winds. the national hurricane centers predicting that elsa will push into georgia and across south carolina, weakening to a depression by thursday. elsa is the fifth atlantic storms this year, became the seasons first hurricane, as it moved through the caribbean last week. dish prime minister boris johnson faced questions about his honesty during a two hour cop -- cross-examination by a committee of lawmakers today. keir starmer pressed for details on the expected impact of the prime minister's plan to lift most covid restrictions on july 19. the prime minister says the nation's vaccine rollout has severed the link between covid cases and deaths. but sturmer called the reopening strategy "reckless." sweden's interim prime minister won by a narrow vote today in parliament that will allow him to form a new coalition government. he won by just two votes.

this means three weeks after he resigned as prime minister, following a no-confidence vote, the former union leader and hyg?■welder needs to hold his sy coalition together and push a budget proposal through parliament in the fall. m"yif he fails, he has vowed to resign again. global news, 24 hours a day, on air and on bloomberg quicktake, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. i'm mark crumpton. this is bloomberg. >> it is 1:00 p.m. in new york, 7:00 p.m. in berlin, 1:00 a.m. in hong kong. i'm matt miller. here are the top stories we are following for you from around the world. we've got the latest in what is going on with yields. trading at 131.

chief investment officer at commonwealth financial network, the nation's largest privately held registered investment advisor or broker-dealer. and billionaires dissent on sun valley. we will go live to. . join them. the allen company conference in for the latest on the ground. and see what they are doing. we will speak with phyllis newhouse about her company's decision to take solar power start up helio jen public in a $2 billion back deal. first off, let's look at what is going on in the markets. we have had incredible moves today. real yields dropped below -1%. on the tenure. thing about that for a second. in the new yes -- in the new last -- in the u.s. we had stocks down, climbing back up. we had the u.s. 10 year yield down below 134 a bit. now it has come back.

still 13170 nine. incredibly low for a fed turning hawkish and talking taper. $6,bloomberg dollar index shot p earlier. it is holding on to some gains. crude dropped, still down $1.16 in new york. a lot going on. looks like a lot of it is being driven by yields and the dollar. joining us now is brad mcmillan, as i said, he is the cio at commonwealth financial network. what do you think is driving yields down? two months ago, if i had asked our yields going to go up or down? most respondents would have set up. now we are down at 130. why? brad: i think when you look at the economy, when you look at the markets, what we are seeing as we are going back to normal. the economy is going back to normal. we are essentially through with the pandemic on an economic asus -- basis. we would expect to see rates go back to where they were before the pandemic.

that is exactly what is happening. for all the fears about inflation, for all of the concerns about things going to get worse, they are going back to where we were, and that was a good place. we are seeing rates normalize one more time. matt: why is that though? if we are seeing growth booming, or even if we are seeing growth at a healthy pace, why do investors feel the need to seek the safety of u.s. treasury? brad: there is a lot of narrative out there about how it is about safety. it is not about safety. it is about supply and demand. there is a tremendous amount of )dcapital out there that is looking for returns. not just here in the u.s., but globally. there is nothing safer than the treasury. as long as you can get a decent return on that, better than you are getting on returns in other sovereigns, why would you not want to do that? it is supply and demand. chasing the treasure -- chasing the treasury and the risks have

dropped as inflation has started to show signs it is going down. more and more of that capital says yeah, treasuries are where we want to be. it is just investors saying, this is a yield that makes sense. matt: what about the return in rates versus the return in the stock market right now? do equities look to perfection? is everything priced in here as we move towards earnings season next week? brad: i don't think so. i think there is still room to go up. remember, we are seeing a bounce back in earnings. last quarter, we saw the biggest gain in earnings in decades, if not ever. and analysts are still trying to catch up. normally, we get a bump on earnings beyond what analysts expect. this quarter, we are likely to see a bigger bump then we would have had otherwise. there is still room. when you look at valuation, they have been steady.

21 to 22 times of forward earnings. as earnings go up and the valuation holds and with interest rates dropping, it made friend up. we still have got some upside here. matt: are you looking for next week? earnings season, we have been so focused on the rates picture, inflation, geopolitical issues from china to russia, that some people have lost their focus on what the stock market is really all about. what do you expect when we start seeing results role in next week? brad: i think that is a very fair statement. but i think what we are going to see in terms of real company earnings, they will continue to beat expectations. they will beat expectations by a lot more than people expect. we are still in the bounce phase, where we get the benefit of that. we are still in a high-growth recovery period. so we are getting the benefit from that. we are also getting the benefit from the fact that companies learn to be more efficient during the pandemic. they are actually helping -- they will get -- they will earn

more out of every dollar they sell. those sales are rising. i think we've got some upside ahead. not just absolutely, but in terms of expectations. i think there will be a lot of positive surprises. matt: the dollar is rising as well. a lot of people expected it to continue on a downward trajectory this year and it has really turned around. do you expect that to continue? brad: i do expect it to continue. uss has remained very attractive. when you look at a multiyear timeframe, the dollar has been bouncing around. it is well within the range. we got toward the lower edge, now it will recover. i wrote a piece on my blog, i said the dollar is still not collapsing, and indeed we have seen it bounce up. people want to buy the dollar. we expect it to go down as the u.s. outperforms, and then other countries start to catch up. but now we are starting to see the u.s. slow and other companies pick up. all of the dollar has become attractive again. this will keep going. matt: it is a really good point.

i'm looking at a chart of the five-year, and you can clearly see we bounced off a bottom a couple times here in the past 12 months. in the last time we saw it was 2018. the top is a lot further from here. do you like european stocks? do you like emerging markets? do you like places where may be the rebound has yet to show its strength? brad: there are two pieces. i think you are right on the play here which is ok, we want to buy before the rebound hits. i think in that case, when you look at emerging markets, they've got more room to go on the upside. europe is probably a little bit farther ahead. they probably have more immediate upside. but it is going to be less than emerging markets. then when you look at pricing, i think the edge goes to emerging. i prefer emerging at this point. i think there are opportunities from a u.s. perspective. matt: great to get your insight.

really appreciate it on a day like today. it really helps. brad mcmillan, commonwealth financial network talking to us about the markets with his outlook. i want to get to something that caught my eye in the markets today. jp morgan executives think the worst of wall street's trading slump is over. thank's copresident and co-coo daniel pinto says the industry's collective revenue reached a low before the pandemic, and things are likely to improve for years to come. this is great news of course for bankers and really interesting as we continue to talk about whether or not you need to come back to the office. always recommend his writing on this and his column yesterday was spot on in terms of the fact that junior bankers need to be back in the office. senior bankers probably shouldn't be. coming up, billionaires gather in sun valley, idaho for the annual allen and company conference. we will have the latest from the event the summer camp for

moguls. moguls is one word people use, you this is bloomberg. this is bloomberg. can use your own. ♪ your own. ♪

>> btv new listing alert.

>> it is the new gold purrs are -- and one of the world safe is mining jurisdictions. our management team has a track record of successfully advancing projects through the production. it is driving value with strong treasury, cash flow, and no debt. >> we have gotten a positive reaction so far. we are hoping it is going to be another eight months, could be longer than that. but things are going well. 18 -- 18 teams are working hard. very exciting when you mix these companies together. we have a strategy that we have developed and no we will see how hbo max does an hbo over the next year, how we do at discovery plus. and we will see if we can come up with something. matt: that was discovery ceo david zaslow there. very cool custom ray-ban

wayfarers. he is at the allen and company conference in sun valley, idaho. joining us for what is happening on the ground is ed ludlow. this is a place where the wealthiest and most powerful people come. i guess this is sort of the summer davos, is that fair? ed: yeah, summer camp for billionaires, when they all broke -- all come up in their suvs because there were hugs because the conference did not take place because of covid. they're really strict covid rules here that each guest has to comply with. but there is also this pent-up anxiety. they are here to do business. mary barrow, ceo of gm, where she says she is here to do business. this feeling, it has been so long since these huge names have done any business in person. that is what they are going to do, as well as have a great time

in beautiful sun valley. matt: she has got a lot of deals to make. it is amazing what the traditional carmakers are now branching out into. what kind of business do you see coming -- we see barry diller. obviously media and internet technology is a huge part of it. but electric cars have to be a big part as well. we see sarah -- see sarah sandberg walking up. ed: exactly. the main deal is the discovery-warner deal. partly because allen and co. who are hosting the conference are advising the deal. the point he made is that there is a lot of pressure on the smaller players in the world of media streaming to do something, to scale up to remain competitive. why? you look at amazon and its purchase of mgm, you look at what apple has done in the content space, now there is pressure on the likes of viacom, cbs, comcast, can they buy some property that will keep them relevant?

one thing is clear, there is a consensus behind the scenes that there are deals to come in the tnt space. matt: cheryl and mary are pretty young. everybody else there looks pretty wise in their years i'm sure. we saw warren buffett pull up. is there a young tech crowd there at all, or is it just billionaires and ceos in their 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's? ed: it is really interesting. the press is camped out because they want to hear from jeff bezos. sources tell me that jeff bezos is attending. you do have this next generation of the palantir ceo who is here, for example. you see other players from the worlds of social media, dropbox's ceo drew houston is here. twilio ceo is here. those may not be household names when it comes to sun valley but the landscape has changed. deals gone behind the scenes.

when executive made the point when you think of sun valley, you think of m&a and the telecom sector. he is not in that space and he said, my customers are here, my bankers are here, my business partners are here. there are other things that get done here. allen and co. underwrote facebook's ipo. executives from those countries attend year in and year out. for allen and co. and other financiers in attendance, it is a good breeding ground for other kinds of deals. matt: excellent coverage there. always appreciate you on the ground reporting on these kinds of events. this is surely one of the biggest of the year. ed ludlow, our tech reporter. still ahead, solar power startups, speaking of tech, set to go public in a $2 billion deal with athena technology. we will discuss the deal with athena ceo, phyllis newhouse, next. this is bloomberg. ♪

matt: this is "bloomberg markets." i'm matt miller. athena technology, the entire women led special-purpose acquisition company, is taking solar power startups yulia jen public in a $2 billion deal. here to discuss the merger is the ceo of athena, phyllis newhouse. phyllis, thank you for joining us. really appreciate your time. let's talk about this acquisition, this deal. solar seems to be having really a second wind right now. tell us about celia jen. phyllis: yes. thank you for having me. when i think about what athena was looking for, and we were looking for a company that was game changing the industry, and we found heliogen, so this is a

company that is used -- using ai to increase efficiency and hardware in the energy space. when you think about this, this is what they've done. this is game -- this is game changing. when people ask questions, what is athena bullish on? we are looking at the market which is over 7 trillion. also uses software and ai to increase the efficiency of the hardware. it is a highly skilled technical team, with strong technical capabilities. a very experienced and accomplished management team. with strong customer demand. matt: we are hearing more and more about solar hardware that can absorb more sunlight with special materials, maybe on both sides, get the reflection off the ground in a more intelligent way, store it, the power, on a battery or send it to the grid. when are we going to see heliogen start to bring products

to market? phyllis: this is so exciting, matt. heliogen is currently doing work with three major customers, and hope to have them built and operating by 2023. that is what is exciting about this industry. matt: what do you think about this back performance that -- the spac performance we have seen? you have been in the -- been in this from the beginning. we saw huge demand initially, he of people called it a bubble. but business people like you had not gone out and done the deals yet. is it going to look different? is the chart going to look different once investors start seeing the money spent? phyllis: here is what i believe. the global appetite for climate technology companies is at its all-time high. athena is made up of accomplished executives, we all agree. that is why when we look at the market, we did not get afraid of

what was going on in the market. but because we did see this, we have the expertise to look at the market, look at the companies that were on the cutting edge technologies, and to continue to drive on. that is how we look at it. -- looked at it. matt: in terms of heliogen, and what you are seeing, investors you are talking about, what is the appetite seemed to be for the solar market? because i felt like there was a lull in solar power demand or solar power hype. now it seems to be creeping up higher again. phyllis: when you look at what heliogen has been able to do with the breakthrough of being able to create a heat refinery, where you've got what four/seven, so this is really an all-time breakthrough. i think the market, there is a lot of investors that have an appetite for this. bill gates was one of the first investors that came in on this

deal because he also saw what bill gross is doing. like i said, i had the opportunity to visit the site when i saw the incredible technology, the innovation, the disruption, i actually saw the facility working, i knew that this was game changing technology. i knew the appetite was therefore the investors and it is going to be there. matt: what about investors embracing a women led company? how are they accepting your team? global wall street is thought of as an old boys club but it must be changing some. phyllis: i can't tell you, i'm so excited to answer that question. when we first came into this, people thought well, all women led spac. but look, we have expertise that spans across all industries. from private equity, banking, we are founders, we are operators, we are revenue generators, we are job creators.

matt: military. phyllis: yeah, military. if you've led anything before in your life, if you've been in the military, this is a cakewalk. are more women becoming involved in spac? yes. one of the main reasons is because we saw the opportunities and the need for more women to come into spac. especially women of color. i think the barriers are twofold. i remember one time a coach told me if you want to play the game, you have to become a student of the game. once you know how to play the game and understand the rules of the game, you cannot be denied. and i think women now will go into spac and expect the market even more because they are seeing women. isabel and i make bold moves. i intend to see this. i know we intend@■xf■ to see moe women now flooding the market and coming into it, because they have the expertise already. matt: phyllis, thank you very

much for your time. thank you for your service as well. phyllis newhouse is the ceo of athena technology, and they have just taken heliogen public in a $2 billion deal. let's get a quick check of what is going on in the markets. we have had a recovery in stocks,. . to some extent. to be fair, we were not down too much and we are not up too much. the s&p 500 at 43 51. the 10 year yield did drop below 130. now backup. the dollar index holding steady. and oil coming down, really what we saw earlier was a spike in the dollar that led to a drop in the euro, a drop in the pound, a drop. even gold came down. oil trading in new york at 71.91. interesting to look at the real yield. if you've got a bloomberg in front of you, tom keene always uses usggtny index.

i know that is a lot to remember but the bloomberg will autocorrect. at one point this morning, it dipped below -1%. we saw a real yield of more than -1% for a while. right now, we are at make -- -97 basis points. pretty fascinating to see such a big drop. coming up, we will talk about meme stocks. they are coming down today as retail traders pullback from this year's favorite -- frankly, i think a lot of hedge fund traders were in meme stocks as well. it is not fair to blame it all on retail traders. we will talk to dave wilson. he knows more than i and our stock of the hour. this is bloomberg. ♪

mark: i'm mark crumpton with bloomberg first word news. the world health organization is urging caution as regions around

the world have seen increasing covid-19 infections over the last week. you went help agencies as more than two dozen countries have epidemic curves that are almost vertical. officials are asking governments to be careful when it comes to reopening so we don't lose the progress we have made in the fight against the coronavirus. the grim task of searching for victims continues in surfside, florida. more than 45 people are confirmed dead in that condo tower collapse. about 100 others are still missing. no one has been rescued from the site since the first hours after the building collapsed on june 24, when many of the residents were asleep. crews have removed more than 124 tons of debris from the rubble. the haitian president has been assassinated. the nation's interim prime minister says the attackers were "highly trained and heavily armed. "

he says the attack happened at the presidential residence. the first lady was also shot in the attack. she remains hospitalized. there have been growing public anger in haiti over moise's attempt to hold onto power and rewrite the constitution. egypt has released that shipping vessel that blocked the suez canal for a week this year. the development came after the owner reached a settlement with canal authorities. the terms were not disclosed. the container ship is carrying some $1 billion worth of cargo and loss control in march, crashing into the banks of the canal, blocking the waterway and roiling global markets. global news 24 hours a day, on-air, and on bloomberg quicktake, powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in over 120 countries. i'm mark crumpton. this is bloomberg. ♪

amanda: i'm amanda lang. welcome to bloomberg markets. matt: i'm matt miller. we welcome our bloomberg and bnn bloomberg audiences. here are the top stories we are following for you from around the world. we are going to get the fed minutes from the fed's june meeting. investors will be looking at any hints for when the central bank will taper. we will have a preview with michael gapen. plus, meme stocks under pressure. amc and gamestop sliding today. we will break down the moves with dave wilson, and the outlook for crypto regulation. mike belshe, cofounder of bitgo, joins us to talk about that. amanda: we are seeing something

of a quiet session, although we are seeing some trading off stories for individual names. over, pretty flat picture, slightly negative. everything but communications and energy are moving higher, just not moving higher with any momentum to speak of. the nasdaq just dipped lower. 2:00, the fed minutes may shed light on some of the discussions around when the tapering may happen. it really is the bond market that has been the focus, playing a part in how these sectors have been trading. the 10-year trading at 1.3. another question will be what this means for growth. is that growth surge behind us? where do we go from here? of course, quarterly profits are up next. for what it's worth, a place you

often see growth is the economics of the olympics. they can attract a lot of economic value to a country, they can cost a lot, too. 16 days away, it appears japan is considering keeping spectators out. maybe no spectators, which is going to be massively disappointing to the athletes, also to local venues which would have hoped to benefit economically here. matt: the people that paid the ioc to win the bid. they wanted this to be a big moneymaker, being for investment. maybe they got some of that investment money already plowed into those stadiums that will be empty. i think it's a good thing. we have known for some time it will not be a big olympics. it was known that there would be few spectators, but it is good for the record books, in my

opinion, to have this every four years-ish. to be fair, there are young athletes that trained so hard, and they have dreamt about this for two decades, and it's great that they get a chance to compete. amanda: i am totally in agreement. if you plan to get married, graduating high school, it is the year it will happen. you wish it was different, but life goes on. this is the life we are living right now. but you are right, athletes are at this stage only once, peak performance. we will all be cheering for you. matt: i will be getting married, we have changed it three times. if you cannot make it, i'm sorry, we are just going to do it. time for stock of the hour. meme stocks are mostly lower as

retail traders pullback from this year's favorites. maybe even hedge funds are pulling back. lately, we have seen some flow data that shows some big institutional trading in this. dave wilson is looking at the winners and losers for us. what do you see? dave: mostly losers. we have an index that tracks meme stocks and all but four of them are lower in today's trading. gamestop is down as much as 11% today. amc entertainment, down more than 14% at one point. we are seeing bigger losses for smaller companies that kind of fit into this meme stock category because they been promoted by amateur traders on places like the reddit forums. if you look at the russell 3000 index performance, what is

notable is, there is amc as the best performer of the year. those numbers are like a moving target with today's swings in the shares, but if you move down, gamestop has the third biggest. amc got to stay in the smaller russell 2000 index because the surge came too late for the cutoff for the folks that calculate the index, so it is by far the biggest company in that indicator. gamestop was a part of the larger russell 1000 at that point. there are a whole lot of people trading and it shows up in the numbers. you get a sense of just how much volume has been generated by the smaller traders. i got my haircut last week. the woman who did my hair, i have known her for years. she told me that she bought amc.

this is not someone who is out there day in and day out trading shares. amanda: we will not ask what you said in reply, but the context is important. even with big declines today, these are pretty good performers. are we also seeing any meme stocks in favor? dave: we are, no question. front and center in that category, there is a company called new egg commerce. they went public in may by merging with a chinese company that had a u.s. listing, sold its businesses to focus on new egg. ever since then the stock has taken off, especially in the last six trading days or so. that is the last bump you see on the chart. as much as meme stocks are struggling as a group today, certainly, individual stories

are making investors a whole lot of money. matt: i absolutely love amc as a business, visiting theaters. i know that you do as well. we have more stories about amc but i don't think we have time. dave wilson, our senior stocks editor. coming up, we will discuss the impact of china's big tech crackdown on cryptocurrencies with mike belshe, cofounder and ceo of bitgo. this is bloomberg. ♪

matt: this is bloomberg markets. i'm matt miller. china is targeting cryptocurrencies after the pboc and regulators took action against a company allegedly providing cryptocurrency related services. for more, we welcome mike belshe, cofounder of bitgo. we have seen china kind of stand on both sides of the fence on a lot of issues surrounding crip to as well as market structure. now it seems to be really choosing a side and drawing a line. what do you think of the latest out of china? mike: over the last 10 years, there is no shortage of reasons to think that this is the final death to bitcoin. we have been concerned about china for a long time.

who is mining the bitcoin out of china? no, it is funded with coal power that is harming the environment. the chinese banding bitcoin for the short term is probably long-term good for bitcoin. it addresses those fundamental problems. it demonstrates bitcoin is resistant to any party trying to take it down. the older losers here are probably the chinese citizens. and it will be temporary. we live in a global economy. china will be figure out how to get back into digital assets and bitcoin sooner or later. amanda: you have been around long enough to see many regulatory twists and turns, to your point. lots of times you thought this may do us in. there are some pretty big rig the tory hurdles potentially --

regulatory hurdles potentially. how serious do you treat that kind of -- it is on the horizon -- and whether it comes to pass or not is a big question. mike: there's a lot of education that comes with cryptocurrency. we have never had anything like this before, and it is fair that regulators, investors, everyone has a healthy amount of skepticism as to what is needed to make it flow. at the end of the day, i believe regulators will realize it is actually not any different from other asset classes in terms of how we participate with it. these are things we are familiar with, we know how to regulate these problems. on the security front, we made great strides. from the technology perspective, we have known how to protect data. now the regulatory side is catching up.

the reason it seems so hard, there are 180 federal lawmakers out there that are each having to come over this educational curve. as they do, they start to realize they are better off embracing digital assets. again, it is a global economy, you cannot put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak. the countries that embrace it quickly will see the best for their citizenry. it will be good in the end. in the meantime, you are right, a lot of questions will be asked by a lot of people, but that is fine. matt: talk about the galaxy acquisition. in a sense you are joining forces with michael. what do you hope to achieve together? mike: he has tremendous experience from goldman sachs, financial services sector.

we are very excited to be teaming up with them. i am in this for a long term, so it is not so much a sale but a merger of great companies. the goal is to make digital assets ubiquitous. we have fantastic retail markets, looking to expand institutional markets. in the last nine months, we have seen institutional markets overtake retail markets. most asset classes as they grow start on the into digital side -- on the institutional side and then move over to the retail. now those components are being built. we are excited about the combination of the companies. we have the right financial services strengths. we are the only company focused on building the infrastructure needed so that everyone can participate in digital assets. amanda: galaxy was an early investor in your company, a pretty big vote of confidence.

it has been long enough, so what has changed for you, what will change for your customers as a result of the combination? mike: institutional markets arriving is a big impetus. we will see over the next 12 months the major incumbents all embracing digital assets, bitcoin in serious ways. there has been a lot of talk about it, but incomes are slow-moving, which they should. making sure they have all of their understandings in place. but the time is now. we are making sure we take the great work that bitgo has done, that galaxy has done, combining those, so that institutional investors can invest with confidence. when you look at who is running the company, do you have the technical components in terms of storing and managing the assets? ability to manage new tokens,

assets coming online? we have put all of those together. it is the first time investors have had confidence that you can put all of this in one place and build those services that are needed for the next level of digital assets. amanda: great to have you here, mike. appreciate it. mike belshe, ceo and cofounder of bitgo. we are awaiting the minutes of the fomc. much will be interpreted. we will be speaking with the chief economist from barclays. michael gapen will tell us what he is looking for in the minutes. stay with us. ♪

amanda: this is bloomberg markets. i'm amanda lang alongside matt miller.

we await the fed minutes at 2:00 eastern. for a look at what he is looking for, we welcome michael gapen. we know there will be reading of the tea leaves as to when the taper will happen but what do you think was driving the action in the markets today? michael: several reasons that are continuing to push yields lower in the u.s. certainly started around the time of the last fomc meeting, release of the minutes, concerns about inflation. one of them is the hawkish shift in tone, concern about inflation outcomes further down the road, risk management around that problem. the shift in tone of the fed was one of the factors that lead markets to reduce the likelihood that we will get a significant inflation overshoot in the medium-term. i also think technicals are at play. we think many accounts were positioned short, expecting

treasury yields to rise. as they grind lower, you end up fighting. the last few weeks -- you end up buying. the last few weeks, global numbers have weakened a bit. momentum has slowed in the quarter. finally, the delta variant, its growth trajectory, how transmissible it is, maybe weighing on em growth expectations. a combination of all of those is weighing on longer-term bonds. matt: how much longer do you think we go? every day, over the past couple of weeks, i come in shocked, since the fed meeting, frankly, that we continue to see investors pile into u.s. debt. where is the bottom? michael: if you talk to our rates strategist, many would say

we have a hard time seeing the 10-year pushing below 1.25. in markets you never say never but i think we are reaching the point where it feels like as far as it can go. we are near that point at roughly 1.32 on the 10-year. amanda: there is this growing conversation, peak growth post-pandemic. do you believe that in the developed markets, has the u.s. economy passed its peak point? michael: i do. we all expected the second quarter be the peak in terms of annualized growth rates. you would expect a burst of activity as the economy opened up, as fiscal stimulus that was put into play earlier this year hit balance sheets in march and april. you think growth would peak in

-?bq2 and then slow after that. china probably peaked in q4 of last year, the u.s. is now. we think there will be a handing over of the baton to europe and japan in the second half of the year. there is a bit of a rotation here at play, but i think the data suggests u.s. economy probably peaked around may, has been slowing as the june data comes in. matt: i was going to show you the economic surprise index. it has just come back down to zero, back down to the level before the pandemic kicked off. looks like there are no more surprises in store. michael: i think the potential surprise is more about next year and a year after, do we get an infrastructure spending package or do we not? over the next three quarters, it

is hard to envision anything other than growth slowing in the u.s. it will still be fairly robust and solid, probably coming up between 7% and 8% this year, so nothing to sneeze at, but i think growth will be moderating. the question is do we get a lift over the next three or four years from an infrastructure spending bill that would keep growth in the range of 3% over time. not the 9% to 10% we are experiencing currently but still robust over time. matt: great to get your insight, great to get your insight. michael gapen, chief economist for barclays. for amanda lang, i'm matt miller . this is bloomberg. ♪

mark: i'm mark crumpton with bloomberg first word news. tropical storm nate also came ashore -- elsa came ashore in a

sparsely populated area of florida today. the national hurricane center is protecting elsa will push into georgia and south carolina, weakening into a depression by thursday. elsa became the seasons fifth hurricane as it moved to the caribbean last week. the delta verne of the coronavirus is still posing a threat in the united states. the centers for disease control and prevention said it is set to become the predominant strain in the u.s. tied to more than half of all npuñ cases. in some regions like the midwest, that number is over 80%. that is raising concerns that could lead to a certain cases in under vaccinated hotspots. prime minister boris johnson faced questions about his honesty during a cross examination by a committee of lawmakers today. the labor leader pressed for