Latest / Trumponomics / 37: The International Plot to Kill Big Bills
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: There are thirty three hundred dollar bills for every man, woman,
- 0:04Speaker 1: and child in the US, So if you've only got one,
- 0:09Speaker 1: somebody else has your other two. Hi, and welcome back
- 0:21Speaker 1: to Bloomberg Benchmark, a show about the inner workings of
- 0:24Speaker 1: the global economy. I'm Tory Stillwell and economics reporter for
- 0:27Speaker 1: Bloomberg News in d C. And I'm joined by my
- 0:30Speaker 1: co host Akido, our Benchmark editor in San Francisco. Hey Hockey,
- 0:35Speaker 1: Hey Tony, how's it going pretty good? I am recording
- 0:38Speaker 1: today out of our newsroom, so you may hear a
- 0:41Speaker 1: little bit of background noise. Oh well, I'm recording from
- 0:45Speaker 1: San Francisco for the first time in I think four months.
- 0:49Speaker 1: Oh wow. Yeah, welcome back, and it's good to be back. Yeah,
- 0:54Speaker 1: thank you so much. Well, today's show is all about
- 0:58Speaker 1: Dolla dolla bills, y'all, Dolla dollar bills. Yeahs. But the
- 1:04Speaker 1: European Central Bank last week said it would stop producing
- 1:08Speaker 1: their five hundred euro bank notes after citing concerns that
- 1:13Speaker 1: it could facilitate illicit activities some criminals. Actually, they refer
- 1:19Speaker 1: to this note as the bin laden, referring to the
- 1:23Speaker 1: I was just I wrote that in my notes isn't
- 1:30Speaker 1: that so interesting? I mean, I feel like that says
- 1:32Speaker 1: a lot about this. That's the former leader of al Qaeda.
- 1:37Speaker 1: For all of our listeners out there, I don't I
- 1:39Speaker 1: don't know how you wouldn't know who' been latin this,
- 1:41Speaker 1: But in case you don't, yeah, good context. Well anyway,
- 1:46Speaker 1: that decision has been fairly controversial. And you know, Germany,
- 1:50Speaker 1: since apparently before even the creation of the Eurozone, has
- 1:54Speaker 1: been a big proponent of high denomination notes, and the
- 1:58Speaker 1: head of the country's central bank just recently said that
- 2:01Speaker 1: it's still debatable whether the removal of the five year
- 2:05Speaker 1: old note is going to curtail any crime, and that
- 2:09Speaker 1: it actually might end up undermining people's trust in cash.
- 2:13Speaker 1: And apparently officials in Austria and also Switzerland are against
- 2:17Speaker 1: eliminating their own forms of high denomination money too. So
- 2:21Speaker 1: to discuss all of this and more, we have enlisted
- 2:24Speaker 1: Peter Sands, whose paper called making It Harder for the
- 2:28Speaker 1: Bad Guys has helped fuel this debate. He's a senior
- 2:31Speaker 1: fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and before that, he
- 2:34Speaker 1: was CEO of Standard Chartered Bank for almost ten years.
- 2:38Speaker 1: Welcome Peter high So Peter, as the head of a bank,
- 2:43Speaker 1: I'm sure that you've seen your fair share of high
- 2:46Speaker 1: denomination notes, right. Actually, cash doesn't play much role in
- 2:53Speaker 1: modern banking. I mean, obviously you take it out of
- 2:56Speaker 1: a t m S and people deposited in branches, but
- 2:59Speaker 1: most of what a bank does doesn't actually involve cash.
- 3:03Speaker 1: So in a lot of ways, this was kind of
- 3:04Speaker 1: a foreign world to you. Well, certainly, the rather murky
- 3:09Speaker 1: world of people trying to move money across borders in
- 3:14Speaker 1: sort of piles of high denomination notes was not something
- 3:17Speaker 1: I've come across. You're not an international criminals, Peter. Maybe
- 3:24Speaker 1: you could walk us through a summary of your research
- 3:26Speaker 1: for our listeners and then we can dig through some
- 3:29Speaker 1: of the details afterwards. The my interest in high denomination
- 3:34Speaker 1: notes is because they aren't used very much in everyday life.
- 3:39Speaker 1: We don't normally take a five hundred dollar five euro
- 3:44Speaker 1: note out of our pocket and try and buy a
- 3:47Speaker 1: coffee with it. But if you look at what criminals
- 3:51Speaker 1: are doing, drug traffickers, people financing terrorism, people giving all
- 3:55Speaker 1: receiving bribes, actually they're using these notes very intensely. So
- 4:00Speaker 1: the point of my research was to look at whether
- 4:04Speaker 1: or not we should still be issuing these or whether
- 4:06Speaker 1: we should get rid of them, not because it would
- 4:09Speaker 1: suddenly stop criminal activity, but it would simply, as the
- 4:13Speaker 1: title of the paper put it, make the lives of
- 4:16Speaker 1: the bad guys a bit harder because the great advantage
- 4:19Speaker 1: of high denomination notes is that they are the most
- 4:25Speaker 1: anonymous and easy way to transport and store money secretly
- 4:32Speaker 1: if you if you want to do something illegal, right,
- 4:35Speaker 1: and we're talking about people who are trying to evade taxes, finance, terror, corruption,
- 4:41Speaker 1: financial crimes, those types of bad guys, I guess anybody
- 4:44Speaker 1: who wants to do something that they don't want anybody
- 4:47Speaker 1: in authority to know that they are doing. And the
- 4:51Speaker 1: great thing about cash is that cash is anonymous and
- 4:55Speaker 1: it leaves no record, and there's no other payment mechanism
- 4:59Speaker 1: that does that it. So for I guess some context
- 5:02Speaker 1: for our listeners who haven't tried to move a large
- 5:06Speaker 1: amount of money around anonymously. A million dollars worth of
- 5:10Speaker 1: twenty dollar bills apparently is about a hundred and ten pounds,
- 5:14Speaker 1: which would fit in about four briefcases. So think of
- 5:18Speaker 1: that as maybe carrying tories entire body weight around. It's
- 5:23Speaker 1: quite a lot would be able to do that one person.
- 5:28Speaker 1: I would find it pretty hard, and you certainly couldn't
- 5:30Speaker 1: do it very discreetly. Right, Yeah, But if you tried
- 5:34Speaker 1: to do that with one hundred dollar bills, that would
- 5:38Speaker 1: only be twenty two pounds and it would fit in
- 5:40Speaker 1: a single briefcase. So it's a totally new ball game. Right.
- 5:44Speaker 1: And if we look at the five hundred euro notes
- 5:46Speaker 1: that we're just announced that they're going to be phased out,
- 5:50Speaker 1: a million dollars a million US dollars that is weighs
- 5:53Speaker 1: about five pounds, and that would fit in a you know,
- 5:57Speaker 1: a very small bag. So it's a it's like you said,
- 5:59Speaker 1: it's a total game changer. Yeah, and surprise, surprise, if
- 6:02Speaker 1: you look at what cocaine smugglers are using, uh, they're
- 6:08Speaker 1: preferred is the five year note, and then after that
- 6:11Speaker 1: they quite like the hundred dollar bill. But give them
- 6:14Speaker 1: a choice, they'll use the five euro because they can
- 6:17Speaker 1: get more money in a smaller package, are less easy
- 6:21Speaker 1: to sort of find package, they can transport it more easily. Peter,
- 6:26Speaker 1: I think a lot of our listeners are hearing this,
- 6:29Speaker 1: and you know, they're thinking, like, gosh, this sounds like
- 6:31Speaker 1: a relatively easy and simple thing for governments to do. So,
- 6:35Speaker 1: you know, can we get any kind of sense on
- 6:38Speaker 1: how much of an impact maybe getting rid of the
- 6:41Speaker 1: one dollar bill would have on cutting crime, on on
- 6:45Speaker 1: how much more taxes the I R s might be
- 6:47Speaker 1: able to collect. Well, it's very difficult to get a
- 6:50Speaker 1: precise calculation, and a lot depends on how easy it
- 6:55Speaker 1: is for the criminals to find substitutes. So if, for example,
- 7:01Speaker 1: we get rid of the five hundred euro note as
- 7:04Speaker 1: as it is proposed, just to stop issuing it, but
- 7:07Speaker 1: the European Central Bank just ramps up production of the
- 7:11Speaker 1: two hundred euro note, then the impact will be less
- 7:16Speaker 1: than if it forces people, to, say, use the hundred
- 7:19Speaker 1: euro note. So it depends somewhat on sort of how
- 7:23Speaker 1: the policy is implemented. But I think we can be
- 7:27Speaker 1: pretty confident that there will be a positive impact, and
- 7:30Speaker 1: it will be most positive whether stakes are high. So
- 7:34Speaker 1: it won't make much difference if somebody is just trying
- 7:37Speaker 1: not to pay tax on a very small amount of money,
- 7:40Speaker 1: because they're probably not using higher denomination notes anyway. But
- 7:43Speaker 1: if they're trying to not pay tax by taking say
- 7:47Speaker 1: cash income um and not reporting it on tens or
- 7:50Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of dollars, then that is more likely
- 7:54Speaker 1: to be affected by not having high denomination notes. And likewise,
- 7:59Speaker 1: you know, drug trafficking is probably the crime that involves
- 8:03Speaker 1: most cross border transportation of very large sums of money.
- 8:08Speaker 1: It's been estimated that about thirty billion dollars a year
- 8:12Speaker 1: crosses the US Mexico border in cash. You just have
- 8:16Speaker 1: to think about it very simply. If you didn't have
- 8:18Speaker 1: a hundred dollar bill and you had to carry either
- 8:21Speaker 1: fifties or twenties, you'd have two to five times as
- 8:25Speaker 1: many packages things hidden in the floors of cars, you know,
- 8:31Speaker 1: secret containers going across. So the cost of doing that
- 8:34Speaker 1: for the criminals and their risk of detection would be higher. Um.
- 8:40Speaker 1: And what's funny is people are quite reluctant when you
- 8:43Speaker 1: first suggest getting rid of these things. People are a
- 8:46Speaker 1: bit sort of anxious and you know, a bit uncertain
- 8:51Speaker 1: about it. But nobody's proposing to bring any of the
- 8:54Speaker 1: things that have been eliminated back again. Right once they're gone,
- 8:57Speaker 1: nobody wants them back again. You know that there's some
- 9:00Speaker 1: of those notes five hundred thousand dollars, five thousand dollars,
- 9:02Speaker 1: ten thousand dollar bills. They're actually all still legal tender
- 9:06Speaker 1: and there some of them are still in circulation. Just
- 9:08Speaker 1: if the FED finds them, they like gobble them up
- 9:10Speaker 1: and destroy them and take them out. Oh my god. Yeah, absolutely,
- 9:14Speaker 1: they haven't been brought back. When when was the last
- 9:19Speaker 1: time you used one hundred dollar bill? Oh gosh, um,
- 9:23Speaker 1: you know, I think I maybe took out one hundreds
- 9:26Speaker 1: when I went to Iceland a year ago. You were
- 9:29Speaker 1: traveling to Yeah, I was traveling. That's the only time
- 9:32Speaker 1: I ever take out money that big. Well, there are
- 9:37Speaker 1: thirty three ish around thirty three at least over thirty
- 9:42Speaker 1: hundred dollar bills for every man, woman, and child in
- 9:47Speaker 1: the US. So if you've only got one, somebody else
- 9:51Speaker 1: has your probably outside of the US too, right, A
- 9:57Speaker 1: lot of these bills aren't inside the country, that's right.
- 10:00Speaker 1: We don't really know how much, but it's probably over
- 10:04Speaker 1: them ah um, outside the US. Indeed, it's been suggested that, um,
- 10:11Speaker 1: the city in the world which probably has most of them,
- 10:14Speaker 1: um is probably Moscow, but again we don't know that
- 10:18Speaker 1: for certain. Well, we're going to take a short break,
- 10:21Speaker 1: but when we come back, we will talk about how
- 10:24Speaker 1: emerging markets are dealing with high denomination bills, as well
- 10:28Speaker 1: as some of the CONTs behind taking them out after
- 10:32Speaker 1: this break. So, Peter, one of the interesting points that
- 10:49Speaker 1: you make in your paper is that a lot of
- 10:51Speaker 1: these criminal transactions don't happen inside the US, inside US territory,
- 10:57Speaker 1: but they're occurring in US dollars. So when government officials
- 11:02Speaker 1: in India or say Pakistan want to fight drug track,
- 11:07Speaker 1: drug trafficking or corruption, uh, the existence of one hundred
- 11:11Speaker 1: dollar bills makes it that much harder for them to
- 11:14Speaker 1: actually fight that. UM. So I'm wondering, do you know
- 11:17Speaker 1: if any emerging market officials have urged the US have
- 11:21Speaker 1: urged US government officials to get rid of one hundred
- 11:24Speaker 1: dollar bills? And has something like this ever been on
- 11:28Speaker 1: the G twenty agenda. I don't know whether um uh
- 11:33Speaker 1: there have been specific conversations from emerging market government officials
- 11:38Speaker 1: um uh to the US. I know that UM that
- 11:45Speaker 1: emerging market sort of crime fighting officials UM are very
- 11:51Speaker 1: aware of the role let's say the hundred dollar bill plays,
- 11:56Speaker 1: whether it's in drug trafficking or corruption um or and
- 12:01Speaker 1: so on. And I would be surprised if those conversations
- 12:04Speaker 1: UM haven't been happening. Um. And I'm aware that this
- 12:09Speaker 1: discussion around the role of high denomination notes has been
- 12:13Speaker 1: discussed in various forums in the context of terrorist finance
- 12:18Speaker 1: and also in the context of corruption. Mm hmm. So
- 12:23Speaker 1: these operators of you know, global common currencies like the
- 12:27Speaker 1: US and Europe, they kind of have this global responsibility
- 12:30Speaker 1: to Yeah, I would argue we do have a global responsibility.
- 12:36Speaker 1: Most emerging markets don't actually issue high denomination notes themselves, um,
- 12:42Speaker 1: But the high denomination notes are in use in their
- 12:45Speaker 1: own economies, um, in ways that are often quite sort
- 12:49Speaker 1: of corrosive to their societies. Right, So this seems kind
- 12:53Speaker 1: of like a slam dunk to me. Why why are
- 12:56Speaker 1: some people opposed to this? Well, I'm sympathetic to the
- 13:00Speaker 1: argument that cash still plays a really important role. It's
- 13:05Speaker 1: incredibly convenient. It works when you don't have a electricity
- 13:09Speaker 1: or telephone signal. It works when you want to give
- 13:12Speaker 1: you a child pocket money. You don't need any infrastructure,
- 13:16Speaker 1: and it is private and there's real value in that. However,
- 13:21Speaker 1: that's really useful in the many small transactions we're doing
- 13:26Speaker 1: sort of every day, and the reality is we're not
- 13:29Speaker 1: using high denomination notes for it. And if you need
- 13:33Speaker 1: high denomination notes in that kind of circumstance, the evidence
- 13:37Speaker 1: would suggest that you're normally doing something which society probably
- 13:43Speaker 1: doesn't want you to do it privately, right, you're probably
- 13:45Speaker 1: being sketchy a little bit. Yeah, I mean, you know,
- 13:49Speaker 1: if you need five eur notes to make a payment, UM,
- 13:53Speaker 1: you're probably buying something or selling something in thousands or
- 13:58Speaker 1: tens of thousands or Europe. The the likelihood is that
- 14:04Speaker 1: there should be some tanks attached to that, UM, and
- 14:08Speaker 1: you know, it may be a bit of a dubious transaction.
- 14:12Speaker 1: And I know as a kid, I mean I always
- 14:14Speaker 1: personally liked it when I got my money in smaller bills,
- 14:18Speaker 1: like for gifts, because it always made me feel like
- 14:20Speaker 1: I was getting more, even though obviously I wasn't you know, Peter,
- 14:26Speaker 1: your your paper came out in February and Larry Summers,
- 14:30Speaker 1: who UM is the former Treasury secretary. He wrote a
- 14:34Speaker 1: very influential op ed about it back in your argument,
- 14:38Speaker 1: and the ECB just last week came to this decision
- 14:42Speaker 1: to stop issuing their five euro notes. Do you feel
- 14:46Speaker 1: like your argument is gaining traction in the US. Well,
- 14:52Speaker 1: it's certainly gaining traction in Europe. As you have noticed, UM,
- 14:56Speaker 1: I think UM the US has been watching to see
- 15:01Speaker 1: what Europe would do, and there's so much of it
- 15:05Speaker 1: out there. The three hundred billion euro of five hundred
- 15:09Speaker 1: euro notes, there's a trillion dollars of there's over a
- 15:12Speaker 1: trillion dollars of hundred dollar bills. But but given that
- 15:15Speaker 1: the five hundred euro note was the the obvious starting point,
- 15:20Speaker 1: that's where the attention has been focused. But I think
- 15:24Speaker 1: it is important in the US to be very thoughtful
- 15:27Speaker 1: about what the role is of the hundred dollar bill. Um.
- 15:31Speaker 1: Do you really need thirty three hundred dollar bills for
- 15:34Speaker 1: um everybody in America? It does seem it does seem
- 15:40Speaker 1: an awful lot. The Swiss particularly have been a little
- 15:44Speaker 1: opposed to this idea. You know, some of the officials
- 15:47Speaker 1: there have argued that the right to pay anonymously is
- 15:51Speaker 1: a basic liberty and that people are using, um, the
- 15:55Speaker 1: one thousand franc notes. They're arguing that there you're use
- 15:59Speaker 1: not only the means of payment but also as a
- 16:02Speaker 1: store of value. Can you explain to us exactly what
- 16:05Speaker 1: they mean by that and whether or not that's a
- 16:08Speaker 1: convincing argument Frankly, I think we should get rid of
- 16:10Speaker 1: the one. The Swiss should get rid of the one
- 16:12Speaker 1: thousand Swiss franc um no, because I suspect it's largely
- 16:16Speaker 1: used UMU to store value, but to store value which
- 16:21Speaker 1: has been illegally obtained in one way or rather through
- 16:25Speaker 1: tax evasion or some form of crime or corruption. And yes,
- 16:29Speaker 1: there maybe some people who choose to hold their savings
- 16:34Speaker 1: sort of under their bed, but A you've got to
- 16:37Speaker 1: be pretty wealthy to really need to do it in
- 16:40Speaker 1: thousand Swiss franc notes right that for it to make
- 16:45Speaker 1: a difference between doing it in the hundreds and thousands,
- 16:48Speaker 1: you've got to be storing a serious amount and be
- 16:51Speaker 1: you've got to ask the question of well, why is
- 16:54Speaker 1: it that somebody is so keen for it not to
- 16:57Speaker 1: be recorded in the banking system. And I'm wondering, Peter,
- 17:02Speaker 1: when this idea came to you in the first place.
- 17:04Speaker 1: Was it when you were running Standard Chartered or was
- 17:07Speaker 1: it a little bit later? Well, it could to me
- 17:10Speaker 1: when I was still out Standard charldhood, but um I
- 17:12Speaker 1: didn't have the time to do very much UM about
- 17:16Speaker 1: it as an idea. UM And so when I came
- 17:20Speaker 1: to Harvard. I thought, well, I should focus on this
- 17:23Speaker 1: and see whether it is such a good idea as
- 17:26Speaker 1: it sort of seemed to me to get rid of
- 17:28Speaker 1: these notes, um. And that's why I worked with a
- 17:32Speaker 1: bunch of a group of graduate students here to do
- 17:36Speaker 1: research into the different high denomination notes in the world
- 17:40Speaker 1: and also the role that these different notes played in
- 17:43Speaker 1: different forms of illicit activity. And after all that research,
- 17:48Speaker 1: it turned out to be just as good as an
- 17:49Speaker 1: idea as you thought it would be. Well, if anything,
- 17:52Speaker 1: it turned out to be a better idea, because the
- 17:55Speaker 1: more we looked at it, the more we came to
- 17:57Speaker 1: the view that really people went you seeing these notes
- 18:00Speaker 1: very much, they don't play a significant role in normal,
- 18:04Speaker 1: everyday economic activity um. And therefore the downside of getting
- 18:09Speaker 1: rid of them seems incredibly limited. And yet, on the
- 18:12Speaker 1: other hand, almost every seizure of illegal cash, be it
- 18:16Speaker 1: for corruption or drugs or whatever, involves these higher denomination notes.
- 18:20Speaker 1: So when you've got something which is being used a
- 18:23Speaker 1: lot for bad things and not being used a lot
- 18:26Speaker 1: for good things, and it is something that is produced
- 18:29Speaker 1: by the state, it's not a sort of natural thing.
- 18:32Speaker 1: It's a it's something that the government produces. You've got
- 18:35Speaker 1: to ask, why are we producing something that makes life
- 18:40Speaker 1: easier for criminals and so and and it's a very
- 18:45Speaker 1: it is actually a very easy policy to implement, and
- 18:49Speaker 1: in the world of fighting crime, most things are quite
- 18:51Speaker 1: difficult to do, whereas turning off a printer is a
- 18:55Speaker 1: pretty simple policy. Is there a chance that I mean
- 18:57Speaker 1: this would save us money or cost us for mean
- 19:00Speaker 1: terms of eliminating these bills, Well, you you you lose
- 19:05Speaker 1: a bit of money, um if you're the central bank,
- 19:08Speaker 1: from what's called senor ridge, which is the interest that
- 19:12Speaker 1: central banks earn on money they've issued. Essentially, when you
- 19:17Speaker 1: hold a note in your pocket, it's an interest free
- 19:20Speaker 1: loan to the government. But that's a pretty small amount
- 19:23Speaker 1: when interest rates are as low um as they are
- 19:26Speaker 1: at the moment, and actually in the many places now
- 19:28Speaker 1: that interest rates are becoming negative, it's a it's a
- 19:31Speaker 1: negative loss. So it's that that really isn't a problem.
- 19:35Speaker 1: But I think that is more than offset by the
- 19:39Speaker 1: increased tax take. You don't have to assume very much
- 19:44Speaker 1: in terms of um greater tax payments from people who've
- 19:49Speaker 1: been using cash to avoid paying tax to more than
- 19:53Speaker 1: offset any potential loss from um Senior Ridge. And then
- 19:58Speaker 1: of course any reduction UM in the sort of massive
- 20:02Speaker 1: flows of money involved in crime has to be a
- 20:05Speaker 1: significant social benefit. Great well, Peter, this has been an
- 20:10Speaker 1: awesome conversation. Thanks so much. And if anyone has some
- 20:15Speaker 1: five hundred euro notes that they would like to not
- 20:19Speaker 1: have on their hands anymore, just contact us. I'm at
- 20:23Speaker 1: two zero two four s too willing to fly send
- 20:27Speaker 1: it over in a briefcase. Thanks Peter, Thanks very much.
- 20:33Speaker 1: Thank you so, Tori. I thought that was a really
- 20:39Speaker 1: fascinating conversation, and you know Peter's paper over fifty pages,
- 20:44Speaker 1: was fascinating to what did you learn? Well, I learned
- 20:49Speaker 1: that there is a lot to write about on this topic.
- 20:52Speaker 1: As you said, his research is extremely thorough, Um. But
- 20:56Speaker 1: I just think here the most fascinating thing is just
- 21:00Speaker 1: the sheer size and bulky nous that cash has and
- 21:07Speaker 1: what sort of equality that is to it, Especially when
- 21:09Speaker 1: you think of cutting out those big denomination bills. It
- 21:13Speaker 1: suddenly becomes a lot harder to do things that you
- 21:16Speaker 1: probably shouldn't be doing. But I think the the other
- 21:21Speaker 1: side of the story here has a really big point,
- 21:23Speaker 1: which is how much, say, do we want the government
- 21:26Speaker 1: to have over how we pay for things, how we
- 21:28Speaker 1: conduct private business. Mm hmm, yeah, I mean that doesn't
- 21:33Speaker 1: really concern me a whole lot. I would love to
- 21:36Speaker 1: live in a cash list society. Really, what if I
- 21:39Speaker 1: mean they tapped into all your stuff and saw that,
- 21:41Speaker 1: like you've then moaned me for like a drunken braunch
- 21:44Speaker 1: one day, and then that got leaked to vand and
- 21:47Speaker 1: then Dan was like, wait what, I don't know. I mean,
- 21:52Speaker 1: I don't think the government cares very much whether I
- 21:55Speaker 1: had a drunken brunch or not, but maybe point taken.
- 21:59Speaker 1: And and you know, so when I recently spent three
- 22:02Speaker 1: months in Japan, and Japan's like a super cash heavy society,
- 22:06Speaker 1: and I was always running to the A t M
- 22:08Speaker 1: because so many places don't take credit cards, um, and
- 22:11Speaker 1: I constantly had to be walking around with like, you know,
- 22:14Speaker 1: fifties sixty thousand yen in my wallet, which you know
- 22:17Speaker 1: in Tokyo. Tokyo is a pretty safe society, so it's fine,
- 22:20Speaker 1: but it made me feel uncomfortable. Yeah, I can totally
- 22:22Speaker 1: understand that. Well, lots of good arguments on both sides,
- 22:26Speaker 1: and will be really interesting to see if this gains
- 22:29Speaker 1: traction here in the US now that Europe is doing
- 22:31Speaker 1: something about it. Yeah, definitely Well. Benchmark will be back
- 22:35Speaker 1: next week and until then, you can find us on
- 22:38Speaker 1: the Bloomberg Terminal and Bloomberg dot com, as well as
- 22:41Speaker 1: on iTunes, pocket Cast, and Stitcher. And while you're there,
- 22:45Speaker 1: please take a minute to rate and review the show
- 22:47Speaker 1: so more listeners can find us and let us know
- 22:50Speaker 1: what you thought of the show. You can talk to
- 22:51Speaker 1: us and follow us on Twitter at Akito seven and
- 22:54Speaker 1: that Tori stillwell. You can also email our producer at
- 22:58Speaker 1: a McCabe with to see is at Bloomberg dot net.
- 23:01Speaker 1: See you next week. M