The Data, Oil, and a Global Q&A

**Mark Zandi** (0:14)
Welcome to Inside Economics. I'm Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist of Moody's Analytics, and I'm joined by one of my trusty co-hosts, Marisa DiNatale. Hey, Marisa.

**Marisa DiNatale** (0:22)
Hey, Mark, how you doing?

**Mark Zandi** (0:23)
Where's our other co-host? What's he up to?

**Marisa DiNatale** (0:27)
I'm not sure. Is he returning from Italy?

**Mark Zandi** (0:30)
Oh, that's right. I think he's in transit back from his time in Italy. That went by fast. I'm sure he's-

**Marisa DiNatale** (0:37)
He did, yeah.

**Mark Zandi** (0:39)
If I'm saying that, he must be really feeling it.
That's right. I had forgotten about that. But it's good to have you aboard. We've got two guests. Our colleagues, Chris Lafakis. Everyone knows Chris. Hey, Chris.

**Chris Lafakis** (0:54)
Hey, Mark. How are you?

**Mark Zandi** (0:55)
Good.
Obviously, when Chris is on, we're talking oil prices and Iran War and all that stuff. A lot going on there, so we'll get back to that. We have a new colleague joining us, Colin Ellis. Colin, how are you?

**Colin Ellis** (1:08)
Hello, Mark. Great to be here. Thanks.

**Mark Zandi** (1:10)
Everyone hears that accent, right? Yeah.
Colin, where are you hailing from?

**Colin Ellis** (1:16)
I am based in London. For those listeners who are familiar with great British landbarks, probably one of the most famous is the motorway called the M25, particularly if you've driven on it. That goes all the way around London, and I am about as far south as you can go and still just be inside that structure.

**Mark Zandi** (1:36)
Got it. You said due south of London.

**Colin Ellis** (1:40)
Yeah. Very, very, very south London.

**Mark Zandi** (1:43)
Right.
You came to us via the rating agency. When was that? That was three, four months ago, something like that now?

**Colin Ellis** (1:55)
Yeah. I started in this group in March, having spent quite a lot of time in the rating agency before that, and very much enjoying it so far.

**Mark Zandi** (2:06)
Yeah.
Where were you in the rating agency? What was your job there?

**Colin Ellis** (2:12)
I had a few. I joined in 2012 and was running the macro side on the ratings. I think that's where you and I first met.
Then for quite a long time, about nine years in total, I was the Chief Credit Officer for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, which sounds great, but basically, EMEA is a big place and it meant wherever there was a problem, it was normally my job to try and get people organized. Then a bit of time just doing global credit stuff as well.

**Mark Zandi** (2:41)
Great. Before that, you were at the Bank of England, I believe, right?

**Colin Ellis** (2:44)
Yes. I am an economist as well, not just a credit guy. So I started my career at the Bank of England. My first summer there was 97
I'm glad I didn't bring this up before I moved across because I decided that as a brilliant forecaster, 2008 was the perfect time to lead the safety of the public sector and join the exciting world of investment banking. So, you know. But yeah, it's been a fun career doing lots of different things, but lots of fun now as well.

**Mark Zandi** (3:20)
Well, good. And clearly, to have you, and you're head of research now for us, and so playing a very central role in the things that we do and all the research that we're doing. And given your expertise, we are going to be talking about, I thought the way I'd frame it is, questions about the global economy that bother Mark Zandi. So there's a bunch of questions I've got for you. I don't know how many we're going to get to, because we got a lot going on, a lot of data. I want to do the stats game. We got some listener questions if we get there. I'm not sure, but there are a lot going on. So there's a lot of questions. So we'll definitely have you back on to answer all those questions, but that's the idea here. So, with that, Marisa, let me turn it back to you.
A lot of data this week came out. Where do you want to begin? What do you think is the most important stat of the week, in terms of what it means for the economy's performance now and in the future?

**Marisa DiNatale** (4:17)
Yeah, we got what I like to call the big four. So we got GDP. I never heard that before.
GDP is where I would start. So we got the final estimate for Q1 GDP for the US. We got personal spending. We got income data and we got inflation data. So those are the four I would highlight. But yeah, I would start with GDP. Okay.