Latest / Merryn Talks Money / Live from Fringe: What Adam Smith Can Teach Investors About AI and Investing

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Live from Fringe: What Adam Smith Can Teach Investors About AI and Investing · Merryn Talks Money

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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
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  Speaker 2: Podcasts.
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  Speaker 3: Radio.
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  Speaker 2: News.
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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Meron Talks Money, the podcast in which people
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  Speaker 1: who know the markets explain the markets. I'm Meron Somerset Webb.
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  Speaker 1: It is that time of year again, and we are
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  Speaker 1: bringing you something very special. Over the next few days,
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  Speaker 1: you are going to hear recordings of the conversations I
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  Speaker 1: had at Pamir House for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The
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  Speaker 1: Fringe is a three-week arts and culture festival that began
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  Speaker 1: in 1947 and takes place in Edinburgh and Scotland every August.
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  Speaker 1: And for the last few years, I have been hosting
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  Speaker 1: conversations about markets, economics and investing from one of the
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  Speaker 1: most special locations in Edinburgh as part of this festival.
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  Speaker 1: I do it from Pamir House, which is the last
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  Speaker 1: home of Adam Smith, philosopher and father of modern economics.
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  Speaker 1: It's where he completed the last editions of his bestsellers,
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  Speaker 1: The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.
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  Speaker 1: You are about to hear the first episode in this series.
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  Speaker 1: I spoke with Robert Wilson, chair of Nelsons and Creative Scotland,
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  Speaker 1: Duncan Lamont, head of strategic research at Schroders, and John Stepek,
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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg News senior reporter and author of the award-winning Money
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  Speaker 1: Distilled newsletter. Along the way, we chat about the difficulty
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  Speaker 1: young people face finding jobs, the pitfalls of holding your
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  Speaker 1: wealth in cash rather than investing, how using AI to
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  Speaker 1: write an essay for you actually might not be that
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  Speaker 1: much of a problem. And of course, everyone's favorite Adam
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  Speaker 1: Smith quotes. Enjoy the show. Right. Who has been before
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  Speaker 1: to this show?
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  Speaker 3: Oh, God.
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  Speaker 1: Limited number of jokes over the years. We can't tell
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  Speaker 1: any of them again. Who listens to the podcast Merit
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  Speaker 1: Talks Money? Oh, that's great. Thank you. So quite a
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  Speaker 1: lot of you have started listening since last year. Who
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  Speaker 1: started listening quite recently? Converted none of you from last year.
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  Speaker 1: We're doing a lot of podcasts now. We're doing three
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  Speaker 1: every week. So if you're listening to all of those,
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  Speaker 1: you really are spending an awful lot of time on this,
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  Speaker 1: for which we are very grateful. Thank you. Right. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I think that you heard a little bit about the
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  Speaker 1: house downstairs. So you all know a little bit about it,
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  Speaker 1: particularly if you've been here before and listened to this
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  Speaker 1: show before. You know quite a lot about Adam Smith
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  Speaker 1: and you know quite a lot about the house. So
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  Speaker 1: probably you've all read Moral Sentiments. Who's read Moral Sentiments?
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  Speaker 4: Come on.
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  Speaker 1: Adam, you have read it. Anyone else? For heaven's sake.
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  Speaker 1: Has anyone read Wealth of Nations?
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  Speaker 3: Oh, well done.
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  Speaker 4: One, two.
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  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
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  Speaker 3: Interesting. Okay.
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  Speaker 1: They were both bestsellers in their times. These were extraordinary books.
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  Speaker 1: He wrote them and they were printed again and again
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  Speaker 1: and again. He was a proper celebrity. And out on
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  Speaker 1: the Royal Mile, you could go up and down and
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  Speaker 1: you could buy his book. You could buy any kind
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  Speaker 1: of Adam Smith-related souvenir. It was like old-fashioned celebrity stuff. Now,
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  Speaker 1: last year, when we were here, we talked a lot
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  Speaker 1: about the 300th anniversary of his birth and how important
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  Speaker 1: that was. This year is the 250th anniversary since the
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  Speaker 1: publication of Wealth of Nations, which is possibly more important.
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  Speaker 1: And no, that's not quite right, is it? I didn't
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  Speaker 1: mean it quite like that. Both important, one not possible
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  Speaker 1: without the other. When we look at this year, Things
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  Speaker 1: have changed so much since last year, in particular the
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  Speaker 1: fast movement of AI. When he published Wealth of Nations,
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  Speaker 1: that was the same year that the steam engine, James Ward,
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  Speaker 1: unveiled the steam engine for the first time. It was
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  Speaker 1: at the cusp of that amazing industrial revolution. And that
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  Speaker 1: is where we are today, of course, on the cusp
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  Speaker 1: of another extraordinary revolution. Industrial Revolution. So he becomes not
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  Speaker 1: less relevant, but more relevant every day. And all his
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  Speaker 1: thoughts about division of labor, about productivity, about inequality, all
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  Speaker 1: these things are more important that we discuss them today
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  Speaker 1: than they were even five or 10 years ago. And
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  Speaker 1: the other thing that becomes more and more important, and
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  Speaker 1: I think we're going to talk about quite a lot today,
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  Speaker 1: or I hope we are anyway, is about the way
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  Speaker 1: in which he discussed the nature of humanity and moral sentiments,
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  Speaker 1: what it means to be human, how we become human,
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  Speaker 1: how we learn to understand the joy and the pain
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  Speaker 1: of other people, which gives us the empathy, which brings
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  Speaker 1: together moral sentiments and wealth of nations, the humanity. What
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  Speaker 1: happens in a world when we live with a type
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  Speaker 1: of AI that that can imitate humanity, but not be human.
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  Speaker 1: And that is the other incredibly important Adam Smith conversation
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  Speaker 1: that I want to get to in this show and
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  Speaker 1: in the shows over the next couple of days. Right,
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  Speaker 1: my guests. On my left, I have Duncan Lamont, who
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  Speaker 1: I think some of you may have heard on the podcast.
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  Speaker 1: Who's heard Duncan on the podcast? Great one on stagflation recently.
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  Speaker 1: We've done quite a few on valuation, haven't we? Duncan
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  Speaker 1: is the head of strategic research at Schroders. So a
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  Speaker 1: lot of charts, a lot of numbers made into really
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  Speaker 1: interesting stories. And so we use him a lot on
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  Speaker 1: the podcast and a lot, John and I, we both
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  Speaker 1: use him in our newsletters and our writing, don't we?
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  Speaker 4: Yep.
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  Speaker 1: So you may have come across him before. Now, Robert Wilson,
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  Speaker 1: I think maybe some of you think you don't know,
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  Speaker 1: but you do know, you do know. Robert is CEO
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  Speaker 1: and co-founder of Nelsons, which is one of the largest
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  Speaker 1: natural medicine companies in the UK and possibly one of
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  Speaker 1: the oldest in the world. He's also the chair of
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  Speaker 1: Creative Scotland. And then finally, I have John Stepek, who,
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  Speaker 1: as you know, is my co-host on the podcast and
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  Speaker 1: the author of his own. Absolutely brilliant. And say it, John.
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  Speaker 5: Say it.
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  Speaker 3: Multi-award winning. Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: Newsletter, money distilled. I don't know if any of you
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  Speaker 1: have any financial awards companies. Any of you give out
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  Speaker 1: financial awards? No. It would be really great if my
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  Speaker 1: newsletter could win an award. Because this is getting really irritating.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 1: So we are going to start with John. John, let's
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  Speaker 1: have you quick.
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  Speaker 3: Okie dokie.
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  Speaker 6: This one's from the theory of moral sentiments. So the
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  Speaker 6: man of system seems to imagine that he can arrange
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  Speaker 6: the different members of a great society with as much
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  Speaker 6: ease as the hand arranges the different.
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  Speaker 3: Pieces upon a chessboard.
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  Speaker 6: He does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard
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  Speaker 6: have no other principle of motion besides that which the
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  Speaker 6: hand impresses upon them but that in the great chessboard
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  Speaker 6: of human society, every single piece has a principle of
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  Speaker 6: motion of its own, altogether different from that which the
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  Speaker 6: legislature might choose to.
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  Speaker 3: Impress upon it. Now, I really like this quote.
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  Speaker 6: I actually think this is my favorite Adam Smith quote
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  Speaker 6: of all. I have used it before, as long-suffering listeners
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  Speaker 6: will know. And I like it for two main reasons.
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  Speaker 6: So the first reason is that I think it shows
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  Speaker 6: how Adam Smith thinks You know, the other kind of
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  Speaker 6: like big economic thinkers who I immediately think of at
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  Speaker 6: least are kind of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes.
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  Speaker 6: And one thing I would say about both of them
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  Speaker 6: is I feel that they're kind of top-down thinkers. So
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  Speaker 6: Marx kind of thinks of people as classes and big
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  Speaker 6: groups rather than individuals. And Keynes was kind of trying
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  Speaker 6: to figure out how to make everything match up, almost
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  Speaker 6: like a chemistry set and thinking of the economy as
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  Speaker 6: a machine. Whereas Smith is starting from the bottom up.
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  Speaker 6: He's starting from people and thinking about, well, how do
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  Speaker 6: people respond to things? And they respond to incentives. And
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  Speaker 6: the question, where he's talking about the managed system here
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  Speaker 6: is he's talking about someone who thinks that if you
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  Speaker 6: impose a system from the top down, and if you
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  Speaker 6: can just get everyone to do exactly what you want
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  Speaker 6: them to do, then everything will be fine and everything
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  Speaker 6: will work out. And I think that The reason that
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  Speaker 6: that's so relevant to today is because I've been spending
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  Speaker 6: a lot of time recently thinking about, well, why do
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  Speaker 6: our politicians seem to be so incapable of thinking about
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  Speaker 6: second-order consequences? So, like, well, what happens whenever they pass
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  Speaker 6: a law, and why does it not match up to
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  Speaker 6: what they expect? And it's basically because these are the
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  Speaker 6: people who we.
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  Speaker 3: Are run by.
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  Speaker 6: We are run by men and women of system. And,
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  Speaker 6: I mean, kind of good examples include, for example, we've
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  Speaker 6: talked about youth unemployment. in the UK an awful lot recently.
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  Speaker 6: You must all have heard about, you know, we've got
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  Speaker 6: a million nicks. You know, there's a lot of angst about, well,
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  Speaker 6: how are we going to get all these young.
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  Speaker 3: People back to work?
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  Speaker 6: And of course, what nobody kind of like really talks
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  Speaker 6: about is the fact that since 2024, we've jacked up
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  Speaker 6: the price of employing someone under the age of 21
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  Speaker 6: by about 25%. Instead of kind of saying, right, well,
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  Speaker 6: maybe we should revisit what we did, because in the
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  Speaker 6: first place, the price went up, sorry, the minimum wage
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  Speaker 6: went up because a politician thought, young people should be
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  Speaker 6: paid more, let's put the minimum wage up, and that'll
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  Speaker 6: sort that out. And then, of course, the knock-on consequence
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  Speaker 6: is that it's harder for young people to get jobs
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  Speaker 6: because it's much more expensive to employ young people. And
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  Speaker 6: rather than thinking, well, this was a predictable second-order consequence
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  Speaker 6: of putting the price of them up, instead they turn
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  Speaker 6: around and come up with yet another system So in
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  Speaker 6: this case, it's kind of like, you know, saying, oh, well,
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  Speaker 6: Sainsbury's are going to offer work experience, or we're going
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  Speaker 6: to introduce lots and lots of kind of new apprenticeships.
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  Speaker 6: And so you start patching up all the things that
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  Speaker 6: you've already messed up. And I think that in order to, well, yeah,
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  Speaker 6: I mean, this is it. We kind of need to
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  Speaker 6: get away from doing this. And for investors, because obviously
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  Speaker 6: we quite often come back to investments, I think that
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  Speaker 6: the kind of big systemic kind of attack on prices,
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  Speaker 6: if you like, at the moment that we're seeing is
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  Speaker 6: politicians trying to set prices in the bond market. And
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  Speaker 6: I think that's where you get kind of Adam Smith's
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  Speaker 6: way of doing things through free markets and through people
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  Speaker 6: responding as individuals and free markets setting prices coming up
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  Speaker 6: against the men of system.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, the price setting in the UK is kind
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  Speaker 1: of across the board, isn't it? I mean, this is
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  Speaker 1: where we're almost a communist capitalist economy at the moment.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So we set the price of wages, we set the
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  Speaker 1: prices of. energy we start set the price of we're
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  Speaker 1: talking about setting the price of rent and even in
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  Speaker 1: scotland we had this absurd conversation a few months ago
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  Speaker 1: setting the price of food so we're actively saying let's
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  Speaker 1: get away from the signals that tell us how things
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  Speaker 1: should be distributed and overlay our own prices on top
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  Speaker 1: and we we know that we know it never works
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  Speaker 1: yeah our men of system insists on doing it anyway.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah and it's that it's very frustrating to see this
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  Speaker 6: mistake happening over and over again because it's not just
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  Speaker 6: here it's the same and it's the states as well
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  Speaker 6: You know, in New York, they're about to open state-sponsored
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  Speaker 6: grocery stores because prices are too high. And you're kind
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  Speaker 6: of like, well, you know, you have to address the
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  Speaker 6: underlying issues rather than just do price fixing. And yeah,
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  Speaker 6: so I think that Adam Smith was spot on about that.
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  Speaker 6: And it's a persistent issue.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: But you always talk, John, about the thing about capitalism
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  Speaker 1: being that it reflects the way that humans actually are.
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  Speaker 1: and that every time you try and impose another system
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  Speaker 1: on humanity, we revert to capitalism anyway, because we're natural improvers, creators, barterers, etc.
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  Speaker 1: And capitalism is a natural system that allows us to
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  Speaker 1: behave as we are. And that was Adam Smith's insight.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to go with the grain of people.
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  Speaker 6: And I do think that's where the theory of moral
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  Speaker 6: sentiments is actually really interesting, really worth reading. Because I
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  Speaker 6: think the other issue with Smith is that There's this
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  Speaker 6: sense that he's in some way the father of free
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  Speaker 6: markets or the father of capitalism. And then you quite
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  Speaker 6: often see, because obviously this is the 250th anniversary of
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  Speaker 6: the publication of The Wealth of Nations.
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  Speaker 3: And I remember reading a.
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  Speaker 6: Few articles where there's a sort of, there's a respect
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  Speaker 6: for Smith, but also a sort of like, oh, side
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  Speaker 6: face capitalism sort of thing going on. where people feel
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  Speaker 6: slightly embarrassed about it. And in fact, really, I think
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  Speaker 6: trying to get away from this idea that capitalism is
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  Speaker 6: something that was imposed is not. It kind of reflects
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  Speaker 6: what human nature is like. And the whole theory of
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  Speaker 6: moral sentiments is basically about empathy. I mean, he calls
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  Speaker 6: it sympathy, but I think these days we would probably
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  Speaker 6: say that he's describing empathy. And really, he's just talking
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  Speaker 6: about we have a natural desire to see our fellow
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  Speaker 6: human beings do well you know, within reason. And, you know,
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  Speaker 6: he talks about how when you see someone in trouble,
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  Speaker 6: your kind of heart goes out to them. And he
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  Speaker 6: also talks about the limits of empathy and explains, for example,
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  Speaker 6: why when you see an earthquake in China, in fact,
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  Speaker 6: that's the example he uses, you know, you don't feel
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  Speaker 6: as upset as if, say, your next door neighbour, you know,
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  Speaker 6: has a horrible tragedy happen to them. And so he
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  Speaker 6: kind of talks about, he talks about human beings and
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  Speaker 6: what they were like, and basically they were social animals.
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  Speaker 6: And the way that we organise society has to work
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  Speaker 6: with that grain rather than being imposed from the top down.
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  Speaker 1: Which is why the managed system simply can't work.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, but I guess that's kind of what we've seen
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  Speaker 4: in financial markets for quite a long time now. If
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  Speaker 4: you think about quantitative easing or anything like that, there
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  Speaker 4: is evidence that if things start to go bad, whether
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  Speaker 4: that's equity market falls too far, bond yields go up,
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  Speaker 4: too high, then there will be a response from central bankers.
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  Speaker 4: So then you have this buy the debt mentality that
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  Speaker 4: people have. They think that they will not be allowed
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  Speaker 4: to lose too much money, so they will take more
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  Speaker 4: risk as a result. Look in the US, almost half
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  Speaker 4: of US households' financial wealth is now in the stock market.
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  Speaker 4: That's the highest it's been in 75 years. The peak
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  Speaker 4: of the dot-com, it wasn't even at 40%. So they
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  Speaker 4: have never had so much exposure to the stock market
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  Speaker 4: in their lives. And I think that's partly because they've
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  Speaker 4: been conditioned to think that if anything goes bad, someone
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  Speaker 4: will bail me out. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Well, they have, and it has happened. So it's not
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  Speaker 1: just a problem for US citizens, it's a problem across
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  Speaker 1: the board. There's overexposure to equity because we know that
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  Speaker 1: the managed system is going to come in and bail
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  Speaker 1: us out.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it leads to.
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  Speaker 1: But what makes you think that that won't continue?
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  Speaker 4: It's gone very well so far. So I think that
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  Speaker 4: you can look at that high allocation to... the stock
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  Speaker 4: market as being either a good thing or a bad thing.
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  Speaker 4: A bad thing, it means that people are taking too
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  Speaker 4: much risk and, okay, there's too much sentiment going in
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  Speaker 4: towards equities and that means there's a risk of reversal.
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  Speaker 2: The more encouraging thing if you're.
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  Speaker 4: An investor would be that they will not allow there
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  Speaker 4: to be a big stock market fall because the hit
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  Speaker 4: to GDP, the hit to consumer spending would be on
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  Speaker 4: a scale that we have never seen in history in
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  Speaker 4: the past. So we know that when people feel richer,
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  Speaker 4: they spend more. When they feel poorer, they spend less.
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  Speaker 4: So I think that... policymakers have kind of got themselves
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  Speaker 4: in a bind now because of this expectation. And they
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: want to inject some discipline. But to find a way
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  Speaker 4: to allow some small fires rather than a big fire
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  Speaker 4: is actually quite challenging.
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  Speaker 1: They may come to a point where they can't prevent
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  Speaker 1: a proper crash.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Something to look forward to.
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  Speaker 4: Right.
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  Speaker 1: I think that we are going to come back to
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  Speaker 1: this in a minute. We're going to come back to
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  Speaker 1: all these subjects. But let's go on to another quote. Robert,
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  Speaker 1: how about we have your quote?
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  Speaker 5: Well, I think I'm here in a bunch of high-powered
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: economically savvy people, but I come from the world of
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  Speaker 5: wellness and culture. So I suppose my quotes that really
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  Speaker 5: appeal to me from Adam Smith, of which there are many,
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  Speaker 5: are very much from that slightly more principled, philosophical, moralist position.
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  Speaker 5: So my quote is, nature, when she formed man for society,
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  Speaker 5: endowed him with an original desire to please and and
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  Speaker 5: an original aversion to offend his brethren. She taught him
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  Speaker 5: to feel pleasure in the favorable and pain in their
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  Speaker 5: unfavorable regard.
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  Speaker 2: So for me, this.
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  Speaker 5: Stands out as the basis of Smith's ideas that go
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  Speaker 5: well beyond this whole perception of self-interest, this perception that
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  Speaker 5: it's all about some of the things you were talking about,
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  Speaker 5: this sort of nod, oh, well, He is the father
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  Speaker 5: of conservatism.
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  Speaker 3: He is the father of capitalism.
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  Speaker 5: And I think it shows the breadth and the depth
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  Speaker 5: of this remarkable man. And it's pointing out to me
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  Speaker 5: that human nature starts from our orientation towards others, not
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  Speaker 5: from the self-interested. And the importance of everyone doing well.
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  Speaker 5: So again, there's always this perception that somehow The self-interest
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  Speaker 5: is driving that perception of the self and that our
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  Speaker 5: money and earning our money for ourselves is what is paramount.
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  Speaker 5: Adam Smith is clearly way beyond that. And I think
• 16:46
  Speaker 5: he would see that as a failure because it's about
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: society improving, benefiting. I think there's another aspect to this
• 16:56
  Speaker 5: that underpins so much of a bit what we were
• 17:00
  Speaker 5: talking about just now is the regard for others underpins
• 17:04
  Speaker 5: the human condition. The regard is how trust is built.
• 17:09
  Speaker 5: And trust, and in some cases confidence, underpins so much
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: of what we do and how we do it. And
• 17:17
  Speaker 5: so that quote to me is really saying that how
• 17:22
  Speaker 5: we are perceived by our fellow man and ultimately how
• 17:25
  Speaker 5: we're perceived by society actually underpins the success of that society.
• 17:32
  Speaker 5: And touching on these things, I mean, this idea of
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: the market holding up, how much of that is down
• 17:38
  Speaker 5: to confidence? How much of that is trust in the
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: institutions and, indeed, trust of our governments? And if that
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: starts to fail, you suddenly see cataclysmic scenarios presenting themselves.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: So I suppose....
• 17:55
  Speaker 5: And the other part of this is the reward mechanism, which, again,
• 18:00
  Speaker 5: Smith is often... seen rather in a rather monochrome way.
• 18:05
  Speaker 5: But the reward is, in this quote, is about the
• 18:09
  Speaker 5: benefit that we feel by seeing others achieve. And it's
• 18:14
  Speaker 5: interesting because my background is two things. One, I've got
• 18:17
  Speaker 5: a business making natural medicines, which fundamentally is about improving
• 18:23
  Speaker 5: the lives of others. But it's interesting, we were just
• 18:26
  Speaker 5: talking in the green room before about the differences of
• 18:29
  Speaker 5: working for a, a very important public body, a cultural organization.
• 18:34
  Speaker 5: And I was saying that when you move into the
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: public sphere, some of the levers you have in the
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: commercial sphere, like bonuses and share options and things, are.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Not available to you.
• 18:46
  Speaker 5: So you have to use a different set of reward techniques.
• 18:50
  Speaker 5: And those are really down to people feeling really good
• 18:54
  Speaker 5: about their jobs, feeling that they've done a great job,
• 18:57
  Speaker 5: feeling that they are contributing something to a bigger cause.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: And my final.
• 19:02
  Speaker 5: Point is that it's well known that a very good
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: thank you from a boss to somebody else is almost
• 19:12
  Speaker 5: equivalent to a pay rise in the warmth and the
• 19:15
  Speaker 5: sense of the feeling that they get from that. So
• 19:17
  Speaker 5: the importance, I think, of what this quote is centering
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: on is that ability to to have much more in
• 19:27
  Speaker 5: the panoply of reward than purely financial. And that by
• 19:32
  Speaker 5: getting on and supporting one another and building relationships, you
• 19:38
  Speaker 5: build that trust. And that trust underpins everything that we
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: understand within the free economy.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd go back to the almost. Thank you. It's
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: almost as good as the money. Almost. Nearly there. Nearly there.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: The really interesting bit here is this idea of trust
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: and the relationships that underpin society, which Adam Smith was very,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: very strong on. And that brings us back to AI.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: So the real worry here is, who's been watching the
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: robot Olympics?
• 20:17
  Speaker 5: Absolutely brilliant.
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, fantastic. It's so good. And then you look
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: at the humanoid robots that are being churned out in China,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and you look not necessarily at the robots themselves, but
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: at the chatbots that lots of people now talk to.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: And as time goes past, and as the LLMs and
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: whatever comes after the LLMs, the large language models that
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: we currently refer to as AI, as they move on
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: and become more and more human-like because they have scraped
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: all the words of past humanity. So they can appear
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: as human, they can behave as human, they can demonstrate
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: what looks like human empathy but is not human empathy
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: because we know that human empathy is created by struggle, right?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: It doesn't really exist inside AI. That's something that may
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: well leech the trust from our communities. And that becomes then,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: this is not where we normally go in the show,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: but that then becomes an existential concern. If you can
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: develop a relationship with a bot, with an AI of
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: some kind that you believe is a personal relationship, but
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: of course it's not, we all become incredibly open to
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: manipulation in our votes, in our emotions, in the way
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: we feel towards other people. And our communities become fully undermined.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: So that seems to me to be the big risk
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: with AI. It's not that they destroy us all on purpose.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: It's just that they remove our trust in the empathy
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: that we think we feel around us.
• 21:47
  Speaker 6: I mean, actually, there was an interesting thing that happened
• 21:49
  Speaker 6: this week in finance, which was that Stanley Druckenmiller had
• 21:53
  Speaker 6: a big opinion column in the Wall Street Journal. And
• 21:57
  Speaker 6: Stanley Druckenmiller is a famous hedge fund manager. He's almost
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: Warren Buffett levels of famous kind of thing. And he
• 22:04
  Speaker 6: was criticising Scott Besson's decision to intervene in the US
• 22:08
  Speaker 6: bond market. But what happened was that he'd written it
• 22:12
  Speaker 6: with AI, and that was quite apparent to people because
• 22:15
  Speaker 6: it had a lot of these slightly weird constructions that
• 22:19
  Speaker 6: the computer tends to come out with.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: And the word quietly.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: The word quietly that comes up in every AI thing
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: ever written was in there.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: It's not X, it's Y, those kind of things.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: And it was... The interesting thing was.
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: people actually got really upset about this. And it was like, for,
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: I guess, for two reasons. One was, you know, because
• 22:38
  Speaker 6: they want to hear from Stan Druckenmiller, not from a
• 22:40
  Speaker 6: computer channel and his thoughts. But also the fact that
• 22:43
  Speaker 6: Wall Street Journal, which is obviously a newspaper, like a
• 22:46
  Speaker 6: big brand newspaper, had just published it and not kind
• 22:50
  Speaker 6: of mentioned that it was AI or taken a kind
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: of stance against this. And I thought it was interesting
• 22:55
  Speaker 6: that That was what people thought.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: He now claims, by the way, John, that he wrote
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: it himself and he had it condensed by AI.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not what he said originally, as far as I.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Can work out.
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: I think he's also admitted that he gets everything written
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: by AI. He says he's not an English major, he's
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: an economics one. He's like, I can't write, so this makes.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: My writing better.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: And before AI, he would have had it written by
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: a junior.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So what difference, right?
• 23:19
  Speaker 6: From that point of view, I was kind of like, well,
• 23:21
  Speaker 6: you know, so what? It's been published because it's a
• 23:23
  Speaker 6: big name. It's not because, you know, there's a lot
• 23:25
  Speaker 6: of circumstances. Like if a junior journal had done it
• 23:27
  Speaker 6: and not told me as an editor, you know, that's
• 23:30
  Speaker 6: a firing offence. But If it's a guest column from
• 23:33
  Speaker 6: the most important hedgie, then it's fine. But it's that
• 23:36
  Speaker 6: sense of lacking trust and kind of taking away from
• 23:39
  Speaker 6: the trust.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Well, look at the other thing we were talking about earlier, John,
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: you and I. We were talking about this new survey
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: out from the FCA, which looks at whether people use
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: AI for financial advice and the extent to which they
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: trust it. You may have seen this in the papers
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: this morning. And what really, really shocked me, although John
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: seemed more sanguine about it, is that people trust AI
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: to give them financial advice more than they trust financial journalists.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure I'm ever going to recover from this.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: I think we should get an audience.
• 24:09
  Speaker 5: But, Maren, it's very similar in, because, again, being in
• 24:13
  Speaker 5: the health arena, I mean, the trust levels on AI bots,
• 24:18
  Speaker 5: on medical facts, is way above there in the UK.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: That may say something about GPs. Any GPs in the
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: audience today? Okay, carry on being.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Mean about GPs.
• 24:30
  Speaker 5: I mean, the GPs are now using AI in the
• 24:32
  Speaker 5: consulting room to check symptoms and stuff. So, you know,
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: it's a very strange one, this idea of, you know,
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: where do the boundaries start? And if those who are
• 24:44
  Speaker 5: sort of in control of things, whether it's health or
• 24:47
  Speaker 5: finance or whatever, are relying on these AI, it does
• 24:51
  Speaker 5: sort of, compound the problem.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll find out in due course. Let's have your quote.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: In all countries where there is tolerable security, every man
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: of common understanding will endeavor to employ whatever stock he
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: can command in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit.
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: But I actually want to have a second quote, which
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: is a slightly, it's not as famous, but I like
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: it better. And it's from a similar passage of Wealth
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: of Nations. And he says, a man must be perfectly
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: crazy who, when there is tolerable security, does not employ
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: all the stock which he commands.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: That sounds like one of those made-up ones. I don't
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: know that one.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: I've never heard Adam Smith use the word crazy.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: He's been asking AI to write Adam Smith quotes for him.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: So this quote, by Adam Smith's judgment, I think that
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: makes most people in the UK actually perfectly crazy. And
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: the reason for this is our obsession we have with cash.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: or with cash ISIS. And full disclosure, I'm not trying
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: to be critical of cash in general. Having a rainy
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: day fund is one of the most important things for everybody.
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: The research shows if you've got a thousand pounds in
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: the bank, your chances of getting into debt problems are
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: cut by half.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: That's important.
• 26:09
  Speaker 4: But what I am criticizing here is the hoarding of
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: cash beyond what Adam Smith would describe as your kind
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: of tolerable security.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Hang on, let's stop right there and ask what is
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: tolerable security? John and I always say you should have
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: six months worth of living cash in an account. You
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: should have six months worth of cash to finance your lifestyle.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: That's enough.
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: I've heard sometimes people saying three months, six months, that
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: kind of thing.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: We think six. And then we also say that you
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: should have a couple of weeks worth of cash in
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: physical cash in your house. You know, cyber attacks, that
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: kind of thing. Well, you know, there's a cyber attack
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: and there will be a cyber attack. If you have cash,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: you can still buy bread and milk. And if you haven't,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: you can't. So why would you not have physical cash?
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: Or power cuts. Power cuts, same, same. And they can't
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: take the card.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: And they're coming. We haven't got onto energy yet, have we?
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Maybe this isn't the place where you usually get onto
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: energy in this conversation, don't we? But there are all
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: these things that mean that you should, we think.
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: You should have some cash.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Have physical cash at home.
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: When I was looking to buy a first house apartment,
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: I was actively looking with my wife to find a property.
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: I wanted to know what my deposit was. I didn't
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: want to take a risk at failing value. Cash has
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: a place, but the issue is.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: How much cash were you keeping in your house?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Not physically in my house.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Who has more than £ 1, 000 of cash in their house
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: at home?
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: And what's your address?
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: John, I was waiting for them to.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: Put their hands up before I asked for the address
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: so we knew who to follow home.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: That was the GDPR form you signed on the way in.
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: The reason I think that we end up in this
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: situation where we have this obsession with cash is I
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: think the way that we talk about risk in this country,
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: and this is from politicians to regulators to those of
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: us in the industry, is a lot of the time
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: all wrong. And it's because of this singular focus on
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: the only measure of risk that matters being whether your
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: investments might fall in value over the short run. You
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: go to open up a cash ice, stocks and shares ice.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: So the first thing that pops up, warning, the value
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: of your investments may go down as well as up.
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: It's always down first. And you might get back less
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: than you originally invested. If someone is a nervous individual
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: who's never put any money in the stock market, how
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: do you think they feel when they read that for
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: the first time? And the reason why I get annoyed
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: is I don't think that is actually the most important
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: risk that matters to most people. The most important risk
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: for most people is the risk that they are unable
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: to achieve their financial goals. So as a minimum, this
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: means keeping pace with inflation. Otherwise, your money's literally being
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: able to buy less. And cash is a terrible way
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: to keep pace with inflation. But even things like retirement.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: So let's say John and Meryn. Meryn is saving for
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: her retirement, puts all of her DC pension in the
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: stock market, saves away diligently, retires in her late 60s.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Late 60s?
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Come on, you're not going to want to stop writing.
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: John, on the other hand, is a slightly cautious Scotsman
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: who is a bit worried about investing, so he goes
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: for something that's more conservative.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: He sleeps well at night. but then he has to
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: work an extra five years before he can retire.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: So should they pull Bitcoin?
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: It's more just, I think that we, this focus on
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: the only risk that matters being whether something falls in
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: value is wrong. And we should be focusing on the
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: risk that people cannot achieve their financial goals. So actually
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: a bigger risk is the risk that we're not taking
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: enough risk.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: OK, but right now, right now, you could say that
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of markets are very, very expensive. You could
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: say that there's an AI bubble well underway in the
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: stock market. So you could say that if you're looking
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: at the market now and you had money to invest,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: it might be entirely reasonable to say, oh, look, NS &
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I have put up their rates today. So why don't
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I stick the money in there and just wait until
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: this AI bubble has passed? They take the market all
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: time high after all time high after all time. I'm
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: setting you up for something here, obviously. I hope you're
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: ready for it. All time high after all time high
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: after all time high. Why would I invest now?
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: So can you tell me a time in history when
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: you would have thought it would have been a good time, though?
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: Because the problem is, I think.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, late 2009.
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: We bought that, didn't we? Front page of the magazine.
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: But I think most people.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: We did.
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: We make that argument, which means actually they sit there
• 30:22
  Speaker 4: waiting for that perfect moment. And that perfect moment never
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: arises and they end up still sitting waiting years later.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: To your point about all-time highs, I do hear this
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: a lot from people because probably the first thing most
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: people think from investing is buy low, sell high. It's
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: kind of drilled in to people. But actually, what I
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: did was I went back and looked at the data
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: for 100 years. And it might surprise most of you
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: to learn that if you invest when the market's at
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: an all-time high, over the next 12 months, actually, you
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: would have got better return on average than if you'd
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: invested at any other time.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: So it feels weird.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Buy higher and then buy higher again.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: It's kind of buy low, buy high. It kind of
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: feels strange.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I think what you're saying is just buy.
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: But the reason is because the stock market actually, over time,
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: goes up. So what does that mean? It's hitting all-time
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: highs all the time. So it makes newspaper headlines, FTSE
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: at this level, S & P at this level, Dow
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: at this level. But actually, the stock market goes up.
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: It's at an all-time high, 30%.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: 35% of the time. How many years did it take
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: you to break even in real terms after 1929? That
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: was a particularly bad period. LAUGHTER Did you break even
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: in real terms if you bought the FTSE at the
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: beginning of 1970?
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: So the way I tested this was I looked back
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: at data going all the way to 1920 and said,
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: you're two different people. One person just invests their money
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: and forgets about it. They don't pay any attention to anything.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: The other person freaks out about when the market hits
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: an all-time high and they decide they're going to go
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: back into cash. And then whenever it's not an all-time high,
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: they're going to buy that dip and they're going.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: To get back in again.
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: If you stretch this out over all that period since 1920,
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: which covers the Great Depression, which covers every other difficult
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: period we've had since, the person who got scared by
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: all-time highs would have destroyed 90% of their wealth. Because
• 32:16
  Speaker 4: when the market's going up, it actually keeps going up.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: So all of those times, you're sitting in cash, waiting
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: for that dip to buy back in, and you miss
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: out on the.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Market for a long time. Duncan, what you're doing, you're
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: not arguing for momentum investing here, aren't you?
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: I'm not. One of the.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Greatest investment sales ever. Value plus momentum.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: I am arguing for taking a long-term approach and not
• 32:36
  Speaker 4: overreacting to when the world feels scary, when the stock
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: market feels scary, because the chances... The other thing I
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: said in our pod was prepare, don't predict. The odds
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: that any of us can guess exactly when the top
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: of the market is is very low. You're going to
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: stick it all in the cash and then get back in?
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: Good luck getting that right.
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: OK.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I'm going back to here I am today. And I've
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: got maybe I've got too much money to cash. I
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: want to invest something right now. What's the cheapest market
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: out there?
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: The cheapest market.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Duncan does these great charts of cheap and expensive markets.
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: So weirdly, emerging market equities have done really well but
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: look cheap, but it's because the expectations for their earnings growth.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Are so high.
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: We're talking 60%, 70% earnings growth projections. So if you
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: believe those numbers can be delivered, then emerging market.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: Equities are cheap.
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: I'm still a bit of a fan of UK value.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fine. That's fine.
• 33:29
  Speaker 4: What are two of the most hated stock markets in
• 33:31
  Speaker 4: the world? UK stocks and value stocks. But most of
• 33:34
  Speaker 4: you probably don't believe that actually UK value has outperformed
• 33:37
  Speaker 4: the S & P 500 over the last one, three
• 33:40
  Speaker 4: and five years. It's not a popular story. It's all
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: about the sexy tech companies. No, boring, boring UK value
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: stocks have done better than kind of exciting US AI stocks.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: Everyone holds Japan, right? We've been talking about it for years. Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: Everyone's made a lot of money in Japan. We've been
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: telling you for 20 years to buy Japan.
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: So Japan looks good value as well. Japan has gone
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: through lots of corporate governance improvements as well, where rather
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: than just hoarding cash, they're returning it to shareholders. And actually,
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: even things like share buybacks, which Japanese companies didn't really
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: do in the past. So it used to be, if
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: you looked at the world, share buybacks are when companies
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: are buying their own shares. And that's been a useful
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: prop for US stock prices for a few decades. They
• 34:27
  Speaker 4: used to do basically tons more than everyone else. And
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: if you've got someone who's coming on every single month
• 34:31
  Speaker 4: just buying the shares, that just helps to keep things moving.
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: Japanese companies sat on the cash and didn't do this.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: They were worried. They had conservative balance sheets.
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: They are now approaching US levels of share buybacks in
• 34:42
  Speaker 4: terms of the percentage of companies that are doing this.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: This is not just a political story or a kind
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: of what might happen in future. There is action happening
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: today in Japanese companies that are making them more shareholder friendly.
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: And actually, I think that sets up for a really
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: good medium to long term story.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: OK, excellent.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, talking about AI, we've been talking about minimum wages.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: We've been talking about young people not being able to
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: get jobs. Quite a lot of things that you do
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: must be relatively labor intensive.
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: Is.
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: Is AI having any effect on the way that you hire?
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Does it change any of the jobs inside your business,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: make a difference?
• 35:15
  Speaker 5: We use AI quite a lot, but it's all obviously,
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: as you would imagine, in the marketing and sales arena.
• 35:22
  Speaker 5: So we're very supportive of AI. We are a production company,
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: and so it is incredible.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: And we're based in London.
• 35:33
  Speaker 5: So we have had absolute issues in getting staff. strangely
• 35:39
  Speaker 5: and i suppose it's one of the things that i
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: was going to come on to is is this whole
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: idea that ai and it goes back to the your
• 35:47
  Speaker 5: point about um adam smith was saying here is this
• 35:50
  Speaker 5: dimension and then you if you think of all the
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: luddites which is you know this this revolution against technology
• 35:57
  Speaker 5: and you see a lot of this in the ai
• 35:59
  Speaker 5: discussion are we this is jobs Or is it just
• 36:02
  Speaker 5: going to, like the Industrial Revolution, actually create different jobs?
• 36:08
  Speaker 5: But a lot of fundamental jobs, like what my business does,
• 36:12
  Speaker 5: are not being replaced. You know, it's very hard to
• 36:16
  Speaker 5: get an AI to put a stopper on a bottle.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: Yes, but there's a lot of subtleties in what we do.
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: We change our lines. We change the things going through them,
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: the different stoppers, different things.
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: And actually, the human.
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: hand is extremely quick and efficient at doing that. So
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: it is interesting, and we are actually.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Struggling to find... And you're having trouble hiring, even though
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: we have a million needs.
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah. We are.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: We'll finish on this Adam Smith quote that we will
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: all desperately hope to be proven wrong, okay? It's about
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: public debt. Public debt has gradually enfeebled every state that
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: has adopted it. When natural debts have once accumulated to
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: a certain degree, there is scarce, I believe, a single incident...
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: of their having been fairly and completely paid. So we
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: are fully reliant on AI on this occasion, proving Adam
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: Smith completely wrong, but he's never yet been proven wrong.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: So I think John's right. Here we are. Fingers crossed, everyone.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: And thank you very much for joining us today. And
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: thank you to my guests. Thanks for listening to this
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: week's Merrin Talks Money. If you like our show, rate,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: review and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: keep sending questions or comments to merrinmoney at bloomberg.net. You
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: can also follow me and John on Twitter or X.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: I'm at MerrinSW and John is John underscore Steffek. This
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: episode was hosted by me, Merrin Somerset Webb. It was
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: produced by Sam Asadi and Moses Andam. Sound design by
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: Blake Maples. And special thanks, of course, to Richard Wilson,
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Duncan Lamont, John Steffek, Blair Barrows, Alan Lloyds and everyone
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: at Pamir House.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: All right.