Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser. Every day
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Speaker 1: Global News. So let's get to it, because a lot
Speaker 1: of virus headlines once again to go over, and that
Speaker 1: includes we've got fiser and by in Tech raising their
Speaker 1: production target for the vaccine to about two billion shots.
Speaker 1: Their previous production was one point three billion. You have
Speaker 1: New York City Mayor build A. Blasio reaffirming his goal
Speaker 1: of dolling out a million COVID nineteen doses by the
Speaker 1: end of January. Does I feel like a lot to you? Um?
Speaker 1: It does feel like a lot to me. Just feel
Speaker 1: like if right, yeah, yeah, by the end of January.
Speaker 1: If you think about it, we know you know, this
Speaker 1: is a city of nine million people, so it's not
Speaker 1: too bad percentage wise. And then l A the epicenter
Speaker 1: of the latest US wave, turning Dodger Stadium into a
Speaker 1: mass vaccination center to inoculate as many as twelve thousand
Speaker 1: people a day. Um, it's four week LA is so
Speaker 1: bad right now, Carol, you have you talked to your family? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean my brother's not even there. He moved in
Speaker 1: with my parents, he does, Yeah, three months ago. Alright,
Speaker 1: So let's get our daily check on the virus. Dr
Speaker 1: William Yates is back with us, founder and owner of
Speaker 1: Yates Enterprises. It's a company that provides security solutions to
Speaker 1: schools and other places, like middle detectors to detect guns.
Speaker 1: Temperature detection device is something that certainly comes into play
Speaker 1: during the pandemic. He is a trauma surgeon who grew
Speaker 1: up on the South Side of Chicago, and he is
Speaker 1: once again with us on the phone in Chicago, Doctor Yates,
Speaker 1: Nice to have you back with me and Tim. How
Speaker 1: are you and how's it going in Chicago? Ah? Thanks
Speaker 1: Carol and Tim. Everything is about the same, uh, kind
Speaker 1: of the same gloom and doom, even though you know
Speaker 1: everybody's gearing up with the virus, but the numbers are
Speaker 1: going up, the deaths of going up. And I just
Speaker 1: saw in the United States now the deaths from COVID
Speaker 1: are over, you know, three hundred thousand, which is bigger
Speaker 1: than a city like you know football guys know green
Speaker 1: Bay here, So it's bigger than Green Bay and bigger
Speaker 1: than Birmingham, Alabama. So we have a real problem. And
Speaker 1: then the other problem is this new variant which we're
Speaker 1: seeing out of the UK and South Africa is something
Speaker 1: else that really hasn't been dealt with yet. What do
Speaker 1: you mean it hasn't been dealt with yet? What does
Speaker 1: that mean? Well, just as we really don't know a
Speaker 1: lot about what are the end results, say, of the
Speaker 1: virus and getting the virus, what happens to you and
Speaker 1: you get sick and then you get cured, do you
Speaker 1: still have symptoms right now? As far as this new
Speaker 1: virus number one, we're kind of sure that the vaccine
Speaker 1: works for this virus, But what we're not sure is
Speaker 1: we know it's more infectious, meaning that it has the
Speaker 1: ability to spread faster and easier, but we don't know
Speaker 1: the clinical sequeli meaning if you get this virus, what
Speaker 1: will happen to you in the long run, even if
Speaker 1: you are you know, cured or feel better. We don't
Speaker 1: know the end results of this. Are we starting to
Speaker 1: what I meant, are we starting to see any sort
Speaker 1: of research into that, any results of early people who
Speaker 1: got this. I mean, we've heard about these COVID longhaulers
Speaker 1: who continue to have persistent problems, and it's terrifying I
Speaker 1: think for a lot of people, right, I mean, the
Speaker 1: COVID long haulers interesting and you bring this up. It
Speaker 1: seems to be more prevalent in the younger population, with
Speaker 1: the population which takes the most risk and lives with
Speaker 1: the most wanton abandonment. Abandonment seemed to have more symptoms
Speaker 1: on the back end. In the front end. I saw
Speaker 1: a study where of young people who had COVID and
Speaker 1: got over it, say six to eight months later, we're
Speaker 1: having terrible problems like breathing rhythmias and things like that.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of this is kind of uh, the
Speaker 1: young people should be afraid of COVID and take it seriously,
Speaker 1: even though they aren't getting that sick. Now, as far
Speaker 1: as the new variant, it's just too too early to
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: long hauler and what we don't even know the short
Speaker 1: term of this one. But what we do know is
Speaker 1: that some of the vaccines appear to be promising. The
Speaker 1: one in Europe is the one we're not using. It's
Speaker 1: called astra zeneca. I believe they've tested that against this
Speaker 1: new strain in Europe and it did work. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's a good I mean, and my interestanding is that
Speaker 1: you can take an existing the existing COVID vaccine and
Speaker 1: adapted to variance. It does take a little bit of time.
Speaker 1: Is that fair? Is that accurate? That that is accurate? Um.
Speaker 1: Usually the vaccines is sometimes have to be tweaked to
Speaker 1: make them applicable for the new strains, Like the flu vaccine.
Speaker 1: Every year that we get some of those are tweaked
Speaker 1: to uh make way for how the vaccine has mutated.
Speaker 1: So it's unclear if these vaccines are being tweaked and
Speaker 1: it fights the irregular form or they're just taking the
Speaker 1: form that's out right now. I'm I'm wondering what you
Speaker 1: would do. You know, here we are nine days out
Speaker 1: from a new administration. If you were advising the president
Speaker 1: to hit the ground running on January. What is the
Speaker 1: best way to get this under control? Well, I think
Speaker 1: the best We'll see the breakdown if you watch TV
Speaker 1: all the time and you see the guys from the
Speaker 1: military and it looks very official, and they're saying we
Speaker 1: have twenty million million viruses, and then you see the
Speaker 1: FedEx planes landing and so forth and so on. The
Speaker 1: virus is leaving the factory. That's not the problem, right
Speaker 1: the exact vaccine I'm talking about. The problem is at
Speaker 1: the state level. Then things become a little haywire. So
Speaker 1: to answer your question, I would make it very seamless
Speaker 1: at the state level. What happens to the vaccine If
Speaker 1: each state gets one million, this first million goes here,
Speaker 1: and it goes today, you know, and somebody has put
Speaker 1: ahead of that. All the states do the same thing
Speaker 1: and follow this aim plan instead of coming up with
Speaker 1: individual recipes for their success. Because that's where the breakdown
Speaker 1: is right now. It's not the government. The government has
Speaker 1: done pretty well. It's the states that are having the
Speaker 1: problem with administering the vaccine. Right You could probably use
Speaker 1: an assist from the government at this point. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a tough thing to do. When we live in the
Speaker 1: United States though, right, we don't have this. It's it's federalism, right,
Speaker 1: States states rates, So it's it's not it's easier than done. Yeah,
Speaker 1: no question. I mean, I'm answering as a scientist. But
Speaker 1: the reason, the reason that people live in the United
Speaker 1: States is for that reason because we do have an
Speaker 1: abundance of rights, and it's not, you know, a dictatorship
Speaker 1: or a fascist type of state. Dr. Yates and I
Speaker 1: know your group at Yates Enterprises um at Yates Protect
Speaker 1: works a lot with thermometers and thermal aging and thermal scanning.
Speaker 1: One thing that we've learned though throughout the pandemic has
Speaker 1: been that having a higher than usual temperature isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: the only endo cater that you could potentially be carrying COVID.
Speaker 1: What have we learned, Well, I guess what we have learned.
Speaker 1: The converse to that is that having a higher than
Speaker 1: normal temperature puts you in the realm possibly of having COVID.
Speaker 1: We know that of the people who have COVID and
Speaker 1: are infective won't have any symptoms at all. But what
Speaker 1: we do know the people who are symptomatic, almost eight
Speaker 1: of those people will have a temperature as defined by
Speaker 1: the CDC above one degree point for fahrenheit. It's almost consistent.
Speaker 1: If you look at every study and type in symptomatic COVID,
Speaker 1: you will find fever is number one up to Some
Speaker 1: studies show as low as eighty, some show as high
Speaker 1: as ninety six. So I think it is worthwhile and
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be standard of care in
Speaker 1: the world because what it's proved to us, having a
Speaker 1: fever every day is not normal. You can't fake or fever.
Speaker 1: To get a fever, your hypothalamus in your brain has
Speaker 1: to be activated. And even if you don't have COVID,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be at work with the feed. That's the
Speaker 1: main thing we learned. What happens to this technology. If
Speaker 1: you know, somebody walks in from outside and they've been
Speaker 1: in below freezing temperatures for ten minutes walking from their
Speaker 1: home to work or on their commute, and they walk
Speaker 1: in and they get scanned and the surface of their
Speaker 1: skin is is colder than usual, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: So that we get asked that all the time, and
Speaker 1: so we ask people to have a separate area for
Speaker 1: kind of a equilibrium process where not a lot of
Speaker 1: people are. All it will take is from about ten
Speaker 1: minutes for that person to return to what we call
Speaker 1: an equilibrium state, and then we check them. But on
Speaker 1: some of the machines, we can raise the threshold and
Speaker 1: get what temperature they were at and it'll make the
Speaker 1: calculation for but it takes, you know, some doing. So
Speaker 1: to make it easy, we have them have a place
Speaker 1: where the person can stay for about ten minutes and
Speaker 1: then we check them. So a lot of the temperature
Speaker 1: scanners that companies have are they kind of a joke.
Speaker 1: Well I'm in the business, I'm gonna say mine on it. Joke.
Speaker 1: Well okay, that's fine, but you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You know, I get you. I'm gonna answer. I think
Speaker 1: a lot our joke because a lot of people use
Speaker 1: them incorrectly. And when I go into restaurants are different places,
Speaker 1: they kind of go through the motions and they never
Speaker 1: look at the number. I know that for a fact
Speaker 1: because I just walk in and I just give them
Speaker 1: any part of my body and they just if I
Speaker 1: give them my knee, they'll scan my knee, you know.
Speaker 1: So you have to be very diligent about where you
Speaker 1: scan because those are measuring body surface temperature, not body
Speaker 1: core temperature, and you should do it. The best place
Speaker 1: to do it is the forehead or on the side
Speaker 1: of the forehead, or something called the temporal artery is
Speaker 1: beating under their Those are the best places the risk.
Speaker 1: Everybody's hand is the coldest thing on their body. That's
Speaker 1: why we wear gloves. So when you start shooting at
Speaker 1: the wrist and everybody's going to pass. So I hope
Speaker 1: that answers the question. But the technology is good, but
Speaker 1: it's only as good as the operator. I think that
Speaker 1: we get shot in our forehead, don't we get full body?
Speaker 1: I think full body? Um, hey, Dr Yates just got
Speaker 1: about thonds here. I don't know. So in terms of
Speaker 1: getting back to normal, how do you see it? Just quickly,
Speaker 1: as quick as I can say it about two years.
Speaker 1: It's going to take that long, probably with the vaccine
Speaker 1: and to get hurt immunity, and then by then there's
Speaker 1: gonna be some other pathogens that we need to worry about,
Speaker 1: so it will never look the same, but it'll be closer.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've heard about the one in South Africa.
Speaker 1: We didn't even talk about that. We talked about the
Speaker 1: one in the UK. There's another variant in South Africa
Speaker 1: that's a little sticky as far as you know, being
Speaker 1: able to you know, fall into being killed by the vaccine.
Speaker 1: Happy Monday, everything I was going to say. Happy Dr Yates.
Speaker 1: All right, Dr Yates, thank you so much. Stay safe,
Speaker 1: be well. Dr William Yates, founder and owner of Yates Enterprises,
Speaker 1: on the phone from Chicago. Well, that's the new reality. Though.
Speaker 1: We've got to be aware that there's going to be
Speaker 1: you know, that's why there's virus hunters out there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we have to just adjust our expectations. That's
Speaker 1: the key to not getting too disappointed. I think so too.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: It's a new day and yet an old reminder of
Speaker 1: how powerful big tech is. A social media giants Facebook, Twitter, Google,
Speaker 1: All Band, President Trump and others, in an effort to
Speaker 1: prevent further riot organizing, one already fighting back. Um, this
Speaker 1: is already one of our big stories of let's get
Speaker 1: into it reporting for a Business Week. Bloomberg News technology
Speaker 1: reporter and author of No Filter, The inside Story of Instagram,
Speaker 1: Sarah Fryer with us on the phone in San Francisco
Speaker 1: along with Bloomberg Business Week editor Jill Weber on the
Speaker 1: Access line in Brooklyn. You know, big tech. We knew
Speaker 1: coming into it was going to be a story that
Speaker 1: was on our radar, but I don't know that we
Speaker 1: thought it was going to be on our radar, Joel,
Speaker 1: in this way I was looking forward to that didn't
Speaker 1: look anything like. I don't think I'll be so lucky.
Speaker 1: Um and and obviously um um. Last week's chaos actually
Speaker 1: came to a head even again over the weekend with
Speaker 1: sort of the social media platforms um basically basically you know,
Speaker 1: not only blocking Trump and and perhaps permanently banning him
Speaker 1: in the case of Twitter. But then I think the
Speaker 1: parlor conversation has become the one that's even more interesting
Speaker 1: because um, both the Apple App Store and and Google's
Speaker 1: play Store have taken restrictions there. But then I thought
Speaker 1: the big move in the one that I was actually
Speaker 1: most eager to talk to Sara about, was sort of
Speaker 1: the the Amazon move awus coming in and basically blocking it.
Speaker 1: I mean this, yeah, but it does show you know,
Speaker 1: like not only are the social media companies able to
Speaker 1: wield a stick, but like Amazon's got the biggest stick
Speaker 1: of all. So so Sarah kind of there's this is
Speaker 1: just a fast moving story. But I want to understand,
Speaker 1: like how you're thinking about where this conversation goes from
Speaker 1: from here. Well, it dove tails right in with the
Speaker 1: tech power conversation that we're going to have a lot
Speaker 1: more of this year as these anti trust of battles
Speaker 1: with Washington rage on, and I expect that to continue
Speaker 1: during the Biden administration. And that tech power conversation is
Speaker 1: both about, you know, the power to restrict as as
Speaker 1: much as it is about the power to allow um.
Speaker 1: And so the companies are grappling with this, allowing Parlor
Speaker 1: to be on the App Store, allowing Parlor to have
Speaker 1: UM posting by Amazon. That's something that employees are looking at,
Speaker 1: critics are looking at and saying, well, why don't you
Speaker 1: just cut them off? You have the power to do that.
Speaker 1: You're a private company, and the company there are saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, Yeah, we don't want to be dealing
Speaker 1: with this this we don't want this headache. And and
Speaker 1: it's really interesting to see that evolution because we we've
Speaker 1: talked about it a lot, like you said, with the
Speaker 1: social media companies, Uh, it's a lot of conservatives are
Speaker 1: concerned about too much cutting off of people who have accounts.
Speaker 1: A lot of people on the democratic side are concerned
Speaker 1: about the hosting of illegal activity and um people who
Speaker 1: are inciting violence, and in the balance is really what
Speaker 1: is is UH an issue here? So, Sara a lot
Speaker 1: and you mentioned this that a lot of the heat
Speaker 1: on the companies actually came from their own employees. So
Speaker 1: what have we seen in not only from a to bus,
Speaker 1: but but at Facebook and Apple? What what sort of
Speaker 1: internal factions are the companies navigating well? Silicon Valley companies
Speaker 1: have a reputation for being really mission driven, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of employees have had personal reckoning over
Speaker 1: the last few years. Is it ethical to work for Facebook?
Speaker 1: Is it ethical to work for Google if they're working
Speaker 1: with the Offense Department on you know, um, putting people
Speaker 1: in cases of the border. There have been a lot
Speaker 1: of new debates about what it means if you work
Speaker 1: for a company that has certain suppliers, certain vendors, certain contracts,
Speaker 1: and host certain voices. And so we have seen employees
Speaker 1: the almost the more forceful voice against their leaders and
Speaker 1: even the government because the government can't can't really be
Speaker 1: clear about what they want. Everyone's scrutinizing tech power, but
Speaker 1: they don't necessarily have a clear direction of what would
Speaker 1: be a good resolution. Whereas employees, you know, they're mostly
Speaker 1: they're mostly liberal, they're well educated, and they're saying, hey,
Speaker 1: I don't want to work for a place that supports
Speaker 1: something like this. And we saw an open letter from
Speaker 1: Twitter employees to Jack Dorothy asking for a bigger ban
Speaker 1: on Trump's They had previously only banned him for twelve
Speaker 1: hours and now that he's permanently banned. And we've seen
Speaker 1: we've seen Amazon employees right to their employer about parlor, saying,
Speaker 1: why are we hosting parlor? We should we should kick
Speaker 1: them off. And I think that that power should not
Speaker 1: be underestimated because of how hard it is to recruit
Speaker 1: and Silicon Valley the best talent. Well, and what's to
Speaker 1: stop I don't know, Like I don't know whether there's
Speaker 1: oranges to oranges, apples to apples, but another company from
Speaker 1: saying I don't like Well, I guess companies do that
Speaker 1: right if they don't want to work with a supplier,
Speaker 1: or if they don't want to work with something, they
Speaker 1: have that opportunity to do it, Sarah. I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to understand the differences or not differences from another company
Speaker 1: kind of banning something, you know, whether they don't sell
Speaker 1: to a certain customer. Um, they do that all the time, right,
Speaker 1: well sometimes so Okay, a few years ago, companies, we're
Speaker 1: happy to just work within the bounds of the law.
Speaker 1: There are sanctions against Iran, we won't sell to around that.
Speaker 1: That was like, you know, if it's a legal we
Speaker 1: won't do it. Um. And that's how Facebook and Twitter
Speaker 1: thought about content a lot in the early days, you know,
Speaker 1: remove as little as possible. Now, I think the tech
Speaker 1: companies are recognizing that they have this tremendous power and
Speaker 1: the ability to move more quickly than the government in
Speaker 1: many cases to to fix that they have. They also
Speaker 1: have this great insight into what's happening, um, faster than
Speaker 1: law enforcement officials have. Facebook, of course this is going
Speaker 1: to have to be providing law enforcement with a lot
Speaker 1: of the images of people who who were in the
Speaker 1: violent mob last Wednesday. So so I think that the
Speaker 1: companies are coming waking up to their power. But it's
Speaker 1: also a politically convenient time for them to do so
Speaker 1: because they're seeing that the power in Washington is shifting
Speaker 1: to the Democrats, and that party is a lot more
Speaker 1: um more in favor of tech companies taking responsibility for
Speaker 1: the power. They have a Republic conversation. So so can
Speaker 1: we just um talk about Parlor specifically for a second here,
Speaker 1: because what does what does the company like that go?
Speaker 1: Now like they've ultimately just had the power plug pulled
Speaker 1: out on them, um already, probably we're going to face
Speaker 1: some iro from from Democrats. I thought, you know, back
Speaker 1: to Carol's question there for a second. One interesting thing
Speaker 1: here was it wasn't like an arbitrary decision that any
Speaker 1: of these tech companies used to enforce this. They actually said, well,
Speaker 1: we have a code effectively and and Parlors uh in
Speaker 1: defiance of that code and and therefore that's what gives
Speaker 1: us cover to basically make this decision. So what does
Speaker 1: the company like Parlor go from here? And sorry just
Speaker 1: got about seconds just quickly. Well, Parlor is using this
Speaker 1: as a marketing opportunity, just like you know GAB when
Speaker 1: they were banned that they they said, you know, they
Speaker 1: don't want they don't want to hear us, but we're
Speaker 1: still here. We're still going to survive. I think Parlor
Speaker 1: is going to have to find an audience a different way.
Speaker 1: It's sinately going to be so difficult for them to
Speaker 1: survive and grow without access to the app stores that
Speaker 1: that makes it a lot less mainstream. You have to
Speaker 1: actually know how to get there. In other words, Uh,
Speaker 1: let's see looking into my crystal ball. And yes, we
Speaker 1: will be talking about this a lot this year, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it. Um Sara and Jel You guys are
Speaker 1: the best sarifier technology reporter at Bloomberg News. Check out
Speaker 1: our book No Filter. Joe Weber Editor. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim
Speaker 1: Stenovic on Bloomberg Radio. Bloomberg Business Week brought to you
Speaker 1: by SEI. Since its founding fifty years ago, SEI has
Speaker 1: provided investment managers and asset owners with robust infrastructure platforms
Speaker 1: and flexible outsourcing solutions. Check it out go to se
Speaker 1: I C dot com slash i m S. So let's
Speaker 1: get to our next segment, because it's about the founding
Speaker 1: father of the People's Republic of China, controversial for his policies,
Speaker 1: disastrous really the greatly forward and the cultural revolution back
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Chairman Mao. And the reason we're talking about him
Speaker 1: is because his reign and his methods are not dissimilar
Speaker 1: to President Trump. It's provocative, it's thoughtful, it's the exact
Speaker 1: conversation we need to be having right now. The reason
Speaker 1: we're talking about it is because Bloomberg neew Economy editorial
Speaker 1: director Andy Brown brought it to our attention. It's in
Speaker 1: his latest column. Andy is on the phone in New Hampshire. Hey, Andy,
Speaker 1: nice to have you here. Um, I haven't had a
Speaker 1: chance to talk with you. It's been such a crazy week.
Speaker 1: How do you kind of think about this last week
Speaker 1: and President Trump as a leader? Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: way I've been looking at it is through the eyes
Speaker 1: of Chinese officials and state media UM, and they're having
Speaker 1: a field day with this. It plays absolutely into their
Speaker 1: a dominant narrative, which which is of the United States
Speaker 1: is impermanent decline UM, starting with the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight two thousand and nine financial cry, which the United
Speaker 1: States arguably never really fully recovered from UM, and now
Speaker 1: this meltdown as they see it, UM, of the American
Speaker 1: system of democracy, which of course is key to American
Speaker 1: prestige and power projections, particularly soft power projection around the world.
Speaker 1: And they're looking at this and they're saying, you know,
Speaker 1: our system is not only produced a far more serious
Speaker 1: and successful response to COVID nineteen, which now underpins our
Speaker 1: economic recovery, and the economy in China is pretty much
Speaker 1: operating normally now, but it's also delivered critically stability. And
Speaker 1: they are comparing and contrasting all this with frankly, the
Speaker 1: chaos that we've witnessed in in Washington, d C. This
Speaker 1: is all happening against the backdrop of a trade war
Speaker 1: with China, relations not any very good place. I think
Speaker 1: it's fair to say, Andy, um, what is the environment
Speaker 1: that President elect Biden inherits, the relationship that President elected
Speaker 1: Biden inherits with China in nine days? And what does
Speaker 1: this due to that? Well? You know, actually that one
Speaker 1: of the sort of what we've been seeing over the
Speaker 1: past couple of days is yet more evidence that the
Speaker 1: Trump administration is trying to box in the Biden administration
Speaker 1: on China, in other words, taking actions against China, including
Speaker 1: sanctions against Chinese companies, but also more seriously in the
Speaker 1: geopolitical space. UM. For instance, just the other day, eliminating
Speaker 1: all barriers to UH state to state UH contacts between
Speaker 1: the United States and Taiwan. UM. You know, taking a
Speaker 1: series of actions like this which will make it very difficult,
Speaker 1: which the Biden administration will find very difficult, uh to
Speaker 1: roll back. Less they should be accused in the early
Speaker 1: days after they've taken over of being soft on China. UM.
Speaker 1: So you know this this is a very deliberate strategy
Speaker 1: of of the Trump administration, and frankly, it places the
Speaker 1: relationship UM uh you know, in a in a very
Speaker 1: very brittle, UM and dangerous position. So Andy, I want
Speaker 1: to go back there to this comparison with Chairman Mao.
Speaker 1: I mean, how does it help us maybe understand Trump,
Speaker 1: or understand even more so, you know, kind of what
Speaker 1: his mission maybe was from the get go. Yeah, look,
Speaker 1: I I'm not I'm not saying And of course it
Speaker 1: wouldn't be serious to suggest that that Trump is Mao
Speaker 1: in any in any way. UH. And yet you know
Speaker 1: there are these incredibly uh disturbing, uncomfortable parallels. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: Mao hated elites, MAO adored chaos. Mao saw conspiracies everywhere,
Speaker 1: you know. And and then, of course the parallel with
Speaker 1: the events last week is is that Mao himself when
Speaker 1: he went um uh, you know, he went mad during
Speaker 1: the last years of his life, he launched an all
Speaker 1: out attack on the Chinese government, the party in the
Speaker 1: state that he himself had created after the revolution. And
Speaker 1: he ordered his Red Guard followers too, as he put it,
Speaker 1: or as the People's Daily put it in a famous headline,
Speaker 1: bomber their headquarters. And he's so chaos um in China,
Speaker 1: um uh. And of course this lasted for a decade.
Speaker 1: This was the Chinese Cultural Revolution um. And one can
Speaker 1: see haunting echoes of that in in some of the
Speaker 1: behaviors and personal attributes of Donald Trump. So I guess
Speaker 1: that the question is, if we're looking at this being
Speaker 1: a historical parallel, what can be done right now, what
Speaker 1: can the checks do, the checks and balances, that is,
Speaker 1: do in order to prevent that from happening here in
Speaker 1: the United States over the next few years. Well, the optimistic, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the the the optimists will say that the
Speaker 1: strength of democracy is its ability to self correct. And
Speaker 1: you are seeing that right now in the events, um
Speaker 1: that are taking place. UM, you know, as as we speak,
Speaker 1: the effort to hold Trump accountable. Um, the election has
Speaker 1: been confirmed, Joe Biden will take office. And yet it
Speaker 1: has to be said that, you know, the rest of
Speaker 1: the world aren't just going to look at this as
Speaker 1: being you know, the the pre Biden and post Biden
Speaker 1: eras as though there's a there's a uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a clear dividing line between the two. Um. The fact
Speaker 1: is that you know, seven four million Americans voted for Trump.
Speaker 1: A hundred what was the number of hundred hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty or hundred and forty Republican Yeah, Congressman voted seven
Speaker 1: voted for this, this legislation. Um, It's going to take
Speaker 1: years for the America, for America to rebuild trust and
Speaker 1: credibility around the world, including most critically with allies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty remarkable all the healing and fixing up and
Speaker 1: repairing that that will have to be done. Hey, Andy,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Bloomberg New Economy editorial director Andy
Speaker 1: Brown joining us on his latest column is a journal Now,
Speaker 1: but you let me drive, Oh no, no, no no, no, please,
Speaker 1: I'll do the right I want to drive. Just drive
Speaker 1: the questions, get trying. This is the Drive to the
Speaker 1: Globe Commune. Thanks, we'll drying us dawn on Bloomberg Radio. Ah. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: time for the Drive to the close. Eleven minutes to
Speaker 1: go to wrap up this Monday, January eleven one. Abbe
Speaker 1: des Bonde is founder and chief investment officer at Center
Speaker 1: Stone Investors. On the phone in New York City. Abe,
Speaker 1: nice to have you back with us. Um, we talked
Speaker 1: with you last week. It was around early November. A
Speaker 1: lot has happened since then. Um, how are you doing
Speaker 1: and how are you making sense of kind of our world?
Speaker 1: Right now? Hear your voice again. M. Yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 1: find center Yeah, we're value investors. So we've been sort
Speaker 1: of in that doghouse. The dog house gets bigger and bigger, right,
Speaker 1: not alone in there. Yeah, we're we're we gotta playing
Speaker 1: a company. Um, and it's a good kind of couple.
Speaker 1: I look around, I'm like, oh, these are thoughtful, smart people. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, so it's good company. Um. And then you
Speaker 1: know we're gonna We're starting to see already, UM, kind
Speaker 1: of some interesting signs of relief from some of the
Speaker 1: bubble activity that we've we've been witnessing over the last
Speaker 1: many months here, and I think, you know, two thousand
Speaker 1: one is shaping up to be potentially very interesting year
Speaker 1: for for people like us. UM get an example, you know,
Speaker 1: we're looking I was just looking at Zoom Media. That's
Speaker 1: a hundred billion dollar market cap company fifty times sales.
Speaker 1: That's kind of like a typical uh, you know ratios
Speaker 1: that you see in some of these hot stocks, and
Speaker 1: you know, all that's good if it's justified by a
Speaker 1: growth and Law Street does project you're on your growth
Speaker 1: for twenty for this year coming up, but the first
Speaker 1: quarter growth is projected to be up two and I
Speaker 1: think you're gonna see a lot of this uh potential
Speaker 1: growth disappointment. It's not hard to disappoint when you're talking
Speaker 1: about fifty times sales and we're looking at growth rates
Speaker 1: and so um, the market, I would say, it didn't
Speaker 1: even really get ahead of itself. It's it's it's got
Speaker 1: it's a universe ahead of itself. And so this year
Speaker 1: it could be very very interesting to watch the air
Speaker 1: being um let out of these some of these bubbles.
Speaker 1: And it's coincident with you know, the world potentially starting
Speaker 1: to open up again this summer the quote unquote the
Speaker 1: real world, you know, getting back in action. Um, and
Speaker 1: I can I can see already what's probably likely going
Speaker 1: to happen. Lots of growth scares in some of these names. Okay,
Speaker 1: so how do you position yourself then to have the
Speaker 1: year of the value investor? Finally? Yeah, so, I mean,
Speaker 1: of course, you never know, there's just two thousand one
Speaker 1: and everything else goes down our who knows. I don't
Speaker 1: know that we are very fortunate. I'm Stenterstone Funds. It's
Speaker 1: on a gold line of great businesses are trading at
Speaker 1: a huge discount. It's like the opposite of the world
Speaker 1: that I just described as the media, for instance, where
Speaker 1: you're looking at potential catalyst emerging from private equity getting
Speaker 1: involved in taking advantage of some of these steep discounts
Speaker 1: that are associated with free you know strongly, you know,
Speaker 1: high growth in our world anyway, let's five. But more importantly,
Speaker 1: companies that have actual cash flows that are profitable at
Speaker 1: good businesses that have been just passed over and stock
Speaker 1: prices have been depressed, so we weakens. I can see
Speaker 1: an environment maybe not tomorrow, you know, or next month
Speaker 1: or what happened was sometimes starting this year. Where As
Speaker 1: disappointment starts to filter through some of those bubble names,
Speaker 1: money starts to gravitate to where it finds a home,
Speaker 1: must naturally in casual, generative enterprises, and that's what we own. Hey,
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, obviously a listener sending us
Speaker 1: a message saying I was wondering, you know, as a
Speaker 1: long term under performance of international stocks, a permit situation,
Speaker 1: or will it turn around? So what might be the catalyst?
Speaker 1: You know, you often look globally when it comes to
Speaker 1: name when any thoughts on that, Yeah, sure, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, for the last several years, we've been talking
Speaker 1: about how the international markets have underperformed. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of latency, they're they're undervalue compared to the US markets,
Speaker 1: and a very very fair question that was very difficult answers, Well,
Speaker 1: what's going to change that one of the catalysts, and
Speaker 1: we didn't really have much of an answer to that
Speaker 1: until recently. The three things that have been driving the
Speaker 1: headwinds for international investing the dollar, the industrial the cyclicals
Speaker 1: the down cycle industrial economies around the world to start
Speaker 1: in two thousand eighteen, and the very tight fiscal policies
Speaker 1: that were in Europe that prevented that economy from recovering
Speaker 1: post two thousand elevens euro crisis because of ironically enough,
Speaker 1: the COVID crisis, all of those head winds have turned
Speaker 1: into tail winds. Interest rates or zero here just like
Speaker 1: there are everywhere else, means the pressure is off the
Speaker 1: foreign currencies, the cyclical economies have begun to repair themselves,
Speaker 1: to pep up around the world. Uh. And and just
Speaker 1: as important, or maybe more importantly, the fiscal fiscal still uh,
Speaker 1: what was a depression a depressant on European economies, which
Speaker 1: is the fiscal austerity measures in places two thousand eleven
Speaker 1: have all turned around. Now they're very fiscally aggressive. So
Speaker 1: you've got kind of the macro intersecting with the micro,
Speaker 1: the micro being undervalued names that have lagged for a
Speaker 1: long time, all kind of coinciding to finally emerge as
Speaker 1: a catalyst for international hopefully for value as well. But
Speaker 1: I think your question is about international, and so as
Speaker 1: far as I'm concerned, I mean, it's the first time
Speaker 1: in a long, long, long time where I can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: we've got everything in our favor. There's nothing that says
Speaker 1: that things can't turn around or we can't just you know,
Speaker 1: hit be hit by another crisis or whatever. But as
Speaker 1: far as you know, lining up the odds in your favor, um,
Speaker 1: you know, there's as well lined up as they possibly
Speaker 1: can be for people like us. I was really interested
Speaker 1: earlier what you said about zoom, Um, and I want
Speaker 1: to make sure that I understand you were Were you
Speaker 1: were not? Were you speaking of zoom video video, the
Speaker 1: zoom that we've been using. Yeah, zoom Sorry, yes, zoom video.
Speaker 1: Are there other names that are are poised to see
Speaker 1: the bubble the bubble the air come out of the bubble,
Speaker 1: as you put it. It's interesting to me, you know,
Speaker 1: I've been reading all these I p O documents that
Speaker 1: have been coming out these new companies Snowflake and plant
Speaker 1: here and and the urban what's called the door Dash
Speaker 1: and Airbnbat, and it's a there's a common thread all
Speaker 1: of them. They all talked about the risk of growth
Speaker 1: being disappointing in one way or another. And I find
Speaker 1: that very fascinating because these stocks are being sort of
Speaker 1: the the built in assumption is that you're going to
Speaker 1: have these growth rates are even more interperpetuity like you've had.
Speaker 1: But the big differences. You know, these these companies are
Speaker 1: not competing with legacy businesses and anymore they're competing with
Speaker 1: other businesses have the same competitive advantages they do. Right,
Speaker 1: So you know there's a massive capitalism is going to
Speaker 1: do its job this year. It's going to introduce competition,
Speaker 1: and yes, the industry can grow, but not all of
Speaker 1: these companies can grow at those rates and strongest right
Speaker 1: or whatever it is. Yeah, I mean you could you know,
Speaker 1: there's this uh and what kind of makes this uh
Speaker 1: a little bit more um challenging for these companies is
Speaker 1: they're all going to go try to make market share
Speaker 1: at no profit. Yeah, which is like what investors have
Speaker 1: been okay with it thus far. It's exactly you know,
Speaker 1: create an Amazon or whatever, pick your company, and we're
Speaker 1: okay with it. Abbe Um, so good to hear your voice.
Speaker 1: Happy New Year, Abe Tosh Bonde, Founder and chief investment
Speaker 1: officer at Centerstone Investors, based in New York City, which
Speaker 1: is where we found him on the phone. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for listening to Business Week. Download the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud,
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