00:00Iran wishes to impose such a cost that states don't believe they can come back and strike Iran again.
00:07The way they are trying to do that is to drive countries around the world into recession
00:11by preventing the flow of gas, oil and other critical goods through the strait.
00:17And therefore, whether or not Iran succeeds in establishing deterrence
00:22is essentially determined by whether the straits can be reopened.
00:25And what are the options for reopening it?
00:27Well, I think the U.S. will go through a staged approach.
00:30So they will begin by attacking the anti-ship cruise missile sites,
00:34the bases where boats are kept, known launch sites for drones,
00:39and essentially try and write down all the things that could attack ships there.
00:44Then they will need to start convoying,
00:47so having naval vessels go with the ships that are trying to get through
00:52in order to shoot down drones and missiles and other things that are fired at them.
00:57And the intent will be to get to a situation where there is a steady flow of shipping through the
01:02strait
01:02and the Iranians have accumulated enough damage that they're not able to interdict.
01:06The problem is that the Iranians have a pretty wide range of capabilities
01:12that can be launched from a long way away, away from the straits.
01:16They have a low signature.
01:17Sorry, what's a low signature?
01:19Difficult to detect before they start getting in the air.
01:22And so the Iranians can probably maintain a persistent threat to shipping,
01:29albeit at a lower level, for a very, very long time.
01:39Think student loans are unfair?
01:41Me too.
01:42And shock horror?
01:43The government is listening.
01:45MPs have launched a parliamentary inquiry into the fairness of student loans,
01:49and they're encouraging anyone over the age of 16 to submit their views online.
01:54Watch till the end and I'll show you how.
01:55But you've got less than four weeks to submit personal stories
01:59about how high interest rates and the growing burden of student debt is affecting you.
02:04Your responses could be read out in Parliament,
02:06increasing pressure on ministers to change the system.
02:09So what do they want to know?
02:11Dame Meg Hillier, chair of the Treasury Committee, said,
02:15Fundamentally, what we're asking is have the goalposts on student loans been moved
02:19in a way which is unfair to graduates?
02:22Specifically, should the terms of a student loan be able to be changed by government
02:27once the loan has been taken out?
02:30And have these retrospective changes eroded trust in the government?
02:34And if you're a teenager who has yet to even go to university,
02:38does seeing these rule changes deter you from attending?
02:42Plus, should the student loan company be compliant
02:45with the financial regulator's rules and consumer protections?
02:49I mean, these regulations will apply to a £50 buy-now-pay-later purchase,
02:54so why not on a £50,000 loan that you'll spend most of your working life repaying?
03:00And should student loans be called loans or something else?
03:04How about a tax on ambition?
03:07My FT articles show some graduates are cutting their hours
03:10or turning down promotions to avoid eye-watering rates of tax,
03:14a problem with how the tax system and the student loan system interacts.
03:19To have your say, type Student Loans Inquiry into a search engine,
03:23tap on the UK Parliament announcement and select Take the Survey.
03:28And the deadline? The 14th of April.
03:36The US economy is doing, you know, pretty well.
03:39It's just we don't know what the effects of this will be,
03:42and really no one does.
03:43Donald Trump's war with Iran has meant oil prices have soared in recent weeks.
03:48So why is the world's most important central bank saying that by the end of the year,
03:55interest rates will be lower than they are now?
03:58The appropriate level of the federal funds rate will be 3.4% at the end of this year.
04:02That's despite its chair, Jay Powell, acknowledging that inflation will almost certainly rise
04:09in the short term on the back of the soaring oil price as a result of the conflict with Iran.
04:16So why is the Fed still thinking that it's going to cut rates?
04:20You know, if we have a long period of much higher gas prices, that's going to weigh on consumption,
04:25not a way on disposable personal income, and it'll weigh on consumption.
04:29But we don't know if that's going to happen.
04:31It's something quite different than that.
04:33We might have much lower than expected pass through.
04:35The oil price isn't the only factor weighing on Fed officials' minds.
04:40There's also the issue with the US's labor market, which has shown plenty of signs of softening.
04:47Even though growth remains broadly strong, officials are taking the stance that,
04:53should the war prove short-lived, oil prices are likely to return to where they were more
05:00or less before the conflict quite quickly, and the impact on inflation will be quite short-lived too.
05:07And that means that they can prioritize the labor market, which should probably lead to monetary
05:14policy in the US being a little bit looser than it is now.
05:18In the near term, higher energy prices will push up overall inflation, but it is too soon
05:23to know the scope and duration of the potential effects on the economy.
05:28A lot could change before the Fed's next meeting about six weeks from now, but at the moment
05:33officials' best bet seems to be that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is leading
05:39to a surge in oil prices, will prove short-lived.
05:49What is private credit?
05:50How big is it?
05:51Private credit, the industry will tell you it's lending money to mid-sized companies.
05:56So you think, you know, Germany's Middlestand or, you know, the industrial base of America.
06:02But what it really is, is lending money to private equity firms to buy mid-sized companies.
06:07And it's boomed into a true trillion-dollar industry, you know, especially since the 2008
06:16financial crisis, when banks really stopped making those loans.
06:20So the ecosystem is, you're a company, you want to get hold of some money.
06:24You can go to a bank to get that money, just get like a standard loan.
06:28Or if you're really big, you can issue a bond that lots and lots of different types of investors
06:32can buy.
06:33But the bit that's grown up in between, particularly in the States, but also to a growing extent
06:38in Europe, is this private credit thing, where companies borrow money, effectively, from
06:43companies that are not your kind of standard banks or whatever.
06:47They are in this private credit, private equity ecosystem.
06:51Antoine is making his, Katie is making a hash of it face.
06:56A little bit more realistic is, I'm a private equity firm, and I want to buy a company, and
07:03I can go to JP Morgan and see how much leverage they want to give me and what it costs.
07:08And then after the crisis, I could go to dozens of so-called private credit firms, Blue Owl,
07:14Aries, Blackstone, Apollo, and I could see what kind of loan they want to give me.
07:24A paradise island in the Caribbean.
07:27A crypto millionaire is trying to build a city with its own court system.
07:30This is a computer-generated image of a community called Destiny that's being planned on the
07:35island of Nevis.
07:36Destiny is part of the networked state movement, which believes pesky laws and regulations in
07:41traditional states restrict innovation.
07:43For example, some who are trying to set up their own states want to allow things like
07:46unregulated medical treatments.
07:48Island critics fear Destiny could become a state within a state, a claim that Janssen's
07:52rejects.
07:53And given that the realtor buying up land for Janssen's project is the wife of the island's
07:57premier, many have questions about what exactly is going on.
08:01Trouble in paradise.
08:07Trump needs China, or thinks he needs China, because China has immense resources and can help
08:14with unblocking, in his mind, unblocking the Strait of Hormuz, and chiefly because he thinks
08:20China shares America's and the world's interest in ending this war quickly, because China gets
08:26vastly more oil from the Gulf than most other countries, including United States, which is
08:33basically a surplus oil-producing country.
08:36And therefore, it's in China's interests to help unblock this waterway.
08:41He is right to the extent that China prefers cheap oil, like everybody else does.
08:47Chinese consumers are sensitive to gas, to petrol prices, like American consumers.
08:53But he's wrong in two big respects.
08:56The first is the principle, never interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake.
09:02This China perceives to be a unilateral war, a war of choice, that Trump declared.
09:08And by the way, America's allies generally see it as a war of choice, too, and are not stepping
09:14up to be tremendously helpful either.
09:18And second, China, more than almost any other economy in the world, and certainly a great
09:24deal more than the United States, has put tons of money into alternative clean energy sources.
09:30So it is not nearly as dependent on oil imports as it used to be, and therefore feels it can
09:37ride this out better than other countries.
09:39So Trump has this famous two-week time frame.
09:44When he says he's going to do something in two weeks, history generally shows that means
09:50it's much, much further away or never.
09:52Now, I don't think it never applies to the Iran war that's happening, but the fact that he wasn't
09:59prepared to stick to the schedule two weeks from now of his summit in China with Xi Jinping
10:06indicates he thinks this war is going to go on for weeks or months.
10:10So if you're looking to go on for weeks or months, then we'll see if he can do something in
10:12the
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