Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. All right,
Speaker 1: so grab your drink of choice. UH, settle into a
Speaker 1: comfy chair. If you're driving, pull over because we've got
Speaker 1: a great guest. Our next guest talks with all kinds
Speaker 1: of leaders from all walks of our lives, the household names,
Speaker 1: the exacts, the innovators, the warriors, the up starts, the artist,
Speaker 1: and from those conversations, he has written a trilogy of books,
Speaker 1: How to Lead on Leadership. The second, The American Story,
Speaker 1: was all about the American history. UH, and the book's title,
Speaker 1: The American Experiment, Dialogues and a Dream is his third
Speaker 1: book in this series. So it's great to have joining us. UH.
Speaker 1: David Rubinstein, he's host of Bloomberg Wealth on Bloomberg TV
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg Radio, and of course you know him as
Speaker 1: co founder and co chair of the private equity from
Speaker 1: the Carlisle Group. He joins us in our interactive broker studio.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. My pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. It's really wonderful and I
Speaker 1: feel like you are someone who talks with so many
Speaker 1: different people, different points of view. Um, we were wondering
Speaker 1: about the last couple of years, with everything going on,
Speaker 1: how that kind of has shaped who you want to
Speaker 1: talk to and how you were thinking about this book,
Speaker 1: The American Experiment. Well, generally, I'd like to talk to
Speaker 1: people who are willing to say something, as you know
Speaker 1: from being an interviewer. Uh, if you watch the Sunday
Speaker 1: talk shows, sometimes you say, why do these people go
Speaker 1: on these shows? Because they don't want you want to
Speaker 1: say anything. What you want is somebody who's willing to
Speaker 1: say something and say something they haven't said before. That's
Speaker 1: the best interview, right, And so I'm always looking for
Speaker 1: somebody who is willing to be engaging and doesn't want
Speaker 1: to just spar with the interviewer and not say anything.
Speaker 1: So you know, that's that's a challenge, but that's what
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do. And you always want somebody that
Speaker 1: people will listen to and want to hear. So if
Speaker 1: I got an engaging guest but nobody's ever heard of
Speaker 1: that person, it may not be as effective. If you
Speaker 1: can get Jeff Bezos, you know, you know that's people
Speaker 1: want to hear from him. So if you want somebody
Speaker 1: has a name and who's willing to engage. And some
Speaker 1: people are great and some people are not as great,
Speaker 1: And you know you've just figured out during the interview.
Speaker 1: But we think about what's happened with the pandemic, the
Speaker 1: capital riots, um, the inequities, George Floyd, We could go
Speaker 1: on and on. There's it feels like a decade or
Speaker 1: two decades of history have happened in the last year
Speaker 1: and a half. How is that, David shaped kind of
Speaker 1: your thinking and putting this book together? And again, the
Speaker 1: voices you wanted to get to, each one has a
Speaker 1: different thing. The January six event, um, I do talk
Speaker 1: about it extensively in the book, and I basically say
Speaker 1: it was a severe stress test for America and America one.
Speaker 1: And I dedicate the book to the public servants who
Speaker 1: protect our democracy. Because remember we had sixty five lawsuits
Speaker 1: that were filed to overturn the January, to overturn the election,
Speaker 1: and none of them actually prevailed, none of them got
Speaker 1: very far. All the judges basically complied with what is
Speaker 1: the rule of law, and they basically didn't act political.
Speaker 1: So I think we learned a lot about the importance
Speaker 1: of the rule of law in this country. We also
Speaker 1: learned a lot in terms of the importance of healthcare
Speaker 1: in this country. How it's so unfair that people are
Speaker 1: her minority status are or are poor. Really we're suffering
Speaker 1: disproportionately because of COVID because they don't have good health
Speaker 1: care to begin with, and then have access to the
Speaker 1: best health care. And it's a sad situation. But it
Speaker 1: also made me think about this, my mortality. I'm seventy
Speaker 1: two years old, and when you're seventy two, you had
Speaker 1: a chance of you got this disease that you could
Speaker 1: maybe not survive. And we now know that six the
Speaker 1: people when on ventilators didn't actually come back out of
Speaker 1: the ventilators. We were putting people ventilators thinking was helping,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. So we learned a lot about how to
Speaker 1: treat people. But suppose I had gotten this and I
Speaker 1: went on a ventilator, I probably wouldn't be here now.
Speaker 1: So I learned a lot about my mortality and thinking
Speaker 1: about it, and the result is I'm rushing to get
Speaker 1: more things done because I now realize, Hey, life is
Speaker 1: very sure, and something bad can happen very quickly, and
Speaker 1: so that that's been something that I've been thinking a
Speaker 1: lot about. It's like the Hamilton's right, I'm running out
Speaker 1: of time right, As you point out in the book,
Speaker 1: the American experiment has been relatively short at this point.
Speaker 1: And I'm wondering if you could contextualize the way that
Speaker 1: you think about what happened over the last year, year,
Speaker 1: year and a half as to to what extent it
Speaker 1: really stress tested us, because you do you do make
Speaker 1: note of the judiciary essentially saving the United States, not
Speaker 1: the lawmakers, because you do call out in the book
Speaker 1: the lawmakers, the senators and the members of Congress who
Speaker 1: voted to overturn the election. They are still in power
Speaker 1: right now. Yes, And I know many of them, and
Speaker 1: privately they will say to you, well, I had to
Speaker 1: do that, or I knew it wasn't going to really prevail.
Speaker 1: Sure many of these people are you know, I live
Speaker 1: in Washington. I host I host a series uh in
Speaker 1: front of Members of Congress once a month. With COVID
Speaker 1: ending soon hopefully I'll be resuming that. And I know
Speaker 1: a lot of members and so forth, and you know
Speaker 1: privately what they say is, um, well I had to
Speaker 1: do this and they didn't really believe in it, but
Speaker 1: you know, and so forth. Some will say that I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go say who said that, but clearly
Speaker 1: it's a very political situation. It's just the saddest part
Speaker 1: of the whole situation we now face is that we've
Speaker 1: politicized the government so much so that the country's really
Speaker 1: unable to move forward very much. We have people who
Speaker 1: don't want to wear masks, who think that it's a
Speaker 1: good thing to force people not to wear masks. In effect,
Speaker 1: we we we you know, a sad situation in many
Speaker 1: ways when you think about it that school children whose
Speaker 1: teachers want them to have masks are being told they
Speaker 1: aren't supposed to have that mask. So bad situation, and
Speaker 1: people are dying because of this. When did debate become
Speaker 1: like a bad thing? I thought that was what kind
Speaker 1: of the routes of democracy. We're all about, this whole
Speaker 1: idea of having different perspectives and hopefully talking it through
Speaker 1: and getting to a better place. When I worked in
Speaker 1: Congress and nineteen seventies and in the White House, uh,
Speaker 1: there was obviously political disputes all the time, and obviously
Speaker 1: this was after Watergate, but people thought eventually you've got
Speaker 1: to get something done. And so you had bipartisan legislation.
Speaker 1: Now if to be considered a great legislator, used to
Speaker 1: be were good at bipartisan legislation, get people on both
Speaker 1: sides of work together. Now to be a great legislator, um,
Speaker 1: you're probably somebody that is good in only getting your
Speaker 1: Democrats or your Republicans to support you. And members of
Speaker 1: Congress now spend so much time raising money because they
Speaker 1: want to raise money for their campaigns or to wort
Speaker 1: anybody from challenging them. And they have to spend their
Speaker 1: time in the case of members of the House, to
Speaker 1: raising money. And the money and the Internet and social
Speaker 1: media has just divided the country in so many ways
Speaker 1: that I find it interesting when I host these dinners,
Speaker 1: so many people say this is the most interesting thing
Speaker 1: that members feel they're doing. In Washington. They can have
Speaker 1: a dinner when nobody sees their meeting with somebody from
Speaker 1: the opposite party because there's no press there, and they
Speaker 1: can talk to people from the opposite house, which they
Speaker 1: really do because they rarely have conference committees anymore. It's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, look, I also recognize this every generation ten
Speaker 1: thousand years back and so forth has always said, well,
Speaker 1: in my time it was better, and now it's not
Speaker 1: as good now. George Washington's father allegedly told him, well,
Speaker 1: your dinner generation are not gonna achieve anything because you
Speaker 1: guys are not hard working or whatever. Well, the truth is,
Speaker 1: every every generation tells the younger people, you're not gonna
Speaker 1: be tough enough, you're not gonna be surviving, and I
Speaker 1: ultimately civilization goes forward. So sure, they're they're challenges. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not happy with many things that have happened. One
Speaker 1: thing that did happen, though, uh, during all this period
Speaker 1: of time, it is the is the George Floyd murder.
Speaker 1: In that case, the thing that struck me was this,
Speaker 1: we've been through. I lived for the Civil Rights Revolution,
Speaker 1: We've lived through the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act,
Speaker 1: and so many things that have been done, infirmative action
Speaker 1: of the things. But this one murder crystallized for people
Speaker 1: in this country the fact that we are still discriminating
Speaker 1: in so many ways. Just think about it. All the
Speaker 1: people that have been lynched over the years didn't seem
Speaker 1: to have the same resonance as this one murder, maybe
Speaker 1: because it was on TV. Maybe everybody saw it, maybe
Speaker 1: because people saw it was so ridiculous the way it
Speaker 1: was handled. But we've made some progress obviously on racial relations.
Speaker 1: And i'd say in the book that while we've made
Speaker 1: a lot of progress on racial relations and and and
Speaker 1: gender equality and other things, we still have a long
Speaker 1: way to go. The rhetoric that is in the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence and the rhetoric in the Constitution is wonderful.
Speaker 1: What we've been spending two thirty years try to live
Speaker 1: up to that rhetoric, and to some extent we've made progress,
Speaker 1: and some extent we haven't. And what I say in
Speaker 1: the book is that we have these genes. These genes
Speaker 1: are part of us, the belief in the rule of law,
Speaker 1: the belief and equality, the belief in the power of voting.
Speaker 1: And we've been trying to make sure that people um
Speaker 1: kind of honor these things that are part of our genes.
Speaker 1: And sometimes we do and sometimes we don't. The rule
Speaker 1: of law is a gene that's so strong that it
Speaker 1: prevailed in the January sixth situation and and the and
Speaker 1: the post election fight, and I think that was good
Speaker 1: in many other countries. And you had a leader of
Speaker 1: do what was done here. I think you could have
Speaker 1: had a military takeover. Yeah, it could have been much closer.
Speaker 1: I I wonder, David, about this sense of optimism that
Speaker 1: you have potentially after writing a book like this. I
Speaker 1: do think there is this collective despair over the last
Speaker 1: eighteen nineteen months, as this pandemic has played out and
Speaker 1: we try to get to the other side of it.
Speaker 1: And here we are sandwiched between extreme weather events. You
Speaker 1: know that they're affecting the entire country, whether it's drought
Speaker 1: or hurricane or fires. Uh, trying to get our kids
Speaker 1: back to school. After writing this book and speaking to
Speaker 1: these people and looking so closely at the history of
Speaker 1: the United States, are you optimistic? I think most people
Speaker 1: who are asked that question will say yes, because nobody
Speaker 1: wants to say no, I'm pessimistic. It sounds bad to
Speaker 1: say pessimistic, and I'd be lying. If I said I
Speaker 1: was pessimistic, it might make news as they I'm pessimistic.
Speaker 1: I am optimistic about many things. The young people are
Speaker 1: so creative. We are solving some problems like global climate change.
Speaker 1: We're working on some things. Racial relations are getting better
Speaker 1: than not perfect. But uh, if you weren't optimistic. You'd
Speaker 1: be hard to get through life. If every day you
Speaker 1: were so depressed you couldn't get through life, you know,
Speaker 1: what would you do? So I'm optimistic, and I've had
Speaker 1: been fortunate in my life to be be able to
Speaker 1: be optimistic because of good things that happen to me.
Speaker 1: But generally I'm reasonably optimistic. I've just been worried about
Speaker 1: some things that we could solve that we don't seem
Speaker 1: to be solving as quickly as I wish we would.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some of the conversations ken Burns Medline, Albright, Um,
Speaker 1: juliep or who I don't know is necessarily a household name,
Speaker 1: Um Alter, Isaacson, David McCullough, some of the things, Rita
Speaker 1: morano Um. Some of the conversations that stood out, And
Speaker 1: obviously they talked about very different topics, the different topics
Speaker 1: of well. Ken Burns talked about Vietnam. And it turns
Speaker 1: out in Vietnam, the political leaders knew all along, They
Speaker 1: knew all along that we had no chance of winning
Speaker 1: that war military. It was really a political um exercise,
Speaker 1: which was disappointed because we lost fifty eight thousand men
Speaker 1: and the Vietnamese lost millions of people. Um, David McCullough
Speaker 1: did a wonderful job of explaining how nobody took the
Speaker 1: right brother seriously in this country. They had to go
Speaker 1: to France to kind of prove um that they could
Speaker 1: they could they could fly. Another reason why we love France, right. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, so, Rina Moreno is an incredible story and
Speaker 1: a woman from Puerto Rico who was not taken that
Speaker 1: seriously as an actress because she was from Puerto Rico,
Speaker 1: she was given kind of Latino Latino jobs, but she
Speaker 1: turned out to be an Academy Award winner and she
Speaker 1: had an interesting life. She lived with um, a very
Speaker 1: famous person for quite some time, Marlon Brando and I
Speaker 1: think eight years or so, and then try to commit
Speaker 1: suicide because he was unfaithful. And then she recovered from
Speaker 1: that and obviously went on to now win an Emmy,
Speaker 1: a Grammy, uh, every other world Tony that you can win.
Speaker 1: So she's UM quite an impressive person now still performing
Speaker 1: at age eight or eighty nine. She was at our
Speaker 1: Boston Pops event and she just fire got to meet her,
Speaker 1: and she's unbelievable in terms of her energy. You also
Speaker 1: talked with m Walter Isaacson, and I think innovation is
Speaker 1: something we spend a lot of time here, uh talking
Speaker 1: about around the table. And you know that governments the
Speaker 1: complicated relationship really between governments and innovation. We're seeing it
Speaker 1: once again. What did you glean from that conversation? Walter
Speaker 1: points out in his book really focus on the Innovators,
Speaker 1: a book right before The Codebreakers. Codebreakers, a new book
Speaker 1: about a woman that won the Nobel Prize for infect
Speaker 1: discovering crisper Um, and and that's a great book as well.
Speaker 1: But but the Innovators is about all the people that
Speaker 1: have changed our lives. Who invented the micro processor, that transistor,
Speaker 1: the smartphone, the internet, all the things. How could we
Speaker 1: live today without the internet? How could we live today
Speaker 1: without smartphones? All these things? But now these all came
Speaker 1: about because of smart people doing things that people said
Speaker 1: couldn't be done. And typically as part of the teams,
Speaker 1: there are very few geniuses. They're discovering things by themselves,
Speaker 1: he points out. Usually it's a person working with somebody else,
Speaker 1: and usually they're building on some something that somebody else
Speaker 1: actually did before them. But the most important thing is
Speaker 1: our country has been a country where We've been strong
Speaker 1: because of innovation. We are the country that innovates. We're
Speaker 1: reinventing ourselves all the time. Why aren't people in Europe
Speaker 1: inventing great companies like with companies we have. You don't
Speaker 1: see as much in Europe or in other parts of
Speaker 1: the world as we have been seeing here right now.
Speaker 1: The technology that's dominating the world, certainly outside of China
Speaker 1: is American technology, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, um. All these
Speaker 1: companies are American companies. Why don't we aren't we dominated
Speaker 1: by European technology companies or Middle East technology companies? Because
Speaker 1: Americans have innovative style and we really incent people to
Speaker 1: do things innovative here. Wait, I gotta follow, So what
Speaker 1: do you think about what's going on in China right
Speaker 1: now in terms of really clamping down It feels like
Speaker 1: on the innovators. Well, in China, I think what's going
Speaker 1: on is the Chinese government is trying to make it
Speaker 1: clear to everybody that we, the government, are the most
Speaker 1: important thing and not the innovators. And so I think
Speaker 1: there's a concern that sometimes you get entre preneurs are
Speaker 1: worth a lot of money, they're they're cult figures themselves.
Speaker 1: Jack ma on the equivalent, and they kind of rival
Speaker 1: the government leaders, and the government doesn't think that's appropriate.
Speaker 1: So the government is doing some things to constrain this.
Speaker 1: We'll see whether the impact is to have people not
Speaker 1: be quite as innovative, or whether people will try to
Speaker 1: take more money offshore, or or or entrepreneurs will come
Speaker 1: to this country and not go back to China. You
Speaker 1: don't know yet. We're talking parts with David Rubinstein. His
Speaker 1: new book is The American Experiment, also host of Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Wealth here at Bloomberg Radio and TV and co chair
Speaker 1: co founder of the Carlisle Group. But it's interesting, David,
Speaker 1: do you think it will prevent China from being um
Speaker 1: kind of a global presence when it comes to innovative technologies,
Speaker 1: which is what President ga said he wants to be.
Speaker 1: It may have some impact, but right now, for example,
Speaker 1: what is up in the air is who is going
Speaker 1: to dominate technology and the around the world of the
Speaker 1: next ten years. Is it going to be the American
Speaker 1: technology companies or is it going to be the Chinese
Speaker 1: trying right now, the Chinese technology companies have largely been
Speaker 1: successful in China. Google and Facebook really don't quite operate
Speaker 1: in China. They have their own equivalent there. But have
Speaker 1: China been able to take Alie pay Uh and financial
Speaker 1: Um or Ali Baba outside of China that much? Not
Speaker 1: so much, or the same with Bai Do now. The
Speaker 1: only one that's really become a major force outside of
Speaker 1: China is Byte Dance, which has TikTok, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: operate all in China. It really operates outside. But over
Speaker 1: the next ten twenty years, twenty or thirty years or so,
Speaker 1: there will be an effort by the Chinese to say,
Speaker 1: let's take our technology companies and use them in Europe,
Speaker 1: Latin America, the Middle East, and who will dominate what
Speaker 1: we have two internets or we just have one internet?
Speaker 1: And and it's not clear to the extent that we
Speaker 1: weaken our technology companies in this country. It may be
Speaker 1: that we won't be dominant around the world as much
Speaker 1: as we have been. But you think about it. You
Speaker 1: go anywhere in the world. Now you can turn you
Speaker 1: can use Google, you can use Facebook. You can't go
Speaker 1: use Bai Do or or Alie pay anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: That may change unless you're in a part of China
Speaker 1: where it's correct blocked uh. David given what's happened in
Speaker 1: China over the last few months, would you be hesitant
Speaker 1: to deploy appital there to to invest there, at least
Speaker 1: for the near future. I am an investor in China.
Speaker 1: I've been a long term investor there my firm UM
Speaker 1: as an investor there. I personally invested there UM, but
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking forward over the next few years. Given
Speaker 1: what's happened over the last few months, there clearly are
Speaker 1: going to be some constraints on growth and valuation. So,
Speaker 1: for example, UM, many of the companies have had some
Speaker 1: constraints the and financial transaction is one and where the
Speaker 1: valuations come down because they're not going to go public
Speaker 1: quite as quickly as they were going to. I still
Speaker 1: think though, you've got a population of one point three
Speaker 1: billion people and a gigantic market, the biggest market in
Speaker 1: the world, and the country is becoming increasingly wealthy, and
Speaker 1: therefore people are recently spending money. We operate a number
Speaker 1: of companies there. We operate with our Chinese partners and
Speaker 1: McDonald's in in uh in China, and clearly that's a
Speaker 1: growing business doing well. So I wouldn't be hesitant to
Speaker 1: invest in China. I just be hesitant to do things
Speaker 1: that the government isn't going to really like. You've got
Speaker 1: to be very careful and make sure you know what
Speaker 1: the government will tolerate and not the book at the
Speaker 1: very beginning you include the preamble to the Constitution. If
Speaker 1: you could sit down with a forefather today, who would
Speaker 1: it be and what would you want to know? Well,
Speaker 1: I winswer on one second. I would just say that, interestingly,
Speaker 1: we had white Christian property owners men who are founding fathers, right.
Speaker 1: If we had a new constitutional declaration independence, who would
Speaker 1: those people be? It wouldn't be all white men right
Speaker 1: or property. We'd have presumably women, We'd have minorities. Would
Speaker 1: we get a different constitution? Will we get a different
Speaker 1: declaration of independence? Probably would um. If I could have
Speaker 1: dinner with any one of those founding fathers, I guess
Speaker 1: it would be Thomas Jefferson, just because his rhetoric is
Speaker 1: writing style is so wonderful, And I'd ask him how
Speaker 1: come you never made a speech as presidently made one
Speaker 1: public speech. If you ask Water Risings, he would say
Speaker 1: he'd like to have all the people he's written about,
Speaker 1: He'd like to have dinner. I think he would say
Speaker 1: with Benjamin Franklin, because he's so creative and so brilliant,
Speaker 1: so many ways uneducated by traditional standards, but now any
Speaker 1: of them. I think if I could have dinner with
Speaker 1: anybody that's ever lived and who's an American not currently live,
Speaker 1: it would be, without doubt Abraham Lincoln. It might be
Speaker 1: the greatest American of them all. Kept the Union together.
Speaker 1: Uh freed the slaves, though not as quickly as some
Speaker 1: people would want it. But he was an incredible person, writer,
Speaker 1: credit speaker, and and I just like to ask him
Speaker 1: this a lot of questions. And it's interesting phenomenon. You
Speaker 1: and you and I are all in the interview business.
Speaker 1: And this is a business where it's just relatively common now,
Speaker 1: it's not unique to be an interviewer, right, lots of people.
Speaker 1: Everybody has a podcast. I think there should be a
Speaker 1: bumper secret and says punk if you don't have a podcast.
Speaker 1: Everybody kept their own podcasts. Everybody cut there on TV show,
Speaker 1: everybody's got their on radio show. But this is relatively new.
Speaker 1: For most of organized history, there were no interviews. So
Speaker 1: we have no interviews of Shakespeare, we have no interviews
Speaker 1: of Cleopatrick, we have no interviews of Abraham Lincoln, George Washington.
Speaker 1: I wish we could go back and interview them. I
Speaker 1: thought about doing a book interviewing what these people would
Speaker 1: have said if I'd interviewed him. That's a great idea.
Speaker 1: So I got to say, William Shakespeare, No, will Um,
Speaker 1: why do you think it is that people think you
Speaker 1: didn't write these plays? Or did you really write these plays?
Speaker 1: Tell us the truth? Or Cleopatri who was a better lover?
Speaker 1: When Mark Anthony or Julius Caesar? When the interviews right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: For Henry the Eighth, why why didn't you just get
Speaker 1: a prenup instead of chopping off the head of your wife.
Speaker 1: There'll be a lot of great questions. We we want
Speaker 1: to know the answers to what you took. Number four.
Speaker 1: You did get some fantastic names for for this book,
Speaker 1: you know, including Ken Burns as we talked about, Madeline Albred,
Speaker 1: John meetch Um, Billy Jean King. Uh. Who did you
Speaker 1: reach out to that you couldn't get? Who said I'm sorry?
Speaker 1: Who's this? David Rubinstein? I don't have time kidding. No, Look,
Speaker 1: some people do not like to do interviews, and some
Speaker 1: people are more more complicated to get a hold up
Speaker 1: and so forth. So I UM on this particular book,
Speaker 1: I have not interested so did this way. I have
Speaker 1: not yet interviewed Elon Musk. I'd like to do that.
Speaker 1: Um Water Isaacson is writing a book about him and
Speaker 1: that presumably will be the source of a lot of
Speaker 1: information on Twitter a few weeks ago talking about that.
Speaker 1: I talked to Water about it and he's very happy
Speaker 1: spending time with him now. And Ellen is uh, I
Speaker 1: won't give away all this, all the stories it's gonna be.
Speaker 1: It's gonna happen absolutely, um, And I would say that
Speaker 1: i'd like to interview I have an interview Mark Zuckerberg.
Speaker 1: I'm on a board with him in China. I've been
Speaker 1: there when we talk to him a couple of times,
Speaker 1: but I haven't really interviewed him, and I think that'd
Speaker 1: be interesting. I had a chance to invest in that
Speaker 1: company when my son in law to be was at
Speaker 1: Harvard and he said investment company. I said, it's a
Speaker 1: dating service, and dating service never get anywhere. That was
Speaker 1: thirteen billion dollars ago. Is there a woman that you
Speaker 1: haven't talked to you that you would like to talk to? Well,
Speaker 1: Queen Elizabeth doesn't do interviews. UM, so I think that's
Speaker 1: probably not gonna happen. But I would say I have
Speaker 1: not interviewed Mrs Obama. I've met her many times, I
Speaker 1: haven't interviewed her. You should be very good as an interviewee.
Speaker 1: I have interviewed Melinda Gates. Uh. I've interviewed many business
Speaker 1: leaders who are prominent women. Uh. And in scott have
Speaker 1: you thought about I have met her, but I don't
Speaker 1: haven't interviewed I. I haven't actually asked her yet. I don't.
Speaker 1: I think she's relatively shy and doesn't seek publicity as
Speaker 1: the way she's doing it. But if she's watching or
Speaker 1: listen thing right now, I'm ready to come out Seattle
Speaker 1: tomorrow and do that interview because she's doing some really
Speaker 1: good things in philanthropy and really turned the world upside
Speaker 1: down by doing it fast, doing it very differently than
Speaker 1: how a lot of other people have done it for
Speaker 1: a long time. Yes, and uh, I mean she's got
Speaker 1: I think she was given thirty four billion dollars and
Speaker 1: now it's probably worth seventy five billions, So she's got
Speaker 1: a lot of money. Your three minutes left, Please don't
Speaker 1: go anywhere. No, just stay forever. Um the investment environment,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether it's back, whether it's crypto. What's
Speaker 1: interesting to you right now? Well, clearly crypto is something
Speaker 1: that gets a lot of attention. It's amazing how many
Speaker 1: people are interested in crypto. Are you invested in crypto
Speaker 1: in any way? I have not invested in crypto currencies myself.
Speaker 1: I have invested in some companies that kind of service
Speaker 1: the industry. And my standard view on crypto is when
Speaker 1: you go to Las Vegas, most people are smart to
Speaker 1: know you're not gonna win there, maybe spend more time
Speaker 1: than you're certainly not gonna win, but you enjoy it.
Speaker 1: You have the pleasure of gambling. So you picked one
Speaker 1: or two percent of your net worth and do that. Well,
Speaker 1: the same as true in crypto. Crypto you want to speculate,
Speaker 1: you don't really know that much about it. Try it
Speaker 1: one or two or three percent. It's not harmful and
Speaker 1: you'll probably have enjoyable time. Perhaps. I interviewed for my
Speaker 1: my show on Bloomberg John Paulson recently, and he is
Speaker 1: dead set against it. He just said, this is terrible
Speaker 1: and it's going to zero. And but on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I've interviewed some other people that will come out soon
Speaker 1: who are gonna be saying, hey, I think it's a
Speaker 1: way to make a lot of money. There's one person
Speaker 1: I be interviewing soon who's who's made billions of dollars
Speaker 1: in crypto. What about when it comes to SPACs and
Speaker 1: where we are in this cycle with SPACs? Are they
Speaker 1: here to stay? And look, spacts aren't anything new, They're
Speaker 1: just having a moment right now. SPACs are not going away. Um.
Speaker 1: But you have to be wary of what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You have to know what you're really doing. So spacts
Speaker 1: are a way to accelerate an I p O process,
Speaker 1: And right now it's harder to raise money for SPACs
Speaker 1: and not just the spack money. There are two types
Speaker 1: of money yet you have to really raise You raise
Speaker 1: the riditional money for the spact, but then you raise
Speaker 1: money that's called a pre I p O pipe money,
Speaker 1: which is the money to help you get public um
Speaker 1: or help the public evaluation uh state at what you
Speaker 1: think it should be. And it's harder to raise that
Speaker 1: money right now. A lot of somebody is raising I
Speaker 1: think it's Apollo is raising a fund to invest in
Speaker 1: the SPACs that aren't doing so well and to buy
Speaker 1: them on the cheap, which is an idea that I
Speaker 1: think is probably has some merit. We've already gone to
Speaker 1: distress SPACs. UM. Thirty seconds left here? What do you
Speaker 1: think will be the next Grand American Experiment? Just quickly? Well,
Speaker 1: the next experiment that I think we'll see UM. I
Speaker 1: think probably we're going to see UM at some point,
Speaker 1: I hope UM greater cooperation between the Republicans and Democratic
Speaker 1: parties when we have some crisis that really unites them
Speaker 1: in ways that we haven't really truly been united since
Speaker 1: nine eleven. Now we're getting ready to celebrate or mark
Speaker 1: I shouldn't I celebrate than the aversary nine eleven. UM,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do at the Kenny Center on the chairman
Speaker 1: of the Kenny Center. We're gonna have an event doing
Speaker 1: that and thanking our military people, but also thanking the
Speaker 1: healthcare workers we've got us through this most recent period
Speaker 1: of time. We thank you, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: having so much. David Rubinstein, of course, co founder coach
Speaker 1: share of the Carlisle Group. His latest book, The American Experiment,
Speaker 1: Dialogues on a Dream Do check it out it's a
Speaker 1: great still summer. It is still summer. Everyone still summer.
Speaker 1: Read This is Bloomberg Radio.