Hello and welcome to Not Another One, the podcast with me, Steve Richards, Ian Martin, Miranda Green and Tim Montgomery, who isn't here today, but we are all in the studio and all ready to reflect on events of the last few days in Gaza, the Middle East.

Now, I know all of you listening will think we have been overwhelmed by analysis of these so-called historic events, but we will come at it in fresh ways. I promise.

Well, I hope to. I hope I can fulfill that promise. So before we begin all of that, Ian,

you're just back from Washington. What was the general mood you picked up in Washington?

Forget about the Middle East.

We're obviously focused on it, but just generally speaking.

Yeah, I was there doing our first London Defence Conference event in Washington,

which was, yeah, it was fascinating catching up with people.

Major takeaways on the economy I return from it

having spoken to a lot of people, more

confused than ever.

About the American economy or the

global situation. The American economy, just a way

in which, it's just a reminder that

America can simultaneously be several

or can be lots of different things at once.

It has this extraordinary

economic energy which you can which you can feel. Is it going through a, you know, is it in a

bubble? Yes, it clearly is in terms of the AI boom that's going on and the way that that's

propping up the rest of the market, concerns about

how tariffs then feed, you know, feed through to inflation slowly, what that's going to do

to the labour market, all of that.

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