So how would you see these two interrelated themes, please, Harold?

Well, so with the first question, it reminds me of some of these transcripts that are released in subsequent accident investigations after big air disasters, when there are two pilots who are pulling in opposite directions on the controls of the aircraft, and one is shouting, pull, pull, and the other is doing push, push.

And that's essentially what you've got in this story.

I think in general that there's a big issue that we're in an era where the enormous fiscal deficits in almost every industrial country.

It's less of a problem in the emerging market world, creating a problem that in the literature we think of as fiscal dominance.

And in those cases, the central banks are really pretty powerless.

And the operation that Marcus just described of intervening in the bond market to buy the long-term bonds that the Treasury is doing is an absolute key instance of that.

How much, Harold, do you think the reserve asset status of the dollar really is under threat?

Perfect.

Perfect.Y- y- you raised, I think, the central issues in those opening remarks.

Nobody at the moment can really know how long the war will go on in Ukraine.

It may turn into a long-term conflict.

It may also be over very quickly.

Uh, at the moment, uh, we're seeing again a movement by the Ukrainian army, a big encircling operation around Lyman, um, in, uh, Tavriisk, uh, w- with a big, uh, push.

Uh, and the measures that President Putin has been taking over the last, uh, days, uh, indicate, I think, the extent of the Russian panic and the Russian despair.

Mm-hmm

Oh, if you click on it, what happens?

Now I'm back again.

Yep, wonderful.

Thank you.

And I can share my screen.

Okay.

And there we are.

What's the historical evidence that is the savings then excessive savings? Is it spent after the war right away? Is that a spending binge afterwards?

But how were you thinking about this? Why this crisis were part of the book and not some others? Were there some that were just below the threshold?

Well, it's a very good question.

Obviously, there's a kind of charm about the number seven, if you like, number mysticism that we have here.

the seven deadly sins and so on.

But it's not just randomness.

I really wanted to think about the moments when economic thinking changed.

And that obviously is difficult because time flows into itself and crises are always complex.

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He says Europe's been dealing with an aging population and a relatively low level of investment in innovation.

It's not that Europe doesn't produce good ideas, but they haven't really translated that into mass marketing of these products.

But now, James says, Europe's making more money available for areas like defense spending, and it's not gonna be on old-fashioned trench digging equipment.

The war of the future is about drones and about electronic warfare.

Is that true, Professor?

Professor?Yes, absolutely.

I mean, that's really there from the middle of the 2010s.

Um, and so in particular Russia, China, but also India, uh, also Kazakhstan.

Um, also more recently some central European countries have been adding to their gold reserves.

And the, the logic of that I think is quite simple, in that it follows from 2014, from the initial Russian attack on Ukraine, uh, the incursion into eastern Ukraine, the seizure of the Crimea, and then the application of sanctions.

So if you're worried about sanctions, you're worried that the US government can control the dollar, you want to get out of the dollar and you want to get something else.

Can you, can you help, uh, explain what you mean by that?