Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg p m L Podcast. I'm pim Fox.
Speaker 1: Along with my co host Lisa Bramowitz. Each day we
Speaker 1: bring you the most important, noteworthy, and useful interviews for
Speaker 1: you and your money, whether you're at the grocery store
Speaker 1: or the trading floor. Find the Bloomberg p m L
Speaker 1: Podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Bloomberg dot com. Cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: investors seem to think that the asset class is looking
Speaker 1: bubblicious and bitcoin itself is in a bubble, but they
Speaker 1: don't see it popping anytime soon. Here to talk about
Speaker 1: this with us is a cryptocurrency investor himself, Chris Berniski,
Speaker 1: partner of Placeholder. He also is an advisor to our
Speaker 1: investment management, which does invest in bitcoin, and he joins
Speaker 1: us here in our eleven three oh studios. So, Chris,
Speaker 1: would you agree that bitcoin is in a double and
Speaker 1: yet it won't pop anytime soon so it doesn't matter?
Speaker 1: There are any number of ways we could approach this question.
Speaker 1: On one hand, we could say money is the bubble
Speaker 1: that never pops and uh as a store of value
Speaker 1: or or that being one of its use cases for bitcoin,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of demand within the traditional capital
Speaker 1: markets for a risk off store value, a disaster hedge,
Speaker 1: so to speak, just as people use gold. So that's
Speaker 1: one side of it. Um. Now bitcoin is is off
Speaker 1: over from its all time highs. Now, there are over
Speaker 1: a thousand other crypto assets right and many of those
Speaker 1: um are near all time highs. They're not off um
Speaker 1: although today we've had a correction and many of those,
Speaker 1: I would argue are much more in a bubble um
Speaker 1: in terms of where their prices relative to where their
Speaker 1: actual utility is. Chris, maybe just step back for just
Speaker 1: a second, because I always like to find out, you know,
Speaker 1: the definition of these things, like a definition of bitcoin,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to put it into a context
Speaker 1: that appeals to my analog brain, and I was thinking
Speaker 1: of stamps, actual physical paper stamps is a limited number
Speaker 1: that are issued, and if you go back in time,
Speaker 1: stamps or even revenue script was something that could be
Speaker 1: traded and could be used for multiple transactions, and at
Speaker 1: each point you could even place a little snip or
Speaker 1: you could cut away a little piece of paper that
Speaker 1: would sort of detail who actually used that stamp. Is
Speaker 1: that a good way to look at what a bitcoin
Speaker 1: is or what a cryptocurrency, what role it plays. I
Speaker 1: think that stamps have some properties which relate closely to
Speaker 1: to a cryptocurrency, but um, a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. Bitcoin
Speaker 1: is more broad in its use cases, and so I
Speaker 1: really would think of it um per the economic definition
Speaker 1: of a currency being a means of exchange, a store value,
Speaker 1: and a unit of account. Right now, bitcoin serves as
Speaker 1: a great store of value, a medio to to to
Speaker 1: to low value mean medium of exchange, and not a
Speaker 1: great unit of account outside of the crypto space because
Speaker 1: it's so volatile. One aspect that has definitely been present
Speaker 1: on people's minds is this idea of regulation. And the
Speaker 1: SEC came out last week and said that initial coin
Speaker 1: offerings in particular look a lot like securities. In fact,
Speaker 1: they are securities, but they're not they're not sticking with
Speaker 1: they're not following securities laws. How much does the sec
Speaker 1: is apparent interest in cryptocurrencies, Uh, basically cap the potential
Speaker 1: gains just because this has been a really largely unregulated space,
Speaker 1: and that will change. I think, um, it doesn't. It
Speaker 1: doesn't cap the opportunity to actually expands the opportunity in
Speaker 1: that we need this space to be better regulated. We
Speaker 1: need more clarity. The entrepreneurs, the investors, all of the
Speaker 1: all of us are craving more more clarity, and so
Speaker 1: regulation is just part of the maturation of this asset class.
Speaker 1: And and for me, there may be uh temporary jitters
Speaker 1: um around the sec coming in and enforcement action, but
Speaker 1: longer term, I think this is a healthy development. What's
Speaker 1: the ultimate goal? Is it for a bitcoin to act
Speaker 1: as basically a gold substitute, a store of value, especially
Speaker 1: for people in countries where the currency is incredibly volatile?
Speaker 1: Is it to replace paper currencies and replace national currencies?
Speaker 1: Where are we heading with this? Well, I'm going to
Speaker 1: pull it back to the idea of crypto assets, which
Speaker 1: is what I wrote the book on UM. I think
Speaker 1: of crypto assets as a new asset class that organizes
Speaker 1: human activity. And so the goal, I would argue, more
Speaker 1: than replacing fiat currencies is replacing equities um as again
Speaker 1: as a means to to organize and incentivize human activity.
Speaker 1: UM around information networks. Bitcoin is an information network that
Speaker 1: transmits currency ETHEREUM is an information network that coordinates compute
Speaker 1: logic and developers file coins and formation network that stores files.
Speaker 1: So we go far beyond the idea of cryptocurrencies, which
Speaker 1: is why I call them crypto assets into cryptocurrencies, crypto commodities,
Speaker 1: crypto tokens, and the information networks that they support. Chris,
Speaker 1: Cryptocurrencies and financial technology fintech seemed to come together, at
Speaker 1: least in various news reports, particularly when it comes to
Speaker 1: markets in Asia. And I'm wondering if you could just
Speaker 1: give us a little insight into what you believe the
Speaker 1: future will look like in a place that is readily
Speaker 1: accepting of cryptocurrencies. I mean, could we have a cryptocurrency,
Speaker 1: let's say that's even back partly by gold, for example.
Speaker 1: I think the possibilities are unless I think, um, you
Speaker 1: brought up Asia. Asia has certainly been um, one of
Speaker 1: the hard hottest areas for this space. UM. Something that
Speaker 1: I've been trying to get to the bottom of is
Speaker 1: how much of this is entrepreneurs and people building real
Speaker 1: utility versus how much of this is speculators Because we know,
Speaker 1: um that some of the Asian nations have a tendency
Speaker 1: UM or an appetite for speculation. UM. But certainly in
Speaker 1: countries like Korea or China where digital payments mobile payments
Speaker 1: are prolific. I think that there's a high likelihood that
Speaker 1: they adopt cryptocurrencies on a on a mass scale earlier
Speaker 1: than we do in the US. Just going back to
Speaker 1: what you were saying about crypto assets, I'm trying to
Speaker 1: envision what this means. Does it mean that there could
Speaker 1: be some kind of crypto tender that could be used
Speaker 1: within an industry, like a retail cryptocurrency specific or you know,
Speaker 1: specific to automobiles or something like that, and then you
Speaker 1: could invest in a sector based uh type of tender?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that what you'r is that where you're
Speaker 1: going with this? I think that's one way to look
Speaker 1: at it. That that would be say sector specific currencies UM,
Speaker 1: and you could design properties of that currency UM to
Speaker 1: fit that sector. And there could even be loyalty points
Speaker 1: baked into it. There's all kinds of things right These
Speaker 1: UM these protocols are really just software that replaced middlemen,
Speaker 1: that commoditized middlemen and the functions of middlemen in different areas.
Speaker 1: But I just wonder how much a barrier is of
Speaker 1: having regular consumers wrap their heads around a different form
Speaker 1: of tender for different types. It's a complicated issue. How
Speaker 1: do you get enough people on board. Well, that's the
Speaker 1: currency aspect, right, and I don't necessarily know that we
Speaker 1: end up having sector specific currencies or more these universal currencies,
Speaker 1: some like Bitcoin that are really good at storing value,
Speaker 1: others like z cash which are anonymous, others like light
Speaker 1: coin which are a little faster or whatever it may be. UM.
Speaker 1: But again, to pull us back with this opportunity, it's
Speaker 1: not only currencies, right, Many of these are commodities UM,
Speaker 1: creating markets for digital commodities, just as we have markets
Speaker 1: for physical commodities. So why can't I trade cloud storage
Speaker 1: futures or bandwidth future um or GPU flop futures, and
Speaker 1: really what crypto commodities things like file coin or gollum
Speaker 1: or these things. A lot of those are creating digital
Speaker 1: markets for these digital commodities. And in terms of getting
Speaker 1: the retail or that the average investor, average user on board, UM,
Speaker 1: I think we're very similar to you know, late eighties,
Speaker 1: early nineties trying to get people on board with the Internet.
Speaker 1: Most people had no clue what it was going to
Speaker 1: be used for, how to be relevant to their lives,
Speaker 1: And it is built to be relevant into their lives
Speaker 1: by entrepreneurs and Investors. Thanks very much for being with us.
Speaker 1: Chris Berniski is a partner for a Placeholder and advisor
Speaker 1: to our investment management and he is the author of
Speaker 1: the book Crypto Assets, The Innovative Investors Guide to Bitcoin
Speaker 1: and Beyond. We turned our attention now to Joshua Green,
Speaker 1: our national correspondent for Bloomberg Business. We can be followed
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Joshua Green. He is also the author
Speaker 1: of Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and the Storming
Speaker 1: of the Presidency. Josh Green, maybe you want to give
Speaker 1: us an update, is if there anything that we need
Speaker 1: to know about the ongoing feud between the Trump White House,
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon, the Republican Party, all because of this book
Speaker 1: Fire and Fury by Michael Wolfe. Well, it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like it's going to be resold anytime soon. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: Bannon put out a statement apologizing to Donald Trump Jr.
Speaker 1: Who we described as treason as for holding a meeting
Speaker 1: with Russian officials in um. Doesn't seem to be much
Speaker 1: indications in the White House that's doing anything to smooth
Speaker 1: the waters. But I've been talking to people in Bannon
Speaker 1: orbits who say you know, he is determined to get
Speaker 1: himself back into Trump's good graces, and you know the
Speaker 1: only way to do that is to keep on a pole,
Speaker 1: lologizing and trying to ingratiate yourself to Trump, who actually
Speaker 1: does have a long history of continuing to talk to
Speaker 1: people he's fired and eventually bringing them back into the fall.
Speaker 1: So it's unlikely, but not impossible to think that Bannon
Speaker 1: could somehow worm his way back into the president's good graces. Josh.
Speaker 1: One thing that I have struggled to understand is this
Speaker 1: all unfolds, is what Bannon's political clout really is. Because
Speaker 1: a lot of people associated him with President Trump's base
Speaker 1: of supporters. Bright Bart certainly was under his thumb. Bright
Speaker 1: Bart seems to be distancing themselves from Bannon. So does
Speaker 1: Bannon really represent at this point the base as so
Speaker 1: many people initially believed. Well, that's unclear. But it's also
Speaker 1: what I think drove the split between Trump and Bannon.
Speaker 1: You know, Trump obviously thinks that nobody but Trump himself
Speaker 1: deserves credit for his presidential victory um and Bannon, on
Speaker 1: the other hand, thought that Trump was a bit on
Speaker 1: a set of ideas that Trump turned out not really
Speaker 1: to believe in that much this idea of a kind
Speaker 1: of a right wing populist nationalism. So Bennon's project, ever
Speaker 1: since he left the White House last August, was trying
Speaker 1: to advance this national movement beyond Trump and he had
Speaker 1: he had uh spent a lot of time recruiting candidates
Speaker 1: to run against Republican incumbents Canadas who would work to
Speaker 1: out sent a majority leader Mitch McConnell, who Bannon's thought
Speaker 1: was impeding his nationalist project. Um. I think the problem
Speaker 1: is that that Bannon, Bannon's ego kind of got out
Speaker 1: ahead of where maybe it belonged. And what we what
Speaker 1: we're gonna find out from this latest episode is now
Speaker 1: that Trump has split with him so publicly and so decisively,
Speaker 1: is there really a populist movement that's loyal to these
Speaker 1: ideas that will split off and go with Bennon or
Speaker 1: is it really more a cult of personality that's likely
Speaker 1: to stay loyal to the president. Josh Green, what does
Speaker 1: this do for a potential legislation regarding infrastructure, welfare reform,
Speaker 1: more men, even funding for the US Mexico border wall.
Speaker 1: I don't think it does a whole lot I mean,
Speaker 1: on the margins, it might make that a little bit
Speaker 1: easier to pass. Um. It's going to be necessary to
Speaker 1: do that in a bipartisan manner. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that Bannon did it Bryite Barton News, was put
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure on the right wing of the
Speaker 1: Republican Party not to come together, not to make deals
Speaker 1: with Democrats. With that voice silenced or diminished, it ought,
Speaker 1: in theory be easier for for the President and Republicans
Speaker 1: and Democrats in Congress to agree on something and move
Speaker 1: it forward. Josh, what about Bannon's allies in the White
Speaker 1: House or former allies. I'm thinking in particular of Steve Miller,
Speaker 1: does this potentially threaten their fate in the White House?
Speaker 1: Or as Steve Miller effectively got against Bannon and edified
Speaker 1: his standing with President Trump. No, Trump made clear you're
Speaker 1: either with Bannon or you're with me, and Miller is
Speaker 1: very much with Trump. You know, went on CNN interview
Speaker 1: Jake Tapper yesterday, Uh basically was abasing himself to Trump, um,
Speaker 1: you know, behaving like a factotum. In fact, the interview
Speaker 1: was cut short in Miller. Miller was apparently marched out
Speaker 1: of CNN by security, so he's left absolutely no doubt
Speaker 1: as to where his loyalties lie. They lie with Trump,
Speaker 1: not Bannon. I think that Jack Tapper at the end
Speaker 1: of the interview said there's one viewer you're catering to
Speaker 1: right now, and he was talking, of course, to regarding
Speaker 1: a president of Trump. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: It's wonderful to hear your perspective as the expert frankly
Speaker 1: on Ban and Steve Bannon and giving some color of
Speaker 1: what we can expect going forward and why this is significant.
Speaker 1: Josh Green, national correspondent for Bloomberg Business Week. Press one
Speaker 1: for information about your account, press to to make a payment.
Speaker 1: Robert Locacio he joins US now. He is founder and
Speaker 1: chief executive officer of Live person, which is based in
Speaker 1: New York and seeks to make that your experience when
Speaker 1: you call companies, that customer service should be automated with
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence rather than have a real person on the
Speaker 1: other line. Robert, your business has sound tremendously well in
Speaker 1: the past year. Your share prices have surged. Is that
Speaker 1: the future? Yeah, you know, I mean, I've been in
Speaker 1: the business for twenty years and working contact centers and
Speaker 1: I invented chat and and seeing the change in consumers.
Speaker 1: But um, the future is really about consumers be able
Speaker 1: to have a conversation with a human or or a
Speaker 1: bot or something that's automated. And I think ultimately about
Speaker 1: conversations will become automated because we want it. We don't
Speaker 1: want to be on hold, we don't want to make
Speaker 1: phone calls and these and so our behavior is driving
Speaker 1: us to do things differently. What's the price point comparison
Speaker 1: between having a human being answer the phone call and
Speaker 1: read off of a computer screen as opposed to having
Speaker 1: a machine listened to your voice and follow various prompts.
Speaker 1: So it's six dollars is the average UH cost of
Speaker 1: a phone call? UM There are about two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty billion phone calls that take place every year to
Speaker 1: contact center, so about one point two trillion dollars is
Speaker 1: spent on phone calls. An automated message or or bought
Speaker 1: UM or even an agent answering through messaging or something
Speaker 1: like chat is about a dollar fifty, So a dollar
Speaker 1: fifty versus six dollars, dollar fifty versus six dollars and
Speaker 1: this and when I go back to this number, It's
Speaker 1: one point two trillion dollars is spent on phone calls
Speaker 1: that we as consumers have to make that we don't like,
Speaker 1: and the agents who answer those calls don't like it,
Speaker 1: and the company's imagined nobody likes it. It's just hold
Speaker 1: on a second. But I think the part of the
Speaker 1: criticism of automated responders to these phone calls is their efficacy.
Speaker 1: And you know, is this is this a problem? You know,
Speaker 1: at what point do you end up on hold at
Speaker 1: the end of a long automated intro anyway, because your
Speaker 1: request is so nuanced that you do require a live
Speaker 1: human being. So in the analog world of voice, when
Speaker 1: you try those automated systems, they're horrible. I mean you
Speaker 1: think about people screaming into the phone no, yeah, and
Speaker 1: then it's noisy, right, So this was just another bad
Speaker 1: This is like bad analog with bad analog, like an
Speaker 1: automated analog system like voice. But when you go to
Speaker 1: something like we do messaging, where let's say with T Mobile,
Speaker 1: you can message to a T Mobile rep. We can
Speaker 1: see the text, so we we can automate a response back.
Speaker 1: We can bring a human in when it's appropriate. But
Speaker 1: when you have text, and you have that over a
Speaker 1: digital framework like like messaging. Um, you can you can
Speaker 1: do AI, but you're right, voice analog voice. This just
Speaker 1: needs to go away. I think it's evil. You know,
Speaker 1: I've said it for me. Voice calls are evil? Wow? Okay,
Speaker 1: are are evil? Can can we just I'm totally is
Speaker 1: it's it's the greatest waste of our time is being
Speaker 1: on hold. We lose years of our life sitting on hold.
Speaker 1: We all know it. It's horrible. Okay, it's horrible. Having
Speaker 1: said that, I want to go back to sitting on
Speaker 1: a couch and I key a couch specifically. And I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you could tell a story about how you
Speaker 1: launched your first business and what failure has taught you. Yes,
Speaker 1: So I started a company out of college in and
Speaker 1: it was interactive kiosks like touch screens for college campuses
Speaker 1: and funded on credit cards. But it went under and
Speaker 1: in I sort of picked myself up, and uh, I
Speaker 1: was in Baltimore at the time, moved to New York
Speaker 1: City and I sub let a loft from a guy
Speaker 1: who made t shirts. A little space and a loft,
Speaker 1: and I had only a couch and a computer and
Speaker 1: I ended up sleeping on that couch for two years
Speaker 1: and showering at a health club, uh, down the block,
Speaker 1: down in Tribeca. And that's how I got started with
Speaker 1: with Live Person. So I mean, what was the lightbulb
Speaker 1: moment for you for Live Person? The light bulb moment
Speaker 1: for me was I remember going onto the internet. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is and uh And I remember obviously there was
Speaker 1: stuff being said about at that time although it was
Speaker 1: just coming especially commerce was just starting. But I didn't
Speaker 1: see anybody on. There was nobody there. It felt like
Speaker 1: a very lonely experience to me, and that when I
Speaker 1: showed up, but like Dell's website at the time, like
Speaker 1: there's nobody here. And that drove me to think about
Speaker 1: how do you bring the human element two the digital element,
Speaker 1: which was which was the web. But on the failure side, UM,
Speaker 1: failure for me has always been I've been twenty years,
Speaker 1: sixteen years of public company CEO. UM. You know you
Speaker 1: only learned through your failures. So it's it's for me
Speaker 1: and you just can't quit. I always tell other CEOs
Speaker 1: or entrepreneurs when you hit the bottom, you just gotta
Speaker 1: work through it and there's another day. But you can't
Speaker 1: quit at the bottom. You've gotta keep going. What's the
Speaker 1: next iteration of automated response. The first thing we have
Speaker 1: to do is we are working on right now on
Speaker 1: what we're creating conversational design that feels very um natural.
Speaker 1: So we as humans need conversations. We know this now.
Speaker 1: We need conversations to transact, We need to ask questions
Speaker 1: and on the other side, to automate them. We need
Speaker 1: a way to too create. I call it like a
Speaker 1: poetic experience that a consumer can ask questioning and something
Speaker 1: comes back that's empathetic, that seems human um, that doesn't
Speaker 1: try to fake them out because it isn't human. And
Speaker 1: so the way we design those conversations are very much
Speaker 1: I say, it's like because I was English literature major, Like,
Speaker 1: it's like designing poetry. You know, you want to look
Speaker 1: at the best conversations from the live agents who had conversations.
Speaker 1: You want to look at the brand, the brand expression
Speaker 1: in the market and bring that into our conversation. But
Speaker 1: I I can. I I'm gonna make a prediction which
Speaker 1: people are gonna think I'm a little a little crazy,
Speaker 1: but I I actually think conversational commerce and messaging and
Speaker 1: having conversations will replace great parts of the Internet will
Speaker 1: replace the web. Websites have failed um Outside of Amazon,
Speaker 1: most businesses don't transact through their websites. Thanks not, there's
Speaker 1: an opportunity here. We've got to leave it there, but
Speaker 1: look forward to having you in the future. Robert low Castio.
Speaker 1: He is the founder and the chief executive of Live
Speaker 1: Person and he is indeed live not a robot. Well,
Speaker 1: there was a rousing speech from oprah Winfree at the
Speaker 1: Golden Globes, this having to do with the really first
Speaker 1: major awards ceremony and bringing to the four the me
Speaker 1: to moment. And here to help us understand the financial
Speaker 1: implications is Deborah Cat's founding partner employee rights attorney for Cats,
Speaker 1: Marshall and Banks, joining us from Washington, d C. Home
Speaker 1: to Bloomberg ninety nine one and one oh five point
Speaker 1: seven fm h D two. Debra, thank you very much
Speaker 1: for being with us. Can you connect the topic of
Speaker 1: sexual harassment in the workplace with discrimination when it comes
Speaker 1: to equal pay for equal work? Sure? First of all,
Speaker 1: thank you for having me. And this is a topic
Speaker 1: that is very important and it all too often we
Speaker 1: siloed the topics of sexual harassment and sex based wage inequities,
Speaker 1: and yet they're very connected. Sexual harassment is about abuse
Speaker 1: of power, and often power is abused because you do
Speaker 1: not have women in the c suite. Only five percent
Speaker 1: of fortune companies have CEOs in those positions, and because
Speaker 1: of the great power disparity, you have an environment that's
Speaker 1: more likely to allow sexual harassment to continue. Women who
Speaker 1: face sexual harassment are six and a half times more
Speaker 1: likely to leave their jobs. And when they leave their jobs,
Speaker 1: they're not typically trading up. They're usually trying to get
Speaker 1: out of a very bad situation, and they often have
Speaker 1: to go to lesser paying jobs and start all over again.
Speaker 1: They lose equity, they lose title, and ultimately they have
Speaker 1: a much bigger loss in economics over their entire career
Speaker 1: as a result of the sexual harassment experience. So they're
Speaker 1: very much tied together, Debrah. Can you give us a
Speaker 1: sense of how prevalent the trend that you're describing really
Speaker 1: is with people with women leaving their jobs as a
Speaker 1: result of sexual harassment and thus not able to sort
Speaker 1: of fulfill their uh their potential in their careers. Sure well,
Speaker 1: low income workers to be stuck staying in their jobs
Speaker 1: UM and do not have the luxury and to get
Speaker 1: out of some very egregiously harassing situations. But I represent
Speaker 1: women UH in financial services, doctors, lawyers, who are highly educated,
Speaker 1: who are being subjected to sexual harassment, who try to
Speaker 1: navigate the situation, who try to avoid the harass er
Speaker 1: and maintain and at a certain point they may just
Speaker 1: decide that they cannot live with that situation. And sexual
Speaker 1: harassment UH effects women in law firms, medical practices, financial services,
Speaker 1: and it's extremely prevalent, and it's underreported, and many women
Speaker 1: reasonably feel that if they come forward and report their concerns,
Speaker 1: they're going to be persona non grata, not only at
Speaker 1: their particular company, but within an industry. So many women
Speaker 1: choose to just vote with their feet and they leave,
Speaker 1: and they try to get out of a bad situation
Speaker 1: and get somewhere else. And I can't give you a
Speaker 1: percentage of of women who actually UH go to lesser jobs,
Speaker 1: but in my experience that's that's not uncommon, and that
Speaker 1: they wind up landing in less lucrative fields or positions,
Speaker 1: or they exit their chosen careers altogether. And we're losing
Speaker 1: tremendous talent as a result of it. How much of
Speaker 1: the blame lies with HR departments that could potentially respond
Speaker 1: to this in a way that would keep them, keep
Speaker 1: people there, keep women there. The spotlight is clearly on
Speaker 1: HR departments now, But for I've done this work for
Speaker 1: over thirty years, and typically HR partner departments carry out
Speaker 1: the will of management. They're very complicit, and historically we
Speaker 1: have seen people who harass get away with it because
Speaker 1: they're perceived as star performers, are the big revenue generators,
Speaker 1: and HR is there to help them remain in place
Speaker 1: and manage the people out, manage the women at who
Speaker 1: have asserted claims. Now we're in a moment where that
Speaker 1: type of behavior is less is less tolerable, and we're
Speaker 1: seeing some very famous and high profile people UH being
Speaker 1: terminated in very public ways. But HR departments have been
Speaker 1: complicit in allowing this kind of behavior to go forward
Speaker 1: for decades and decades, and HRR officials often do not
Speaker 1: have reporting relationships that allow them to elevate the issues
Speaker 1: without themselves having a target on their backs. So we
Speaker 1: often represent HR people who have tried to do the
Speaker 1: right thing but have not been given to power, or
Speaker 1: when they made recommendations to exit real star harassers. Uh
Speaker 1: they themselves found their careers in jeopardy. So it's a
Speaker 1: complicated issue. But um, I think we know that without
Speaker 1: really a tone, it's top It says sexual harassment is
Speaker 1: not acceptable and will not be tolerated in this company.
Speaker 1: Uh h R officials are really not given the power
Speaker 1: that they need to do what they need to eradicate
Speaker 1: sexual brassment within their companies. Debor Cats, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us. We'll have to have you back.
Speaker 1: Debor Cats founding partner and employee rights attorney with Cats,
Speaker 1: Marshall and Banks, which is based in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg P and L podcast.
Speaker 1: You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Pim Fox. I'm
Speaker 1: on Twitter at pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at Lisa
Speaker 1: abramowits one before the podcast. You can always catch us
Speaker 1: worldwide on Bloomberg Radio.