Latest / Merryn Talks Money / The Kokou Agbo-Bloua Aftershow
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: Welcome to Marry Talks Money the after show. This is
- 0:06Speaker 1: where we unpacked all the commentary here in our regular podcast.
- 0:09Speaker 2: I learned some set web this week.
- 0:11Speaker 1: John Stepack, senior reporter at Bloomberg and author of the
- 0:13Speaker 1: daily Money to Shelve newsletter, joined me as usual to
- 0:16Speaker 1: discuss my conversation with Cock. Here's Society General's global head
- 0:21Speaker 1: of Economics, cross at IT and quant Research and UK
- 0:24Speaker 1: head of Research.
- 0:26Speaker 2: Right, John, have you listened to this one?
- 0:30Speaker 3: I've read the transcript again, so read it rather than
- 0:33Speaker 3: listen to it?
- 0:33Speaker 2: Do you do you?
- 0:35Speaker 4: Yes?
- 0:35Speaker 1: I hope everyone else listens to it. But what did
- 0:39Speaker 1: you think of this conversation? Where would you like to
- 0:43Speaker 1: say you absolutely do not agree.
- 0:46Speaker 3: I mean, I'm going on my issue here and I
- 0:50Speaker 3: think is actually a lot to do with the job
- 0:52Speaker 3: descriptions that if you'd given me a list of the
- 0:55Speaker 3: questions you were going to ask CORKU before I read
- 0:58Speaker 3: this transcript, I could have told you what all of
- 1:00Speaker 3: the answers were going to be pretty much.
- 1:03Speaker 1: Wow, I don't have a list of questions in advance.
- 1:06Speaker 1: It doesn't work like that. But oh yeah, if you
- 1:09Speaker 1: try to send you the list to questions, you can
- 1:11Speaker 1: tell me the answers, and we went bothered with all
- 1:12Speaker 1: this boring podcasting business.
- 1:14Speaker 3: If you give me the improv before you before you
- 1:17Speaker 3: did the improv, I mean it's let's say it's not
- 1:20Speaker 3: it's not really a Christmas so much as like it's okay.
- 1:24Speaker 3: So the received wisdom is, surely there's going to be
- 1:28Speaker 3: a recession, but does the recession thing even matter that much?
- 1:32Speaker 3: And you know, interest rates have gone up an extraordinary rate,
- 1:37Speaker 3: but somehow everything's going to basically be okay because we've
- 1:40Speaker 3: got enough time role off that. And if you know
- 1:46Speaker 3: there is a disaster, then it means, you know, the
- 1:50Speaker 3: central plants can cut interest rates anyway to stop it
- 1:54Speaker 3: from being a disaster. So it's basically everything is going
- 1:56Speaker 3: to be okay, and therefore you should a diversified portfolio.
- 2:02Speaker 2: That's not an acceptable answer.
- 2:05Speaker 3: Oh yeah no. And they meant to be fairy through
- 2:08Speaker 3: some ideas there. And you know, there's there's a lot
- 2:13Speaker 3: to be said for warning passive investments and all the
- 2:17Speaker 3: rest of it, and transition metals alone. Again, i'd sort
- 2:23Speaker 3: of make the point that transmit transition metals are fine,
- 2:27Speaker 3: but probably have to be a wee bit picky because
- 2:29Speaker 3: I mean, like the lithium price is kind of like
- 2:31Speaker 3: shot up and then collapsed when everyone realized that actually
- 2:34Speaker 3: there's plenty of lithium in the world, and as soon
- 2:36Speaker 3: as the price is high enough, assuming we even stick
- 2:39Speaker 3: with elitium batteries, it's yeah, it's not going to be
- 2:43Speaker 3: the new oil. It's you know, a pretty common substance,
- 2:46Speaker 3: and as long as you know it's there's enough of
- 2:49Speaker 3: it out there, it's just to be never had to
- 2:51Speaker 3: use it before, So I don't I don't know, it's
- 2:54Speaker 3: it's I know, sorry, it sounds like I'm being like
- 2:57Speaker 3: terribly kind of I mean, but I think it's just
- 3:01Speaker 3: at a high level, if you're not going to say
- 3:04Speaker 3: something out of the ordinary about micro then the rest
- 3:10Speaker 3: of it's just sort of like, oh, can the decimal points.
- 3:12Speaker 3: Basically it's like, oh, is the decision going to be
- 3:14Speaker 3: in this quarter or is it going to be in
- 3:16Speaker 3: that quarter? And at the end of the day, that
- 3:18Speaker 3: sort of thing doesn't matter that much. Forests, and then
- 3:21Speaker 3: beyond that it's kind of they can have At the
- 3:28Speaker 3: more detailed level, you kind of need to be a
- 3:30Speaker 3: little bit peckier than just you know, okay, well buy
- 3:33Speaker 3: by these transition metals or whatever.
- 3:36Speaker 2: Yeah, I suppose the thing that I would I would
- 3:38Speaker 2: have picked him up on. I probably did pick him
- 3:40Speaker 2: up on.
- 3:40Speaker 1: Is this idea that everything will be fine because interest
- 3:43Speaker 1: rates of everything will be fine because interest rates have
- 3:45Speaker 1: gone up so fast that they can come down again.
- 3:48Speaker 2: Whereas I tend to feel more that interest.
- 3:52Speaker 1: Rates went out very fast because they had to, because
- 3:54Speaker 1: the central banks made some enormous mistakes and latinflation get
- 3:58Speaker 1: out of control. So we now have rates at what
- 4:01Speaker 1: you might consider to be historically historical normal levels. So
- 4:05Speaker 1: the idea that as soon as something goes wrong, we
- 4:08Speaker 1: can drag them back down again to beats historically extremely
- 4:14Speaker 1: abnormal levels of you know, real terms negative or one percent,
- 4:19Speaker 1: zero point five percent, et cetera.
- 4:20Speaker 2: So the idea that that ammunation exists.
- 4:22Speaker 1: So I'm not sure that it does, because the central
- 4:24Speaker 1: banks may just may because they didn't alway learn their lessons,
- 4:27Speaker 1: but they may have learned a lesson about how very
- 4:30Speaker 1: very very low interest rates allow for the misallocation of
- 4:34Speaker 1: capital and also open the.
- 4:36Speaker 2: Door to inflation.
- 4:38Speaker 1: So even if something does go very wrong in the
- 4:40Speaker 1: global conin which I expect it will, at some point
- 4:43Speaker 1: in the not two distal future. I'm not sure that
- 4:46Speaker 1: that leeway exists, that put still exists.
- 4:49Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because they went up for a reason. So
- 4:53Speaker 3: it's kind of like with you know, if they go
- 4:55Speaker 3: back down, then you can't sot. They can't just see
- 4:58Speaker 3: that inflation is going to vite niche because it's convenient
- 5:02Speaker 3: at that point for central banks to be cut in rates.
- 5:05Speaker 3: The one thing that I did find kind of interesting
- 5:10Speaker 3: or that I think is something that we could do
- 5:13Speaker 3: with talking more about in a more specific way is
- 5:18Speaker 3: the thing about productivity. There's a lot of time people
- 5:21Speaker 3: talk about productivity and talk about his artificial intelligence going
- 5:25Speaker 3: to help me out? It is tech going to help
- 5:27Speaker 3: but it and I think it'd be interesting they just
- 5:31Speaker 3: maybe break down, well, actually, how are these things going
- 5:34Speaker 3: to help the productivity? And is there not an issue
- 5:39Speaker 3: with the way really that we measure productivity? And like,
- 5:43Speaker 3: one of the reasons productivity is falling so badly in
- 5:47Speaker 3: the UK, for example, but in lots of other places
- 5:49Speaker 3: is because productivity measures are basically based on manufacturing industries
- 5:54Speaker 3: being much more significant parts of the economy than they are.
- 5:58Speaker 3: And if we all acknowledge that, we'll actually, how does
- 6:00Speaker 3: a hairdress have become more productive? What is the nature
- 6:03Speaker 3: of an increase in hairdress is productivity? And what's kind
- 6:06Speaker 3: of like, well, you know you can't it's going to
- 6:10Speaker 3: measure that, and you're never going to get to a
- 6:12Speaker 3: point where one hairdresser can do three haircuts in an
- 6:15Speaker 3: hour rather than two haircuts in an hour.
- 6:17Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, that's simply not true.
- 6:21Speaker 2: Hair cutting takes too long.
- 6:23Speaker 1: This is one of the conversations I have every time
- 6:25Speaker 1: I go to the headdresser, say how long is this
- 6:27Speaker 1: going to take? And they take an hour? I'm like,
- 6:28Speaker 1: how can this take an hour? How can this possibly
- 6:31Speaker 1: in any rational world take an hour?
- 6:35Speaker 2: Man?
- 6:35Speaker 1: This is why you always look five minutes to cut
- 6:38Speaker 1: a woman's hair.
- 6:39Speaker 2: Anyone's hair tops absolute tops this.
- 6:42Speaker 1: I mean accept that it's very skilled work and that
- 6:45Speaker 1: it's difficult, but an hour.
- 6:46Speaker 2: No, no, no, there is a huge room for productivity
- 6:50Speaker 2: gains in hedressing. You've chosen the wrong example.
- 6:53Speaker 3: I don't be You could just get a set of
- 6:55Speaker 3: clippers and then that would kind of, you know, boost
- 6:57Speaker 3: productivity technically speaking, but but would it actually boost productivity
- 7:05Speaker 3: if you've got a whole lot of unhappy people we
- 7:07Speaker 3: know here.
- 7:09Speaker 1: I can't answer that's that's that's too much for me
- 7:13Speaker 1: today anyway, But I get your point. It's very hard
- 7:16Speaker 1: to rise productivity in the service industries.
- 7:18Speaker 3: But yeah, but I think this is I think this
- 7:20Speaker 3: is the things that we talk about this again at
- 7:22Speaker 3: the kind of very high level, but it's I think
- 7:26Speaker 3: a lot of time it's if we talk about the
- 7:29Speaker 3: abstract number of productivity, but they're actually talking about, well,
- 7:31Speaker 3: what would the more productive economy actually look like? And
- 7:36Speaker 3: also I think the product I mean, I find productivity
- 7:39Speaker 3: are very abstract, difficult concept or at my head rounte.
- 7:43Speaker 3: So I do not know what most of for example,
- 7:47Speaker 3: or kind of non finance listeners think of whenever they
- 7:52Speaker 3: think about productivity, because this is, like I say, it's
- 7:55Speaker 3: this kind of like a concept that is infuriatingly abstract
- 7:58Speaker 3: to me. I'd like to think that we break it
- 8:01Speaker 3: down in more concrete levels, as in, what would this
- 8:05Speaker 3: mean for you? Well, I think this means for these industries.
- 8:09Speaker 1: One of the things in the UK is that it's
- 8:11Speaker 1: public sector productivity that has been such a disaster, and
- 8:14Speaker 1: really private sector productivity isn't great either. But when you
- 8:17Speaker 1: look at our productivity numbers. It's the public sector that
- 8:19Speaker 1: is genuinely letting us down. And the place where I
- 8:21Speaker 1: think most people can see that productivity could be massively
- 8:26Speaker 1: improved is in particular in the NHS. And that's where
- 8:30Speaker 1: we have where when you talk about digitalization and you
- 8:33Speaker 1: talk about AI et cetera, something an organization such as
- 8:37Speaker 1: the NHS could be massively improved by a higher level
- 8:42Speaker 1: of efficiency and productivity and middle management in particular. Yeah, definitely,
- 8:47Speaker 1: that's somewhere where we really could see dramatic change have
- 8:50Speaker 1: a huge benefit not just for us in our health,
- 8:53Speaker 1: but for our government finances.
- 8:55Speaker 3: And see on the private sector, say they can allaw
- 9:00Speaker 3: lawyer area and the process of buying houses and selling
- 9:04Speaker 3: houses and all the paperwork that kind of has to
- 9:07Speaker 3: be chucked in between parties. I can see that's another
- 9:12Speaker 3: area where that could improve it. I mean one thing
- 9:15Speaker 3: one point I would make with that though, is that
- 9:19Speaker 3: we sort of point to AI as being a solution
- 9:21Speaker 3: for all this, but you know, the enertis is still
- 9:26Speaker 3: using fax machines in some areas.
- 9:30Speaker 2: This is the point.
- 9:31Speaker 3: It's kind of like, well, it's not the fact that
- 9:32Speaker 3: we've invented AI is not going to change this with
- 9:35Speaker 3: What we need to do is break down some of
- 9:37Speaker 3: the guilds that are protecting these professions. And I mean
- 9:41Speaker 3: that's the big hurdle is things like the and all
- 9:45Speaker 3: the you know, the kind of British Medical Association kind
- 9:49Speaker 3: of you know, doctors, but also but on the laws side,
- 9:52Speaker 3: you know a lot of paperwork could presumably have already
- 9:55Speaker 3: been replaced, and it's all about professions protecting their you know,
- 10:00Speaker 3: the leveled up status if you like, and rather than
- 10:04Speaker 3: the technology lagging, because there's lots of technology that could
- 10:07Speaker 3: already improve all of these areas that wouldn't require artificial intelligence.
- 10:12Speaker 3: I mean, simple algorithms and spreadsheets would work very wellful
- 10:17Speaker 3: things like tree eyes, if you know, we were more
- 10:24Speaker 3: capable of getting them nty all these different parts of
- 10:28Speaker 3: the bureaucracy. We kind of moved off the interview.
- 10:35Speaker 1: We had totally and I was about to start talking
- 10:37Speaker 1: at something else will together and then remembering that we're
- 10:39Speaker 1: supposed to be talking about this interview. So one of
- 10:43Speaker 1: the things that he did talk about when we came
- 10:44Speaker 1: to productivities, he was talking about the Roaring twenties a.
- 10:47Speaker 4: Little good point. I mean, there was a lot of
- 10:49Speaker 4: comparison between the Roaring twenties and the Roaring twenty twenties.
- 10:55Speaker 4: After the reopening of the economy, these sort of revenge
- 10:58Speaker 4: spending et cetera. When you look at total factor productivity,
- 11:02Speaker 4: it has actually sort of been flat to two, falling
- 11:07Speaker 4: independent on countries. Obviously, the US clearly has a lot
- 11:10Speaker 4: more investment in innovation and productivity, so for that you
- 11:15Speaker 4: need investment in technology, robots, et cetera. Even artificial intelligent
- 11:22Speaker 4: intelligence is expected to increase the productivity in the service industry,
- 11:27Speaker 4: not just replace jobs, but make us a lot more
- 11:30Speaker 4: efficient at what we do. So I think there is
- 11:34Speaker 4: a there is a probability for productivity to increase because
- 11:38Speaker 4: we won't have much alternative As businesses will are facing,
- 11:42Speaker 4: as you said, real wage growth, they'll have to find
- 11:45Speaker 4: ways to protect our margin by investing in more productive assets.
- 11:50Speaker 4: Otherwise they'll just have to they'll struggle and under perform.
- 11:53Speaker 1: So I think it is yeah, And I remember you
- 11:56Speaker 1: and I are talking about there's a lot in twenty twenty.
- 11:58Speaker 1: Twenty twenty one fully expected there'd be a Roaring twenties coming,
- 12:04Speaker 1: and I wonder if that might still happen. I've started
- 12:09Speaker 1: seeing mentions again after a break, Mentions of the Roaring
- 12:13Speaker 1: twenties popping up all over the place. Eddie Ardini at
- 12:16Speaker 1: Yardini Research is always talking about his Roaring Twenties outlook
- 12:20Speaker 1: and how it centers on the technological innovations, etc. That
- 12:23Speaker 1: we were talking about in this podcast, and that he
- 12:26Speaker 1: thinks that this productivity boom is coming back, and that
- 12:30Speaker 1: is reflected in the moves in the stock market this year.
- 12:33Speaker 1: And so this is not just a pop and a
- 12:36Speaker 1: bear market, but the beginning of a new bull markets
- 12:39Speaker 1: that reflects this massive productivity search.
- 12:41Speaker 2: This idea of the Roaring twenties is still out there.
- 12:44Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember a few years ago,
- 12:46Speaker 1: maybe it was last year Billy Gifford had a conference
- 12:48Speaker 1: and it was called the Roaring Twenties and we all
- 12:51Speaker 1: got notebooks with the Roaring Twenties written on the front.
- 12:53Speaker 1: I still have that notebook and I must open it
- 12:55Speaker 1: and see what it says inside, to remind myself of
- 12:58Speaker 1: what we thought was going to happen for what actually happened.
- 13:01Speaker 2: But it may come back.
- 13:02Speaker 1: Maybe maybe next year, John, you and I'll be talking
- 13:04Speaker 1: about Mooring twenties again.
- 13:05Speaker 3: What do you think I'll be always I feel pretty optimistic.
- 13:10Speaker 3: I can see these round twenties being a actually actually
- 13:14Speaker 3: coming back and actually happening, because there is so much pessimism,
- 13:20Speaker 3: you know, a high level. And I'm not saying I
- 13:23Speaker 3: don't necessarily think interest rates will break anything or explode anything.
- 13:27Speaker 3: I just think I sort of feel that either something
- 13:30Speaker 3: either quite drastic will happen or actually we'll see a
- 13:35Speaker 3: boom on the other side of this, because people actually realize, well, wait,
- 13:38Speaker 3: I'm actually nothing particularly bad it's going to happen, and
- 13:41Speaker 3: what we actually need to do is just get our
- 13:43Speaker 3: heads down and get invest in and maybe high interest
- 13:46Speaker 3: rates will get rid of some of the extraneous rubbish
- 13:49Speaker 3: and the misallocated capital, and we'll start focusing on what
- 13:52Speaker 3: matters I do. It's a weirdly uncertain setting outcomes, even
- 13:59Speaker 3: compared tea, you know, the usual future uncertainty.
- 14:02Speaker 1: I think it is, but I keep looking at it
- 14:04Speaker 1: and thinking, as you just said, high interest rates will
- 14:06Speaker 1: solve some of our capital misallocation problem, and the labor
- 14:10Speaker 1: shortage may solve other problems, and that it is when
- 14:14Speaker 1: there is a labor shortage that companies have to get
- 14:16Speaker 1: a grip and use technology to solve their their general
- 14:19Speaker 1: economic problems. And I know, I promise I wasn't going
- 14:21Speaker 1: to talk about my holidays, but back to my holidays.
- 14:25Speaker 1: So one of the things that I did at three
- 14:26Speaker 1: Nank was I visited quite a few tea plantations because
- 14:29Speaker 1: you know, I love a plantation and I love the factory, right,
- 14:31Speaker 1: So I've also visited a couple of them tea factories,
- 14:36Speaker 1: which was absolutely fascinating. And one of the things that
- 14:38Speaker 1: constant complaint out there was the shortage of labor. That
- 14:41Speaker 1: it's really hard to get people to pick tea or
- 14:44Speaker 1: pluck teath, which seems which makes sense to me, because
- 14:47Speaker 1: it's extremely hard work and it's horribly underpage. You get
- 14:50Speaker 1: one one hundred and fifty rupieces a day as a
- 14:52Speaker 1: base base pay for plucking tea, which is, you know,
- 14:55Speaker 1: about three pounds I think, so really not very much,
- 14:58Speaker 1: and the tea pluck is in in the hells around.
- 15:01Speaker 1: Candy are demanding a doubling of their base break, which
- 15:05Speaker 1: seems entirely reasonable. And there's also a incentive program on
- 15:09Speaker 1: top of that where you get another fifty rupees for
- 15:11Speaker 1: each kilo of tea that you pluck etc. So it's
- 15:15Speaker 1: still extremely low wages. Even if it was double, that's
- 15:17Speaker 1: still extremely low. However, a doubling of wage from whatever
- 15:21Speaker 1: from a level plus a labor shortage means that the
- 15:23Speaker 1: plantations are having to look at alternative ways. How can
- 15:28Speaker 1: we make this more productive? How can each person have
- 15:30Speaker 1: more tea picked at the end of the day. And
- 15:33Speaker 1: so they've started looking at mechanical pickers, which is amazing
- 15:36Speaker 1: because one of these machines and go look them up online,
- 15:39Speaker 1: if anyone can be bothered, is quite everything.
- 15:41Speaker 2: To look at.
- 15:42Speaker 1: You can double or triple their productivity of each tea picker,
- 15:46Speaker 1: ie the amount of tea that they pick every day,
- 15:49Speaker 1: using a variety of machines that are two in particular,
- 15:51Speaker 1: one one that is used by tvlee, one that is
- 15:53Speaker 1: used by one person. And this is extremely innovative and
- 15:57Speaker 1: it's a classic example of employers going, Okay, we can't
- 16:02Speaker 1: get enough labor and we can't afford to pay labor
- 16:06Speaker 1: what labor needs, or maybe you can't afford it and
- 16:09Speaker 1: want to However, you look at it right, and so
- 16:11Speaker 1: we need to come up with an innovative solution. And
- 16:13Speaker 1: suddenly everyone is inventing ways to help a picker double
- 16:17Speaker 1: the amount of tea they get during a day by
- 16:19Speaker 1: using mechanical pickers. And I found that very interesting, just
- 16:22Speaker 1: because there's actually a classic of the shortage of labor
- 16:26Speaker 1: causes technological change genre. And that's all I'm going to
- 16:31Speaker 1: say about the holidays for now. Anyway, we can talk
- 16:34Speaker 1: about the beaches later.
- 16:35Speaker 3: Yeah, and we'll look forward to motivate. It's also it's
- 16:38Speaker 3: really interesting here there's a labor shortage like kin Sholanka
- 16:42Speaker 3: as well, laker.
- 16:42Speaker 1: Shortages, labor shotges coming everywhere, which is one of the
- 16:45Speaker 1: reasons why I mean, we won't talk about immigration at
- 16:47Speaker 1: the moment, but one of the one of the things
- 16:49Speaker 1: about the idea that we can use migrants forever to
- 16:55Speaker 1: cover our own lower paying jobs as absurd because there
- 16:59Speaker 1: are labor shortages across the world, and across the world
- 17:02Speaker 1: there are people who are saying, I see, do you
- 17:03Speaker 1: know what, I'm not going to do that really hard
- 17:05Speaker 1: work for their money.
- 17:06Speaker 2: I'm going to need a bit more, which is entirely reasonable. Right.
- 17:09Speaker 1: So this is a global dynamic, not just a UK dynamic.
- 17:13Speaker 1: So it makes no sense for us to say we're
- 17:15Speaker 1: going to solve our labor problem by importing labor from
- 17:17Speaker 1: other countries, but there's also a labor shortage. It might
- 17:20Speaker 1: work a short time, but its perfinitely not going to
- 17:21Speaker 1: work long time. Excellent, right, John, I think we'd better
- 17:26Speaker 1: leave it there and remember everybody that had diversified portfolio.
- 17:29Speaker 1: Is a good thing, but it's not the most interesting thing.
- 17:33Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's Maren Talks Money the
- 17:35Speaker 1: After Show. This episode was hosted by me Maren Sunset
- 17:38Speaker 1: Web alongside John Stepic. It was produced by Some Society
- 17:40Speaker 1: and additional editing by Blake Naples.
- 17:45Speaker 2: Now we gould you like to hear more about my holiday?
- 17:46Speaker 2: We've done here