Latest / Merryn Talks Money / Is the Stock Market Sending a Warning?

Transcript

Is the Stock Market Sending a Warning? · Merryn Talks Money

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Welcome to the Merrin
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Talks Money Market Wrap, where we talk about the biggest
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: moves in markets this week and what is driving them.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I'm Merrin Somerset-Webb, UK Money Editor-at-Large.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: And I'm John Stavik, Senior Reporter at Bloomberg and author
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: of the Money Distilled Newsletter.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Okay, John, there's a lot going on. There's always a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: lot going on these days. But listen, one of the
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: things that I want to talk about, and I'm not
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: sure that you agree with me that this is a
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: big deal, but I do think it is a big deal,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: is about breadth in the market. So quite a few
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: people have written about this week, including our very own
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: John Authors, who points out that on Tuesday, NASDAQ went
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: up quite a lot, right? But of that rise, more
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: than half of the rise was down to four companies,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: all four chip-making companies, basically, Micron, SanDisk, Microsoft, Micro, devices,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and video. So everything else is kind of basically irrelevant
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: to this huge concentration. Now, we know that isn't new, right?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: But it just seems to be getting more and more
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: intense that when the market moves, it's just being dragged
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: along by a couple of big companies and everything else
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: is out there. knocking around at neutral or going down
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a little bit or really just not doing very much.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: And that's not normal. You know, it doesn't happen that often.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: He looks at it and he says that in terms
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: of this kind of really extended period of outperformance by
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: a couple of big companies, you've got to go back
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: to the late 1990s to see. We all know what
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: happened then, right? The narrowing of performance. And the more
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: you look at it, the worse it gets. And he actually,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: John points out a tweet that I was looking at
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the other day, which first made me think, oh, I'm
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: a bit worried about this. which was from one of
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the traders on X. And so there are two days
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: in history like today when the S & P 500
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: rallies at least 1% to as in 1% of a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: new high and more of its stocks fell to new
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: lows than highs July 23rd, 1929 and December 21st, 1999.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So both before really, really, really epic, epic market fails, right? Now,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: as John says, and I agree, it's a very small
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: sample sale, doesn't mean anything, It doesn't feel good, does it?
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Having the market led by companies like this and people
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: constantly think, oh, it's a new high, it's a new high,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: it's a new high. Everything's fine, but underneath everything kind
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: of isn't.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Fundamentally, I agree. And obviously, I agree that the market
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: is very, very concentrated. It's very pricey. And any measure
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: that you pick really will show that the S &
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: P is expensive and the Nasdaq's expensive. So I actually
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: don't disagree at all with the fundamental Well, one of
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: the issues we practice is that people talk about it
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: a lot and quite often it then just goes on
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: to widen out. So whenever you get down to talking
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: about these things, which are almost kind of timing devices,
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: and that's all because that's sort of the question like,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: does it actually tell us that in three months time
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: the market's going to start crashing or whatever? I mean,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: to be fair, you know, I've already got a marker,
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: I've I've produced a little graph in my Bloomberg terminal
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: to remind me that The Economist had NVIDIA on the
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: cover a couple of weeks ago. And so I've just
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: got a wee note of that with NVIDIA share price
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: because that's my kind of chosen timing indicator.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Glass houses, John, glass houses. Oh, no, no, no.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: This is not a criticism. It's because The Economist is
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: so widely read and so widely respected that it works.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: It's not because it's a bad title. It's because everyone
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: reads it. So, yeah, I'm sort of like on crash
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: alert for about at least six months from the publication date,
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: which was about September earlier this month. So, yeah, this
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: kind of adds to that feeling. It's just, I don't know,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: I've heard breadth is narrow a lot.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, I'll give you that. But when breadth is narrow
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and when there are so many things to worry about
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: with the companies that are leading it.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: Right, and you've written about this this week yourself, right?
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: I've written about it this week, yes.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: And what did you say this week? Is this a
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: new worry, John, or are you just piling on top
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: of our old worries about too much capex and not
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: enough revenue?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: It's basically just the old worries, too much capex, not
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: enough revenue. Chris Claudia over at Capital Gearing Asset Management
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: wrote a white paper basically showing what a wild level
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: of spending is going into this and the correspondingly wild
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: level of revenue that will have to come from it
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: if it's actually to make a reasonable return on capital.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: And obviously Chris's view is that, well, that's not likely
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: to materialise and so at some point we're going to
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: get a reality check. Although to be fair, he's saying
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: he wouldn't feel confident predicting a reversal inside the next
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: 12 months. Whereas I must admit, I'd be surprised if
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: we don't get some sort of reaction in the next
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: 12 months because apart from anything else, the anthropic IPO
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: is meant to be coming any time soon. So that's
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: a kind of natural point for people to start thinking about.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Is this going to work or not?
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the thing that I keep seeing is the failure
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: of data centers to be completed. So we talk about
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: all these CapEx being thrown at it and doing data
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: centers going up all over the place, but they're kind
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: of not. So there's an awful lot of chips sitting
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: around in boxes. I saw one thing that was in
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: various suggestions about what percentage of the chips that people
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: have been buying are not actually being activated. They're just
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: sitting around waiting for the data center they're supposed to
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: be going in to be built, and they're not being
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: built at the speed that was previously expected. You've got
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: all the protests against them. You've got the problem with
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the electricity hookups. You've got problems with the heat, problems
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: with the water, problems with all sorts of things. That
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: means that while the money is being technically spent... it's
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: not necessarily clear that the infrastructure is being built at
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: the speed that's supposed to be. And if I was
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: going to worry about something beyond Armageddon and that kind
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: of thing, that's what I would worry about. The data
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: center's not going up. I mean, where I live in Scotland,
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: every time anyone talks about a data center, the protesters
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: come straight out. And I see that's the case across
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: a lot of the US. And one of the things
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I was looking at today is the amount of heat
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: these things generate. So we've all talked about the cooling
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: systems and that kind of thing, but And there's now
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: an idea that if you live near a giant data center,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you're just going to get hot.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Maybe people shouldn't be objecting to it so much in Scotland.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: I don't think that's the Scottish issue. This is more
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: a Texas issue.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point because,
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: you know, any other time we talk about infrastructure, if
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: it's nuclear or if it's rail, the first thing that
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: comes to anyone's mind is, well, is this even going
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: to get built? Whereas with the kind of hyperscaler stuff,
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: it's like they click their fingers and we imagine that
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: it just is magic out of thin air. And yeah,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: you're absolutely right. The chances of any infrastructure project getting
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: built on time and to schedule are relatively low. If
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: you take the average, I think, across most infrastructure projects.
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: So it's slightly weird how we seem to have this
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: slight blind spot about this kind of aspect of the
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: AI build out.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think that it is interesting that a
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: lot of people still forget that, well, previous things, I mean,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: take the internet bubble. That wasn't hardware to the same
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: extent this is. AI is very, very physical, right? Everything
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: about it is physical. And we think of it as
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: being digital, but it's simply not. So if you want
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: to see what's going to happen next, you probably need
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: to stop paying attention to the digital side and really
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: look at the physical side.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: See, this is interesting, though, because what would that actually mean?
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: On the investment side, if you get delayed capacity, but
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: then you've still got the capacity, presumably that wouldn't be
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: bad for the hyperscalers because they're the ones who are
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: benefiting from any actual shortage in data center capacity because
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: they're the ones that kind of own it and rent
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: it out.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Sure, but a lot of their forecasts are based on
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: having more data center capacity.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Higher-priced data center rentals may be okay, but we're moving
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: outside our area of core competence here, John.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Well, no, because I'm just thinking it's got to be
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: good for someone if there's a shortage somewhere. So I'm
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: assuming it just jacks up the rents or something like that.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: But yes, yes, we'll need to go away and do
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: some digging into that one for you.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's think about that one. Let's think about that one.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: Of course, I suppose the other thing to point out
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: is that chips don't last that long. I mean, as
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: we were saying in the show in Edinburgh, there was
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: a lot of talk about how previously when you've looked
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: at infrastructure build out and you've gone, oh, well, you know,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the thing crashes, but we still got the infrastructure. And
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Alec Cutler pointed out that that simply isn't the case
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: with data centers because you might still have the building,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: but the chips inside are outdated very quickly. Yeah. So
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: you just have a big building. Yes.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: A big empty shed full of obsolete chips. Okay.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: So let's move on to worrying about debt, shall we? Obviously,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: we can worry about the private debt, there's all that,
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: but let's look at public debt. Obviously, we had a
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: horrible borrowing numbers from the UK this week. We borrowed
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: much more than we OBR thought we were going to.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: We're spending an absolute fortune on debt interest. It's going
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: to go up to about 4% of GDP. 4% of GDP, John.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: It's ridiculous over the next year or so. It's insane.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking in the 2010s, it was more like 2%.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And I know this is not all because we're spending more.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: It's because rates are going up.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter where
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: the rise in spending is coming from and where the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: rise in borrowing is coming from. It's still horrible. And
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: it's still the responsibility of the government to do something
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: about it where they are demonstrably not.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: It's depressing, but entirely expected. We're getting all the same
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: sort of kite flying now as we did before the
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: last couple of budgets. Are they going to do this
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: with capital gains tax? But no one's talking about cutting spending.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: And actually, the other thing that I have to say
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: is that the other parties, certainly the Lib Dems and Reform,
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: they have both said that they want to raise the
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: personal allowance to.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: £ 15, 000.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: And you're kind of like, have any of you looked
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: at the debt to GDP figures recently? Do you need
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: to get a grip on this? You can turn around
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: and say that, I mean, I'm all for lower taxes,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: but A, our tax base is too heavily concentrated on
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: people on high incomes and there's nowhere near enough coming
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: out of actually the lower income side of things. Partly
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: because we all need to be in it together, but
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: also partly because the only way to actually make up
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: the kind of figures we need is to take a
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: bit of money from everybody. And so the idea that
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: they're going to then do these effective giveaways... And then
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: they're going to pay for them with things that they
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: haven't actually costed out. So for the Lib Dems, it's
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: a magical EU deal that won't happen. And for reform,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: it's spending cuts that they still need to spell out.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: So I think that this kind of like, basically, it
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: feels as if we're in a run up to an
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: election and everyone's kind of like bidding for voters rather
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: than taking the situation seriously.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: I would like to think the bond market would have
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: something to say about it. But for now, it seems
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: to just be drifting along, responding to the oil price
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: more than anything else.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Drifting along at quite a high level. Remember, by the way, John,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: when you say the Lib Dems want to raise the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: personal allowance, this is already all their fault. This was
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a Nick Clegg policy. It was a Nick Clegg policy
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: to keep raising the personal allowance because he had this
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: idea that people shouldn't pay tax, that people shouldn't participate.
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: And I remember having these arguments with him about this thing.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: But surely, democracy requires participation, even if it's very small participation.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: As you say, we've got to be in it together.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: And that's how you keep a tax base steady and stable,
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: is by requiring everyone to at least in small part,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: participate in it. The more people you take out of it,
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: the less stable the whole thing becomes.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: You always had a more sensible view on that than
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: I did because whenever I was young and idealistic and stupid,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: I thought, well, what's the point in taking money away
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: from people if you're just going to give it back
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: to them in benefits? But yes, as I've grown older
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: and less idealistic and hopefully slightly less stupid, I've realized, well, yeah,
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: because you take a bit away from people and they realize, oh,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: hold on, somebody's got to pay for this stuff.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Like every single young person when they see
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: their first paycheck.
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: You what?
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Babe, what's that? That's your tax, honey. Anyway, I'm not
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: sure you've got all these things that have happened to you, John.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I think you've just been listening to me for 20
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: years now, you know? Finally getting there.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: No wiser, just, with better influences. Is this what you're saying?
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: Maybe.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Maybe. Anyway, you were worried in particular about France this week, right?
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, not worried. I was sort of like gazing
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: with curiosity across the channel.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Fair enough.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean, it is interesting because France, obviously,
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: in many ways, actually, France is in a worse state
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: than the UK. And probably the two main things that
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: have kept its yields lower than Britain's is because inflation's
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: lower in the Eurozone. And also France is underwritten by
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: the German taxpayer via the European Central Bank in a
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: way that Britain isn't. But yeah, the price for France
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: borrowing over 10 years has blown out to more than
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: a percentage point over the cost for Germany. So the
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: spread has got a bit bigger. And this is the
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: first time the spread has been above 1% for, I think,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: since 2012. And it's just a sign that markets are
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: starting to actually get genuinely concerned about France because obviously
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: there's a big election next year. None of the parties
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: there are keen to cut spending either. And the fact
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: that the far left guy is saying, why don't we
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: just burn all the debt that the Bank of France holds? So,
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: which is equivalent to the Bank of England saying, see
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: all these bonds we've been selling in QT, we're just
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: going to set fire to them and we're not going
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: to worry about them.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of down with that, to be honest. It's
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: just moving deck chairs around, right?
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: No, it's not moving deck chairs around if you actually
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: just destroy the debt, because that's just, that's basically monetization.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: And also on top of that, that would blow up
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: the euro.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: It's coming anyway.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: So we might as well just dive in.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: The great global devaluation, it's on the way. So we
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: might as well just burn everything.
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: You've got to do it more subtly than that.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't think I'm up for the job of
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: these podcasts anymore. Turning into a nihilist as we look
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: at government debt levels.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: You should go and stand for election. Actually, if I
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: think about it, stand for election in your local constituency,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: never mind France, and you'd probably get a few votes
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: for that.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: I don't know, don't make me any friends. Look, guess what?
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Someone pointed out to me today that if you look
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: at how much UK government debt is, it's roughly the
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: same as the total revenues of the Mag7. Our GDP
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: and our debt, which are basically the same thing, are
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: also roughly the same as the revenues of the Mag7.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: It is so humiliating.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: It is. It is. And I can see why people
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: sit there and say tax the billionaires, but none of
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: those billionaires actually live in this country.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: No, sorry, that doesn't help us anyway. The last thing
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I wanted to point out this week is that, okay,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: so we're worried about the markets. We're worried about AI.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: We're worried about breadth. I am, you're not. We're worried
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: about public debt. We're worried about global devaluations. We're worried
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: about fiat currencies. And at the same time, you saw
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: the numbers out from the World Gold Council this week
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: pointing out that China is back in the market big time,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: spent 158 billion on gold so far this year. which
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: is way more than last year. And they're also producing
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: quite a lot of gold themselves, nearly 400 tons this year.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And they're cutting back their holdings of U.S. treasuries. Just signals.
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: These are just signals.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think the China thing is important.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: I was talking to somebody yesterday and just pointing out
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: that obviously gold used to have a genuine place in
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: the kind of global monetary system. And if you did
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: want to internationalize the yuan, then a very obvious way
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: to present it is being a parallel coin of the
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: US dollar system for countries that would rather run on
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Linux rather than Windows, then having a yuan backed by
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: gold is actually a pretty good way to do it
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: and make it, if you like, a feasible alternative to
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: the dollar.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Excellent. Thank you, John. There's no better way to finish
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: this podcast than with a minor conspiracy theory.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: LAUGHTER Thanks for listening to this week's Merrin Talks Money
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Markets Wrap.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: If you like our show, rate, review, and subscribe wherever
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. Also, be sure to follow me
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: and John on X at MerrinSW and John underscore stuff X.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Sam Asadi and Moses Ander.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Questions or comments in this show and all our shows
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: are always welcome. Our show email is MerrinMoney at Bloomberg.net.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: And it's not a minor conspiracy theory, but by the way,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: it's entirely possible.