AI, shutdowns and shadow banks

Summary

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Unhedged Podcast Summary

Episode: AI, shutdowns and shadow banks
Date: October 2, 2025
Hosts: Katie Martin & Robert Armstrong
Podcast by: Financial Times & Pushkin Industries

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into three major sources of investor anxiety: the U.S. government shutdown and its impact on market data, the rapid and possibly overheated growth of AI-driven investments in the U.S. economy, and the expanding shadow banking sector that’s taking on increasingly significant (and opaque) financial risk. With their signature wit and skepticism, Katie Martin and Robert Armstrong examine why markets remain unfazed despite these uncertainties, discuss the possible implications of an AI-fueled economy, and explore the risks arising from shadow banks.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The U.S. Government Shutdown and Market Implications

[00:39–08:59]

• Katie and Robert open with their willingness to highlight under-appreciated risks, joking about being “miserable old farts.”
• The current U.S. government shutdown means crucial data like the monthly nonfarm payrolls (jobs) report won’t be released:

  "Literally, it is the most important economic data point in the world. And it has been shut down by the shutdown..."
  — Robert, [03:22]

• The absence of jobs data comes as the labor market is sending mixed signals—weakening employment, but broader economic resilience.
• The hosts explain the annual Congressional budget process and the recurring political “game of chicken” that leads to shutdown risks, noting this time may be more unpredictable given the political context.
• Discussion of President Trump’s threats to fire (not just furlough) federal employees, which could raise political and economic stakes ([05:28]).
• Despite the drama, financial markets remain indifferent, brushing off shutdown headlines and weak labor market signals:

  “Markets, by the way, Katie, don’t seem to care about anything. They don’t care about the weak labor market either. So it’s not just the politics they’re ignoring...”
  — Robert, [05:48]

• Katie emphasizes that unless a debt ceiling crisis looms, shutdowns rarely move markets.

Notable Quote:

"They are. They're nihilist, dude."
— Katie, [06:01]

2. The 'AI Bubble': Is U.S. Economic Growth Hanging by a Thread?

[08:59–15:55]

• AI is portrayed as both revolutionary and single-handedly responsible for much of recent U.S. economic growth and market enthusiasm.
• Referencing economist Jason Furman, Robert highlights that stripping out tech hardware/software from GDP nearly erases recent growth:

  "If you take tech hardware and software out of GDP growth, that's like 90% of the GDP growth we saw in the first half of this year..."
  — Robert, [09:34]

• The complexity of measuring AI’s true economic impact is discussed, including how importing technology hardware distorts GDP.
• Katie observes the rapid, energy-intensive buildout of AI data centers across the U.S., driving both stock market and real economy growth.
• Robert provides a striking stat: the capital expenditure of just a handful of AI giants equals 1% of U.S. GDP ([11:33]).
• Both acknowledge the big unknown: whether these huge investments in AI will ever pay off.

  "If people realize that the AI business model is not that profitable… then there’s all these assets in the world that are going to have to be massively marked down..."
  — Robert, [12:45]

• Citing James Anderson (Baillie Gifford), Katie flags “uncomfortable echoes of the dot com bubble” as Nvidia and others announce massive investments.
• Robert draws analogies to previous bubbles – Japan in the 1980s, U.S. tech in 1999 – and notes that booms often leave valuable infrastructure behind, even if they burst.

Notable Quotes:

"This just feels a little bit, this feels a bit toppy, doesn’t it?"
— Katie, [14:25]
"Ultimately these things are good for economies... the railroad bubble gave us railroad lines, you know what I mean?"
— Robert, [15:49]

3. The Shadow Banking System: Burgeoning Risk in the Shadows

[16:09–19:01]

• Katie segues to shadow banking, referring to Robert’s ongoing reporting.
• Robert explains: A shadow bank is any lender that isn’t a bank (doesn’t take deposits), but raises money in other ways and extends credit—e.g., subprime auto lenders.
• Critical concern: Banks themselves are increasingly lending to these shadow banks, effectively taking on risk by proxy ([17:18]).
• The Federal Reserve now requires more disclosure. U.S. bank lending to non-bank financial firms has reached $1.7 trillion:

  "Now, I don't know how big a problem that is. I do know $1.7 trillion counts as a very large number."
  — Robert, [18:17]

• Shadow bank-related lending now accounts for almost all U.S. lending growth.
• Monitoring the risk is challenging since, as Robert says, it’s “not always easy to tell what’s going on underneath the hood.”

Notable Exchange:

Katie: "So all the lending growth comes from deep in the shadows. All the economic growth comes from the AI buildout. And we have a total blackout on official data to tell us how that's going to affect the US economy. Sounds great. Rack me up for another record high in U.S. stocks. All makes absolutely perfect sense."
— [19:01]

4. Markets Shrugging at Risks: Why Nothing Seems to Matter

[19:01–20:04]

• Despite shutdowns, AI bubble fears, and shadow banking opacity, U.S. stock markets are near all-time highs.
• Katie and Robert both reflect sarcastically on the disconnect:

  "In the short term, when the market has momentum, almost nothing else matters. Yeah, that's true today, and that has always been true since dinosaurs were trading stones..."
  — Robert, [19:40]

• They end the main segment with a wry sense that markets’ current indifference have deep historical precedent.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “Speaking of tough, I have received several inquiries after our last podcast, which we recorded when I was out in New York, checking that I was still alive after we went for a few little drinks last week...”
  — Katie, lighthearted banter, [01:57]
• "You called me a depressed old fart or something equally offensive at the top of the show. And I'm just trying to wear my optimist hat here. Katie, doesn't fit very well, but I'm trying to jam it along."
  — Robert, [15:55]
• "When the market has momentum, almost nothing else matters... that's always been true since dinosaurs were trading stones with one another..."
  — Robert, [19:40]

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Important Segment Timestamps

• [00:39] – Introduction and preview of key worries
• [02:45] – The impact of the government shutdown on jobs data
• [06:39] – Differentiating market-irrelevant shutdowns from debt ceiling crises
• [08:59] – Transition to AI’s role in economic growth
• [09:34] – Citing GDP growth driven by AI/tech
• [11:33] – AI company capital expenditure as 1% of GDP
• [12:45] – Balance sheet risk from overvalued AI investments
• [14:08] – James Anderson’s AI bubble warnings
• [16:09] – Introduction to shadow banking
• [17:37] – Banks lending to shadow banks and quantified exposure
• [19:01] – Markets’ indifference, summary
• [20:04] – Segue to listener Q&A / wrapup

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Tone and Style

The episode is marked by the hosts’ customary mix of dry humor, informed skepticism, and a touch of resigned world-weariness—often oscillating between wry fatalism about markets’ myopia and the real, if abstract, concerns lurking beneath the surface.

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For listeners who missed the episode:
This installment offers a sharp, accessible, and often funny take on three pressing financial system risks: a data blackout from the U.S. shutdown, the all-consuming AI boom, and the under-the-radar ballooning of shadow banking—all of which markets appear happy to ignore for now.

Transcript

[PJIM Narrator]

At pjum, we actively manage risk today while targeting outperformance tomorrow. So no matter what investment risks concern you most. From geopolitics to inflation to liquidity, PGM brings disciplined risk management expertise that spans 30 market cycles. Our active approach finds opportunities and volatility, helping our clients to navigate risk and achieve their long term goals. Pjum, our investments shape tomorrow today.

[Robert Armstrong]

Pushkin.

[Katie Martin]

We spend quite a bit of time on this show banging on about stuff that investors are not especially worried about when they probably should be. That arguably makes us miserable old farts, but whatever, I'm leaning in. So here's a few things you could potentially worry about if you want to be nice and miserable like us. One of them is the total dysfunction in the US government and the shutdown that's now underway. Americans, if you're wondering, yes, this does make you look very silly. The other is artificial intelligence. It's getting hella bubblicious out there. And if you really want to worry about something kooky, then you can always have a look at shadow banks. This is Unhedged, the Markets and Finance podcast from the Financial Times and Pushkin. I'm Katie Martin, a markets columnist in slightly nippy London, and I'm joined down the line from New York City by an essential worker who, unlike hundreds of thousands of federal U.S. employees, is still coming to work. And knowing him as I do, you can bet your ass he's still getting paid. It's Robert Armstrong.

[Robert Armstrong]

I think you just called me a grouchy old fart. Was that the word you use collectively to describe the two of us? That was a bit tough, Katie. That's a tough way to start the show.

[Katie Martin]

Speaking of tough, I have received several inquiries after our last podcast, which we recorded when I was out in New York checking that I was still alive after we went for a few little drinks last week when I was. When I was out there and actually.

[Robert Armstrong]

Fine, we were very.

[Katie Martin]

It was quite civilized.

[Robert Armstrong]

Right? Yeah.

[Katie Martin]

I think we can be sensible grown ups when we try.

[Robert Armstrong]

Not like the murder in Madrid, as I think of it.

[Katie Martin]

We never speak of it again.

[Robert Armstrong]

Yeah.

[Katie Martin]

So let's.

[Robert Armstrong]

What are we talking about first? What's first? What's first on the first.

[Katie Martin]

First. First we're talking about the shutdown, so actually talking about it is a terrible idea because shutdowns can turn into open ups very quickly and we can end up out of date. But yolo, let's talk about it.

[Robert Armstrong]

I mean, the most important thing for us is, weren't we supposed to get a Jobs report Friday that we're not gonna get now. I mean, that's a disaster.

[Katie Martin]

So the jobs report, for the uninitiated, the non farms payrolls report is like the sort of benchmark U.S. employment report. Comes out the first Friday of every month come hell or high water. And this is like the number one data release that comes out of anywhere in the world because it's such an important input for US Monetary policy. So everyone watches payrolls. And this Friday, oh, terrible scenes. We're not going to get payrolls because the Bureau of Labor Statistics is going to be.

[Robert Armstrong]

Yeah, literally is the most important economic data point in the world. And it has been shut down by the shutdown at a time when the labor market is the focus of all the attention of the market and the pundits, because the labor market has been weakening dramatically at a time when the rest of the economy doesn't seem to be weakening dramatically. So we're sort of trying to figure out is something weird going on in the jobs market involving immigration. I mean, listeners to this podcast have heard us rattle on ad nauseam about this, but it's an especially important time to have new labor market data and we're not going to get it. So this is very bad.

[Katie Martin]

It's extremely bad. But the shutdown generally, I think, like non Americans kind of don't get it. But like there's an annual process, from what I understand, where Congress has to agree on a budget and if they can't agree, then until they can agree, a whole bunch of functions just get shut down. So like national parks are now unstaffed.

[Robert Armstrong]

Yeah. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics, all of this stuff and this kind of game of chicken that the two political parties play almost always like games of chicken between children on bicycles almost always end with somebody turning away at the last second.

[Katie Martin]

Yeah.

[Robert Armstrong]

And it's a very good bet that that will happen this time. But sometimes these things do drag on. Yeah, I can't. What was the last time?

[Katie Martin]

I think it was about seven years.

[Robert Armstrong]

Ago that it dragged on for a month or so.

[Katie Martin]

Yeah.

[Robert Armstrong]

And it becomes a pain in the ass. But we are in a different kind of political environment than the one we were in the last time we had a serious attempt at playing this game. And so who knows how things might or might not escalate. And Trump, we should also put the asterisk here that Trump has threatened to fire people permanently, not just furlough them. It's not clear if he's allowed to do that, but it's not clear that he cares about what he's allowed, but.

[Katie Martin]

When has that ever stuck to him before?

[Robert Armstrong]

And so that would raise the political stakes and the economic stakes, I would.

[Katie Martin]

Say, if that happens. But like for now, you know, markets are like, woo, woo, woo. All time high, all time high usa. And you know, no one seems to really care about this.

[Robert Armstrong]

Markets, by the way, Katie, don't seem to care about anything. They don't care about the weak labor market either. Right. So it's not just the politics they're ignoring. Yeah, they don't. They seem, you know, very, very close to being totally indifferent to the economics too.

[Katie Martin]

Yeah, they are. They're nihilist, dude. But for all that, I am happy to sort of play the misery guts role on this podcast and partially in real life too. I do actually agree that although this is like a total, like an unedifying site, it doesn't actually matter for markets just yet. The only thing that would make it matter is the thing that really matters for markets is when US politicians clash heads about the debt ceiling. That's a. That's a different kind of political process that you go through that can in theory lead to people not being made whole on their treasury holdings, on their holdings of US government bonds.

[Robert Armstrong]

In theory, even that is a slim probability. But this is what the current political environment is all about. It's not that different from political environments of the past. It's just that the kind of extreme low probability events at either end of the distribution of outcomes get slightly nastier and slightly more possible. So like the absolutely horrible outcome percentage goes from 1 to 1.2%.

[Katie Martin]

Yeah, right.

[Robert Armstrong]

How do you price that? I don't really know. Maybe you just whistle past the graveyard and pretend the whole thing didn't happen. Yeah, that's what markets seem to be doing.

[Katie Martin]

Well, in the meantime, in the absence of the thing that markets really care about, which is, frankly, jobs data that we were just saying we would normally get on Friday, what we do have to sort of plug the gap is there's another regular jobs data release that comes out of the private sector. So it's not an official government piece of, of data, but at the private sector from the adp, if that came out on Wednesday. It's like a payrolls processor.

[Robert Armstrong]

Yes. They are the person who like runs the software that does all the company's payrolls. So they have access to this stuff.

[Katie Martin]

Yeah, so they sort of know, but they. So. So they had their data out on Wednesday, said that private sector employment decreased by 32,000 last month and that's not like a huge miss as such, but economists had expected for it to go up by 50,000. In an ideal world, no one would be relying on the ADP numbers to tell them what's going on in the jobs market. But we don't live in an ideal world. So what this looks like, again, as you were saying, the jobs market is a little bit more creaky than it was a few months ago. This is an extra sign of creakiness. Right.

[Robert Armstrong]

Someone pointed out on their blog, and I'm sorry, I don't remember this person's name and I will email them when I figure it out and apologize for this. But they pointed out that ADP actually uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics weightings of the different sectors of the economy in order to come up with its number. So if the shutdown lasts long enough, the ADP number will become unreliable too. So that's just something for the rest of us to look forward to.

[Katie Martin]

Alrighty, let's. Let's move on to another thing that if you are a miserable sod, you could worry about if you wanted to, which is AI. Now, AI is all sort of shiny and fantastic and everything, but there's a large number of people, a growing number of people I find, who are like, not allergic to tech, but who are saying, listen, if you take this sort of AI miracle out of the US economy, how much economic growth is left? And I think the answer might be not very much. There's a lot of focus falling on this, right?

[Robert Armstrong]

Yes. But there is a lot of trickiness about the numbers. So this was brought to my attention by a tweet by the famous Harvard economist and public intellectual Jason Furman, who basically did the mathematics on the GDP report and said, look, if you take tech hardware and software out of GDP growth, that's like 90% of the GDP growth we saw in the first half of the this year. And that sounds really bad. That sounds like you are the AI bubble and a bad cold away from being in a recession, basically. And a lot of people have been sort of singing this dreary tune. But as your friend and mine, Katie, Dario Perkins at TS Lombard, which was a clever person at a private economics kind of shop, said, you have to back out the fact that a lot of the equipment that goes into these data centers is imported, which appears as a minus. So the numbers are actually hard to read. But I.

[Katie Martin]

Right, right, right.

[Robert Armstrong]

So it's actually. You'd have to add the imports back and figure out the value of the intellectual property which comes from the United States be very complicated, but I think it is not true that we'd be in a recession without AI. But there is no question that is a big chunk of American growth and we would miss it if it was gone.

[Katie Martin]

Oh, yeah. I mean, we've, we've spoken on this pod before about how big of a slice AI gobbles up in US stock markets. And the answer is, you know, a lot is basically all you need to know, but yet it is also a really large part of the real economy because there are just people building data centers all over the place. Because AI only works if you have massive data centers, which, by the way, churn out loads of carbon. But that's a whole other question.

[Robert Armstrong]

You need like a stat for you, Katie. I got a stat for you. I don't inter. You know, I, I don't mean to interrupt you, although I do it all the time, for which I apologize very much. Just the capital expenditure budgets of the big AI monstrosities, the Alphabets and the Oracles and the so ons, is equivalent to 1% of gross domestic product in the United States. That's just those seven companies or whatever.

[Katie Martin]

It is, that is like a lot.

[Robert Armstrong]

They are just shoveling money out the door. And, you know, and to be fair, five years ago we were all whining about how there was underinvestment in the US economy, right? How there wasn't enough capital expenditures from big American companies, how all the money was going to buybacks, how we were all eating the seed corn. And now we have an economy where people are investing and we're like, not like that.

[Katie Martin]

Not like that. Because the thing is, what, like what we haven't. Or like, not us. But what the world has not yet really figured out is if you build up these data centers to produce the AI, is anyone going to pay for the AI at the end of this process?

[Robert Armstrong]

Like, crucial question, what is the. What. What is the return on the investment? I don't think the worry is that the investment will suddenly stop and growth will cease. What I think is if people realize that the AI business model is not that profitable for whatever reason, and I don't know that it is or it's not going to be. I'm just speculating, should that happen, then there's all these assets in the world that are going to have to be massively marked down, starting with the share prices of Meta and Amazon and Alphabet and so forth, right? And going on to the stuff on the balance sheet of those companies, the value, the carrying value of the AI data centers themselves. And so what this suggests is it's not like a gross recession. It would be like a balance sheet recession, you know, like Japan had back in the day where you're like prancing around with all this stuff on the national balance sheet at a very high value and then suddenly you realize actually we have to haircut all this stuff massively.

[Katie Martin]

So one of the people sounding the alarm this week is a chap called James Anderson, who was like a big cheese at Baillie Gifford, which is a fund based up in Edinburgh that, that has made some spectacularly successful bets over.

[Robert Armstrong]

The years on Great on tech, Great on Japan.

[Katie Martin]

Great on tech, Great on Japan. So he knows his tech. He has warned of what he calls a disconcerting rise in AI valuations, saying that Nvidia's planned $100 billion investment in OpenAI has brought uncomfortable echoes of the dot com bubble. Says here in the ft, you know, even, like I say, even the tech fans are saying, look, this just feels a little bit, this feels a bit toppy, doesn't it?

[Robert Armstrong]

The past, the parcel stuff is disconcerting. Like we are all the companies in this business and we'll all start doing business one another. I'll throw a hundred billion to you, you'll buy my chips, I'll do this. This investment will go there. That does feel a bit like Japan 1988 or America 1999. The kind of circular nature of it all. But you know, I guess it is easy in a boom like this to be skeptical. And in many booms like this, you do ultimately see a pretty horrific separation of losers and winners, right? All the money is rushing to one place, not all the money is going to get good returns. But ultimately these things are good for economies, right? That, you know, real estate booms leave behind them housing that people can live in, telecom booms leave behind them fiber that people can send electronic messages over. Do you know what I mean? There are good effects of these kind of somewhat bubbly, like the railroad bubble gave us railroad lines, you know what I mean?

[Katie Martin]

Yeah, what's the point?

[Robert Armstrong]

So I'm just trying to be optimistic. You know, you called me a depressed old fart or something equally offensive at the top of the show. And I'm just trying to wear my optimist hat here. Katie doesn't fit very well, but I'm trying to jam it along.

[Katie Martin]

That's cause you've got quite a big head, as you've discussed on other platforms. One last thing, because you were writing this week about and it immediately sounds scary. Dun, dun, dun. Shadow banking.

[Robert Armstrong]

Yes.

[Katie Martin]

Tell me more about this.

[Robert Armstrong]

Okay.

[Katie Martin]

Shadow banking.

[Robert Armstrong]

So this is interesting. If you are as big a nerd as I am, what a shadow bank is, is a company that lends money, but is not a bank. And what not being a bank means. It doesn't take deposits. Right. So which is what a bank does. What a shadow bank does is it raises money in other ways and then lends it out. So you might have a subprime auto lender, like one tricolor, which we talked about on the podcast the other day, that is a tricolor, is a sort of shadow bank. And what is interesting about them is that banks lend to shadow banks. And this raises questions like if a bank is lending to a shadow bank, isn't the bank kind of by proxy doing what the shadow bank is doing? So the shadow bank tricolor is doing these very dodgy consumer auto loans. What about the bank that's lending to tricolor?

[Katie Martin]

I mean, dodgy in the sense that like it looks like they're not going to get paid back, not in the sense that they're like, correct, you know, naughty in some sense.

[Robert Armstrong]

The long and short of it, and the reason I was writing about it this week, is that over the last year or so, the Fed, which among other things regulates how banks operate, has forced banks to disclose more about their loans to other lenders. So basically they're lending into the shadow banking system. And according to the latest numbers, there are $1.7 trillion from US banks to non bank financial companies or shadow banks. Now, I don't know how big a problem that is. I do know $1.7 trillion counts as a very large number.

[Katie Martin]

It's a lot.

[Robert Armstrong]

This number, this part of math class, I remember that when you get to the trillions.

[Katie Martin]

Yes.

[Robert Armstrong]

These are serious numbers.

[Katie Martin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Armstrong]

And it's growing fast. In fact, this kind of lending accounts for basically all the lending growth in America right now. So banks are basically falling over themselves lending to private equity companies, private credit companies, subprime lenders, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on. You know, it's kind of like what's going on underneath the hood here. And it's not always easy to tell.

[Katie Martin]

So all the lending growth comes from deep in the shadows. All the economic growth comes from the AI buildout. And we have a total blackout on official data to tell us how that's going to affect the US economy. Sounds great. Rack me up for another record high in U.S. stocks. All makes absolutely perfect sense. Yeah, I mean, I'm increasingly convinced by the view that there's going to be like a big rally towards this the end of this year in stocks. Because, you know, heaven knows the world has thrown enough crap at markets this year, and if they can get through that, they can get through anything.

[Robert Armstrong]

What this tells you is that in the short term, when the market has momentum, almost nothing else matters. Yeah, that's true today, and that has always been true since dinosaurs were trading stones with one another with their little.

[Katie Martin]

Arms pressing their keyboards.

[Robert Armstrong]

Little arms.

[Katie Martin]

Go with the flow. There's a good case for it. Speaking of going with the flow, let's come back in a little second with Longshore.

[Longshore Narrator]

In 1960-2000, we saw GDP per capita. Roughly speaking, income per person measure the standard of living. It grew at an average annual annual rate of 2.3%, which means the standard of living doubles every 29 years. That's one working career in the 21st century. GDP per capita rises at an average annual rate of 1.3%, which means the standard of living is doubling every 56 years. And there is a palpable sense of reduced opportunity for today's young.

[Robert Armstrong]

Hear more expert insights on investing with PJIM's the Outthinking Investor podcast. Subscribe today.

[Katie Martin]

Alrighty, it's time for Long Short, that part of the show where we go long a thing we love or short a thing we hate. Rob, what are you? Long or short?

[Robert Armstrong]

I am short Cyber attacks. And not just for generic technological reasons, but because of the following lines from the ft written by our colleagues Harry Dempsey and Leo Lewis in Tokyo, Japan is just a few days away from running out of Asahi Super Dry as the producer of the nation's most popular beer wrestles with a devastating cyber attack that it's shut down its domestic breweries.

[Katie Martin]

Now I'd like these are dark days.

[Robert Armstrong]

Why this touches me so near to my heart is now I'm going to tell you about my secret vice, Katie Most days on my way home from work I purchase a beer and drink it in a paper bag on the subway on the way home.

[Katie Martin]

Most days, not most days, just on a Friday.

[Robert Armstrong]

Standard. A subway beer is a totally standard thing for me and very often it is an Asahi Superdry that I have in my paper bag on the subway.

[Katie Martin]

So is there a danger that you will run out of Asahi Superdry?

[Robert Armstrong]

I mean, it would be. It would be catastrophic.

[Katie Martin]

Or is it. Is it also.

[Robert Armstrong]

No, it's just a domestic brewery. So hopefully in America we still have it. What are you Long and short enough on my bad habits. What about yours, Katie? What are you long and short?

[Katie Martin]

Well, I'm short, Covid, because everyone's getting it again. A friend of mine who's got it for the 11th time, she's the only person I know who's had it more than me. I think about seven or eight is going around and this right here is prior warning that I will get it because I always bloody get it.

[Robert Armstrong]

And we'll have a sub. We're gonna have to get a sub for you for next week.

[Katie Martin]

You may as well start casting the net now and find some people who are free in the next couple of weeks because I will get it. It will wipe me out, it will be very unpleasant and I will complain about it a lot. But this is just my lot in life, unfortunately. So listeners, unless I have Covid again, I will be back on Tuesday. Listen up then. Unhedged is produced by Jake Harper and edited by Bryant Urstadt. Our executive producer is Jacob Goldstein. Topher for hairs is the FT's acting co head of Audio. Special thanks to Laura Clark, Alastair Mackey, Greta Cohn and Natalie Sadler. FT Premium subscribers can get the Unhedged newsletter for free. A 30 day free trial is available to everyone else. Just go to ft.com unhedged offer I'm Katie Martin. Thanks for listening.

[Robert Armstrong]

Sam.