Episode Summary
Starting off with inflation, the dominant 2022 macro theme, we explored the different drivers of inflation globally, highlighting the differences in the drivers between regions.
While energy drove the inflation jump in Europe, North America saw excessive shelter inflation, while the heavier weighing of food drove inflation in Emerging Markets.
Linked to inflation, we covered deglobalization and near-shoring. While generally perceived as inflationary, James brought up a few factors where it might not be.
We then discussed rates: we are seeing the first synchronized global central bank tightening in many years.
However rates as a policy transmission mechanism vary substantially from country to country: James contrasted the predominantly fixed mortgage rates in the US versus Sweden where the housing market has already softened considerably.
We then covered what might be the end of the US dollar bull market.
Finally, we touched upon global demographics: given China’s entering a period of population decline, we discussed global labor force dynamics, and how the aging and shrinking of the workforce can be counteracted through robotics.
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Guest-at-a-Glance
💡 Name: James Pomeroy
💡 What he does: He’s a global economist at HSBC.
💡 Company: HSBC
💡 Noteworthy: James is responsible for covering the current economic climate and policy decisions as well as many of the longer-term themes that drive the fundamentals of the global economy. These typically revolve around demographics, but include urbanization, technological developments, and payments.
💡 Where to find James: LinkedIn
Key Insights
⚡ Global supply chain diversification has been around for years. Companies had started diversifying their supply chain even before the pandemic hit. James explains, “This is clearly a story that’s probably gone on for much longer than the pandemic. It started before the pandemic. It was something that has been going on for years in terms of businesses thinking about where they can do their business cheapest or produce goods cheapest. […] That trend has been, arguably, accelerated by a few things in the last few years. Firstly, the tariffs that were put in place by President Trump and the uncertainty that created in global supply chains. Also, the pandemic itself, in terms of the different policies that different economies had at different times, meant that a lot of firms appear to want to diversify their supply chains but also then, the higher cost. When the shipping costs went up seven times suddenly, businesses thought, ‘Hang on, wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to pay for that?’ And so all of this accelerated the businesses thinking about, ‘Do we want to rejig our supply chains?’ Now that looks like it may happen in the future. At the moment, the evidence of it happening on a large scale is relatively thin.”
⚡ Is the changing shape of global trade inflationary or deflationary? Global trade is constantly evolving. But is it inflationary or deflationary? Here’s what James says, “The question in terms of whether it’s inflationary or not is, essentially, what you are replacing with what now? The cost of producing in China, in parts of Asia, has been going up very quickly in recent years, mostly because of strong wage growth. If that production leaves China, for example, and goes to Vietnam or it goes to India at a lower cost of production, it could actually mean cheaper cost. It could actually be deflationary. Equally, if that production shifts out of China and goes back to the US or Europe in a very heavily automated process, that could also be deflationary. And equally, if it goes back to Mexico or Poland or wherever it needs to be, that may give businesses a lot more security in their supply chain. It may make us less vulnerable to supply chain shocks, which may actually not be deflationary but may not necessarily give an inflationary impulse. So I think we’ve got to monitor the data and see how this trading system evolves.”
⚡ Population decline can change the global economy. Demographics drive the global economy. So, what does this mean as the world’s population continues to decline? James explains, “In terms of demographics, we’re bearish on the world’s population. We think the world’s population is going to fall much sooner than a lot of people do. And I think this is, essentially, because birth rates are coming in much lower than one, people expected a couple of years ago, but also we are seeing a lot of social trends that are meaning that birth rates we think are going to be permanently lower, and we’ve got to lower our expectations of where they could get to. So the pandemic has basically taught us that a whole young generation of people today, across the developed world in particular, don’t want to have kids as much as their parents did. […] And we’ve also got to revise where that can get to because, in Korea, we’ve now got a birth rate that’s below 0.9. That would not have been seen as plausible five years ago. It’s happened, and this is not a city-state. This is a real economy of 50 million people with a birth rate that’s so low that, as it stands, the Korean population will drop by 60% in the course of a generation.”
Episode Highlights
Inflation Is Slowly Coming Down
“There’s been a big commodity story, and that’s fading away. Not necessarily these levels are going down; the cost of your grocery shop or the cost of filling up your car is still going to be very high compared to where it was 2, 3, 4 years ago, but it’s calming down, or it’s not increasing, and that’s what matters for that inflation rate. Essentially you get the headline that inflation rate will drop down ever so slightly, even though you’ve got those slightly higher levels. So what you end up getting is this story where inflation will naturally move lower because of these base effects, even if nothing else changes.”
There’s Still Inflationary Pressure on the Services Front
“Some of that is higher wages; but also, it’s where we’re choosing to spend our money. It’s people who are going out and desperate to go to sporting events and shows and music gigs and all of these things. The demand is there, and businesses in those sectors are able to lift their prices because demand is still very strong in those sectors. That’s the little bit that worries central banks. Some of these wage costs, some of that demand story on services, and so, inflation will come down. It’ll probably end up staying slightly higher than you might initially think ’cause, despite the dropping out of base effects in commodities, lower goods inflation, it may well be services that keep things a little stickier.”
Robotics Will Balance Population Decline
“I think it completely ignores robotics and automation. We’re going through one of the fastest periods of automation the world has ever seen. This is not just automation in terms of manufacturing. These are service robots. It’s things that have helped streamline your checking into a hotel, a reception in an office. We’re saying AI, again, is going to play an enormous role in knowledge work. These technological developments balance that dynamic out a little bit as well.”
Top quotes:
[09:09] “It isn’t so simple to me to think that the changing shape of global trade will be inflationary because there are a lot of reasons why it could be deflationary, too.”
[19:12] “We think that the changing demographics aren’t likely to be inflationary as some people expect.”
[19:55] “There are lots of things going on with demographics — fewer children, these cohort effects dragging things through. I don’t think it’s necessarily inflationary. I think automation’s a much bigger factor, but it probably means, over the longer term, weaker growth potential in the developed world.”
Full Transcript
[00:00:00] James Pomeroy: In terms of demographics, we’re, I guess, the right word is bearish on the world’s population. Now, we think the world’s population’s going to fall much, much sooner than a lot of people do.
[00:00:09] Nick Mazing: Hello, and welcome. You’re listening to Signals by AlphaSense, and I’m your host, Nick Mazing. Today we’re joined by James Pomeroy, an Economist at HSBC based in the UK. We’re going to discuss several macro topics as we try to make sense of the next year or two, and even longer. We’ll touch on inflation, rates, deglobalization, FX, and demographics.
[00:00:42] If you’re an AlphaSense client, you can access James’s notes in the platform, if you don’t have access to those, you can reach out to your account manager. James, welcome, and can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
[00:00:54] James Pomeroy: Yes. Thanks very much for having me, Nick. Um, so, I’m James Pomeroy, as you said. I’m a Global Economist at HSBC, that involves looking at a bit of everything, you know, what is happening today in terms of central banks and growth and inflation and all of these near-term challenges that we all face.
[00:01:09] But I also spend a fair bit of my time looking at some of the longer-term themes, really driving the fundamentals of the global economy, just so be it demographics, future cities, digitalization, all of these interesting topics that I think are probably more important today than they’ve ever been.
[00:01:25] Nick Mazing: And now, let’s talk about the, one of the big topics of last year, going into this year, and that is inflation. And we had inflation in a number of geographies, though the drivers were somewhat different depending on where you are. So, in Europe, energy costs obviously were a major, major problem, in the US we had Stimulus, COVID hangover, housing, and so on,
[00:01:49] in emerging markets where food is a larger percent of the basket, you had that was driving that. So, how do you think about inflation going forward? Are we going to see some sort of a harmonization of how things are moving, or what do you think?
[00:02:04] James Pomeroy: There’s a lot going on with inflation at the moment. So, there’s almost sort of multiple questions in one here, but if we start with sort of the things that have, we know have lifted inflation, you mentioned commodity prices, you mentioned energy in Europe, food in emerging markets, that’s been pretty evident, right?
[00:02:18] There’s a huge gap between headline inflation and core inflation, and we all feel it, this is the stuff that people feel day-to-day, how much it cost to heat your home, fill up your car, feed your family. These very, very high inflation rates in a lot of these commodities have really lifted inflation globally to varying degrees because, for example, in Europe, the energy shock has been much greater than elsewhere.
[00:02:38] And as you say, in emerging markets where food is a bigger share of the basket, we’ve seen the upside shocks come through there as well. So, it’s sort of, there’s been a big commodity story and that’s fading away, not necessarily these levels are going down, you know, the cost of your grocery shop or the cost of filling up your car is still going to be very, very high compared to where it was, you know, 2, 3, 4 years ago.
[00:02:59] But it’s calming down or it’s not increasing, and that’s what matters for that inflation rate. Essentially, you get the, the headline inflation rate will edge up ever so, well, will, the headline inflation rate will drop down ever so slightly, even though you’ve got those slightly higher levels. So, what you end up getting is this story where inflation will naturally move lower because of these base effects, even if nothing else changes.
[00:03:21] Now, if we take away these sort of, that sort of headline basis and we think about the core inflationary pressures, for me, one of the most interesting things that started happening is what’s happening with goods prices, and this is an almost reversal of the enormous run-up in goods prices we had during the height of the pandemic, if you go back to 2020, 2021, and even the first half of 2022, you had an enormous, almost supply-demand imbalance,
[00:03:46] you couldn’t get stuff, and everyone wanted to buy stuff, and we couldn’t go out and do things, we all went and bought loads of furniture, we did up our homes, we bought electronics, all of those things, just as you couldn’t get it. There was huge shipping capac, capacity constraints when we couldn’t get stuff across the world.
[00:04:02] You saw this in the shipping rates, right? The cost of shipping went up sevenfold. This was basically this grinding to a halting global supply chains and exactly the same time that demand was so high. What we’ve started to see in particular in the US and one of the big questions for this year is does that, A, continue, or B, spread to elsewhere around the world. Is that supply-demand imbalance has just completely gone?
[00:04:24] Spending on goods has stopped increasing, and it looks like in the last few months of 2022 in the US, it started falling, that makes sense, it should be falling, it went up so high, it has to come back. But also the supply dynamic has changed enormously, we can ship things across the world, businesses have got available inventory. And so, you’ve now got a situation where competition is back in the market.
[00:04:45] And what we’re seeing in the US is these rapid falls, and goods prices, at the back end of 2022, had the sharpest quarter drop in durable goods prices in history in the US. The question now is, does that continue, and does it happen elsewhere? We think it probably does, at least in the US, and does spread elsewhere, and you see lower goods prices, the challenge is on the services’ front.
[00:05:05] Now, you’ve still got inflationary pressure for services, some of that is higher wages, but also it’s where we’re choosing to spend our money, it’s people who are going out and desperate to go to sporting events and shows and music gigs and all of these things, the demand is there, and businesses in those sectors are able to lift their prices because demand is still very, very strong in those sectors.
[00:05:24] That’s the little bit that worries central banks, some of these wage costs, some of that demand story on services. And so, inflation will come down, it’ll probably end up staying slightly higher than you might initially think ’cause, despite the dropping out-of-base effects in commodities, lower goods inflation, it may well be services that keeps things a little stickier.
[00:05:42] Nick Mazing: And related to inflation and COVID as well, deglobalization, right, obviously a, or reshoring or near-shoring or friend-shoring, whatever you want call it, right? Uh, very interesting topic, obviously a moodier process, and the consensus view is that you’ve had, let’s say, call it 30, 50 years of globalization, outsourcing supply chains, lowest bidder, wherever they are in the world, they get the business, and there is certainly a reconsideration of that. So, in the Western hemisphere, you have Mexico and Central America emerging as, really the near-shore locations. In Europe, you have a similar dynamic, I mean, you’ve had it for a long time.
[00:06:24] But, you know, if you look at Eastern Europe, basically being the provider for Western Europe. So, what do you think about deglobalization?
[00:06:34] James Pomeroy: Yeah, so, this is clearly a, a story that’s probably gone on for much longer than the pandemic, it sort of started before the pandemic, it was something that as you sort of allude to, has been going on for years in terms of businesses thinking about where they can do their business cheapest or produce goods cheapest.
[00:06:49] And it doesn’t necessarily mean just that labor cost, which is why went and started producing things in China in the first place. There’s also an element of being close geographically, which is why Mexico has become a large manufacturing economy, it’s why these eastern European economies, like Poland, have become large manufacturing economies, and that, that trend has been
[00:07:07] arguably accelerated by a few things in the last few years. Firstly, the tariffs that were put in place by President Trump and the uncertainty that created in global supply chains. Also, the pandemic itself in terms of the sort of the different policies, different economies had in different times, meant that a lot of firms appear to want to diversify their supply chains, but also then the higher cost, right?
[00:07:29] When the shipping costs went up seven times, suddenly, businesses thought, “Well, hang on, wouldn’t it be great if I didn’t have to pay for that?” And so, all of this accelerated the, the sort of businesses thinking about, “Do we want to rejig our supply chains?” Now, that looks like it may happen in future, at the moment, the evidence of it happening on a large scale is relatively thin. Now, we’re seeing a fair amount of extra investment coming into Mexico, for example, clearly a winner. We’re seeing a lot of stories about some very crucial industries in healthcare and electronics maybe being reshored into Europe and the US, and this is clearly part of that story, but there’s still a lot of trade in Asia,
[00:08:03] global trade is still picking up, and it’s a, it’s a story that hasn’t quite sort of affected the world yet. Now, going forwards, it might, we’ve got more and more businesses talking about these things, near-shoring, reshoring, deglobalization clearly becoming a much, much greater theme. The question in terms of whether it’s inflationary or not, is essentially what you are replacing with what.
[00:08:23] Now, the cost of producing in China, in parts of Asia, has been going up very, very quickly in recent years, mostly because of strong wage growth. If that production leaves China, for example, and goes to Vietnam, or it goes to India, a lower cost of production, it could actually mean cheap cost, it could actually be deflationary equally if that production shifts out of China and goes back to the US or Europe in a very, very heavily-automated process, that could also be deflationary.
[00:08:49] And equally, if it goes back to Mexico or Poland or wherever it needs to be, that may give businesses a lot more security in their supply chain, it may make us less vulnerable to the supply chain shocks, which may actually not be deflationary, but may not necessarily give an inflationary impulse. So, I think we’ve gotta monitor the data and see how this trading system evolves.
[00:09:09] But it isn’t so simple to me to think that the changing shape of global trade will be inflationary, ’cause there’s a lot of reasons why it could be actually deflationary, too.
[00:09:17] Nick Mazing: And another topic related to inflation is rates, and we’ve seen synchronized tightening by global central banks for the first time in a, in a long time, I think many market participants actually haven’t been through anything like that. But the effectiveness of rates, as a policy transmission mechanism, obviously varies quite a bit in the US, where you have, let’s say, consumers who fixate mortgage for 30 years, nobody’s refinancing when you look at the refinancing volumes, right, because people locked in the rates. In other countries, obviously, those rates reset, and that is a kind of the really, the transmission mechanism. What are we monitoring in terms of rates this year?
[00:09:57] James Pomeroy: Yeah, I think house, housing markets are a great example of this, and where we’re seeing it most clearly isn’t necessarily in house prices ’cause as you say, in the US, if you’re on a 30-year mortgage, you’re not really affected. But one thing you really, really don’t want to do is move house because suddenly, if you move house, your cost every month goes through the roof.
[00:10:14] So, what we’re actually seeing in a lot of places is that it’s housing transaction volumes that are down, not necessarily prices, because demand is collapsing, but so is supply. Uh, and so, essentially, what you’re seeing is these hits to the economy coming through fewer people moving home, that’s gonna mean fewer doable goods, purchases, and so on.
[00:10:31] You’re gonna see the hit through those channels. The question in those economies where you are seeing a more direct hit, and Sweden is a great example of this, but most mortgages are on a variable rate. So, the fee is almost instantaneous, house prices have dropped about 15% already, and they could well go lower.
[00:10:47] The big question there is how does that spill over into the rest of the economy? Now, do you start to really see housing construction go down considerably? Do you start to see household confidence really drop off a cliff and households really be much more cautious about their other forms of Spending?
[00:11:05] Now, in Sweden’s case, that hasn’t been the case yet, but it could well prove to be in 2023. And it’s a great example because there’s a highly-leveraged economy with a housing market that’s fallen more than anywhere else in the world with this very efficient transmission mechanism of monetary policy.
[00:11:20] And actually could be quite a good ready reckoner where we could see some of these impacts of higher rates, which are gonna come with a lag through the rest of the global economy. We’re probably gonna see the impact first in Sweden, and the data do look like they’re turning, we are forecasting a pretty sharp recession in Sweden in 2023.
[00:11:36] But it’s gonna be a good brama to think of what’s gonna happen elsewhere, but clearly, higher rates are squeezing households and that’s not a good thing for growth in the course of 2023.
[00:11:45] Nick Mazing: And related to rates, let’s talk about FX. So, we’ve seen a major boom market in the US Dollar, right, it was nice to take a summer, you know, a summer trip to Europe here from the US where it, when, you know, when the Euro was at, was at parity, obviously, for multinationals reporting in dollars, right, we were in the journal with one piece where they looked at how high up in the press releases company used Constant Currency.
[00:12:12] And, you know, because obviously they, they, they like the like for, like, reporting. So, how do you think about the US dollars, is the boom market over?
[00:12:22] James Pomeroy: So, we think it is, but that’s not necessarily because we really hate the US dollar or really love anything else, quite frankly, it’s almost that expectations went so far in one direction they could only go back. Now, if you go back to September, October sort of time when this sort of tide was turning in that US Dollar bull run, we were a situation where everyone was very, very worried about emerging markets,
[00:12:44] everyone was terrified about Europe because of where gas prices were in the uncertainty and the possibility of essentially having to turn off the power in parts of Europe during the winter. And essentially, it’s a combination of that worst-case scenario being averted in most parts of the world, particularly here in Europe.
[00:13:00] So, things look slightly better, and maybe interest rates can go higher in this part of the world, and we’re seeing the Bank of England, the ECB lift rates a little more quickly since then, and probably will, in the ECB’s case in particular, do a little bit more, which markets were skeptical about, and now there’s a little bit more solidity in that European growth story,
[00:13:17] it’s not necessarily great, you know, we’re still forecasting mild recessions in Europe, but it’s certainly not that worst-case scenario that everyone was thinking was certainly plausible three months ago, four months ago. And then, the same time, what’s happened in the US is the feathers not necessarily got super dovish, but they’ve stepped back a little bit of the hawkish rhetoric.
[00:13:34] James Pomeroy: And a lot of that comes down to what we were talking about earlier with inflation. Now, in the US, you’ve seen this big deflationary pool from goods prices, which allows you a little bit of comfort, the underlying inflation is coming down quite quickly. Now, the backend of, uh, last year, you had that core CPIX shelter.
[00:13:51] There’s a lot of reasons why we have to ignore shelter in the US CPI data because of the huge lags it has that was negative three months in a row. It’s only ever happened once in history during the peak of the pandemic. So, this is a very, very different US inflation environment to where we were expecting, on where markets were expecting three months, four months ago.
[00:14:08] And those two dynamics that better growth in the world, that much lower US inflation than anyone was forecasting back then, has changed the dynamics and essentially the world was priced for US great, everyone else terrible. And now it looks more like everyone else okay, US sort of okay, and that balancing act is leading us to get back to some sort of different equilibrium with currencies.
[00:14:30] Nick Mazing: I feel so strongly about the EUS in CPI shelter methodology that actually got published in the Financial Times, discussing the, because, I mean, rental inflation in the US picked at 18% year over year, had they been using realtime data, the US in CPI have been in the teens, and they have started acting much, much, much faster, so.
[00:14:50] James Pomeroy: And, and, and it also means you have these weird lags of when it’s coming down, right? So, rental prices have stopped rising, but we’re still seeing these point sevens, point eights, month-to-month in CPI is meaningless, it’s telling us about what happened two years ago, and the Fed is rightly now acknowledging that we need to strip out that shelter when looking at what is really happening in those month-to-month inflation prints.
[00:15:09] But it’s gonna play havoc with markets because shelter in core CPI’s more than 40% waiting is gonna keep going up in year-on-year terms for the next three, six months almost regardless of what is happening on the ground. And it’s a huge problem in terms of explaining these numbers to markets, to investors, and to really send a clear message.
[00:15:28] And that does muddy the challenge for the Fed, but nonetheless, they seem to be accepting. We need to look through the shelter numbers.
[00:15:34] Nick Mazing: Mm-hmm, and the last question that I have is about demographics. Now, you write about demographics quite a bit. I like demographics because it’s the future that has already happened, quote-unquote, I’m forgetting whose quote it is, but it is the future ’cause it already happened, you can, like, count on that. So, we recently had news that the population in China declined, and now people have been expecting that maybe it came a little bit sooner.
[00:15:59] And there is also the issues of things like access depths in developed markets, long COVID affecting the labor force participation. What do you think investors should keep an eye on there?
[00:16:10] James Pomeroy: I think there’s a lot of things to watch in terms of demographics, we’re, I guess, the right word is bearish on the world’s population. Now, we think the world’s population’s going to fall much, much sooner than a lot of people do, and I think this is essentially because birth rates are coming in much lower than one people expected a couple years ago.
[00:16:28] But also we are seeing a lot of social trends that are meaning that birth rates we think are going to be permanently lower and we’ve gotta lower expectations of where they could get to. So, the pandemic has basically taught us that a whole young generation of people today, across the developed world in particular, they don’t wanna have kids as much as their parents did.
[00:16:46] And that’s partly because of social changes, there are more people in the workforce, particularly women working in the, much, much more, we’ve got people caring about environmental concerns, we’ve got huge economic concerns. Now, if you are in your twenties today, the ability to buy one of these very expensive homes where you could raise a family is almost impossible for a large number of young people.
[00:17:05] James Pomeroy: So, the idea of raising a family, in particular a large family, is almost not even on the radar for a lot of people in their twenties, and that’s pulling down birth rates quite sharply. And we’ve also got to re, revise where that can get to because in Korea, we’ve now got a birth rate that’s below north point nine, that would not have been seen as plausible five years ago,
[00:17:27] it’s happened, and this is not a city-state, this is a real economy of 50 million people with a birth rate that’s so low that as it stands, the Korean population will drop by 60% in the course of a generation. And what we’re saying is don’t rule out that possibility in other places. Now, I say this to people, I say, “Look at the UK, our birth rate’s about 1.5, 1.4 children per woman.” There’s no reason why that couldn’t be north point nine in a decade’s time, and if it is, you’re talking about our population halving by the end of the century. And the same could be true in other developed markets because there’s economic and social changes that are happening.
[00:18:03] So, we think big picture, look at that very, very, low birth rates, it’s gonna have a huge impact, you know, 20 years down the line that’s probably beyond the investment horizon of many investors. But the whole, a world of many, many fewer children and what it means for, you know, debt dynamics and fiscal policy and all of those things is gonna be fascinating. In terms of that near-term term,
[00:18:22] we’re gonna have fewer workers. Now, we’re, we’re going into a world where across the developed world and in China, we’re going to have smaller working-age populations, and many people will say a bit, like, with globalization, therefore that must be inflationary because workers will have more bargaining power.
[00:18:36] We’ve got older population who are wealthier, asset-owning who can keep spending, but we’ve got fewer workers to provide the goods and services that the population wants to consume. That’s great analysis. The problem is, I think it completely ignores robotics and automation. Now, we’re going through one of the fastest periods of automation the world has ever seen.
[00:18:56] This is not just automation in terms of manufacturing, this is service robots, it’s things that’s helped streamline your checking into a hotel, a reception in an office, we’re saying AI, again, is gonna play an enormous role in knowledge work. These technological developments balance that dynamic out a little bit as well.
[00:19:12] James Pomeroy: So, we think that the, the changing demographics isn’t likely to be as inflationary as some people expect, I don’t necessarily worry about us having too few workers ’cause I think in a certain number of jobs will naturally disappear out of the economy anyway because of these productivity-enhancing benefits we get from technology.
[00:19:29] So, what you end up getting is a slightly older, different workforce that may be one that means slower growth going forwards, but also note that changing cohort effect that comes through from demographics. So, what you’re likely to get is a young generation today who care much more about environmental issues, sustainability,
[00:19:47] you’ve got a young generation who’s much more digitally connected, they’re going to be the core consumer globally over the course of this decade, they’re gonna drag their taste with them. So, there’s lots of things going on with demographics, fewer children, these cohort effects dragging things through,
[00:20:00] James Pomeroy: I don’t think it’s necessarily inflationary, I think automation’s a much, much bigger factor, but it probably means, over the longer term, weaker growth potential in the developed world. That cocktail of things isn’t great if you’ve got a huge amount of government debt.
[00:20:13] Nick Mazing: James, thank you for joining us.
[00:20:16] James Pomeroy: Thank you very much.
[00:20:17] Nick Mazing: This was James Pomeroy, Global Economist at HSBC. We discussed inflation rates, deglobalization, demographics. My name is Nick Mazing. This is Signals by AlphaSense. You can subscribe to us on the major platforms. Thank you for listening.