TRIGGERnometry - Can We Spend Our Way Out of Populism？ - Mark Blyth

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster.

00:00:08.240 I'm Constantine Kissin.

00:00:09.420 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.

00:00:14.940 Our brilliant guest today is a political economist at Brown University in America,

00:00:18.880 and a returning guest to Trigonometry, Mark Blythe. Welcome back.

00:00:22.700 It's lovely to be back. It's also nice to be thought of as, what was that, fascinating?

00:00:26.280 Was that a fascinating guest?

00:00:27.780 Absolutely. Well, you were last time.

00:00:29.880 It's going to be fascinating.

00:00:31.100 You are, and we know that you will be again.

00:00:33.260 But last time, we had a brilliant conversation.

00:00:35.940 It was about a year ago.

00:00:37.720 And if you remember, we were talking about the fact

00:00:39.960 that one lockdown is probably affordable,

00:00:42.500 two or three are a lot more difficult.

00:00:44.640 How do you assess the year that we've had since?

00:00:48.420 Well, I don't know how many martinis

00:00:49.900 you've had involuntarily over the past year,

00:00:53.000 but I'd say my pandemic drinking reached Olympic levels

00:00:56.220 and had to be dialed back.

00:00:57.980 So that was the main personal cost.

00:00:59.880 um is that scottish levels mark well that was just getting up to scottish levels you know so

00:01:06.540 let's keep it real all right the serious point on this you know one of the funniest things that

00:01:11.460 happened is that we always read these events through our political biases right and this is

00:01:17.620 particularly true even of vaccines right you'd think putting anti hardcore anti-vaxxers to one

00:01:22.800 side you would think that would be something that would be kind of beyond politics whatever but it's

00:01:27.060 not right so the lockdowns of course become a classic example of this at the start of the

00:01:32.480 pandemic during the first wave there was a common meme that went around which i actually enjoyed and

00:01:37.760 shared in which was the following hey it turns out that if you're a big country run by a big 0.99

00:01:42.580 loud mouth male asshole you're not doing too well and if you're a small country run by a woman that 1.00

00:01:47.980 shuts up and just gets shit done you're doing pretty well isn't that funny and that kind of 1.00

00:01:53.140 worked for a while but then it got more complex and it turned out that some of those small 0.98

00:01:57.400 countries were just as screwed as everybody else and then some of the big ones kind of got a little

00:02:01.720 better at it uh i don't know if i did this after you we talked but um i did a couple of things

00:02:07.300 online and a spanish filmmaker approached me and put together a movie which you can look at on

00:02:12.100 youtube called the mustang and the volvo which basically describes the different behavior of the

00:02:16.660 american economy vis-a-vis the european economies and when you get right to the end of this one

00:02:22.040 another fascinating one came up which was now we've got the vaccines let's see what happens

00:02:26.500 so of course particularly in united states but you see this across western europe as well

00:02:30.620 there's the concern with getting the elderly the vulnerable minorities etc right but there's a

00:02:36.320 problem in doing so these are the people that usually don't trust the state want to hide from

00:02:41.400 the state and have every reason every now and again to actually quite rightly fear the state

00:02:46.080 they haven't had too many pleasant interactions with them so there was all this attention

00:02:50.000 particularly in the blue states in the u.s on like finding the most vulnerable in the minorities and

00:02:54.020 equity and all that sort of stuff and it meant we were absolutely stuffing it meanwhile down in 0.98

00:02:58.140 florida where they just didn't give a shit it was like let's open up a stadium and if you've got an 0.88

00:03:01.840 arm we'll just whack something into you and they started to do really well so i think what this 0.98

00:03:06.640 whole thing has shown is that it really upends and really exposes how anything can be read through

00:03:12.460 your own political biases right there's no truth about the pandemic apart from the one that we put

00:03:17.800 on it and that is a partisan game for better or worse and it's interesting that you say that

00:03:23.040 that literally everything has been politicized because that's what we see here in the uk

00:03:27.420 how has that affected politics do you think that was a significant fact on what happened

00:03:32.780 with trump and biden etc i think it was in the you know one way to think about biden and i don't

00:03:40.840 think this has changed is like everybody just needed two years of quiet right but it was just

00:03:45.840 like you enough of the tweet the tweet storm at two in the morning wondering if the missiles are

00:03:49.540 flying right so uncle joe was just like can we just have some calm time that would be nice right

00:03:54.500 and the way that he's handled this is very much along those lines you'll notice that uh for all

00:04:00.560 the attempt to politicize cancel culture on the wall etc right that you get with fox and the other

00:04:06.140 media here and you see also in the united kingdom uh joe doesn't play that game because you can beat

00:04:11.960 your activists into having those conversations because that's what your activists care about

00:04:15.620 but basically if you don't respond then it's a non-problem so what's interesting about biden is

00:04:21.160 he wants to talk about the things he wants to talk about and he refuses to talk about anything else

00:04:25.680 which is a very interesting kind of anti-political play because you can't really lever that into the

00:04:31.820 stuff that you want as opposition if he just won't talk about it so you can go on about the woke crew

00:04:37.500 the squad all that sort of stuff he's just got nothing to say about that so it just doesn't

00:04:41.460 really stick so he's got a very interesting way that that's played playing in a sense and we'll

00:04:46.380 see how long that can handle but you know but beneath it you just go back to the handling of

00:04:50.800 the pandemic you know you still have i think the latest poll was somewhere in the region of about

00:04:55.760 40 percent republicans said that they're definitely not getting it and i mean a partisan divide on

00:05:01.320 vaccines just seems crazy if you think about it but there it is and you still have uh over 50

00:05:06.360 percent of republicans accepting the line that the election was stolen i mean put that in the

00:05:11.040 British context for a minute imagine if the conservative party just said when Labour won

00:05:15.700 no it was stolen and everybody went out and had a look at it and you appointed your commission and

00:05:20.460 you had to look through all the votes and you went no actually it was totally fine they went nope

00:05:23.200 stolen that's it it's just stolen right you're poisoning the well that's permanent political

00:05:28.380 politicization and it's deeply undermining American democracy so on the one hand you've

00:05:34.220 got Biden who's playing a good game of like I'm not going to play that politics but on the other 0.99

00:05:38.480 hand, you have an opposition party, which effectively has said, fuck democracy. And that's 0.99

00:05:42.800 not cool. It's not. On the other hand, I know a lot of people on the right who would make the,

00:05:48.540 in my opinion, very legitimate counter argument, which is when Donald Trump got elected, we got

00:05:53.140 Russiagate, which turns out to be a complete nonsense. No, completely. No, no, I totally buy 0.98

00:05:58.560 that. But there's a difference between that and basically saying an election that was fine

00:06:02.500 was stolen. That's actually qualitatively different. So I just think this is like,

00:06:07.880 I think the United States is very much at an inflection point.

00:06:11.100 Basically, what Biden is trying to do is chuck enough money at the problem that populism

00:06:14.900 is abated.

00:06:15.960 I'm not sure that's going to work.

00:06:17.580 And we could talk about why.

00:06:18.740 And we could bring that to Britain and Hartlepool, wherever you want to go.

00:06:21.640 Well, let's talk about the economy, Mark.

00:06:23.320 Let's talk about the economy, because that's really the thing that is fascinating to me

00:06:27.800 in terms of what has happened.

00:06:30.200 So we've obviously, in the UK, we've paid everybody not to work for God knows how long

00:06:35.380 now.

00:06:35.600 That didn't quite happen in America.

00:06:37.880 But nonetheless, this is obviously costing everything that's happening.

00:06:41.720 It's costing people and governments and nations a huge amount of money.

00:06:46.100 Where are we economically around the West?

00:06:50.100 So the United States is, I mean, so here's the thing.

00:06:53.360 Yes, everybody's got more debt than when they started,

00:06:56.140 but interest rates are at a 700-year low, right?

00:06:59.660 And what matters is the maturity of your debt.

00:07:01.800 This is something you never, ever hear in the media.

00:07:04.140 What matters is how much debt do you have coming up at a certain point

00:07:07.580 and how long do you need how much more do you need to issue to effectively keep that stable

00:07:11.700 and what's the interest rate you're going to get that so there's a little equation solvency equation

00:07:16.000 you can use to figure this stuff out and if you run everybody's numbers through it despite the

00:07:20.380 huge rise in debt it's actually cheaper to pay stuff off i mean the really the really duh question

00:07:26.200 at this point is if you want to do you know infrastructure if you want to do investment

00:07:30.240 all that sort of stuff why not just issue an absolute ton of 30-year bonds just now basically

00:07:34.880 1%. Because with 1% inflation, that's a zero interest rate, which basically over 30 years

00:07:40.940 eats itself. Like, why would you not do that? So, you know, there is no giant funding crisis at this

00:07:46.880 point in time, and nor does it look likely that there is going to be one. So then the question

00:07:50.840 is, how big is the rebound? Well, the rebound is kind of proportional to how much slack there is

00:07:56.180 in the economy and how much pent-up demand you have in the economy. And I think what you're going

00:08:00.540 to see two surprises, not really surprises here, that America is going to come back with very,

00:08:04.940 very strong growth over the next two years, possibly sustaining it above 4%. And the United

00:08:10.720 Kingdom is going to come back stronger than people think as well. Now, the Brexit stuff is going to

00:08:14.720 weigh on that. If you actually look into the trade stats, you do begin to see this effect.

00:08:18.680 But it's not really that bad, at least so far. And more importantly, when you consider that you

00:08:24.560 could be stuck in the European Union, where once again, the North is about to screw the South and

00:08:28.520 nobody can really agree on anything and the pandemic relief fund is actually too small to

00:08:33.300 do any good even for Italy etc etc then the UK is actually in a better spot so as it goes over the

00:08:39.360 next couple of years there will be a very very big rebound which is exactly what people around

00:08:43.800 Biden are hoping on. But Mark surely you know we've got all these people here on furlough

00:08:49.360 there's a number of you know of companies that have gone to the wall small businesses particularly

00:08:55.040 in sectors like travel, retail. I mean, Debenhams is catering has gone bust. Surely that's going to

00:09:02.280 have a really serious effect on our job market and on our economy as a whole. Yeah, but it depends

00:09:07.560 on how much comes back. So, I mean, for example, I'm going to be going to the Cotswolds in August.

00:09:12.660 Try getting a hotel in the Cotswolds in August, anywhere in the freaking Cotswolds, right?

00:09:19.460 They're pretty booked solid, right? So certain sectors are definitely coming back strong.

00:09:23.600 for me the really interesting one and this is the big one going forward is what happens with

00:09:27.500 commercial real estate so if you've got i'll give you two examples right if you're in the tech

00:09:32.020 industry tons of your really important workers work from home anyway techies in basements writing

00:09:37.160 code troubleshooting all that sort of stuff so there's nothing new there but what it's basically

00:09:42.180 told google is we don't need that giant campus in palo alto we just don't right apple doesn't need

00:09:48.800 half the offices it's got etc etc so if you're in a tech firm or a firm that can really be

00:09:53.580 platform think sort of like corporate human resources back office to finance boom they're

00:09:58.340 not coming back on the other hand you've got businesses like finance think the city of london

00:10:02.700 where everything's about face-to-face the ecosystem deal making co-presence as economists call it right

00:10:08.340 they're going back to the office but a lot of commercial real estate is going to be over the

00:10:13.160 next couple of years so if you're looking for you know fragility in the economy it's not the fact

00:10:17.640 that a few catering firms are going to have gone bust they will be picked up again as things expand

00:10:22.380 for me the big one is well what happens to all that real estate investment which is super expensive

00:10:27.660 what happens to downtown right what happens to the prêt-à-manger economy if only half the people

00:10:33.580 come back to the office right that's where you really begin to see structural change

00:10:37.680 and it also brings into question mark what is going to be the future of cities

00:10:42.680 has covid rendered the city irrelevant so it's funny i was just talking to john friedman who's

00:10:48.720 an economist friend of mine here at brown and he had a great line on this which is basically cities

00:10:53.840 have been the growth nodes and have pulled in people capital and resources from everywhere for

00:10:59.400 the past 150 years doesn't matter where you look so are we actually saying that there'll be a slight

00:11:04.820 rebalancing against that in certain sectors probably or we're saying that the city's days

00:11:09.600 are numbered that's a big bet that's a big bet right so you know it would take a lot to unwind

00:11:16.340 london now you know on the one hand given the fact that if you look at gva which is gross value added

00:11:21.840 the underlying component of gdp growth the only bit of london that grows according to the on of

00:11:27.140 the uk that grows according to the ons is actually london and effectively the rest of the country

00:11:32.260 lives on transfers now it would be nice to rebalance that and they're you know thinking

00:11:37.220 about leveling up all the rest of it is exactly the way to do that but you know what nobody's

00:11:41.480 sure how to do that basically once a city loses its industrial rationale it's kind of hard for it

00:11:47.540 to reboot its way back some places manage it there's pittsburgh in the united states which

00:11:52.280 was the steel town which became basically biotech university healthcare right but not everybody can

00:11:57.480 play that trick so take dundee where i'm from right we were we have the unique honor of being

00:12:02.600 the first town in the world as far as i'm aware to de-industrialize because we were screwed by

00:12:07.440 nylon right we used to be the packaging uh plant for the world all the jute fibers would come from

00:12:12.960 india they'd boil them and turn them into packaging in dundee and then they would send them

00:12:16.980 out to package everything nylon comes in you're done right so we effectively started losing that

00:12:22.060 industry in the 1950s has dundee come back right it's got games video games it's got biotech a

00:12:30.920 little bit it's got a few things but there's nothing there when you think about dundee and

00:12:34.760 you go, that's what they do. So the future for those cities is actually much, much more uncertain

00:12:40.600 than a place like London, essentially dissolving, right? That's not going to happen.

00:12:45.880 Mark, and from the economic point of view, if you come back to the macro side of things,

00:12:49.800 there's a couple of things I want to ask you about. First of all, what did you make of the

00:12:55.200 difference? Now, I understand the Volvo and the Mustang metaphor, which we talked about last time,

00:12:59.380 the difference between America and the UK. That's obviously very clear. What did you make of the

00:13:04.400 decision in the UK, for example, to have a furlough, to have self-employment grants, to give companies

00:13:10.940 grants, and to support people through this period. Do you think that was the right decision, or is

00:13:16.020 the American model a better one? Well, here's the weird thing about it. Eventually, the American

00:13:20.400 model became more like the British model, right? So they ended up extending unemployment benefits,

00:13:25.820 even in places like Florida, where they really didn't want to do it. You had to be hardcore

00:13:30.180 Alabama, Mississippi, deep south, not to take the free money that was on the table, right?

00:13:35.260 And, you know, is there such a thing as free money? Well, at the moment, there is, because

00:13:39.140 essentially, you can borrow a negative real rate, which means somebody out there in the world is

00:13:43.180 so keen to hold a bond as a safe asset, they're willing to lose money on the transaction if they

00:13:48.540 hold it to duration. So in other words, I borrowed $10 from you, and a year from now, I give you

00:13:54.620 nine back. I mean, it's a no-brainer to do that. So on a 10-year bill, right, if you've got like

00:13:59.880 a negative real rate and you run it over 10 years you get nine bucks back that would be it exactly

00:14:03.860 but you're willing to do that because you're betting essentially that that nine bucks not

00:14:08.440 only will be there the economy that the bond is tied to will be bigger so in a sense you'll get

00:14:12.900 more for your nine bucks right so it's the safety play and if the whole world's in safety play mode

00:14:18.180 it's dead easy to do that so you know which one's better the puzzle in the united states just now is

00:14:23.820 the is everybody just lying as we used to call it in scotland on the brew uh because they're

00:14:29.180 finally getting decent unemployment benefits and nobody's going back to work well you know if you

00:14:34.220 actually look into the data on this it's kind of weird it's like some sectors rather than others

00:14:38.220 or whatever but here's the thing we've had chronic wage stagnation for the bottom 40 to 60 percent in

00:14:44.600 the u.s for the past 30 years this is a feature it's not a bug right the design is we need to

00:14:51.740 get wages for the bottom 60 percent of people up that's why they're so angry that's why they're so

00:14:56.720 pissed off. So the fact that there's a shortage in certain sectors and employers are having to pay

00:15:01.840 more, that's the plan, right? That's not an error. That's exactly what they're aiming for.

00:15:08.140 Well, that was going to be my other question to you, because one, and look, I think economically,

00:15:13.100 I'm probably in the center, maybe even I lean right on economics, I would argue.

00:15:17.300 But when I look at something like inequality, to me, that's a huge issue. And one of the things

00:15:22.320 that has happened during the course of the pandemic

00:15:24.940 is I don't know whether it's a transfer of wealth

00:15:28.100 and income, you tell me,

00:15:30.280 or is it just the accumulation of wealth and income

00:15:33.060 right at the top by the people who already had everything

00:15:36.100 while everybody else essentially forced

00:15:37.980 to live off handouts.

00:15:40.260 What has been the impact of the pandemic

00:15:42.340 and what do you think will be the impact

00:15:43.940 on the pandemic, the lockdowns

00:15:45.600 and everything else that we've done

00:15:46.960 in terms of income and wealth and equality going forward?

00:15:50.740 Well, it's made it worse.

00:15:51.760 i mean there's no doubt about it there was a big piece in the financial times which uh you can you

00:15:56.780 can probably get through the paywall if you try hard enough but essentially looking at how much

00:16:01.220 billionaires have made the billionaire class the 0.1 percent and it's astonishing i mean you'd

00:16:06.640 expect it would be you know the united states etc and they're up there but it's the swedish

00:16:10.780 billionaire class which have made tons right it's the russians it's other people there so it's a

00:16:15.460 global phenomenon it's not just the us and the uk by any means and here we call this the k-shaped

00:16:21.240 recovery, right? So if you think of the letter K, if you're on the top end, that's great. That 0.97

00:16:25.380 means you have assets. We've pumped tons of cash into the economy. When you do programs like QE

00:16:30.920 and you're buying bonds, you're swapping out bonds for cash, you're putting it in the hands of people

00:16:34.580 who already have assets. What do they do? They go buy assets. You should see the housing market

00:16:40.060 over here just now. Holy hell. I mean, you can literally put a shitbox with lipstick on the door 0.74

00:16:45.360 and you can sell it for a million bucks in some places. I mean, it's ridiculous. Why is that? 0.99

00:16:50.020 because everybody's dying for houses well there's certainly pent up demand we didn't really do any

00:16:54.140 housing starts in 2020 because of covid but a lot of it is just like the people who have assets now

00:16:59.580 have cash and want to buy even more assets because that's what goes up in value so a lot of this also

00:17:05.140 feeds into the like the inflation fear that we've got just now is like look at the price of housing

00:17:09.320 that's going up that's not an inflation that's a bunch of people who already have everything buying

00:17:13.860 even more stuff pushing the prices up right it's a very different thing but it's definitely made

00:17:19.120 it worse this is again to go back to what biden's trying to do and you can think about a sort of a

00:17:23.960 weaker version of this at least vocally is the leveling up the country discourse in the uk

00:17:29.040 is that it's going to be really hard to take that top end where all the wealth is concentrated

00:17:33.840 and redistribute it down so what we need to do is push the bottom up so you you basically make

00:17:39.880 the curve flatter right that's how you're going to do it and that's basically you know the the

00:17:45.000 thinking on raising wages running the economy hot etc they realize they've got to do something

00:17:49.480 about inequality and the way they're going to do is raise the bottom rather than try and tax the

00:17:52.980 top because the tax won't let you the top won't let you do it and but mark isn't also the problem

00:17:58.040 that you raise wages at the bottom what covid has allowed a lot of companies to do is usher in

00:18:05.000 automation via the back door very very easily yeah and and some of those jobs should be automated

00:18:11.720 right i mean that's the thing are we really better off as a society or even individuals if you have

00:18:16.580 people working for a couple of quid an hour doing something that could be automated wouldn't it be

00:18:21.540 better for that person not to do that you wipe out all those jobs and effectively what you then have

00:18:25.680 is a higher wage floor so then it's up to those people to get the skills to get in to get on that

00:18:30.720 wage floor and then the whole of the country's working at a higher level so you know a good

00:18:35.360 example is there are no hand there are no hand car washes in scandinavia none everything's

00:18:40.620 automatic because basically they just automated that whole sector. Why is that? Because basically

00:18:45.280 they don't want to have a low wage economy. It's like, why? I mean, this is the thing. If you go

00:18:49.120 to Denmark, go to Copenhagen and go into a McDonald's, buy everybody breakfast and then 0.98

00:18:54.360 shit your pants about how much it just cost you. It's a fortune, right? And that's a policy choice

00:19:00.540 because basically you want your wage flow to be high and you want to have a certain type of

00:19:05.260 society. And what we've been doing in America and the UK is running a very different one,

00:19:09.400 the low tax low wage one and that's great for corporate profits but it sucks for the people

00:19:14.500 who have got the low wages and there's a question of you know have we hit the buffers on that model

00:19:19.220 have we taken that as far as we possibly can and yeah that's pretty much where we are but isn't

00:19:25.280 that also if you try and change that that's what america's built on that's their ethos those are

00:19:30.340 their values are you going to be able to do that is that realistic well it's a bit like you know

00:19:35.680 it goes back to the question of, can you afford this? And if you look back in time, you go, well,

00:19:40.040 you used to pay more taxes. Why can't you do it now? Right? It's not as if it's unprecedented.

00:19:45.980 So, you know, we're talking about the Biden increase in corporate tax. If you follow it

00:19:50.820 through on a graph, right? Gabriel Zuckman put this on Twitter. Here's the rate of corporate

00:19:55.240 tax. It goes up to basically 50 odd percent. And then it dives down to where it is now at 21. And

00:20:00.280 he basically wants to take it to 28. And this is called an unprecedented rise. It's like, no,

00:20:04.420 know that's not unprecedented right you've got lots of room and the simple fact is that particularly

00:20:09.620 large corporates this is not true of small businesses and this is an issue right but if

00:20:13.840 you're talking about large corporates they've never made more money i mean apple's cash pile

00:20:18.620 is bigger than the gnp of around 40 countries and they hide it in tax havens and pay no tax on it 0.97

00:20:24.640 and it's like no enough we're just not going to do this shit anymore you guys need to pay more to 0.97

00:20:29.160 your workers. That's the deal. Well, and more, more tax to the economy for that would be nice 0.99

00:20:34.760 as well. Mark, why do this is an issue that to me seems very odd that we're even having this

00:20:40.060 conversation because it seems to me like the only way that the current system of tax loopholes would

00:20:45.900 exist is if we had corrupt politics where the people with the money are paying off the politicians

00:20:52.740 to keep it that way. And we're all 7 billion of us sitting around just letting it happen.

00:20:59.160 now given the fact that you guys are domiciled in the uk and i don't want to get done for libel

00:21:05.300 i'm not going to say what's in my head right now what i am going to say instead is that yeah

00:21:13.000 absolutely you know a great example of this is that sort of like um how can i put that

00:21:18.780 the former prime minister formerly known as david cameron before he became mr greenshill

00:21:23.860 um when he in 2010 he did the so-called edinburgh declaration which is you know as part of our

00:21:30.100 fiscal belt tightening we're about to do we're going to raise more taxes in the era of tax

00:21:34.280 dodging for companies over blah blah blah and what did they do they cut taxes and loosened the tax

00:21:38.940 codes right i mean if you look at the maps of global finance in terms of financial flows london

00:21:44.220 is this enormous hub for money that comes from all over the world and they get shipped out to a

00:21:49.560 series of tax havens. And then those tax havens actually serve as the headquarters for companies,

00:21:54.780 but they have no local tax rates, so they have to pay there. And yeah, like London is at the

00:21:58.800 absolute epicenter of this stuff. So the level of hypocrisy on taxation is just absolutely

00:22:04.400 astonishing. But again, to go back to your earlier point, I mean, this shows you the power of the

00:22:08.180 billionaire class, right? I mean, why was Lex Greensill, right, this basically billionaire

00:22:13.720 billionaire bullshitter able to get access to the phones of every member of the government

00:22:19.920 the mart right i mean you know in any other country you might be calling that corruption

00:22:24.860 hey kk are you a fan of cultural appropriation of course i can't go down to the local supermarket

00:22:33.940 unless i'm dressed like a mexican bandit or as i like to think about it your cousin in that case

00:22:39.180 you're going to love beer rebel noodles.

00:22:41.900 They make award-winning, delicious ramen noodles

00:22:44.240 with an Irish twist.

00:22:45.500 What, bankruptcy and alcoholism?

00:22:47.080 No, all their noodles are homemade

00:22:49.200 using high-quality ingredients.

00:22:51.480 In fact, respected food critic Jay Rayner

00:22:54.480 called them deserving of poetry. 0.85

00:22:57.100 What a cuck, man up, Jay. 0.90

00:22:58.700 Their sauces, noodles and broths 0.76

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00:23:02.580 over years of working in Michelin-starred kitchens.

00:23:05.760 They're dead easy to make,

00:23:06.860 the noodles take one minute to cook

00:23:08.780 And the whole dish takes only 10 minutes to put together in the comfort of your own home.

00:23:13.940 I'm hungry just explaining this to you.

00:23:15.980 You're always hungry, mate.

00:23:17.140 I mean, that's a fair point.

00:23:18.440 Go to bearebel.com.

00:23:20.480 That's B-I-A-R-E-B-E-L.com and get a tasty flavor of the East in your dinner time. 0.80

00:23:30.740 So how does it work on the political level?

00:23:33.240 If I am some junior member of the prime minister's staff and I'm like, hey, prime minister, we're going to solve the corporate tax loopholes.

00:23:41.680 I run in there with this great plan.

00:23:43.200 What happens from there?

00:23:45.320 Well, what tends to happen from there is Treasury comes in and says, well, it'd be nice to have more money, but I don't think it's going to work.

00:23:52.280 And then somebody from legals will come in and say, well, in order to do that, you're going to have to violate the Dominion status of Jersey.

00:23:57.820 And you're going to have to change our relationship with all these other crown dependencies.

00:24:01.080 and you don't want to get into that because then what will happen is the city of london

00:24:05.280 which has its own representative in parliament not many people know this will then start give

00:24:11.420 it yeah no the city of london has its own representative in parliament who is not elected

00:24:15.920 look it up it's amazing right and they will basically lobby the crap out of us and at the

00:24:21.700 end of day 11 of gdp and 8 of all jobs is connected to the financial center and given the fact that

00:24:28.160 basically the london housing market is the world's largest money laundering operation

00:24:31.760 um do we really want to screw this up let's think it through how about a commission we'll have a

00:24:39.100 royal commission to study it and then five years from now when they report i'll be gone you'll be

00:24:44.540 gone that's what happens i mean it's it's so depressing because as well it's not in their

00:24:51.120 interest like you said and everybody's playing the game the eu's playing the game everybody's

00:24:56.340 are absolutely and this is why you can never you know i mean you're beginning to see this now

00:24:59.880 because what happens is i mean the americans are still the elephant in the room right and if the

00:25:03.360 elephant shits in the room everybody notices so under the trump administration they pulled out of

00:25:08.560 the oecd corporate tax harmonization stuff on the grounds quite legit that this is all aimed at

00:25:14.020 our digital at the digital firms and it's right they pay no taxes and that's an issue and all the

00:25:18.160 rest of it but the way this is structured they'll be the only ones paying tax and they're american

00:25:22.480 firms so forget it we're done right so they walked out so then they came back and said all right 0.98

00:25:27.420 no taxing the digital on their own everybody let's hit 28 and the french went holy shit are you 0.94

00:25:34.340 serious that could be awesome so there's convergence between the eu and the u.s and if

00:25:40.060 you get the two of them to agree right then basically you've got it your problem there is

00:25:44.340 the latvians right the problem there is uh who else oh the dutch right so all the people that 0.95

00:25:50.720 benefit is from being kind of financial entreposed they're not going to like this one at all and

00:25:55.840 because you need unanimity in the EU to do anything right it's going to be tough to get that through

00:26:00.280 which is why they're doing it through a different organization called the OECD which makes it easier

00:26:04.240 but they are trying genuinely to get there they understand that this is a problem and also what's

00:26:09.160 interesting if you talk to corporates in the US about this it's kind of funny some of them don't

00:26:13.080 mind because basically they're like yeah you're right I mean basically we wake up as a firm we

00:26:17.200 make a billion dollars a minute right i mean it's absurd so why are we you know not taxed we should

00:26:22.520 actually be a bit more taxed another one you get is yeah i'm in favor of taxation because a lot of

00:26:26.980 firms are just basically profitable because they don't pay any tax so if we actually all pay the

00:26:31.820 same tax you get to figure out who's basically a bullshitter and who's not so the great reveal

00:26:36.820 would be like oh look at that we thought you were a firm and it turns out you're just a tax dodge

00:26:40.500 so if you're actually an efficient firm you could see this as gaining a competitive advantage i

00:26:45.220 actually make sure you're just a tax dodger i'm going to take your market share so there's a way

00:26:49.400 in which actually having a higher but equitable tax base might benefit firms overall so that's

00:26:56.140 why there hasn't been the foaming at the mouth you would expect over this topic and and mark isn't

00:27:02.000 another incentive the fact that a lot of well every country at the moment is verging on being

00:27:08.360 broke because of covid they need a fight to find a way to generate more income therefore you tax

00:27:14.380 these huge multinational digital corporations yeah i'd put it slightly different um so long

00:27:20.580 as you're not in the eu and you haven't given up your printing press technically you can't go broke

00:27:24.200 and the only real constraint is are you having a large inflation of which i mean double digit and

00:27:30.000 it's sustained which is a problem or alternatively the what you have to pay an interest on your bonds

00:27:35.360 goes far higher than your growth rate so as far as we can see it what you can do is basically look

00:27:40.300 at what's called the yield curve right basically 10 years out what what's the interest rate likely

00:27:44.500 to be on these bonds and basically for pretty much all the oecd you've got a negative real rate

00:27:50.100 out to 10 years like the germans are trading at like negative six eight or something like this

00:27:54.480 so essentially what that means is you don't have a financing constraint it's not you can't go

00:28:00.080 bankrupt now do they want the extra taxes yes they do and they want the extra taxes because

00:28:04.980 they want to A, stop populism, by B, raising wages, by C, making people a bit happier about

00:28:12.540 their general condition in labor markets so that they can restore faith in the basic institutions

00:28:17.160 around them, and D, so that these elites don't eventually end up getting hung, drawn, and

00:28:22.000 quartered. So that's basically the game plan everywhere. Mark, can you explain something

00:28:28.580 for our viewers who may not be economists? I studied economics at university a little bit,

00:28:33.100 I understand the explanation, but I'm not sure whether I believe it.

00:28:37.980 We do have in the West, in many countries, levels of debt that are huge, particularly for peacetime, right?

00:28:48.860 Yeah, totally.

00:28:49.780 The cycle used to be you spend money on wars, then you recover in peacetime, you build up some reserves, and then you spend them all on another war, right?

00:28:58.760 Whereas what we have is essentially COVID is like a war,

00:29:02.120 but we were already deeply in debt before it happened.

00:29:05.700 Now we've borrowed more money,

00:29:07.260 but you're saying we can borrow more,

00:29:09.460 we have to pay back less, it's fine.

00:29:11.280 A lot of economists talk about MMT,

00:29:13.440 modern monetary theory.

00:29:15.000 Again, to an ordinary person, 0.98

00:29:16.840 it sounds absolutely fucking crazy. 0.98

00:29:19.160 This idea- 0.98

00:29:19.740 Sounds bonkers, right, absolutely.

00:29:21.400 And the key thing is because anybody who says to you,

00:29:24.180 well, the economy is a bit like a household 1.00

00:29:25.660 is either an ignorant person or a bullshitter. 0.99

00:29:28.320 because an economy with its own printing press is nothing like a household, right? There is no 1.00

00:29:32.460 such thing as kissing dollars. If there were kissing dollars, I'd short the shit out of them, 0.99

00:29:37.380 right? They wouldn't last very long, right? There's no such thing as a Mark Blythe 10-year bond 0.98

00:29:42.340 because I'm Scottish. I might be dead within 10 years, right? So all of the things that states

00:29:47.380 can do, bring people into the household, they're called immigrants, you can tax them over the 1.00

00:29:51.640 generations, right? All that sort of stuff, households can't do, right? It is just simply

00:29:56.160 not the same thing so when they say that right well you can't spend more than you earn it's like

00:30:00.340 well actually you can because there are people out there in the world called investors who are

00:30:04.600 willing to basically loan you money because they want the security of knowing that it's safe for

00:30:09.140 up to 30 years and because of that what you're effectively doing with a bond is taking your tax

00:30:14.000 revenue none of this is mmt you don't need to go near that this is straightforward right but you

00:30:18.080 can you're essentially taking the tax revenue you will have in the future and borrowing it from

00:30:22.600 someone and then with the tax revenue in the present you're paying out now what is then

00:30:26.580 important how much taxes you generate and the interest rate on the debt as far as we can see

00:30:32.080 just simply because of demographic pressures the fact that interest rates honestly have been falling

00:30:36.640 with the exception of the 70s and 80s for 700 years by most estimates straight down we're going

00:30:43.260 to be in a very low interest rate environment for a while it's also with zero wage pressures

00:30:48.240 unlikely that we will see a sustained inflation. So you just don't have that problem because a

00:30:53.280 state is not a household. And so long as you have a global investor class that wants to hold these

00:30:58.080 bonds as safe assets, the game just continues. But if I'm an ordinary person, which I am,

00:31:03.580 and I'm hearing you explain that, I'm going, well, why don't we borrow endlessly all the time

00:31:09.180 to continually invest in stuff and buy everybody a Porsche? It sounds great.

00:31:14.640 Well, you don't have to buy everybody a Porsche, but you could get them up to the level where

00:31:18.220 let's say there's a recent study by rand so if anybody wants to do this go on go on a line and

00:31:24.060 look for rand corporation r-a-n-d and i'll look for a paper called trends in income 1979 to 2020

00:31:30.460 and what it shows is that if you haven't changed any of the regulations in the united states economy

00:31:35.580 or any of the tax rates in the united states economy since 1979 your average worker would

00:31:40.940 have been fifteen thousand dollars a year better off yeah so add that up over 40 years they could

00:31:47.500 buy their own porsche right so there's a way in which we set the means right when you change

00:31:53.220 taxes when you change regulations you're benefiting one group over another and to go back to your

00:31:58.340 inequality point what's happened is the corruption of politics has essentially meant that it's all

00:32:02.580 gone to a tiny sliver of humanity and the rest of us have been living on crumbs so debt is part of

00:32:08.580 the equation but so are wages so are taxes and if you have a decent tax system and a high growth

00:32:14.020 rate so your growth rate's here interest rate and your bond is here it literally doesn't matter

00:32:18.840 because this will shrink over time take the example of wartime united states comes out of

00:32:22.860 the second world war 164 debt to gdp huge amount of ludicrous way for way more than we've got now

00:32:28.680 and that's when it had the fastest and uninterrupted period of growth uh in its history

00:32:33.900 and after 30 years of that growth its debt to gdp was down to 40 percent

00:32:39.760 so again the story that we tell each other is a particular version of the story which when you

00:32:46.260 figure out how this actually works it's all financing can you finance it or not an example

00:32:51.360 you live in london let's say 10 years ago somebody said i'm going to buy a house in crouch end you're

00:32:56.300 like well you're brave all right so it's half a house in crouch end how much is it 350 000 how 0.84

00:33:02.380 much is your wages 50 000 shit seven times income i'm going to buy it you're over levered you've got 0.98

00:33:08.240 way too much debt. 10 years later, how much is that house worth? About 10 million at the moment. 0.97

00:33:13.360 Right, exactly. So therefore, because the economy grew so much, the amount of debt shrunk in real

00:33:19.820 terms. That's the analogy you need to think about. It's really interesting that you say that. And

00:33:26.280 also as well, Mark, the point that the elites want to do this in an effort to stop populism.

00:33:32.240 but i'm looking at what's happening to the eu you know the the situation in france their abysmal

00:33:38.720 handling of the vaccine isn't the cat already out of the bag when it comes to populism no it

00:33:44.520 certainly is and if you think about it this way the two largest parties in italy are basically

00:33:49.440 the fratelli d'italia who are the ones who are like no no we really are a fascist party we're

00:33:53.880 not hiding it right then then there's the liga which is kind of like well some people say we're

00:33:59.000 fascists but honestly we're kind of not maybe we are and then you've got the rump of berlusconi

00:34:04.260 which is a vision you didn't need in your head which is forza italia and if you put all of them 0.99

00:34:08.180 together you can have a government right and that's that's the one where investors go oh shit

00:34:13.980 right and then the italian debt market's a problem all right so where is let's think about go back to

00:34:18.220 debt where is debt a problem italy why is italy a problem the whole thing is so long as your growth

00:34:23.100 rate's higher than the interest you pay in your bonds you're fine italy hasn't grown in over 20

00:34:27.740 years and it's piled on a ton of debt since the pandemic and because it's in the eu it doesn't

00:34:33.980 have its own printing press so it can't do certain things like basically stimulate the crap out of

00:34:39.480 the economy and hope for the best so it then relies on the ecb buying its bonds to keep the

00:34:44.600 yields down keep these interest rate payments down but once the eu recovers whatever that is

00:34:50.240 then they no longer buy those bonds and at that point investors holding italian debt go no way

00:34:55.040 you guys going to grow enough to generate the taxes to pay these bonds so the interest rate's

00:34:59.340 going to go up and you could have another crisis at that point in time that's when the populace go

00:35:03.420 told you and boom they're in right so there is real risk there that is baked into the cake

00:35:08.780 so much of it has to do with the fact that when you join the euro you give up your own printing

00:35:13.320 press and a lot of you get some advantages from that but whenever there's any kind of turbulence

00:35:17.840 bad idea and you say it's a bad idea how close do you think the entire eu project is to failing

00:35:25.360 not as much as most british people hope

00:35:28.240 to be frank uh because you know and i've used this analogy many times and i think it still works

00:35:35.740 it's the hotel california once you check in you can't check out right if the italians were to go 0.99

00:35:41.280 stuff this we're out enough of the euro we're going to bring back our own currency how would

00:35:44.960 you do it you probably have a parallel currency right and you would use that we'll call it the

00:35:49.400 new lira and you would just put it in the atms and you would have euros but you'd also have these

00:35:54.380 and you could say these things you can't use them in shops but you can use them to pay your taxes

00:35:58.060 all right that's great that's 40 percent of my income right there i can just take care of that

00:36:02.360 with this new currency so when you're doing that you're basically allowing it to spread people start

00:36:06.940 to go well if i could pay my taxes with it i might as well buy groceries with it right and suddenly

00:36:10.720 the euros like one of these parallel things it's like a latin american economy and at that point

00:36:15.800 in time you got to wonder if this thing's going to work or not and there's a good chance that

00:36:20.400 anybody who's holding that's like do i really want to hold new lira or would i rather have a bank

00:36:25.000 account in germany with real euros so any italian with money that doesn't have rocks in their head

00:36:29.500 basically opens up a bank account in berlin stuffs it full of euros that huge amount of capital

00:36:34.920 flying out of the country would cause its own economic crisis and in general the cost of getting

00:36:40.560 out of the euro probably 50 percent of national savings now you may be a fascist and you may be 0.64

00:36:45.800 a populist but you really want to destroy half a national savings to prove a point

00:36:49.340 mark one thing that goes somewhat against the narrative that we were discussing earlier which

00:36:55.740 is working people ordinary people the bottom 60 percent if you like really struggling uh not

00:37:01.960 happy with the situation 20 are really struggling the bottom 60 are just pissed off right right so

00:37:07.660 the bottom 60 are pissed off. What they want is higher wages, their purchasing power over God

00:37:13.880 knows how long has been plummeting, savings, people really struggle to put any money aside,

00:37:18.780 et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the one country that bucks the trend on that, you might

00:37:23.740 say, is the UK, because we voted. Now, basically, all the polling shows that ordinary people in

00:37:29.680 this country completely support the right-leaning party. How do you explain that? It is a fascinating

00:37:36.000 one but i don't actually think it's a disproof or a contradiction i mean if you had the tory party

00:37:41.040 circa 1987 they wouldn't be talking about leveling up right they wouldn't have done furloughs they

00:37:47.500 wouldn't be talking about big investment projects greening the economy none of that would be on it

00:37:51.620 just be like tax cuts for us and screw everybody else right so it's a very different conservative

00:37:55.980 party and what they've done is they've moved to the left economically and stayed on the right

00:38:00.240 culturally and that is the winning combination and the reason labor got slaughtered is because

00:38:05.900 if you are perceived to be a party essentially of elite intellectuals cities universities and

00:38:12.120 minorities you're never going to get the white working class to support you and that's basically

00:38:17.460 what's happened and so long as the tories have moved to the left whereby their interests are

00:38:21.540 being recognized economically and then they want to stay right culturally that is a winning

00:38:25.640 combination there's no way for labor out of that box i think matt goodwin has got this absolutely

00:38:29.740 right. Well, we've had him on the show a few times, as you probably know. But I'm curious,

00:38:35.180 then, what about, is that different in America in the sense that the sort of progressive coalition

00:38:40.300 play? We just need basically for the country to get darker and, you know, more LGBT and more this 1.00

00:38:46.980 and more that. And we'll get to a point where that is the winning formula. Is that going to happen?

00:38:53.100 So that's still the debate very much in the Democratic Party. And what you see with Biden

00:38:57.240 and the whole attempt to raise wages at the bottom is that's not enough right elections are

00:39:03.080 increasingly won by tiny tiny fractions so when you see a result like you see in hartlepool you

00:39:08.380 sit up and go wow that is that's a big thing that's structural it's a lot of information in

00:39:12.120 that and if i was the biden team i'd be looking at this and saying okay what exactly is the

00:39:16.660 conservative party the conservative party with one or two exceptions is about as right-wing as

00:39:21.360 mainstream democrats at this point in time they're way closer to democrats than they are to republicans

00:39:26.540 so at that point in time you know if that's the play why wouldn't we do that play now biden's not

00:39:32.160 going to piss off his activists he's not going to alienate his base he's not going to do this

00:39:35.460 but he's not going to talk about trans every day right he's not going to talk about police

00:39:40.120 violence every day he's just going to keep silent on those issues and concentrate on what he does

00:39:45.900 which seems to be stuff that people find popular so yeah there's definitely a sort of a struggle

00:39:51.520 in the democratic party over basically how to use the word woke the party wants to be and you've got

00:39:58.000 people like jim carville saying this is a problem not because it's ethically a problem or morally a

00:40:02.840 problem just politically you can't mobilize enough people if you go down that road and part of a part

00:40:09.260 one way to look at what's happened to labor is by going significantly down that road they've kind of

00:40:13.480 tested that theory and shown that it's probably true and all these parties seem to be struggling

00:40:20.020 with the effects of globalization what can you do with these communities that have had the heart and

00:40:25.880 soul ripped out of them is there are there any really any solutions to this problem mark

00:40:29.760 well that's it to go back to the thing i was saying earlier about cities right once they

00:40:34.300 start on a decline some of them can bootstrap their way back and reinvent themselves but not

00:40:38.300 everywhere can right you've got to have a reason to want to put capital into a place you can move

00:40:43.840 government jobs around you can take the dvlc out of cardiff and stick it somewhere else if you

00:40:48.340 really want to right but there's getting private sector capital in these places depends upon making

00:40:54.520 them actually much better places to live so if you think about a city like manchester i would

00:40:58.980 bet on manchester i'd also bet on liverpool huge investment in the 1990s and improving if you will

00:41:04.080 the basic infrastructure of those cities you get better transportation and communication links

00:41:08.440 there what have you got really good cheap housing you don't have in the southeast right and the

00:41:12.680 ability to basically grow those economies out and then you've got skilled labor forces you've got

00:41:17.100 good universities that's a place where you could bet on right what about your buries what about 1.00

00:41:22.740 norwich right what about places like that that basically you know are on the skids the classic

00:41:27.580 one are sort of the coastal community south of london on the east coast right it's not clear

00:41:32.440 what you do with that i mean once skeg nest loses its appeal it's not coming back but it's not true

00:41:37.980 everywhere so the question is where do you put your money and where do you maximize your bets

00:41:42.000 to try and balance things out about but you're right you see one of the things about globalization

00:41:45.900 we don't talk about is what it does is it creates the dominance of cities so there's a paper i'm

00:41:50.920 working on just now and i found these statistics and i was absolutely fascinated by it you know

00:41:54.800 what percentage of gdp london creates for the whole country 22 i was gonna say 20 yeah right

00:42:03.160 now here's one paris what do you think it is for paris vis-a-vis france five no 30 what yeah right

00:42:12.260 here's one uh the netherlands amsterdam 30 wow right so and then here's the best one dublin

00:42:21.540 50 yeah double that makes sense to me right but what's actually happening is that you get

00:42:29.860 globally connected cities that become the real wealth generators so when we think about holland

00:42:34.180 what you're effectively talking about is amsterdam right when you think about britain you do really

00:42:38.720 think about london right that's it and if you think about germany it's actually very different

00:42:43.140 because berlin the hopstad is bust bankrupt right for the from the unification period three lander

00:42:49.360 in the south make most of the money but it's not city based right and there's much more kind of

00:42:53.900 like you know general redistribution because of the federal system um so you know globalization

00:42:58.300 affects countries in different ways but one of the predominant ways it does is basically by making

00:43:02.320 these global growth cities like the main story and you know when you've got that that's a dynamic

00:43:08.020 What do you want to do?

00:43:08.760 Do you want to not play that game?

00:43:10.940 There's going to be cost to doing that.

00:43:13.500 Mark, I was going to ask you,

00:43:14.960 we've talked about the fact that different people in society,

00:43:19.600 different strata of society have benefited

00:43:22.040 and suffered differently as a result of the pandemic.

00:43:25.260 What about geopolitically?

00:43:27.280 One of the things that people talk about a lot is China.

00:43:31.500 What will change and what has already changed

00:43:34.420 in terms of the economic power balance

00:43:36.980 and also going forward,

00:43:38.680 what will be the impact of the pandemic

00:43:40.300 in terms of China, the US

00:43:42.200 and the rebalancing of power in the world?

00:43:45.460 So it's an interesting one.

00:43:47.060 My bellwether for this is usually the EU

00:43:49.340 who like to play a game of hide, seek and take the money, right?

00:43:52.900 So, you know, they're about as principled

00:43:55.000 as Robin Hood's bad cousin, right?

00:43:57.420 So, and they signed this big investment agreement with China,

00:44:00.720 but it turns out the European Parliament

00:44:02.000 put the whole thing on ice.

00:44:03.540 They're just not going to play.

00:44:04.480 there are genuine security concerns around Huawei 5g even if you don't have substitute tech all

00:44:09.980 this sort of stuff so we're already seeing the beginnings of what tech people call the splinternet

00:44:14.460 as it splinters into different national versions of the internet there's a really interesting

00:44:18.800 investment firm in New York actually that's betting on this and they basically are looking

00:44:24.780 for you know who's going to be who's going to be the deliveroo for Indonesia because it's not going

00:44:30.000 to be Deliveroo why would you need an American firm to do this right so you're going to see more

00:44:35.040 and more of this kind of like local national or regional hubs in terms of that in terms of the

00:44:40.160 overall geopolitics of it there is an increasing school of thought that thinks that Xi has overplayed

00:44:44.660 his hand the if he really does something like try and grab all the semiconductor manufacturers for

00:44:50.460 the world by invading Taiwan then the costs of doing so would be very very high for everyone 0.95

00:44:56.120 but particularly for china because it would effectively turn everybody else against them

00:45:00.940 so the belt and road stuff has been at best a mixed bag a lot of it tends to tends to basically

00:45:05.720 in debt the people who are borrowing and then you end up owning the asset which is good for china

00:45:10.460 but not for the other side and then of course the whole sort of you know the human rights data

00:45:14.500 surveillance surveillance society type stuff which you know when you describe it neutrally

00:45:19.320 just doesn't sound like an appealing place to be if that's going to be the future maybe you know

00:45:24.180 maybe liberalism isn't dead after all maybe it is worth fighting for so i think at this point in

00:45:29.660 time you know conflict is baked into the cake but what that how that conflict manifests itself is

00:45:34.500 going to be an interesting one the last one on this and then i gotta go run and pick up my kid

00:45:38.720 so i'm gonna have to go but anyway um is how climate intersects in all of this so so if the

00:45:45.220 republicans come back in at some point which they probably will then america drops off the climate

00:45:49.320 change bandwagon again the problem with this is the rest of the world will eventually turn against

00:45:53.680 carbon assets oil gas etc etc the bank of england came out today and basically said we've got a new

00:45:59.660 ratings regime next time there's a crisis if you want your bonds bought you'll get a premium on

00:46:04.100 them if you're not carbon heavy and if you are carbon heavy you'll have to pay a tax and we 0.94

00:46:08.380 might ultimately not buy your shit whoa there's a big threat so you can see all of this moving in 0.96

00:46:13.620 one direction all of that bespeaks cooperation with china because if they play this game they've 0.99

00:46:18.980 declared net zero by 2060. And the communists don't usually do plans or at least claim them

00:46:23.420 unless they're serious about them. So they're going to do this. The EU is going to do it. If

00:46:27.660 the Democrats control the US, they're going to do it. If the Republicans come back in, the rest of

00:46:31.420 the world is going to move that way anyway. And all those carbon assets in 20 years time are going

00:46:35.500 to be worth a lot less. So you've got conflict on one side, but you really need to cooperate with

00:46:40.860 them on another. So it's going to be interesting how they square that circle. It's going to be

00:46:46.040 very very interesting would you say that china's reputation as a result of this mark has been

00:46:50.640 irreparably damaged i don't know irreparably right because ultimately there are people for whom

00:46:57.060 reputation doesn't really matter and there are countries for whom belt and road is like the only

00:47:03.120 source of investment they're going to get and they're simply not going to say anything and there

00:47:07.040 are plenty of dictatorships in the world who are like your score what a great model let's go that

00:47:11.380 way right think places like burma right sorry my anmar right but anyway um so yeah unfortunately

00:47:18.820 you know that doesn't mean permanent delegitimization nor does it mean that they'll go

00:47:23.340 oh we went too far maybe we should come back this way a little bit they have their own game plan and

00:47:28.360 as far as they're concerned it's working for them mark listen we got to let you run otherwise we

00:47:33.920 could chat to you for hours as always we'll love to have you back another time thank you so much

00:47:38.880 for coming on remind everybody before you go where they can find you online you can find me at mk

00:47:44.440 blythe on twitter that's the easiest one i have a website but i haven't updated it since 1972

00:47:49.880 fantastic thanks for coming on mark and thank you all for watching we will see you very soon

00:47:55.400 with another episode like this one or a live stream and they always go out 7 p.m uk time

00:48:00.840 take care and see you soon guys

00:48:08.880 We'll be right back.

TRIGGERnometry - June 23, 2021

Can We Spend Our Way Out of Populism？ - Mark Blyth

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