Paul Mcnamara on the Problem With Turkey, and the Attempt To Save the Lira

is the situation in Turkey. And if you haven't already, a couple of weeks ago, we published an episode with the economist Fila Bingal based in a in a bank and in Istanbul, basically walking through some of the measures that the air Delan government has taken recently to stabilize the lira. And of course the lira had a pretty terrible one. It feels like, as we said on that episode, that every nine months, every year, every year and a half, there's a pretty big episode in Turkey where the currency

plunges and the government engages in seemingly unorthodox monetary policy. Nonetheless, none of it seems to have worked. Inflation is extremely high, and so the argument is or the attempt by the government is to discourage domestic savers from moving their money into into dollars and to hold their money in lira. So far, you know, this has been a goal for a while. Turkey is a heavily dollarized economy by and large,

though nothing has has worked. So I would encourage people to listen to that episode for a discussion of the mechanics. But of course anything new is bound to be very controversial, and there's a lot of views and a lot of skepticism about whether anything will improve with the new measures. Uh, And so we want to continue on the topic. And of course in the last episode we spoke to an economist at a Turkish bank, but this time we want to get the perspective that's a little bit more international

from the international investing community. And I'm extremely excited about our guest. He's been on the podcast two or three times in the past, often helping us understand what's going on in the e M and I think we've even talked Turkey specifically before, maybe in eighteen or nine. Nonetheless, very excited to welcome back to the show Paul McNamara. He's an investment director at GAM, longtime specialist in emerging markets, and so we're going to dive right in. So Paul

welcome back to odd lots, thanks very much. Before we even get to the current measures and the current mechanisms that the government has put in place to attempt to stabilize the lira, how would you characterize the long term issues facing the country? Why is it in your view that we seemingly come back to Turkey in particular, I don't know, every year or every year and a half during some episode of high inflation and extreme currency of volatility.

It's it's something that tends to be particularly true of countries which have a habit of getting themselves into trouble. Turkey isn't remotely in as much trouble as Argentina, but the mindset there is the same. Is that if you know a country is prone to or more corrections in the currency, to overnight huge rises in infrastrates or big drops in bond prices, you tend to be to react

much faster. And this goes as much for people with a bit of money in the bank, do they switch their money from lira's to dollars or back again, or take their money out of the bank. You know, when you get this much volatility, it kind of creates its own volatility because people feel the need to react much faster, and just that willingness to react more quickly kind of creates sort of enhances the volatility, So you get into

this kind of volatility promoting spiral. Now, how much of this spiral would you say is a function of, say, domestic institutions, and of course people perceive the Air Douan government to be engaged in I would say, highly unorthodox views of how monetary policy works, lowering rates, blaming high

rates for high inflation, et cetera. How much of this spiral is sort of the government disinclination towards more orthodox policies versus sort of more behavioral explanations on the part of Turkish savers and their disinclination to hold lira, Like, what, what is why in particular does Turkey seem to exhibit this this doom loop? I mean, I think I think it's really interesting because it's it's kind of unusual to

have a crisis which is which is largely voluntary. It's it's not like you have to do some sort of thought experiment. You know that what would be the counter factual if Turkey at higher interest rates? Because we know that that before President Hrderhan sacked rag Ball, the previous head of the Central Bank. We had much higher interest rates, and we had a liraer that had been appreciating solidly

for a couple of months. So in terms of the trigger for this this particular situation, it's entirely I think on the on the shoulders of the government that they decided that they were going to sort of play play games. I think it is maybe a little bit casual that they decided that, you know, that they could conduct a complete experiment in monetary policy. I mean, I think there are longer term reasons why Turkey has been particularly prone

to this boom bus cycle. It's a country where the external deficit, you know, dips on a regular basis into into deficit, into very substantial deficit. It's got much much lower level of foreign exchange reserves than pretty much any of the other big e ms except maybe South Africa, you know, so it has fewer natural safeguards. I mean, I think the history of the volatility makes the consequences

of policy experiments more serious. But you know, primarily the you know, the recent huge amount of volatility was a political choice by the government. So why is that like when we talk about these ems that flare up of the news from time to time in Turkey, South Africa, Brazil from time to time. What is it a structurally and you mentioned the lack of foreign exchange reserves and the sort of the thin cushion that the country has.

Is there something structural about well, what is it that I guess about the way the Turkish economy is structured in terms of domestic industry and so forth, such that it maintains these vulnerabilities And in your view, does a policy exist there could reverse some of these factors. Yeah, I mean, I think the very substantial role for foreign currency, and especially the US dollar is definitely something that makes

Turkey much more vulnerable. You know that depositors regularly switched their money between lira and dollars depending on, you know, what they perceive the outlook for the currency to be. But probably more important is that an awful lot of the on shore debt is in US dollars. So not only do Turkish depositors keep a decent chunk of their savings in well, I'll keep saying dollars. I mean it

does include especially euros. There's a few other currencies, but we'll say dollars for simplicity, is that not just genuine foreign debt, I mean debt owed to external institutions, but also on shore. The Turkish banks lend dollars to domestic borrowers. And if you owe, if you owe a lot of dollars and the liraa plunges, then you're going to end up chasing the lera. And that's especially true if if you're say running real estate or something like that, something

without a natural stream of dollars. I mean, if you're a big exporter, then I think it makes a lot of sense your revenues are and dollars, It makes a lot of sense to have your debt in dollars. But in Turkey, you know, a big it's got a very very strong and well I mean not always vibrant real estate sector. You know, for a couple of years, I mean before COVID, the share of real estate construction was ticking up towards the level we saw before the euro

crisis in places like Spain. And if you're borrowing dollars without a natural source of dollars, then then the very big role of the dollar in the economy is going to create volatility in itself, because it does mean that when the dollar strengthens, instead of making people look, oh, the dollar is expensive, I won't buy some now, it's I desperately need these dollars, and if it moves even more,

I'm going to be even further underwater. So I think the big role of the dollar, not just on the deposit side, but also on the death side, is very important there. So this gets to you know, this sort of this gets to our discussion in our last episode in Turkey, which is people look at Turkey and they say, Okay, what's what's all this? You know, cutting interest rates where they should be hiking them, and diminishing the independence of the central bank, sacking the central bank, and so forth.

But how much is the core issue really the high level of dollarization? And is there an argument that nothing can be solved or no stability can be achieved until that's reversed in some manner. It's fairly clear that you know that that the high level of dollarization creates more volatility. It makes any bad policy decision, any big external change, you know, be a spike in the oil price or something like that, it will generate more volatility in a

highly dollarized economy like Turkey. But you know, I mean, dollarization is by no means unique to Turkey. You know that we've seen, I mean, most of the economies of Central Europe were to a significant degree, maybe not to the same degree as Turkey. You know, oriented to know, first the deutsch Mark and and later the Euro. You know, there was a huge role for foreign debt in the Asian financial crisis. Going back a bit further, a lot of Latin America still has a significant role of dollar

for dollarization. But you know, an awful lot of countries across the emerging world have managed to reduce the level of dollarization in their economies. And that happens when they just managed to maintain macroeconomic stability. I mean, the one thing we haven't mentioned yet is inflation. But the current crash or whatever you want to call it, is primarily

about inflation. I mean, nobody really cares that much. You know that there's no suggestion if you look globally that foreign investors demand a certain level of real of real interest rates generally to to put money into a foreign economy, or that you know, domestics will always prefer to have, you know, to hold foreign currency. If real interest rates get too low. But in the specific situation we have

here where inflation is is well. I mean, even before the latest round of nightmarish numbers, inflation was already very high. And have this perception that any sort of orthodox policy or not even or even an unorthodox policy which had some kind of logic behind it, you know, that there

was no possibility of anything like that. That's what's kind of creating its own kind of spiral because we saw the big drop in the lira, and the result of that is that the latest CPI that was announced was thirty six percent year on year, including thirteen and a half percent in one month, and the p p I is I mean, this is inflation ticking up from sort of nuisance and you know, minus disruptive factor to something that becomes a real problem that makes taking economic decisions,

even with the horizon of a few months, really very difficult. The key problem is not, oh, you know, interest rate

to here rather than there. It's that inflation is very very high and the government either doesn't have a clue or doesn't care un inflation specifically, I mean, how much is this is just I guess I would say the inverse of the lyric and so how much of it is passed through from import and so mechanistically when the lira weekends, inflation goes up, etcetera, or other other dynamics, there's a lot of there's a lot of other other

stuff at work. I mean, you know, as a very very loose rule of thumb, the estimate of the past through you know, say, is very very roughly about a quarter or somewhere between a quarter and a fifth. So if you get a ten percent rise in inflation, sorry, ten percent drop in the lira, then that will probably add somewhere between two and two and a half percent

to inflation. So it's part of it. But the factors which are at work everywhere else in the world, which is, you know, a huge build up of cash balances, both of firms and individual and household levels, people being pushed out of the economy and then suddenly kind of coming back bottlenecks, big rise in oil prices because all energy effectively all Turkey's energy needs are imported, which is which is quite unusual in e M. So the lira is

a very important part of it. It's a particularly important part in the recent big spike, but it's overlaid on a general global reflationary picture, which I think may affect Turkey more than more than a lot of others as well. And of course you've got stuff like the government just pushed through a very very big rise in the minimum wage,

for example. You know that that there's inflationary factors all over its assuming out for a second, and you mentioned that of course heavy dollarization is not unique to Turkeys, so it's a factor, but it can't explain everything. And you know that other e m s either have been able to deal with dollarization it hasn't created the same level of volatility, or they've actually been able to reduce

dollarization over time. What's worked, Like, is there a playbook more broadly setting us at Turkey in what would work? Is there a consistent playbook that you've seen in your career watching a different ones where it's like, yes, this is a this has been a path towards reducing the delization and the risk that comes in there. Yeah, I mean it's extremely simple macro stability. I mean, obviously inflation coming down and staying down. I mean it looked as

if Turkey was well on this course. I mean, actually the best part of a decade ago. Now, when they got inflation well down and persistently into single digits, then you start to see the currency stabilize, you see real appreciation. It's not just a question of inflation. You need to have the banking sector seen as safe. You need to see government debt seen as effectively risk free locally, but

in a word, stability. If domestic institutions are stable, if if domestic macro variables are stable, then people don't want the uncertainty of owning a foreign currency, because then owning foreign currency becomes a two way risk. You get the domestic currency appreciating, and it's then it's the holders of

foreign cur se who get hit very hard. I mean, a particularly good example is what happened in Poland and Hungary from the other side, when people who had taken mortgages in Swiss Frank's in particular, but in foreign currencies, the volatility between foreign currencies and local currencies makes both borrowers and lenders want to prefer domestic currency, not on the grounds of wanting a directional move that looks after them, but just on the grounds a certainty that you will

not you know, even in somewhere like Poland or Hungary. You can comfortably get a move in euro's lotty or euro euro foreignt of five six seven percent, and people don't want that uncertainty. So I mean the natural preferences for people to use as their unit of account the domestic currency, and you need Turkish level disruption to chase

people out of domestic currency. This gets into when people pinpoint are now or when they talk about the diminishing raw, the diminishing independent of central bank, or the frequent changing of key central bankers or ministerial points. This is where you would say it sounds like is a real negative

contributing effect or essentially essentially the uncertainty effect. Yeah, I mean, I mean I think it's it's it's an attitude of the government, what kind of wants to have its cake and eat it that they want low inflation, but they you know, they also want high growth. They want financial conditions which are good for the good for it well, especially the property sector, but you know for rich people generally, you know, and and a reluctance to to recognize, you

know that that there are tradeoffs. In economics, I mean specifically the idea that the best way to reduce inflation is to cut interest rates, you know, which has been repeated and actually loud amplified as we went through December. It just adds to the volatility. And you know, and

it's the same thing that they've intervened very heavily. We've think that the intervention since the last couple of weeks of November was ticking up towards twenty billion dollars and you know, and and gross reserves are you know what

about dred and thirty billion dollars? Never mind net that they've been running these big swap books with the domestic banks, which distort the usefulness for the figures that under the previous well a couple of finance ministers ago Mr al Bairack, the state banks were de facto intervening to keep the

lira a stable. It's this incoherent mismatch of ideas based on the idea that things are only really going wrong from Turkey in Turkey because of foreigners, especially people like me, and not because they have a policy setup that is designed to produce inflation. So let's get to some of the more recent moods, and it seems like the core idea and again we discussed this recently is how do give people you know, obviously they're and you you laid

it out in the beginning as well. There's this people are very quick to buy more dollars, and there is this sort of loop that happens the dollar strength and people want to buy more to get these very extreme moves, very rapid in dollar lira, and that of course destabilizing. So the idea for the government that the government is like, how do you give people protect lera protection without encouraging them to move to dollars And so, okay, we're going to The basic idea is we're going to pay you.

You keep your money in lira in uh for a certain amount of time, and if the lera weakens during that will compensate you by giving giving you more lira. What is your sort of initial read on these types of programs or this program in particular, It looks kind

of incoherent. I mean, there's there's an attempt to change people's expectations, you know, and thus creates a kind of a virtuous circle that people will move their money out of dollars into lira, stabilize the banking system and it all work fine, you know, and if you could just somehow spontaneously make people start shifting their money out of dollars into lera, creating a bit for lira, stabilize the currency, bring inflation down. You could see how how this would work.

The trouble is that this is and I think your previous interview he made the same point that this is the government writing effectively put options on the lira. Now, if you write and at the money put option on the lira right now, it's going to cost you about eleven of the sun ensured. Even if kind of leera volatility or implied volatility goes down to the lowest levels it's been for the last couple of years, it's still going to cost you somewhere close to five of the amount.

So this is the government writing a very very valuable put option for free. And that's you know, we saw something.

I mean the counter argument and I wouldn't you know, I not making an exact comparison, but the logic is quite similar to for example, the Irish government deciding to guarantee its banks in two thousand and eight on the basis that if people believe the government stands behind the banks, they won't pull their money out of the banks you know, and there and therefore the banks won't need protecting, and it's effectively a free option, a free bit of underwriter.

I mean, what happened in Ireland is of course that the banks were insolved, were basically unsafe at any speed. You know that that no matter who you know, and that the Irish government clearly couldn't really afford to underwrite the banking sector as it was, so all you really got was effectively a free lunch for the existing debtors of Anglo Irish Bank, who got you fully repaid from a bank that was very subsequently, very very very clearly insolvent.

And so the worry is this that this is this is an option that the Turkish back, And if you look at it like this, I mean, the logic would be that around half the Turkish deposit base right now is in dollars, it comes out with something like a hundred and fifty billion dollars. The Liara moved Fiort of Piake to trot or not even picked to trot, moving about a month. You know, there's no way the Turkish government can afford to pay for moves of that magnitude.

I mean, the idea of making a guarantee and therefore it never happens to be never has to be used, is obviously quite attractive, but you have to have some sort of logic that if the guarantee does have to be used, it's it's not going to make everybody's credit worth and then you just have the bank's contaminating what is still a pretty much a pretty clean government balance sheet. Yeah.

I mean, this seems to be the key point because we have seen over the years various governments or central banks essentially make a play I could promise, and many and the successful ones never actually end up being used.

And the one that you mentioned Irish government, but the one that really stands out to my mind it was highly effective was Mario drags o MT when they said, you know, if a country gets into financial trouble and if it's willing to undergo a program of restructuring, then the the e c B will backstop it's debt, and that closed spreads extremely fast, and no country had to No country ever entered into a program, and the O m T was never used, but regardless there's an extremely

successful program. We saw it similarly here in March with the Fed promising to back municipal bonds for cities and states that got into trouble in the end, that basically did the trick. I think a couple localities ended up using it, but by and large the mechanism wasn't used much. You know, obviously the East EB and the FED, you can't beat them though they have essentially you know, they're

free floated their their own currencies. Yeah, I mean you you can't beat the FED in dollars, you can't beat the ECB in euros. But I mean what the Turks are saying is that you know, their effects of the underwriting a dollar debt. I mean whether or not they

say they're paying it in lira doesn't really matter. It means that they're underwriting a dollar debt and the Central Bank of Turkey cannot print dollars, right, so in theory they're only guaranteeing you lira, So technically they're not they're

not guaranteeing you dollars. But if they're guaranteeing a level of lira dollar stability, which I think is how you then de facto they're trying to they're promising to give you some sort of they're implicitly offering to sort of pay dollars, it seems like, and that is something that the government, neither the government nor the central bank can do. Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons you want to hold you're you're willing to hold areas that you can freely

convert it into dollars at any time. If we get it to the point where you have a dollar liras spiral that is threatening, you know that that is moving the way it was in December. The last thing you want to be doing is printing huge amounts of lira and giving those two people who treasure dollar dollar lira stability, because then they'll just rush out and then when when the time comes, they'll buy dollars and make the spiral worse.

It seems like to me that the nightmare scenario would be that you get significant take up of the new accounts, but not significant enough such that it actually puts the floor into the lyra. So in theory of everyone were to put their lera into these licked accounts, it seems

to me that that could have a stabilizing effect. But it's also is if you put have a lot of people putting their money in these accounts, but not enough, you could still have significant liar weakness, and the payout gets triggered such that the government is then forced to print more lira, accelerating the downward spiral. Yeah, I mean the argument is if you compare it to an insurance contract, I mean, the way the conventional insurance is, you know,

you insure your car. If somebody sets fire to your car, we'll we'll give you the money. But what these guys are saying, or what the Turkish authorities are effectively saying, is, you know, if we ensure your car, we will make it much less likely that your car catches fire. But if your car catches fire, then we'll set fire to

your house as well. Is that the consequences of a big dollar lira spiral become worse through the existence of these insurance contracts, as these financial products, they might make a crisis less likely, but if a crisis does happen, it's um it's going to be much worse because the sovereign balance sheet is contaminated as well, and you're printing

leer at the very worst time to be printing more lera. Well, what are you watching for in the weeks ahead to see if some sense of stability is going to be achieved, or if you know, we'll see a further downward spiral. Well, I mean two things. One that is just what happens to Liarra by itself, because obviously we saw this massive I think something like a thirty percent into a day move.

Now the interesting thing, or the relevant thing to us is at the time people are saying, well, everybody's clearly buying into this idea, it's going to work. But it's you know, it's subsequently turned out that there was very very heavy intervention by the turkeysh Central Bank even while the speech was taking place, and presumably timed in order to coincide. I mean, I mean, I've seen various estimates, but most to them you know, on the day alone,

and this is after markets, local markets had shut. It's about six pm London, so kind of eight nine local time. That that the central bank kind of put somewhere between four and five billion dollars in sort of to buy up lira, and that thus ramping the lira very very much.

And it would be interesting to see, you know, just can the lira sustain these improved valuations even without But the other thing that we think is probably more of a medium term variable and will drive other things is domestic credit growth, because the real you know, it's it's not just a question of what's the level of interest rates, it's also the quantity of new credit. And Turkey's problems, certainly since the global financial crisis, have always coincided with

a growth in domestic lending. But it doesn't really matter if it's learas or dollars. Is that lending picks up, activity picks up, that creates demand for imports, It also creates leakage into dollars, and it tends to weaken the currency. So what we need to see, I think above all is monetary discipline, not some not just in terms of the actual level of interest rates, both the policy rate

and effective rates. It's it's very hard to see how a level of credit growth compatible with strong domestic demand growth is also compatible with leris stability. I mean, how much of you know, we're still in the middle of a pandemic globally, and obviously even in the US. You know, there's inflation is elevated right now, and there is a hope that when things normalize, whatever that means, that you know,

inflation will moderate. How much of the stress on Turkey's economy is in part a extreme version of what many places are seeing and in theory should moderate somewhat just if you know, the health situation and the global travel situation and the business situation, or to begin to normalize. I mean, specifically for Turkey, a Karma coronavirus situation is terribly important because a tourists season is incredibly important to

their bands of payments. So you know, if if this summer looks like one or better, that's very positive for Turkey. If it looks like then, you know, then really that's seriously problematic for Turkey. I mean in terms of the global forces, you know, I mean, Turkey is unusual in terms of relying on external energy for for essentially all its energy needs so very high, that very high oil price, the very high gas prices, that those are a big negative.

But I think you know Turkeys, you know, inflation in the mid thirties is a point where they can't just rely on external factors to to bail them out. They need to get the policy mix more light than it's been so far. Opinions very I know that your previous interviewee was much more positive on the on the new savings plan than I am, but it's going to require policymaker in action. Even in the most benevolent scenario, if they keep doing what they're doing, they will be able

to have a crisis. So at some point, you know, in theory, a currency weekend significantly that crushes imports. I guess it makes exports more competitive, Tourism, maybe a few other, a few other industries. How do things stabilize? And you know, obviously, look, we can we can talk about how rough things are and the problems the policy, but at some point, whether we're talking about the currency or whether we're talking about real assets in the economy, you know, something becomes a

buy and you don't. If you wait for good things to emerge, perhaps it's too late. What do you look for and not just turn in specifically, but you know, in other sort of like ems that really like hit rough times, what do you look forward to see inflection points in when it's like, yes, it's still really bad, but it's all priced in whatever that means. Yeah, I mean inflection inflection points tend to be much more about what's going on than valuations. I mean that there is

no absolute level for a dollar owed by Turkey. You know, I mean, at the moment the external debt is trading close enough to par that makes no difference. But you know it's not. There's no feeling that you know, a dollar debt price of thirty cents and the dollar a Turkish lira rate that's fort below long term trend. There's no absolute level of valuation that on its own constitute to buy. And you can see this, for example in the in the really extreme cases, places like Lebanon or

Venezuela or Argentina. And I absolutely am not saying that Turkeys in the same class as those countries. But you can't rely on valuation alone to make the case to buy, you do. We do need to find a situation where we think that the Turkish situation is sustainable. That could be any you know, it could be one that I'm wrong, that inflation peaks, starts to drift down, that you know that the president Hurdahan can do a victory lap and

while I'm looking for a new job. You know, it can be just that things start getting better by themselves. It could be at the other extreme that they have to close the banks or ration depositors, or convert dollar dollar deposits into Lira, none of which I'm saying is particularly likely. I'm just kind of presenting very very extreme cases of what could happen. I don't think, you know,

this sort of crash scenario is likely at all. But what we do need to see is something like the lira stabilizing and at the moment, you know, with with with still half the deposit base in Lira. As long as the Lira is this volatile, I don't think volatility will continue to be self sustaining. It's not about valuations. You need some way or other to get to a level where where the country moves to a sustainable footing, where inflation stops rising, the currency stabilizers and so on.

Let's say, you know, before we go and this I found this to be very helpful, But before we go, you know, mentioned the ongoing pandemic. What is your sort of broader view going. You know, as we look to two, one of the stories for years has really been currency. You know, we had the dollar was extremely strong, in surprising a lot of people, especially as more rad hikes began to get priced in. For two, US risk assets

once again continue to outperform the world. What is your sort of like broader things you're looking at in the

in the in the e M landscape, maybe beyond Turkey. Yeah, I mean it's the is going to sound like a terribly predictable answer, but you know, as long as the FED remains hawkish and you know, I think three hikes this year, I mean, it might not be hawkish by Vulcan standards, but you know, it's still seen as a hawkish that's a difficult environment free M, and it's a difficult environment for anybody who's only you know where a

stronger dollar is a problem. You know, the the the ideal thing would be a big growth recovery outside the US because when when when growth is very US centric as it basically you know almost always is that tends to be a strong dollar environment, and that tends to be a difficult environment free M to to prosper in. But I think you know, number one the FED and number two growth even in the developed world, but outside

the US are what we're most focused on. Well, Paul, it is always a pleasure to speak to you, and this was extremely helpful context on Turkey, So thank you for coming out on a lot. Thanks very well. Obviously, Tracey is not here, so I can't go back and forth with her, but we got to complete I don't know if I would say competing, but certainly different takes

on the lira and what's going on in Turkey. The first one was a little bit more optimistic about the government ability to encourage domestic savers to hold their money in lira, to essentially use that ability to write a

lira put option to uh discourage more dollarization. However, as Paul noted, you know, the issue with the government writing such an option in this case is that, unlike say with the e c B or the FED, you know they're not It's not strictly a matter of printing the own current to see because the implicit promise is to hold the lyric stable relative to the dollar, and so it's a little trickier. But I would have found it

very useful. I don't have a side, obviously, I'm just a journalist, but I found it very useful to get multiple perspectives. And maybe we'll talk more Turkey, but I found it uh useful to get multiple perspectives because, as the cliche goes, that's what makes a market. So we'll just leave it there and people can decide for themselves, and we'll follow the currency and uh the lyra, and

we'll see what happens. Maybe we'll have more episodes, but uh, this has been another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Wisn't Thought. You can follow me on Twitter at the stal Work. Follow my co host Tracy Alloway at Tracy Alloway. Follow our guest Paul McNamara, e M Expert. His handle is at M Underscore Paul McNamara. Follow our producer Laura Carlson. She's at Laura M. Carlson. Followed the Bloomberg head of podcast, French scal Levi at Francesco Today.

And check out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening,