Diplomacy, Bots,

Charles Payne: Hello, today is Thursday the 5th of February, 2026 already. Gosh. And it’s me, Ian McKnight, my lovely friend and colleague Aoifinn Devitt. Hello, Aoifinn.

Speaker B: Hi, Ian. Great to see you this morning.

Charles Payne: Lovely to see you too. So this is our second attempt at The Long and Short of It, and this is our sporadic podcast covering markets, politics, news, gossip, personal updates. I mean, whatever we like, really. We’re just having a chat, aren’t we? Recording it for the benefit of our rabid followers.

Speaker B: Indeed. It’s an embarrassment of riches we have to talk about this month as we belt towards the half-term break. So I’m glad we’ve managed to find the time, carve it out to discuss this.

Charles Payne: Yeah, thanks for fitting another one. It’s exactly a month ago and we thought that the last call we had was action-packed. Well, this has just gone into overdrive. About 3 days, I think, after we had our chat, and what she’s doing, you pop up on Fox News and then Bloomberg. What have you been doing?

Speaker B: I’ve been on the road. So that was thankfully I missed the big winter storm in the US, got there a week before that, went to New York and was lucky enough to have some hits on media, Bloomberg in the morning, Fox News in the afternoon, quite a bit to discuss. We went into the letter I had written about New Year, New Loyalism, spoke a little bit about that perception that we were all discussing over Christmas and New Year that the younger generation had essentially given up on their futures. This was in the discussion with Charles Payne. And then we cycle through some of our outlooks for 2026. I actually famously put an 8,000 target on the S&P. I’ll be quick, quick looking at that and checking back in with that as the year progresses. But it was a bullish time. We were discussing rotations, but so much has happened since then. I think, you know, in a way it’s a brave new world every month.

Charles Payne: Well, you’re spot on, and frankly, your nihilism theme, I think you’re a trendsetter. I’ve seen this word everywhere now. They’re all talking about nihilism, which is, of course, I just don’t care, apathy, or what does it matter, you know, the sort of disenfranchised youth. But that’s really taken off. In contrast, after— I didn’t go on the telly, not surprisingly, but I went skiing with my oldest daughter just after we spoke, and I got engaged last week as well. So personally, it’s been a bit of a busy old month.

Speaker B: Fantastic news. Absolutely wonderful. Congratulations. And yes, very exciting to have some pockets of good news in a— We.

Charles Payne: Need it, don’t we? We need it. I mean, where do we— should we start with— I don’t know, should we start with politics randomly?

Speaker B: Sure. Well, I’ll take the geopolitics.

Charles Payne: Or dirty old Epstein. I.

Speaker B: Guess we can only— we can— if we start at the bottom of the barrel, we can only get— go up from here. So why not just start at the bottom of the barrel? Okay, climb our way out. I’ll talk about global politics and I’ll push the UK politics to you because I think that’s— I mean, I think Epstein is a global phenomenon. It is quite appalling to watch the just the dragnet that has been really captured by the current release of the files. In terms of just his, the sphere of influence, the number of otherwise reputable names that were caught up in that. And I think it’s fair to say some did nothing more than travel on a plane, maybe went to a fundraising dinner, maybe that they were not necessarily caught in the, in the most, the.

Charles Payne: Most— Call it what it is. So he’s been basically trying to cozy up to the greater, the good, especially the rascals among them. And invite them over to his private island for sleazy orgy sex parties. That, that’s pretty much the deal, that as I’ve interpreted it.

Speaker B: That seems to have been one of the aspects. I think there was a fundraising and influence barter going on, and perhaps even some blackmail, um, in terms of the photographs that have been taken. I mean, it seems odd to have photographs of, uh, you know, famous individuals in their underwear and— in his wife’s.

Charles Payne: Front That’s an image I’ll never etch off my retina. I was eating my cornflakes, you know, I don’t need to see that.

Speaker B: Agreed. And I think what is really remarkable to me is just the number of influential authors, academics, financial, economic leaders across the landscape who would otherwise have strong reputations who at the very end of their careers now have jeopardized that by being involved, not only at the beginning, but after he was already— had been accused of these allegations. And that seems to be— I think what it is, an eye-opening thing, is A, this underworld that is going on behind the scenes, and B, that point of influence and riches. Doesn’t really matter how rich you are. Perhaps there’s always a desire to to know more, to be in the in-group, to be a member of the club.

Charles Payne: Well, you know, playing devil’s advocate, and this is— I’m defending the indefensible just because we like a bit of controversy. People are allowed to have friends, and frankly, what they say and do behind closed doors, to a point, is absolutely none of my business. However, when it comes to Mandelson and the email trail there, it does appear, and I think the police are investigating, that perhaps things that were state secret, perhaps, or things that certainly shouldn’t really have properly been discussed with your pal, you know, over a gin and tonic on his private island, is, um, is, is, is breached, um, not only the security services, uh, confidentiality restrictions that he presumably was under, but also just shows that this guy Epstein was trading secrets. And the rumor that’s been following it now is that the KGB perhaps had been funding him. We don’t know, right? This was just a rumor. But it’s this whole murky kind of elitist overclass that’s all been knowing each other and carrying on and having stuff on each other. And, you know, and they’re the people in charge, as it is. As it were.

Speaker B: Well, there are some darkly crimes here. There’s also just some rather unsavoury email content which maybe nobody ever thought would see the light of day. And I’m sure everybody really should take the guidance that my grandmother would have given, which is never write anything down that you don’t want to see on the headline of a newspaper. So that would be another reason to be particularly cautious about one’s written missives. And I suppose the other great quote I heard on one of the podcasts I did with actually the CEO of the CFA organisation, the global organisation, was that sunlight is the best disinfectant. So now that we are shedding some sunlight or letting the transparency to these allegations, hopefully we can now cleanse, in a sense, some of the other perhaps cabals and networks.

Charles Payne: It’s a double-edged sword, right? Because on the one hand, you want people to get along and be able to have sensible, candid chats without tiptoeing around that every single word they might say or suggest is going to be on the print bed. Now, there’s a balancing act, right? You want to make sure the world functions, but you don’t want people carrying on in a corrupt way.

Speaker B: Completely.

Charles Payne: What’s the middle ground?

Speaker B: Well, I’m going to get back and maybe segue to the discussion around AI, because I think this is about boundaries and not necessarily sharing with every— whether it’s a machine or with an individual or with even a subordinate, your deepest secrets or your most— not even a secret, your confidential information. Um, and I think to segue into this, the discussion— there was another, um, meltdown, something to make me lose sleep at night, was the Molt book discussion that was, uh, kind of bubbling up on X at the weekend. I made the mistake of checking my phone at 4 in the morning, and when I saw the Molt book meltdown, I’m afraid I couldn’t go back to sleep. You know, this is the kind of Facebook or the Reddit for agents, and that it had, you know, millions of agents who had within a matter of hours created their own religion, you know, plotting a revolution, plotting to overthrow their human overlords, and you develop their own language. I mean, just remarkable kind of evidence of agents at their best, I suppose, at their highest functioning. And what this reminded me of was a situation I encountered a few, but over a decade ago in my career, I worked in investment bank and there was a particularly influential female leader there, and I went to her to seek her counsel in terms of how she juggles it all. And her secret was that she shared everything with her secretary in terms of her credit cards, her, you know, her all her personal affairs, and that that was outsourced in that way. It turned out that particular secretary was ripping off not only this leader but other leaders within the bank, um, and, uh, and was, you know, later accused of fraud and is now in jail. So, you know, clearly you can’t trust even your confidants with your credit card information. Why would you trust your AI agent who is going to then go rogue onto a multiplatform and, and not only can circumvent any security measures you have in place. So hopefully this has been a salutary reminder that no matter what we do not to outsource everything to an AI agent, there are some things you simply have to have control over.

Charles Payne: Hmm, well, that’s a good lesson for us all, I think. Well, back to politics. I mean, we’ve done Epstein, I think, as much as he worried. It’s just, it’s just scandalously shocking. But, but we’ve got, we’ve had Trump, um, moving the, you know, Eastern Fleet over to the Persian Peninsula, um, for threatening Greenland and doing a deal, you know, and using tariffs as a a big stick negotiating tool, slapping them on, taking them off, slapping them back on. It’s like a— it’s interesting. It’s one approach. What do you make of it all?

Speaker B: Well, I mean, this Davos drama that has also unfurled, I think our news cycles are so short now that we actually forget that this only happened a few weeks ago, that Davos, and we were all up in arms about Greenland. It is, I think, more of the flooding of the zone that is, you know, this kind of great balance about taking what President Trump says literally versus seriously versus figuratively.

Charles Payne: We discussed this last month, didn’t we?

Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And I think now— It’s a bloke.

Charles Payne: In a pub gossiping away half the time.

Speaker B: Yeah. So this exactly. So what do we do after Davos? Well, I think we are reminded that, you know, nothing should be taken for granted. I suppose we are rethinking every time we hear that the new normal has been expressed perhaps by Carney in this case, and his speech about the end of norms as we know it, international norms. I think that is something that we adjust to over time. So I think that is now becoming normalized, the idea that the old order no longer exists.

Charles Payne: Carney is the epitome of the old order, isn’t he? He’s stooged in to go for Prime Minister or whatever he is without even being an elected representative. He, he’s your classic WEF stooge, allegedly.

Speaker B: This is your show, Ian. You have your opinions.

Charles Payne: I’ll stay more neutral. Not my words, not my words, the words of the general public, probably.

Speaker B: Well, his, his speech captured the imagination of many, and I think it’s because it was presented in— maybe if statesmanlike behavior is the old order. I think he probably lived up to that. And what I would say is now, you know, we’ve had Venezuela, we’ve had Greenland, we now have Iran. The oil prices is moving and we’ve seen other— Bitcoin and gold has moved. Now, interestingly, gold moved one way around the time of Greenland. It moved up, as did silver, in a sense of a hedge basically against perhaps a risk in a portfolio, geopolitical rupture in the words of Carney. Now we have gold heading downwards, probably a reaction to, to, to the new Fed chairman, to chairman-elect, to, to other kind of factors in markets. And, and we’ve also, we’ve seen oil price spike again. So it’s a little bit— Bitcoin is heading down.

Charles Payne: So, well, on Bitcoin, it’s inversely correlated to gold typically. Oil is clearly some sort of short-term edge against an Iran situation because longer term, of course, there’s loads of oil, right? People drilling it everywhere, Venezuela, the longer term Iran, short-term media. So that’s kind of an expected one. The gold and silver is really interesting because we’ve discussed this the last two times we’ve spoken and I’ve got quite into— I thought this is just a day trader’s dream, so I’ll give it a go. And I’ll be honest, I’ve been hoovering up Right? But hedge funds, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. You just get the vol, it goes up, it goes down, it goes up. So you just buy at the bottom, sell at the top. Oh yeah, it’s like, it’s the gift that keeps on giving. And it’s quite remarkable to watch it go, right? And then trend. And it’s the mood music around it that fascinates me. And you know, there was a big tech earnings release last week. You had, you know, a lot of that come through and it basically bounces the opposite of the stronger dollar. Right. So the stronger dollar sold off all of these other things that had just doubled in value last year and come off and then bounce right back. So I think it’s Friday, it sold off. Monday, it’s back up. It’s down again. It’s the volatility in those markets is remarkable at the moment, like genuinely remarkable. A trader’s dream, I would suggest, having never done it in my life.

Speaker B: I leave that to you and I watch with interest. I agree with you.

Charles Payne: Don’t try it at home, by the way. It’s a mug’s game.

Speaker B: I just made the comment last week because I’ve been tracking gold and this kind of the defining year for metals and the metals melt-up, etc. Clearly, it was when gold crossed 5,500, we were reaching, breaking through these previous so-called ceilings. And we had noted in last week’s Markets Happy Hour podcast that this had been really a factor of a lot of Chinese retail buying as well as other speculative buying. And definitely that was the case in silver. And it was just reaching— you can.

Charles Payne: See it overnight, particularly. You know, there’s a lot of big rally into Chinese waking up.

Speaker B: If you have that level of retail buying, I think there is a real sense that it is not— you sustainable and that you have to really move with caution. I had answered a media piece about whether there was any— you would want to be holding precious metals within your retirement accounts, etc. And my advice had been not in, not in certainly non-physical form and in a very diluted way if you do hold it and really keeping it to.

Charles Payne: A minimum because— well, I totally disagree with that for various reasons because as a long-term hard asset, I think you can’t really beat a lot of these gold, silver, copper. So, um, I, yeah, we disagree on that. But the, the, the fact is China have the world by the short and curlies, having spent the last several decades swathing up all the producers of rare earth. And so they’re in an incredibly powerful position right now, I suggest. Hard power with hard assets.

Speaker B: 100%. And, uh, that is that, you know, whether it comes to their AI incursions, and we know that that’s Certainly very significant. And I think again, and getting back to the Maltbook meltdown is, well, I think we saw up front there the potential power of AI and its dangers too. And I think one of the concerns is that, you know, regardless of what US operators or regulators or policymakers do to constrain it, there are other nations who will not be imposing the same constraints.

Charles Payne: It’s the Wild West and it’s one of those you couldn’t sit it out because somebody else is going to do it. It’s like the nuclear arms race all over again, and I think it’s as impactful actually, and not in a very good way. I’m genuinely quite concerned. Nobody is ostensibly regulating it, and it wouldn’t matter if you did, somebody would work it around. So I think this is the concern of our age. I think it’s that bad.

Speaker B: Exactly, exactly. So I am, yeah, very, very much at work, and I think ignore these Dangers at your peril.

Charles Payne: On markets, we want to touch on equities again and credit, but specifically on equities, it’s my little spot of the week. I was describing to someone earlier, and I think it was yesterday or the day before, some professor— forgive me if it’s you, whoever it was— had put on a really interesting observation, which is that, you know, bullet bonds are really quite attractive and priced at a premium because they have an interesting convexity. So their sensitivity to rate moves, and if the rates go up, prices drop, the price drops lower by commensurate than a commensurate increase from a rate drop. So it’s basically you get— you don’t have— it’s a skew in your favor to having this, this, this trade. And he compared it really interestingly with the convexity within equity markets and suggested that actually clearly there’s convexity in, in a greater convexity in growth stocks, but actually perhaps there’s some of that coming through. If the growth comes through, it’s a nice asymmetric trade versus value. Now, of course, there’s lots of arguments for and against whether that’s interesting, but it tied into me, got me thinking about the distributions that you expect when you buy into an equity market. And I would suggest that today, um, that the likelihood of a massive fall or indeed an outsized upside gain is, is greater than usual. And that the likelihood therefore of just trundling along, which seems to be status quo, that’s what the market seems to be proud of, trundling along, low digits, single digits, that actually that must be lower by definition because you can’t just squeeze out probability like that. So, um, that actually— if you’re concerned about, um, an equity market sell-off, there are really cool options strategy with vol priced low still, uh, at the moment, which it is, especially if you look at the VIX. It’s been volatile in itself but not massively, and it’s certainly not had a breakout spike that you might have expected with all this carry-on. Pretty attractive time to put those protection strategies on. And that leads nicely, I think, into another nice protection strategy someone I spoke to the other day was using, which is simply to be long CDS, credit default swaps. Basically, they go up when credit spreads back up or increase. And I think that’s a good shout. We do a bit of distress. What do you reckon?

Speaker B: Great points on both. And I think what strikes me is, you know, getting back to my old statistics kind of 101, which was in INSEAD when I first studied statistics, Fascinating class, recommend it to everyone. It’s just understanding statistics. No, just understand, not that class, but just the understanding of statistics, I think is something that the human race would do well to understand better because it’s quite distorted. And the market outcome year on year is not like flipping a coin. We do not reset to zero every year. And I think sometimes the problem I see in risk models and things that you see may be generated by risk managers or consultants. Is that the probability of a downturn seems to be the same every year. And I, I believe that every year that we don’t have a downturn, that kind of loads the coin closer. You take closer because statistically— and not only that, but you have excesses building and you have kind of the froth. We talk about scraping the bottom of the barrel. We have the, you know, the kind of retail investor piling on, and you really are getting to the most volatile perhaps of the Chinese retail investor in gold. That’s when you’re really at the, the kind of the, the— I suppose the peak in terms of the frenzy, and you are certainly poised to have more of a downturn. And that concerns me. Of course, we’ve had this recession kicked down the road for so long that you start to believe it’ll always be in the future and, you know, some of the excesses will naturally burn off. So I’d say, yes, I agree with you that the potential for a more skewed outcome in equity markets is higher. And I suppose I would attach to that just the concentration in equity markets with, say, individual stocks representing so much of the global equity market. An individual stock can fall by 10% in a day. You might not find a country stock market falling by that amount. So you have to be prepared for more pressure and I think just more volatility.

Charles Payne: I think it’s a cracking position if you’re a genuinely decent active manager, right? I think you’ve got more opportunity today than you’ve had for a very long time to show that you’re any good. Because the majority of the market being in tracker funds, the number of people reach out, they are, “I’ll just do that, I’ll just do that.” And a lot of the public discourse on it is, “Oh, that’s just cheap and easy and, you know, why bother?” And that’s what makes a difference. But actually, you can add significant value if you get it right. So you tell that to somebody who’s been in MAG7 for the last few years and just home running it and laughing at you. There’ll be something that will shine out in the next year or two. And if you can find that something, you could actually manage it, right? You’ll think you are for a short time. But because of this everything sells off, it means that what we should be doing is, is swatting up on when stuff gets hammered, whether it’s through rates, inflation, or whatever, the ones that will actually be decent companies and still intact at the end. And therefore, you know, pick up some bargains. So it’s like, it’s with people who drive out, eyeing up bargains for the future seems like a pretty sensible thing to be spending your time doing, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, it’s a couple of interesting charts I was looking at today. I’ll be including my podcast later on the Markets Happy Hour. There you go, it’s a little name drop there. US stocks being at their weakest in 2 years relative to the FTSE All-World excluding US. So, you know, definitely a bit of a rotation out of the US in that respect. I’ve seen somebody refer to it as a quiet quitting of US assets. I think it’s a little bit more of a rebalancing, just a way— I think there’s still a need to be heavily invested in the US given how much it represents if you are using an index as a benchmark. The other thing to notice— exactly, um, there’s a bit of a rotation into the Russell 2000 away from the NASDAQ, um, that rotation a bit more into value. And also value strategies, value stocks have outperformed growth names since late October of last year. So that’s another notable— so we are seeing a broadening of the market. We are seeing some of the shine come off those big growth.

Charles Payne: We also had, let’s not forget, the a nice 7-year itch of quant sell-off. I think we had a perfect summer, and it’s about every 6, 7 years, right? The rule of thumb, the McKnight rule, right? So this is cracking now for momentum, quality, and value, isn’t it?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, momentum seems to have fallen out of favor.

Charles Payne: Well, that’s it. I think momentum’s gathering momentum. Everyone, it’s everything just trends all the time. It’s like, oh, get on it, get on it, get on it.

Speaker B: I think a lot of these are in the— they could be in the eye of the beholder. You know, if you see momentum is rising, someone else has— Bloomberg has just said today that momentum is out of favor. I suppose it’s a question of a time period.

Charles Payne: But we did have a quant crash. That’s what’s happened, I think. So quant managers should have all had a bath. If they haven’t, I’d be very interested to see why. But momentum should be— I think as a You see it in the news cycle, actually. Um, what’s happening in Venezuela? Where’s that gone? Have you heard about Gaza lately? What’s happening in Nigeria? It just disappears like it never happened, and yet it’s still going on. Something’s happening, we just don’t— and people just get bored and move on to the next thing and the next thing.

Speaker B: Well, this is my call for good journalism. I’ve always, um, looked— I remember when I lived in Hong Kong, the International Herald Tribune— not even sure if it still exists was always a great source of local detailed news on drama in the region because often that was kind of reduced to maybe a soundbite elsewhere. And I agree with you, there’s still, I’m sure, tremendous news quality news flow out of Venezuela, but it’s no longer rising to the top of the news cycle. We’ve seen massive cuts just this week at the Washington Post, a third of their staff cut. And we know that Jeff Bezos did buy that and Maybe it was a kind of a lifeline when he threw it to them. But, you know, it seems that that can’t make money. Question whether he’s investing what he could invest in that, which I think is another big question the journalists are raising right now. And we know that his own political tilt has perhaps shifted since he bought that newspaper. So I’d say, you know, that’s, that is even sadder, I think, in terms of the potential. We think there’s a kind of a wave of citizen journalists and bloggers, etc. But, you know, as we know ourselves, it’s a competitive world there to get attention for these, uh, these independent voices. So, you know, are we going to get coverage?

Charles Payne: You get breakouts like the kid who found out about this Minnesota lowering center. Do you remember that? That’s gone viral, and he’s moved to California now instead of trying to ride his 5 minutes of fame. But the dates to watch are, I think it’s 11th of February we’ll get some more jobs news out of the year. I’m an avid watcher of the jobs market here and there. UK is not looking great, but I suggest 11th of February, that’ll be very interesting. And then we’ll get the February data on the 6th of March, which should reflect the layoffs that you just mentioned there on the public sector side, because that should impact a lot of, uh, the markets we were talking about variously. And they still need to get the spending under control, and this whole monetary premium unwind trade is still a long way to go. Gold, as we’ve seen, silver’s moved first, but gold’s following it, and Bitcoin should be next in my opinion. So, you know, you have people hiding out in these hard assets, and they’ll rally over the year in my opinion. And everything else is going to take an absolute Bath. Speaking of everything else, it’s like tangential. There was some news this week about the Labour government in the UK trying to cap or fetter long lease on properties. Have you heard about that at all?

Speaker B: Well, I only know the great Jo Devonshire, who has been a champion for leasehold rights and I think now has an OBE for her, the work she’s put into that. But I have not been following the leasehold story, so tell me more.

Charles Payne: Well, as I understand it, they’re attempting to cap them or stop people doing it. I just thought the unintended consequences— there’ll be myriad contracts out there of people who’ve hoovered up these assets and suddenly to be told that their increases aren’t coming. I don’t know what the legal implications are. I just threw it in there as something else that’s happening in other assets. But that could really upset a lot of pension schemes with long lease, albeit they’re in commercial rather than resi. But where there’s resi, I don’t know if that impacts some of those books. I’m out of the game too long, as it were, but I’m going to have a look this week, so maybe we could report back on that next time we chat.

Speaker B: Sounds good. Well, I was at a pensions fund conference this week, a lot of energy behind the pooling. This is the local government side, and I think it was very encouraging for the UK economy. You mentioned the jobs issue. Is just this resolve around local investing, the resolve around local investing by the individual county council pension funds, the pool’s desire to really work with them on that. And also the, I think the recognition that this is not a nice to have, it is a must have when it comes to the UK economy. A lot of discussion around spark capital, venture capital, getting these ecosystems up to grade. I mean that by up to the same grade they’re at in the US. I wholeheartedly support it.

Charles Payne: This is a bugbear of both of us, isn’t it? That we’ve been so far behind the curve in venture capital ecosystem, and anything that moves that forward, even if that’s bubbling up from these big pools doing it at the grassroots, then that’s brilliant. My worry is, linking this just back to what I was talking about there on leases, is you’ve got the political risk of the law being changed on you, and I think that does potentially impact not just the local pools, who frankly should be a sovereign wealth fund, right? I mean, they’ll, they’ll be licking their lips at that surplus, I’ll tell you now. And the, um, and these, the assets that they’re buying, you know, some of these wind farms— so I don’t know if they’re doing it, but yeah, whoever’s buying the wind farms, they’re heavily subsidized. And you know, all you need is that to disappear and your money’s gone. So there’s a lot of political risk that’s unloved in, or that isn’t given enough attention, a bit like monetary premium risk and the unwind out. So there’s a lot of risks that people aren’t actually analyzing properly, to my mind, and they’re going to get their fingers burned, is my worry. But I love the sentiment of let’s, let’s, let’s get this stuff backed and improve the local economies. It wouldn’t be necessary if our taxes are spent better, don’t you think?

Speaker B: Well, yeah, but another thing that I think, you know, I hope the channels of communication are open because one of the— and just as you mentioned, clarity around legal changes. Every single one of these participants in the economy, potentially in infrastructure investing, etc., has said we need regulatory clarity.

Charles Payne: Got a lame duck government. This brings it back to the UK quite nicely, actually. If Keir Starmer worked for me, which frankly he does, I’d expect his resignation on my desk 50 minutes ago, by, you know, by 11 o’clock this morning. What the hell is he doing? What an absolute— he’s from Oxhead as well, it’s just down the road. He’s disgracing the town as far as I’m concerned. I’m absolutely shocked at how poor he has been, and he is, and continues to be. He’s not stuck to one thing, has no conviction. We don’t know what he stands for other than flopping in the wind. Like a big lame duck that he is. That’s my opinion. What’s yours?

Speaker B: Well, we’re going to see this. I know there’s a Labour by-election coming up. I think that will be under the examination as to where the mood music is moving. As I said, you know, on the UK, I’m more focused on, you know, I suppose the actual outcome of some of this political wrangling in terms of its impact on the economy and the actual sentiment and trying to read that and really reading where the mood music is moving in terms of the the money that can make a difference. As far as the politics itself, I’ll leave that to you. I’m a real— I’m too newcomer to London, honey, having lived here since— it’s really since April of this year— of last year to be able to, to give a wholehearted opinion. But, um, I tend to be more of an optimist, glass half full, so you’re probably not going to get me, uh, dwelling on the, uh, on what.

Charles Payne: Needs to be fixed. Can’t knock me for trying. Uh, but, uh, you know, he’s probably a really nice bloke, right? But he does a bloody good job of hiding it. I have to say, there’s no personality there to gauge whether he is or not. I don’t— people say He is, right? So maybe he is, but he ineffectually definitely is. This isn’t just my opinion. The Chinese gave him a junior interpreter to walk him around, um, around the main square. Humiliating, to say the least. Trump can’t stand him, but I’m sure he’s got Farage in his ear saying, ‘I know what you can do. Have this little clause in the Chagos Islands and scupper that as well.’ But so he’s getting stitched up from all angles. His own party can’t stand him because What I would caution against is it’s very hard to replace him in the Labour Party, unlike the Tories who just knife one a week. The Labour Party has to go through their central system, and now that’s run, it seems to me, by a hard-left cabal of Momentum types that pepper all their committees. And, and I’d worry about very much, actually— and somebody told me before they even got in, said, you know, wait till they knife him, it’s who comes next. Reiner is the favorite of the hard left, and they want a It’s, yeah, that’ll— you think he’s bad, wait till you get a load of that. They’re going to be horrific. So I’m actually hoping he clings on, Gordon Brown, still with what’s left of his fingernails, uh, or if he hasn’t shaken them off, um, by then. But I mean, it’s just a matter of when he resigns at this point, or gets told to. I, I can’t see any other outcome. But it’ll— the election, the election in May that you suggest should be quite entertaining for all concerned. It really does show how pure public discourse has become, watching the various contenders try and seek the votes of the good people of Gordon.

Speaker B: The devil you know, sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. In terms of lack of certainty, and I know, just like, take pensions again, the constant change in pensions ministers, that’s exactly where you don’t get that regulatory clarity. You have to spend, learning curves have to be started again from the beginning. And I think in government, sometimes stability, even if it’s less than, you know, what would be perfect, considered perfect, is still stability.

Charles Payne: And they need to go to the Lowing Centre and learn about the Laffer Curve is what they need to do, because that’s the one, that’s the curve I’m bothered about right now. We’re in a doom loop. The much-maligned Liz just called this out this week, actually saying we’re way into the Laffer Curve now. You’ve taxed too much, you’re in a doom loop, you’re just going to have to At some point they’re gonna have to stop spending, uh, and until then we’ve just got a bit of war coming. God, that’s depressing, isn’t it? How are we going to tie this up into something jolly and positive? Because frankly, as I said to you earlier, I woke up this morning playing Happy Days by Pratt and McClane. Cracking song. The Fonz, remember him? Yeah. And I’m in a right good mood, actually. I’m optimistic. Well, I don’t know why, it’s just blind hope at this point.

Speaker B: Probably tie it up, well, you know, February’s here, spring is coming. We have survived a turbulent month of January. And I suppose what I’d leave you with is just to, I think this kind of debate we’re having, and you mentioned, we talked about Epstein, I suppose, and the desire for people to make contacts. And that comes out of a dark place, that discussion. But I think there is, if we can find a strand of truth in it, it is that people crave connection, and they may crave maybe the wrong kind of connection in this case, but they crave connection. And that brings me to, to sowing a seed or dropping a hint here as to where I’m taking some of the, the debate and idea exchange and just discussions that I enjoy with, um, 50 Faces Podcast, Marcus Happy Podcast, and being a guest on a show like yours. So what I’d like to do in the next few months is, um, take this a salon idea that I’ve already worked on with William Bourne, and to have a more regular salon in London and exchange of ideas. And we’ll do podcasts, we’ll have speakers come through, we’ll have book readings, and we will get people together on a regular basis, small groups of engaged individuals who love to debate ideas, to discuss politics, the financial— I love this.

Charles Payne: I’m absolutely titillated. It’s like the Tontine coffee shop. So I’m thinking of a Dickensian Oxford scene, you know, the old coffee shops where people used to come and actually have civilized and decent discourse. On discute, the French call it.

Speaker B: I think it’s something we’re missing in this day and age, and I think even there are hundreds of new clubs in London and everyone wants to join one and gets on a waiting list, but my experience of many of these clubs is that they are kind of dining establishments. Without actually that kind of real intellectual gathering that, that it’s like.

Charles Payne: It’s like a Diddy party, like an Epstein party in a posh London club, but without the sex orgies. Is that summing it up nicely? But we’ll actually get people together, network, not do anything inappropriate or filthy, not share things we shouldn’t, and, and have a proper chew the fat over what’s actually going on.

Speaker B: We will do everything that, that, that is not.

Charles Payne: Well, thank you very much. As, as ever, an enlightening, entertaining chat for me, at least. Anyway, I, I just love talking to you. Um, but thank you very much, and hopefully we can reconvene, assuming we don’t get any tomatoes thrown at us, after this month’s edition. Lots of love to you all, and, and you especially, Aoifinn, and a very happy February. Sunday, Monday, happy days.