Ed Harrison here for Real Vision. I'm talking to Michael Howell, who is the managing director of cross-border capital. We've talked to each other before

Michael welcome back to Real Vision. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here.

Yeah, so I mean a lot of things to talk about.

We were just discussing off camera about how to even frame this whole discussion.

I want to frame it using your framework because it's a really good one with regard to the debt liquidity spiral.

You were talking about financial markets spinning around a fragile debt liquidity axis.

I think that's a good turn of phrase. Talk to me about that and how

liquidity, global liquidity is so important right now. Okay, liquidity is the main thing we look at.

I mean, that's what I've researched for the last 30 years.

It's a critical component in markets,

and it's really what's driving markets this year. What you've seen is an awesome increase in liquidity,

courtesy of the central banks. Global liquidity is likely to be up by about 20 trillion dollars this year, which is about a quarter of world GDP.

That's just the increase.

I mean, these are big numbers.

Central banks have plowed in about six trillion dollars so far.

They've increased their balance sheets by about a third.

So that sort of frames what's been going on.

If you look at the backdrop, I mean this is one of the best backdrops I've seen in in 30 years of being in the markets it

doesn't really get much better than this there is lots and lots of cash around

and basically investors are not particularly speculatively positioned yet. They've still got comparatively low exposure to

equities. Equities are becoming a scarce asset, certainly relative to the huge

amounts of liquidity and of course government debt that is being plowed in by

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