Latest / Trend Watch / Episode 38: Do Presidential Debates Still Matter?

Transcript

Episode 38: Do Presidential Debates Still Matter? · Trend Watch

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_01: Ready to take a deeper look at where history, politics, and economics all intersect?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then you've come to the right place.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Each week,
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: here's where we pull back the headlines and focus on the big trends,
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: the stuff that actually shapes our future.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Through the noise, we focus on the signal.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Neil Howe, and this is TrendWatch.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Today is September 12th, 2024, and this is Trend Watch.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back, everybody.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: As usual, I have on my fellow analyst, Christian Ford.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, Christian, what I always ask, how was your week?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my week was pretty good, Neil, but I honestly don't have much to report.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's been kind of a boring but peaceful fall, but I'll turn it around on you.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: I know you have a big trip coming up.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to, what, Lithuania this weekend?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I am.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to go actually visit the Baltic states, find out what's worrying NATO way up there.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it is interesting now with the Finland and Sweden joining NATO,
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: the Baltic Sea has become a kind of NATO lake,
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: With the exception of the tiny little bit of coastline around St.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Petersburg and Kaliningrad.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll be coming in at Palanga.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I do believe that we will be going down to Vilnius, which is sort of southeast.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that'll be interesting.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a fairly large city.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it is ancient.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean,
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: it was the center of the great,
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Polish Lithuanian kingdom,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: back in the Middle Ages.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's been variously claimed by Poland, Belarus, Lithuania and Russia at various points.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: It is rich with history.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: And while it was a capital of this huge Lithuanian-Polish Commonwealth,
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: it was one of the most multicultural cities in Europe.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it really was, as were many cities in Europe all the way up to
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: that tragic century,
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: the 20th century,
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: with the Russian Revolution,
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: World War I,
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: and all the other things which purified in various ways all these areas of Europe,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: which used to be multicultural.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, that's where I will be headed.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I will tell you all about it when I get back.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: if you don't want to tell me anything about your week,
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: if that's it for you,
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: maybe I just ought to start out with reminding all of our listeners.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you like this podcast, please go ahead and share it with friends and family.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Repost it on social media.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: From now on, only some episodes will remain free.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: we should take a moment to clarify to listeners that this podcast isn't all we do
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: on Substack.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: We also have lots of written content.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Would you care to explain?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's right, Neil.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I always take this time to tell our listeners to go check out either our videos or
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: written pieces.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you had a piece that got a lot of press recently about where we actually stand in the election.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: You came to some interesting conclusions that,
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: while Kamala Harris might be ahead in the polls,
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Trump might have some strategic advantages in his back pocket.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to explain what those are?
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I know we're going to get to the debate shortly.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of an interesting question.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: How often do debates change the election?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: But we'll talk about that in a bit.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: What I wanted to lay out really was how we should calculate odds given,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: recent experience and where the two parties are.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's no question that late July through nearly the end of August was a terrific,
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: five weeks for the Democratic Party.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: They got rid of Biden and they, you know, unceremoniously deposed him.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: And with nary a primary, they put in Kamala Harris.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it was remarkable how quickly she galvanized the party,
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: re-energized the Democrats,
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: particularly the activists,
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: the engaged Democrats.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: and gave her really tremendous momentum to the extent that not only was she leading
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: in national polls,
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: she was often leading and continues to lead in many of the battleground state polls.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And her momentum was such that the betting odds, which had heavily favored Trump in late June,
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: um, completely switched around and actually favored, uh, Harris.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh,
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: these are,
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: these are the poly markets and predict it and all the various British betting sites.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: That was, that was remarkable.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then over the last two weeks, she lost momentum, right?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the national polls closed a little bit.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: You had that recent,
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: um,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Siena college,
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: New York times poll,
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: which actually showed that Trump was ahead one point nationally,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: uh,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And you had some of these closing polls in some of the battleground states, particularly in the Midwest.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: And the odds went the other way.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then we had the debate and it began to shift another way.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Look, this is going to be a very close election.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've never seen the odds so close for so long.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: But one thing I did write about was...
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: How Trump enjoys certain structural advantages.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I lay out three of them.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess I should maybe just explain them very quickly.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: One is the the popular electoral threshold, you know, because the.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the Republicans are dominant in some of these lower population states.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: He has an electoral college edge,
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: and that edge really translates into the requirement that the Democrats get
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: somewhere between a two to four point position.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: percentage point advantage in the national vote in order to have a even chance of
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: beating Trump in the Electoral College.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Don't forget that in 2020,
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: Trump was beaten by Biden by four and a half percentage points in the national vote,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: but he lost three states by only
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Forty five thousand votes total.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there were only three states in that election that were decided by less than one percent.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: They were all decided by an average of point four percent for Biden.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, Biden, you could say was a little bit lucky.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: He got all three of them and that won him the election.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was probably a long shot that Trump could have won that election.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: But the fact that he actually had a chance at all is truly amazing.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the first thing.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: The second thing I talked about was the turnout skew.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: This is something that used to favor Democrats.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: But in this new age of Trump and populism, it now favors the Republicans.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that is the tendency of one party or another to do better as the turnout rises.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: And this used to be, again, an advantage for the Democrats.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: They had more working class people.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: They had more non-college people, people who generally weren't as engaged in politics.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: They tended not to vote in midterms and special elections, but they voted in big presidential elections.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we still have a turnout skew, but it's reversed.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I present all the evidence to show how it's reversed.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the real dividing line is 2016.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: You just begin to see the line begins to go the other way.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: It is now true that the bigger the turnout, the better Trump will probably do.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Which is interesting, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because with all the debates,
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you recall,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Christian,
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: all those debates about,
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: COVID and making sure that,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: making sure that every voter is absolutely eligible and tightening up on ID laws
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: and so on.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: The assumption was,
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: yeah,
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: the assumption was always that,
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: the more people showed up,
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: the better Democrats would do.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: As I conclude in my piece, the exact opposite is now the truth.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: The better the turnout, the better Donald Trump will do.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact,
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: that explains why the Democrats have recently done better in the midterms than they
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: do in the presidential elections.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: They surprise on the upside when there are fewer people turning out,
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: particularly in the special elections.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've noticed that.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Democrats do very well.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: But they have done hugely.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: They have hugely underperformed when the turnout is large.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's true in the presidential elections.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: It also explains why in the last two presidential elections, Trump being in both of them, there was.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: A tremendous October surge by Trump.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you can make the assumption that voters who decide late tend to be
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: voters who are relatively disengaged.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it explains that as well.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I go through the evidence on that.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that does explain, too, why Trump is pitching his campaign campaign.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Not so much to the high realm of policy,
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: but to the low realm of symbols and emotion and sort of tribal connection.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, he wants to get those unengaged voters.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: He wants to give them emotional reason to show up at the polls.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: He's not really interested in the, you know, the.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: The the professionals and the college degreed Republicans who would have preferred Nikki Haley.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: He figures they're going to show up anyway and vote for the Republicans.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's interested in all those people who don't ordinarily show up in elections.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just tremendous evidence supporting that.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I make that point.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, the point which has been much discussed, and that's the partisan non-response bias issue.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: The fact that we do not now have genuine random samples that was given up when we
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: can no longer,
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: use random sample phone dialing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And we can't really do random sample address addresses either.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: So what we generally tend to do now is sort of a convenience poll online to get people to show up.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then we try to adjust them by each group's share of the electorate.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if they're
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: if they're male,
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: female,
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: what age they are,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: whether they have,
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: how,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: how educated they,
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: you know what I mean?
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: All the usual kind of demographic, you know, we push and pull on the data, right.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: To, to make them quote unquote representative.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: That will work to some extent,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: but it will not work if people in exactly the same demographic in every way,
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: But they only differ because, you know, one of them likes Trump and one of them likes Biden.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And for that reason, it's the one that likes Trump who prefers not to respond.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's hidden.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way of measuring that.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: You can try to estimate it.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: But generally, that's hidden to the pollsters.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: And this is these are not stunning conclusions because the pollsters have talked about all these things.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: But what I try to do is is lay out all the evidence possible.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: you know, in perspective.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And these are the, this presents a challenge to Harris because Harris needs to
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: She needs to launch a second stage.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: She would lose today if the election were held right now because she would not
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: overcome those three structural problems that we talked about,
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: including the fact that she's not ahead large enough in the popular vote.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Keep in mind that Trump in the popular vote today is well in front of where he was
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: at the same date in 2016 or 2020.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: So from his point of view,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: even as James Carville said,
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: right,
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: as James Carville said,
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: we have a three percent deficit.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when Harris is ahead, too, we're actually behind one.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: What's your reaction to all this?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think the real question will be, what will the turnout be?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a hard thing to say because these unengaged voters,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: they are the voters that also forget it's election day.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it will be interesting to see if Trump can take advantage of them.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like trying to find out something about a black hole, you know.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they don't respond.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: They're not engaged.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: You don't, you know.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: And take a look at people trying to predict turnout.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: No one has any idea what the turnouts could be.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: Except that I think it's fair to say that it will be high.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: It may not be quite as high.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: The extraordinary turnout we had in 2020,
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: the presidential turnout,
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: the voting rate of all the eligible voters in 2020 was the highest in a century,
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was the highest, I think, more than a century.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was before 1920.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was...
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was actually I think it goes back 120 years.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: I believe if you look at the election project numbers,
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was McKinley against William Jennings Bryan 1900.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there you go.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: That was an extraordinary year.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think that was probably covid keeping people at home and giving them nothing
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: else to do with their time?
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Let's look at the stories of the week and we'll come down to the end.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: We'll do markets.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: On Tuesday,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump faced off on ABC for their first and possibly only
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: presidential debate.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Again, more about the election, right?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: President Biden is signaling that he will block Nippon Steel from acquiring U.S.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Steel,
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: a position also endorsed by Trump,
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: several senators,
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think notably from Ohio and Pennsylvania,
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: and the United Steelworkers.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: And abroad,
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: let's go abroad,
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: the US and Iraqi forces raided multiple ISIS outposts in the deserts of Iraq and
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Syria at a time when many observers think ISIS may be resurging.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Western intelligence says that Russia is receiving tactical ballistic missiles from Iran.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: The US accuses China of providing direct and very substantial support for Russia's war machine.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: Israeli military intelligence say they found the bodies of six October 7th hostages,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: including one American executed by Hamas,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: further inflaming the debate in Israel about how to proceed in Gaza.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Following the hung National Assembly elected in France over the summer,
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: President Emmanuel Macron has appointed a well-known conservative Republican,
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Michel Barnier,
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: as prime minister.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, to move back to our own hemisphere here, Mexico's Senate today.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: has passed new legislation making the nation's entire judiciary elective,
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: a move that is triggering protests.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well, some of it from its own people, but also from Mexico's leading allies and trading partners.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_01: So with that, Christian, that's a big lineup.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: So let's get into it.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's start with the markets, Neil.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: It was a pretty good day in the markets.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: The S&P closed up 0.75%, and over the last five trading days is up 1.68%.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: As for the global Dow, that closed up 1.1%, and over the last five trading days is up 0.39%.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: The VIX closed at 17.8%.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: which is a little bit below what we had been seeing earlier in the week.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as for the 10-year Treasury, that is at 3.688%, down 4.5 basis points over the last five days.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I will say...
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: 17 is still high, right?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: We're not down to those 12 levels that we were seeing, you know, earlier in the summer.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_01: So we'll see.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe another good week or two, right?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll be soaring again.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go on to indicators in the U.S.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: In August, non-farm payrolls rose from 89,000 to 142,000.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: While that was an increase, Neil, it was still below expectations.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: We had August ISM PMIs.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: Manufacturing rose to 47.2.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: That marks 21 months of contraction out of the last 22 readings.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: And services slightly rose to 51.5, so that indicates growth.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: In August, CPI rose 2.5% year over year.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's down from 2.9% in July.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And core inflation was steady at 3.2%.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, particularly the month-over-month trends really haven't altered much.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: The markets did know how to react to that.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: You notice early in the day, the markets plunged.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Late in the day, they came back again.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I think there's a real unsureness, right?
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Is the problem that the Fed will not be able to cut as much as it otherwise might have?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: which would then risk both.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the markets don't like that because interest rates aren't down.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's harder to borrow.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: But it also may be that it will be higher for longer and that will hurt the economy.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you've got all of these things going on.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: I will say one thing that you didn't mention,
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: but we should mention the 10 year,
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: two year uninverted interest.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: And for anyone who follows our recession indicators,
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: right,
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: all about the indicators,
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: will know what a huge move that is,
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, how long have those been inverted, right?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: The 10-year 90-day is obviously still inverted.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: But for anyone who remembers past recessions, right?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great long-term indicator.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: You know, 18 months, two years before the recession, it often inverts.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it almost always un-inverts right before the recession starts, right?
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's interesting how yield curve inversions are both a short-term,
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: I should say a long-term and a short-term indicator,
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: right?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, they sometimes don't invert.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: They sometimes invert briefly before the election, before the recession.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they invert early in the recession.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: But I should say uninvert early in the recession.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: But clearly,
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: clearly,
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: as the Fed starts cutting and if you look at the CME forecast,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: it's going to be cutting a lot rapidly.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're going to you're going to see all these things invert.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So there you have that, too.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: All right, Neil.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, for global indicators, I only have one for you from China.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have the Caixin PMIs for August.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: Manufacturing rose from 49.8 to 50.4, so we're in positive growth there.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: And services fell from 52.1 to 51.6, but that still marks 20 months of growth.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to plunge in here?