Latest / Trumponomics / Summers Predicts U.S. Recession More Likely Than a Soft Landing
Transcript
- 0:06Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Stephanomics, the podcast that brings the
- 0:09Speaker 1: global economy to you, and we're dedicating this week's episode
- 0:12Speaker 1: to a conversation I had the other day with the
- 0:15Speaker 1: economist and friend of Stephanomics, Larry Summers, former US Treasury secretary,
- 0:20Speaker 1: now a professor of economics at Harvard and an energetic
- 0:23Speaker 1: contributor to public policy debates. We spoke at an event
- 0:27Speaker 1: hosted by the Council and Foreign Relations about the economic
- 0:31Speaker 1: fallout from the war in Ukraine, future of the G twenty,
- 0:35Speaker 1: and of course inflation. Larry was one of the first
- 0:38Speaker 1: to predict You'll remember over a year ago the surge
- 0:41Speaker 1: in prices were now living through. Now the US Federal Reserve,
- 0:45Speaker 1: the Central Bank has belatedly accepted that interest rates will
- 0:49Speaker 1: need to go up quickly and often to get control
- 0:52Speaker 1: of prices, which in turn has some people worried about
- 0:55Speaker 1: the future of the recovery. So I started by asking
- 0:58Speaker 1: Larry whether he believed that the recession in the US
- 1:02Speaker 1: was now inevitable. I think it's the most likely thing.
- 1:09Speaker 1: If you look at history, there has never been a
- 1:12Speaker 1: moment when inflation was above four and unemployment was below five.
- 1:19Speaker 1: When we did not have a recession within the next
- 1:22Speaker 1: two years. So I think the odds are a hard
- 1:26Speaker 1: landing within the next two years are certainly better than half,
- 1:32Speaker 1: and quite possibly two thirds or more. I don't think
- 1:38Speaker 1: the idea that is still embodied in FED forecasts that
- 1:44Speaker 1: we could have continuing super tight labor markets at three
- 1:49Speaker 1: and a half percent unemployment and we could have inflation
- 1:54Speaker 1: come down rapidly is a terribly plausible one. That's a
- 1:59Speaker 1: resident two of team transitory. And the key fact one
- 2:04Speaker 1: has to recognize, I think to grasp the current situation
- 2:08Speaker 1: is that wage inflation is now running above six percent
- 2:12Speaker 1: on the best data, which is the Atlanta FED indicator.
- 2:16Speaker 1: And if wage inflation is running at six percent, that's
- 2:20Speaker 1: a kind of ultimate core inflation, pointing to price inflation
- 2:26Speaker 1: at four and a half or five. So I think
- 2:30Speaker 1: we're either gonna live with that for quite a while,
- 2:35Speaker 1: in which case we'll have an even bigger recession later,
- 2:39Speaker 1: or some set of events involving monetary policy and involving
- 2:44Speaker 1: what happens in the real economy are going to force
- 2:47Speaker 1: a hard landing. I'm much more agnostic on how high
- 2:52Speaker 1: interest rates are going to have to go to generate
- 2:56Speaker 1: a hard landing and disinflation. Then I am on the
- 3:00Speaker 1: likelihood that at the end of the day we're gonna
- 3:04Speaker 1: see a fairly hard land Just to dig in a
- 3:08Speaker 1: little bit in terms of what you think the mechanism
- 3:10Speaker 1: is going to be that will bring the US into
- 3:12Speaker 1: a recession, I mean, we we know, and in fact
- 3:14Speaker 1: was part of your argument that the stimulus that was
- 3:18Speaker 1: so large a year ago in the US, it left
- 3:22Speaker 1: household excess savings quite high, certainly by historical standards, even
- 3:28Speaker 1: in the lower half of the income distribution UM Debt
- 3:32Speaker 1: service from households is now at a forty year low.
- 3:35Speaker 1: They are looking they're coming into this with quite a
- 3:37Speaker 1: strong position, even with the inflation that we're seeing. So so,
- 3:41Speaker 1: what is the mechanism that's going to bring the US
- 3:43Speaker 1: into a recession? I think the two two classes of
- 3:47Speaker 1: mechanisms that are operative, and which one is going to
- 3:52Speaker 1: get their first and their relative timing is something where
- 3:56Speaker 1: I don't have a confident judgment. One class of mechanisms
- 4:00Speaker 1: is monetary policy. I think monetary policy is going to
- 4:04Speaker 1: have to keep going until we see disinflation, and we're
- 4:09Speaker 1: not going to see disinflation back towards the target range
- 4:13Speaker 1: until we see unemployment rise meaningfully. That's one source of
- 4:18Speaker 1: uncertainty monetary policy doing what it has to do. The
- 4:23Speaker 1: other is the countervailing mechanisms to what you described, the
- 4:28Speaker 1: fact that inflation has eroded real incomes and the value
- 4:32Speaker 1: of savings, the fact that there's significant fragility in financial markets,
- 4:38Speaker 1: the fact that mortgage rates have drought have risen by
- 4:42Speaker 1: two hundred basis points in UH the last four months,
- 4:47Speaker 1: and we're seeing for the first time in many years
- 4:51Speaker 1: that lots of people are starting the mortgage process and
- 4:54Speaker 1: not finishing the mortgage process. We're seeing evidence in certain
- 5:02Speaker 1: sectors of significantly reduced traffic. So I think it's hard
- 5:08Speaker 1: to know when, when, and to what extent the economy
- 5:14Speaker 1: is going to turn over itself, and to what extent
- 5:19Speaker 1: it is going to be induced by monetary policy. But
- 5:25Speaker 1: I think the judgment it's hard to escape is that
- 5:29Speaker 1: inflation is not going to get near reasonable levels if
- 5:34Speaker 1: the economy doesn't at least substantially slow. You talk about
- 5:40Speaker 1: potentially the need or necessity of unemployment to go up.
- 5:45Speaker 1: Some of your critics would say, we've got to an
- 5:49Speaker 1: amazing point in the US economy in which US workers
- 5:53Speaker 1: have been on the back foot for so long that
- 5:56Speaker 1: you have the unemployment rate that there's previously unheard of
- 6:00Speaker 1: three point six percent. We've got reported in Indiana where
- 6:03Speaker 1: there's less than one unemployment and workers in those places
- 6:09Speaker 1: have a position of power that they haven't had in
- 6:12Speaker 1: many years. What is wrong with having produced that situation? Look, Stephanie,
- 6:18Speaker 1: it's a it's a hugely important question. The first academic
- 6:23Speaker 1: work I did was on how important hype high pressure
- 6:27Speaker 1: labor markets were for the disadvantage. I showed what was
- 6:32Speaker 1: novel at that moment, that a one percent increase in
- 6:36Speaker 1: the employment ratio for white men was associated with a
- 6:40Speaker 1: six percent increase in the employment ratio for African American teenagers.
- 6:46Speaker 1: So I yield to no one in my belief in
- 6:51Speaker 1: the importance of helping the disadvantaged and in recognizing that
- 6:55Speaker 1: tight labor markets do benefit uh those who are action
- 7:00Speaker 1: lee left behind. But the three problems. The first is
- 7:05Speaker 1: that overall this higher inflation has gone with falling, not
- 7:10Speaker 1: increasing real wages. You know, if you look at a
- 7:14Speaker 1: graph of the nominal wage growth in the United States
- 7:18Speaker 1: on one axis, and real wage growth growth and purchasing
- 7:22Speaker 1: power on the other axis, it looks like a turned
- 7:26Speaker 1: over parabola. Living standards grow most rapidly with wages arising
- 7:31Speaker 1: at four percent, and then they fall off as you
- 7:35Speaker 1: start to see wage growth at five, six, seven, eight percent.
- 7:39Speaker 1: So the first thing to say is that what we're
- 7:42Speaker 1: doing is uh we're having lower real wage growth for
- 7:50Speaker 1: the vast majority of the populations and consequences. The second
- 7:55Speaker 1: is the core lesson we have learned is that there's
- 7:59Speaker 1: not a stable trade off between unemployment and inflation. There's
- 8:04Speaker 1: a stable trade off between unemployment and the acceleration of inflation.
- 8:09Speaker 1: And if we run an overheated economy, it's not that
- 8:11Speaker 1: we'll have to live with four percent inflation forever. It's
- 8:15Speaker 1: that will live with steadily rising inflation and set up
- 8:20Speaker 1: at ever greater price that we have to pay. Prudent
- 8:25Speaker 1: policy makers don't just pay attention to the current moment.
- 8:29Speaker 1: They pay attention to what happens over the longer term.
- 8:36Speaker 1: And the consequence of overheating is that it has to
- 8:40Speaker 1: be followed by something that ultimately stabilizes things. And the
- 8:47Speaker 1: history is that if you look at the overall path,
- 8:51Speaker 1: the poor are worse off once you go through that
- 8:55Speaker 1: whole process, then they would have been if you kept
- 8:58Speaker 1: things stay bole all along. That's why the fed's new
- 9:05Speaker 1: woke rhetoric in was so dangerously misguided. And I fear
- 9:13Speaker 1: that down the road, the people who they were most
- 9:18Speaker 1: concerned to help with that rhetoric are going to be
- 9:22Speaker 1: the victims if, as I expect, we have some kind
- 9:28Speaker 1: of hard landing. Even that you've started by saying you
- 9:32Speaker 1: think that's the most likely scenario and that you want
- 9:35Speaker 1: the FED to be looking down the track, I guess
- 9:37Speaker 1: the other inevitable question is how do you think they
- 9:39Speaker 1: should be responding to a recession. I think the FED
- 9:43Speaker 1: has to stay focused on bringing down the inflation rate
- 9:52Speaker 1: and bringing down the expected inflation rate. I don't think
- 9:57Speaker 1: there is any alternative that doesn't set a stage for
- 10:05Speaker 1: greater pain. We can have an argument about two versus
- 10:10Speaker 1: some number a bit greater UH than UH two, But
- 10:16Speaker 1: I think we need to recognize the think about this,
- 10:23Speaker 1: frankly in the old fashioned way, which is less in
- 10:26Speaker 1: terms of numerical targets, and that is price stability is
- 10:32Speaker 1: when people aren't talking all the time and focused on
- 10:36Speaker 1: the overall changes in the price level. By that definition,
- 10:40Speaker 1: we had about thirty five years of price stability between
- 10:43Speaker 1: the mid eighties and and by that definition, we have
- 10:48Speaker 1: lost price stability in the United States. UH. Inflation is
- 10:53Speaker 1: now the number one economic issue. It's driving vast erosion
- 10:57Speaker 1: in confidence in government, and the FED has to do
- 11:01Speaker 1: what's necessary to restore a sense of price stability. I
- 11:07Speaker 1: can't say exactly what that means in numerical terms, but
- 11:12Speaker 1: I know that we are well away from it UH
- 11:16Speaker 1: now in the judgment of the American UH people, I
- 11:24Speaker 1: think that's what's going to be necessary. UH. In terms
- 11:28Speaker 1: of UH monetary policy, I welcome the particularly the most
- 11:34Speaker 1: recent speech of Chairman Powell, which I think UH moved
- 11:40Speaker 1: a long way towards being in the right place. I'd
- 11:45Speaker 1: like to see the FED signal a commitment to raise
- 11:51Speaker 1: interest rates until real rates are clearly positive, or until
- 11:57Speaker 1: it's clear that price to reality has been restored. And
- 12:03Speaker 1: I think they've moved a long way in that direction.
- 12:06Speaker 1: That's good of late, but I think they've got UH
- 12:10Speaker 1: some distance to go before they achieve it. It has
- 12:20Speaker 1: become an extraordinarily salient issue politically inflation. I mean President
- 12:25Speaker 1: Biden did in his State of the Union he had
- 12:27Speaker 1: said this is going to be his number one goal
- 12:30Speaker 1: or one one of his primary objectives in the next
- 12:34Speaker 1: year and beyond bringing down inflation. And I think some
- 12:38Speaker 1: of us were left sort of scratching our heads, thinking,
- 12:41Speaker 1: we'll hang on, what can the administration do? Since it's
- 12:44Speaker 1: the FED job to be reducing inflation? What can the
- 12:46Speaker 1: administration do to reduce inflation? Look the net effect of
- 12:51Speaker 1: the things the administration talks about in terms of micro
- 12:55Speaker 1: policies to reduce inflation, this gouging talk is frivolous, non serious,
- 13:03Speaker 1: and utterly ineffectual. A guest price holiday would ultimately push
- 13:08Speaker 1: up prices uh by raising demand. The student loan relief
- 13:14Speaker 1: yesterday is injecting resources into the economy at a hundred
- 13:20Speaker 1: billion dollar a year annual rate when the economy needs
- 13:24Speaker 1: to be cooled off uh not uh heated up. The
- 13:30Speaker 1: administration could be much more constructive than it has been
- 13:34Speaker 1: with respect to energy supply. So I don't think the
- 13:39Speaker 1: administrations by America policies operate in the direction of raising prices,
- 13:46Speaker 1: as do various policies they pursue to raise small business.
- 13:51Speaker 1: So the micro economic policies of the administration are have
- 13:55Speaker 1: been a wash with respect to inflation at best, what
- 14:00Speaker 1: could they do? UH? The Peterson Institute just released a
- 14:05Speaker 1: study that I helped instigate and discussed. It's on their
- 14:09Speaker 1: website that estimates that a realistic program of trade liberalization
- 14:15Speaker 1: could take one point three off the cp I. Their
- 14:20Speaker 1: scope for regulates for UH policies to increase immigration that
- 14:27Speaker 1: we take substantial pressures off the labor market. But the
- 14:33Speaker 1: approaches UH that would work, our approaches that would emphasize
- 14:41Speaker 1: UM increasing the level of competition for American producers, not
- 14:52Speaker 1: seeking to protect American producers. That's the that's the element
- 14:59Speaker 1: U of micro economic policy that has a prospect for success.
- 15:05Speaker 1: And I fear that the more popular themes around corporate
- 15:12Speaker 1: gouging and the like are simply diversionary. The FED had
- 15:16Speaker 1: one job. It is monumentally failed on that job on
- 15:22Speaker 1: a consistent way for the last year and potentially into
- 15:25Speaker 1: the future with this strategy. If a fund made manager
- 15:29Speaker 1: made that kind of bad call for such a long time,
- 15:33Speaker 1: there would be pretty concrete consequences. If an elected politician
- 15:36Speaker 1: made that kind of mistake, they would almost certainly be consequences.
- 15:42Speaker 1: Do you do you think there should be greater accountability
- 15:46Speaker 1: for this particular failure and potentially for the forecasting system
- 15:51Speaker 1: that produced it, but even potentially individuals. I I think
- 15:58Speaker 1: the FED should be much more visibly acknowledging that it's
- 16:06Speaker 1: been wrong and seeking to understand and learn from its
- 16:12Speaker 1: errors than have been UH the case. And I think
- 16:19Speaker 1: the failure for there to be some institutional review, you know,
- 16:26Speaker 1: after bad battles, armies have after action reviews. The I
- 16:32Speaker 1: m F has blundered in various situations, and there have
- 16:37Speaker 1: been very thoughtful reviews of what in its culture and
- 16:40Speaker 1: what in its mode led to those errors, and I
- 16:46Speaker 1: think the FED should be engaged in more of that.
- 16:51Speaker 1: I think, in fairness to the FED UM, the views
- 16:57Speaker 1: they were expressing were relatively close two UH consensus views,
- 17:05Speaker 1: not frankly this last fall, when I think they were
- 17:10Speaker 1: behind the consensus and still sticking with their views, But
- 17:17Speaker 1: for much of last year their views were tracking consensus views.
- 17:25Speaker 1: And so I think the soul searching is less about
- 17:29Speaker 1: accountable individuals at the FED, and then about how those
- 17:34Speaker 1: consensus views UH were formed. And I guess I have
- 17:41Speaker 1: been struck by a certain UH blitheness with which some
- 17:50Speaker 1: of my UH friends in the economics community have kind
- 17:56Speaker 1: of pivoted two addressing the current moment without thinking about
- 18:06Speaker 1: what led them to be wrong in the past. Okay,
- 18:09Speaker 1: let's let's um, let's get onto Ukraine, Russia and the
- 18:15Speaker 1: fallout from the crisis. You were a senior Treasury official
- 18:18Speaker 1: throughout those two Clinton administrations in the nineties, which were
- 18:23Speaker 1: really kind of trying to think through after the end
- 18:26Speaker 1: of the Cold War, how Russia was going to fit
- 18:28Speaker 1: into the international economic system, decisions around whether it should
- 18:33Speaker 1: join the G seven, all of those things. Should we
- 18:36Speaker 1: be doing more to hurt Russia economically? Now? What what's
- 18:39Speaker 1: your take on the kind of coordinated sanctions that have
- 18:44Speaker 1: that have been achieved and the other actions that have
- 18:46Speaker 1: been taken. I think by the standards of history and tradition,
- 18:53Speaker 1: we've done a great deal. By the standards of the
- 18:56Speaker 1: magnitude of the problem, there's a lot more to do.
- 19:02Speaker 1: Understand this. The ruble is now trading at the same
- 19:08Speaker 1: exchange rate that it was before the war started. Russian
- 19:14Speaker 1: banks are not experiencing runs every day. Russia is getting
- 19:23Speaker 1: revenues from the export of its energy products that are
- 19:29Speaker 1: comparable to or greater than they were receiving before the war.
- 19:36Speaker 1: Because of increased energy prices, the limitation on the sale
- 19:44Speaker 1: of goods to Russia has not been nearly as comprehensive
- 19:50Speaker 1: as was imposed on Iran at earlier UH moments. The
- 19:59Speaker 1: truth is that, in a sense, and I strongly support this,
- 20:07Speaker 1: using economic tools is trying to fight a war without
- 20:17Speaker 1: costs and blood. That is the right thing, But in
- 20:23Speaker 1: important respects, we've been trying to fight an economic war
- 20:28Speaker 1: without costs two households from the first moment when the
- 20:35Speaker 1: sanctions were introduced, and as it was explained that simultaneously
- 20:41Speaker 1: we're gonna be doing everything we could to keep guest
- 20:43Speaker 1: prices under control, I have felt that there was a
- 20:48Speaker 1: moral failure. And if this is a unique and extraordinary
- 20:56Speaker 1: worst threat in seventy years of naked aggression, then we
- 21:03Speaker 1: need to be prepared to make sacrifices at the level
- 21:08Speaker 1: of accepting higher energy prices, wearing sweaters on days with
- 21:16Speaker 1: cool weather being a little hotter when UH we can't
- 21:23Speaker 1: run air conditioners as strongly as we did before, sacrificing
- 21:30Speaker 1: luxury exports UH to UH Russia, and sacrificing mercantile UH
- 21:40Speaker 1: commercial UH interests. I do not believe that enough has
- 21:47Speaker 1: been done. I believe that much more needs to be done.
- 21:53Speaker 1: I was glad to see the step that was taken
- 21:57Speaker 1: to stop the Russians from using their froe and reserves
- 22:01Speaker 1: to pay debt, but in a way, it was an
- 22:04Speaker 1: extraordinary and remarkable thing that for the six previous weeks
- 22:09Speaker 1: they had been allowed to use their frozen reserves to
- 22:14Speaker 1: prevent them UH from doing it. So I think that
- 22:21Speaker 1: we have a long way to go in raising the
- 22:27Speaker 1: pressure that we impose on sanctions, and frankly, I would
- 22:34Speaker 1: prefer less rhetoric about the war criminality of what's going on,
- 22:44Speaker 1: which it seems to me does not bring pressure to
- 22:49Speaker 1: produce peace, if anything, slightly the opposite, by meaning that
- 22:57Speaker 1: there's no exit strategy from this, less emphasis on that rhetoric,
- 23:04Speaker 1: and much more emphasis on the imposition of UH economic
- 23:12Speaker 1: pain we saw in the United States in two thousand
- 23:17Speaker 1: and eight. What cascading lack of confidence in finance can
- 23:24Speaker 1: do to destroy the performance of an economy. It's extraordinarily
- 23:31Speaker 1: counterintuitive for any financial person, but I think we need
- 23:36Speaker 1: to engage exactly those forces as forces of destruction with
- 23:43Speaker 1: respect to the Russian economy right now. Recognizing that that
- 23:49Speaker 1: may have some collateral implications for some few financial institutions
- 23:54Speaker 1: in the West and being provided being prepared to provide
- 23:58Speaker 1: the necessary UH kind of support. But I don't think
- 24:03Speaker 1: we have yet stepped up fully in terms of engaging
- 24:09Speaker 1: the tools of UH financial warfare. That's how I see
- 24:14Speaker 1: it from UH the outside. But what I have is
- 24:19Speaker 1: an outsider's view, and I've been an insider, and I
- 24:24Speaker 1: have seen outsiders with naive views making it sound simpler
- 24:31Speaker 1: than it is. And in fairness to those who are
- 24:34Speaker 1: making the decisions, it may be that there are a
- 24:37Speaker 1: whole set of collateral costs that they have thought through
- 24:42Speaker 1: very carefully. But my instinct is that there's a good
- 24:47Speaker 1: deal more that could be done, and I'd like to
- 24:50Speaker 1: see some long queues outside some Russian financial institutions. I'd
- 24:57Speaker 1: like to see some Russian defaults followed by the seizures
- 25:01Speaker 1: of key Russian assets, and I'd like to see the
- 25:05Speaker 1: ruble in free fall as part of judging the efficacy
- 25:12Speaker 1: of a sactions program. You know, one of the other
- 25:22Speaker 1: things that happened UM and that your watch the Treasury
- 25:25Speaker 1: when we're working together in the late ninety nineties was
- 25:27Speaker 1: the beginnings of the g twenty, which was pretty evident
- 25:32Speaker 1: in the global financial crisis in the global response to that,
- 25:35Speaker 1: but has been pretty absent in recent years, and certainly
- 25:39Speaker 1: in response to this crisis, or indeed the inflation crisis
- 25:45Speaker 1: that's now and cost of living crunch that's coming for
- 25:48Speaker 1: so many countries. Um, I wonder, do you think it's
- 25:51Speaker 1: the end of the G twenty. Look, I think the
- 25:54Speaker 1: G twenty had a premise. The premise of the G
- 25:58Speaker 1: twenty was that all countries wanted all other countries to
- 26:03Speaker 1: do better, that we all gained from a more open,
- 26:09Speaker 1: more rapidly growing economy, That the United States wanted China
- 26:13Speaker 1: to grow faster, that China wanted the US to grow faster,
- 26:18Speaker 1: That we all wanted to solve global problems together. And
- 26:22Speaker 1: that was the premise of the G twenty. And that
- 26:27Speaker 1: was basically true in the two thousand and eight financial crisis.
- 26:33Speaker 1: Everybody wanted the crisis to be successfully weathered and the
- 26:37Speaker 1: global economy to grow again. That is in very profound
- 26:45Speaker 1: questions today. Self Evidently, it is not the objective of
- 26:51Speaker 1: the other member, most of the other members of the
- 26:53Speaker 1: G twenty to support Russia's economic flourishing. It is a
- 26:59Speaker 1: substantial question whether we are hoping for the success of
- 27:06Speaker 1: the Chinese economy and whether China is hoping for the
- 27:10Speaker 1: success of our of our economy. So the premise of
- 27:16Speaker 1: the G twenty, which was a forum for devising means
- 27:23Speaker 1: to shared ends, is much less evidently true today. And
- 27:31Speaker 1: before one talks about what you should convene a G
- 27:35Speaker 1: twenty meeting to do and what kind of statement G
- 27:39Speaker 1: twenty should make, it seems to me one has to
- 27:43Speaker 1: get straight these questions about which communities have which shared ends.
- 27:51Speaker 1: Right now, I perceive a bit of a vacuum in
- 27:58Speaker 1: clear thinking on the is with some traditionalists wanting to
- 28:03Speaker 1: just kind of keep going with the G twenty and
- 28:05Speaker 1: have do stuff, and others have what seemed to me
- 28:12Speaker 1: to be rather naive given the world we live in,
- 28:17Speaker 1: conceptions of communities of democracy, which it seems to me
- 28:22Speaker 1: do so much to exclude so many major stakeholders in
- 28:28Speaker 1: the economic system that there's a real question as to
- 28:32Speaker 1: whether they can be meaningfully affective. So I think we
- 28:36Speaker 1: need some serious reflection on the mechanisms of international fora
- 28:46Speaker 1: and consultation. I don't know that we're in the right
- 28:49Speaker 1: place right now, but I think it takes a kind
- 28:54Speaker 1: of realism that balances sort of two cliches. Uh one,
- 29:05Speaker 1: some sharing of ends is a prerequisite to successful cooperation,
- 29:11Speaker 1: and the other is you don't make peace with your friends,
- 29:15Speaker 1: you make peace with your potential adversaries. And so I
- 29:19Speaker 1: suspect we need to use the European term some kind
- 29:23Speaker 1: of variable architecture, in which there are some faora where
- 29:28Speaker 1: there's more in common among the participants but less reach,
- 29:33Speaker 1: and other foura in which there is less in common
- 29:40Speaker 1: among the participants but more uh reach. Anyone who thinks
- 29:47Speaker 1: that these descriptions and that these kinds of issues and
- 29:52Speaker 1: this is a place where I've gone from naive and
- 29:57Speaker 1: stupid to less naive and stupid. I used to think
- 30:02Speaker 1: that serious people discuss serious things, and diplomats discussed the
- 30:07Speaker 1: shape of tables. And I think I've now come to
- 30:11Speaker 1: realize how important the shape and composition of groups could be.
- 30:16Speaker 1: And anyone who doubted that proposition needs to consider how
- 30:20Speaker 1: consequential the rather loose statements that were made about allowing
- 30:26Speaker 1: Ukraine into NATO UM proved to be in terms of
- 30:31Speaker 1: what they set off. Larry Thomas, thanks very much for
- 30:36Speaker 1: an excellent exchange on issues that I may will be
- 30:39Speaker 1: of great interest to all the people listening in. Thank you, Stephanie.
- 30:48Speaker 1: Well that's it for this episode. Thanks for listening. We'll
- 30:51Speaker 1: have more from around the world next week and in
- 30:53Speaker 1: the meantime, remember you can always find us on the
- 30:56Speaker 1: Bloomberg Terminal, website, app or wherever you get your podcasts,
- 31:00Speaker 1: and for more news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics, follow
- 31:03Speaker 1: our Economics on Twitter. This episode was produced by Magnus Henrickson,
- 31:07Speaker 1: with special thanks to Sommer Sadi, Larry Summers, and the
- 31:11Speaker 1: Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Mike Sasso is
- 31:14Speaker 1: the executive producer of Stephanomics and the head of Bloomberg
- 31:17Speaker 1: Podcast is Francesca Levy m