from the New York Times. Some Olympic officials want to have the Winter Games played in fixed cities, so no more, you know, I mean it's not this is just a proposal right now, but fewer cities are actually bidding for the Olympics because they can't accommodate every event. You just look at the Milan Games. So we have them in Courtina as well. It was sprawled out, spanning
eighty five hundred square miles. It did work though, Yeah, but you know a lot of the they spend so much on the infrastructure and then they sit, you know, weeds grow in between, like the ski slide, you know, years later.
So also an issue about the snow. Not every pay place that has historically hosted Winter Olympics. I feel like they can do it reliably with this lack of st But with.
Snow, do they look at it as a one off year or is it is one off?
It was a one off year that so they say, And you know, but we were up there twelve thirteen thousand feet snow is great.
I don't know.
One more?
What do you do?
All right?
Oh, this one made me so happy.
Tulips.
Have you seen tulips? I saw on Park Avenue. I can see they want to come up and they're so confused that it's not warmer yet. But this year, for the first time ever, on the National Mall in DC, this was from the Washington Post, people were able to come out. They got free tickets, over twelve thousand people to come and pick ten tulips and make a little bouquet for themselves. This is sort of reminiscent of what like you see happening in Amsterdam and Berlin because they
have big tulip celebrations. This was the first one on the National Mall in DC, and it was a big hit. Apparently.
All right, those free tickets, what like that? Did they know? Okay, what's the Washington Mall. That's the cherry blossoms.
Yes, the cherry blossoms. So now they have another thing. Okay, well, the cherry blossoms are happening. They're going to be happening. That haven't happened yet.
Can I editorialize please? I love the tulip bulbs on Park Avenue. Yes, that's what they do. Is just building up the charity there. The government services except Park Avenues become Third Avenue because they ruined Third Avenue in the last six months, all most some of the traffic on Third Avenue Park Avenue for a whole bunch of blocks. Now every day is bumper to bumper yep.
But at least you still don't have the stores on Park right, they're free of like the commerce and the way that Third Avenue is used to be.
You know, that's the way it was, Alexis Christopher's thank you so much the newspapers.
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