Dr. Alan O'Sullivan

But we just see this constant march up.

What is driving this?

Is it something structural in the economy?

Is it AI related?

We know that AI saved the day in last year's market.

But is there something where productivity gains, concentration of wealth in corporates and the worker is going to lose out eventually?

That is going to have implications for inequality, something that's already a serious problem.

Now, Market Insight, moving on, we talk about private credit.

Private credit has been in the news an awful lot lately, and there has been some concerns about, is it a systemic risk?

What's the issue?

First of all, what is it?

It's non-bank lending, and you could say non-bank.

bond market lending.

So typically when a company needs to raise debt, they may go to the corporate bond market or they may go to a bank.

So this is a situation where post the financial crisis in 2008, we got a situation where the banks were in dire straits, government bailouts, etc., QE, and

You had banks, a combination of banks being reluctant to lend and also companies not looking for cash, trying to deleverage.

You had a new player step into the breach in terms of private lending.

And that's where companies, large asset managers, so-called shadow banking, started lending to these mid-sized companies.

Okay, that all sounds pretty fine and well.

But what you have is when you have a private – unlike publicly listed instruments, private is a bit more opaque.