mark zandi, welcome to the programme. it's good to be with you, tanya.s it that ageing populations are proving such a challenge for government finances at the moment? well, as the population ages and people need pensions and need health care, that's very costly. and the burden of that cost falls upon governments. and so as the population ages and those costs rise, government finances are under a lot of stress, but these sort of demographic changes don't happen overnight, do they? it's been many years in the making. so how is it that governments are not better prepared? yeah, no, you're right. i mean, this is well known that the population was going to age. there's been some surprises in terms of the sharp decline in replacement rates across across the globe. fertility rates are down. people are just not having children at the same rate as they did just a few years ago, a decade ago. so there's been some surprises. but you're right, we knew this was a long, long coming. i think it's very difficult for governments to address problems until they're directly

. >>> let's bring in mark zandi.mad draw thatma russia. you wrote that # the global economy uld get a big boost if russia's internaconflict forced it to curtail its war more quickly. the war has done serious economic damage and while the western response has cushioned the blow ending the aggressive would lift a dark economic. could this be good for the economy? >> i think that there are a lot of paths that this could go down. most likely is scenario that putin continues to prosecute the war. and that is not good. creates a lot of uncertainty. but the global economy has figured out a way to around it. but there is a scenario where this puts tremendous pressure on putin to wind down and ultimately withdraw from ukraine and i think that that would be a positive obviously for the peek of ukraine and for the global economy because it lists the critical uncertainty, stabilizes global commodity prices and that is a big plus for global growth. obviously there are other darker paths that we could entertain, but i think that t

i hope we see a broadening out >> steve, i wonder if mark zandy is on to something he tweeted this morning odds that a downturn is dead ahead are recedreceding the idea that maybe this time is different. we as market watchers and the fed as policymakers need to look at the fact that maybe this time is different you have a tremendous amount of excess savings you have labor hoarding. you have low leverage. you have all these things in place that made the mattress like five stories tall for the fed to pull this off at the end of the day i'm not saying they're going to, but we're at a much more cushioned place today than many thought we would be. >> reporter: yeah, scott, calling this the gadot recession, the one we wait for but never comes -- as you'll see in our cnbc/fed survey tomorrow respondents have pushed ahead by another two months when they think the recession will begin i want to answer this two ways emotionally i'm afraid to take my eye off the ball and say there won't be a recession i'm afraid it will happen if we do that. intellectually, i see the case the case is we have this hig

mark zandi is with us. >> did i say that? the consumer is hanging tough, but off the table sounds really strong >> you're not feeling that strong >> well, you know, it is all about probabilities. i wouldn't dismiss recession, but i do think they're receding and i think consumers are hanging in there as long as they -- they're not spending with abandon. they're doing their thing. as long as they continue to do that, they have the resources to do that, jobs, unemployment, excess savings, stock portfolios are a little lighter than they were a couple of years ago, but higher than they were before the pandemic if you add it all up, consumers are in the game as long as they stay there we can avoid a recession. >> do you think the fed, this is characterized likely as a pause, do you think that means that the fed is done hiking for this cycle or is this a skip? >> i think it depends on the data, between now and july is the next meeting and we'll get another jobs number, couple more inflation reports. i think it will be a close call,

. >> i just go back to the idea of what mark zandi puts forth as others have as well, this time could be different if you are looking for a historical precedent to make your case you will always build a narrative one way or the other to support your story. i think we learned that. however, maybe this time is different. maybe this time is different the market and the economy is not going to react the relationship as mark dow suggested, the interest rates between the market and the economy is different than what we thought and maybe we walk away from the period saying we were wrong >> yeah, look, every period is different. but every time of analysis is using history as a guide, right, whether it's fundamental or technical. i think there's a lot of things different this time around i will go back to what happened this summer, where the s&p had to retrace it's bear market decline, and it went on and broke new lows in october. if we had gone back further through history we would find out it did happen prior to 1950. i think the timeframe -- excuse me, time looking at a wide range of histor