#29: The pandemic & the impact on the global, US and UK economy with Shaun Richards

<p>Shaun Richards is an independent economist who specialises in inflation measurement and monetary economics. This follows a career in the City of London where he specialised in derivatives (mainly options) on interest-rates and bonds. He has also worked in Tokyo. He is a Bank of England (BoE) watcher which covers the issues of monetary policy and quantitative easing (QE).&nbsp;</p> <p>Shaun has also traded as a local on the London International Financial Futures Exchange&nbsp;where he mostly traded futures and options on future and present UK interest rates.</p> <p>We cover the following topics in this conversation:</p> <ul> <li>What has happened to the global/US and UK economy as a result of the pandemic?</li> <li>What is money printing and what is the impact on the economy?</li> <li>Should we be worried about the rising level of global and UK government debt?</li> <li>We're hearing a lot about UK inflation: can you explain what inflation is? What is driving inflation? What is the rate of inflation and looking ahead to H2 and 2022/23?</li> <li>Interest rates: what do we expect to see in the US/UK in 2021/22/23?</li> <li>Unemployment &amp; productivity: what are we seeing in the UK? What's ahead? (eg structural changes)</li> <li>What is the economic outlook for the global/UK economy?</li> <li>Ray Dalio, the billionaire and hedge fund manager, says that he'd rather buy bitcoin than a bond. Do you agree?&nbsp;</li> </ul> <p><br></p>