Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg PENL podcast. I'm Paul swing you
Speaker 1: along with my co host Lisa Brahmas. Each day we
Speaker 1: bring you the most noteworthy and useful interviews for you
Speaker 1: and your money, whether at the grocery store or the
Speaker 1: trading floor. Find a Bloomberg Penl podcast on Apple podcast
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to podcasts, as well as at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com. Jonathan Farroh speaking with Larry Cudlow, chief
Speaker 1: economist to President Trump, on a wide ranging interview, talking
Speaker 1: about jobs, but also talking about trade and the implications there. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I want to really home in there on that.
Speaker 1: And we have our own car Acadana still with us
Speaker 1: listening to the interview alongside US chief US economist for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Economics. I just, real quick want to get your
Speaker 1: reaction to Larry Cudlow's response on whether the US is
Speaker 1: less incentivized to come to some sort of trade deal
Speaker 1: with China based on the strength that we're seeing in
Speaker 1: the U. S economy, especially since we're not necessarily seeing
Speaker 1: commends or at strength in the Chinese economy. Well, I
Speaker 1: think if we look back over the last two months
Speaker 1: or so, we can see that the most progress in
Speaker 1: trade talks occurred during periods where the market was down,
Speaker 1: the economic tone was negative. You know, there were questions about,
Speaker 1: you know, how weak the U. S economy actually was.
Speaker 1: Certainly China continues to slow, so they have incentive to
Speaker 1: come to the table. For the US when we've been
Speaker 1: in periods of an upmarket and an up tone in
Speaker 1: the data, Uh, the trade negotiations have been that much
Speaker 1: more cantankerous. And Larry was very cautious, uh, not to
Speaker 1: provide any direction to things. And Jonathan is rightly asking,
Speaker 1: we really have two levels in the trade talks. One was, uh,
Speaker 1: do we pick up where we were in October when
Speaker 1: the tariffs were due to go up to or uh,
Speaker 1: is October just ancient history. In the next step, if
Speaker 1: things deteriorate, would be the December fifteen tariffs, which are
Speaker 1: on about a hundred and fifty six billion of products,
Speaker 1: many which are consumer goods and things of that nature.
Speaker 1: And Larry really didn't and to provide guidance in that
Speaker 1: direction at all, and instead only talked about the potential
Speaker 1: for a phase one deal just to put some numbers
Speaker 1: around that. Very briefly, if we add dusted off October
Speaker 1: UH and pending December tariffs together that price tag is
Speaker 1: greater than everything put in place in So we're not
Speaker 1: talking peanuts here. This is a very consequential levers that
Speaker 1: are are looming potentially very close UH in the near
Speaker 1: term UH that could dramatically impact economic outlook. December fift
Speaker 1: that's a key date. Carl Wicked Donna, thanks so much
Speaker 1: for sticking around with this. Carl's the chief US economists
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg Economics. Let's shift gears a little bit talk
Speaker 1: about the global markets, including the energy markets. Big meeting
Speaker 1: just is wrapping up with OPEC in Vienna. Jason Shanker,
Speaker 1: President Prestige Economics. He's also the chair of the Futurist
Speaker 1: Institute and a Bloomberg Opinion contributor. UH. He is in
Speaker 1: Vienna for the OPEC meetings and also joining us here
Speaker 1: in our Bloomberg in Active Broker Studios is John Author's
Speaker 1: and your editor for a Bloomberg Market. So, Jason, let's
Speaker 1: start with you give us your key takeaway from the
Speaker 1: OPEC meetings in Vienna this week. Well, I think there's
Speaker 1: a couple of things. First, is that the group is
Speaker 1: concerned about global growth they're concerned that oil inventories could
Speaker 1: weigh on prices, as we saw the last time there
Speaker 1: was a Chinese manufacturing recession, which happened between the the
Speaker 1: December in middle I think that's a real concern. They're
Speaker 1: looking at the macro, they're trying to come up with
Speaker 1: a price bullish story and keep the inventories under control.
Speaker 1: And I'd say there's extra pressure coming from Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: as they're running up to an I p O. So
Speaker 1: just wondering whether you think these cuts that are going
Speaker 1: to be implemented are going to make a significant impact
Speaker 1: in pricing. In other words, should we expect oil prices
Speaker 1: to rise? Well, other commodities probably give us a hint
Speaker 1: as to what we might expect. In the last few months,
Speaker 1: copper and alumin have been kind of grad Julie rising
Speaker 1: oil prices could rise a little bit in the first
Speaker 1: half of the year because of the summer driving season.
Speaker 1: Right this we look at the jobs number today, the
Speaker 1: summer driving season in the United States was the big
Speaker 1: driver of global oil prices. Are gonna be the biggest
Speaker 1: driving season in history. People have jobs, people have money.
Speaker 1: The refineries ramp up in Q one Q two, so
Speaker 1: oil prices could see a little bit of upside almost
Speaker 1: regardless of what O Peck does today. At the beginning
Speaker 1: of Jason, I'm glad you brought that up in John,
Speaker 1: I want you to come in here. John, author's about
Speaker 1: the demand side of the picture. How we are seeing
Speaker 1: optimism grow heading into that we're going to see a
Speaker 1: re acceleration of sorts. I'll be a little bit more
Speaker 1: tempered than in the past of the global economy. Do
Speaker 1: you think that the data supports that shift in view? Yes,
Speaker 1: it does support the idea of another reacceleeration after another
Speaker 1: midcycle slow down or whatever you want. School that we
Speaker 1: had one of those u in fifteen sixteen, which at
Speaker 1: that point was the optics certainly were focused on on China.
Speaker 1: It looks as though we're having another one now, which
Speaker 1: we might in time come to blame on Germany and
Speaker 1: the Eurozone. Certainly, German auto manufacturing is in a horrible
Speaker 1: states by its own by its own, by its own standards.
Speaker 1: If you take a look at the latest IM data
Speaker 1: from the beginning of the week, you do see the beginning,
Speaker 1: you know, a nascent restocking boom. New orders got cut back,
Speaker 1: a lot I suspect in large part forget about other
Speaker 1: aspects of demand. But this was another effect of the
Speaker 1: trade war. And the perverse effect is that we're now
Speaker 1: eighteen months on from people putting their new orders on
Speaker 1: hold because they were nervous about the trade war, and
Speaker 1: they've really got to buy something. And the inventories have
Speaker 1: been winding down during the process, so that the chances
Speaker 1: of a re acceleration and another move upwards are quite high.
Speaker 1: Whether that means and therefore an extension for a bit
Speaker 1: of the longest cycle we're in. Whether I'm happily going
Speaker 1: to tell you that we're about to go off on
Speaker 1: another major, major rally is another question. And you can
Speaker 1: also make the loaded comparisons to Night, which is another
Speaker 1: time when the Fed cut rates, when the economy didn't
Speaker 1: look so bad um and the economy did do very
Speaker 1: well for a year or so after that. The market
Speaker 1: didn't unbelievably well for a year or so after that.
Speaker 1: But we know what's happened next. Jason, want to go
Speaker 1: back to you real quickly. There's something news out this morning.
Speaker 1: The Saudia Minister thinks that the Saudi Aramco I p
Speaker 1: O or that company will eventually in perhaps and in
Speaker 1: your term trade above that to trillion dollar market was
Speaker 1: priced earlier this week at one point seven trillion. What's
Speaker 1: the latest talk in Vienna about the Saudi Aramco deal
Speaker 1: was considered a strong success. Well, I'm not an equity analyst,
Speaker 1: but I would say that, you know, it's something that's
Speaker 1: hanging and looming large over the meeting because obviously the
Speaker 1: Saudis would like to sacrifice maybe have the group sacrifice
Speaker 1: a little bit of income, uh to prioritize balance sheet
Speaker 1: as they're looking to do the I p O I mean, yesterday,
Speaker 1: there's a marathon set of meetings, no decision made. If
Speaker 1: a bunch of n O C s were doing I
Speaker 1: p O S in in the next year, you probably
Speaker 1: would have gotten a deal pretty quickly. But that's kind
Speaker 1: of where we're at. And as we look at the
Speaker 1: year ahead, there are some risks because the p m
Speaker 1: I s the Eurozone plus us I s M plus
Speaker 1: scan Chinese manufacturing p m I that's been below a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty, which would be the break even for that
Speaker 1: sum for six consecutive months. And even though folks are
Speaker 1: optimistic about the year ahead, and we've seen that number increase,
Speaker 1: it's still below one fifty, and the prospects of a
Speaker 1: trade deal are still spotty. I mean, we've just heard
Speaker 1: a long interview about that, and it's ended in tears
Speaker 1: in the last two throughout the last two years, and
Speaker 1: in this time it could very well end in tears
Speaker 1: as well. Jason Schenker, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: He is president of Prestige Economics, also a Bloomberg Opinion contributor,
Speaker 1: joining us from Vienna at the OPEC meetings. And John Authors,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being with us as well, Senior
Speaker 1: editor for Bloomberg Markets, joining us here in our Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Interactive Brokers studio. On a very busy morning lista with
Speaker 1: a strong job's number, seeing a very strong reaction positive
Speaker 1: just under one percent move in equity indices. Here on
Speaker 1: the back of that news, let's talk a little Facebook here.
Speaker 1: There's a couple of things I want to get to
Speaker 1: with our guest, Sure Overday, here's a technology columnist for
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Opinion, joins us here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. Sure,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for coming. I want to talk about um,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, maybe coming to New York and increasing
Speaker 1: their presence here, which is very interesting. But I also
Speaker 1: want to get to your column because it's one of
Speaker 1: the greatest headlines I read today. Mark Zuckerberg isn't always
Speaker 1: a colorless automaton. Got to get to that first, all right,
Speaker 1: coming to New York, Big News going to rent a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of space. What's going on there? So at
Speaker 1: least the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is talking
Speaker 1: about leasing a very large space here in the fairly
Speaker 1: the former fairly post office building. Um. New Yorkers will
Speaker 1: know this as the former and I guess future home
Speaker 1: of New Jersey Transit and Amtrak. Yeah, hopefully. Um. But
Speaker 1: this is a very large and sort of well known
Speaker 1: building in New York City, and it's just speaks to
Speaker 1: the expansion of large tech companies, notably Google and Facebook,
Speaker 1: into New York from their headquarters in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: It raises a question. There was another story on the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg talking about tech companies increasingly eyeing New York as
Speaker 1: a as another option in addition to Silicon Valley. Why
Speaker 1: why is New York becoming more of a hub or
Speaker 1: is it for tech companies? So I think there's a
Speaker 1: few things that play here. One of them is that
Speaker 1: UM the large superstar tech companies you know, Facebook, Google, Amazon,
Speaker 1: going down the list, they have just grown and expanded
Speaker 1: you know, revenue and employees both and as they've done so,
Speaker 1: you know, they in some cases have reached the limits
Speaker 1: of expansion in the Bay Area. Although if you go
Speaker 1: to facebooks headquarters in Menlo Park, it basically looks like
Speaker 1: a perennial construction zone. They have like armies of construction
Speaker 1: workers building new buildings, so they're not done there yet.
Speaker 1: I think also these companies realize that not everybody wants
Speaker 1: to live in the Bay Area. Some people want to
Speaker 1: live elsewhere. There's been, you know, an increasing push to
Speaker 1: um letting people work remotely. So if you live in
Speaker 1: Montana and you want to work for Facebook or Airbnb,
Speaker 1: that's increasingly an option UM. And I think there's also
Speaker 1: a phenomenon of tech companies looking for talent in other
Speaker 1: hubs in the United States and elsewhere. So you've seen Seattle,
Speaker 1: for example, being um particularly fertile ground for a lot
Speaker 1: of tech companies who want to associate themselves with people
Speaker 1: coming out of Microsoft or Amazon or the Universe, University
Speaker 1: of Washington or other places where there's high quality tech
Speaker 1: talent in New York as part of that too. So sure,
Speaker 1: let's get to your column here. Um, we've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of Markus Zuckerberg. The public has seen a lot
Speaker 1: of Marcus Zuckerberg increasingly over the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: oftentimes testifying in front of Congress or others. What's your sense,
Speaker 1: your takeaway about him as a spokesperson for the industry. Well,
Speaker 1: I wanted to just point out that there's kind of
Speaker 1: two different Mark Zuckerberg's. Right, there's the Mark Zuckerberg that
Speaker 1: we see in media interviews or on occasions when he
Speaker 1: gives speeches or testifies before Congress. And I think that
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg is a little bit uncomfortable when he's asked
Speaker 1: to talk about issues that are broadly about, you know,
Speaker 1: the role of Internet in the world, and um, the
Speaker 1: nature of human trust and economic development and and Facebook's
Speaker 1: own role in all of those big picture questions. So
Speaker 1: that's the one Mark Zuckerberg. The other Mark Zuckerberg that
Speaker 1: you see less is in private settings or to employees,
Speaker 1: where he's talking I think very confidently and capably about
Speaker 1: strategy and Internet trends, and you know, knee camping competitors metaphorically. Um,
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to point out that there is
Speaker 1: this dichotomy that the Mark Zuckerberg that we often see
Speaker 1: in public is not the same Mark Zuckerberg that people
Speaker 1: know in more private settings. So do you think this
Speaker 1: ought to give investors more confidence in the leadership and
Speaker 1: the understanding that he brings to the company going forward
Speaker 1: in some of the challenges that it faces. I think
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, look, I don't know. Maybe Mark
Speaker 1: Zuckerberg does not need to prove himself anymore as a
Speaker 1: capable product and business executive. Right the track record of
Speaker 1: Facebook in the last ten years speaks fifteen years, I
Speaker 1: guess since he founded it somewhat speaks for itself. Um.
Speaker 1: But I also point out that, look, the role of
Speaker 1: being a CEO of a superstar tech company is probably
Speaker 1: different than it was five or six years ago. And
Speaker 1: that's not only true for Mark Zuckerberg, but all these
Speaker 1: other companies. As technology and as the Internet play a
Speaker 1: greater role in our lives, in our economies, in our countries,
Speaker 1: in our personal interactions, these people are understandably asked to
Speaker 1: think bigger than just their companies, just their products, um
Speaker 1: and business strategies, and really asked to think about the
Speaker 1: role of the Internet in public life and the world.
Speaker 1: And those are really difficult questions and probably not what
Speaker 1: Mark Zuckerberg anticipated when he started Facebook. Indeed, a lot
Speaker 1: of people also probably a little blindsided by some of
Speaker 1: the transformational natures of these technological advancements. And UH and
Speaker 1: companies share over technology columnist with Bloomberg Opinion, joining us
Speaker 1: here in our Interactive Broker Studios. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for for that. There are a lot of questions around
Speaker 1: the marijuana industry, namely whether or not the US will
Speaker 1: legalize it on a broad level. In the meantime, you
Speaker 1: have states legalizing the product, which raises a question how
Speaker 1: do you advertise it, especially since it is not legal
Speaker 1: in so many places. Joining us here in our Interactive
Speaker 1: Broker Studios Joshua Otten He has chief executive officer of Ronan,
Speaker 1: which is one of the largest branding agencies for cannabis
Speaker 1: and health help businesses. So, josh we were just talking
Speaker 1: about the perception of the industry and how do you
Speaker 1: first of all, go about marketing a company that is
Speaker 1: not operating in a universally legal field in the United States. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a challenge, right. So when we launched rown in
Speaker 1: about six months ago, our goal was to work with
Speaker 1: emerging brands who are building products and commodities and helping
Speaker 1: them to evolve into really real lifestyle and wellness brands
Speaker 1: and so um, there's a lot of challenges on the
Speaker 1: cannabis space, specifically because you're only selling in specific dispensaries
Speaker 1: and local even in a state like California. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of times you're only operating in Southern California
Speaker 1: parts of southern California. So the challenges how do you
Speaker 1: generate campaigns and advertising that generates an r o I immediately?
Speaker 1: But a lot of times that's short sighted because the
Speaker 1: reality is if you're building a brand that isn't just
Speaker 1: a commodity, you can't just talk about ingredients or strains
Speaker 1: or t H percentages. Those are just what's in it, right,
Speaker 1: So you have to be able to build a brand
Speaker 1: that can communicate the consumers. So it's really a lot
Speaker 1: of content content marketing all the stuff that food and
Speaker 1: beverage does. It's at a slightly smaller scale, but you
Speaker 1: have to take those same steps. Do we have any
Speaker 1: success cases in the busy in this right now, if
Speaker 1: any brand's kind of broken through a little bit and
Speaker 1: how did they do it? Absolutely, I think that if
Speaker 1: you want to kind of categorize them into two different buckets,
Speaker 1: if you want to look at say recreational or adult
Speaker 1: use in lifestyle. Cookies is a great example. Uh, it
Speaker 1: was founded by a rapper named Burner Up in Oakland.
Speaker 1: Cookies is a lifestyle cannabis brand. They have some really
Speaker 1: great genetics, but really it comes down to content. And
Speaker 1: the reason I think they're winning is because they're selling
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars worth of merchandise and T
Speaker 1: shirts and hats every year. And that's that's what is
Speaker 1: a brand that's a red bull, right like people who
Speaker 1: are creating a self identity around it. And then on
Speaker 1: the wellness side, you can look at someone like a Doss.
Speaker 1: They're creating these products that have activity groups. Hey, if
Speaker 1: you take this, it will help you sleep. We're going
Speaker 1: to consistently dose you. This will help you relax, this
Speaker 1: will get you excited. So you kind of have these
Speaker 1: two buckets activity group outcome and wellness and then lifestyle.
Speaker 1: So it's almost a kin to a red bull. You know,
Speaker 1: they kind of allude to what it is. Red Bull,
Speaker 1: Monster Energy. You know, you don't really know what's in
Speaker 1: those things, but will give you energy. And then there's
Speaker 1: five Hour Energy. It tells you exactly what it's gonna do.
Speaker 1: And so we I see the people that are taking
Speaker 1: lanes and picking specific verticals are going to have success.
Speaker 1: I got this is this is sort of unprecedented because
Speaker 1: even with alcohol, there are very few alcohol brands that
Speaker 1: advertise getting drunk, right, There's there are very few advertising
Speaker 1: brands that try to sell to that experience of the buzz.
Speaker 1: And yet you know, essentially you don't take marijuana, you don't,
Speaker 1: you don't, you don't smoke up to to just taste
Speaker 1: the flavor, right, I mean it's to get high, So
Speaker 1: you have to be advertising the high and has ever
Speaker 1: been done before? I actually disagree, and I actually take
Speaker 1: I actually look at the food and beverage, alcohol and
Speaker 1: beer as the as the way we should go, because
Speaker 1: alcohol doesn't talk about what their proof is, right. I Mean,
Speaker 1: you go to a tequila bar and there's a thousand
Speaker 1: tequilas and they all have varying degrees of taste, but
Speaker 1: you have your outcome. But you know, if you have
Speaker 1: four shots, no matter what it is, you're gonna go
Speaker 1: home a little loopy. Um. So my point is that
Speaker 1: cannabis brands that are advertising how high they get you
Speaker 1: or their t a chia percentages away from an educational
Speaker 1: sandpoint because you want to know what you're consuming. UM,
Speaker 1: that's not gonna last in the market. That's not the
Speaker 1: point necessarily. Um. Just like it, just like drinking wine isn't.
Speaker 1: The point isn't to get loaded. You can if you
Speaker 1: drink an entire bottle, you're you're gonna be wasted. You're
Speaker 1: but one or two glasses and you're fine. So the
Speaker 1: same thing. If you smoke half a joint or a
Speaker 1: couple of hits, depending on what it is, it's going
Speaker 1: to give you a nice equivalent, um, if you're looking
Speaker 1: for a recreational outcome. So I guess my point is
Speaker 1: I think that the cannas industry can learn a lot
Speaker 1: from from alcohol and beer by not focusing on how
Speaker 1: high it gets you and focusing on lifestyle. And because
Speaker 1: because the end of day, it's a commodity, right, wine
Speaker 1: is wine. Wine is a commodity, it's grapes. What makes
Speaker 1: it not a commodity is when you bottle it, put
Speaker 1: in a really nice bottle and start marketing it. Otherwise
Speaker 1: it's more low or whatever whatever variety it is. So
Speaker 1: it's I'm wondering how you would advertise or market or
Speaker 1: promote your brand because but there's a story out just
Speaker 1: I think today High Times holdings High Times magazines warning
Speaker 1: investors that they may not be able to continue operations
Speaker 1: after they didn't get their I p O off. So
Speaker 1: if I can't, the first thing and the only thing
Speaker 1: that aim to my mind, if I was marketing uh
Speaker 1: a cannabis brand, would be High Times magazine, how what
Speaker 1: I do it? So we were actually launching a network.
Speaker 1: So so we have about a hundred part part of
Speaker 1: our agency engine is that we have a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: hours of original content that I've produced over the last
Speaker 1: three years that has launched. We even have a partnership
Speaker 1: with Viacom in Pluto TV, so they have a t
Speaker 1: C channel. So we have any five or six million
Speaker 1: minutes watched a month, just owned Viacom and distributed about
Speaker 1: fifty million homes. And we're now launching another network that's
Speaker 1: gonna long in January that's going to be in another
Speaker 1: another forty million homes with about a thousand hours. So
Speaker 1: our purview is high times has a very specific audience, right,
Speaker 1: they have in what I call the endemic consumer. These
Speaker 1: are people who are fans. The product is part of
Speaker 1: their self identity. It's not just a product they consume.
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the wider audience. What's the political risk
Speaker 1: of putting this industry in the limelight? I mean, because
Speaker 1: on one hand, you know, if if it sort of
Speaker 1: is within the community that's already devoted to the industry,
Speaker 1: it's one thing. If it's another if it's trying to
Speaker 1: cater to the mat passes. Are you worried about blowback?
Speaker 1: The more visible you make some of these companies um
Speaker 1: personally you know, again not to sound like Gazella, but
Speaker 1: you know, when you look at it, you compare it
Speaker 1: to food and alcohol. I'm not food, alcohol, and and
Speaker 1: and and even tobacco. There are no positive outcomes from
Speaker 1: consuming alcohol, right, I mean, no one's deluding themselves and
Speaker 1: thinking that, you know, having beer and alcoholis has some
Speaker 1: positive health benefit. Red wine, yeah, but that it's like right,
Speaker 1: it comes out and then like two months later you
Speaker 1: guys say it's not so who knows. But but that's
Speaker 1: not the point. We're consenting adults, and so at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, we're consuming a beverage that has
Speaker 1: absolutely been proven to increase domestic violence, have drunk driving deaths,
Speaker 1: all these terrible outcomes. But that's okay. We're consenting adults.
Speaker 1: We consume it. So if you want to compare cannabis
Speaker 1: to you know again, alcohol and the industry, and we
Speaker 1: realized we can't prohibit it just because it has a
Speaker 1: lot of negative side effects, I would absolutely argue cannabis
Speaker 1: has a tenth of those same you know, possible liabilities
Speaker 1: while still allowing for consumers to you know again, consumer
Speaker 1: safe product. The safety issues I'm sure you as I've
Speaker 1: heard of it, right, you have all this sort of
Speaker 1: like oh my god, the CDC came out and all
Speaker 1: this you know what it was the black market, and
Speaker 1: everyone inside the cannabis market knew it. And it was
Speaker 1: frustrating because we knew that it was vitamini ascetate. We
Speaker 1: knew that it was coming from illegal operators. And when
Speaker 1: you have a market like California where two thirds of
Speaker 1: it two three force is still illegal black market and
Speaker 1: you have three forces of the city in California, refusing
Speaker 1: to allow dispensaries and even fighting to allow delivery. All
Speaker 1: you're doing do You're not reducing consumption, reducing access? Josh Houghton,
Speaker 1: really fascinating stuff. Thanks for joining us. Josh Outen, the
Speaker 1: CEO of Ronan based in Culver City, California, joining us
Speaker 1: live here on our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio talking about
Speaker 1: the cannabis industry. Cooper's out with a very interesting report yesterday.
Speaker 1: They released an eighty four page safety reports seeking to
Speaker 1: quantify the misconduct and deaths that occur on its system
Speaker 1: and argue that its service is safer than alternatives. Let's
Speaker 1: dig into that a little bit with Eric Newcomer. He's
Speaker 1: a startup reporter for Bloomberg News, joining us on the phone.
Speaker 1: So Eric tell us about this report. It's pretty interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Uber decided to proactively release data on sexual assaults
Speaker 1: and fatalities UH in its cars and basically found that,
Speaker 1: you know, last year there were about three thousand sexual assaults,
Speaker 1: which it defines in behavior ranging from you know, an
Speaker 1: unwanted kiss to rape. And then on the fatality side,
Speaker 1: found about fifty fatalities a year. So this is you know,
Speaker 1: pretty unprecedented transparency for a company to sort of proactively, uh,
Speaker 1: disclose some of the worst behavior on its platform. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to understand how to view this reports.
Speaker 1: On one hand, yes, the transparency is a shift, particularly
Speaker 1: for Uber, which has been accused of being lacking transparency
Speaker 1: and has come under fire from UK regulators in particular. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so this would be a nice departure for them
Speaker 1: on that. On the other hand, three thousands sexual assault claims,
Speaker 1: more than fifty row deaths. How can we even frame
Speaker 1: that in terms of is that worse or better than others?
Speaker 1: Since this is not a normal report to put out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's stunning. It's hard to process. I mean Uber tries
Speaker 1: to sort of, you know, position in terms of one
Speaker 1: point three billion trips that took place last year. But
Speaker 1: I think it's going to take time for people to
Speaker 1: compare this. You know, academics are clearly going to pour
Speaker 1: over these numbers and compare them to what, you know,
Speaker 1: subway systems disclosed. But on the side of sexual assaults,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always been the case that victim advocates
Speaker 1: have believed that cases were under reported, you know, college
Speaker 1: colleges have generally sort of had for reporting, and you know,
Speaker 1: when they put more pressure on students to report, you know,
Speaker 1: those numbers have gone up in that that's been good.
Speaker 1: So so in a lot of these cases, there's this
Speaker 1: tension of wanting more reports because sexual assault is underreported,
Speaker 1: while at the same time wanting to hold you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's colleges or companies or government accountable when when
Speaker 1: these numbers are troubling. So yeah, it's hard I think
Speaker 1: so far to say, you know, where is three thousand.
Speaker 1: We haven't seen lifts numbers, We don't have taxi numbers,
Speaker 1: so so it's I think this is a starting data point.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to track it over time. It's interesting
Speaker 1: about the in the Bloomberg News report, they said here
Speaker 1: about fifty people have died in uber collisions annually for
Speaker 1: the past two years. That's a rate about half the
Speaker 1: national average for automotive automotive fatalities, that's according to the company.
Speaker 1: So that gives that dynamic a little bit of context
Speaker 1: on the sexual assault eric is it. Did they have
Speaker 1: a sense of you know, sexual assault on the part
Speaker 1: of the driver versus on the part of the passenger
Speaker 1: because I've heard, you know, bad stories about both scenarios. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean it's our actually pretty even. I think it's
Speaker 1: you know, slightly slightly more allegations against drivers, but but
Speaker 1: overall it's it's very close to even. So both riders
Speaker 1: and drivers, you know, are getting attacked by the other,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's it's important to realize that. I
Speaker 1: think we talk a lot about rider's safety, but you know,
Speaker 1: drivers are inviting a stranger into their car as well.
Speaker 1: It's an important thing to remember that they need to
Speaker 1: be protected. Also, I'm looking right now, Uber shares down
Speaker 1: two point one percent. Was this a mistake to put out?
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, it's it's tough. I think Uber committed
Speaker 1: themselves to this. You know, they said more than a
Speaker 1: year ago, I think that they were going to do this,
Speaker 1: and then they realized how hard it was, you know,
Speaker 1: and have have really sort of agonized over how to
Speaker 1: disclose the data. So it's you know, we'll see over
Speaker 1: the long term if if you know, they want to
Speaker 1: turn around their reputation, you know, dark Houser show you
Speaker 1: the CEO said, you know, transparency is you know, on
Speaker 1: the path to trust basically, So it's a short term harm,
Speaker 1: but and it draws negative attention to them. But I
Speaker 1: think if they want to really be seen as good actor,
Speaker 1: this is the type of disclosure that they need to
Speaker 1: be making. Eric Newcomer, thank you so much for being
Speaker 1: with us. Eric Newcomer is a startup reporter for Bloomberg
Speaker 1: News talking about this report out of Uber. Thanks for
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Speaker 1: pt Sweeney. I'm Lisa A. Bram Woit's I'm on Twitter
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