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Speaker 2: Bitcoin rallying past eighty six thousand dollars for the first
Speaker 2: time ever, boosted by President elect Donald Trump's embrace of
Speaker 2: digital assets and the prospect of a Congress featuring a
Speaker 2: pro crypto lawmakers. For more on the trade, we're joined
Speaker 2: by Mike Reagan. He's a senior editor for Bloomberg News.
Speaker 2: He joins us here in the Bloomberg BusinessWeek Studio. Help
Speaker 2: us make sense of the optimism here. Why exactly are
Speaker 2: bowls so excited? Well, I think you started out it
Speaker 2: with the Trump victory. If you go back to July,
Speaker 2: when Trump really was front and center in the crypto world.
Speaker 3: He spoke at the Bitcoin twenty four conference, and he
Speaker 3: made a lot of promises to the crypto community. But
Speaker 3: to me, the most important one is he has plans
Speaker 3: for what he calls a strategic stockpile of.
Speaker 2: Bitcoin, like a strategic oil reserve.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and you know, and the US does have
Speaker 3: other sort of strategic reserves, you know, they for different commodities.
Speaker 3: Over the year, I think, you know, no one expected
Speaker 3: we'd ever be talking about a strategic reserve of bitcoin.
Speaker 4: But in this political environment, I mean, you look.
Speaker 3: At the money that was spent by the crypto lobby.
Speaker 3: They're super pac called fair Shake, you know, something like
Speaker 3: a one hundred and thirty million on congressional races, and
Speaker 3: they managed to elect pretty much most off not all,
Speaker 3: the candidates they wanted by.
Speaker 2: Using messaging that was not at all related to crypto.
Speaker 4: We should not, right, right, But it's that money.
Speaker 3: You know, if you put that target money into certain
Speaker 3: congressional senate elections.
Speaker 4: It can have a big effect.
Speaker 3: So the political mood for being sort of tai crypto
Speaker 3: at all right now is not very high after that election.
Speaker 3: Now that you know, the question is what does he
Speaker 3: mean by this bitcoin reserve. He the day before Trump spoke,
Speaker 3: RFK Junior spoke and said, oh, I heard Trump's going
Speaker 3: to announce a plan to buy a million bitcoin for
Speaker 3: this reserve. Now put that into perspective, that's eighty five
Speaker 3: billion dollars.
Speaker 4: Worth of bitcoin at this at this price point.
Speaker 3: And Cynthia Loomis, the Senator from Wyoming, actually spoke after Trump.
Speaker 4: Now Trump fell short of that promise at.
Speaker 3: His speech to the Bitcoin Convention, but Sithony Loomis, the
Speaker 3: Senator from Wyoming, came after him and was basically presenting
Speaker 3: a draft of a bill that she had to do
Speaker 3: exactly that by one million bitcoins. So you know, the
Speaker 3: question I think that's lingering over this market right now
Speaker 3: is will that really happen?
Speaker 4: Is there really enough.
Speaker 3: Support in Congress for spending eighty five billion at these
Speaker 3: prices tomorrow could be ninety billion, one hundred billion depending
Speaker 3: on where these prices go over the next few years
Speaker 3: to buy crypto because if you know, if the market
Speaker 3: knows that the government's coming to buy, well, you know,
Speaker 3: the sky's the limit for the price. So, you know,
Speaker 3: will Congress really, you know, are they influenced enough by
Speaker 3: this crypto lobby to actually go for that? I think
Speaker 3: is the big question hanging over this rally. But you know,
Speaker 3: clearly there's a runway of time before Trump comes in
Speaker 3: and before we really get a sense of his priorities
Speaker 3: where this is sort of the driving theme and it's
Speaker 3: almost impossible to find someone who's bearish on bitcoin and
Speaker 3: crypto in general because of this sort of enthusiasm from
Speaker 3: the next administration towards crypto.
Speaker 5: What about not just enthusiasm, but how much do we
Speaker 5: know about whether the new administration is actually going to
Speaker 5: provide a regulatory framework more than what we already have
Speaker 5: in the crypto industry and kind of promote bringing the
Speaker 5: crypto industry into the US. How much of the optimism
Speaker 5: and Bigot's price is kind of reflect.
Speaker 4: Now there's certainly some of that too, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, Trump has promised to fire Gary Gensler and
Speaker 3: appoint crypto friendly regulators.
Speaker 4: Now it's an open question.
Speaker 3: A lot of legal experts think he doesn't have the
Speaker 3: power to actually just fired Againstler, but he certainly, you know,
Speaker 3: can exert his as much influence as he can to
Speaker 3: try to get him to quit or whatever.
Speaker 4: You know. You know, Trump often deals in sort of.
Speaker 3: Actions and activities that don't have a precedent, so it's
Speaker 3: hard to hard to say exactly how far he will
Speaker 3: push the envelope on that as far as just appointing
Speaker 3: new regulators. Now, there's any number of crypto bills floating
Speaker 3: around Congress.
Speaker 4: That have just kind of stalled out in the process.
Speaker 3: So I think there is a chance that we could
Speaker 3: see sort of that logjam clear.
Speaker 4: Even before the end of the year, there were you know,
Speaker 4: there was some hope that the stable coin bill is
Speaker 4: the big one.
Speaker 3: You know, the cryptotokens that are worth exactly a dollar.
Speaker 3: They're very, very important to the market, and you know,
Speaker 3: there's a bill floating around to sort of set the
Speaker 3: regulatory guidelines for them. That would kind of be the
Speaker 3: first one that we would look to happen. But you know,
Speaker 3: it's kind of a blank slate now as far as
Speaker 3: what the regulatory environment will look like in the next administration.
Speaker 3: So it's a great question, and we're just gonna have
Speaker 3: to stay tuned and see how it all progresses.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering what would change the mind in your view
Speaker 2: of the folks who are so bullish right now. You say,
Speaker 2: it's difficult to find a bear out there given the
Speaker 2: way that the scenario has changed just in the last
Speaker 2: few days.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, to me, that question of the bitcoin reserve is
Speaker 3: really the one that's lingering over the market. You know,
Speaker 3: Trump has a very long agenda of things he wants
Speaker 3: to accomplish.
Speaker 4: Where that sort of.
Speaker 3: Making good on the promises to the crypto community, Where
Speaker 3: that lands on that list of priorities, I think is
Speaker 3: the most important thing. If you get into the new
Speaker 3: year and there's a few weeks months and you don't
Speaker 3: hear him talking about it, or you know, there's not
Speaker 3: really much action going on in DC to create this
Speaker 3: bitcoin reserve, then I think people are going to start questioning,
Speaker 3: you know that that's a big deliverable to the crypto
Speaker 3: community from Trump, And I think, you know, he's got
Speaker 3: some time obviously, you know, he can't do anything until
Speaker 3: he he's in office and the new Congress is seated.
Speaker 3: But where that item lands on the priority list for Trump,
Speaker 3: I think we'll really determine when and if this market
Speaker 3: cracks starts to crack.
Speaker 2: One thing that's pretty remarkable to me about the election
Speaker 2: is just how powerful the crypto lobby was. Yeah, in
Speaker 2: this case, especially in the sense of running programming, running
Speaker 2: ads that were not at all tied to crypto in
Speaker 2: order to elect candidates who were pro crypto. Their record
Speaker 2: is incredible for this past election.
Speaker 3: Right right, And they've already started to fund the pack
Speaker 3: for the mid terms. You know, this lobby, this super
Speaker 3: Pac fair Shake, It's not going anywhere.
Speaker 4: It's incredibly powerful.
Speaker 3: I believe I was the biggest source of corporate funding
Speaker 3: to congressional campaigns in this last election. So, you know,
Speaker 3: memories are short not everyone you know is really focused
Speaker 3: on the FTX days and all the blow ups.
Speaker 4: That we saw a few years ago.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's what I like.
Speaker 2: If something like that happens again, or if consumers are
Speaker 2: indeed harmed by certain projects that are out there, by
Speaker 2: certain products that are out there, then does that shift
Speaker 2: sentiment at all?
Speaker 6: I think it could.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it certainly could. You know, knock on wood.
Speaker 3: The last trailing year or so has been as far
Speaker 3: as crypto projects and exchanges and companies blowing up, it's
Speaker 3: been pretty smooth sailing. So I think that helps to
Speaker 3: sort of, you know, create this atmosphere of complacency towards
Speaker 3: this market that you know has a pretty volatile history,
Speaker 3: and you know, yes, what could change the price action,
Speaker 3: that's the thing, you know, it's a it's a very
Speaker 3: unpredictable market.
Speaker 4: I mean, over time it's.
Speaker 3: Obviously expanded exponentially, but the price of bitcoin has just
Speaker 3: been astounding over its history, but not without majors and
Speaker 3: bear markets in between. So I do think a dip
Speaker 3: and price could sort of change the sentiment about how
Speaker 3: laissez faire the government wants to be towards this solassa
Speaker 3: class for sure.
Speaker 2: Mike Reagan, Bloomberg News Senior editor, over on the Crypto Desk.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining us on Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
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Speaker 2: We've been looking forward to our next guest for quite
Speaker 2: a bit of time. It's because Peter Atwater is a
Speaker 2: go to for us. He helps us understand how we
Speaker 2: got to a certain place and also where we're going.
Speaker 2: He's Adjuncate Professor of Economics at William and Mary. He's
Speaker 2: also the author of The Confidence Map, Charting a Path
Speaker 2: from Chaos to Clarity. That book came out last year.
Speaker 2: He's also President of Financial Insights. It says it uses
Speaker 2: a confidence driven framework to get perspective on the financial
Speaker 2: markets and the economy. Peter, always good to have you
Speaker 2: join us. I want to use that framework on about
Speaker 2: confidence to understand what happened in the US last week
Speaker 2: with the resounding election of Donald Trump. How should we
Speaker 2: look at confidence as a factor there?
Speaker 7: Sure, so, going into the election, I felt that voters
Speaker 7: were going to select the candidate that addressed the vulnerability
Speaker 7: that mattered most to them. And that's a very individualized thing.
Speaker 7: When confidence is low, moreover, it favors the candidate who's
Speaker 7: not the incumbent. And so I think as a backdrop
Speaker 7: to what we've seen is this was as much a
Speaker 7: rejection of the incumbency as it was a mandate for
Speaker 7: Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: But you also write that I mean, typically we usually
Speaker 5: see I guess that pattern that the incumbent, If people
Speaker 5: are feeling confident in what the incombinent has done, they
Speaker 5: vote for the incumbent, and if they don't, they vote
Speaker 5: in another way. But just looking at your note that
Speaker 5: you sent over, it does seem like there were some
Speaker 5: specific voters, specific types of people who were voting for
Speaker 5: Trump that had some very I guess particular issues in
Speaker 5: mind that they brought to the polls that maybe other
Speaker 5: people were maybe blind to.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, you have issues of immigration, you have
Speaker 7: issues of inflation. On the other hand, you have folks
Speaker 7: who feel threatened by a lot of the liberal agenda.
Speaker 7: And so what we have behind this election is an
Speaker 7: interesting composite whose interests are aligned in getting the incumbent out.
Speaker 7: And it remains to be seen, in my opinion, whether
Speaker 7: the cohesion that exists in opposing a single candidate will
Speaker 7: be able to be sustained. It feels more like a
Speaker 7: loose cooperative than it does necessarily a unified body.
Speaker 2: Well, we do see some unification within the Republican Party
Speaker 2: right now, at least when it comes to composition in Congress.
Speaker 2: We spoke to Billy House and Stephen Dennis earlier and
Speaker 2: they talked about, yes, there is some resistance to Trump
Speaker 2: within the Republican Party, but few and far between, at
Speaker 2: least in the House of Representatives, a little bit in
Speaker 2: the Senate, where you have some senators who actually did
Speaker 2: vote to impeach the president elect back when he was president.
Speaker 2: That said, it does look like Republicans will maintain control
Speaker 2: of the House of Representatives. How would you advise them
Speaker 2: over the next two years to latch on to the
Speaker 2: lack of confidence that Americans expressed at the polls in
Speaker 2: Democrats to use that to their advantage to actually go
Speaker 2: through with our policies.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think that we spend a lot of time
Speaker 7: focused on the left right divide. To me, the greatest
Speaker 7: issue in the United States to day is the wealth
Speaker 7: gap between those at the bottom and those at the top.
Speaker 8: And so whether I.
Speaker 7: Was advising, you know, a second Biden administration or the
Speaker 7: new Trump administration, this is really a time where attention
Speaker 7: needs to be paid to those at the bottom in
Speaker 7: creating a means by which moving up the capital ladder
Speaker 7: is possible. No.
Speaker 5: Sorry, So when you think about who could be the
Speaker 5: biggest then beneficiaries of a President Trump, who comes to mind, Well.
Speaker 7: It depends on your time perspective. I mean, today, what
Speaker 7: we're seeing is that the market concluding that the biggest
Speaker 7: beneficiaries will be really part of this broad elon musk
Speaker 7: pro trate as I call it, where it picks up
Speaker 7: you know, crypto, it picks up space, tesla, you know,
Speaker 7: there's a lot that is involved in this broad entourage trade.
Speaker 7: What concerns me is that between now an inauguration date,
Speaker 7: everybody can fantasize about what is likely ahead. The rubber
Speaker 7: doesn't meet the road until after inauguration date, and so
Speaker 7: investors need to be careful not to front run to
Speaker 7: an enormous extreme what they foresee ahead. And from my perspective,
Speaker 7: that's exactly what's happening right now. Between regulation, taxation, the
Speaker 7: endorsement of this Elon Musk Trump partnership, their investors are
Speaker 7: counting on a very clear, unencumbered future ahead.
Speaker 5: How much did you see that in play when it
Speaker 5: comes to prediction markets, because it was astounding seeing how
Speaker 5: the night of the election, the prediction markets I'm thinking
Speaker 5: of polymarket had was basically pricing for for Trump to
Speaker 5: win hours before we saw you know, even I mean.
Speaker 6: There were weeks before.
Speaker 5: Weeks before, yes, but but but especially on election I too,
Speaker 5: there was a really big gap between the broader consensus
Speaker 5: and what prediction markets were saying. I'd love for you,
Speaker 5: Peter to kind of opine on like how that comes
Speaker 5: into play and whether you are seeing I guess you know,
Speaker 5: people who use polymarket are maybe going to be people
Speaker 5: who are already more pro Trump.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, you have a Venn diagram today of
Speaker 7: crypto gambling sports. There there's a there's a large overlap
Speaker 7: of participants and more importantly confidence, and so to see
Speaker 7: that influencing the poly market environment doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 8: What I've been.
Speaker 7: Watching, actually, to me, was a better leading indicator was
Speaker 7: the developing coil and test that if you had gone
Speaker 7: back and looked over the last three years, you've seen
Speaker 7: this narrowing and narrowing of coil. And these are emotional
Speaker 7: tugs of war between the bulls and the bear that ultimately,
Speaker 7: when the rope gets released, the energy that is released
Speaker 7: with that moves things to one side. And so ahead
Speaker 7: of the election, you could see that when Tesla's earning
Speaker 7: surprised and the stock popped, that the rope was already
Speaker 7: beginning to let go.
Speaker 2: So what could what could actually lead to some sort
Speaker 2: of pullback? Right now we're seeing really kind of exuberants everywhere, Peter, Yeah, So.
Speaker 7: This sort of exuberance dies on exhaustion that everybody who
Speaker 7: believes in it has committed the maximum amount that they're
Speaker 7: going to commit. It's also an environment that likes round numbers,
Speaker 7: So it wouldn't prize me to see if we get
Speaker 7: you know, a a an ascent to bitcoin one hundred
Speaker 7: thousand I mean that that feels like a like a
Speaker 7: logical next step. Again, remember that this is this is
Speaker 7: an environment where it is incredibly transparent on X what
Speaker 7: people are positioned in, where they're going, and you have
Speaker 7: to believe that institutions and others are now betting on
Speaker 7: the crowd's bets. And thanks to all of these, you know,
Speaker 7: fast fashion ETFs, the ability to add extreme leverage into
Speaker 7: all of that is part of the appeal.
Speaker 8: This is this is.
Speaker 7: A fast moving gamblers game that is going to draw
Speaker 7: everybody in before it exhausts.
Speaker 2: It's just remarkable too to see it play out in
Speaker 2: real time on the X platform, which by the way,
Speaker 2: looks completely different to me now a couple of years later, Peter,
Speaker 2: than it did before Elon Musk bought it. But that's
Speaker 2: a conversation for a different day. Peter Atwater, adjunct Professor
Speaker 2: of Economics at william and Mary, author of the Confidence Map,
Speaker 2: Charting a Path from Chaos to Clarity, also President of
Speaker 2: Financial Insights, Joining us this afternoon from Pennsylvania.
Speaker 6: This is Bloomberg Business Week.
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Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw this earlier, but Amazon
Speaker 2: is reportedly developing smart eyeglasses to guide its delivery drivers
Speaker 2: around and within buildings. This according to Reuters, who cited
Speaker 2: five people familiar with the matter. If these work glasses
Speaker 2: would navigate drivers on a small embedded screen along routes
Speaker 2: and at each stop. The ideas that it aims to
Speaker 2: reduce delivery time.
Speaker 5: Think so because you see it in your vision field
Speaker 5: instead of having a look onto the dashboard of the
Speaker 5: Trunck Grunder.
Speaker 2: Or no, or when you're walking around holding a package,
Speaker 2: you're like, Okay, this is exactly the house it needs
Speaker 2: to be delivered to. Kind of a cool little USh
Speaker 2: for I should note. An Amazon spokesperson told Reuters it
Speaker 2: is continuously innovating to create an even safer and better
Speaker 2: delivery experience for its drivers, but it would not compliment
Speaker 2: comment on its product roadmap.
Speaker 5: I want to see, like a prototype, what they would
Speaker 5: look like.
Speaker 2: I think this is a real use case for smart
Speaker 2: you know, for like the Google last type thing. They've
Speaker 2: been used for quite a while, they never caught on
Speaker 2: with consumers. They're trying to make that happen at Snap
Speaker 2: and at Meta. Still we'll see if it happens, but
Speaker 2: the industrial use case is certainly interesting. We got with
Speaker 2: this Ty Brady, he's chief technologist for robotics at Amazon. Tie,
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna put you on the spot and ask
Speaker 2: you to comment about this this report because we already
Speaker 2: got a comment from an Amazon spokesperson, but it does
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about innovation happening at Amazon. I
Speaker 2: know you guys did this interesting survey with MIT on
Speaker 2: what AI could mean for workers. Before we get to that,
Speaker 2: just give our viewers our listeners an idea of the
Speaker 2: role that robotics play right now at Amazon.
Speaker 9: Well, first of all, it's a pleasure to be here,
Speaker 9: and thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. Boy.
Speaker 9: I'll tell you the age of physical AI is here
Speaker 9: and it is really proving useful for our customers. We
Speaker 9: have our robotic systems inside of our fulfillment centers. We
Speaker 9: actually just rolled our next generation fulfillment center down in Louisiana,
Speaker 9: and we're seeing a lot of returns and gains on that.
Speaker 2: Is this the Kiva system that Amazon bought over a
Speaker 2: decade ago.
Speaker 9: Wait, it is based on that. That is part of it.
Speaker 9: What we do is that we have robotics that can
Speaker 9: move goods, that's part of the Kiva systems, but also
Speaker 9: robotics to store goods and sort goods and identify all
Speaker 9: the various goods. And we have this in this next
Speaker 9: generation fulfillment center where we have ten times the amount
Speaker 9: of robotics that we've ever had under one roof, and
Speaker 9: we're already seeing that we can process those orders twenty
Speaker 9: five percent faster and also pass along to a lower
Speaker 9: cost to our customers.
Speaker 2: Just proving just so we understand if when when we
Speaker 2: order something on Amazon using the app or using the browser,
Speaker 2: does a robot now pick that item at fulfillment center,
Speaker 2: is it still a human being?
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's It's an amazing, amazing series of events that
Speaker 9: actually happens. When you go on Amazon dot com. You're
Speaker 9: getting your holiday order redder ready. We of course want
Speaker 9: to have the world's largest selection of good for our
Speaker 9: goods for our customers. We want to process that at
Speaker 9: a low cost and then have the ultimate customer convenience.
Speaker 9: And robotics is helping all along that way, right people
Speaker 9: and machines working together. We have AI systems that source
Speaker 9: put the right products in the right area so that
Speaker 9: can be closer to our customers. That helps on our
Speaker 9: delivery times. We have robots that move safely around people
Speaker 9: that we inbound those goods into our buildings where can
Speaker 9: take on more good put more goods in the same
Speaker 9: footprint as we've had as compared to our manual buildings.
Speaker 9: We can store of actually forty percent more goods, and
Speaker 9: then we have robotic systems that help sort and even
Speaker 9: package those items for our customers. All this is so
Speaker 9: that we can just have the ultimate in customer convenience
Speaker 9: and get the right good to right to the customer's door.
Speaker 5: Ty, what is a twenty twenty four robotics system and
Speaker 5: how is that different than the systems that we saw
Speaker 5: ten fifteen years ago. I'm just thinking about how I
Speaker 5: used to watch that show how It's Made, and it
Speaker 5: would show factories and there were always robots working in
Speaker 5: the factories and moving things along conveyor belt. So what
Speaker 5: is so different about the twenty twenty four. Robotics.
Speaker 9: That's such a great question. We have really seen just
Speaker 9: just huge advancements over the last few years when it
Speaker 9: comes to robotics. This is why we call it physical AI.
Speaker 9: It's really the embodiment of adaptive behavior in our robotic systems.
Speaker 9: But our robotics systems shouldn't be viewed as singular and
Speaker 9: as alone as just machines. Instead, what we do is
Speaker 9: we build our machines to extend human capability. We build
Speaker 9: our machines to augment folks to do their jobs better
Speaker 9: and create a safer environment for them. We've seen those
Speaker 9: benefits in the last four years with regards to safety
Speaker 9: and also in regards to the efficiencies and the productivities.
Speaker 9: But the big you know, I could talk about more
Speaker 9: and more of the robotics that we've seen, but we
Speaker 9: also have to I think the big mindset is when
Speaker 9: you reframe your relationship with machines people first attitude towards
Speaker 9: of how we build those machines that allows people to
Speaker 9: do more. And now we are upscaling. We put a
Speaker 9: one point two billion dollars into an upscaling pledge for
Speaker 9: our employees and then we, as Tim said, We funded
Speaker 9: this independent study with MIT in order to understand the
Speaker 9: perception of technology and how people adopt machines and AI
Speaker 9: into their work environment.
Speaker 2: So let's talk a little bit about that, because I
Speaker 2: think you hit on a really important point here, and
Speaker 2: it's the idea that and I was kind of joking
Speaker 2: about this a little while ago. I was like, can
Speaker 2: can these robots be programmed to love? But the fact
Speaker 2: is is you do have to be comfortable being around
Speaker 2: automated things that could look like humanoids, they might not
Speaker 2: look like humanoid robots. What did you find through this
Speaker 2: collaboration with MIT about how people want to interact or need.
Speaker 6: To learn how to interact with machines.
Speaker 9: It was a fascinating study. It was actually groundbreaking. The
Speaker 9: MIT enlisted to ipsos to survey more than nine thousand
Speaker 9: people across nine different countries to understand how they perceive technology,
Speaker 9: because perception is really important to adoption, even to innovation. Right,
Speaker 9: as I said, we put people at the center of
Speaker 9: the robotics universe. We really want to understand how people
Speaker 9: and they will adopt technologies, and broadly we found the
Speaker 9: study found that a majority of people see robots having
Speaker 9: a positive impact on their pay and on their career.
Speaker 9: And there's three key, three key findings that came along
Speaker 9: with that. First of all, if people are asked to
Speaker 9: work at a higher level and can focus on higher
Speaker 9: order tasking, then they're more keen to adopt technology and
Speaker 9: they're more optimistic when it comes to the use of
Speaker 9: the technology for their own career goals and their own pay.
Speaker 9: The second is if they felt valued by their employer. Right,
Speaker 9: So being valued is both are you working in a
Speaker 9: safe environment and do you have a great benefits in pay?
Speaker 9: And then Amazon, we're really proud of the benefits and
Speaker 9: pay that we offer our employees, and also through automation,
Speaker 9: we're actually reducing the number of recordable injuries significantly over
Speaker 9: the past four years. And then the last part is
Speaker 9: really those that want to learn more and take control
Speaker 9: of their career. So if they want to learn and
Speaker 9: grow in their career, they're more optimistic for technologies. And
Speaker 9: that was really good good news for us as we
Speaker 9: put in one point two billion dollars into upskilling our employees.
Speaker 9: So they're good signals. But we're not done yet because
Speaker 9: this is across many many workers, across many industries, and
Speaker 9: we're going to follow on the study actually a survey
Speaker 9: of our Amazon employees directly, because we're always interested in
Speaker 9: the voice of our customer, the voice of our employees,
Speaker 9: and we always want to make this safe for more
Speaker 9: productive environment.
Speaker 2: What's a takeaway that you had from the survey about
Speaker 2: how you're going to either design or implement robotics across Amazon, Like,
Speaker 2: what's one actionable thing you took away from this?
Speaker 9: Well, the first action that we had is that we
Speaker 9: actually want to fund more studies. We want to fund
Speaker 9: the study, particularly for Amazon employees, so we can hear
Speaker 9: directly for them of their perception and how robotics is
Speaker 9: really augmenting and extending the capabilities. So we are voice
Speaker 9: of the customers our first actual takeaway that we had
Speaker 9: from the study. The second is really validation of our
Speaker 9: philosophy that of putting peace people the center of the
Speaker 9: robotics universe. Right, It's this validation of augmentation and extension
Speaker 9: and allowing people to do what they do well, thinking
Speaker 9: with common sense and reasoning and really understanding the problem
Speaker 9: at hand. People do this amazingly well. So our job
Speaker 9: as roboticist is to complement that amazing skill that our
Speaker 9: employees have that people have with machines that can be
Speaker 9: better designed. So very concretely, for example, we have a
Speaker 9: robot called Proteus that is free roaming inside of our
Speaker 9: fulfillment centers that moves goods on demand, and it understands
Speaker 9: where people want to be and people can look at
Speaker 9: the robot and understand what the intent of that robot is.
Speaker 9: So its job is to move these vessels of goods
Speaker 9: to our dock doors safely, and it's fully around people.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 9: So the concrete actual thing is here is that we
Speaker 9: are getting this really strong validation that by extending and
Speaker 9: augmenting here human capability, not only can we more and
Speaker 9: more productive, but we can also create a safer environment.
Speaker 5: We don't have a ton of time left, but I'm
Speaker 5: curious when you talk to Amazon employees, what are some
Speaker 5: of the biggest concerns that they have when it comes
Speaker 5: to robotics in action.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, we always think about the voice of the
Speaker 9: customer first and foremost. It is one thing in order
Speaker 9: to do like a robotic system in your lab and
Speaker 9: convince yourself that it's going to work in the lab.
Speaker 9: But when we roll out what we call our alpha
Speaker 9: and beta deployments with our customers. We get first hand
Speaker 9: their quotes of what is working and what is not working.
Speaker 9: We should build our machines too that you can reasonably
Speaker 9: and tangibly use the machine in very intuitive ways.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 9: You shouldn't have to have eighteen degrees in order to
Speaker 9: figure out how to use the machines. And we get
Speaker 9: that feedback quite often to say, it needs to be simpler,
Speaker 9: it needs to be less complex, and it needs to
Speaker 9: have the utility in order to extend and complement human creativity.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to We're gonna have to leave it there. Ty,
Speaker 2: do appreciate you joining us.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 2: Ty Brady, chief technologist for robotics over at Amazon, joining
Speaker 2: us this afternoon from Boston.
Speaker 6: Uh, Emily do you? I mean it's this is a
Speaker 6: real thing.
Speaker 2: Is to try to like understand how humans are going
Speaker 2: to interact with these things, because that changes how we work.
Speaker 5: I would be a little afraid of a robot, but
Speaker 5: if it was doing tasks that I didn't feel like doing,
Speaker 5: then I would be friends with it.
Speaker 6: Then I would really like it do the dishes.
Speaker 5: I'd be very nice to it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, get that. This is Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 8: Mac a journal about you.
Speaker 5: Let me drive Oh no, no, no, alright, please, I.
Speaker 9: Want to.
Speaker 6: Good question time.
Speaker 1: This is the Drive to the Close commuting well by
Speaker 1: Don on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Well look at that, less than twenty minutes to go
Speaker 2: in until the closing bell. Once again, the equity market
Speaker 2: is open, bond market not so much.
Speaker 6: On this twenty twenty four Veterans Day here in New York.
Speaker 2: Emily Grafeo and I right now, we're joined by Greg Halter.
Speaker 2: He's director of research at the Carnegie Investment Council. For
Speaker 2: our Drive to the Close. Carnegie has about four billion
Speaker 2: dollars in assets under management. Greg, good to have you
Speaker 2: back with us.
Speaker 6: How are you.
Speaker 8: I'm doing fine and thanks for having me back again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we love it when you join us. Hey, we
Speaker 2: haven't actually talked to you in quite a bit of time.
Speaker 2: But the real thing I wanted to ask you about
Speaker 2: first was the election and if Trump being elected to
Speaker 2: a second term changes at all your thesis. Look what
Speaker 2: we've seen with equity markets, we've seen with crypto just
Speaker 2: in the last four days.
Speaker 6: It's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 8: It's definitely remarkable.
Speaker 10: Although if you look back at history in cases where
Speaker 10: you have a unified government, one party or the other.
Speaker 10: The equity markets tend to do well leading up into
Speaker 10: the inauguration, and we're also in a very good seasonal
Speaker 10: part of the year, November being I think the best month,
Speaker 10: So we've got a few good things going for us.
Speaker 10: Maybe the election there is just I don't want to
Speaker 10: say just an election, but it kind of fits the
Speaker 10: pattern of what we've seen historically. Again, the numbers, there's
Speaker 10: not that many observations, but the ones that there are
Speaker 10: generally show positive.
Speaker 5: What about when it comes to what you're seeing in
Speaker 5: the bond markets, I know Tim's head, the pawns.
Speaker 6: Are closed except for today today.
Speaker 5: But you know, there has been a rise in rates
Speaker 5: since Trump won the presidency. It reversed a little bit,
Speaker 5: but overall I've been hearing a lot of people say
Speaker 5: that Trump's policies are going to reignite inflation and yields
Speaker 5: are going to go up. What do you make of that?
Speaker 10: Well, I think you go back to the couple days
Speaker 10: before the fifty basis point cut, and that's actually was
Speaker 10: the low, and we've seen at least on the tenure,
Speaker 10: probably seventy basis points of increase since then. Drop maybe
Speaker 10: twenty basis points here recently, So I don't think this
Speaker 10: is due to the election, this most recent move, and
Speaker 10: I think it has to do less with inflation and
Speaker 10: more with the growth expectations.
Speaker 8: And maybe the market sniffed this out.
Speaker 2: Greg, what do you make of what's going on in crypto?
Speaker 2: This is not in your notes, so you know you
Speaker 2: don't write about crypto at all in your notes, But
Speaker 2: we can't ignore it today. We heard the numbers from
Speaker 2: Charlie a little earlier, but they're worth repeating. Bitcoin up
Speaker 2: another nine percent today, eighty seven thousand for the first
Speaker 2: time ever market top of one point seven trillion dollars.
Speaker 2: Are traditional investment managers ignoring bitcoin at their peril?
Speaker 10: Well, they certainly have if you look at the past
Speaker 10: ten years with great volatility. But I think what you're
Speaker 10: seeing now is the potential for less regulation from the
Speaker 10: new administration, maybe some sort of stockpile of bitcoin by
Speaker 10: the US potentially maybe some central banks buying there as well.
Speaker 10: And one point whatever trillion you mentioned is really peanuts
Speaker 10: relative to the assets of equities and bonds and other
Speaker 10: areas other investment classes if you will, out there. So
Speaker 10: it is small, there's huge potential here. I've heard some
Speaker 10: talk about ninety thousand as being the next point. We're
Speaker 10: almost there as of today, so it's definitely been on fire.
Speaker 10: If you will broke through the level of the seventy
Speaker 10: thousand or so, and it's been off to the races.
Speaker 2: We might get there by the time we're done talking.
Speaker 2: Given what's happened. Hey, you hit on something really interesting,
Speaker 2: and I've been thinking a lot about it because a
Speaker 2: general theme that has emerged is less regulation, less regulation,
Speaker 2: less regulation, and that's something that Kathy Woods spoke to
Speaker 2: me about last week. But at the same time, I
Speaker 2: wonder if there's this balance that may need to be
Speaker 2: to exist when it comes to regulation. And yes, investors
Speaker 2: certainly cheer when regulation kind of loosens, but I think
Speaker 2: we have to remember that regulations are there for a reason.
Speaker 2: There's a reason that we're required to wear seatbelts, for example,
Speaker 2: in cars, and I'm wondering if we get to a
Speaker 2: point where it's a risk that a lot of regulations
Speaker 2: get rolled back.
Speaker 10: Great question, and I think there's good regulation and there's
Speaker 10: over regulation. I believe Jamie Diamond mentioned this not too
Speaker 10: long ago, and hence you've seen the stock price there
Speaker 10: do very well last week. At what point is the overregulation?
Speaker 10: That obviously is a point of contention. I think a
Speaker 10: lot of times you get fiefdoms, governmental fiefdoms or whatever,
Speaker 10: and there's too many, too many hands in the kitchen,
Speaker 10: if you will.
Speaker 8: You know, look at bank regulation.
Speaker 10: You've got OCC and fdi C and the FED and
Speaker 10: then the States, and there used to be a federalis
Speaker 10: a bank examinter? And do we need all these entities
Speaker 10: when they're all protecting the safety and soundness of the banks. Meanwhile,
Speaker 10: private equity and private loans have really taken over a
Speaker 10: lot of the work that the banks used to do,
Speaker 10: so you could see why Jamie Diamond made those comments.
Speaker 8: So again, there's good regulation like seat belts, and there's
Speaker 8: over regulation and where is that?
Speaker 10: Obviously that's in the eye of the beholder and the
Speaker 10: people that run the companies as well. So it's a
Speaker 10: tough one and obviously they'll be winners and they'll be
Speaker 10: losers here that remains to be seen for sure.
Speaker 5: Greg talk a little bit about the energy sector and
Speaker 5: what your outlook is for energy, particularly under Trump, because
Speaker 5: you made a lot of notes in your notes to
Speaker 5: us on that and I want to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 8: Sure. I mean, if you're talking drill, baby, drill, you know, drill, drill, drill.
Speaker 8: That's good. In terms of production.
Speaker 10: We're at thirteen point five million barrels a day, I believe,
Speaker 10: how much higher can we go? And if we do
Speaker 10: go higher for both the oil and natural gas, you know,
Speaker 10: how are you going to handle all this? And actually
Speaker 10: that could mean lower prices for the price of the commodity,
Speaker 10: which again is good for the consumer, good for the
Speaker 10: corporations that are using natural gas and energy for transportation
Speaker 10: and fuel and so forth and power, but it's not
Speaker 10: so good for the companies. So again you have these
Speaker 10: balancing acts here. And one thing I would say, you
Speaker 10: know about all this rhetoric, no one really knows how
Speaker 10: this is going to play out for every action. There's
Speaker 10: some sort of other side of that which we don't know.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 10: If anyone thinks they can predict that, I think is
Speaker 10: pure folly. So we'll just have to see how these
Speaker 10: things play out. You know, the energy companies have been
Speaker 10: very good in terms of controlling their spending, their capex
Speaker 10: and their costs, and it's obviously helped them from the
Speaker 10: standpoint of cash flows and reducing debt. The stock prices
Speaker 10: haven't done so well, except for companies like Kinder, Morgan Energy,
Speaker 10: Transport Texas specific Land.
Speaker 8: Those stocks have.
Speaker 10: Done fabulous, but that may be more due to the
Speaker 10: energy needs in this country due to AI and the
Speaker 10: whole grid and so forth.
Speaker 8: So again, there's all kinds of reactions.
Speaker 10: That you may not expect and who whatever thought utilities
Speaker 10: and pipeline companies would be doing as well as they
Speaker 10: have over the last six months in.
Speaker 2: The market, Alter, director of Research at the Carnegie Investment Council,
Speaker 2: about four billion dollars in assets under management.
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