Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Digital Currencies Are Entering A Third Phase: CoinShares Chair
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg P and L Podcast. I'm Pim
- 0:08Speaker 1: Fox along with my co host Lisa A. Bramowitz. Each
- 0:11Speaker 1: day we bring you the most important, noteworthy, and useful
- 0:14Speaker 1: interviews for you and your money, whether you're at the
- 0:17Speaker 1: grocery store or the trading floor. Find the Bloomberg P
- 0:20Speaker 1: M L Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Bloomberg dot Com.
- 0:27Speaker 1: The news this week, financial services giant Fidelity is taking
- 0:32Speaker 1: a huge step into the world of cryptocurrency. It announced
- 0:35Speaker 1: the launch of a separate company called Fidelity Digital Assets Services.
- 0:40Speaker 1: It is designed to handle cryptocurrency custody and trade execution
- 0:46Speaker 1: for institutional investors. And I think there's probably no one
- 0:51Speaker 1: better to comment on this than Danny Masters. Danny Masters is,
- 0:55Speaker 1: of course the chairman of coin Shares. He is previously
- 0:59Speaker 1: the head of JP Morgan's New York energy trading business
- 1:03Speaker 1: before he set up his own commodity funds. He joins
- 1:05Speaker 1: us here in our Bloomberg Interact or Broker Studios. Danny,
- 1:09Speaker 1: thank you very much for coming in. What was your
- 1:11Speaker 1: reaction when you heard that Fidelity was offering these kinds
- 1:16Speaker 1: of services? About time? Abby Cohen's been at the forefront
- 1:21Speaker 1: of distributed ledger technology. For some time, we've interacted with
- 1:25Speaker 1: Fidelity across multiple vectors, Um Johnson, Abbie Johnson's face parton Johnson,
- 1:32Speaker 1: You're right and she Um, I think what you know
- 1:35Speaker 1: in concert with her founding grandfather's view about the finances, Um,
- 1:40Speaker 1: you know, they think big and they think forward, and
- 1:43Speaker 1: she sees this as being a new industry in a
- 1:45Speaker 1: new way to form capital and distribute capital. Um. And
- 1:48Speaker 1: I think they're going to do very well with that.
- 1:51Speaker 1: Do you still think, given all the volatility that we've
- 1:54Speaker 1: seen in cryptocurrencies this year, that this asset class is
- 1:59Speaker 1: sort of a new commodity of sorts in a new
- 2:01Speaker 1: store of wealth. I think the narrative change is very
- 2:05Speaker 1: rapidly in crypto. It is an evolutionary process, for sure,
- 2:09Speaker 1: maybe a revolutionary process. Uh. And the way I'm currently
- 2:13Speaker 1: thinking is really in that what is happening now and
- 2:17Speaker 1: the timely entry of Fidelity and others is really the
- 2:20Speaker 1: what I call the third wave of the crypto movement.
- 2:24Speaker 1: First wave Bitcoin arrives, it disrupts golden money. The second
- 2:28Speaker 1: wave we see ethereum a new blockchain that has the
- 2:31Speaker 1: ability to form capital. That happens very rapidly in in
- 2:35Speaker 1: a in a very large way. The SEC don't like that.
- 2:39Speaker 1: We're talking initial coin offering, initial coin offerings. The SEC
- 2:43Speaker 1: don't like that for obvious reasons, and that comes to
- 2:45Speaker 1: essentially a screeching halt. Third wave, in my opinion, will
- 2:49Speaker 1: be this so called security token. So you cannot do
- 2:52Speaker 1: an initial coin offering with ease anymore, but you can
- 2:54Speaker 1: do a security token. What does that mean? That will
- 2:58Speaker 1: be in the first instance, one of the exemptions from
- 3:01Speaker 1: the Securities Act, either a reg A and a plus
- 3:04Speaker 1: reg D reg S, whereby a token will will represent
- 3:08Speaker 1: equity in a private company and it will exist in
- 3:12Speaker 1: this space between what has traditionally been private companies and
- 3:16Speaker 1: public companies, and it will be a hybrid which is
- 3:19Speaker 1: transparent and liquid and transferable. Why do we need this Well,
- 3:24Speaker 1: I think you for the average investor um to buy
- 3:29Speaker 1: into a fully publicly listed company, you know the S
- 3:32Speaker 1: and P multiple will be around right now. If you
- 3:35Speaker 1: buy into a private company, you might get the five
- 3:37Speaker 1: to ten P So there is potentially a tremendous value
- 3:40Speaker 1: to be a accrued to a smaller investor coming in
- 3:43Speaker 1: at the lower end of that of that P spread
- 3:46Speaker 1: because those assets are typically not available to the average person.
- 3:50Speaker 1: I want to ask you about something having to do
- 3:52Speaker 1: with access, because if and I know from your website,
- 3:57Speaker 1: if you have a broker that already does business on
- 4:02Speaker 1: the NASDAK in Sweden, you already have pretty much access
- 4:07Speaker 1: to a variety of trackers for cryptocurrencies. There's the Bitcoin
- 4:12Speaker 1: Tracker one, there's one in Euros. There's also the Ether
- 4:16Speaker 1: tracker one and one in Euros. What have you learned
- 4:20Speaker 1: from that experience? It's been a expt provider, has been
- 4:25Speaker 1: a wonderful journey for us. You know, we we we
- 4:28Speaker 1: started very small and we got I think we peeked
- 4:30Speaker 1: around one point seven billion, and the prices were high
- 4:33Speaker 1: last year and obviously receded with the price drop. Um
- 4:37Speaker 1: it's been an interesting episode and journey with NASDAC themselves
- 4:42Speaker 1: because it's a controversial asset class. It has characteristics like
- 4:46Speaker 1: security of the assets themselves which don't exist in other
- 4:50Speaker 1: asset classes. I think you've seen NASDAC themselves now starting
- 4:54Speaker 1: to talk about security token exchanges as well going forward.
- 4:58Speaker 1: So you know, it was an embry on, it an
- 5:00Speaker 1: early adoption and it got a lot of traction and
- 5:03Speaker 1: I think it's going to be the first of not
- 5:06Speaker 1: only trackers in other markets and other jurisdictions on bitcoin
- 5:11Speaker 1: and other cryptos, but I think it will be that
- 5:14Speaker 1: it will prove to be the precursor to the larger exchanges.
- 5:17Speaker 1: Actually looking at security token markets themselves, So how does
- 5:21Speaker 1: blockchain fit into these sort of securities token markets because
- 5:26Speaker 1: it just listening to it, it sounds like it's a
- 5:28Speaker 1: way to create a token that is outside of the
- 5:32Speaker 1: public equity regulatory structure. But how does blockchain fit into
- 5:36Speaker 1: It's not actually outside of the regulatary structure, it's outside
- 5:40Speaker 1: of the piping and infrastructure of the conventional marketplace. So, um,
- 5:47Speaker 1: when you look at how the Chicago merk or the
- 5:50Speaker 1: New York Stock Exchange work, there is a bunch of
- 5:53Speaker 1: electronic piping that goes around making the transfer and the
- 5:56Speaker 1: trading of these shares happen. Um, and that is a
- 5:59Speaker 1: con cerebral infrastructure. And there has been talk about deploying
- 6:03Speaker 1: distributed ledger technologies to these exchanges in order to get
- 6:07Speaker 1: the advantages of distributed ledger technology. What are the advantages?
- 6:12Speaker 1: They are real time settlement, low latency, transferability, portability, ext
- 6:19Speaker 1: central crisis for b andy melon right exactly. So, so
- 6:24Speaker 1: those are the advantages. But rather than re engineer the
- 6:28Speaker 1: CME so that they rip out all their old systems
- 6:30Speaker 1: and put in distributed ledger databases and so on, what
- 6:33Speaker 1: you do is you turn securities into cryptos, and you
- 6:36Speaker 1: turn them you trade them on crypto exchanges. So we're
- 6:39Speaker 1: seeing this with a bunch of companies out there. They're
- 6:41Speaker 1: taking as a certain an example before the regg D environment,
- 6:46Speaker 1: creating a security in a token. We will have an
- 6:48Speaker 1: ice in, but it will trade in a some sort
- 6:51Speaker 1: of walled garden that will look like a crypto exchange.
- 6:53Speaker 1: You've seen coin based do this um. The structure that
- 6:56Speaker 1: they're putting together is a register broker dealer, a registered
- 7:01Speaker 1: investment advisor in all fifty states, and an automated and
- 7:04Speaker 1: alternative trading system. Once you put those three things together,
- 7:07Speaker 1: plus the twelve and a half million customers, they have
- 7:10Speaker 1: their own stock market, and once they issue tokens on it.
- 7:13Speaker 1: This is a competitor's nicely and that step just quickly.
- 7:16Speaker 1: Should you mine or should you buy? If you're an
- 7:19Speaker 1: individual to learn about this marketplace, buy, okay, don't go
- 7:25Speaker 1: into the mining business. I think for coin Shares at least.
- 7:30Speaker 1: You know, we we we occupy multiple verticals in this
- 7:33Speaker 1: digital esset space. The one thing we don't do directly
- 7:36Speaker 1: is mining. It's a very complex calculation in order to
- 7:41Speaker 1: figure out the economics of mining. It is also something
- 7:44Speaker 1: of an arms race when it comes to the chips
- 7:46Speaker 1: and the technology that go with it, and we don't
- 7:48Speaker 1: really want to play in that space. Danny Masters a pleasure.
- 7:50Speaker 1: Thank you so much for coming in. We really appreciate it.
- 7:52Speaker 1: My pleasure, thank you, Thank you guys. Danny Masters is
- 7:55Speaker 1: a share a bit of coin Shares Group, which oversees
- 7:57Speaker 1: about a billion dollars or more than a billion dollars
- 7:59Speaker 1: of crypto. So it's from London, although he joins us
- 8:02Speaker 1: here in our eleven three oh studios, and of course
- 8:03Speaker 1: he is a former global head of Energy and Trading
- 8:05Speaker 1: at the predecessor of JP Morgan and then the JP
- 8:09Speaker 1: Morgan Unich him. Yesterday, news came out that Uber Technologies
- 8:16Speaker 1: is increasing the size of its debut bond offering since
- 8:20Speaker 1: there just is so much demand. They're going from one
- 8:22Speaker 1: and a half billion to two billion dollars of bonds.
- 8:26Speaker 1: Joining us now, Kathleen Gaffney co director of Diversified Fixed
- 8:29Speaker 1: Income and EAT Advance UH and GURU and all things
- 8:32Speaker 1: fixed income and credit. Kathleen, are you out there buying
- 8:36Speaker 1: these super bonds? We are not UH as as tantalizing
- 8:40Speaker 1: as eight percent is. Eight percent comes with a whole
- 8:44Speaker 1: lot of risk about the future. I tend to be
- 8:47Speaker 1: very cynical about new issue in general. The bankers have
- 8:50Speaker 1: a good sense of timing, which is not in the
- 8:53Speaker 1: favor of investors. Good sense of timing means knows when
- 8:57Speaker 1: they can get the perfect pricing for the issue you're
- 9:00Speaker 1: but probably the worst pricing for the investor. But what
- 9:04Speaker 1: does this tell you that there is so much demand
- 9:06Speaker 1: for this bond offering from a company that is burning
- 9:09Speaker 1: cash and UH and has a lot of sort of
- 9:12Speaker 1: hair around it. It's tough because there aren't a lot
- 9:19Speaker 1: of options. There isn't a lot of supply, and so
- 9:22Speaker 1: if you have to be invested in high yield and
- 9:25Speaker 1: those are the buyers high yield funds in general, you've
- 9:30Speaker 1: got to buy what's coming to market, and you can
- 9:34Speaker 1: make the case that it's good relative value. You're getting
- 9:38Speaker 1: paid quite a bit. But eight percent may not cover
- 9:43Speaker 1: the risks that we see down the road. If Uber
- 9:47Speaker 1: isn't able to execute perfectly, I don't know how many
- 9:51Speaker 1: new young companies have been able to pull off executing
- 9:55Speaker 1: things perfectly. Even at my old age, I'm not executing
- 9:59Speaker 1: things per I stop. I want to put a larger
- 10:05Speaker 1: question to you, which is that the total US debt
- 10:08Speaker 1: to GDP ratio is currently around three, and if you
- 10:15Speaker 1: include state local debt contingent liabilities, this goes above five. Oh. Yes,
- 10:24Speaker 1: adding global debt to GDP has surged. It's over seventy
- 10:30Speaker 1: trillion dollars was added to global debt total since two
- 10:34Speaker 1: thousand eight. Why would people be buying an asset that
- 10:39Speaker 1: has just swamped the market with supply. It isn't rational
- 10:47Speaker 1: in the long run, but in the short term, And
- 10:50Speaker 1: if you're only short term oriented, you can make that case.
- 10:55Speaker 1: That's the trouble that investors are going to get into
- 10:59Speaker 1: that if you only think about the short term, your
- 11:02Speaker 1: eight percent is going to be a lot lower in
- 11:06Speaker 1: terms of your real return down the road. Pay attention
- 11:10Speaker 1: to where rates are headed long term. It's eight percent,
- 11:14Speaker 1: you believe Do you believe that institution well could have
- 11:17Speaker 1: divided institutional investors? Do you believe they recognize the risks
- 11:23Speaker 1: or do they see that they can get out. I
- 11:26Speaker 1: think they think they can get out um. But I
- 11:29Speaker 1: also think they operate in a short term environment where
- 11:34Speaker 1: their incentives are to make it through this year. They're
- 11:40Speaker 1: not thinking about what do I ultimately want to be
- 11:43Speaker 1: able to deliver. We have come so far away from
- 11:47Speaker 1: what our jobs ultimately are to do uh that we
- 11:52Speaker 1: work in very narrow uh spaces. Well, but hold on
- 11:57Speaker 1: a second, because a lot of people have been sort
- 11:59Speaker 1: of for telling gloom and doom since given how low
- 12:04Speaker 1: rates were going and short term turned out to be
- 12:06Speaker 1: five years at least six years, so you know what
- 12:09Speaker 1: is short term, especially if people don't foresee a downturn.
- 12:12Speaker 1: That That is a very good point, and I think
- 12:15Speaker 1: it's part of what keeps people anchored um in the
- 12:18Speaker 1: old ways and not thinking about how differently the market
- 12:21Speaker 1: could be. The biggest signal has been the correlation between
- 12:26Speaker 1: stocks and bonds of late. We saw it in February
- 12:29Speaker 1: stock sold off, bonds were essentially flat when they should
- 12:33Speaker 1: have rallied. It happened again in the last few weeks
- 12:36Speaker 1: when we saw the equity vall pick up significantly, but
- 12:40Speaker 1: treasury vall and and in fact credit fall picked up
- 12:44Speaker 1: very little. So it's not the income. The carry isn't
- 12:49Speaker 1: serving the role that it did, and that anchor to windward,
- 12:52Speaker 1: that flight to quality is not working the way that
- 12:54Speaker 1: it did. So what's your best bet right now, given
- 12:56Speaker 1: the changing environment, It is to look to look abroad,
- 13:02Speaker 1: to look away from the US, to look at where
- 13:05Speaker 1: there's real growth and positive fundamentals and positive economic policy.
- 13:11Speaker 1: So emerging markets. I continue to harp on that, but
- 13:15Speaker 1: I think that's where you're seeing inflation coming down, reforms
- 13:19Speaker 1: being put in place. It's not widespread. There are still
- 13:24Speaker 1: countries that are struggling to become more mainstream, but there
- 13:28Speaker 1: are areas of the world, particularly Latin America, that look attractive.
- 13:33Speaker 1: And I think Asia down the road because of the
- 13:37Speaker 1: um differences, the long term tension that is increasing between
- 13:42Speaker 1: the US and China, that is going to have some
- 13:45Speaker 1: significant implications for countries in Asia that aren't China that
- 13:52Speaker 1: will benefit from our need to keep our tech capabilities
- 13:58Speaker 1: close to home and China racing for made so lots
- 14:04Speaker 1: of long term implications that favor emerging markets. We've got
- 14:09Speaker 1: to leave it there, but we'd love to have you
- 14:10Speaker 1: back and spend more time. Thank you very much for
- 14:13Speaker 1: being here. Thanks Pam Kathen Gaffney, co director of Diversified
- 14:18Speaker 1: Fixed Income at Eaton Vance on the world's fixed income markets. Well,
- 14:27Speaker 1: Canada is the second country in the world to legalize
- 14:31Speaker 1: recreational marijuana and just after Uruguay. And here to tell
- 14:36Speaker 1: us about perhaps some of the beneficiaries is on AA Grana,
- 14:40Speaker 1: our senior software and I T Services analyst for Bloomberg
- 14:45Speaker 1: Intelligence on a rag the company Shopify connect Shopify with
- 14:51Speaker 1: the legalization of recreational pot Hi, Pim, isn't it interesting
- 14:57Speaker 1: that IBM st and we're talking cannabis. But you know,
- 15:02Speaker 1: you look at um Shopify, which provides software and an
- 15:07Speaker 1: e commerce platform for companies to sell whatever they want
- 15:10Speaker 1: to sell. UM it's a Canadian domicile the company, so
- 15:13Speaker 1: it was very natural for I believe the Canadian government
- 15:16Speaker 1: to go out and you know, use them as one
- 15:19Speaker 1: of the vendors. And given that their software is cloud based,
- 15:23Speaker 1: and some of the requirements are that you have to
- 15:26Speaker 1: make sure that you know, you track the entire supply
- 15:29Speaker 1: chain of cannabis from you know, the seed to supply
- 15:33Speaker 1: and also you want to know to make sure that
- 15:36Speaker 1: you have you know, enough data encryption and privacy regulations
- 15:40Speaker 1: in place so that you know that the customer data
- 15:43Speaker 1: is not leaked. So because of those two reasons, I think,
- 15:46Speaker 1: you know, Shopify was the natural choice. All right, let's
- 15:49Speaker 1: if Tom Keene were speaking, let's rub up the script,
- 15:51Speaker 1: because you say that IBM you point out that it's
- 15:54Speaker 1: having its biggest one day to clients, and this comes
- 15:57Speaker 1: of course off their disappointing earnings a sort of point
- 16:00Speaker 1: to some issues with their cloud computing and artificial intelligence units.
- 16:05Speaker 1: Is this a huge deal or is this an overreaction
- 16:07Speaker 1: by markets? Oh well, we wrote about this even before
- 16:10Speaker 1: learnings that, you know, the last push that they got
- 16:13Speaker 1: from some kind of you know, you would say glimmers
- 16:15Speaker 1: of hope was through their systems division, which is a
- 16:17Speaker 1: mainframe refresh they get about two to three years. But
- 16:21Speaker 1: if you peel that off, you know they're they're petting
- 16:24Speaker 1: the entire company on Watson, an artificial intelligence and a
- 16:27Speaker 1: large portion of those products are in a division called
- 16:31Speaker 1: Cognitive Solutions. And I mean that you know, there was
- 16:34Speaker 1: down five in constant currency. That's a that's a massive
- 16:38Speaker 1: drop in our you and I think that's what striving
- 16:40Speaker 1: this particular UM, you know, sell off and we need
- 16:43Speaker 1: to understand whether they can recover from this or not.
- 16:45Speaker 1: So do you think that they can. It's going to
- 16:48Speaker 1: be tough, especially given that you know the market is
- 16:51Speaker 1: getting very competitive and there are enough you know, cloud
- 16:54Speaker 1: based software companies out there. Amazon selling it's artificial intelligence tools,
- 16:59Speaker 1: enterprise art visual intelligence tools, Microsoft is selling it, Google
- 17:02Speaker 1: is selling it UM. I mean theeed IBM people have
- 17:05Speaker 1: to do something drastic and something you know completely, I
- 17:09Speaker 1: would say, um urgently. Otherwise, you know, people not gonna
- 17:13Speaker 1: like sales, you know, being negative let's say in the
- 17:16Speaker 1: next couple of years. That's not going to go well
- 17:18Speaker 1: with them on the rug. How did IBM miss this?
- 17:24Speaker 1: It's tough him as I've said it for the last
- 17:27Speaker 1: several years. I mean, this is a company which has
- 17:29Speaker 1: a fair amount of legacy I T services business and UM.
- 17:34Speaker 1: Sooner or later, a large portion of data centers are
- 17:37Speaker 1: being closed down, People are moving workloads to the cloud.
- 17:40Speaker 1: People are actually sometimes renting somebody else's data. No, I
- 17:43Speaker 1: know all this, but how did IBM miss this trend? Oh?
- 17:49Speaker 1: You mean to say from a large I would have
- 17:51Speaker 1: to go back to Mr Sam Paulisono and ask him
- 17:53Speaker 1: this thing. This goes way beyond you know, even earlier
- 17:56Speaker 1: than gineer Maries days, because um, this this move, it
- 18:00Speaker 1: has been going on for over ten years, and IBM,
- 18:03Speaker 1: I think, you know, was was a lagged at that point.
- 18:06Speaker 1: So I'm just looking right now. So IBM is considered
- 18:08Speaker 1: one of the big giants, the stalwarts of the Czech universe.
- 18:12Speaker 1: In the United States, hasn't a rating, has a whole
- 18:15Speaker 1: bunch of debt. Do you see this sort of miss
- 18:18Speaker 1: and they're missing of the trend to be a permanent
- 18:21Speaker 1: blemish that going forward they cannot recover from, will end
- 18:24Speaker 1: up degrading their credit rating and create a downward spiral
- 18:28Speaker 1: for them. So I'm not sure about the credit rating
- 18:31Speaker 1: part of it, because at the end of the day,
- 18:32Speaker 1: you know, one division was down five the other one
- 18:35Speaker 1: was too. You know, if you're going to be looking
- 18:37Speaker 1: at zero two percent growth, you mean you're gonna probably
- 18:39Speaker 1: make the same amount of money next year to the
- 18:41Speaker 1: year after. But if you're a tech company, you know
- 18:44Speaker 1: mrs want to see growth at least equity investors do.
- 18:47Speaker 1: So from that point of view, I think the biggest
- 18:49Speaker 1: question is can they show positive growth over the next
- 18:52Speaker 1: couple of years, and yesterday's results puts a big question
- 18:55Speaker 1: mark to it because you know, as I said, one
- 18:57Speaker 1: of the most promising divisions, that's the one where the photos. Yeah,
- 19:01Speaker 1: Annora Grana, thank you so much for being with us.
- 19:03Speaker 1: Annora Grana, Senior analyst of Software and I T Services
- 19:06Speaker 1: at Bloomberg Intelligence. And IBM does have more than forty
- 19:10Speaker 1: one billion dollars of debt um, which you know isn't
- 19:14Speaker 1: massive compared to their cap market cap compared to say,
- 19:17Speaker 1: I don't know a Netflix out there or one of
- 19:19Speaker 1: the others, but definitely interesting and shares are plunging today
- 19:22Speaker 1: after their disappointing earnings last night. Our guest is Ben Emmons.
- 19:28Speaker 1: He is the chief economist and head of Credit Portfolio
- 19:31Speaker 1: Management and Intellectist Partners. He is also a contributor to
- 19:35Speaker 1: Bloomberg Opinion. He's based in Los Angeles. Ben, thank you
- 19:39Speaker 1: very much for being with us. Talk if you can
- 19:42Speaker 1: about the independence of the Federal Reserve and how many
- 19:45Speaker 1: interest rate increases you see in twenty nineteen after the
- 19:51Speaker 1: mid term elections. Good morning, Bim, and thanks very much
- 19:55Speaker 1: for having me. Um. Well, the defend independence is very much.
- 19:58Speaker 1: Dare I think that that the v in comments by
- 20:00Speaker 1: bus Stage or even Kaplan have indicated clearly that you know,
- 20:03Speaker 1: we're staying the course here. Paul will not come out
- 20:06Speaker 1: himselves maybe saying this, but clearly they're going to stay
- 20:09Speaker 1: the course. Um. And that's really cement about his labor
- 20:12Speaker 1: market strength, like for example, Jolt State yesterday shows that
- 20:15Speaker 1: that you know, they can keep that gradual rate hike
- 20:17Speaker 1: patients intact, which I think we will see another three
- 20:21Speaker 1: rate hikes into the middle of twenty nineteen, which will
- 20:24Speaker 1: bring us closer to that three number on the fat
- 20:28Speaker 1: fronds rate, which is sort of the long term neutral rate.
- 20:30Speaker 1: I think that's where they're heading. It does seem like
- 20:33Speaker 1: that's what is being priced into the market. But I'd
- 20:36Speaker 1: love to get your opinion. Just on something that happened
- 20:39Speaker 1: yesterday to not a lot of fanfare. There was the
- 20:42Speaker 1: first time ever that the Treasury Department sold eight week
- 20:45Speaker 1: treasury bills two month treasury bills. And I don't know
- 20:49Speaker 1: if this is wrong to say, but it was not
- 20:51Speaker 1: a good auction and I've seen sort of some distortions
- 20:55Speaker 1: in the front end of the treasury market. In a
- 20:57Speaker 1: response with three month treasury yield climbing at a disproportionate rate.
- 21:02Speaker 1: Do you think this was a mistake at the Treasury
- 21:03Speaker 1: Department's part. So it's an interesting dynamic that as you're highlighting, Lisa,
- 21:09Speaker 1: because you know, this is like a really short term
- 21:11Speaker 1: gap measure if you think about it, right, you financed
- 21:13Speaker 1: the deficit really short term, and not all of it
- 21:16Speaker 1: of course, but like it's one of those measures and
- 21:19Speaker 1: two months, right, which binks is you know, basically at
- 21:21Speaker 1: the end of the year. So you know, I think
- 21:24Speaker 1: what the market is trying to indicate it is like
- 21:26Speaker 1: all this sort of supply that then needs to be
- 21:28Speaker 1: rolled over again. It is what I think causes some
- 21:31Speaker 1: of that distortion. The other part I think is happening
- 21:34Speaker 1: is that we're going again towards this year and effect
- 21:37Speaker 1: on bank balance sheets, right, that that tends to be
- 21:39Speaker 1: the case when they withdraw some of the balance sheet
- 21:41Speaker 1: to fund other people's balunce sheets, And therefore I think
- 21:45Speaker 1: you get some distortion and money market rates to which
- 21:48Speaker 1: includes treasury bills. Why maybe some of his bidding wasn't
- 21:51Speaker 1: that strong in the in the treasury bill market. That
- 21:54Speaker 1: being said, though, if you think about treasury bills is
- 21:56Speaker 1: and safe assets. It's still very much in demand, right,
- 21:59Speaker 1: So I don't think that the distortionself isn't signal that
- 22:03Speaker 1: the demand for safe as is a necessarily change. But
- 22:06Speaker 1: let's go overseas if we can for just a moment.
- 22:09Speaker 1: I want to get your thoughts on what is happening
- 22:10Speaker 1: in Italy and the European Union and the Italian government's budget. Yeah,
- 22:16Speaker 1: so you know, the headlinesing and today are just very
- 22:19Speaker 1: European bim if you think about that, you have the
- 22:23Speaker 1: European Commission that wants Italy to stick with the rules,
- 22:26Speaker 1: and of course Italy proposes a budget that's you know,
- 22:29Speaker 1: not sticking with the rules. And you see Salvini just
- 22:31Speaker 1: out now saying let us just do the work. And
- 22:34Speaker 1: then you have the entaser, you know, chairman coming out like, wow,
- 22:38Speaker 1: we don't know, we're going to support and the idea
- 22:40Speaker 1: of rules and we're gonna stick with that. So you
- 22:41Speaker 1: have this noise, right, and what it does is in
- 22:45Speaker 1: particularly European bomb markets, gives this perception that there will
- 22:49Speaker 1: be a standoff idea that just like Shablow with treesa
- 22:53Speaker 1: trip us in the past and Greece, that that creates
- 22:56Speaker 1: and widening of spreads, just uncertainty gets priced in there.
- 22:59Speaker 1: Ultimately Italy will likely go its way and does this
- 23:02Speaker 1: budget of two point four percent, and then there's a
- 23:05Speaker 1: question about how they're going to moderate it over the
- 23:07Speaker 1: over the time that comes after that in terms of
- 23:10Speaker 1: controlling the deficit, because clearly Italian rates have risen much
- 23:14Speaker 1: higher with this view that that death load is becoming
- 23:16Speaker 1: more problematic. From here, how much further do you expect
- 23:20Speaker 1: the Italian yields to rise though? I mean, are we
- 23:22Speaker 1: just sort of at the beginning or middle end of
- 23:24Speaker 1: the widening. So if you think about what happened in
- 23:27Speaker 1: the in the death crisis a number of years ago,
- 23:30Speaker 1: when we were at seven percent in the Italian yields,
- 23:32Speaker 1: that was really pricing Italy essentially being out of the Eurozone,
- 23:36Speaker 1: out of the monetary Union. And so I don't think
- 23:38Speaker 1: we'll go to death directions as yet. This three and
- 23:41Speaker 1: a half percent seems to me more like what markets
- 23:43Speaker 1: are indicating that in order to run the deficits like
- 23:47Speaker 1: like two point four percent and the debt GDP rates
- 23:50Speaker 1: you're well over hunters in order to stabilize the death
- 23:53Speaker 1: GDP ratio, that needs to be higher risk beaming right
- 23:56Speaker 1: in order to to compensate for that. I think this
- 23:58Speaker 1: is why three and a half percent the ten years
- 24:00Speaker 1: sort of reflecting, and we could go up a little
- 24:03Speaker 1: bit more from here, because if this uncertainty remains about,
- 24:07Speaker 1: you know, approving this budget, markets will price and uncertainty
- 24:10Speaker 1: into the higher yields. So, since we're in Europe and
- 24:13Speaker 1: we're overseas, I want to get your thoughts on Turkey,
- 24:16Speaker 1: which has been dealing with a currency crisis and then decides,
- 24:19Speaker 1: well it's ebbed a little bit. We've released that pastor uh,
- 24:22Speaker 1: we're gonna now sell dollar bonds two billion dollars of them.
- 24:25Speaker 1: Would you be a buyer of Turkish dollar bonds right now? So?
- 24:29Speaker 1: I think that that greatly depends upon the stability of
- 24:31Speaker 1: the Turkish layer itself. That the central bank has responded,
- 24:35Speaker 1: and there's been some you know, if you think about
- 24:38Speaker 1: the debate about central bank independence, which clearly was at
- 24:41Speaker 1: stake it in Turkey, given the relationship with Oregon and
- 24:43Speaker 1: the central bank, I would be very cautious about dollar
- 24:47Speaker 1: bonds as yet for Turkey because I'm not so sure
- 24:49Speaker 1: if the central bank will follow on with more rate
- 24:52Speaker 1: high measures to control the inflation, which is really spiring
- 24:55Speaker 1: right now, and so the Turkish layer has been temporarily
- 24:58Speaker 1: I think stabilized that stage very weak right. It hasn't
- 25:01Speaker 1: really rallied any further from here, So I would not
- 25:05Speaker 1: be necessarily and investor in dollar bones in Turkey at
- 25:07Speaker 1: there's a moment. Ben Emmon's, thank you so much for
- 25:09Speaker 1: being with us. Van Emmon's is chief economist and head
- 25:12Speaker 1: of a credit portfolio management and Intellectus Partners LLC in
- 25:16Speaker 1: Los Angeles. He's also a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion. Thanks
- 25:21Speaker 1: for listening to the Bloomberg P and L podcast. You
- 25:23Speaker 1: can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
- 25:27Speaker 1: or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm pim Fox. I'm
- 25:31Speaker 1: on Twitter at pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at Lisa Abramo.
- 25:35Speaker 1: It's one before the podcast. You can always catch us
- 25:38Speaker 1: worldwide on Bloomberg Radio.