The Era of Geoeconomics Has Arrived

Whatever the reason, I do know a surprisingly large number of people tend to tune into Stephanomics at Christmas, even on Christmas Day. My guest this Christmas is to Paul Tucker, former Deputy Head of the Bank of England, with a long career at the Central Bank of the UK, and now a respective author and teacher as a resident research fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. Paul, Sir Paul, thank you very much for joining us on Stephanomics. End of the year.

I got to know you as a central banker. You had a whole career as a central banker, a technocrat at the Bank of England, running, among other things, the Markets division at the Bank of England and the thick of the global financial crisis. But since leaving the bank you've been teaching at Harvard and writing, writing less and less about economics and more and more about politics and philosophy.

So have you changed or has the world changed around us? Well, first of all, thank you very much for having me here. It's it's great to join Stephanomics. I think both. Actually, in one sense, having a new life nearly a decade into my new life, it was an opportunity to go back and live an alternative life. That's that's fun. And secondly, the world has changed so much that you can't take economic policy away from politics and the really big issues.

It It throws up that I think I served as a staff for and a policy maker in a much simpler world where monetary policy could be siloed away from trade policy, and both could be siloed away from security policy and human rights policy. I don't actually think any of those things are true anymore. You're preaching to the choir on that one, because I think that even the silos at Bloomberg need to come together. We talk a

bit about that. So your your new book, Global Discord, Values and Power in a Fractured World order, what's a one line description of what it's about, Whether or not all the things that international cooperation relies on, whether it in trade, monetary, staff, environmental, human rights, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The law of the Sea can possibly survive now that there is potentially an existential contest between the People's Republic of China and the West. And this is an enormous change.

I see in Your Your, the promotional material that the publisher says in Global Discord, Paul Tucker lays out principles for how democracies can approach relations with China and other illiberal states without sacrificing their deepest political values or jeopardizing their safety. I have to say, when I was reading the book, it feels like it's about how the international system, or I guess what we call the world order as we know it, is going to survive an era in

which China is just a much, much bigger player. That's exactly right, and a bigger player with a completely different history, a completely different government system, completely different deep values. Something why I promote the book. Something I go and asking people is have you heard of Document number nine? And most people say no. It was leaked in two thousand and thirteen, and it is a litany of seven knows and six of those knows are basically objecting to liberal

and democratic values and a repress and everything else. And it is a fact of the world that China is very powerful, and it's going to in my view, it's going to remain very powerful for a very long time. And yet it comes to international organizations, regimes cooperation with a completely different way of thinking about the world than anything that is familiar to us in our recent history, by which I mean the last two d and fifty years.

One early line in your book did shine with me right from the start, because you say, when more or less any public policy instrument can be weaponized, geoeconomics becomes

integral to foreign policy. And we have been thinking about that a lot at Bloomberg, and I recently created a geoeconomics squad, combining the economics and the politics reporters with lots of people around the world who are focused on technology, energy, international trade, because it feels like all of those things are coming together and we can't, even as reporters, put them into boxes anymore. You do. Quite a lot of your book is addressed to that, isn't it? Yes, it is,

it is. And you know, the common theme for all of that is that partly because of the new technology, but not only because of that, almost any part of economic policy can be weaponized and therefore is an adjunct of security policy. And then when the Ukraine War broke out and Russia's foreign exchange reserves were seized around the world, a lot of people responded with surprise. My response was,

I wondered what the threshold was for that. It was completely obvious to be given my background, that that could be done, and that was serious enough to do it. And I guess now, or a decade ago, the swift payment system doesn't matter what that is a then that it's a mechanism for sending payment messages across the world that was used in sanks against Iran. Prime ministers and

presidents thought this was a fantastic thing to do. Um central Bank has thought, oh, that's that's quite a Pandora's box. So once it becomes obvious that you can use these instruments for security policy, then they will be. And that's that merely returns us to the past. In the nineteenth century and the eighteenth century, economic policy was a regular

part of security policy. That debt collection m was was was grounds for war you talk about the reaction to the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and and some people did wonder whether we were facing this Pandora's box issue with some of the things that have been done this year. I mean, you talk about foreign exchange reserves. Of course, once you've done it, once you've sent a message about what you might do in the future, for example, if China invaded Taiwan but also given people an incentive to

find ways around it. So do you think balance it's been positive or negative for the kind of future that you're hoping to. So I think this is why the question of threshold is important, because it does exactly that. So you mustn't you mustn't do something like spending foreign exchange reserves except where you think it's really necessary to

prosecute your your case. And I think what's interesting about the Ukraine War in many respects is that it's kind of the first proxy war of the new superpower struggle. I don't think Putin would have been able to to prosecute it in quite the way has been able to

if if Beijing hadn't at least acquiesced. Something else I'd say about that is that my prediction changed this in the book right towards the end, had been that Putin would move against eastern Europe if and when China moved against Taiwan so as to stretch an unprepared West on two fronts. And I think that put In a sense is even away that optionality. The West is now going

to be prepared on both fronts. But in answer to your question, yes, this wealth, this will simply intensify the efforts in Russia and China a few other places to try to manage their part of the world economy without the dollar. I mean, the dollar is absolutely integral two to the Western security system. Somewhere in the book I can't remember exactly where I say if if if the American hegemon has an unknowing headquarters, it's the Federal Reserve building.

People listening may start to think that this is another book about the coming war between the US and China. And I've got my sort of personal listeners. They all seem to talk there's an accidental conflict, and the avoidable conflict, and the coming conflict, and the conflict that's already upon us. I think we're even going to get another author of another book along those lines. In the new year. And obviously your book is somewhat about that. You said yourself,

kind of intensified rivalry with a rising superpower. But you're coming at it from a particular perspective, which is the sort of interplay between that kind of raw power, that rivalry of of two superpowers, and the systems we have for organizing global affairs. Because, as you point out, you

can have great powers emerge. We've had the EU become a much a very equivalent force in many ways to the US, at least in terms of people and economically over the last eight years, without upsetting the global system at all. So it's not necessarily about having a new power. It's about the kind of power they are now. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. So history is littered with the story of rising powers, and the big question for any of them is how do they feel about the

prevailing order? And they wouldn't want to change it a bit because they want to be more important however they are, But are they basically buy into the structure of the order and the way that gets reflected in international cooperation. We live in a world where all the international organizations bear the thumb print of the United States and somewhat Europe as the second most important region of the world are over the past seventy odd years, and China is

different in that respect. And it's when people are talking about the security element of this, the war element of this. Lots of people compare this with the second German Reich Britain at the end of the turn of the twentieth century. I don't think that's the most um instructive comparison, even though it was a dreadful, dreadful epoch changing struggle. I think much more instructive is this is that between France and Britain over the long eighteenth century, from round six

around eighteen fifteen. And that was because it wasn't just about where do you stand in the pecking order, It was about different conceptions of power. Our country. We're sitting in Britain talking about this our country. We're resisting an authoritarian universal monarchy at the beginning of the eighteenth century and universal revolutionary movement at the end of the eighteenth century.

And Burke said somewhere the problem isn't France's powers, that it's the wrong kind of power exactly, And that's I think captures the challenge for the West with Chinese power, and that will China will therefore understandably want in some degree to have all of the great international organizations reshaped somewhat in its own image. And we're not going to want to do that very much. So reshaping it in

its own image. Just going back to that, that means rejecting quite a lot of what you might call the principles of the liberal international system. Yeah, I mean, it certainly involves rejecting representative democracy, but it involves rejecting a free press. It involves rejecting what they call universal values, which they say in Document nine values that supposedly apply in all places and at all times. They just don't

recognize that. Now, in some senses, I think it's important to put oneself in their shoes, which is I mean, I'm not a great fan of the universalist m claims of Western values. I think countries and different people have to find their own way to to liberty. So I'm a kind of pluralist liberal in that in that sense. But they're beyond that. I mean, they're just saying no, no, no, no, we have we have a a party lead country. And that's that infects inflects how we want international organizations to

be struct by the way. I think this is a really important thing to say, so I want to say it now if I may, that none of this is to criticize the Chinese people or Chinese history in any way at all. I mean, this is kind of remarkable civilization. And what's more, I think I came to think while writing the book that countries like South Korea and Japan are incredibly important because they show that you can be a Confucian heritage state and still live by that part

of your traditions and be a constitutional democracy. Well, that is just simply not true of the People's Republic. People's Republic. It's not so much that it's Confucianist, it's that it is kind of authoritarian and always entirely about preserving the power of the party. Yes, entirely about that. I think that captures it perfectly. The comparison with the UK and

France is fascinating. But people do tend to talk about how this is a new Cold War, and in many ways it feels like we're a new Cold War precisely for some of the reasons that you say that, it feels we are the rivalry. The tension is with a system that is rejecting a lot of our basic principles and wanting to run along very different kinds of tracks. So I guess it's worthwhile just pausing to say, how

what are the differences with the Cold War? What makes this situation in many ways harder than the Cold War? That we touch each other everywhere, in everything, and whereas the there's a passage about the Cold War towards the beginning of the book, and essentially these were two kind of self contained blocks with a tube between them, and the tube had two little bits oil went in one direction and dollars in another. The Soviet block had eventually

had banks in London, Vienna, Paris. I think lots of spies, lots of spies. It's quite simple in a sense, whereas I think this really is more like eighteenth century France and in Britain. They struggled in famously, in the United States, on the coast of India, on the coast of Africa, on the Southeast Asia, I mean, in other words, everywhere,

And that's what this is going to be like. China is an absolutely integral part of the world economy, biggest trading country in the in the world huge manufacturing power. Our economy and their's are intimately connected. Um and therefore this goes back to you the weaponization point. Weaponization can be both both geographically pervasive and field pervasive. Now this creates the possibility, it's only one possible scenario that that we will disengage to the point that we retreat into

a kind of new cold water order. But but but that would take some doing. I mean, there would be a lot of unraveling to be done to get to that point. And actually, as as the economist Richard Bolden pointed out WI booked him earlier this year, it's not just the sort of sexy high tech ways in which there involved in our economy. They also produce all of our socks. So if so, unscrambling that omelet would require, I don't know that we have to get a lot

better at knitting, among other things. You mentioned the scenarios, I mean, you do sketch out for scenarios that you come back to several times during the book ways that this could play out. Because I guess your time at the Bank of England has taught you not to make forecasts. What what are those for? The first is lingering status quo, the second is superpower struggle, the third is new Cold War.

The fourth is reshaped world order. I think just dispatching fourth, I think that won't happen for some decades until other rising states reached to the top table, most obviously India, conceivably Indonesia. And I think for foreign policymakers they need to be thinking about who are going to be the other big powers in a few decades time, and that would be almost like a new Breton Woods any very

different from there would be a whole reshaped system. It would be like a kind of nineteenth century concert concept of Europe. But for the world and the international organizations would find they had to be completely reconfigured because the great powers weren't a few European states in the United States and Japan, but the United States, EU, India, China, maybe some others, and they were and if order was maintained in that world, it would be maintained through some

kind of balance about among them. In the mean time, which is going to be quite a long meantime. In my view, I think I ended up thinking that we're going to live through a kind of lingering status quo in monetary affairs and financial affairs. The dollar will remain the world's premier reserve currency for a while. That helps American banks be the most powerful banks in the world, and so on and so forth. So I think monetary of the monetary of finance field will be a lingering

status quo for a while. But everything else, I think trade, most obviously cross border investment will live between superpower struggle

and and Cold War. Just how much to decouple, how much to disengage and with I mean, I wrote the book before all this started happening, but we're already seeing it in powerful states in both directions don't want to be overdependent in critical things, whether it be medical stuff or energy or chips or whatever um And I think, I think it's impossible to predict how far that will go, but I think that would go on for a long while.

And I wouldn't be surprised to see the West reinvent the equivalent of the Cold War what was it called cocombe where the kind of controls that the US and all the big European states had on importing and exporting from the Soviet block they needed to be coordinated. No good for for America to put a block on something if it was flowing into France and Britain and vice versa. And so at the moment, I think we're at the stage where the main Western capitals are thinking about how

they want to protect themselves. I think eventually this will lead to coordination amongst the capitals. So I just wondered, what does what does the US need to do to lengthen the period where it can continue to have sort of be dominant or at least be top doc and and how is President Biden doing on that front? So, first of all, in terms of how important this is, it's not just important for them, but it's important for us. Again,

we're sitting in London. We live in a part of the world the Big picture outsourced its defense to the United States. The capacity of the United States to provide a security umbrella for our part of the world and parts of East Asia depends to some significant degree on the dollar, because the dollar enables them to borrow more cheaply than otherwise. It provides them with a cushion in

bad states of the world. A remarkable thing about the financial crisis is American finances so weak and so incompetently regulated that it collapses and blows up the whole world economy. Any other country you would expect to run away from their government bonds and their currency. Instead, there is a run into treasury bills and all term treasury bonds. So one way of thinking about this, an important way, I think, is that Beijing a bound to want to for the

renmimb to be a significant reserve currency. When you see that even the US at its weakest ben is supported fortified by runs into the dollar, it's fantastic. But you touched on the debt ceiling debate. I think this is a really useful way in to what the United States should should do and avoid doing. It cannot afford to make big mistakes and um and because the breakdown of silos, people may not understand this. This is a belt when

within the Beltway game about Republican democratic politics. What came the Republicans extract in order to to raise the debt ceiling? But there's some tangible probability that the debt ceiling won't get raised. This is a gift to Beijing, a gift. Um. I didn't talk about that in the book, but something similar. There's a debate about how the fragilities in banking have moved into the number of the financial system, the shadow banking sector, and I I mean actually shadow banking is

a national security issue. That sounds a quite an exaggerated thing to say. Maybe put in another way, the West cannot afford another big financial crisis, so the stakes get changed. It's in a in a world where you think, while actually the global order depends on the American hegemon and its European friends, we can't afford another crisis. I think the Biden administration has done well in reviving, reinforcing signaling that it cares about allies and friends, that the United

States isn't isolationist. The to be blunt, the silliest thing I've heard occasionally in Harvard and Washington, well, you know this China thing, and we'll be able to see the see that off on our own. We don't. We don't. You know, Europe's very irritating or whatever, and that basically that maybe that's true if China makes loads of mistakes, but policies should be based on an assumption that China

won't be make mistakes. I think China's policy, by the way, it should be based on the possibility that they will make mistakes, but Western policy should be based on them

not making mistakes and continuing to grow rapidly. And I think the Biden administration has done a pretty good job at signaling that it cares about the international order, that its predecessors created many Republicans as Democrats, that it knows it needs friends and allies, It knows that involves awkward, sometimes distasteful choices, But I am not sure so that has filtered through into domestic policy making to the extent

that it could. And I think the debt ceiling, that if the debt ceiling goes wrong, umthing else just looks makes the US look like it's sort of endangering the stability of the international financial system because of its own domestic political squabbles. So, just to be clear, it would be arguments in Congress preventing the US government from continuing

to issue debt. And so in those circumstances, you'd make a decision either to reduce the proportion of your foreign exchange reserves that were in dollars or if you didn't do that, probably you're another country. If you're another country, to shorten the maturity of your dollar holdings rather than And it wouldn't be that you'd go to meeting and say what the US has had it, That would be

a crazy thought. It would be what they do seem to be capable of self inflicted harm, and that may get worse, and therefore we should be just a little bit less reliant on the United States being m the the great power in the world for the next thirty years. And I think they can avoid mistakes, but only if they're domestic politics takes seriously that the world is changing. I think, in a sense the state of US domestic

politics as a product of two things. One is a whole series of really big problems about living standards and frustrations and respect and so on. But the other is the luxury of thinking that their position in the world is secure and therefore they can play these games, and to which I would say, you can't afford to play the games anymore. It's it's this is for grown ups only. Now. As you said earlier, there's plenty about this which is

quite reasonable objectives that any rising power would have. And there's every reason in the world why the China, for example, might want to have the rem and be me a major reserve currency, I might want to develop advanced technology, and I guess I just wonder, how do you how do you think the US or the West should strike that balance between just investing in your own strength and the strength of your example, avoiding the debt ceiling and making it a good thing to be part of the

U S system, and on the one hand, or trying actively to retard the progress of the other. Because I was sort of struck by something the Commerce sectary said a year and a half ago, Gina Romando. She said, we have to work with our European allies to deny China the most advanced technology so they can't catch up

in critical areas like semiconductors. I mean, even a few years ago, that would have seemed incredibly antagonistic and kind of unfair to be trying to slow down China's progress, But we're now seems we're going quite firmly down that route. Do you think it's dangerous to be signaling quite directly, we just don't want you to develop. I think there will be phases like that, and there will be phases when it's relaxed, and I think that will go on

for a long time. I think the big thing is China is too powerful for us to to be capable of telling them how to reorder their society and how to live. But we can think, and I think it's reasonable for us to think, and I have in mind Xinjiang, Hong Kong, elsewhere. But if they treat their own people like that, how would they treat us if they could. I think that's a and that requires a judgment. Actually,

it's not that that leads to an inexorable conclusion. We could say, you and I are old enough to know that for many decades, people in Europe were uncomfortable with with parts of the US society's treatment of black Americans,

but we didn't feel threatened by them. I think that the combination of the way China read some of its own people and its attitude towards not only Taiwan, but other states in in the South China see the northern parts of East Asia as well, means that we do have to be careful not to be overly dependent and build our security. But it also means we should find common cause where we can. It's it's summer, I say in the book, No, it's no good treating someone is

beyond the pale unless you can keep them there. We you know, it's it's we can't to work with them on climate chan. We need to work with them on climate change. We need to work with them on anything that's an existential threat to the planet. And we need to strive and strive to do that, both because it's necessary in itself and because it's a way of sibling to them. Yeah, we completely accept that your power in the world, and we need to do some things with you.

Yet there needs to be attempts. I think something that's tremendously important for them to do Washington and Beijing, this is just for them, is to somehow agreed de escalation protocols of the kind that existed maybe after the Cuban missile crisis, I'm not sure, but certainly existed between understanding and that you don't you know if your planes get too close to or ships get too close or something that you and it's an accident, rather than deliberate that

you have a way of signaling actually that was an accident. I thought when there was this business about possibly a Russian missile landing in Poland that Putin's response to that was so moderate. His words in public are all of that may be kicking in in the background that does not exist um with with Beijing at the moment. So these are things where there need to be summits. I thought that G twenty showed its usefulness earned Biden and She having a bilateral. Imagine that G twenty didn't exist.

So they've then got to agree to have a special meeting and go to it. That's much harder than we're all going to be at at the G twenty. It's pretty awkward to not go without sending a hostile signal to everybody. Since we're there, it will be very It's a big thing. If we don't meet, we are going to meet, And I think what places like the U N and the G twenty can do. It's just kind of things that appear small but which actually are a

big deal. And if we just take it a little bit more up to current day and some of the things that we talk a bit more often about on on Stephanomics, it is often observed that on China, at least the Trump and the Biden administrations don't look so different, or at least many of the Trump here tariffs have been maintained under President Biden, and we've seen you could imagine, um, something along the lines of the action on semiconductor chips might have been done at least by a Trump era official.

Do the odds on a particular scenario change significantly if President Trump were re elected. I think so. I think the the if you like, the the direct bilateral relationship between Washington and Beijing not hugely different between Trump and and Biden, exactly as you say. But something else is very very different, could hardly be more different, which is the attitude to allies. A policy if you like, towards China is a policy towards the world. You need friends,

especially in today's world with the extraordinary destructiveness of weapons. Um, it's it's it's having lots of friends that will make conflict less likely and will make some kind of peaceful reconfiguration of the international order more likely and so ave A huge own goal by the Trump administration was pulling out of the Transpacific Trade Partnership, which both addressed a particular problem in trade policy between China and the West, when I talk about at some length and one of

the chapters in the book, which is absolutely amazing, to back out of it and now now I think it will be. I suspect it would be quite difficult and ought to be quite difficult for both the US and China to join, because if if, if the members of the Transpacific Partnership allow one, and how can they not

allow the other in? And then they've just rep you know, they'll just recreate all the problems of the w t O. So, just in practical terms, if you are more of a sort of President Biden time administration, and you're you're responding to some of the things you said at the beginning about building up sort of security of supply chain means and not being as reliant tom Chinese and other other goods.

If you're outside the US, how do you tell the difference between the US defending the global world order by having an alternative to China and just straightforward US protectionism Because you've got something like the Inflation Reduction Act, which is causing no end of grief in the Europe people are very cross at what they consider to be the quite protectionist measures in that which involved, you know, only using US producers to create different forms of renewable energy

and other things, it's quite tricky to walk that line. And for everyone to think that you're acting on behalf of the world order and not just the US. Yeah. Actually, I don't think that example's tricky. I think that's just a mistake. It's it's it's quite ali an eate um um europe over that. I think the way to avoid the trap that you write identify is precisely to avoid kind of on shoring everything except where you really really need to. And there are only very few things for that.

So the words friend shoring, um, it's quite it is quite good. Actually, because friendship is weaker than alliance. Alliance is a strong thing, we will come to your defense. Friendship is much weaker than that. I'm sure your friends would love to hear that. I'm not a state. Fortunately,

friendship is the best I can do. All right, So you have had this alternative life, you've said at the start, almost it was taken up this politics and political philosophy, almost as some people take up watercolors when they step back from the step back from the front line of policymaking. We're not we're sitting in blueberg offices. Now that if you're reasonably good at throwing stones, you can throw a

stone at your old employer the Bank of England. Um, with all of this analysis under your belt, do you feel lucky not to be in your old job. I feel really, really lucky to have had the opportunity to do something else. I mean, the greatest limitation. I felt this at a number of times during my career as a public servant for thirty three years. And it's a marvelous, marvelous thing to do. I feel immensely lucky to have

done it. And that one downside is that if you do it right to the end, then that abslut the only thing you get to do, and it's the new working for the state. You do it in your own country. I had been seconded, thankfully to Hong Kong in the late eighties. That was a marvelous experience. But I hadn't lived out quite apart from Harvard and political philosophy and politics makes economics, I hadn't lived outside this country except

for nine months. So just going to live there was an adventure for for us and you know, just made by life really good. Actually we make everyone very jealous at the end of the year. And Okay, your book, which is all of I don't know what is it? Fifty four not that I counted, but something like that

five pages. What's the key takeaway from that? And I guess all the thinking you've done all this time at Harvard and reflection that you've had time to do, what do you think is the big takeaway for economic policy makers at the bank or at the federal US Federal Reserve, finance ministries on both sides of the Atlantic. What are they missing your former colleagues, and how does their worldview

need to change. I'm going to say something that will almost sound contradictory that on the one hand, they need to be aware that precisely because the weaponization stuff that you rightly raised, that they aren't siloed away from higher level issues. I tell a story at the beginning of the book about someone walking into my office when I was deputy Government saying, the Federal Reserve has refused Indie or a swap line does no matter what a swap

line is, it's a line of credit. And my response was, don't they realize India is going to be a power? And you know, I was saying, that's above the pay grade of the central bankers. And yet I also want to say something that will sound completely different. They have just got to stick to the basics, which is delivering price stability and delivering banking systems stability, and the broadest sense.

I don't They've got involved, not just here in the UK, but very much and continentally Europe, very much in the United States. They've got involved in climate change, They've got involved in social justice, inclusive growth. Those things may be more important for society as a whole. But they must do the thing that only they can do for those people listening in America and in Britain. Sorry, Eddie George was a very great governor of the Bank Havingngland. They

used to say to us stability, stability, stability. Every time they I mean, I wrote my own speeches, as most of them do. It's a tremendously time consuming, difficult thing. Every time they speak about something else, they are not thinking about the thing that only they can do. My main targets are in the United States and and in

continental Europe. But so they somehow need to be aware that they're part of a bigger thing security policy, and yet narrow themselves down to this narrow but vital um mandate. And you know, lucky people like me can roam more widely so they should read lots of important books, but not get any big ideas you sound like. You mentioned that you're teaching with my old friend and boss, Larry Summers, and he, of course is exactly the same thing about

Central banks who stray too far from lane. Yeah. Yeah, We've talked about that a lot, and it is really what we each genuinely think. And actually, as an striking thing is that I would say, to the extent that I can kind of informally come as opinion in my head, I would say most former top Central banquets think that, which actually means that we have obviously been spared, as we were up, obviously spared a set of pressures that the current generation is subject to. And as you say,

there is this tension. Because there is, you have to be more conscious of being silent. Well, Sir Paul Tucker, thank you so much for joining us on our Happy Christmas episode. You have indeed given us a lot of food for thought. Thanks for having me, Stephanie, it's been a real pleasure. Well, thanks for listening to Stephanomics. We'll be back with the last episode of the year, our

famous look Ahead with Bloomberg Correspondence and Invited guests. In the meantime, You can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, website, apple, wherever you get your podcasts. For more news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics, you can also follow as Economics on Twitter, and you can find me on at my Steponomics. This episode was produced by the man As Hendrickson, Summer Sadi, and Yang Yang, with special thanks to Sup Paul Tucker. Mike Sasso is our executive producer. M