 Baili from FIG Securities. Mark, good morning to you and thank you very much for joining us. Now we know that the UK may potentially trigger Article 50 as early as this week, but it looks like Prime Minister Theresa May is continuing to get a bit of a bumpy ride on Brexit. Yeah, good morning Leanna. I guess the debate continues both in the press and in the House of Commons and House of Lords. They continued over the weekend with UK Brexit Secretary David Davis talking about the fact that they don't really want to have an alternative plan B that's publicly known because if that is the case and if it does have to come back to the House of Parliament for a vote on the final deal in terms of accepting any final deal in two years time, if the EU does know that that's the case then it's not likely to put forward a good deal because probably like to see the UK remain inside the EU. So there's all kinds of political systems that are in place that kind of limit the government's ability to divulge that. In addition as well the Lords have sent back the bill against the House of Commons as you said in the intro because it wants to secure the rights of the EU nationals within the UK and vice-versa UK nationals living within the EU and that still hasn't been clarified by the government. So as you rightly say the talk is that the Article 50 could be triggered as early as Tuesday this week with maybe Wednesday, Thursday more likely. There are some kind of dates further down March that are also potential but again it does get complicated because you've got some Dutch elections later this week and then you've got a meeting in Rome to actually celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Rome later on in March as well. So there's a lot of other dates in March that could potentially get in the way but you know although the excuse me the UK government is still talking about March it's not committing to this week and it's just saying still by the end of March is our most likely timeline for a triggering Article 50 and as you rightly say it's important to note that the House of Lords can only delay it can't actually prevent the Article 50 and this bill being passed. So I think it's going to happen but it's still a bit of a debate as to when. And Mark the Bank of England is meeting on Thursday I believe it's likely that they will remain on hold with their rates despite sort of rising inflation but a lot of that down to the fall in sterling that we're watching. But do you think this Bank of England meeting could put you know it's going to be sidelined because of all of the talk around the Article 50? Yeah I think you know as you say I think the Bank of England will sit on its hands still until we'd really know that the fallout from triggering Article 50 we had seen some pretty good figures out of the UK in terms of economic data then we had a bit of a I think a soft retail sales print a couple of weeks ago which kind of surprised the market and we are seeing you know that increase in inflation but largely due to the fall in sterling. So you know the Bank of England will probably look through that temporary blip in those costs because once that's worked through the system after a year or so then you know the inflation will fall back down but I think the Bank of England is likely to just still sit on the sidelines just wait and see what happens in terms of the the overall economic performance you know following any trigger triggering of Article 50 because it's still not sure in terms of what's going to happen I mean you still see in the banks debates you know whether they're going to be still headquartered in London or whether they're going to move to Dublin or elsewhere on in continental Europe as well so there's a lot of unknowns that still have to be played played out and you know the Bank of England has to be ready to respond to those. Now still speaking on Europe just keeping our attention over there for now we have the Dutch elections happening there on Wednesday do you think it's likely to be fairly messy process of trying to couple a government together we could see some further political uncertainty? Yeah the political uncertainty in Europe is just unfortunate one that we've had for the last you know two or three centuries and it's not going to change in the next two or three weeks as you rightly point out the Dutch election on Wednesday and it is a proportional representation voting system. At the moment though it does look like the anti-Muslim Freedom Party has fallen away a bit in the polls and it's looking like the Liberal Party the mainstream Liberal Party will actually be the largest party in the parliament there you know as you rightly say you still have to kind of cobble together a coalition and how strong that is you know will depend on the final votes but it's probably the risk in Holland is probably fading a little and you still but bigger issues obviously probably still in Italy and obviously with Greece with a big payout of a principal repayment due in July and there's still negotiations which seem to have kind of fallen off everybody's radar still ongoing as to the release of another installment payment from the bailout package. All right now just a very quick thought from you we've spoken a lot about these non-farm payrolls print that we saw overall you know looked to be pretty positive I suppose they're on Friday but I think there is a growing conversation about whether or not the FOMC may be behind the curve when it comes to tightening rates. Yeah I don't think the FOMC is behind the curve I completely agree with Janet Yellen who said that on several occasions you can put together the argument that it is but I guess if you the key part to determining that is looking at the the wage inflation again that was rather tepid if you look on a month by month basis in February came in at 0.2 consensus is 0.3 yes January was revised up slightly so the year on year was in line with consensus at 2.8% but again it doesn't really indicate that the Fed is behind the curve and in actual fact in terms of the market reaction to those non-farm payrolls you know you actually saw the long dated longer end US Treasury is actually rallying the yields fall you know 10 years for example fell around about three basis points to 258 on Friday after the news so I don't think that they're behind the curve but you know I think the the the hike this week is certainly priced in and everybody will be watching that statement and examining that statement for any clues in terms of future guidance I think it'll they'll hike but they'll probably the outlook statement will be quite dovish still saying look it's very dated dependent in terms of the future hikes but again probably position in the market for for three hikes in total this year so another two hikes this year as the kind of the the blue dot plots that we saw in December have already indicated to the market I think that's the way that the Fed will play that I think it probably be a pretty much unanimous decision you might get one or two descents but given the comments from the various regional Fed presidents that we've seen over the last couple of years it's probably going to be pretty close to being a unanimous decision to hike and you know given the data as they've always said it's going to be dated dependent I think that's probably the the right thing to do in March and but still being a bit cautious about the outlook for for the rest of the year all right fantastic mark is always your analysis very much appreciated thank you so much for joining us thanks leon have a good day mark bailey joining us there from fig securities coming up