Hi, Mark, So are you ready to talk about US politics? Absolutely not, Danta as a DC native, all I want to talk about the Nationals. They won the World Series this past week, and I vote let's just skip energy, climate in politics and just talk about baseball. So this is the first World Series championship in d C in eighty six years, by the oldest team by age of the of any squad ever who started the season with
nineteen wins and thirty one losses. The worst team start for a team that ever won the World Series animated the playoffs is a wild card and based elimination. Five times throughout talk about that. That was about as much as I've ever wanted to know about the Nationals. Thanks a lot for that, Mark. Well, how about something a little closer to my heart. Let's talk about the US
pulling out of the Paris Agreement. A couple of weeks back on this show, we talked about how the US was technically still in but now it looks like we are starting to push the paper work around and the US is officially pulling out. This is uh tough, because there's just so much going on in d C these days.
Let's say perhaps it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, or maybe just the most distracted of times, because it is really hard to get a sense for what is actually going on in the areas that b e F covers, because it seems pretty much everybody is distracted by the campaign and these topics aren't exactly front of mind for some of the candidates and their speeches. Hopefully we can change that. Yeah, we're
in luck. So today we've got Ethan Zindler with us, who leads benef in the America's but actually, very importantly back in the day, um, we were both based in d C and we'd go to the Nationals games together when they were a brand new team. Really market you
had to bring U back to the national absolutely did. Anyway, let's talk about the fact that Ethan's and there wrote a VI I P comment earlier this year for BEENF titled time is running Short for Trump's anticlimate agenda, as well as an endlest reaction that was titled Democrats go to hown on climate. You can find both of these on the Bloomberg terminal at b NF go or on BNF dot com. Also, please remember that BNF does not provide investment or strategy advice, and you can hear the
full disclaimer at the end of the show. This is Dana Perkins and this is Mark Taylor and you're listening to Switch on the BNF podcast. So let's hear from Ethan on US politics and the current say to play for transport, energy, climate. Ethan, thank you for joining us today. Thanks for having me. It's nice to be here in the studio. Ethan is joining us from Washington, d C. Where I would say most people who live there no a thing or two about politics, but fortunately it's actually
part of your job. UM. And today we're going to delve into three things that are the b NF side of the political spectrum. So let's dive into transportation, energy, and carbon emissions. Which one should we start with? What do you think, Mark? Transport sounds great? So what's going on in moving around in the US? Gosh, what's not where?
We We like to drive big cars in the US, as you as you know, we like to drive very large vehicles and UM, as a result of that and the fact that our CEO two emissions have been declining from the power sector, the transportation sector is now the single's biggest contributor to CEO two emissions in the US. And while we have been making generally actually progress on improving mileage efficiency of the cars that people drive, that's
actually started to level off a bit. Uh. And the main thing in terms of policy and politics is a giant fight between the Trump administration and the state of California about vehicle standards. UH. Tough one to say, right, I mean, basically, the what's at stake here is the you know, setting standards that would arrive eventually from thirty six to forty six miles per gallon requirement UM into about halfway into the next decade. California and a bunch
of other states essentially have set the targets themselves. The federal government under Obama was syncd up with California. UH. And then Trump came along and said, to wait a second. You know, I'm the federal government. I don't like this policy,
and they put the brakes on uh. And that has led to a huge fight between California and the federal government because for years California has had what's called a waiver to essentially set its own policies, and now the Trump administration is challenging that and it all appears likely to go to court. One further complication out of all this is that four major automakers have basically said that
they're perfectly happy to comply with California standards. Uh. And meanwhile they and all the other automakers are saying, wait a second, we just give us one set of rules that we can abide by here. We do not like multiple sets of rules that are difficult to understand, and we don't want to make two sets of vehicles to serve the US market overall. So there's a fair amount
of sort of confusion. Um, but to some degree, Um, you know, I think the smart thinking a lot of among a lot of automakers is they better continue to try to improve efficiency because a they don't know who's going to be president next and whether this is all going to change again, and be they don't know how this court case is going to shake out, and so at the end of the day, they may still end up being left with something that looks a lot like
what California and the Obama administration had wanted to do. All. In reality, do automakers even make two sets of vehicles? I mean, presumably they would cater to the more stringent market, and then that would have an impact on the rest of the country, which may in fact be the argument from a policy standpoint, is that correct, that's the conservative thing to do if you're operating in a market, and
presumably that's what most automakers are doing right now. I mean, I would say, you know, look, I'm not I'm not the regulatory affairs person that you know, GM or whatever, but the smartest thing to do would be to assume you're going to get the toughest set of standards and continue to plan accordingly. And of course we're seeing lots of announcements around electric vehicles and all kinds of efforts that it suggests the automakers are trying to do some
of the right things. On the other hand, it's worth noting that GM and Forward in particular make huge amounts of their money off of selling pickup trucks and SUVs, which Florida F one series I believe is the most popular car in the United States. Is it not very popular car and very profitable for the manufacturer? And GM and Dodge have similar models, So yeah, they're they're being
pulled in multiple directions. So this dovetails really well. With emissions, because this is a big part of the emissions pie. But then you have the part of the emissions pie that comes from the energy industry. What is happening there from a federal I guess, and maybe then to state level, well a lot. I mean, let's start with the big picture, which is the US and the power sector is rapidly decarbonizing.
So we used to get about half our power from from coal really as recently as like ten twelve years ago, and now that's down this year, maybe as low as tent by the time of the year is over. So it's a huge decline in reliance on coal, and basically all of that has been made up by a combination of natural gas, wind, and solar with it most really in that order more or less in terms of the
contributions that are being made. So our CEO two emissions have been going down pretty dramatically as a result of all those changes in the power sector. And that's I think generally, Um, you know, certainly from a climate perspective, very good news. Um, you know, there's then plenty of other things going on beneath the surface around all of that.
As you add more renewables, it creates new complications for markets. Uh. And meanwhile, Trump, you know from the from the Washington perspective, Trump ran promising to revitalize the coal industry and that is not been an easy thing to accomplish despite his best efforts. So what is causing the volume of coal retirements? I know that we definitely have a house of view, but from the US standpoint, we'll just start with the
fact that these coal plants are ancient. I mean, we have plants that are some plantses are like over forty fifty sixty years old. The average age, I think is well over thirty years old. So you know, we have these are not efficiently operateding you know, projects in many ways, and so the economics aren't great. And then you combine that with the fact that we have super cheap gas in the US, I mean really in West Texas it's
almost free um at this point. And then you have the fact that when renewables participate in the grid, they've been been into essentially zero cost uh. And so those factors basically are effectively driving coal out of the market. There are certainly some regulations on coal. We have the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeastern states that puts frankly, a relatively small price on c O two emissions, and we have a carbon program out in the West coast
similar relatively small price on carbon. But the main thing has just been the economics are not working for coal, and now on top of that, no one's going to finance coal. That's the last thing is that, you know, banks and everybody have generally pledged not to finance coal at all. There's been a pull back on restrictions. Could
you outline what some of those have been. I know some have been coming from the e p A on various aspects of kind of generally environmental things, but which of those specifically address things like carbon emissions and greenhouse gases more widely? So it's worth just before I even go all the way down this road, I just say, wasn't noting that I don't think this really even matters
that much. But the reality of it is is that the Trump administration came in and immediately sought to undo what the Obama administration had done, which was a regulation that was sort of informally known as the Clean Power Plan, and the Clean Power Plan essentially set a goal of reducing CEO two emissions from the power sector. At at it requested or essentially demanded that states formulate plans to do this individually. If they didn't comply, the federal government
was going to do it for them. Frankly, we at ben F and the U S were never that impressed by the ambition of that regulation to begin with, because we thought that the US power sector was going to decrbonize anyway. So then Trump came in and made a huge deal, Oh, you were getting rid of this policy. We're putting the brakes on it, and they've done that. But the reality of it is, at least an RV is it's not that big a deal because the policy itself was not what was going to be driving the
market anyway. So they did put the brakes on that regulation. They are they we rewriting it um. But you know, reality marches on and basically, coal plants have continued to retire in the US, the economics continue to not make sense. Gas continues to be super cheap, renewables are getting more and more mandated, and so generally speaking, the trend is not you know been you know that you know hasn't changed very much at all. So there's the real power in the US lie with the states. It's a big
part of the story. And in fact, you know, one of the things that people don't talk that much about in terms of Trump and energy is is certainly a focus on his sort of efforts to to deregulate and is very outspoken, let's just say, unconventional views about climate
change um. But the reality of it is that in two thousand and eighteen there was such a backlash against Trump at the state level with Democrats a you know, first they won back you know, the House of Representatives at the federal level, but back the state level, they want to think, well over three hundred state legislative seats. They took control of an additional six state legislative chambers. And what that's meant is that a very productive twenty
nineteen in terms of policies supporting clean energy. I think we have about half a dozen new states that now are aiming for renewable energy and mandating it UM. States like Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico others that are all aiming that. Maine has passed something very recently as well. So the backlash that's taken place at the state level has been pretty strong. Um. Now, granted, not all states.
You know, Oklahoma, you know, Kansas, you know, they're not you know, and by the way, those are those states are very strong for for huge states for renewables, but not because they're like necessary because they're mandating in any kind of huge way. Um. But the reality is that the gap between what the federal government's trying to do and what some states are trying to do is getting wider and wider. But in the US, states do wield
a lot of power over it. They can mandate certain amounts of renewables come online, they can sign onto carbon duction goals, all kinds of things. Is it still needed to mandate these things to come online? Or is it
just kind of happened? Well, I think there's certainly some particularly maybe some not quite with an environmental community, but some who Yeah, I would say some environmental community look at the power sector and are kind of starting to They won't say this out loud, but they're sort of saying, okay, power sector, check the box. Like okay, decarbonizing coals kind
of on its way out. We want to make sure we get rid of that last Eventually, what will be ten of coal that will be pretty hard to take offline. So there's definitely still a focus on that, and I think some of the environmental community are also starting to point the finger up gas and not wanting to build more gas. At that point. It's a bridge fuel, right, Well,
that's me. That's interesting. So well, I mean, under the Obama administration, I think, in my opinion, these gas became sort of viewed as, yeah, a big part of the solution, and I think a lot of people now are at least again on the environmental side, are starting to rethink whether they want to be supportive of that and the new sort of pivot. It's not clearly been stated, but it's just like, Okay, we've built a lot of gas.
It's helped bring a lot of coal offline. And again this is the environmental community perspective, but let's not build any more gas because now we want to actually, you know, the bridge is enough bridging. Let's let's you know, renewables are cheap enough, we can do more of this. And by the way, renewables plus batteries are cheap enough that they can actually compete with gas, and so I think that's actually a fair argument for them to be making.
But back to the original questions sort of, you know, on the power sector, that then isn't raised some questions. If we say, and I'm not saying entirely agree, but if we say problem solved, power sector decarbonizing, let's move on to other stuff, that does bring more of the focus back onto transportation. Because transportation is now the largest contributor to CEO two emissions in the United States, and we do like to drive big cars, and can we
do more? I think that's a fair question. I mean, what do you think can be done in the transportation Well, I mean we're certainly seeing a lot of a rollout of these new electric vehicle models, and I think that are making a dent. Not really understand trucks, right, I mean not in a big way. Well on the trucking side, Um, you know, Tesla does have its own you know, the team wheeler that they they're gonna say they're gonna roll out. Yeah. Well there's Rivian Is saying that they're going to make
an electric you know, pickup truck. I I'm I'm dubious that we'll see that mass adoption of that sort of any time, you know, really soon. Um, you know, if you're asking me what my prescription is for decarbonizing the transportation sector, I would say the you know, there are
new efforts, certainly to support electric vehicles. U. Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the Senate, just this morning, has a piece in the New York Times about his effort to support e V rollout and um, tying it to manufacturing into jobs, into batteries and all that kind of stuff, which I think is I think can can garner support from across multiple parties, both you know, the automakers, the unions,
and you know and others environmentalists as well. UM. But at the basic question of like Americans liking to to drive cars they like to drive, I would say this I have some more of a kind of qualitative answer, which is, like I having driven an electric vehicle for six years now, I would make the contention that we do all the analysis of NF all the time about the point where the economic crossover point comes and you get the total cost of ownership, blah blah blah, all
that kind of stuff that makes sense. Evs are better products. They're actually better in terms of they don't break down as much much less, they're quieter, the acceleration is awesome, so they're super fun to drive, and so I think there's sort of an intangible element to this where the more people get conditioned to actually trying an evy, the more they'll like them. I think the range anxiety issue is one that people just completely over magnify in the head.
What's that you have it? I don't, but I have people in my family who do have, so I think you can get over that. I think the other thing is, I guess my point that is trying to make earlier is that I think if people would look practically at
how they actually use their cars. We have a lot of families with two cars in the United States, many many, which I know is a foreign concept largely here in the UK and a lot of places in Europe, but I don't know, it may not even be maybe something under a majority, but a very large percentage of American drivers have two cars. If they would stop and just think, Okay,
how do I use these two cars? I think they would recognize that they could easily have one car that literally could have a range of less than a hundred miles if they were, you know, if they would just think about it, a little bit, but a hundred fifty two miles definitely to fifty plus absolutely is fine. And so I guess the point is there's a car in many people's garage that's ready to be a TV already,
and they just don't they don't think about it. But if they go for a test drive and they think a little bit about it, they'll be like, wow, ay, I'll save money if I get this car ultimately because I won't be paying for gasoline. B I won't have to go to a gas station. I'll charge it at home for the most part, um, you know, and and see it'll be fun to drive. So I think people
will do that. I think that is what Transport Team is actually seen that in these two car household where you are seeing e V adoption, you're seeing it as a second vehicle because that range anxiety does continue to exist, and that switching over to two cars isn't necessarily happening, um, and it's not Just be clear, it's not crazy, right, Like, you know, I gotta go see you know my folks up in Boston. It's an eight hour drive from DC to Boston or whatever it is. Yeah, I need to
I don't want to. I don't want to be like stuck on a turnpike somewhere waiting for some guy, you know, finished chargings test slot. So what's in your garage, what's what's your what's your demographic on that one you got? But one of each? We we sort of we did for six years. We had a Leaf UM and we had a Honda CRV UM and the Honda CRV was the long haul vehicle and the Leaf of the short up. We have further complications because we have a kid who's going off to college now and will soon be a
one car family. So our compromises. We have a plug in hybrid electric vehicle, which is a Volvo. So basically my wife commutescent electric, but then on the weekends, if we want to go much longer distance, that car can go much further than that. Let your hair down. It's a sweet Vehicle's let's talk happy place. So let's let's talk a little bit about how you're charging that vehicle and what's actually feeding into the grid. Now, I have a specific question, which I know you're a little bit
passionate about. It has to do with wind. So you mentioned earlier on in this episode that natural gas wind, solar, you know, maybe having a bit momentum in the US, and I'm thinking specifically wind. When you say wind in the US, you mean on shore wind, but there is offshore wind potential. Thus far, nothing installed correct across all of the United State. Yes, we have I think five. It's okay that run around that to nothing. I think that's fair. Okay. So there have been projects that have
gotten close and not worked out. My my in laws live out Cape Cod, so I'm I'm somewhat familiar with the Cape Wind projects that did not happen. But now there is this Vineyard Wind series of projects, and there is some regulatory elements that are actually quite pertinent right now at this point kind of at the end of twenty nineteen, which will impact the success or maybe lack thereof,
of this project. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah, So, I mean that's well, first, just thanks for bringing up Cape Wind, because way back when I used to be a reporter writing about that project seventeen years ago now out on Cape Cod and and at the time that project was they eventually did to build the project for about two hundred dollars a mega one hour Vineyard Wind, which is sort of the it's not even fair to call it successor about the newer, you know, much newer project.
They're looking to build that project about twenty miles south of Martha's Vineyard in a tucket, so out of basically out of eyesight for most people. UM, and they are looking to their pp A that they offered was I think sixty five actually, I mean about a third of the price, really cheap by comparison, UM and UM as you know, as luck would have it. On Tuesday, I was with our colleague Rachel Schiffman at the American Wind Energy Association's Offshore Wind Conference, which is held in Boston,
which is actually really big to do. They were about people there and talking about know what they want to talk about was, you know, the potential for you know, they're talking about twenty six gigats. We're saying probably like fifteen the seventeen gig wats, but like real, real built by real build potentially in the US. And that's our view, UM.
But it's all actually keying right now on Vineyard Wind, which is one project which is co owned by Copenhabien Investment Partners and Infrastructure Partners and one other and UM that project looked like it was in great shape. Uh, And they did cheap and they won contracts, and they got their environmental impact statement work done and they thought
they were pretty much done. And then all of a sudden, UM, the agency that regulates ocean energy activity, said wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on, we want to do an extra review on this. And that came last summer. And now we're in a kind of a weird place because basically, this entire industry is just like ready to go prime to hire people, build ports, like do stuff and and and everybody was there.
You know, we got the guys who make you know, the basis and the monitoring devices and everything like that, and um, and now everyone's waiting. And that is a decision you know, that is now effectively in the hands of the Trump administration. Now. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which which oversees this, is run by someone who's actually a career person. He's not a you know, he's not someone you would call Trump guy. UM. And you know, I think he gave some pretty rational reasons for why
he wants to hold the project up. But I think if there's not some action by next March, which was kind of the end of the period which they sort of regulatory period for reviewing this, I think everybody in the industry is gonna get pretty antsy and start to become very suspicious about what the delay has been here.
But it sounds like tomorrow it is pretty it's pretty soon and and um, you know, just to complicate things without getting to too much detail, we have tax credits that are critically important to the economics of projects, and already this delay is going to mean that that project gets less tax credit support than they were expecting, and it makes the economics much more challenging than they were So. Um, anyways, a fascinating couple of days to hear because, like I said,
the industry is really primed and ready to go. And by the industry, I'm mostly talking about like companies from over here, um, you know, like or Stead. Um, well, there is it is a global market, right and we we are certainly expecting a lot of build elsewhere in Asia and other places. Yeah, but it's on the other hand, like you know, I haven't grown up in Boston and being from New England, like there's a lot of people
who'd like to work in this industry. New Bedford southern New England has been hurting at aonomically big time for a long time, and so there's a real potentially are and I think would be enormously disappointing if this doesn't come through. Is the energry picking winners in terms of technology? I mean they're pushing for coal but kind of rolling it back on offshore. When does that sound right or no?
Are we talking about the means? The administration so you know they've wanted to UM and there have been various discussions and regulatory efforts to try to be supportive of coal by making the argument that you know, that represents some fundamentally critical part of energy security in the United States. But without going into all the sort of technical details and things like that, it's it's basically amounted to pretty
much nothing so far. UM. There is a there is some studying going on at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about about these questions, but it's all very tied into a lot of different things like the rights of states to do how what they want to do, UM, the
concept of free markets and how those are supposed to operate. UM. There are a lot of complications associated with trying to prop up one technology, and I think that frankly, people within the administration, you know, those who are smart and those who know the energy industry know that trying to keep a fifty five year old coal plant online, you know, it's hard to do and uh and may not be realistic. I remember the one that you and I toured in
Alexandria is now luxury apartments, isn't it. No, it's not, but I wish I wish it was something, because it's
an amazing facility. And I mean joking aside, Like we we took a tour and when it was that maybe over ten years ago, and you walk into these plants and you feel like you I mean even then, which was whenever that was felt like we were walking to a museum and it was a place was operating, right, I mean, the giant General Electric turbines written out in the old fashioned kind of script across them and everything. And yeah, there was a digital control room with guys
but looking at a bunch of computers. But realistically the place felt like you were, I mean, had stepped way back in time. And actually I would love it if this is the it used to be the gen On plant. It's it's located right across the river from the capital. Um, it would be great if they did do something with it.
I actually think they should turn it into a museum because I mean, and I mean this honestly, like coal contributed an enormous amount to the US growth in society, and we owe an incredible, you know, debt of gratitude to the folks who dug coal out of the ground, who ran the plants, who did all of these things, and we should pay homage to those people and everything that it stands for. It's it's no joke. It's certainly time to move on. But um, but you know, I
think it's it's something to be practical about it. And I think as a sort of as as we kind of blithely walk by, Okay, Cole has you know, decreased from half of power to power or whatever it's going to be this year, it's worth remembering that, you know, West Virginia is really hurting and then top and on top of um, you know the demise of coal, they're hurting because of opioids. And it's so you know, these are these are real people who who who are affected
by this. So so there are definitely talk there's plenty of talk in Washington workforce efforts to try to retrain people and stuff. It's hard to see how that works, um, but it's worth remembering that they're actually human beings involved in all this. Now, the natural gas industry is booming in the US, and for those who are not part of the energy industry, will first of all, congratulations for
making it this far into the podcast. But if you're still here, you know, you will know that natural gas has not always been a big part of the US in terms of first of all energy, secondly exports. What does the regulatory environment look like for natural gas that is making it to have such a heyday or is
it completely agnostic of that? Well, it's interesting. I mean, if you would hear the Trump administration talk a little bit, they would say, oh, whether that the Obama administration to somehow like constrained the production of gas, which is ridiculous because the amount of gas that's being produced under Obama and now under Trump has been just rising spectacularly. The US has been the number one producer of natural gas for about ten years now and now the number one
producer of oil in the world as well. So to say, yes, so to say that the US, to say that the US is you know that somehow regulation has been strangling the industry, and and and and on the flip flight to say that deregulation will unleash a great deal more investment is hard for me to see because there's so much activity that's already taken place already and so much growth that's gone on. So you know, um, you know
Secretary of Energy Perry, who's who's leaving now. But he coined the term molecules of freedom, and um, that's that's what he claims that we are exporting to the rest of the world. And I think that term is certainly it's a little let's just say, a little hyperbolic. But on the other hand, I mean, I do think if we can be the one who exports um to places to offset you know, supplies from Russia, that is a good thing, right, let's be I mean, at least in
my opinion. I mean, I think we want to be a counterbalance to some of the other actors in the world who are who are providers of gas. So um, the US has the potentially use its its position and gas geopolitically. It also has the potential to build more of an interest industry in terms of l n G and exports, and the administration has generally been very supportive of that. I think both administrations have been the Obama administration as well, so I think this has been sort
of consistent between Democrats and Republicans. If you're looking ahead, what do you see as having the biggest impact in the U S energy sector in the next five years? Um? In terms of what will happen over the next five years, I mean, it's hard for me to see the general trends that we've seen changing. I think the I think the main new thing is batteries plus renewables UM natural
gas sort of. I would argue, you know, truly, on the on the costs had been cheaper than renewables in a lot of places, but if you factor in and also more effective at meeting demand more on around the clock basis very importantly. But if you factor in the idea of including a battery UM and how cheap some of the bids that we've seen around p V storage, particularly in the Southwest, why kind of counts a little less.
But elsewhere, UM, I think that's something that's really worth keeping an eye on and we've seen pronouncements from folks like UM, the CEO of next Era, saying that he's more committed on, you know, on renewables plus storage, and so I think, you know, that's an area world starts. And we've seen bids in interesting places like Indiana and elsewhere, which suggests that this is a technology that's going to really kind of come along. So I think that's one. And by the way, on top of that, tying it
back to policy, there is a move UM already. If you have a battery and you hook it up to your renewable energy system, that battery is essentially as long as it's not bigger than that system, UM can qualify for the Investment tax credit, meaning essentially get a thirty discount on the total cost of the battery. UM that's sort of been kind of informally blessed by the Internal
Revenue Service. There is now an effort in Congress to make sure that that can sort of become more codified lo younger term, and even an effort to make sure that if you just build the battery and don't have attached to renewable energy system, it can qualify for the tax credit on its own as well, so there's a lot going on. We haven't even talked about tax credits, which are boring, I know, but are critically important to the industry, and there's an effort, you know to try
and extend those. That's underwear in Congressman. They always seem to be under threat of being cut off. Is that where they sit now, Well they got it, they got an extension in and that was the last time, like there was a real battle about extension. So so it's not been quite yesterday that we've had that. UM. But every time that they have cut off, at least on the wind industry, we've seen just this collapse of activity. Yeah,
every time. It happens. Every time it happens, and so we are sort of looking at another cliff kind of coming, but not quite the same cliff. I don't know. Maybe it's a dune, I don't know what you want to call it, which is like, you know, we'll see as the tax credits roll off, probably you know, a decline
and activity, particularly in the wind sector. UM. But the reason why it's more of a in then the cliff is because the way Congress wrote it is that the tax credit essentially phases down it doesn't just like boom pop off, so that that helps him, makes it a little more gradual. That said, the wind industry would really like the tax credit extended, the solar industry would like it extended. I think they were not hopeful they had
any chance of that happening. And then the Democrats won the House of Representatives in two thousand eighteen, and now one thinks, okay, well maybe we got a shot. But now we have this little impeachment thing going on, and so whether or not anything happens, frankly on anything else in Washington is a real open question. We haven't even you know, we're now operating in a new fiscal year in in the United States that started October one. We
don't have a budget for this year. We're still operating over last year's budget, and you know, we're looking at a potential government shut down at the end of November. So you know, kind of like literally to keep the lights on, stuff needs to get done first before and then of course of the impeachment thing. And then I think there's a question of whether or not a tax it's gonna get addressed sometime before the end of the year.
You know, the usual craziness and ethan. It has been a long time since I have lived in the US, or Washington, d C. For that matter, So thank you so much for joining us today and letting us know what is happening in the US. We look forward to having you back on the show sometime soon. Thanks Going Nationals. Bloomberguin e F is a service provided by Bloomberg Finance
LP and its affiliates. This recording does not constitute, nor it should it be construed, as investment advice, investment recommendations, or a recommendation as to an investment or other strategy. Bloombergun ea F should not be considered as information sufficient
upon which to base an investment decision. Neither Bloomberg Finance LP nor any of its affiliates makes any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness of the information contained in this recording, and any liability as a result of this recording is expressly disclaimed. Ye haven't even talking about baseball yet.