Talk to us about that.

Yeah.

So look, I think the important thing is to start at a very high level and think about the macro versus micro factors.

As a macro proposition, it's almost tried to say that this is one of the most important investment cycles, but also growth cycles that we're pretty much in early innings on.

To give you some numbers, PwC estimated that we'll have an additional $16 trillion of new growth coming from AI by 2030.

And you've seen many other numbers to that effect.

Of course, there are some downside risks around joblessness and questions around cyber.

So

So can you just break down for us what is a

bond? Yeah.

So let's—this is a great question, because I would say that the sort of fundamental culture of the United States is very positive.

People are energetic about economic growth and prospects, notwithstanding that sometimes we get a bit grumpy.

But fundamentally, Americans tend to be positive about the future.

And that's why the stock market is such a great sort of barometer for American sort of euphoria.

And I think that's why people like to point it.

I am the house now.

And would love to get your sense of how do you go about assessing people with the lens of seeing how different it can be within the context of the same company?

The important thing that most people who've been involved in any sort of organization, public policy with government, the United Kingdom has had seven prime ministers in ten years, anything to do with human management, the key important takeaway around how you think about finding the right people, I've learned in fifteen years on boards, but being in the House of Lords, trying to ask questions that are outside of check boxy.

At Starbucks, I haven't been there that long.

I wasn't there for all the changes in leadership.

Barclays Bank, we had four CEOs in seven years.

I'm very familiar with high pace of change.

Most of the time when we've had an issue, it was we didn't ask a question outside of the box.

How have you thought about integrating that into the investment program?

And so I know you make a thorough, nuanced argument about it, but do you just want to take a few minutes hitting the high points of why you think that foreign aid to Africa has actually been actively detrimental?

A very good friend of mine always says, "Dambisa, the numbers don't lie." And I think I'm going to extend that to say the evidence doesn't lie.

We've had over sixty years of these large systemic programs going from government to government or multilateral institution to African government, and look at the performance.

What really is disappointing, as someone who was born and raised in Africa, is that we actually know where economic success comes from.

We know that countries that trade more do better than countries that don't trade.

We know that countries that have efficient governments do better than countries that don't.

Countries that are more forward-leaning in terms of how they operate do better than countries that are dependent on outside external help.

Do you think there's room for reasonable people to look at the same set of evidence you just showed us but come to different conclusions, or do you think people who argue that aid works are just ignoring the facts?

Mm

...

in a very broad way.

Um, it's a learning curve, obviously, to state the obvious, and I think that, um, what the best companies are doing is, is trying to figure out, uh, not only what does this mean for our bottom line, is this going to increase revenue and cut costs and, you know, think about n- new metrics of, of how we compare ourselves, what are our new KPIs and the financial metrics comparing ourselves to other competitors, other c- you know, peers, but also other sectors.

Um, but I think they're also thinking about what does this mean for society? Is this a complete reshaping of how governments tax? Um, if it's just going to be a handful of companies that are thinking about, uh, you know, generating revenue and concentrated, uh, success, concentration returns, you know, how do we then think about where our role is in that? Um, of course, also thinking about the job market.

Yeah.

I think the, uh, changes and, uh, and rollout of this new era, um, are quite choppy in places like China.

I mean, there's some elements of it that are quite interesting, but China does have a, a lot of, you know, debt drag.

So let's just pick that up and talk about why you think that it is a bubble, but not a bubble to really get stressed about yet.

Yeah, so I think that it's worth just pulling out some metrics.

So the one that everybody reaches for is the price-earnings ratio, so multiples.

And historically, the market has traded around 16 times of earnings.

That's the price-earnings ratio.

And one of the things that people have said is, you know, the average over the last couple of years, few years, has been much higher.

It's about somewhere between 23 to 25 times.

What do you do to bring it back?

How much has that altered, I guess, the ability of Europe to recover from this longstanding productivity crisis?

I'm gonna sound more philosophical on this matter than perhaps I ought to, but I think this is a classic, this question around what should happen next, what has happened, what mistakes have been made, I think really needs to be set In the context of a sort of a historical lens.

So in 1900, if you will indulge me, we're coming into the new century, the 20th century.

The world, and particularly the United States, was very globalized, had a very strong GDP.

It was absolutely a leader in terms of economic growth.

A lot of the sort of railway barons had been successful in the latter part of the 19th century, were really an impetus for growth coming into the 1900s.

But then three things happened in relatively quick succession.

Tell us your argument about foreign assistance and where you think we should be going instead at a time of a feeling of shrinking resources that are not distributed evenly.

Do you see the dollar declining significantly? dollar

increase in value? I mean, the obvious question is, what's the replacement for the US dollars as a fiat currency? So let's do fiat currency first.

So fiat currency, I don't think there's anything that's automatically or obviously can replace the dollar.

The euro, unlikely for the reasons we've just outlined, the regulatory environment is still very fragmented, etc, etc.

They've also got debt and deficit problems.

So not likely to be the euro.

The yen, similar kind of thing.

I mean, is China really producing fewer unicorns than the U.S.? Or is it just that we don't have the visibility into the innovation?