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Bloomberg audio studios podcasts radio news. This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at 7am Eastern on Apple CarPlay or Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
Tom Keene
Your quick brief with Rob Sack and P. Jim here. I just as a general statement, what are you going to look at within the wall of data here in four minutes? What? What matters to you?
Kevin Warsh
Well, I think the key is on the activity side. Things are holding up well, so I think we're going to get jobless claims. Those will look good. I think on the spending side you're seeing the consumers show some signs of strain but holding in pretty well. So it really comes down to the inflation numbers. We're looking for 0.35% month over month, core PC 3.4% year over year. Looking at the details will be important. What's driving that?
Paul Sweeney
But that's the real story in six
Tom Keene
months are we peak? Paul keeps saying Are we peaking here in inflation?
Kevin Warsh
I think at the end of the year we're closer to 3% on core PC. So you're going to get some gradual disinflation in the back half. But you know, to me the risks are heavily skewed to the upside on inflation. All the leading indicators I look at for consumer inflation, things like the producer price index, surveys of supply chain strain, survey of prices, all those things still look quite firm. So I don't have a lot of confidence that we're going to get that gradual disinflation in the back half. And if you look at the Fed, they had a much higher forecast for core PC by the end of the year. I think that's quite possible with some of the leading indicators that we're seeing.
Paul Sweeney
Has the Fed ever addressed the issue of what we've seen over the last couple of years of de globalization on shoring friends, Shoring. All of that trend suggests just higher overall underlying inflation going forward forward. Have they addressed that vis a vis their 2% kind of target?
Kevin Warsh
Well, I think this gets to an important issue which is they've been a lot of supply shocks over the last several years. Some of this due to some of these deglobalization type trends. We can look at tariffs as kind of example of that. And you saw that reflected in the last Fed meeting where they said supply shocks are keeping inflation away from target. And it's not just energy, it's more broader than that. And I think that's why you're going to continue to see a hawkish Fed even with oil prices down. Where are. Because it's a much broader story than energy. We've missed inflation target for many years and a lot of that's related to those globalization trends.
Tom Keene
What year over year CPI is optimal for equity markets?
Kevin Warsh
Well, that's a great question because you're. But the equity markets are balancing a lot of factors here. On the one hand, hotter inflation means the Fed's going to stay higher for longer. Things will be hawkish. On the back of it though, you have this AI story which we think is largely orthogonal to rates. Yeah, yeah.
Tom Keene
So what's your statistic on that before we go to the report here?
Kevin Warsh
Well, I think that, you know, if we get softer inflation, that would be ideal for equity markets because I think net net rates moving up is negative for, for, for rates. So I think if we start to see, you know, a miss on PCE here, something below 0.3, that would be quite favorable month over month. I think that's Unlikely, given some of the data that we've already got.
Tom Keene
Services and goods. Do we return to a vector of goods disinflation?
Kevin Warsh
Well, that's what's in our forecast. But there too I think there's a lot of risk for these globalization trends. Also, you know, what was driving goods inflation over the last year was tariffs. Right now that's good. Looks more muted. That's mostly played through. We could get more tariffs later this year leading to an entire round of new goods inflation. So the base case, yes, we'll see disinflation in goods. But I think the risks there are also skewed to the upside.
Tom Keene
Rob Stockings with this here. Marcus, lift up 50 futures now up 60. Nasdaq up 2.1%. Now up 2.2%. 4%. You get the picture. What I see here, and Rob's going to help me here because I'm doing amateur math, I got a GDP shock Q1 from 1.6. It came in at 2.1. I got a GDP price index, 3.5 came in a higher 3.6. Rob, get ready. If I add 2.1 and 3.6, I get a 5.7% quick nominal GDP eyeball. That's all I need to know, right?
Kevin Warsh
I mean that's been the story for us all year. We've been calling this the overheating economy. That's been our base case. And that's nominal GDP growth five and a half, 6% or higher. And that feels like where we're landing. And if you look at China like
Tom Keene
it's very strong yellow numbers here in the screen, folks, are yellow. It's Banana Republic yellow.
Paul Sweeney
Yeah.
Tom Keene
Is that good that we have a 5 plus percent nominal?
Kevin Warsh
Well, if we look at the real side, you know, that's a good story. We've had had a pretty resilient economy driven by AI CapEx, a resilient upper income consumer fiscal support in the first half. But that worrying part is the inflation of that nominal GDP story, you know, far above the Fed's target, far too high. As we talked about earlier, we think that's going to moderate gradually. But you know, risks here to the upside and looks like this morning's print came in right in line with expectations. You're running near 3.5% on core PC inflation when you know the Fed targets 2%. It's going to take a lot of work and a lot of disinflation across categories to get back down to target. And I think that's Kevin Warsh's focus is getting back down to 2% without rounding. Not in the vicinity of 2, but back down to 2.
Paul Sweeney
Tom, the two year treasury is down 2 basis points, 4.12% on the news here. So, Rob, based upon what you heard from Kevin Warsh last week with his first meeting.
Suki Cooper
Yeah.
Paul Sweeney
How do you think he's going to interpret, interpret this data here?
Kevin Warsh
I think what we saw from Kevin Warsh in his first meeting is at the moment, this is a Fed with a one sided mandate. It was price stability. You saw that in the statement. You saw that in his comments. You saw that in the balance of risks in the Fed's acp. Not much focus or worry about activity or gdp. GDP or the labor market. Lots of worry about inflation. And, and so I think here this is going to be in line with their concerns that inflation is running well above target and they're going to have to hike rates to bring inflation back down.
Paul Sweeney
Tom, you got to pay attention to these Wall street guys. They just switch jobs left and right. There's no loyalty whatsoever. They just go for the big check. Rob, I just noticed that. Rob, who was at Citi for a long time, he's now at pjim. So I'm like, oh, they move around. They move around like crazy.
Tom Keene
Two, three times a year I make a mistake.
Paul Sweeney
And then so I'm like, so where did Tom Purcelli go? He was a pjm. I look at him, he's at Wells Fargo.
Tom Keene
I mean, no, it's like anthropic. It's like. And they're going for anthropic salaries.
Paul Sweeney
I know, I know.
Tom Keene
Rob, I got one more question here. We got to keep it going. Cesarovsky from Morgan Stanley is on deck right now. I'm sorry, I got to go back. Folks, help me here. Mr. Walsh, Chairman Wash, as we're doing a special on Greenspan tomorrow, they have Joseph Cohen and Bloomberg Money. Chairman Wash has got to look at a nominal GDP that none of these chairmen have ever really seen because we had stimulus. President Trump would say the Biden stimulus. We had a medical event, we had more stimulus. And then Trump put it on. You know, whatever you think about the politics, folks, I mean, there's no other topic to me than Banana Republic. Nominal gdp. What's the harm of that to our listeners and viewers?
Kevin Warsh
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you're seeing that reflected in many areas. This affordability issue that we keep talking about. Even though growth has been strong, the labor market's been relatively solid, you know, inflation's been high. And you're seeing that reflected in concerns about affordability. And I agree with you. I think for war, she's looking at five plus years of missing the inflation target and saying this is job number one. We're missing, you know, 3% is not 2%. Even two and a half percent is not 2%. And we have to hike rates and we think they're going to hike three times this year to help bring some of those pressures down.
Tom Keene
When you come from pj, do you get in the Greg Peters Hinckley picnic boat when you come across the Hudson?
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Kevin Warsh
Well, exactly. We were closely with Greg and Dalip and I mean, that's the team over there. Robert Tip.
Tom Keene
It's got the side thrusters, you know.
Lee Roberts
Yeah.
Tom Keene
Rob Stock and thank you so much. Terrific brief there and a wall of economic data. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this.
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IBM support for the show comes from public.com if you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge on public. You can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English like if the Vix hits 25, buy a put option on the S&P 500 or if my cash balance goes above $20,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve the workflow and your agent handles the risk. Monitoring the market, watching for your conditions and executing your strategies exactly as defined. An investing platform driven by your intent and not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com market and fund your account in five minutes or less. That's public.com market paid for by Public
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you're listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 7 to 10am Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.
Tom Keene
Joining us now, Sebastian Page. All that he does for T. Rowe Price and his wonderful, wonderful effort on diversification. His book was really quite important. Sebastian Audible Paul and I were bedazzled by your Father's Day. This is your father and your son going 420 miles north of Montreal up by where like an X Files an asteroid hit in Quebec and you were out there fishing what, sturgeon, Sebastian, were you attempting to catch?
Sebastian Page
You know Tom, you and I have talked about the mean flies that you get in the wilderness. There are lots of flies over there. You take a prop plane to Bikamo, you drive three hours north into the wilderness. The experience was wonderful because my son, who speaks mainly English, had to improve his French and my dad, who speaks mainly French, had to improve his English. We had a great time. I'm not going to lie. The fish was small, but it was delicious.
Tom Keene
I did one more question on this because there's so much to talk about. Sebastian, tell me. There was no cell phone for your son. He couldn't use his iPhone.
Sebastian Page
You know what's disappointing is just recently my father, it's a, it's in the wilderness, Tom. He got Starlink and let me tell you, it works. So it kind of ruined a little bit of the experience.
Tom Keene
Okay, let's go here. I'll get one very Paul wants to jump in. Let me do this quickly. Sebastian Page on the event of Space X and Starlink anthropic to follow on and the rest your take on Space X.
Sebastian Page
Look, in general those IPOs are being very well absorbed. We believe in the AI trade. We're bullish, we're long US large cap growth. Tom. Interestingly, people worry about debt levels and the sustainability of earnings. The Russell 1000 large cap growth over the last five years at times has traded as high as 30. Price earnings ratio we're at 22. So we've actually moved money there. We're following the AI bottlenecks. It's about cooling, it's about electrification, it's about the component you're missing. It's about emerging markets now. It's an expanding trade. We believe in this fundamentally because we're doing the research, 300 analysts at T Rowe Price, but also because the end user demand is there. There are billions of users. Yes, they balk at sometimes more expensive tokens. It goes up and down. But generally there is demand and application for AI and we're in that trade.
Paul Sweeney
Sebastian, talk to us about momentum trading here. It seems like we're seeing that in this market here, kind of following some of the big cap growth names that have been winners. Talk to us about how you think about momentum.
Sebastian Page
This is a huge debate on our investment platform, Paul. It's unbelievable how strong momentum has been. I wanted to illustrate this for our investors and I created this very simple return chasing strategy where you buy the top 10 stocks based on the prior returns for 12 months every month on the S&P 500. And you go back in time and you see how well this is. Return chasing momentum trade has worked. And I was just almost fell off my chair. The profits. If you exclude transaction costs from this dumb momentum chasing, just buy the top 10 performing stocks over the last 12 months. Rebalance every month is 40% annualized over the S&P 500 for the last three years. This is how strong momentum has been strongest than any time over the last 25 years. So what do you do? You either neutralize the risk, you need to be aw of the risk if you're looking for mean reversion, if you're looking for things to normalize. But either way, in our portfolios, we've got to manage this risk.
Paul Sweeney
Inflation. We're seeing oil coming down pretty dramatically here as we appear to have some movement towards peace in Iran here. Does that take away the inflation risk in this marketplace, do you think?
Sebastian Page
No, I think for the next three to six months the inflation risk is still there. It could still surprise on the upside. Counterintuitively, it might surprise on the upside even more because oil has come down. What I mean by that is the market's pricing of inflation is quite low. The break even one year right now is 1.7%. The swap rate for one year on inflation is 2.2, 2.3%. Meanwhile, if you analyze the last three months, the headline print, it's 8%. Even the shelter component last three months annualizes 4.8%. So yes, oil prices are coming down, but you have a lot of lagged effects, Paul, on inflation from insurance and freight costs going up to transportation to industrial production to final goods, from fiscal to stimulus to demand increasing from fertilizer to food price inflation moves with lags and I think markets underestimating those lags.
Tom Keene
Should our listeners and viewers, Sebastian, I mean you wrote the definitive book on this. Should they be concerned about concentration in their large cap for a 1k portfolio?
Sebastian Page
You know, interestingly those companies, yes, there's concentration if you look at the handful of CEOs that control so much of the market cap. But their revenues are quite diversified and quite robust. So I'm actually giving you a nuanced answer. Tom. For someone who's written a book on diversification, it might not be as big a risk as people think if you look at the economic diversification of the revenues and the sustainability of the cash flow generation from those big companies. But the nuances, it's pretty extreme by historical standards. It's basically near an all time high in concentration.
Tom Keene
Sebastian, your trooper hauling your son up there halfway to the North Pole. Greatly appreciate he is with T. Rowe Price sponsoring the Baltimore Orioles. Sebastian Page joins us. I'll get as his book out on Twitter and LinkedIn. It's really extraordinary on this idea of diversification. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this.
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Paul Sweeney
for this show comes from public.com if you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge on public you can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English like if the Vix hits 25, buy a put option on the S&P 500 or if my cash balance goes above $20,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve the workflow and your agent handles the risk, monitoring the market, watching for your conditions and executing your strategies exactly as defined. An investing platform driven by your intent, not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com market and fund your account in five minutes or less. That's public.com market paid for by Public
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You're listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 7 to 10am Eastern. Listen on Apple, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.
Tom Keene
What a joy to have in studio. Definitive, and I mean definitive on all of commodities in the frontier world, the third world. Her leadership at Standard Charter bank with their understanding of Southeast Asia, I think of Freeport McMorran, Indonesia and all that. We are thrilled. Suki Cooper joins us this morning with the Standard Charter Bank. She gets to work with Steve Anglet.
Paul Sweeney
I mean, is that right?
Tom Keene
Pretty good. That's all there is to it. Gold, you figure? Freeport McMurray In Indonesia, every central bank wants to buy gold. Let's start with the why. Why do they want to buy gold at the margin?
Suki Cooper
Historically there's three goals and gold achieves that. They want stability, they want liquidity, they want returns. But what we've seen over the past four years is that there are additional reasons to want to buy gold in addition to diversification. It's concerns around geopolitical risks. It's wanting to have a store of view. It's wanting to have that hedge. And it's not just central banks we're seeing that play out through the investor side as well. But for central banks in particular, they've been the marginal buyer.
Tom Keene
Is it a return to the 1930s, the 1920s, the 1910s?
Suki Cooper
It's not so much a return to the wanting to have that monetary stability, it's more so wanting to strengthen balance Sheets and have optionality but also wanting to diversify at the same time. So some of it. There's a central bank gold survey that was released last week and this is I'd say the best survey for us to be looking at because it signals from 76 different central banks what their intentions are. And we had a record 45% saying that they intended to increase their own gold reserves over the next 12 months. That's the highest we've had. And when we had such strong figures in the past, it's translated into record value terms in additions.
Paul Sweeney
Since the end of January of this year, gold's down about 25% and we're now we're below $4,000 per ounce. What's going on there?
Suki Cooper
It's a historic day in that we've seen the lowest settlement since November 2025. We've seen a huge pivot from January to now to what the gold markets focus on. Yes, there was over positioning at the start of the year but there was also more of a focus on the structural drivers behind gold. Now there's been that pivot towards less. So the debasement trade concerns around real yields rising, the dollar being much stronger. So we've seen this macro headwinds developing but it's come at a time when we've seen a need for liquidity really pressuring the gold market. So it's a combination of factors, a combination of headwinds that we think are going to keep gold price fragile in the near term. But beyond that we're still positive.
Paul Sweeney
Yeah, because I mean I'm just looking back at my gold chart here on my Bloomberg terminal here it's been for several years nothing but up. So this turn down is really something different. And I'm wondering because it seems like when we were talking about gold over the last four or five years it was just everybody was buying, the central banks were buying, individuals were buying, everybody was buying.
Suki Cooper
Yeah, that really I think 2025 was the year where we had investors wanting to buy ETF holders, short term investors and central banks. But before then it was largely central banks that had helped to raise the floor for gold prices. But what's changed this year is that we still have that central bank buying but the ETFs have turned negative. We've seen significant outflow.
Tom Keene
So is that an opportunity? I mean, you know when Steve Engelner leans over the desk and says suki, where are we going? Are you saying Gold 6000?
Suki Cooper
We haven't changed our price forecast. We still have 5150 as our Q4 average.
Tom Keene
Suki got to make some moves here.
Suki Cooper
So in the near term it's fragile. India's demand has slowed down. We've got the headwinds from real yields. We've got focus on the inflation data in an hour's time where markets might be pricing in an increased, ever increasing probability of.
Tom Keene
I just finished Lee Quadrant New Jewel 1873. Of course, he wrote Lords of Finance eight years ago. And the arc over that is how gold and silver bounce off the mining, the supply. Oh, we found silver in Nevada, therefore the silver price changes. We have record gold mining now. Am I right?
Suki Cooper
We do.
Tom Keene
What does that mean for the price of gold? Is that bad?
Suki Cooper
It hasn't been. Because the market's been so keen to absorb all that supply, we haven't seen recycling responding as much. Normally it's price elastic, but we haven't seen as much distress selling when it comes.
Tom Keene
That's because Alexis hasn't sold the gold.
Paul Sweeney
So what else in the world of precious metals jumps out at you these days? Where's their value, do you think?
Suki Cooper
Relatively. We think going forward there's going to be much more focus on where we see demand growth. And of course there's the demand growth and that benefits silver, benefits platinum. And when we're looking at chips, we're looking at electronics, hard disk drive. So that demand looks relative, looks robust. We look for markets where we expect them to be undersupplied. We think the platinum market is likely to be under supplied for the next couple of years. Platinum come from largest from South Africa and then Russia.
Paul Sweeney
Wow. Exactly. On Fifth Avenue.
Tom Keene
Nailed it.
Lee Roberts
Exactly.
Paul Sweeney
So platinum. And talk to us about palladium as well.
Tom Keene
Oh, listen to you.
Paul Sweeney
I got my global commodities price thing up on the Bloomberg terminal. I'm quoting everything.
Suki Cooper
Palladium is under a little bit of pressure right now with the Middle east conflict reinvigorating concerns that we might see a faster pace for EV sales. And that's put the internal combustion engine sales perception under pressure, at least the near term.
Tom Keene
With respect to Steve Englander, is the Suki Cooper world linked to his Is gold still linked to US dollar dynamics?
Suki Cooper
Interestingly, over the past few weeks that correlation has become important again with the US dollar with real yields, with inflation expectations and it hadn't really mattered. And go back to 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.
Tom Keene
But now it's back in link.
Suki Cooper
But now it's back. We've seen such so inflation worry dollars
Tom Keene
stronger yields up, gold up potentially lower
Suki Cooper
in the near term. But we think that those structural drivers that had been pushing gold higher will come back to the forefront. In the near term, it's fragile, but beyond that we think the structural drivers are still.
Tom Keene
I got a Russia Sharma lift here in copper. From the depths of 2022, it's a solid double in copper. What is the lift in copper signal to Suki Cooper?
Suki Cooper
So the copper market is indicating partially the demand growth around AI, demand around electrification of vehicles.
Tom Keene
Like data centers.
Suki Cooper
Like data centers, yeah. So we're seeing a robust outlook when it comes to the demand profile. And when we think about the mine supply side, the question is really can it keep pace? So when we're seeing investment across mining, there's more of an appetite to want to invest in copper projects because of that stronger demand picture going forward. But in the very near term, there's focus on the US Tariff review which is due up for. We should have more details on it before the end of next week at the 30th of June. So copper prices are being kept elevated by some of that uncertainty around the risks on tariffs being impacted.
Paul Sweeney
I got silver down 20% year to date. Is that just a sympathy trade with gold or is there something special there?
Suki Cooper
I think it's a little bit more exaggerated because of the retail element. Silver tends to do well when there's strong industrial demand, but also strong investor demand. And we know at the start of the year there was tremendous retail demand for silver. That has moderated. It's still there. It's just not as strong as it was at the start of the year. And silver now no longer has the additional ETF lows pushing it higher too. We still see the market as being undersupplied, but we think that increasing volumes of ETFs turning negative in terms of profit making positions is likely to weigh on silver in the near term.
Tom Keene
I mean, Paul, it's like this is what AI is about in Google Gemini, which I use here religiously, folks. Thank you, Ms. Mr. Secunda, for that. I look up amphenol, which is like a moonshot right now they make like stuff for data centers, a custom flexible copper bus bar and connectors.
Paul Sweeney
Gotta have that.
Tom Keene
And it's like sheets of thin copper. Right. So that's tangible. And forget about all this anthropic stuff. Yeah, I need copper bus bars. Right.
Suki Cooper
So this is also another fascinating area. Silver is used heavily for solar panels, but now they're starting to look into alternatives with copper instead. So silver has benefited from growth in the solar industry, but there is that substitution risk too.
Tom Keene
Okay, we gotta go. We don't care. All we want to know is what you think about England and the World Cup. They looked a little tired out there.
Suki Cooper
I'm still supporting England.
Tom Keene
You're still all the way. I mean, it's basically Harry and everybody else.
Suki Cooper
It's a team effort.
Tom Keene
It didn't look waiting for cricket. The first first half was painful. Do you understand cricket?
Paul Sweeney
No, I barely understand baseball.
Tom Keene
Mr. Bloomberg put me in some shishi hotel.
Paul Sweeney
Yeah.
Tom Keene
Near like Trafalgar Square and I watched cricket for three hours with a beverage. No idea.
Suki Cooper
Yeah.
Tom Keene
No idea what I was doing. Suki Regards to Stephen under Standard Charter Bank. Suki Cooper, just absolutely spectacular. Her thoughts on gold. Important. Go to Standard Charter for her important literature. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Surveillance coming up after this.
Paul Sweeney
Support for the show comes from public.com if you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge on Public, you can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English like if the Vix hits 25, buy a put option on the S&P 500 or if my cash balance goes above $20,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve the workflow and your agent handles the risk, monitoring the market, watching for your conditions and executing your strategies exactly as defined. An investing platform driven by your intent, not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com market and fund your account in five minutes or less. That's public.com market paid for by Public
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Tom Keene
This is a joy and really a great privilege out of the combine of the Carolinas and his Washington, D.C. lee Roberts joins us on Chancellor UNC Chapel Hill. I got to get the college thing first, but I'm not going to mince words. People go like, Tom, how do you do this? And I do. I had the honor of standing at a piano in Georgetown with John Dickerson and explaining the impact of Nancy Dickerson on my household as a kid. Folks, Nancy Dickerson, John Dickerson's mother, invented Barbara Walters. Barbara Walters did her act and she invented someone called Cokie Roberts. What was it like growing up in Washington in the crucible of the Roberts household? Stephen Roberts and Cokie Roberts well, good morning.
Lee Roberts
Thanks for having me. Thanks for mentioning my parents. It was definitely different. A lot of conversations about politics and policy around the dining room table.
Tom Keene
Excuse me. Nixon's online too. Is that what it was like?
Lee Roberts
Well, you know, I think for a lot of Washington households you grow up with with that around, so it wasn't unique among my among my friends.
Tom Keene
I'm going to put you on the spot because I got too much respect for your family. The new Washington Post, can they resurrect it? Can they get it back to the pixie dust you and I knew?
Lee Roberts
I got to tell you, the Washington Post, most of what I read there is about the Washington Redskins. They call them the commanders now. But I'm a lifelong.
Tom Keene
You can come back.
Lee Roberts
That's what I read the Washington Post for.
Paul Sweeney
Lee, talk to us about managing a large university. I don't care if it's a state university like UNC or a private university. In a world where funding really seems to be at risk, that public private partnership that had been the bedrock of this country since World War II is under threat. Talk to us about how the environment is today.
Lee Roberts
A lot of uncertainty around federal research funding. I will say that despite the proposals for significant cuts in federal research funding, what was actually passed and signed by the president basically held federal funding flat. Now the priorities are changing around and that's not a bad thing. They need to be updated and the process through which we receive the funding needs to be streamlined and addressed. And again, that's not a bad thing at all. The biggest challenge, though, is that federal funding is not being dispersed in the way that it was allocated. So you're seeing a lot of universities waiting for grant funding. At the same time, there's tuition pressure, there's public funding pressure. But we're really fortunate in North Carolina to have such strong support from such a fast growing state.
Paul Sweeney
That's a good point. Just in general for higher education, there's probably universal agreement that the tuition growth that exceeds inflation in my entire lifetime every year. What does that suggest to you? That is not a feasible financial model in most people's minds. How do you guys think about it?
Lee Roberts
Agree it's a challenge for higher education generally, but at North Carolina, we've been ranked the best value in higher education for 21 years in a row by U.S. news World Report.
Tom Keene
It was Duke.
Lee Roberts
And then finally our in state tuition is $9,000 a year. So it's a pretty good deal. It was flat for nine straight years. It's going up by 3% this year. It's actually gone down in real terms by about 20% over the last nine years. So we have a pretty good story to tell at Carolina when it comes to affordability.
Tom Keene
Lee Roberts, you look at any fancy school up in New York to prep schools and it's absolutely shocking. The migration south, it's like a whole new generational world. Why are they going to Wake Forest? Why are they going to unc, even if they don't want to go to Duke.
Lee Roberts
You know, I think weather and sports has something to do with it. Greek life is important for, for some students.
Tom Keene
Are they sick of the grade inflation at the major schools in the Northeast?
Lee Roberts
Well, I think it's okay for college to be fun, and I think that's what students are looking for. It's not only fun, but a dimension of fun in college is a good thing.
Tom Keene
Yeah, but do you have great inflation at UNC like they have at some of these, these, these schools up north?
Lee Roberts
You know, I think you do see great inflation across the board in U.S. universities. Saw the, the report coming out of Yale, obviously a lot of news out of Harvard. That's something for the entire sector to tackle.
Paul Sweeney
Lee, we've seen stories of universities physically expanding their footprints beyond their existing campus schools, buying schools in, say, San Francisco to get exposure to the technology. Is that something that UNC thinks about?
Lee Roberts
You won't see us expanding physically outside of North Carolina, I don't think. But, but we do have about 800 acres a mile and a half from our existing campus that we plan to build out as a full blown new campus. Given that we're growing enrollment, given the huge demand for STEM classes, you need new facilities for that. And look, we have a huge housing problem in the town of Chapel Hill, which is a problem for the university as an employer. So we can use this land to help address all three of those challenges.
Tom Keene
How do you do, for example, the dorm housing thing? How do you do that against the pressure of competition? That we have to have dorms and apartment suites that look like the St. Regis over on 54th Street? I mean, the whole elite versus just getting my first dorm room in Colorado. I think it had electricity. I mean, how do you balance this fancy fancy with the reality you just put the 18 year old in a room?
Lee Roberts
Well, look, we're a public school and we're the first public university in the US not one of the first. The first.
Paul Sweeney
Really.
Lee Roberts
The median age of our dorms is 1940. We've got two outside my window that date from the 18th century. So that was well before climbing walls. It was before H Vac. And so we're trying to upgrade our housing stock, but we're building modern Chevys, we're not building Cadillacs.
Paul Sweeney
What's the greatest threat to your business, your business model, the model of running a public state public university these days?
Lee Roberts
Look, I think the thing everyone is grappling with is artificial intelligence. And what does it mean for higher education? We've never just been in the business of transmitting information. If that were the case, then YouTube would have destroyed higher ed. We need to make sure that students have the wisdom and the judgment to go along with this gusher of information coming up.
Paul Sweeney
I've been saying to everybody, the last job I think I'd want to have today is an educator. High school, middle school, and of course, certainly in higher education.
Kevin Warsh
What are.
Paul Sweeney
I mean, you guys are learning like we're learning right on the fly. What are some of the policies you guys have kind of instituted or thought about instituting?
Lee Roberts
Well, you're right. That's a real challenge because the external environment is changing so quickly and universities don't change very quickly, and that's okay. That goes along with our remarkable stability. But that tension is heightened at a time like the one we find ourselves in now. We have a new policy whereby you can choose one of three policies for your syllabus as a professor about how AI will be used in the classroom. So instead of defining the policy for yourself, which is where we were before, which was confusing students, you have to choose one of three. It'll give students a lot more predictability about how they can use AI in a given class.
Tom Keene
I literally sat in a fancy prep school gym in New York City and they announced that Georgetown and MIT were bringing back test stores. We got this fiasco out in California with the faculty saying we can't teach the kids UNC on a new rigor of admission and a rigor while you're an undergraduate at the school.
Lee Roberts
So I think the key is just to make sure that students have the skills that they need to thrive over the course of a 50 plus year career. And those aren't going away even as the workforce continues to change very rapidly. Communication skills, critical reasoning, problem solving, ethics, judgment. Those are going to serve students well no matter what the workforce looks like.
Tom Keene
Paul, we got a problem. Janet Lawrence listening. I know, it's just too much. Janet Lauren drives all of our education coverage and she has been wonderful about any given school in the acreage. Now, you mentioned your acreage at UNC and I know you've got. Is it the Lineberger Cancer Center?
Lee Roberts
It is.
Tom Keene
You're building. Explain the machinery. People are going like, we need a football stadium because Belichick has been so successful. Or we need a new English classroom. You know, this was built in 1942 and instead you're building the hospital palaces. You want to explain that? Funding, the thinking of that.
Lee Roberts
Well, we've got to do all of those. You know you can teach English in the same classroom for 100 years and. And we do at Carolina. But you can't do that with biology or chemistry, which are some of our most popular majors. Fastest growing majors. Everybody knows about the arms race in college athletics facilities. And we're trying to upgrade and improve our facilities. And we have an enormously important health sciences specialty at Carolina. You mentioned our cancer center, medical school, nursing school, pharmacy, dentistry, public health. Those all require advanced facilities.
Tom Keene
What's the demand for nursing right now?
Lee Roberts
It's off the charts.
Tom Keene
It's off the charts.
Lee Roberts
We have got a severe nursing shortage in North Carolina and around the country. We're about to open a new nursing building at Carolina to try to address that demand. It's a challenge for the whole unc.
Tom Keene
Their salaries coming out. Paul, they're like popping income.
Paul Sweeney
I know it's good for the young folks. Lee, talk to us. Athletics. UNC has one of the premier athletics departments in the country. I know it because we compete against them every day. Nil transfer portal boy. Talk about change in college athletics. It's just been extraordinary. How does Carolina think about it?
Lee Roberts
Well, no one's seen anything like this before. You're right. We have a long and proud history in college sports. 28 sports. We made it to the finals in Omaha, lost in the final game on Monday night. But we're proud of the breadth of our athletics program. Women's lacrosse, women's soccer, field hockey, arguably the best in those three sports nationally. But the current system is not working. It costs too much. It's not good for anybody. Nobody designed this system. It came about as the results of a series of court cases. And so, you know, I came from the private sector. To me, it's rare you look at a situation and say, you know, what would make this better? If only the US Congress would get involved. But in this case, I think it calls out for federal regulations.
Tom Keene
People like you, I mean. LEE Roberts, Chancellor, unc, just say, no, we're not going to do this.
Lee Roberts
No, because it's too competitive. We really do need, we need federal harmonization of the world that we're in now. That's come about from these patchwork court rulings. And there is bipartisan legislation, the Cruz Cantwell legislation that the president has endorsed.
Tom Keene
I mean, I don't know if you know this, but Paul's got the Belichick question. We got to ask it. I just want to say first, I rooted for UNC in the March Madness because Seth Trimble had the courage to go four years to school. I just thought that was the coolest thing versus this idiotic freshman year only thing.
Lee Roberts
Yeah, appreciate that. Great, great player, great young man.
Tom Keene
He'll have some greats.
Paul Sweeney
You know, Bill Belichick. Talk about an out of the box selection for a head coach.
Tom Keene
Was that your fault? How are you guys?
Paul Sweeney
What was kind of behind. Behind that? It was certainly a high profile decision. It was a bold decision. But again, outside of the box decision. How are you guys thinking about that on campus?
Lee Roberts
We're just trying to raise our level of competitiveness in football. And we have a long tradition. We've been playing football since 1888. We're about to play our hundredth season in Kenan Stadium. But we haven't been at the elite level the way we want to be. And you look across the board at our peers. Everyone's trying to invest more money in football. Everyone's trying to get better. Duke, obviously, Vanderbilt, Georgia Tech, schools you wouldn't think of as traditional football powerhouses. Everybody trying to raise their game in football. And coach Belichick's off to a terrific start. We're excited for the season.
Paul Sweeney
So talk about international students. How are they? Are they relevant and to you guys as a state university? Because I know a lot of private universities are really feeling the strain that their foreign application pulls down dramatically for a variety of reasons.
Lee Roberts
International students add immeasurably to the vibrancy and life of our campus community. But we don't depend on them financially the way a lot of private schools do. We are only about 5% international students at the undergrad level.
Tom Keene
Really?
Lee Roberts
Well, that's because we only have 18% non North Carolina students, out of state students. And so the international students have to fit into that 18% out of state cap higher at the graduate level, depending on the program. We're about 10% overall when you mix graduate and undergraduate. But we went up this year in international students. We were up by about 12%. And we were up from each of our five biggest sen. Countries individually.
Tom Keene
I find to me there's like four or five. I mean, to wrap this up. Lee. And this has been just fabulous. I look at it like there's almost three or four college experiences coming off the Clinton revolution. And there's the stereotype, Paul, of the party school kids, which UNC is, you know, kids having fun, like you say. Lee. But the thing that people miss within all the critique are the kids coming in and working and the work ethic, you know, I make jokes about it. Doctors out of Duke and UNC at Weill Cornell in that. I mean those kids doing stem, they're different than we were, aren't they? Lee?
Lee Roberts
Students work hard and they also know that getting an internship is the most important factor in getting a job after graduation. So they're really looking for those kinds of practical experiences to help them in the, in the job market and gain more practical experience.
Paul Sweeney
I think half of Bloomberg news is from Carolina, the journalism school. They're all over the place.
Tom Keene
It's a good thing, you know.
Lee Roberts
They are all over the place.
Tom Keene
We say regards to Peter Grauer.
Paul Sweeney
Yes.
Tom Keene
Who is a leader here at Bloomberg and of course he went to.
Paul Sweeney
Yep.
Tom Keene
You've never spoken to Mr. Grauer.
Paul Sweeney
We have our words.
Bloomberg Staff
Don't worry.
Tom Keene
We have our words. Lee Roberts, thank you so much with UNC Chapel Hill Chancellor. That was a real treat here, folks, just to digress away into something and of course shocking there that 18% cap out of State International at UNC.
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Date: June 25, 2026
Hosts: Tom Keene, Paul Sweeney, Lisa Abramowicz, Annmarie Hordern
Guests: Kevin Warsh (PJIM), Sebastian Page (T. Rowe Price), Suki Cooper (Standard Chartered), Lee Roberts (Chancellor, UNC Chapel Hill)
This episode dives into the latest U.S. economic data releases, particularly focusing on inflation (Personal Consumption Expenditures - PCE), economic growth, Federal Reserve policy, momentum in equity markets fueled by AI, the state of commodity markets, and the evolving landscape of higher education. Through in-depth conversations with prominent economists and institutional leaders, the hosts dissect drivers behind persistent inflation, AI’s grip on markets, the fragility of precious metals, and the financial and strategic challenges facing major universities.
Guest: Kevin Warsh (PJIM, former Fed Governor)
Timestamps: 01:55–09:45
Memorable Moment:
Tom Keene’s “Banana Republic nominal GDP” quip captures the sense of overheating and disconnect from Fed targets.
Guest: Sebastian Page (T. Rowe Price)
Timestamps: 12:38–18:52
Guest: Suki Cooper (Standard Chartered)
Timestamps: 21:52–30:43
Guest: Lee Roberts (Chancellor, UNC Chapel Hill)
Timestamps: 34:48–50:20
The conversation is fast, direct, and data-driven, with signature Bloomberg wit (Keene’s playful “Banana Republic” GDP line; friendly jabs about cricket/baseball confusion; Suki Cooper’s measured explanations; and Lee Roberts’s down-to-earth candor about the state of higher ed and athletics). Insights are granular, often quant-focused but accessible to a business-savvy audience.
For deeper dives, refer to the specific timestamps above for guest insights and standout moments.