Holger Schmieding

And the topic of our podcast, as the listeners know, is the widening gap between Europe on the one hand and the US and China on the other hand.

And our big, big question in this podcast, what can Europe do about that? And I could actually not think of a better guest today to talk about that than Holger Schmieding.

He is the chief economist of Bärenberg Bank, and he's one of the most renowned economic voices in German media and beyond.

We know each other way back from my times as a journalist.

Great pleasure.

Thank you.

And I want to tell our listeners also that Holger Schmieding is also having a wonderful podcast that I actually listen to regularly, which is called Schmieding's Blick.

So you can, if you speak German, you can subscribe to it.

We're talking about yields now at the 5% level.

At what point do we have all of these catalysts catching up with the market? And there was a comment that was made by Sammy Cha, the chief economist at Lombard Odia, saying yields at 5% aren't a problem if you're growing at 6.5%.

But if you're growing at 5% with yields at 5%, that might be a different story.

Well, we're not growing at 5%, are we? We're growing sub-3%, 2.3% to 2.8% in the US this year.

Still to come on the show, crypto looks for clarity, Senate Democrats block a highly anticipated bill to regulate the sector, sending digital assets lower.

Plus, L'Oreal claims the top spot, overtaking LVMH as the most valuable listed company on the French stock market and becoming the first non-luxury company to do it in almost a decade.

And as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen prepares to deliver her State of the Union address later this morning, we'll get the reaction from Berenberg's chief economist, Holger Schmieding.

That's at 8.30 London time.