Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Susan Combs, and I'm with Verizon Wireless HQ Planning, so thank you all for coming. My role has been to support service assurance for our virtual mobile provider network based on virtualized network functions, or VNFs, based on OpenStack. So our leading the way with our VNFs has been supported by the highest level company, Lowell McAdam, is our CEO. So we definitely have support for our work on VNFs on OpenStack. And many of you are most likely already familiar with Verizon. Maybe we even already have our service. But you may not know that LTE covers 98% of the US population, and our global IP network covers 99% of Fortune 500 customers. So this is diving a little bit more into the support that we give to our customers. So for our digital commerce customers, including Telematics, which is the number one fleet management company in the world, we're leading evolution toward virtual network functions on OpenStack while continuing our consistently strong operational performance. So the graph below illustrates Verizon's leading evolution toward VNFs with active calls on a geo-redundant VNF site pair on OpenStack serving the mobile provider network. So in this case, the VNFs are routers. It's just one single site pair. And these are active calls.  We're very proud of supporting our production network on our virtual mobile provider network. That just started this year. So this is from the past month showing our support for over 50K or around 50K active calls peak each day, then dipping every evening. Then you can see the slight dips on the weekends. And what's also interesting about this particular graph is that it shows the transition from one VNF to the other. So this supports our very reliable service that we offer to our customers. Now, all of this network activity generates a lot of logs. And what I wanted to also say is, for our service assurance, we have many different methods of gathering data. It may be SNMP alarms. It may be SNMP polling. We gather extended statistics from our VNFs. And then we also gather logs. And the title of the talk, Finding Needles in the Open Haystack, is a reference to that it can be for alarms. It's very easy to see, OK, I have an alarm. I know what to do. For extended statistics, it may be calls active. That's pretty clear. For logs, sometimes it can be a challenge to know where to look for the log that you need. So we'll go into logs. So today, we gather about seven gigabytes worth of logs per day from our virtual mobile provider network. So this is the entire set of logs that we gather. And then we can go into detail and look at individual logs as well and search for them. Or we can split it out. Here, I'm splitting out just open stack logs or specific open stack services, whether it's Cinder or Ironic or whatever open stack service may be of interest. So I'd like to look at logs for. And here, again, we can go in and look at the text representation of logs as well. OK, so this is interesting. Going down even into more detail, what logs are created by specific actions? So just as a small lab project, I did a couple of tests to see what we can see in the logs from specific actions. So for example, we may want to create a test project. So here, I'm just creating a summit test tenant. And a test user, summit test user, validating that they've been created. And the role assignment, we can see that the summit test user is a member of the summit test tenant. OK, so far, so good. Now what log activity did these actions generate? So sure enough, searching for logs, we find logs for them. So we see Keystone and Swift logs, including here's a sample Keystone log. Of course, we need the UUID of the project and the user, which we see the project is in blue as summit test and then in green as the summit test user. So we see a record of what we've done. So that's maybe interesting. It may not be clear how to use it. Let's try another example. So we can create a sample test volume in Cinder. So did that. Then we might delete it. Now this is an interesting thing because in the lab, sometimes we delete a sample Cinder volume and it may not completely delete. We've experienced this in our lab. So what more could we learn about the situation from the logs? So as you can see here, I had a sample test Cinder volume that I just created. Then I deleted it and it looks like it deleted. Let's see what the logs tell us about this. So we find records of the deletion and Cinder as well as in Nokia. And this one that's highlighted in yellow here, I think is interesting because it tells us not only that it was deleted, which would be interesting as a confirmation anyway, but it also tells us the exact command that it sent to our storage provider to complete the deletion. So it's telling us it sent Navisex CLI and it sent the command to destroy that particular Cinder volume. It gave an argument of forced detach. So if we were in a situation where we needed to troubleshoot a Cinder volume that hadn't completely deleted, this would be a really good starting point because we'd know the exact command that went to our storage provider. So this gives a little bit of the flavor for what logs can add to our foundation of service and assurance data that we gather from alarms and statistics. Can give us more detail and more color.


So Plato's dragging his kicking and screaming out of the cave wanting us to know what is really real wanting us to be able to see the difference between appearance and reality. Now to describe this difference between appearance and reality well we have to start with appearance and then get to reality and this is the four kinds of belief and the first or four kinds of knowledge I should say and the first kind the book uses the term imaginings and this is the basically just the perceptual content so right now I'm hearing some bugs I see greens and browns around me I feel the heat and the light from the sun I feel the humidity of the air this is all the perceptual content if I were to say go over to this tree right here I feel the rough edge of the tree I even dare to try to choose some of this I'm sure it would taste like something but I'm not going to do that so this is the first step in in this knowledge now to be clear our knowledge is not just this step our knowledge is not just the perceptions right that would be to halt the process altogether to say that there's no difference between our perceptions and anything else and so there's no difference between perceptions and what we might call like real knowledge or knowledge of the real we just say well that that's just you know here's our perception here's the knowledge of the real right now to say that you know there's there's our perceptions and then there's more beyond that Plato's taking a big kind of step here now again the book uses the word imagining another word that might be useful especially in our context is imaging so think about what's happening right now I mean the video is interpreting information encoding it on a disc to be to be transferred to a player which produces something very much like the perceptual content that I'm having right now right well that uh that you know that that's an imaging process it's giving the perceptual content so that's the first step it's imaging well the next step according to the book is called belief or believing now you might wonder exactly what that believing is well you know take a look at your computer screen okay you're getting some perceptual information right now you're hearing a voice over the speaker now ask yourself are you thinking that that information is from your computer or is it from me um I mean in a roundabout way you might say it's from me but you know my I am not speaking in wherever you are viewing this video I am not in your study hall or in your living room or what have you speaking to you at the moment all right that is technically speaking it's the computer that's producing that sound right now not me where from where I am the uh I am producing a sound my vocal cords and the camera is recording it and so to speak so believing is is the idea that yes there's this perceptual uh information right there's sight sound taste touch and smell but uh that this perceptual information is coming from something so one way to look at it that you know all this you're perceiving right now is coming from me and the trees and the uh the the bugs making the sound right now my voice or another way to think about it is that the believing is from the computer itself right so those are two different kinds of beliefs with this with uh you know something like the same perceptual information right so with believing you're moving from the shades the shadows that are on the wall right the appearances to uh the cut the cutouts it's the actual physical objects that are around you so in believing I I see this I feel it all right but what's what the you know the step from you know the step from perceptual content to believing is there's something there that's involved uh that you know that's somehow involved or causal related to my perceptual content so with uh imagining and believing we're still dealing with the particular individual things I am perceiving and having beliefs about this thing right here now that's the interpretation outside that's the inspection that's with the particular thing the next step is the interpretation what we had talked about in class what we had practiced a little bit trying to find the definition or the essence of this thing and what do we call this we call this a tree right specifically this is a cedar tree I could tell by the strippy kind of bark and the needles a little bit by the structure of the trunk right this is different from I don't know if you can see this from right back over there we got some oak trees right different kind of perceptual content so when I am thinking I've gone from particular to the abstract it's kind of like this first step so I look at this and I say this is cedar this is cedar I define it um you know I abstract away from these particular things these particular cedar trees to the individual cedar trees to the form the definition the essence of cedar okay so you'll again you go through the process of inspection to look at individual cedars and see what they have in common same thing with the oak I go to the individual oak and I abstract away from the oak to find what they have in common uh so when I move from that seed from that tree right there that individual thing right there to cedar I'm moving from believing to thinking and that's where I've moved from that particular to the form now it takes a lot of work right it takes a lot of it takes a lot of inspection to have really good interpretation so now you know now we're moving into into interpretation and this step of thinking is with the form of this particular of this individual tree the next step is perfect intelligence now this is really involved so let's start kind of from the ground up right we start with imagining right the perceptual content we go to believing right so I'm going for the perceptual content the first step of more reality that's a concrete thing gone from the shadows to the cutouts right then I go from the cutouts to the solid objects right so I go from this particular tree this particular oak to the form oak and then now in the and now allegory the cave the next step was to go from the solid objects to the sun and here's how that works so I have this particular oak and I've seen other oaks and from that I get the form oak we've got that tree right there I'm actually not sure what that is but I can see it's a different kind of tree than oak right um I see the cedars behind it now here's an oak um I don't know what that is let's call it let's just call it pine for the sake of argument it's not a pine but let's not it's not a pine let's call it an elm for the sake of argument it's not an elm but let's just call it an elm tree and then back here we have cedar so oak uh pine I'm sorry elm and cedar right what all three of these have in common is tree these are all kinds of trees right so I'm abstracting even further away not only do I see what oak hasn't you know what particular oaks have in common with oaks but I see what oaks and elm and cedar all have in common such that they are all tree so these are this is a relationship between the forms where forms of a particular things are grouped together that's like the first step and then these forms are grouped together so we go from this oak to the form oak alongside elm and cedar to form tree so that's an overall form for these now there's more forms and there's more particular things in front of you in front of the camera right now right so there's sunglasses there's human being there's hat now each of these has a form the form of sunglasses even though this is like only one particular kind of sunglasses there are more than there are more than these so what is the definition of sunglass in general such that this is one of them and as you move up in this abstraction you see how all the forms are related together now here's the idea for plato the more you move up in abstraction the more real you know the more there's more reality that you know no perceptions are fleeting they come and go they are more fleeting than this particular oak tree i can stop looking at the oak but the oak is still there right there's that's probably going to come a time where i cease to exist but this oak continues to exist these particulars exist for a very long time all right so the oak outlasts my perceptions in the same way the form of oak outlasts you know is is an eternal thing it outlasts it's more real than this particular oak tree because this oak tree there's a point when this oak tree did not exist there will be a point when this oak tree does not exist but the form of oak will continue to exist so what plato wants us to see here is that the further up you move in abstraction the more reality you're grasping so we move up from oak and elm and cedar to tree and we move up from tree to plant we move up from plant to living things so on and so forth as we move on up in abstraction when you see how all of this is related to each other you understand reality you understand existence and that's what it means by perfect intelligence perfect intelligence in the sense that in the sense that is complete complete intelligence complete knowledge there's nothing for which you do not know i imagine this is really hard for you to swallow you're thinking oh well what are these forms supposed to be right they're more real than these things here so can i you know hold them can i interact with them and you say that they're permanent does that mean that they're really hard and dense like the perminian one i think you are kind of missing the point here now at this point we're wondering what the forms are well remember that little exercise we did in class you know when we looked at the squares right and we saw squares of different sizes different colors different locations and when we were thinking about what makes a square square it wasn't any one of those particular squares it's what they all had in common so there's this essence this definition of square and i asked you to imagine this essence of square right so the the essence of square is equilateral equi-angular quadrilateral and i asked you to imagine that and you imagined it or you tried but what you got was a particular square you didn't imagine equi-angular equilateral quadrilateral maybe right now you're trying to do it and you see the words but that's not the same thing that essence that form of square is what you comprehend it's not here right we move from inspection to interpretation well what you comprehend uh has no parts this tree has parts it has bark it has sap it has branches it has needles it has roots if you start taking away the parts you destroy the tree the form of tree has no parts to destroy it has uh it it does not decay it does not um it is not composed it is an existing thing independent of this tree just like the essence of square is an existing thing independent of any particular square you imagine or draw or see now since it has no parts it cannot be destroyed it cannot be created play does says these forms have always existed have always existed they are permanent they're eternal and they're not eternal because they're incredibly dense and nothing can affect them they're eternal because they're immaterial immaterial they are not made of matter think back the distinction that Pythagoras made between form and matter these things are not material they can't be composed they can't decompose so where are the forms where you're asking where the immaterial thing is that's a nonsense question immaterial things don't have a location so think about the number one the number one is a form it's immaterial I can't hold the number one in my hand I can hold individual things in my hand but not the number one I can hold up an individual finger but that's not the number one the number one doesn't come into existence or cease to exist with particular things it's eternal immaterial so this question of where are the forms nowhere they have no location they're a separately existing thing what are the forms the immaterial they are the essences they are the essences of these particular things around us they are permanent um they're you know they're related to each other and they're related to these things but they're uh but their existence does not depend upon these particulars these concrete individual things so now we might wonder well what's this relationship between the forms and these particular things I mean I I can't interact with the forms I can't hold them on my hand they can't be created or destroyed they're these permanently existing things which are you know they're not dependent upon these things around us so I mean why think that this is true well look back at what Plato has to say he says that um you know the the form of cedar and oak and elm that these outlast these particular trees well since they outlast them they're more real than the particular things they're more permanent than these particular things so here's here's the first step in the claim is that the forms are more real than these particular things now another question is um you know is there any relationship between the forms and these particulars between the universal and the particular and the idea is this like well if the form has been around you know since longer it doesn't really make sense to say it that way but you know since the forms are permanent and eternal and these things come and go you know the idea is um that somehow the forms are responsible for the existence of these particular things you know there's one or two ways you can go you cannot say look you know the forms are permanent these particular things are not the particular things come and go well the question is well where do the particular things come from you could say they're either spontaneous or that they come for something more real you can't I mean if you try to say they come for something less real that's like saying that the trees come from my pictures of the trees my imaginings of the trees now that that's not going to do it because there's lots of things I imagine that don't actually exist um so it's so you know the other option is to say that the particulars just spontaneously come into existence well it's not really going to work in a Greek mindset because that's creating more problems than uh than solving them and the Greeks are real interested in trying to unite everything so instead of saying that they're spontaneous it's like well these particular things they must come from something else so they're not going to come for something less real they're going to come for something more real so these particular trees all come from somehow come from the form tree and there's lots of language that's used to describe this um the forms cause the trees don't think of it in your sense of cause right um we think very mechanical um you know very mechanical sense of causation where we're dealing with uh shall we say the transfer of energy from one uh from one piece of matter to another something like that that's not what they're talking about they're thinking more along the lines of terms of um explanation or um origin right so yeah the one way to describe it is that these particular things are caused by the forms another way to say is that these particular things participate in the forms so this raises a lot of questions for Plato this is kind of a difficulty but the point but the point to remember for Plato here is that these particular things all these particular things they in somehow at somehow depend on the forms for their existence they depend on the forms for their existence so we have this idea that these concrete these particular things depend on the forms for their existence and that is supposed to give something of an explanation of the relationship between particular things in the forms well what's the relationship between the forms well look at what's happening here we can start to see a pattern for Plato that each of these particular things right all the particular cedar depend upon the one form of cedar and all the elm depend upon the one form of elm and all the oak depend upon the one form of oak well keep going the form cedar and oak and elm they depend upon the one form of tree so we keep having this dependence under a hierarchy and tree falls somewhere along you know there's probably a few steps in between but tree is going to be under plant keep going you'll plant under living thing so this dependence of the particular on the form continues from the more specific form to the more general form the specific forms are cedar elm and oak the more general form is tree next you know we have tree and say bush and ivy and they fall into the more general form of plant and it keeps going and going now where does that lead that is a really interesting question so without a doubt these forms are seeming very spooky to you you're wondering how we come to know these things to begin with well that's a really interesting question if you think about what's going on here as Plato describes it and you know this part's pretty accurate where we start with the perceptual content the imaginings and we go from there to belief now you may not think that that's such a huge step but you know if our brain was not wired the way it was we wouldn't naturally make that step there are people who can't make the step from perceptual information to belief that there's objects out there and you might say that you know you push it even further you know you might say okay well maybe you could talk about this form thing but i'm not really buying it it's like well Plato would say you're you're already used in the language anyway when you walk out here you do not say hey look at that and that and that and that and that and that and that no you look out and you say look at the trees you're dealing with a form you're dealing with an abstract an essence a definition a meaning so you already Plato's gonna say you're already committed to this idea how do you know about these well it's it's difficult because we are going from perceptual to believing and then from believing to form and then form to you know sorry believing to to thinking and then thinking to perfect intelligence many of the ways that we think already do this all right we're already committed to this kind of idea we're trying to unify everything under one and you know not just material objects but uh uh concept and concepts as well so uh how does this come about because frankly the minute you move from perceptual content you are no longer dealing with perceptual content the minute you move from perceptual content to say yeah that thing right there you have left perceptual content you're doing something else and even more so when you move from that thing right there which is uh believing to thinking you again have left perceptual content think about what you're doing with the squares when you have finished looking at the individual squares and you so and you define them all under the term square the essence square you're not dealing perceptual content the essence or the form of square does not look like any particular square so the minute we leave perceptual content all right the question is well how do we know about this that's a great question um Plato had three things he suggested three things one you know first and foremost is recollection not creating these forms we don't create the forms with our minds right we remember the forms with our minds and the uh the idea there is that at one point our souls were disembodied and they were with the forms you probably don't like that explanation but we'll you know we'll discuss a little bit in class the other way to know the form is through dialectic but again I think Plato's going to push on this and say yeah you know through through dialectic we're comparing notes with one another but we're still ultimately going to rely upon recollection because we're going to have to rely on you know our knowledge of the forms to be identified that these individual things are trees to begin with which is an essential part of dialectic well last way we come to know about these things is probably the most interesting it's through desire through love you might wonder how is this supposed to work well you know think about when you're falling in love with a person anyway that's a way to start we're falling along with a person um what you get is the perceptual content first you know we don't have access to each other's minds right we hear voices we uh see facial expressions we uh you know we we spend time when we have experiences with the person that's inspection the interpretation is when we start to try to um understand what the intentions are what the desires are that we don't see intentions here you infer the intentions and the reason why I do that is is out of love because you want not necessarily romantic love but you know love and care for the person that you know you're going from the particular things to you know the not particular things I mean to to really what is the content or the meaning or the essence of this person well the same thing happens with with us when we're just looking around I mean look what happens with humanity inevitably once humanity starts encountering the world after you know try to solve such problems as how to live until tomorrow start to start to wonder what's all this around us what is this reality and it's that desire to know it's that desire to know what reality is that's what impels us to understand the form to understand these universes right so we do start with trees right we do start with you know it's individual you know it's do start with cedars and elms and and uh and uh uh oaks and we move from there to trees to know more to get the plants to get to living so it's this desire to know and probably most importantly when you step out here you see beauty and beauty is something we want something we crave if we don't experience beauty in our lives we were really miserable so from the from this beauty right we have this desire to know from the beauty of the trees we want to know the trees from the beauty of all this around us we want to understand all this around us so that's those are the three main ways that we come to know us through recollection through dialectic and through desire


I'm going to get most of these wrong guys, so bear with me. I'm going to give him a best shot. Well, do I know what that says in English? Not a chance. Okay, he says, mi amo. Oh my God, I know this. Mi amo. Um, what could it be called? Mi amo. Mi forever. Love myself. That's weird, isn't it? It's only got like five letters in it. Love myself is huge. No. No he like Ramizah Paralora. No he. Ariana Grande. She's so fit. No, it's too hard, it's too hard. Was I expected to get these right? Plan de Dios. Um, don't have a clue. Oh, God's plan. Yes, but you know what? It's weird because they put their plans before. So that basically says, plan, yeah like plan God. Are I round, innit? That's what it is. Estas America. Lost in America? Grande Esparanas. It's like a fish. Esparanas. Major Como Yo. Major Como. I sound French. Major Como Yo. It's a new song. Is it? Woman like me, I see it. The capital of Spain is Spanish. Madrid. Of course it is Madrid. She is EMA. She's really fit though. That's what I thought. Holly? Oh man, I knew it was Hailey Steinfeld. That's a living. But then again, Hailey Steinfeld wouldn't know that Joey Essex was representing the UK this year at MTV. So it's just how it is, you know? Spain is part of the Europe continent. Yes, I got it right. Despacito. Does that mean, is that anything to do with what's the question again? Despacito. Desperate? Oh, it means slowly, does it? Desperito. Oh yeah, I should know this one. She's got Ola, which means hello. Gracias. It means thank you. Reche. Limón, which means lemon. What does yes mean? C. I can't do that anymore. Nicki Minaj. What is that? God is a Queen? Is that right?  God is a woman? I thought God was a geyser. Flamenco is a... I mean, I would say Flamingo. Flamenco. A fountain? Like a hula-hula. BB? Oh, Janet Jackson. Is that... Is she like Michael Jackson's sister? I should know this one. Kiki. Kiki, do you love me? Do you want me? Is that it? Oh yeah, cookies in my feelings. Half a point. I can't do that. Brendan Urie. Brendan Urie. Mate, these questions are really, really hard. I know Urie Geller, and I know Urie Yango, but I don't know who Brendan Urie is. Urie Geller. My mate. My mate's dad. Okay, Panic at Disco.


I would think that being married to someone of the monarchy of the English-British monarchy has to be incredibly challenging for any human being. I think it had to be incredibly challenging to be the son of a princess that was, or the son of Princess Diana for a variety of different reasons, mainly because I don't believe her husband really loved her. I don't believe that they had a healthy relationship, so we never got to see a healthy relationship.


Live from the Sands Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering AWS re-invent 2015. Now your host, John Furrier. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live here in Las Vegas for Amazon re-invent. Amazon Web Search, AWS fourth year, our third year broadcasting live. Three days of wall-to-wall coverage. We're in day two, we've got a whole half a day and then all day tomorrow, big news. Day one of the keynotes, a lot of great stuff. This is theCUBE, Silicon Angles flagship program, where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. Talking to the executive, we're going to have Andy Jassy on shortly, but talking to the people in the trenches, talking to the thought leaders, talking to the entrepreneurs, that's what we do. We collect the dots to allow you to connect them. Our next two guests is Jeremy Winters, Lead Data Warehousing Architect for full 360 and his colleague, Michael Bowen, Lead Data Architect, same company. Welcome to theCUBE guys. Thank you. Good to be here. Put my glasses back on for the boys. There you go. So, the big news today was not really a surprise for the folks inside the industry. Business intelligence has to be different. It's got to be faster. We've been seeing technologies advance all the way from ingest to prepare to spark in memory. All the technologies are all pointing to one direction. Faster analytics, better insights, better decisions, better outcomes. That's a sea chain because the old way of doing it was big, bloated software, send out reports, fenced out data and some silo. So Amazon really now is going to the next step, putting an actual product in the ground to reduce the costs down to significant levels but provide real value. This is your business wheelhouse. One, what's your take of the announcement? And then why so long? Why did it take Amazon this long to do this? Well, we're happy to hear that freedom and it was really cool for me. I've been around this business for about 20 years to hear them saying the slice and dice kind of stuff that I've been saying for 15 years. So it's kind of a big, I told you so, for the enterprise on-prem people that we kind of left five years ago when I jumped ship and I said the cloud is the future. So now it's kind of vitalizing that message that we've had for a while. What made you jump ship to go to the cloud? Was it obvious? You just said, okay, it's the new economics, the new platform. Is the cloud, some might say, wasn't fully baked then? Was it more of you saw it early? Did you have some use cases baked out or what was the impetus? We saw it early. We were one of the first partners full 360 about seven years ago to put S-Base in the cloud. We were the first ones to put Amazon, excuse me, Vertica in the cloud. And we had worked in enterprise environments where IT is kind of, I'm an IBM shop, you got to do it this way. Or I'm a Hewlett Packard shop or a Sun shop. And we couldn't keep our tools and migrate them along with us. So we'd find things that would work well on Unix environments and they didn't have Unix environments. So we saw in order to expand what we wanted to do, we have to have control of the whole environment. And AWS gave us that. So now we have VPCs with complete control over the whole end-to-end process. Jeremy, I love your shirt, fast data. That's really all about the data. There's no one characteristics. Before we get to that, I want to ask you to explain what you guys do, what's your company, how you guys fit into the ecosystem, and your relationship with Amazon. Because obviously, saw it early, that's good. You're two years ahead of everybody else basically. Now everyone's going to Amazon. What do you guys do and what do you guys do for customers? So we're a systems integrator. So we typically help customers get their data into the cloud, get their business intelligence setup, get their ETL setup. And our relationship to Amazon is, again, as partners. So we're not competing with them though. Sometimes they come out with a product and we're like, whoa, we have to rethink the way we're doing stuff. But at the same time, we've been able to roll with it. And that's part of our philosophy is to continuously change and expand as the technology changes. So we stay current, instead of staying locked into an old way of doing things, we're all about, what is the new way of doing things? How do we stay current with it? When we first started reporting on the ecosystem at Amazon, Dave Vellante and I would say, man, Amazon's going to rule the world. We're like, we saw it early. We're like, this thing is a tsunami, it's going to take the beach out and it's not going to stop until someone puts a seawall up. The question is who is going to be that vendor? We're still speculating on who that might be. We don't know. But the ecosystem was always kind of a question mark because they're running so hard on the product advancements. It was kind of like a hard thing to dissect. We had to compete there, had to partner. Will they eat us? Will they identify us and do what we're doing? Do they roll it into the product line? So the question is, is there a secret handshake in Amazon? Is there a way that you guys saw early in the ecosystem being successful? And how is the ecosystem going today? Because obviously it's a packed house here, a lot of players, but still people worry about that, you know, shit, am I in their path? Or, you know, yeah, because they're just rolling stuff out like it's nobody's business. Well, we're data folks and we concentrate on our customers' needs. So we would have customers, some of them are already in the clouds, like some of our gaming customers, and they would tell us different things and our enterprise told us things. But we found that we needed to change data warehouting methodology because now we had, we're kind of vendor agnostic in terms of databases. We are here with our partners VoltDB. We work with Redshift. We work with DynamoDB. And we said, how do we make all these things into a coherent place? So the idea was kind of, how do we do DevOps in data warehousing? How do we integrate multiple technologies? How do we handle the security needs of our customers? And so we knew there was a lot of stuff that wasn't product base, but process and methodology base. And guiding customers who were kind of gingerly getting into the cloud with confidence. All right, so let's break down some of the announcements. What do you guys think of the Fireball, I mean, Snowball, Firehose, QuickSight, Spice, these are things that they're adding in. Streaming of data, you talk about fast data, I love this shirt, what they're really referring to is, it's going to come trickling in slow off internet of things or it's going to be really fast targeted data that's been either worked on in the past. What is the dynamic in today's announcement? What is the real meat on the bone? Meat of the bone in today's announcement. For you guys? Well, for us, it's really opportunities. I mean, again, we're rolling with the technology, so we're not trying to stick with the way of doing stuff. We're trying to, or really going with it. So as these things come up, we're just trying to find customers that want to do it. And because we're, you know, we say data centric as in technology agnostic, we understand data regardless of what tool you're going to move it around with. So we want to find the people with the data that want us to help them use these new tools to move their data around to ingest it and to view it. Well, I mean, that's exactly what probably the customers will like too. They want to be data centric, but they also have multi-vendor environments. So, you know, there's some things that they're looking at too.  But the customer, they're going to do what's in Amazon, they're going to do some hybrid cloud. So there's going to be some engineering going on, certainly at the architectural level, right? Yes, okay. I got to lay out some architecture. What is the critical threshold issue for the customer? Is it the tooling? Is it the systems management? What do you guys see for customers that to get them over that point of, okay, I get this now, I'm operationally sound with cloud, I got my on-prem, and that's not going to go away. Most cases, 90% of the cases, there'll be some on-prem. Hybrid will dominate. We see hybrid all over the place now. So, this is the engineering conversation, but to look at down the road, where's the straight and narrow? Is it the tooling? What do you guys see? One of the things that Amazon came to us, and they said, well, we know that on-prem scales, what happens when you have a 50-node database? And this was even actually before the Redshift came on. And they asked us, and we showed that we could do stuff in the cloud that people outside on-prem hadn't been bold enough to do. So, Amazon trusts us enough in terms of our expertise with scaling databases, so that we could advance. Also, it's interesting when our customers have confidence in us, and they start talking our language. They said, can you get that stuff in our VPC? Well, we have this data over here. Can you get that in our VPC? That's fun. And we say, yeah, we have a really comprehensive methodology for data management that includes fast data, pulling data from microservices in real-time, and all the way to business. So, what do you think about the ingest tool? They have the data porting tool, they have a lot of migration, one's free. The schema thing was a freebie. I love that one. That seemed like a great tool. Another tool they were previewing, I think that was what was called, it was the data micros, firehose. They also had the data, I moved data in faster. So, there used to be the criticize of Amazon, was it's the Roche Motel. Data goes in, but you can't check out, right? So now, they're saying freedom. Is it really free? What's the, I mean, is it freedom? And what's the price of freedom? It's into the day, nothing's free. I mean, talk about our ability to do transparency. People look for the data supply chain, and with the traditional vendors, you know, you kind of like, well, this is in our proprietary box, and end users, when you're doing BI, you're responsible for the whole data supply chain. And then we open that up with stuff like config, and CloudWatch, and customers can see where their data lives at all times through the stack. And that's the transparency level that they've never had before. And also just in general with dealing with data, you know, one of my philosophies is you want, he says transparency, but it really, to me it means you should be focusing on the data, not on the things around it, and your data should be kind of self-evident in the story that it's trying to tell. So, regardless of what tools you're using to pulling your data, collect it, and house it, assuming the data's structured correctly, you can someday decide, you know what, this 200 petabytes of data is going to be, we want to shift off-site in these new snowball containers, because we're going to use it somewhere else. And that's not a problem, because our data still makes sense. As- Yeah, the data's the value. Exactly. Also the data having access to other parts of data, seeing what's coming in from other parts of the data flow. So, if we were to set a data, you want to see through the APIs of other systems. That seemed to me a big, the streaming stuff was pretty significant. I mean, I think that's solid. Let me ask you guys a different question then. So, let's talk about business intelligence, also known as BI. What is the biggest change happening right now in BI? Is it the, finally people are like crossing over to the fact that is a better way? Is it just the clock is running out on the old way? He calls them brands of yesteryear on stage, since he's targeting, he's talking about the old guys, the big data warehouses and the BI tools. So, what's the biggest change that's happening in BI? I would have to say, time to market. So, BI projects used to be very monolithic, take a long time. But now, when we say fast data, we don't just mean fast ingestion. That's part of it, is time to market. Here's your data. How quickly can we start making sense of it and start looking at it? Making it useful immediately. Making it useful, and as soon as you put data in Amazon S3, you dump 100 terabytes in Amazon S3, you can spin up an EMR cluster with Hive and start querying it right away. To me, that's fast data. That's having the ability to start thinking about the information as soon as you have it and at various steps along the way. And letting the BI reporting and stuff is much more interactive with that process instead of let's plan it out, do a bunch of work and then look at it. It's really, here's the data, let's start looking at it and let it grow. You know, it's interesting. It seemed like two years ago when the Kinesis was announced. I think it was two years ago, I don't remember, but Redshift too, Kinesis and Redshift, very interesting closed loop concepts. What you're basically referring to is I want to get the data and close out what I'm working on, not have to wait. The time is huge issue. Is those products getting traction in your customer base? Do you see Kinesis and Redshift? Obviously you know the hot seller. And if so, what value propositions and what use cases do you see them? We talked about this with one of our customers just yesterday, we brought some with us here. And they were talking about the accountability of the system that they bought, that they would probably like to replace Redshift. And Redshift gives you the auditability of who's querying what. And so we can use API calls and say, how useful is this system actually being used in your organization? And you can count that ROI. Generally if you buy a big data appliance, the whole IT organization uses it and nobody's quite clear what piece is using what. Redshift gives you that accountability right there. Yeah, I mean, I love that. What other observations do you guys have here at the show? What do you guys see going on? What's the big vibe here? The folks that aren't here, what's it like? I love that Amazon is pointed toward the enterprise. Because when you said big data, even just last year, people weren't sure if you were talking about e-commerce, if they were talking about data mining, if you were talking about IoT. And so now they're focused on the enterprise and getting more enterprise players. Now that people are being more confident, they're says, yeah, this is the stuff that we know that we've been talking about. And data warehousing is going to change with this and Amazon is part of it. So there was a lot of fun before, but it's becoming clearer that Amazon is serious about this business. The fog is lifting on there, enterprise. And they can do it, yeah, yeah. So it's making our messaging a little bit easier because people understand the cloud is real. Jeremy, thoughts on the show? Folks that aren't here? I'm just seeing kind of off a tanger that just really, I see a lot of focus on data clearly in the announcements, the fact that business intelligence is front and center in the main keynote. Business intelligence, 15 years ago, when I tried to explain to people, what do I do for a living? They're like- You get kicked out of the overflow room. Right, whereas now it really is a very central fundamental thing, which again, the idea is people are what makes data meaningful and the layers between the person and the data and the time to make that happen. It's a lot of emotional aspects too. There's a lot of storytelling that people talk about that. But to me, the thing that I get excited about that is that it really is so relevant because the value of the data is extremely untapped right now. And tapping the data is huge. Look at the spark stuff in memory. You're seeing the underlying technologies actually advancing, I mean, the puck is coming right to where BI is right now. And that's going to be not a geek conversation. It's going to be data, quant jocks, business people kind of partying together. You know, it's going to be interesting. It's the data itself. I mean, we have aviation customers and so when a plane got lost, we said, hey, we actually take engine data and we know when engine data is doing this and that. And so we're just like thinking about all the future things that can happen when we can get data real-time. Guys, Jeremy and Michael, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate. Full 360, check them out. These guys are big time on the data bandwagon. Of course, the data bus, the data river, the data lake, which I don't like, data ocean, is more like it because it's fast, a lot of currents, dynamic, tsunamis, lake.  Fast data, I'm a big fan of that. You're watching theCUBE. Go to SiliconANGLE.TV. Check out our guests of the week. Every Wednesday we do women in tech Wednesday. And check out guests of the week, a podcast every week dedicated to our guests of the week where they're bringing the signal. Of course, we're bringing the data. We're data-driven, sharing the data with you. We'll be right back after this short break.


With inflation surging at historical levels and real wages being in a free fall throughout most of 2022, of course, intensifying human capital of the cost of living crisis risks to deepen economic scarring from the pandemic. At the beginning of 2023, now here in Davos, policymakers and business leaders face an array of challenging decisions to try and shield the most vulnerable in the short term to address some of the systemic drivers of worsening living standards and deepening inequality beyond 2023. So I am delighted to have on the panel today Christian Lindner, he's Federal Minister of Finance for Germany, Gita Gopinath, International Monetary Fund, Alan Job, Chief Executive Officer of Unilever, Anwar Tyson, Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School of Berkeley. So thank you all for joining us. This is not an easy topic, but it's one maybe that we need to spend a bit of time just to try and understand the underlying causes of inflation, the cost of living crisis. Can you give us an overview of what you think, first of all, have we seen the worst in terms of inflation and the pressure this is putting and also these underlying causes? Yes, thank you. And it's a real pleasure to join this panel. As you said, it's a tough topic to talk about, but I think it's actually a little more easier to do so now than if we were having this conversation about six months back. Six months back, things were really tough. Inflation was at very high levels, especially headline inflation, which includes the cost of energy and the cost of food. Across the globe, we saw a global rise in inflation in the second half of last year. And these two factors were a big part of why we had this. Now we've seen energy costs come down quite significantly. We've seen food prices come down, but still remain elevated relative to before the pandemic. So actually I would make a distinction between what we're seeing in terms of energy markets versus in terms of food. I think in terms of food, we still have food security problems as a major concern. But we have inflation coming down. And so the cost of living has gone down over time. Now what is tricky, of course, is that wages haven't kept up with the cost of living. So there's been a lot of erosion in real wages. And you see the consequences of that this year. You can see unrest in different countries in the world and social unrest. There's something we need to worry about. Would you like me to go into the factors behind this? Factors, please. Yeah. Okay. So in terms of the drivers for the big spur of inflation last year, I think I would start off by saying that we had a serious imbalance between demand and supply in several sectors. So for one, even before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we had energy prices going up. We had oil prices going up quite sharply because we had a pretty strong recovery from the pandemic as a consequence of substantial stimulus that was provided both in terms of monetary policy and fiscal policy to the world as a whole. So that generated a big sharp increase in demand without the supply coming through very quickly. It was also a period when people were spending a lot on goods as opposed to services because the pandemic was not over and people were still hesitant to go to restaurants. They were buying a lot of goods. And so we saw a global component of goods inflation rising everywhere. And of course, following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we had a double knock on energy prices. It was different. It was really bad in parts of the world like Europe, where you had gas prices go up three to four times. So these were several of the factors that drove the inflation. And of course, what's bringing it down now is the slowing global economy, which is coming from tight monetary policies in several parts of the world. But also we've been lucky with the milder weather. We also had 2022 as a year when China's demand for several of these commodities were actually low because they were still living under zero COVID policy. Several of those things can change this year. But let me stop there. Okay. Minister, do you assume, thank you, do you assume that actually inflation will remain a high for a pretty long time? It's coming down, but it still remains high from historic levels? Well, we are witnessing higher levels of inflation this year and the outlook for the next year and for 25 remains on a higher level than we used to see in the past. But there is already a decline. The outlook, the economic outlook for Germany, for example, will be updated. At the moment, we expect 7%. I don't want to spoil, but I expect a decline of the inflation rate. If you allow, I would like to underline one political aspect. We have heard the economic assessment, which I fully share. But we have to tell people and we have to tell low income countries that one of the most important reasons for the higher inflation rates is Russia's unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine. There are some narratives which focus the sanctions we made decisions on. But the key reason for higher inflation rates, for example, in the European Union, is Russia's war. When it comes to Germany, if I may add, we have this very strong dependency especially on Russian energy imports in our domestic market. We were ridiculously dependent on Russia. And now we are making efforts to overcome this situation. And I'm happy to tell you, we built already two LNG terminals within some months. And if you compare, the old German speed had been 20 years for one airport. And now we are able to build LNG terminals in months. And so this very special situation poses an opportunity for Germany to improve our overall competitiveness by supply side measures. Laura, how difficult is it to break down actually the causes of inflation? So how much of it is a war? How much of it is structural issues that have been here for quite some time? So I think that economists continue to debate this. And maybe Gita has the most recent research. There is among economists, the general view, well, how much of this was due to the fact that we really pumped up demand to get quickly out of COVID. And how much of that was the fact that supply came back much more slowly than anticipated.  And so I don't think, from my point of view, that is the most important question anymore. The question now is what do we do going forward? What do we do going forward? We are where we are. I want to start with- But, Laura, if you don't understand where it comes from, it's very difficult to then give a- It's demand and supply. So basically what's happening in the world is we've got the central banks pulling back on demand. We've got the developed economies and the developing economies pulling back on the fiscal stimulus to the extent that they had one pulling the bat. So we're working on the demand side and we actually are also working on the supply side. If I think about the Biden administration, for example, it's done a lot on opening up the ports. It's actually worked hard to get the logistics system back under efficient rapid recovery. It's done a lot in terms of strategic use of the strategic petroleum reserve, actually putting oil in and now actually buying oil to put back into the system now that the price of energy has changed. So I think all I would say is rather than debate how much was demand versus how much is supply, let's say that both factors are there and that actually you have policymakers acting on both sets of factors. You actually do and I think that's important. I just want to point out one positive issue here that hasn't been mentioned so far and that is inflationary expectations because part of the concern of the central bankers and the fiscal authorities, the macro authorities, and this would include the IMF, obviously, was once you let the inflation genie out of the bottle, you would end up with self-reinforcing mechanisms because as people expected structurally higher inflation, they would create structurally higher inflation. And if you look at the medium to long-term measures of inflationary expectations, they suggest that people still expect, maybe not that the inflation rate will go quickly down to in the U.S., the 2 percent target, but it might go reasonably quickly down to around 3 percent, which actually may end up being a place we can be for quite some time in a healthy fashion. Alan, what are you looking at? Unilever is Unilever one of the biggest food companies in the world. You're dealing with inflation day in, day out and you also have to make a decision whether you pass that on to consumers. Yeah, I think there's three enormous threats to our business, which is the climate emergency, the loss and destruction of nature, and rising inequality. And it's the inequality challenge that inflation is really amplifying enormously. I think 75 percent of the world's population live in a country where the genie coefficient over the last five years has got worse, the gap between rich and poor. And that's triggering, yes, a cost of living challenge, but also social unrest and anger. I humbly suggest actually the central banks and intergovernmental bodies were very slow calling inflation. We could see it coming for quite some time before it started to get called out. Maybe I'll just put some numbers against it. So Unilever revenues in 2021 were €52 billion. On that we have a cost of goods sold of €24 billion and last year we suffered €4.5 billion of cost inflation on a base of 24. So it's a very, very material unprecedented number. The last thing we want to do is take prices up. It affects competitiveness, it disturbs volume in the market. So our first reflex is to go to productivity savings, change the mix in our business. But ultimately we did land price last year and the consumer did not react as we had anticipated. There was a far lower volume elasticity than we expected and I think that was because of pent up household savings that buffered the consumer. There was much less down trading than we expected to see. Premium segments in most categories remain quite robust in food and healthcare and personal care. And the world is not flat. We saw more of an effect in Europe, much less of an effect in particularly Southeast Asia, South Asia, Africa, Latin America, places that are used to economic volatility stood up very well. And our best read right now is that there's another €2.5 billion of cost coming through in this calendar year. So I think the panellists are suggesting we may be past peak inflation. I think that's right. We are certainly nowhere close to peak prices. So the consumer is going to see the cost of food, personal care products, everyday commodities is going to continue to rise. And I think the most households particularly in Europe are going to feel the squeeze. Minister, do you agree that we've reached peak inflation and how long are you expecting the German government to continue to subsidize your citizens? Well, I hope so. We presented a protective shield for our private households and small and medium enterprises. We have amount of up to €200 billion for 23 and 24 to pay subsidies in a form of electricity price and gas price break. But now we already have to think about an exit. We cannot allow ourselves to continue to spend these amounts. Even Germany has its budgetary limits. And it's crucial to return to sustainable, to sound public finances on the one hand. We mustn't further fuel inflation. And on the other hand, we have to let the central banks to do their work. They have a high responsibility for fighting inflation. And I really welcome the change in monetary policy which we have seen last year. It's a journey which has just started, I think. And we mustn't further fuel inflation. And if I may, we have to work on the causes for inflation. And domestically, it is the high energy price level. On the European level, I think it's a lack of competitiveness as well. And we'll talk a little bit about electricity prices. But if you look at the milder winter we've had, if you look at the price of gas that's gone down, do you think you won't spend those €200 billion? From my point of view today, we won't need €200 billion. Because it's getting easier. The price levels are lower than we expected. We have less hardship cases. And so my expectation is we won't need the whole protective shield of €200 billion, which is good news because German state is paying more for servicing all debt. Alan, you were nodding. No, I think there's one big unknown that none of us would have predicted that China would be where they are right now and that they would have come out of Covid so extraordinarily quickly. There's two trillion of excess household savings in China right now. And we fully expect we're gearing up for revenge spending by Chinese households who have been locked down for three years. And that's going to show up in travel, in domestic consumption. And I think that could be the disruptor that slows down the ending of inflation. That's a very big variable in the supply and demand construct. So I think that's one to watch carefully. Is there a danger that we are talking at cross purposes because inflation can come down, but for the people that have lost the most during the pandemic, the cost of living is very real and is not going anywhere? So indeed, even if inflation comes down, prices are high because we don't have deflation. We just have lower levels of inflation. So the prices have gone up. You know, how much of a hit that's had on households and on consumption varies across countries. So in the U.S., for instance, there was a lot of generous support provided to households during the pandemic. That meant that the savings of households have grown quite a bit. And in fact, there is still a fair bit of that excess savings left, which is one possible upside to spending an inflation that could happen. I think that in the developing parts of the world is where you really see the stress, which is the cost of living has indented their incomes. And that's been a big problem. So in terms of the point you raised about has inflation peaked, we do believe that in terms of headline inflation for the global economy, we think it peaked in 22. And it's likely to keep coming down. But if you look at the more stickier components of inflation, which is services sector inflation, for instance, I think there's more stubbornness in there. And that's going to be a challenge for central bankers. So Gita, what do you see as a prolonged, I guess, cost, you know, the risks of a prolonged cost of living crisis for the most vulnerable groups, even if inflation comes down? I think there's a real risk here. Like I said at the beginning, I'm actually particularly worried about food security because we know that food prices have come down, but they're still raw food prices have come down, but they're still about 30 percent above 2019 levels. And we know that the pass through from raw food prices to retail prices takes a while. So we haven't seen the effect yet. And we're likely to see retail price inflation of food going up, especially in the emerging and developing world. Laura, how do you see this panning out? So if we have this cost of living crisis that is prolonged, what are the right policy mixes to address it? And what is the ultimate legacy of this? Well, I almost want to say that without calling it a cost of living and crisis, let's call it what existed before and it's going to continue to exist. And that's a living wage crisis for many, many people. That is a living wage crisis in the United States, maybe for the bottom 20 percent of the population. It just has been. And if you look at in the U.S., where the major components of cost of living are food we've talked about, gasoline transportation we've talked about, but housing is the largest single one. And that was a cost of living crisis in the United States before. And it's going to be a cost of living crisis going forward. So I want to make that distinction here. The cost, the inflation of these key areas of importance to cost of living has exacerbated what was a living wage or a poverty problem throughout the world. And as Gita said, what we've seen is we've actually seen instead of a reduction in people living in poverty, we've seen an increase in the level of people living in poverty. We've seen a worsening of the Gini coefficient. So it's exacerbated a problem which existed before and which we have not solved. Minister, you live this day in, day out. I mean, housing in Germany is a concern. It's becoming less affordable, especially for young families. What are some of the things that you have introduced or can introduce to make it easier? Well, to reduce housing costs, we need to build. And this means we need public funding and subsidies, especially for poorer families and vulnerable households on the one hand. And on the other hand, we need more effective, less bureaucratic permitting procedures in Germany. This is the problem of Germany. We have private sector capital, we have know-how, and we have interested companies and investors, but it takes, it took too long time. We are working on it. And may I ask or may I add one aspect? The special situation in Germany is that we are, at the moment, we are losing collective welfare due to the higher prices for energy imports. The German business model for too long time, based on very cheap energy imports. And this is why we could afford a higher level of taxation, for example. And now we have to reinvent our business model. And my expectation is higher competitiveness for the German private sector will lead to the ability to pay higher wages to reduce the burden for the private households by paying better loans and wages. There has also been suggested for that real estate company, BIMA, should take out loans and build state housing. Is it something that you rule out? I won't allow this. BIMA is the state-driven public sector company. It builds the buildings for ministries and military areas. It's not for families and people. That's clear. Laura, what, Alan, you had something to add. Well, I just wanted to pick up on what Laura was saying about this idea of a living wage. The reason why I frame my opening remarks in the context of rising inequality is that this is a long-term trend. It's not a short-term cost of living crisis. It's a long-term inequality crisis. And there's a concept of a fair living wage, which is paying people enough to feed, house, clothe and educate themselves, in some cases transport as well. And you know, even over four years ago, we said, well, of course we'll run company. We must pay all of our people a fair living wage. So we started, well, what is a fair living wage? And there's multiple standards. So we picked a standard and we looked herself in the mirror. It turned out there were pockets of the world where we were not paying a fair living wage. We got busy with that. We've now rectified that. Everyone who works for Unilever makes a fair living wage. We've now said everyone who provides products and services to Unilever will pay their employees a fair living wage by 2030. And we've got 93 of our suppliers have signed up right away to pay there. And so that amplifies us from an impact of hundreds of thousands of people to millions of people. And this is not charity. People who are paid properly are less likely. You get lower attrition. You get higher productivity. You get better motivation. It is a strong financial incentive to pay people properly. And so I would ask all the business leaders in the room and the regulators in the room to consider a fair living wage as an opportunity for your business, because we shouldn't be running our economies and running our businesses on slave wages, poverty wages. So I think there's a call to action here to pay people properly. Alan, the last 12 months, have you increased wages to match inflation? So eight, 10% increases? It's very different in different parts of the world. So our global wage bill will be just slightly lower than inflation for 2022, same in 2023. But enormous differences in different countries around the world. Minister? I completely understand and share your concern when it comes to inequality. And we have to support the most vulnerable in our societies. But well, I would like to focus on our middle classes and people who were able to afford a standard of living and who were able to afford their own properties. And for them, the situation is changing. They now can't afford the cost of living and they can't reach their own properties. And so in the German and probably European perspective, we are doing a lot for the most vulnerable, paying welfare subsidies. But we have to ask, what can we do to stabilize the qualified people who are working hard, playing by the rules, and now are witnessing that they can't afford their lifestyle, the way of living they have learned from their parents, for example. And this leads to, well, a renaissance of competitiveness so that our companies are able to pay fair wages and lead to a new financial surrounding so that those people can afford loans and mortgages for their properties. So Laura, given what the minister on Allen and Gita have just said, what's the right policy mix to deal with this? Policy mix. Well, I indicated that I thought at the beginning, these are not traditional macro demand and monetary policies. So you have to go into the, from a federal point of view or a state, I do a lot of work for the state of California, which is a big economy. At that, you look at the composition of the budget in terms of what you're spending money on and you look at composition of the revenue stream in terms of what you are taxing, what you can bring in to support the spending on the budget side, because we're not talking about major deficit deficit enhancing spending. So in this case, I would say, if you think about what the federal government of the United States has done, we've said long term, how can we get at more affordable cost of living, more affordable cost of living. One is to work on improving logistics infrastructure. I mentioned ports. Part of the problem here, certainly through COVID and the supply chain and the slow recovery on the supply side, was logistics issues. And so the bipartisan infrastructure bill has a lot in that area. Another area, of course, obviously is climate and trying to deal with the reality that over time, we're going to have to do energy transition away from carbon based fuels to other kinds of fuels. And if we can give tax incentives, and there are many, many tax incentives in our IRA bill, to basically reduce the cost to a consumer of buying an electric car or of using all kinds of, if we think about the goal here for climate of electrifying everything, we've put tax credits in for everything to electrify, to try to get people cheaper access to the electrification faster. So those are a couple of examples where it's working on the supply side where you think policy can actually encourage more supply. You know, on climate, just let me mention, and I know this is true around the world, there is a lot of interesting stuff going on in the private sector with improving agricultural techniques, whether it's how you seed, how you irrigate, how you harvest, to improve the efficiency of that, and over time to reduce the cost of food through improving the technologies. So there's a lot that I think is in the area of enhancing technological development to deal with sectors. I want to say that housing is the most complicated, and it's the most complicated because there are resistance to the use of land for this purpose. So you talked, Minister, about the difficulty of getting zoning. You know, California, we have a huge housing crisis. It has been recognized by the federal level for years. Most of those zoning laws are made at the local level, and most localities do not want to build additional housing. They don't want the drain on the education system, on the healthcare system, on the transportation system, on the park system, on nothing. And therefore, this is going to be, to some extent, one of the hardest nuts to crack. Policy makers are having a really hard time with this, getting people behind them. Just make a couple of points. Firstly, since there's been a focus on the more secular features of the cost of living, I think we should agree that if we can bring inflation down from 10% to 2%, we would be much happier. I think we live with 2% inflation in many parts of the world for a very long time. If we can bring inflation durably down to that level, I think that would be success. And macro policies, or I agree with you, the supply side measures play an important role, but macro policies are going to be critical to that. So I think it's very important for inflation aggregate demand relative to supply depends upon monetary policy stance and fiscal policy stance. And therefore, it's very important to stay the course, bring inflation down durably. The second thing, and I think Alan's point was, we saw inflation coming sooner, if you looked at food, if you looked at those sectoral products, especially food, relative to, say, central bankers did. And I think this is a lesson to be learned from these last couple of years, which is the central bank thinking, monetary policy thinking was that you kind of could ignore sectoral price movements. If you see big movements of sectoral prices, you could see through that because those things tend to be very volatile. Monetary policy works with lags. So you don't want to rush in and raise interest rates because you saw food prices go up by 20%. I think what we've learned in the last two years is that when you are in a world where you have demand coming back strongly and you have sectoral supply shocks hitting at several margins, in that case, you really can't see through sectoral supply shock. So I think that's the lesson we've learned. And it's something we have to keep in mind because we're not out of the woods when it comes to supply shocks. We still have a climate transition that has to happen. We have to make sure we have secure energy. We still have China that's coming back. And I agree with you. One of the risks to inflation going up is how strong the rebound will be in China. Right now there's a bit of a disconnect between the markets and what central banks have been communicating with. The markets expect that we're heading towards the 2% target really quickly in the US and the Fed will be there to cut interest rates very soon. Again, you have to keep in mind that there are all these uncertainties around the world, including what will happen to energy prices as the Chinese economy comes up. So we have to stay the course. The second thing I would make in terms of the more structural side of inflation is it is important for countries to diversify the sources of where they buy goods from. Heavier reliance on only one country we know, Germany has that experience, can create a lot of trouble. And so diversification is very important. But the answer is certainly not to bring all your production home, which is a risk that we see. And it is a significant risk to the global economy. The reason we had three decades of being able to keep inflation down was because we were we had trade with many countries in the world that put cost pressures down for households and for firms. But I see the tendency now in response to the pandemic and the war to go maybe the other extreme and to say the only solution is for us to do everything in-house. And that is the perfect recipe for us to live with high inflation per se for a long time. Gita on the monetary policy point, is there a danger that so we go from inflation 8% to 4%, 5% and actually central banks will have to put a lot of economies in a recession, we'll see job losses. And so the cost of living crisis will get worse to get to that 2% target. You know, we haven't seen the softening in the job market that we typically see going around with the big increase in interest rates. So when we say that 2023 is going to be a tough year and tough of several economies compared to last year, it is because the labor market is where we are likely to see unemployment rates go up. We're at record low unemployment rates in the U.S. and in the Euro area. Record lows, right? Everything we know about how monetary policy works when you've tightened interest rates so much is for the unemployment rate to go up. That's how you bring down inflation durably. The question is how much will it take? But at this point, there's really only one way for it to go. Minister, what are you going to do for that middle class that you say is being squeezed so much? I mean, do we need to reform the electricity markets? Yes, we have to reform the electricity market. We have to reduce the burdens, for example, in the taxation. We have to improve the framework conditions for our SMEs in Germany and all these supply-side measures. And this is crucial. I remind us of Joe Biden here in Davos, 2017, when he delivered a speech concerning the American middle class. And he warned that if we forget them, they would forget us, the elites, and they were probably looking for other representatives. And afterwards, we saw what happened in the US. If I may, there's one very interesting aspect you mentioned, the serious risk of fragmentation of the global economy. We see protectionism. I have my concerns with the Inflation Reduction Act. And we need to have the right consequences in this situation of supply chain, bottlenecks, inflation. There are some criticisms about globalization. And I think, at the moment, we have a period of opportunity, a window of opportunity. Russia's war against Ukraine brought us as value partners together. And we were able, on the G7 level, under the German presidency last year, to found a climate club. I think this is an impressive example of policy-making power. And so, why stopping there? We should continue these efforts. Instead of having, well, kind of a trade controversy between the US and the European Union, we should consider whether there is an opportunity for French-shoring, as my US colleague Janet Yellen suggested. So, we should have a different level of ambition. Why not starting to negotiate a global trade agreement of the liberal democracies? But, Minister, it could also, and I know a number of European leaders have voiced concerns about this Inflation Reduction Act. Could Europe not do its own IRA? No, we mustn't. A competition who is able to pay more subsidies would be a threat to sustainable public finances in Europe. And, frankly, our next-generation EU fund is about 800 billion euros in comparison to the IRA. I think we are doing a lot. So, it's not trade war. It's trade diplomacy we need. Laura, and actually, the same question to all of you. Are you optimistic that the cost of living crisis will get better? Or will it get worse before then it eases off a bit? Well, I think the question is similar to the inflation rate. Have we seen a peak inflation rate? And I think we have. I think we're going to, I think traditional monetary policy and fiscal policy is going to continue to battle to bring it down. I think it is true and unfortunate that the only way that monetary policy and fiscal policy does that is to create slack in the labor market. That's what it does. What one hopes is that the unemployment rate doesn't go up too much, that that relationship between the ability of monetary policy to bring the inflation rate down and how much you have to rely on that unemployment rate going up, that that relationship is different now. And that's, I know, what Jerome Powell and the Fed is hoping. But I think that we are on a course to bring the inflation rate down. And I just want to say, because I don't want this to be a debate about between the U.S. and Europe, but what I really think we need is exactly cooperate. Much of the IRA is about climate. And what we need to do is we need to work together to basically use subsidies and tax policy to accelerate the speed, to accelerate and scale all of the technology requirements to address climate change. That's what we need to do. We have to mitigate the negative side effects on partners, I would suggest. No, no, no, no. I'm saying if we think about that as a general goal, we should be able to structure the policy so as to mitigate those effects.  It is very hard to do this. You're spending national resources, your country's resources. And the politics of the Congress led very much, in particular a couple senators, led very much to the writing of that piece of legislation. I'm not particularly optimistic because the cost of living crisis disproportionately impacts those at the bottom of the pyramid. There is so much talk about tightening rates and about stimulus spending. I think the only way to break the long-term trend of rising inequality is productivity. No one is talking about productivity as the sustainable way out of the inflation environment that we're in right now. I think the private sector has got quite a lot to offer on how you tackle productivity, but I just think it's going to take time. And the people who are suffering the most will continue to suffer for quite a long time.  So if our projections are right, we do have inflation coming down globally this year and next. Of course, we've been surprised many times. And I think last year at this time nobody expected Russia's invasion of Ukraine. So that happens. So things can go terribly wrong. But the baseline is for inflation to come down and come down across the globe. I think that will help with cost of living. I think the perennial problems of inequality and those at the bottom and the issues in housing will remain. I think there's a harder nut to crack and that will take some more time. But I think we should feel good about the fact that inflation comes back down to the more reasonable levels. On fragmentation, I'm going to put my global hat on and say, we really want all countries to be able to work together to come up with solutions and maybe putting my completely pragmatic hat on. I would say at least at the minimum when it comes to things like food exports, exports of fertilizers, basic essentials for the world that we have multilateral solutions and not friend solutions or inshoring or any of those combinations of that. Thank you, Minister. Did we get worse or easier the cost of living crisis from here? The German media reports that there's a lot of pessimism here in Davos. I think we should change the perspective from doubts and concerns to opportunities and challenges. We are not objects of our fate. We are not passengers of the flight. We are pilots. So let's work on policy solutions for the challenges we have to cope with. You see the willingness of government leaders and politicians to come together and find a common solution? Within the European Union, among the member states, there is the willingness to do. We are making efforts, for example, to deepening our single market and to make progress on capital markets union. So there's a reason for optimism. Okay. Well, thank you all for a very interesting panel. Christian Lindner, Alan Job, Gita Gopinath and Laura Tyson. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.


Welcome back to The Breakfast here on Plastivia Africa. Our first major conversation this morning is going to, of course, the Judy Sherry Staff Union of Nigeria, who have called of their strike. It's been long enough. And this morning we're speaking with Mr. Justice Uwe Buz, a human rights lawyer. Good morning. Thanks for joining us, sir. Good morning. Good morning. It is my pleasure once more. Thanks for joining us. You know, I'm sure courts, you know, workers and, of course, Nigerians across the country would be celebrating the end of this strike. Is it also something that you're happy about? Let's start with that. Your reaction to, you know, the decision to call of the strike? Well, actually, I am happy because we've been at home for some time, did nothing. But in the other way around, if you... Seems we're having a bit of a technical glitch this morning. We'll try to get back with our guests. But yeah, he started off saying he's happy. You know, no one likes to just be idle, you know, in as much as we say, oh, I wish I was chilling at home today at work. But when that situation comes, you find that that's really not what you want. So people are happy. Lawyers are happy to be back to the court. But we need to get just exactly what this means for him and other lawyers across the country. It's the longest ever strike by Judiciary workers in Nigeria. Actually, the longest ever industrial strike, 64-day-old, the longest ever industrial action the Nigerian judiciary has ever seen. So we really need to get a feel of what lawyers really have to see about this. What role has the NLC played, if any, what role has the NBA played about this? What role has the government played? And beyond calling off the strike, the crocs of the matter, why didn't back down that strike in the first place? Have those issues been resolved? Let's talk about a memorandum of understanding a couple of days ago. There's also those who have been waiting for the courts to be back in session so they can either grant a bill or at least have their cases passed through the process. And it's taken too long to just keep waiting and waiting and waiting. Some of them, of course, are still behind bars, hoping that their cases will be heard. We've spoken about the inadequacies that our judicial system has been dealing with for a long time and why it takes so long for court cases to finally be concluded. You see a case running for three, four, five years, which is totally abnormal. And then you now compound that with a strike that lasts for more than two months. So it is good news. But like you said, has the memorandum of understanding be fully complied with? Do we expect that in another four months, just once again say, well, somebody reneged on their promises? We're going back to, you know, on strike. The governor of River State also is pretty critical here. And of course, how is every state governor going to be playing his part with this understanding? Mr. Awekbo, welcome back. Thank you. All right. Please go ahead. Yeah, what I'm trying to say is that for me, I am not too surprised that the judiciary went on strike. And as much as it has been the longest in our history. But moving away from that, the question we should be asking ourselves is, should the government always allow people or workers in the country to always embark on strike before they do the need to or before they do what they're supposed to do? As far as I'm concerned, it is neither here nor there. I will not even be surprised if by the next one month, or two months there about, this will go on, we'll be back into another strike. Because signing a memorandum on agreement, it doesn't end here because we've discovered and seen in the country, we have so many memorandum of understanding and agreement signed by the labor union and the government, we are not kept to. So in fact, it's a team of worry because if at this point in time, that judiciary can embark on strike for this length of time, and the government allowed it to linger to this time, I am surprised, I don't know where we are in this country. But you mentioned that you will not be surprised if there's another strike in one month. Why would that be? Is it that the reasons why they went on strike in the first place have not been addressed regarding judicial autonomy? Well, it has been addressed, you showed to us on paper. But in practical terms, has it been addressed? Now what I'm saying is that something to me is not only the issue. We would have expected, you know, they want to promote the movement, we would have expected implementation of all these things. Should we wait until you sign something before people do the need for, before people do what they're supposed to do? And all the things, these things just mean action that some other people are asking. There are even things that the government should optimally do. These things are even constitutional provisions that you don't need to embark on strike, but you don't need to wait for government to do what they're supposed to do. That's what I'm trying to say. Now you and I know that this is not the first time in the history of this country that agreements have been signed. Look at the answer for example. How many every time are you going to sign? Why? Because of the same thing. At the end of the day, agreement to be signed, at the end of the day, it will not be kept. So why are we here? Why are we behaving this way? Okay, so I need to ask you the question. So if there's, if there seem to be a history of, you know, government and workers signing agreement on something and the government renerges or breaches that contract, why in this case, did just now wait for the practical implementation of the things they're asking for before calling off the strike? Well, you know, the truth is that the quality is high. People are actually angry. And also with what is happening in Nigeria today. Okay, look at that. You can just take a, if you see to maybe to our correctional homes and all the way. There are overnight cases every day. Go to correctional home. You see that people are multiplying on daily basis and all the way. So I believe one of the reasons why this one has to do these things is even out of sympathy. Let me put things that way. There may not come out to tell people. But that's the truth. All right. Okay.  Every Nigerian should be celebrating because one way or the other, we are all involved. Because I'm involved. So directly or indirectly, we are all involved. If judiciary is not working, even you people there will still not be happy. You will be involved one way or the other. You'll be concerned. So every country, every person in the country should be celebrating. Because judiciary, of course, you know, that we say that judiciary is the last hope of the common man. So how would the common man get his hope if judiciary is actually doing nothing?   Are you worried, you know, about the partial implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding? Do you think? And of course, like the River State Governor, yes, I'm wiki had already made his own views clear with regards judicial autonomy and the Memorandum of Understanding just on strike. So are you worried that, you know, maybe not all state governments will go ahead with the implementation of this MOU? Well, the truth is this, we, unfortunately, we are in a situation where we play politics with everybody. Well, secondly, and most importantly, where the executive arm of the government has almost swallowed the two other arms of government, you know, thinking or feeling that both the legislature and you basically detuned. For me, for me, the way I see this whole thing, the way I look at it, just so it's not even supposed to go on strike in the first place, the two bodies that are supposed to be a check or a one-stop to the executive is the judiciary and the legislators. But because of politics, they're not even doing this. Because the judiciary and the legislators, what the governors have done, and even the president, is even at a future good offense. The constitution provides, made the provision that an act has to be done, and you are not doing it. So why is the judiciary at the Central Skipping Fire? Why must you resort to as if you're against it? That is the problem here. If we're doing the needful, the problem is that our institutions are not working. If our institutions are working, I don't think that this price will be better. This decision will come up and take up the need. That is just the thing. Wow. You made a very strong statement there saying the executive has swallowed the other arms of government. You know, beyond just soon, what do you think the government needs to do institutionally to check this? Because the executive, they know that if they allow the institutions to work, they will not be neither here nor there. Do your job as the executive and also do their own. That is why they check some balancing. And that is why it was provided, I've been sure, that the three organs of government must work separately in order to avoid charity. But today, unfortunately in this country, the three organs of government are not working separately. The executive has swallowed the two other arms of government as a result of qualities. Because it always involves the people they want, both in the charity and both in the legislature, in order to play their piece. So it has become an issue of who pays the FIFAR, detests the tune. That is just what is happening in Nigeria today. Okay, now let's also talk, you know, of the reasons behind the strike. How much does judicial autonomy change or improve on our judicial system? You see, I have to make you say are we not even ashamed? Are we supposed to be talking about judicial autonomy at this stage alive? It's not like we're talking about local government autonomy. Okay, are we also talking about legislative autonomy? In fact, let me tell you the truth. And it seems to be a conspiracy now between even the legislative and judicial system. Where are the legislators not even talking? Okay, look at it, look at it. Our house of, our senators, our house of members are there and they kept quiet for over two months. And the judiciary is almost as your strike. What did they do? What have they done? Have they called anybody to arrest? The various types of assemblies of the states, what have they done? They did not do anything. That is to tell you that the moment you begin to place selfish policies and continue these selfish policies we are playing, it can never over well with this conflict. There is no to require. Okay, I want you- So, this is of an autonomy or no, I'm supposed to be saying this. Okay. Barista, we know that this strike really has been on for a while now, about two months. And you mentioned that Jusun probably ended the strike out of sympathy because a lot of cases to attend to. So, can you please give us a sense of what it might look like? Would judiciary workers having to deal with such a huge backlog of cases wants to resume? Well, the truth is this, I have to tell you the truth. The courts, I see the courts are going to give them parts, especially overnight cases.  My friends that just came from the police station to the courts and all that. I remember there are a lot of daily basis that goes on. And you only need the courts for giving interpretation to them as I speak to you. Everybody is hanging in the country. Once you have any issue with anybody in there, no matter how late they are, the excuse they will give you is that the court is not working. And what do you do? Do you want to resolve to serve her? And the answer is no. So, that's why I think that it's going to affect everything. Remember that the only matter the judiciary is not only criminal matter. There are civil matters that are there. The final cases may need to come into the other way, but nobody is doing that. Okay. So, you see that one way or the other Nigerians have been abstracted in one way or the other. So, I immediately, I see by one difference, by one day, the cultural activity that part. All right, Boris, Justice Huwebu, we thank you very much for sharing your thoughts on the suspensions that strike by Jusson. Have a great day. All right. At least now, take people to court for using Twitter illegally. If you have VPNs on your phone, you might be getting a knock on your door. Our many people are sent to the courts and maybe to jail. We hope it won't get to that. Anyway, we know that there's a lot of talk about regional security and many others. So, they might just be licensed to carry weapons and operate regionally to ensure security in the states and regions. And that's because the House of Reps are considering a bill to that effect. I will discuss that in detail after this break.


What is going on guys welcome back to the channel and I appreciate you being here today I am back with another apex legends top 5 plays and today we have top 5 Epic kills but before we get into the video guys if you do enjoy leaving a like Who really does help out and I do appreciate that support if you are new around here and apex legends is what you want to See more of be sure to subscribe and if you have any amazing clip You think he's worth sharing with the world send it into the email or just linked at the top of the video Discussion but let's get straight into this top 5 and at number 5 We have a clip sent in by haters one it who is saved by his teammate TSS who comes in with this nasty KO below In a number 4 we have a clip sent in by flying burrito getting a finisher on someone who failed getting it on you epic Three we have a clip sent in by creams on wall 40 69. This is how you throw a ninja star The number 2 we have a clip sent in by Frenchy who throws his epic long distance grenade which leads to him wiping a team In a number 1 we have a clip sent in by Parthian when Jackie Chan plays apex legends But guys that is the end of this top 5 if you enjoyed the video leaving a like really does help out if you are new around here And this is what you want to see more of be sure to subscribe And if you have any amazing clip you think he's worth sharing with the world send it into the email address linked at the top of the Video description but guys thanks as always for stopping by hopefully you enjoyed the video and hopefully I will see you on that next one


Everybody for us to rip in a box of 2021 top scrum F1 sapphire from max and thank you max And good look got buddy. Let's see Big-timer stopper and Lewis Hamilton. It's a Lando Norris. It's Lando Hamilton same card Lando there And the Hamilton. All right. It was Roy Nisani. There's an aqua Felipe a drug of it future stars 76 of 99 for the F2 University team Fernando Alonso and a Guillermo Samaya Nicholas Latifi and Aqua Sergio Perez 46 of 99 the Grand Prix driver of the day Stereo nice Sergio. There's a rookie Yuki Nice card there fleet by Djurgovic Decent box so far is he some more color though George Russell a Roberts Shortsman Daniel Riccardo Carlo signs Franz toast another parallel Very nice big card photo variations short print max for stopping with the sepia 82 of 100 And yep, that is the short print big congrats on the max Nice max for max, huh? Yeah Yeah Max and with the max for stopping big card, buddy That's going to the mag of course Good stuff, man. Nicholas Latifi Sergio Perez Monchow Sebastian Vattel. There's the Lewis Portrait very nice and a David Brevio another Hamilton Yuki rookie Mazepin and verse stopping Last pack great box with that with that max variation. There we go other Lewis there and How about a Valtteri Botas? Very nice seven of 100 on the sepia. What a great box man max and grants to your bud Show these last two cards We do appreciate it. We'll get these out to you last our ghastly and sonota Great box Just great box man. Thank you for the order. We'll get these out to you like I said