Trump Says He’ll Meet Putin Again to Discuss War in Ukraine

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2:32Make more of what's yours. Accounts subject to credit approval. Restrictions and limitations apply. Cards are issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., member FDIC. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. We had some more news, David, out of Washington between the president and President Putin.

3:17Yeah, the two of them spoke by phone today. This wasn't previously announced. In the middle of that call, we got a post from President Trump on Truth Social indicating that the call was underway. And I think that's the first time we've kind of seen that happen. The president, I don't know if pausing the conversation, but tweeting or posting in real time that the two of them were talking. And then there was a subsequent post indicating that they'd had a conversation for about two hours where they discussed all manner of things, the war, of course, and maybe the prospects for another meeting with the two of them.

3:44Let's talk to Bloomberg News. White House and National Security Editor Michelle Jamrisco, who is in our Bloomberg, Washington, D.C. Bureau. She's been tracking this story over the course of the day. Michelle, this is kind of the appetizer to an in-person conversation that's going to take place tomorrow at the White House. President Zelensky is going to be in Washington to meet with with President Trump. And President Trump said the conversation he had today is going to inform what he says to President Zelensky. Get us up to speed on sort of what the contours of that conversation are likely to be tomorrow.

4:10him. Yeah, well, never a dull moment over here, David. So following the developments minute by minute. And yes, just this morning, we heard about this Putin-Trump phone call that would be slated to take place. So we did get a little bit of a preview of their later meeting in person that Trump has forecast. But to jump ahead just to tomorrow, yes, this meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky is a very highly anticipated one, obviously something that Zelensky has been seeking for some time. We expect one centerpiece of this meeting to be the potential for the U.S. to provision Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.

4:49At least that's Zelensky's wish. That is something that we expect may have come up in the conversation today between Trump and Putin, as it is something that is a highly sensitive topic, obviously, to Russia as well. And Putin himself has kind of threatens that the war would enter a new stage if this were to happen, if this exchange were to take place, while Zelensky, for his part, is obviously constantly looking for more military support that can help him end this war and end this invasion. Yeah. Does it feel like we're moving closer to an end here? I'm trying to kind of read the back and forth here, the two-hour phone conversation, President Zelensky at the White House tomorrow.

5:32And we have seen as of late, Michelle, it feels like President Trump in the White House leaning more on the side of Ukraine. But we know that that can also change rather quickly. So can you kind of gauge, you know, where we are in this process and the possibility of an end, the White House playing a significant role in putting an end to this war? Yeah, I mean, always very dangerous, as you know, Carol, to predict the end of these things. But we can say, I mean, first, your point about the evolution of this relationship between President Trump and And Zelensky, that has changed quite a bit, even just this year.

6:07I mean, we all remember the Oval Office meeting that did not go well before there was the Oval Office meeting that did go well with Zelensky at the heart of both. And I think, you know, there is a long strain now of months, months long episodes of Trump getting publicly frustrated with President Putin. And so the tide did turn in that sense. And now we seem to be kind of coming toward a middle ground, you know, flying high off of last week's developments in the Middle East. We have a president who's even more emboldened on his peace mission, so to speak. And he's looking to do anything he can to bring a resolution to this war that he admittedly had said he would end on day one when he was back in office.

6:49And has been the most elusive of the eight wars that he claims to have resolved on one side. He says this one is much trickier to solve. And so he's doing everything he can to make sure that at least it looks like that things have calmed down. But we're in a war that's in its fourth year and it's not going to be an easy end. As even Trump admits, you know, these two leaders, Zelensky and Putin, don't seem to like each other very much. So it's going to be it's going to be a bit difficult to bring them together. But we do see a lot of wheels turning in terms of new mechanics, new meetings that, you know, otherwise wouldn't have happened and would be kind of surprising to take place.

7:30But if not for Trump's willingness to kind of bring people together and at least hash things out in person. On the phone and in person. Michelle, thank you very much. Always great to talk with you. Michelle Jemrisco is a Bloomberg News White House and national security editor, cutting us up to speed on the conversation between President Putin and President Trump. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

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12:05that we've seen develop over the course of this week, I think beginning with those comments from Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, suggesting there could be some problems with private credit that have gone ignored or unattended to. Now we see this kind of action in the regional banks today. Your sense of just kind of how you're watching this unfold, what you're looking for, and what it might tell us about the market. It's such an important question. And to be honest with you, as I've worked with public and private markets investors for the last 15 years, This has been on the radar as banks pulled back after the financial crisis.

12:39Private capital has stepped in in a meaningful way to fuel business activity. And one of the things that's sort of become apparent to me in this, let's call it shadow bank, as is commonly used, is the shadow banking system is a lot like the normal banking system. There is some really just high quality lending, very well backed, normal activity happening. and there's some more challenging fraudulent activity happening. And so in terms of what we monitor, it's all the same stuff you monitor in the public markets. The major difference is that you have to be much more careful with things like default rates or some of the more standard areas of data that are going to have different definitions depending on who your lender is, makes it a little more difficult to parse in the private markets, but it's the same idea.

13:23I mean, I feel like we still have to figure out what happened here, right? I mean, I don't know. There are regulators over Zion, so you would assume that everybody was being a little bit more careful. Having said that, when you think about private markets and Jamie Dimon, what he said this week, are you getting a little bit more nervous about that there might be more problems in the financial system? I think it's incredibly reasonable. You said private markets for a while now. Yeah, I think it's so reasonable to be more attentive, let's say. When you have valuations and credit spreads where they are, it gets more and more difficult for people to see enormous amounts of upside in economic activity and market activity as well.

14:03And when you have a lending system that is so important to the real economy, it again, it's reasonable to say, hey, what's going on in this enormous segment of the economy that has grown so much over the last five to seven years? And so I think this is going to be an area that's going to draw more and more importance in our investment conversations coming up. When it comes to making investment decisions, though, you're seeing all in yields in these asset classes that are still attractive to investors. The transition that we're seeing then is a focus on quality, on workout capabilities, on if there is a problem in these asset classes, how do these teams navigate?

14:45When you were mentioning sort of the surge that we've seen of interest in private credit, suffice to say there's been a surge of interest in AI and artificial intelligence as well. And it does strike me that over the last week or so, there's been kind of a different conversation surrounding it. Maybe one of outright skepticism, maybe one just sort of about needing to see more proof in the pudding. And I wonder if you're seeing that as well, how you're rethinking about thinking about the kind of breakneck growth we've seen in AI and what needs to happen in the quarters ahead. I'm absolutely seeing this.

15:11It's really interesting, actually. I just got back from a three-week roadshow with our clients in Europe, and I was expecting a lot of things, but I wasn't expecting all of my conversations to include a big portion just about AI and U.S. tech and what's really going on there. And I would say that the skeptic story is increasing. I think the catalyst, in addition to valuations being high, et cetera, I think the catalyst for this was really this sort of rooibos spending announcements out of NVIDIA and OpenAI that have raised questions about the sustainability of the great earnings capacity that we've seen in AI.

15:50What I'm really watching to determine whether this is reaching bubble conditions is the transition from capitalizing tech spend from cash off of these companies' balance sheets and into the debt markets. It's starting, but it's really early. I think we need to see that mature more before I'd be really concerned about bubble conditions. All right. That's really interesting. because I do feel like last earnings time, we looked at things like meta and some of the big hyperscalers and we did see them actually having an impact from all the AI spend in terms of boosting revenues. But I feel like we're gonna have to go through that once again.

16:23Having said that, we've had quite a bounce back on the equity side of things. It would be normal to see maybe another correction of some sort here. I think that's right. But there's a, I can make a list of five or six really credible reasons why you might see a pullback in the equity market and specifically U.S. tech. But as we think about the next six to nine months in the equity market, the tailwinds are stronger than the headwinds. You have a Fed that's cutting interest rates. You have quantitative tightening that looks like it's likely to be easing. You have tax refunds in the spring that look like they're going to be much stronger than they've been in recent years.

17:00There's really a lot of important tailwinds to this market. And so until we see the AI hyperscaler say demand is falling, until we see the headwinds with respect to trade, et cetera, really make their way into the data, we're likely to see a pretty constructive market backdrop over the next six to nine months. I want to ask just for your perspective on the economy. So we heard a lot from Chris Waller today. He was on our air in the morning and then our colleague Tom Keene sat down with him at CFR. They had a longer conversation still. You know, and his perspective here is, you know, another quarter point cut here at the next meeting.

17:36Talked a lot about the labor market inflation. Your sense of where this U.S. economy is, particularly when it comes to inflation, the stickiness thereof. How are you thinking through sort of where that's headed? Yeah, this is another area where we've spent a lot of time because we anticipate that the first level sort of impact of tariffs to consumer price and inflation are here, but aren't really going to be felt until the until the holiday season and the turn of the year. And so I anticipate that we're going to have next year a growth environment that's slower. We're looking a little below one and a half percent.

18:11So it's a little below consensus. Inflation, that's about a little higher than consensus. where it's sticky around 3 % for core inflation. That's a stagflation light scenario. But when you, again, when you layer on some of the - You add the modifier. Yeah, when you add the modifier, it's not an overly bearish view on the US economy, but it's one where the Fed and the market are grappling with these same questions while you have the overlay of a sort of relatively bullish for the economy and for inflation, meaning inflation lower story coming out of AI. When we talk about the long-term implications of inflation, things like technological change and productivity and demographics are always on the list, and you put a question mark by them.

18:58And that's what we're all going to be grappling with over the next year. So funny, because I've been kind of watching all these conversations happening in Washington, talked with some of our colleagues down there, and they say the same thing, which is there's the promise of increased productivity, but nobody really knows at this point what that It gives us all permission to acknowledge the lack of conviction, right? And look, it's interesting. I think that there is a trade to place and money to be made by having a really sort of one-sided perspective on this issue of inflation in particular. What we're seeing investors do is instead lean way more into diversification.

19:35And it's funny because diversification isn't a new investment idea. But if you look back in the last 15 years, your ideal asset allocation wouldn't have actually been very diversified. You should have been all in on U.S. large cap growth equity for your ideal allocation. And so closing underweights to international equities, adding gold and other commodities. Well, that's where I wanted to go because gold is up, what, 64 percent. Carol saw us at 20 percent gold. If only. But for such a long time, gold did nothing. So, I mean, how much should it be in your portfolio? So I am of the team here. Here's one of the areas where I do actually have a strong conviction.

20:14Personally, I am of the team that gold has become a new asset class and that we will continue to see the price of gold rise in the coming years. We've heard folks like Ray Dalio say that gold should be as much as 15 percent in your portfolio. I think that's a little high for the average wealth investor, if only because it is not a yielding asset class. And so when you look at price return off of equity by comparison, it's kind of cheating. You really should look at total return. What's your take on why it's going up? Is it a safe haven or is it? There's so there's hedging or a pushback on the dollar.

20:45Like, what is it there? So there's structural factors related to central banks over the last really since Russia invaded Ukraine have been meaningfully trading dollars for gold. That's accelerated this year as a result of central bank and corporate hedging in response to some of the political volatility we've seen out of the U.S. I expect that sort of demand for gold to continue. There's also not been much development in supply. It's, you know, you can't wish gold mines into being. And so there's been a little bit of a hold up on that front. And then I think right now we are seeing a bit of a momentum or FOMO factor coming in where investors that maybe, you know, set it and forget it or wouldn't have thought very much about this are saying, oof, like, did I miss the boat on this one and piling in?

21:32Nuts. Yeah. Well, right. It's fun, though. How much gold is in your portfolio? Not enough. Not enough. I'll say that unequivocally. Well, a gold bar costs, what, more than a million dollars now? So the starting price is high. Yes, it's a high barrier to entry. On a date, just got like 30 seconds. On a date when we're feeling just a little bit nervous and wondering, is this the beginning of something to come undone? Are you more optimistic or pessimistic about the outlook? My economist brain will always want to be pessimistic, but I'm constructive. I think that we have some tailwinds for the economy and markets that get us through another nine months.

22:05I didn't hear optimism. No, well. Optimistic. No, no, no. Too late. Cheerlead. Thank you so much, Lauren. Thank you for having me. Great to have you back, Lauren Goodwin. She's economist and chief market strategist. Two hats at New York Life Investments. Joining us here in studio. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say, Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130. Carol Master along with David Gora, we're here on Bloomberg Business Week Daily.

22:43There's a lot going on. We mentioned Apple getting ready to finally launch a touchscreen version of its Mac computer, kind of a big reversal to the company's long strategy. Apple shares still down about 1%, but they're definitely off their lows. And then meantime, David, we are constantly seeing, I feel like, headlines over the last few weeks, over the last few months, even go back all the way through the summer earlier this year, of AI executives leaving well-known big tech companies a la Apple and heading to Meta. This is something that Sarah Fryer has been observing. She's our big tech team leader out in San Francisco.

23:18Mark Herman covers this for Apple. Try to get his perspective on this in just a moment. But Sarah, let me turn to you first. It does seem like there is this pipeline being built. I don't know how fortified it is, but we're seeing something of a trend here. That is meta kind of picking off high-level AI experts from Apple. And I read all of this. I read your reporting and Mark's reporting and others. And I think, you know, in the world of finance on Wall Street, there are all these prohibitions in place about if you take one job, when you can start the next job. Doesn't seem to be the case out in Silicon Valley to the same extent, does it?

23:48I just remark on how quickly this has happened. And of course, we're talking about this today because an Apple executive is now moving to Meta, working at Apple on kind of high end web search, AI powered web search. What's going on here and why does Meta have this edge, it seems, in this fight between Apple and Meta? Meta is paying a lot. They're putting out these, I'm sure you've seen the headlines of hundreds of thousands of dollars in pay, sorry, hundreds of millions of dollars in pay for these very high level AI names. And especially from Apple, we've seen about a dozen people go from the Apple team over to Meta.

24:27And it speaks not only to Meta's ability to recruit, but also of Apple's failure to make big inroads in AI for consumers the way that they had promised they would. It's really been a shortcoming for the company. And they've been trying to revamp their whole strategy. And during a time of upheaval there, I think a lot of executives are finding that they could just not. They could just not try again at Apple and instead go to Meta, which is really going all in on their, quote, unquote, super intelligence team under Mark Zuckerberg. Mark, come on in. Mark Gurman, come on in on this. Because what's interesting is this guy at Apple, I thought he just had gotten kind of a new big job at Apple.