Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily reporting from the magazine
Speaker 1: that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies,
Speaker 1: and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus global business, finance
Speaker 1: and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week Daily
Speaker 1: with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, welcome to the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 2: This past week our backdrop on again off again Middle
Speaker 2: East tensions commentary from fedcher J Powell, a NATO ally summit.
Speaker 2: All the details can be found on the Bloomberg and
Speaker 2: of course at Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 3: And so all of this shaping our approach this week,
Speaker 3: a lot of people's moods this week, and really shaping
Speaker 3: our conversations this week, including a conversation that we had
Speaker 3: with Bloomberg's own Joe Wisenthal. You know him, he's the
Speaker 3: co host of the Odd Lots podcast. He stopped by
Speaker 3: to weigh in on the democratic socialist who could be
Speaker 3: the next mayor of New York City.
Speaker 2: Also gene editing Anyone just one of the innovations in
Speaker 2: life science trends capturing the attention of venture capitalist Jenny
Speaker 2: Rook of Genoa Ventures. All of that to come. We
Speaker 2: begin though with that macro view and really all that's
Speaker 2: coming at today's c suite and CEOs, especially when it
Speaker 2: comes to the tensions around the globe.
Speaker 3: From Iran to Ukraine and even in New York City,
Speaker 3: geopolitics is definitely in focus for investors. Kevin Kadjawara is
Speaker 3: managing director and co president at Teneo Intelligence. He joined
Speaker 3: us to break down how Wall Street is dealing with
Speaker 3: what's happening around the world. He also talked about what
Speaker 3: he sees as some of the biggest risks for executives.
Speaker 4: Well, I think you highlighted just the variety of issues
Speaker 4: that are out there, right, and the fact that they
Speaker 4: are all happening at the same time. What's more typical historically,
Speaker 4: right is to have a number of sort of discrete
Speaker 4: events and you can respond to each of them. But
Speaker 4: these now happening with greater frequency. They are happening simultaneously,
Speaker 4: and they are therefore compounding on one another in ways
Speaker 4: that you know, you look at any individual issue and
Speaker 4: you might question why the market reacts in that way,
Speaker 4: but there's really, you know, there's a lot of different
Speaker 4: inputs coming in. So I think that the you know,
Speaker 4: the challenge for say a CEO or frankly an institutional
Speaker 4: investor for that matter, But for a CEO is, you know,
Speaker 4: how do I triage everything that's going on and what
Speaker 4: is actually kind of signal for the business that I'm
Speaker 4: in versus trying to cut through all that noise.
Speaker 2: Well, that's where I want to go, Kevin. Because companies
Speaker 2: are going public, right, IPOs are happening, Companies are doing deals,
Speaker 2: companies are making decisions, they're spending cap X so lo
Speaker 2: what are you hearing from the community about, Like, what
Speaker 2: are the lines to say, all right, I'm ready to
Speaker 2: pull the trigger on spending money or hiring people or
Speaker 2: expanding versus it's just too unclear. I'm out.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the way that they look at it
Speaker 4: is that uncertainty is essentially a tax, or it is
Speaker 4: effectively tested in the sense that it perverts what would
Speaker 4: be otherwise normal economic behavior. Right, So in other words,
Speaker 4: you know, if you were trying to anticipate tariffs, you
Speaker 4: probably tied up capital building inventory that you wouldn't otherwise do,
Speaker 4: or because you have no visibility on what the runway
Speaker 4: is looking like. You're going to hold off on that
Speaker 4: potential m and a transaction or opening that new factory,
Speaker 4: or rejiggering the supply chain in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 4: So I think though, that while there's this realization that
Speaker 4: there's a lot going on, there's a lot of uncertainty. CEOs,
Speaker 4: just like the President himself, always making decisions based on
Speaker 4: imperfect information, and now it's perhaps more imperfect than usual.
Speaker 4: But any moment that you get that clarity and there's
Speaker 4: an opportunity, you know, you and your CFO had better
Speaker 4: be ready to act and be able to commit that capital.
Speaker 3: On the uncertainty tax on the uncertainty side of this,
Speaker 3: there's certainly geopolitical uncertainty, but there's also the uncertainty about
Speaker 3: policies that are coming out of Washington, that are coming
Speaker 3: out of the White House. I seen this sort of
Speaker 3: changing way that companies are speaking or communicating with the President,
Speaker 3: especially companies outside of the United States announcing investments, companies
Speaker 3: in the United States announcing investments in the US. How
Speaker 3: would you say that your clients or you're advising your
Speaker 3: clients to communicate with Washington, to communicate with the president.
Speaker 4: Well, look, I think that there's a The issue is
Speaker 4: that it gets really bespoke or really quickly depending on
Speaker 4: the sensitivity of the industry you're in, depending the country
Speaker 4: that you're you're from, and what the trade relationship is
Speaker 4: or the overall nature of the relationship is. So you
Speaker 4: have to take all of those things, into all of
Speaker 4: those things into consideration. I think that there is a focus,
Speaker 4: you know, perhaps a greater indexation, if you will, on
Speaker 4: things that you know are going to resonate well and
Speaker 4: via avenues that you know will resonate well with this,
Speaker 4: you know, with this administration and with this with this president.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: So for some people that means we've got to go
Speaker 4: to mar A Lago. For some people that means appearing
Speaker 4: on certain news organ news outlets, and and in others
Speaker 4: it means executives.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sure, we saw Jamie Diamond. I think it's fair to
Speaker 3: say Carol communicate that morning on Fox with Maria Bartiromo. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it seemed like he made his message known to
Speaker 3: Washington through that interview.
Speaker 2: So was an audience of one so understanding that going
Speaker 2: on there that President Trump is listening, yes and watching
Speaker 2: absolutely Huh. You know, we've had a lot of conversations here, Like,
Speaker 2: it's just amazing the fear of executives to speak out
Speaker 2: in the United States of America. Tell me, give me
Speaker 2: what what intel? And I understand you can't tell us
Speaker 2: specifics and stuff, but I'm just curious, like, what is
Speaker 2: kind of the psyche of the corporate clients that you're
Speaker 2: dealing with and why there is that fear. Well, I
Speaker 2: think I understand if you example want to be a target,
Speaker 2: But aren't you surprised. I mean, these are leaders that
Speaker 2: are supposed to speak out when things are maybe they
Speaker 2: don't agree with things.
Speaker 4: Well, I think that there are There's again, there's a
Speaker 4: hierarchy of leaders, right. You just mentioned Jamie Diamond, who's
Speaker 4: probably the closest thing we've got to sort of a
Speaker 4: head of state level chief executive in this country and
Speaker 4: perhaps further empower. But that also plays into his own personality.
Speaker 4: He is comfortable in that role in the way that
Speaker 4: not every executive is, I think. But secondly, I think
Speaker 4: this is this has forced executives not necessarily to shrink,
Speaker 4: but to refocus on what's important to them, their industry,
Speaker 4: their company, the stakeholders they have, and to focus in
Speaker 4: on those things rather than feeling like they need to
Speaker 4: you know, they need to weigh in and open on
Speaker 4: every single issue that is out there.
Speaker 2: So do you think that's a good thing.
Speaker 4: Well, I think it's I think it's just the new reality.
Speaker 4: I don't think any of these things are good things
Speaker 4: or bad things.
Speaker 7: It's just the thing.
Speaker 4: This is the this is the environment that we are
Speaker 4: currently in. That environment will change four years from now,
Speaker 4: and they'll shift again.
Speaker 2: Because such a swing. If you think, you go from
Speaker 2: the murder of George Floyd and COVID and executives are
Speaker 2: out talking about everything, and we thought that there was
Speaker 2: this real opening and then it just feels like I
Speaker 2: understand pendulum swing, but it swung another.
Speaker 4: Well, of course, the other thing is is action, right,
Speaker 4: and I think being on the other side of this
Speaker 4: now right where we're looking at, for instance, de E
Speaker 4: and I initiatives right being rolled back in terms of
Speaker 4: how they're promoted and so on and so forth. But
Speaker 4: a lot of executives have bought with their stakeholders and
Speaker 4: their employees and their customer bases. They bought a lot
Speaker 4: of goodwill because of the actions that they have taken
Speaker 4: over the years. And now even if you change the
Speaker 4: website a little bit or something of that nature. But
Speaker 4: you remain committed because you can see the bottom line
Speaker 4: positive impact of these types of policies. You've got a
Speaker 4: lot of good will already built in with your stakeholders.
Speaker 3: So you consider the stakeholders the ones who work for you,
Speaker 3: the employees as a group of stakeholders. You don't necessarily
Speaker 3: talk about out the DEI policies outside of the company
Speaker 3: in the same way, or maybe you don't even talk
Speaker 3: to them about them internally in the same way. But
Speaker 3: perhaps you did see a return on the investment, so
Speaker 3: you keep doing those things and you call them something
Speaker 3: else like what.
Speaker 8: There's elles with it?
Speaker 4: And you know, and and today it was a perfect
Speaker 4: example of the type of company that has a lot
Speaker 4: of people who are devoted towards helping executives, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of thread this needle, so to speak. And some
Speaker 4: need more help than others. And also you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's it's an awareness of who your audience is, who
Speaker 4: your customer base is. Some are going to respond, you know,
Speaker 4: and we all know the companies right where you know, uh,
Speaker 4: we're taking certain taking certain stands has stood them in
Speaker 4: good stead with their audiences, uh and and others who
Speaker 4: have had a more challenging time. So it's you know,
Speaker 4: it's about being smart and surgical about this.
Speaker 2: But you've seen cycles like I think about, you know,
Speaker 2: in this world, and I think about the Great Financial Crisis,
Speaker 2: there's COVID, there's just so much stuff, war overseas, different
Speaker 2: presidents and so on and so forth. How do you
Speaker 2: describe the cycle? And how do you think a lot
Speaker 2: of CEOs And I had to dump everybody in a
Speaker 2: bucket because it's just not the way the world works.
Speaker 2: But I am just curious, you know, historically, business wise, economically,
Speaker 2: the role of the United States in the world, Like, how.
Speaker 4: Do you see that there is something changing right now?
Speaker 4: And this is not just a cycle, This is a
Speaker 4: secular change, right and this is something that can no
Speaker 4: longer be punted.
Speaker 8: Down the road.
Speaker 4: In other words, the decisions that CEOs are making today
Speaker 4: are existential decisions for their companies and whether they are
Speaker 4: going to be you know, nimble enough to be some
Speaker 4: of the you know, some of the winners on the
Speaker 4: other side. Think about it in the context of like
Speaker 4: climate change as an example, right, Remember a few years ago,
Speaker 4: companies managements were you know, making zero carbon commitments in
Speaker 4: the light, but the reality of it was it was
Speaker 4: like a generation or two down the road of management
Speaker 4: that would actually have to implement that was an easy
Speaker 4: commitment to make in a sense, right exactly, but right now,
Speaker 4: like you say, the playing field is actually fundament changing.
Speaker 4: And it is not hyperbolic to say that it's a
Speaker 4: para paradigmatic shift right now. But it is this generation
Speaker 4: of leadership that's having to have the situational awareness and
Speaker 4: kind of realize that even though you've got all these
Speaker 4: balls in the air right now with the just in time,
Speaker 4: you know, just what's happening right now, with trade, with
Speaker 4: the geopolitics, with the fiscal bills, all of that presidential administration.
Speaker 8: Though not at all.
Speaker 2: So you're talking about supply chains, you're talking about what
Speaker 2: a like what is.
Speaker 4: Say we think of as the international rules based order,
Speaker 4: right which is a system that has that that laid
Speaker 4: the groundwork for the multinational corporation to be the single
Speaker 4: most important economic actor. If that is evolving, if the
Speaker 4: role of the US is evolving, is it axiomatic that
Speaker 4: those same economic actors are going to be the big
Speaker 4: winners in the next or do you have to be
Speaker 4: nimble enough to be thinking ahead of how this is,
Speaker 4: how this might change. I mean, we're this interim period.
Speaker 4: I don't know if it's going to be.
Speaker 7: Long or short.
Speaker 4: We don't know exactly what it's going to look like
Speaker 4: on the other side. But you know, those who are aware,
Speaker 4: it's like Eisenhower said, right, the plan is worthless one
Speaker 4: of the first bullet flies.
Speaker 8: But planning is everything, right.
Speaker 3: So interesting putting you on the spot. Is this a
Speaker 3: positive development in the work that you do well?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think so in the sense that it
Speaker 4: is inevitable that you know, over time, strategic decisions have
Speaker 4: been made predicated on a certain perspective on what the
Speaker 4: global operating environment is going to look like, and then
Speaker 4: all your other decisions stem from that, the.
Speaker 3: Global operating environment being a world of liberal democracies.
Speaker 4: But not just that, this ability to have to take
Speaker 4: advantage of the free flow of labor, free flow of capital,
Speaker 4: you know, a just in time global supply chain system,
Speaker 4: opening of markets, all all of that, right, the sort
Speaker 4: of the key variables of globalization. Right, that's shifting. Right,
Speaker 4: If that's shifting, you've got to start scenario planning for
Speaker 4: how that might impact your business.
Speaker 2: Twenty five second. It's a question, Tim and I like
Speaker 2: to ask a lot of folks who come on here,
Speaker 2: because in January we thought about American exceptionalism. A lot
Speaker 2: is that going away? And forgive me only about twenty
Speaker 2: five seconds.
Speaker 4: Look, the United States has certain built in advantages scale
Speaker 4: the English language, the doll or a a A an
Speaker 4: economic ecosystem and financing ecosystem that finds phenomenal ideas and
Speaker 4: can bring them to market, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4: Nobody else has got that still, even with all the
Speaker 4: challenges we've got.
Speaker 3: That was Kevin Kajawara, Managing director and co president at
Speaker 3: to Neo Intelligence.
Speaker 2: Coming up on Bloomberg Business Week, Joe Wisenthal of Odd
Speaker 2: Lots on how some on Wall Street are decrying a
Speaker 2: hot commy summer.
Speaker 9: That's next. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: So Roun Mom. Donnie is poised to become the Democratic
Speaker 2: nominee for mayor of New York City after the thirty
Speaker 2: three year old Democrats socialist forced his opponent Andrew Cuomo,
Speaker 2: the former governor of New York State to concede within
Speaker 2: hours after polls closed. Mam Donnie spoke to supporters after
Speaker 2: Cuomo's concession.
Speaker 6: We have won because New Yorkers have stood up for
Speaker 6: a city they can afford, a city where they can
Speaker 6: do more than just struggle, one where those who toil
Speaker 6: in the night can enjoy the fruits of their labor
Speaker 6: in the day.
Speaker 3: Mam Donnie exceeded more than sixty percent of the vote
Speaker 3: in vast swaths of the city, building a multi ethnic
Speaker 3: coalition across Brownstone, Brooklyn, working class queens, and Upper Manhattan.
Speaker 3: We got with us Joe Wisenthal. He's the co host
Speaker 3: of the Adlats podcast. He had zorroon Mamdami on the
Speaker 3: show just pretty much exactly a month ago. Before we
Speaker 3: get going, I do want to point out that Michael Bloomberg,
Speaker 3: the founder of a Bloomberg LP, the parent company of
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Radio, did endorse Governor Cuomo in the election. It
Speaker 3: was a forty five minute conversation that you and Tracy
Speaker 3: had yeah with Momdanie on odd Lots. He gave you
Speaker 3: a socialist vision for New York. What did you take
Speaker 3: away as his vision?
Speaker 7: I would say two things.
Speaker 10: Obviously probably the most provocative of his ideas that's causing
Speaker 10: a lot of anxiety even in the stock market. Like
Speaker 10: if you look at real estate, some of the rent
Speaker 10: freeze stuff, which for obvious like economists hate that kind
Speaker 10: of thing. They think it's you know, various forms of
Speaker 10: rent control is a terrible idea. We understand why investors
Speaker 10: in real estate don't like it either. On the other hand,
Speaker 10: and so we talked about that. But on the other hand,
Speaker 10: my main takeaway from that interview is like, yes, like
Speaker 10: if you're a young democratic socialist, of course you're going
Speaker 10: to be really excited about the Mamdannie candidacy. But he
Speaker 10: comes off in a way that if you're sort of
Speaker 10: like a I would say, like normy center left democratic
Speaker 10: liberal or something, and you're sort of the typical person
Speaker 10: who works in an office in New York City, like
Speaker 10: he is really good and really talented at not seeming
Speaker 10: like someone who will be a threat to And I
Speaker 10: think that when you look at the results, that's like,
Speaker 10: to my mind, like the really striking part is that
Speaker 10: how broad that coalition was, et cetera. Because we know
Speaker 10: that there are parts of the city that have trended
Speaker 10: that way for a while. Obviously, aoc IS victory in
Speaker 10: twenty eighteen that was a stunner, but that was Niche.
Speaker 10: You know, this was the entire city, right, this was
Speaker 10: this was kind of everyone across, you know, huge swats,
Speaker 10: much bigger numbers. He did well in sort of the
Speaker 10: you know, white educated areas, but also he did well
Speaker 10: in more non white areas that had trended more towards
Speaker 10: Trump and the most recent election. So he clearly did
Speaker 10: a really good job of sort of overcoming the fact
Speaker 10: that many people would say he is pretty radical politics,
Speaker 10: and he's like, well, actually he can sort of like
Speaker 10: talk very fluently about policy. He comes off as a
Speaker 10: very thoughtful guy, and he really I think ended up
Speaker 10: like disarming a lot of the critics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's also tacked off a lot of billionaires and
Speaker 2: is a great story that's among the most red on
Speaker 2: the blue that talks about Wall Street to crying the
Speaker 2: hot commy summer. Yeah, Dan Low, hedge fund billionaire. It's
Speaker 2: officially a hot coming summer and there's a.
Speaker 7: Short but you know what I mean.
Speaker 10: On the other hand, if I were running for mayor
Speaker 10: and the thing is like, oh, he's upset a lot
Speaker 10: of billionaires.
Speaker 7: It's like, bring it on.
Speaker 10: Right, like, you know, seriously, like if if you're gonna say, oh,
Speaker 10: he's really ticked off a lot of billionaires, that's like
Speaker 10: about as good of And that's one of the probably
Speaker 10: the best things you could say.
Speaker 7: Most people aren't billionaires.
Speaker 1: So is he?
Speaker 2: You know, there's another one, a New York power broker,
Speaker 2: Kathy Wild and she's connected business titans across all different
Speaker 2: industries in New York City and saying that he terrifies
Speaker 2: tax payers and employers. I mean, are employers going to
Speaker 2: be running from Florida? The rest of the final is
Speaker 2: the rest of Wall Street can to Florida.
Speaker 10: Here's my thoughts on this, And maybe I'm like a
Speaker 10: little biased, but this is my take, and maybe I'll
Speaker 10: end up being totally wrong. New York City is the
Speaker 10: best city in the world. We all everybody noticed that,
Speaker 10: even during COVID or aftermath of people like New York
Speaker 10: City is dead.
Speaker 7: They're like, Oh, We're going to go to Miami. Want
Speaker 7: to really moved to Miami.
Speaker 10: They like went there for like the minimum amount of
Speaker 10: time they could to maybe change tax satus and a
Speaker 10: bunch of people.
Speaker 7: Came back, you know, going to Miami now.
Speaker 10: On the other so it's like, if you're good, like,
Speaker 10: there are really gonna be that many people like, Oh,
Speaker 10: I'm upset about the mayor, i'mset about taxes.
Speaker 7: I mean move.
Speaker 10: But if the quality of life in the city degrades,
Speaker 10: if people perceive, oh, the public transit is not running
Speaker 10: as well, it's not as clean, it's there's more crime
Speaker 10: in the city, the schools aren't as good, then of
Speaker 10: course you're gonna have people leaving. So my gut would
Speaker 10: be and again maybe this is just my sort of
Speaker 10: pro New York bias, My gut is that very few
Speaker 10: people are gonna leave because they're upset about the mayor.
Speaker 10: Per se, this is where all the action is. If
Speaker 10: you want to talk to someone interesting probing.
Speaker 2: At the first mayor that people have been upset about
Speaker 2: it either.
Speaker 10: Was upset about the they're gonna be upset about so like,
Speaker 10: I don't think that is. On the other hand, if
Speaker 10: he can't implement a vision of a you know, he
Speaker 10: says it's gonna make this city more affordable, people expect
Speaker 10: the quality of services to be good. People expect transit
Speaker 10: to be good. If you can't deliver on that right,
Speaker 10: then I would expect that, yeah, at the margins, more
Speaker 10: people leave because the city is less appealing. But if
Speaker 10: the quality of life in New York City is roughly
Speaker 10: sustained or maybe hopefully improves, then I don't think you're
Speaker 10: going to have like some mess exitus.
Speaker 7: Just like on principle, it's still New York City.
Speaker 3: Well, just a couple of weeks before he was on
Speaker 3: Odd Lots, he was on Surveillance, I was filling in
Speaker 3: for Paul Sweeney. Then with Tom Keene, I asked Juan
Speaker 3: Mundani about the label of democratic socialist. Check out what
Speaker 3: he had to say.
Speaker 11: I embraced the label because ultimately I do identify myself
Speaker 11: as a democratic socialist, and I think, you know, I
Speaker 11: think that the thing that New Yorkers hate more than
Speaker 11: a politician they disagree with is one that they cannot trust.
Speaker 11: And I think it's important to be honest about how
Speaker 11: we're coming to this politics and also what that label
Speaker 11: means to me, which is ultimately that each and every
Speaker 11: New Yorker has what they need to live a dignified
Speaker 11: life and that it's city government's responsibility to provide that.
Speaker 11: And I think we have a general consensus on many
Speaker 11: of those building blocks in our society, whether it's public
Speaker 11: like education or libraries or sanitation. But then there are
Speaker 11: certain places where we tend to believe that these are
Speaker 11: necessary parts of living a dignified life, and yet we
Speaker 11: allow people to be priced out of it. And I
Speaker 11: think housing is one of the most obvious examples of that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So that was our interview with Zoron Mundani back
Speaker 3: on May sixth. The is on Bloomberg Surveillance. The housing
Speaker 3: part is something I wanted to hit with you because
Speaker 3: there's this idea of rent freezes, which he ran on
Speaker 3: and talked a lot about. But if you think about
Speaker 3: this from a supply and demand perspective, how do you
Speaker 3: get people to build more housing, which is what the
Speaker 3: city needs if you don't provide the incentive that people
Speaker 3: are going to pay for it. And if you say, okay, well,
Speaker 3: if we're going to build affordable housing, we can't raise
Speaker 3: the rent on.
Speaker 7: It, well I would say a few things.
Speaker 10: So one is he's not completely doctor naire about how
Speaker 10: it all has to be rent regulated housing, and in
Speaker 10: various interviews he has talked about there is a role
Speaker 10: for market rate development. He's talked about up zoning all
Speaker 10: of the things that wonks like the abundance.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and he's like talking so he's not.
Speaker 10: So it's not like a particularly start radical vision on housing.
Speaker 7: He's talked about market rate housing. The other thing.
Speaker 10: I know this in that video, you know, he's wearing
Speaker 10: a suit, he's smiling, he's really and then you say
Speaker 10: they saying he's like dignified life, et cetera. Like that
Speaker 10: you just see in that clip. Watching it just now,
Speaker 10: why someone want to see that, It's like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 10: I think that makes sense. I mean, look, there's a
Speaker 10: lot of people in the here, like socialists, et cetera.
Speaker 10: And I get, like, you know, people find that to
Speaker 10: be very provocative or scary or radical or whatever. But
Speaker 10: it did not come off as a radical in that clip, right,
Speaker 10: he grew up comes off as like a pretty serious,
Speaker 10: likable politician. And I think what he said too about
Speaker 10: like sort of being genuine. It's like the fact that
Speaker 10: he didn't run away from his past. That he didn't
Speaker 10: run I do think that is a pretty big deal
Speaker 10: these days, and that in an ear of social media,
Speaker 10: et cetera, people could sort of sniff out of fraud
Speaker 10: or sniff out of phony or whatever. And he certainly
Speaker 10: doesn't come off as one. And you probably made trade
Speaker 10: offs and he probably said, you know, there are certain
Speaker 10: things that maybe aren't just appealing to somebody, didn't run
Speaker 10: away from them. And I think it helped put together
Speaker 10: a package of like okay, like maybe I don't agree
Speaker 10: with him on X or Y, but he seems like
Speaker 10: a legitimate, serious guy.
Speaker 2: I mean, how much can he you know, actually change.
Speaker 2: And we've had some conversations about you know, really everything's
Speaker 2: decided out of Albany in many ways in that what
Speaker 2: a mayor in New York City amazing, this you know,
Speaker 2: massive city, and how important it is really to kind
Speaker 2: of the overall US economy. Right, it's a big one
Speaker 2: that there's just so much that they can actually get done.
Speaker 10: So this is where I think a lot of the
Speaker 10: success I mean, look, the general hasn't happened, but he
Speaker 10: is the favorite in the general election. So if he
Speaker 10: becomes the mayor, I think a lot of the success
Speaker 10: or failure is just going to come down to the
Speaker 10: sort of nuts and bolts management side of it. And
Speaker 10: so you know, it's like what happens to the trash,
Speaker 10: what happens to the war on rats which the current
Speaker 10: mayor mayor was just like really taken seriously the war
Speaker 10: on rats and you talked about that rats are yeah,
Speaker 10: and he's like made this a big deal And my
Speaker 10: understanding is actually progress the wonder Yeah, and so like
Speaker 10: setting us a lot of the questions of this administration again,
Speaker 10: assume if he wins, are going to be like, okay,
Speaker 10: setting aside his sort of loyalty to d you say
Speaker 10: people and so far, like, is this an administration of
Speaker 10: competent managers who could do the day to day basis?
Speaker 10: And I think one of the things he said when
Speaker 10: we interviewed him is like that he would make a
Speaker 10: point of that and a sort of diversity of viewpoints
Speaker 10: within the administration that might be the test even more
Speaker 10: than some.
Speaker 7: Of the housing company.
Speaker 2: Does he hate rich people?
Speaker 7: I should have I didn't ask him that. I don't know.
Speaker 7: I mean, I don't like it doesn't come off like that.
Speaker 2: He doesn't. That was a nice suit.
Speaker 7: I think he's rich.
Speaker 10: His mother is like a massively successful filmmaker, and he
Speaker 10: went to Bowden, so I'm sure he's doing fine.
Speaker 3: As a Colby college graduate. You know Boden's a big rival,
Speaker 3: so I let that one slide before.
Speaker 2: Like a private school, that's what we're at, right.
Speaker 3: I do want to get your take ry briefly thirty
Speaker 3: seconds on the grocery stores. You asked him about this
Speaker 3: because you guys did a whole episode about how York
Speaker 3: gets his groceries thin margins. When it comes to grocery stores,
Speaker 3: how do they get any more efficient?
Speaker 6: You know what?
Speaker 10: I will say, Of all the different things he's talking about,
Speaker 10: I get the impression this is the one he's least
Speaker 10: attached to.
Speaker 3: And you actually said, like, look, we're talking about city
Speaker 3: run grocery.
Speaker 10: So he is this idea of three or four pilot
Speaker 10: publicly run grocery stores and food deserts area. I don't
Speaker 10: get the impression that he's really attached to this idea.
Speaker 7: If it doesn't move the dial.
Speaker 10: I don't think he wants some sort of like city
Speaker 10: wide you know, Bolshevik breadline type thing. I think he
Speaker 10: wants to do a trial that are sort of like
Speaker 10: they see if there's some way to move the dial
Speaker 10: on costs or just availability in certain neighborhoods. But I
Speaker 10: also got the impression if it doesn't work. I don't
Speaker 10: he doesn't seem to ada.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine what Brownstone Brooklyn would have thought of
Speaker 3: closing Union Market and replacing it with a.
Speaker 10: Jose and Oldies, which everyone likes are pretty close to
Speaker 10: those Soviet grocery stores.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Oh.
Speaker 3: Joe, that was Joe Wisenthal, co host of the Odd
Speaker 3: Lots podcast. He's not a shoe in by any means.
Speaker 2: No, He's not right. This is a process, right, And
Speaker 2: there's also it feels like the field of independence could
Speaker 2: grow too, so there might be more folks on the
Speaker 2: ballot ultimately to vote on.
Speaker 3: I think one part of the conversation also that we've
Speaker 3: talked about over the last couple of weeks and really
Speaker 3: this week has been how much power does this next
Speaker 3: mayor actually have? This mayor will have to work with
Speaker 3: Albany and work with the city Council in order to
Speaker 3: implement whatever he or she would like to put into practice.
Speaker 2: I think that's a huge point. I think it's something
Speaker 2: that when you and I first heard it, we were like, what,
Speaker 2: I had no idea. You just think of New York
Speaker 2: City as being so independent, the mayor of being kind
Speaker 2: of having a lot of power to determine you know,
Speaker 2: a lot of initiatives in a really big city in
Speaker 2: the United States. So it's fascinating to see that a
Speaker 2: mayor can come in have some plans, have some goals,
Speaker 2: have a mission, and yet it's ultimately up to what's
Speaker 2: going on in upstate Alwinny about what gets done.
Speaker 3: And just remember the campaign season is just starting now
Speaker 3: in earnest because the general election is still coming up.
Speaker 3: So expect more campaigning from candidates.
Speaker 2: You expect more calls and knocks on the.
Speaker 9: Door, big round game.
Speaker 2: Look, you've been complaining about it all week. Next message
Speaker 2: showing me from the doorbell camera. Look who's at the door.
Speaker 9: The door knockers in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: Let's just say that I live in New Jersey. I
Speaker 2: feel blaster at this monk.
Speaker 9: Well, let's talk about New Jersey politics.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe in a week or so. Still ahead on
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business Week, where one venture capitalist is finding opportunity
Speaker 2: at the intersection of biology and technology.
Speaker 3: The founder of Geno Adventures.
Speaker 9: Jenny Rook, is up next. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenovek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Big news earlier this month. In the world of cardiology,
Speaker 2: millions more Americans should be taking weight loss drugs to
Speaker 2: prevent heart disease. That's according to the American College of Cardiology.
Speaker 3: Exercise in a clean dyah and aren't always enough for
Speaker 3: heart health, the nation's top cardiology organization said in new
Speaker 3: recommendations released in June, weight loss drugs should be used earlier,
Speaker 3: the group said, making them part of the first line
Speaker 3: of defense for obese patients.
Speaker 2: Jenny Rook looks at a lot of this stuff things
Speaker 2: like this too, but kind of under a bigger lens.
Speaker 2: She's the founder managing director of Genoa Ventures. It's a
Speaker 2: VC firm that invests in, as she says, quote, the
Speaker 2: next generation of companies at the convergence of technology and biology.
Speaker 2: It does feel like we're on the cusp of something.
Speaker 2: She is invested in such companies as Interven, Bright, Speck,
Speaker 2: and many many more. Some notable exits include It's emergen
Speaker 2: cymergen zeimergen Enjoy, didn't say it right at Heriboo, and topazm.
Speaker 6: More.
Speaker 2: She joins us here in our Bloomberg Interrector Broker studio,
Speaker 2: I'm never good at getting some of the names. Why
Speaker 2: do they make it so difficult, well to keep out
Speaker 2: the RIFRAF.
Speaker 7: No, there's a.
Speaker 2: Process right of how they named some of these things.
Speaker 12: There is, but often it comes from the inspiration of
Speaker 12: the technical founders and they might not be thinking about
Speaker 12: the breast of the world and how to communicate that science.
Speaker 12: So that's also something we help them with.
Speaker 2: You come by periodically and we talk about kind of
Speaker 2: big broad macro. But we are curious too about some
Speaker 2: of the things. I think when we last left off,
Speaker 2: we didn't get a chance to really talk about some
Speaker 2: of the things that you are excited about right now
Speaker 2: that you think are just interesting in your space, that
Speaker 2: you're investing in.
Speaker 12: Take us there, Oh, I'd love to. It seems like
Speaker 12: a great way to end the week too. I know
Speaker 12: it's been a long one and let's have our eye
Speaker 12: on the horizon. Have some exciting things. So you mentioned Caribou.
Speaker 12: You know that was a Nobel Prize winner, Jennifer Downa's
Speaker 12: first gene editing company based on her Crisper Cass innovation.
Speaker 12: It's a new world post Crisper, and an evidence of
Speaker 12: that is just last month we had our first in
Speaker 12: vivo editing of a human to fix a genetic disease,
Speaker 12: and that is incredible, the first time that's ever happened
Speaker 12: where the treatment can go into the living body and
Speaker 12: address a problem with a gene and that infant in
Speaker 12: this case is now cured of that genetic disease.
Speaker 2: Is it help me understand? Is it just what's involved
Speaker 2: in that identifying the gene and then surgically going in
Speaker 2: and removing the.
Speaker 12: Gene surgically but with molecular So it's like the crisp
Speaker 12: or scissors go in at the molecul level. But you're
Speaker 12: right to ask about the process because the whole process
Speaker 12: and end took six months, which is extraordinary for this
Speaker 12: one person.
Speaker 2: It's molecular base.
Speaker 12: Because it's molecular and so they sequence the person's entire genome,
Speaker 12: They identified what the error was that was the basis
Speaker 12: of the disease, and then they were able to design
Speaker 12: DNA to go in and replace that basically cut and
Speaker 12: paste and replace it with a function in gene.
Speaker 3: One thing that came up during our conversation with Jennifer
Speaker 3: Dudna is the decline and excite meant for this technology
Speaker 3: that we're seeing from venture capitalists right now. So VC
Speaker 3: money raised for gene therapy companies peaked in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: that was three point three billion dollars. Then it's been
Speaker 3: moving lower since just a few hundred million dollars last year.
Speaker 3: This is according to data from deal FORMA.
Speaker 9: What's going on?
Speaker 12: Yeah, well, I think VC money in just about every
Speaker 12: category has gone down twenty twenty except AI. Right, So
Speaker 12: we never learned hype cycles, right, So there is there
Speaker 12: has been a correction and a really retraction for I
Speaker 12: would say risk capital and long term capital, and some
Speaker 12: of that is I think it's important to take stock
Speaker 12: of the moment that this big milestone happened. So twenty
Speaker 12: twenty five, that's twenty five years after the human genome
Speaker 12: was sequenced. So if you think about the hype cycle,
Speaker 12: then there was oh, perhaps all genetic diseases will be cured.
Speaker 12: Well maybe one day, but it does take time.
Speaker 3: And so I think that was the hype cycle in
Speaker 3: two thousand, two thousands. Okay, So then now in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five, what's the hype cycle related to this? Now
Speaker 3: that we saw this baby experience this gene editing.
Speaker 12: Well, what I say, I would say is now delivering
Speaker 12: on that propose, but it is a reminder that investors
Speaker 12: need to inform themselves about the challenges between the promise
Speaker 12: and the potential and the actual reality of delivering.
Speaker 2: On Well, like, what did it cost?
Speaker 12: It was expensive, It's expensive.
Speaker 3: I read some I read some commentary on it that
Speaker 3: we shouldn't extrapolate too much from this because this was
Speaker 3: There was a few there were a few unique elements here.
Speaker 3: One is that the alternative if this didn't work, was
Speaker 3: a really bad shortened life for the baby. So the
Speaker 3: downside potential downside. So the risks of this outweigh the
Speaker 3: benefits risk because the risk the downside was basically death.
Speaker 11: Correct.
Speaker 12: Yeah, And so it's a It's a doesn't apply necessarily
Speaker 12: immediately to all things that we might want to do
Speaker 12: for our genomes right and health overall. But it's a start, right.
Speaker 12: It's a great place to start in terms of that
Speaker 12: risk reward. And just like any innovation in these technologically
Speaker 12: driven spaces, the cost comes down over time, so starts
Speaker 12: expensive and then we keep moving. What's interesting about this
Speaker 12: time though, it is an end of one, but the
Speaker 12: approach was quite modular. It's the whole genome. Find the
Speaker 12: error designed a sequence that goes in deliver and all
Speaker 12: of those modules can be reused.
Speaker 3: So is this already being done to other babies?
Speaker 8: Do we know?
Speaker 12: I know that there are some in research.
Speaker 3: And what about two adults.
Speaker 5: I think that's.
Speaker 12: Probably a slightly longer timeline. And this is gene therapy
Speaker 12: is not my particular expertise, although I have a geneticist
Speaker 12: by training, so I think the timeline for that is
Speaker 12: really going to depend on some of these other questions
Speaker 12: you're asking how much does it cost and how does
Speaker 12: the risk reward play out?
Speaker 2: I do think about though, like for the application of
Speaker 2: something like cancer, Alzheimer's, so many things like it just depends, right,
Speaker 2: and this is not something that's going to happen overnight.
Speaker 2: I'm excited about it, that whole idea of genetics, because
Speaker 2: I do feel like as much as we know about
Speaker 2: the body, there's so much we and the use of
Speaker 2: using the body, yes to fix things?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 2: Is that something that excites you?
Speaker 12: Can I give you a new example?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 12: Have you heard of exosomes?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 12: Okay, exosm So you know about.
Speaker 2: Cells, right?
Speaker 12: Cells are kind of like bubbles. They're the components of
Speaker 12: the body that can they contain our DNA and the proteins,
Speaker 12: everything THATLSE.
Speaker 2: Is going on.
Speaker 12: Exosomes are little tiny bubbles that bubble off of the bubbles,
Speaker 12: little blebs, right, and best we know, they are a
Speaker 12: communication mechanism between all those cells. So they come off
Speaker 12: of a cell and they have little packets of information.
Speaker 12: They have some of the proteins, they have some of
Speaker 12: the RNA. There are thirty trillion cells in a human body.
Speaker 12: There are three thousand trillion cells exosomes in a body,
Speaker 12: so there's one hundred times two orders of magnitude more
Speaker 12: of these little vesicles moving around. Kind of information, so
Speaker 12: much information, and we're just now figuring out what they
Speaker 12: are and what they're talking about.
Speaker 3: We've spoken to you twice this year, and I think
Speaker 3: both times was after major cuts were announced to American
Speaker 3: universities into research.
Speaker 7: You were to bring us back to earth here, that's
Speaker 7: what I want to.
Speaker 3: Do, because at the time you were very concerned about
Speaker 3: what this would do to the pipeline of innovation.
Speaker 2: Feeling optimistic, I know, but.
Speaker 3: Because what we're seeing, well, we are seeing our anecdotal stories.
Speaker 3: I've seen some headlines of people's therapies like stuck in
Speaker 3: the freezer in some cases and they can't access that
Speaker 3: because of cuts that we've seen. Are you any more
Speaker 3: optimistic now?
Speaker 12: I think we talked last time. I'm long term optimistic, right.
Speaker 12: These are long term plays that we will continue to
Speaker 12: have innovation, we will continue to have an impact, but
Speaker 12: we are still on a trajectory where significant retraction and
Speaker 12: funding for these kinds of innovations will mean the pace
Speaker 12: thereof and they're to have impact on people's lives will
Speaker 12: be delayed.
Speaker 2: Because so much of initial ideas comes out of academia,
Speaker 2: so and so forth.
Speaker 12: That's right, that's where where the basic research happens, where
Speaker 12: someone like doctor Danna, who's curious, says, well, what if
Speaker 12: we try and you don't know whether it's going to work?
Speaker 2: Are you looking increasingly at or potentially thinking that you're
Speaker 2: going to be looking at firms that are started in
Speaker 2: other countries because that's where the researchers have gone. Is
Speaker 2: that starting to happen?
Speaker 12: We have always looked over globally and because we're always
Speaker 12: looking for the best idea, you know.
Speaker 2: What I mean, like is it going to be less
Speaker 2: us or no? Do you think that? Which is so
Speaker 2: part of I feel like the US innovation or innovative fabric.
Speaker 12: Yeah, what I am seeing immediately is a shift of
Speaker 12: early stage risk capital to focus more on startups outside
Speaker 12: of the US, which we've never seen before. We've actually
Speaker 12: seen some of the firms kind of in our network
Speaker 12: say we were looking at that company in the US,
Speaker 12: but there's so much uncertainty now we think we'll perhaps
Speaker 12: focus closer to home.
Speaker 3: What is close Look, it depends on who you're talking to,
Speaker 3: but there's no startup ecosystem like the US startup ecosystem.
Speaker 3: I think that's fair to say. If you think regionally
Speaker 3: or geographically, what should investors be looking at outside of
Speaker 3: the US.
Speaker 12: Well, there's extraordinary innovation happening all over the world, but
Speaker 12: a lot of interesting work in the UK and Europe broadly,
Speaker 12: where there's wonderful basic research happening, and because there's better
Speaker 12: information transfer and tool transfer now globally, those same startups
Speaker 12: can kind of get things going.
Speaker 3: What about China?
Speaker 12: China is a little more opaque to us, right, but
Speaker 12: there's certainly again extraordinary innovation happening there and a lot
Speaker 12: of I would say government support for translating it.
Speaker 2: Do people think of the shifts at R and D
Speaker 2: as just an administration one administration thing?
Speaker 12: Is it just an administration thing? It's certainly is heavily
Speaker 12: weighted by Yeah, that some of those choices in funding availability,
Speaker 12: in the certainty thereof, and also the regulatory landscape.
Speaker 2: Okay, so I guess my question is are they thinking
Speaker 2: that after President Trump finishes up his second term, could
Speaker 2: it possibly the pendulum swing back to the way it
Speaker 2: was and just got about thirty seconds.
Speaker 12: Sure, hopefully we will see over time, you know, increased
Speaker 12: support for this kind of innovation because it is so important.
Speaker 12: But some pruning is irreversible. If you're a gardener and
Speaker 12: you overprune a tree, it just never quite recovers, will
Speaker 12: never be the same.
Speaker 3: That's general adventures. Jenny Rook Carol. One thing that we
Speaker 3: talked about with Jenny, not just this time, but the
Speaker 3: last time she was on with us was the promise
Speaker 3: of gene editing technology, so called crisper technology. And then
Speaker 3: after our conversation with her, we saw a story about
Speaker 3: super Baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I kind of love it. It's a story specifically
Speaker 2: about Bootstrap Bio. It's a California startup. It's working on
Speaker 2: technology to genetically edit human embryos, and the goal, I
Speaker 2: think it's safe to say initially and mainly is to
Speaker 2: eliminate inherited diseases, but it's also about enhancing desirable traits.
Speaker 2: And this is against a backdrop of a lot of
Speaker 2: concerns out there from scientists and ethicists about the technology,
Speaker 2: safety and potential consequences. We've talked about these designer babies,
Speaker 2: like do you know, kind of figure out what you
Speaker 2: want your kid to be and edit out things you
Speaker 2: don't like, and so that is terrifying to a lot
Speaker 2: of folks.
Speaker 3: Even though the promise of removing some of these inherited
Speaker 3: diseases that sounds pretty great. Experts do warn that germline
Speaker 3: editing is unproven and potentially dangerous, and it could have
Speaker 3: consequences if a flaw is introduced to an embryo, with
Speaker 3: some calling for a ten year moratorium on the practice.
Speaker 2: What I would point out is that even laboratory work
Speaker 2: on germline editing highly highly regulated in the United States.
Speaker 2: So researchers continue to make progress, but it's not ready
Speaker 2: for prime time according to those who are in the field,
Speaker 2: and so I would assume regulators are going to get
Speaker 2: pretty involved in this they have to. And that wraps
Speaker 2: up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Coming up in the next
Speaker 2: sixty minutes, Tesla, Uber Weymot. Driverless cars are seemingly everywhere
Speaker 2: and I can't wait.
Speaker 9: You sure, I've.
Speaker 2: Read some stories in my opinion only this is not
Speaker 2: anybody else.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 3: I've gotten a little bit of pushback in recent days, Okay,
Speaker 3: and been I've seen some lawsuits that have been fouled. Anyway,
Speaker 3: Plus the next Reality TV President and Forage Brewing. Yes,
Speaker 3: it is a thing our pursuits team taps into making
Speaker 3: beer with ingredients found in the wild.
Speaker 2: Yep. Everything from roots, fruits, vines, and even tree bark yep,
Speaker 2: it can go in a beer. This is Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 3: I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stinavek.
Speaker 9: Stay with us.
Speaker 3: Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week, daily reporting from the magazine
Speaker 1: that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies,
Speaker 1: and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance
Speaker 1: and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week Daily
Speaker 1: with Carol Masser and Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Plenty Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg Business Week, including investors have revd up shares
Speaker 2: of Uber in part because of its partnerships with Weimo.
Speaker 2: We're going to take a deep dive into the world
Speaker 2: of driverless cars.
Speaker 3: Plus, do not compare him to that other reality star
Speaker 3: who made his way to the White House. I mean,
Speaker 3: is he even interested in going to DC? Our Business
Speaker 3: Week team talks to Mark Cuban.
Speaker 2: And the top shelf special everything from beer in our
Speaker 2: backyards to American sake. Having a moment that's from our
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Pursuits team.
Speaker 3: First up this hour, we got news this week that
Speaker 3: Uber will begin offering its customers driverless Weimo rides in Atlanta,
Speaker 3: making it the second market after Austin where the two
Speaker 3: companies are teaming up instead of competing against each other.
Speaker 2: We've got the perfect duo to talk about all this.
Speaker 2: Max Chaptain is Bloomberg Business be Communist co host of
Speaker 2: the elon Ing podcast. Craig Trudell is Bloomberg News Global
Speaker 2: Autos Editor and the editor of the Hyperdrive newsletter. Max
Speaker 2: right here in our Bloomberg Interactor Broker studio, Craig out
Speaker 2: there in London, Craig, let's start with you, all right,
Speaker 2: So there's a lot going on in this sector. What
Speaker 2: do we know about how things have been going down
Speaker 2: in Atlanta in Austin, like, how it's all progressing and
Speaker 2: full disclosure, Tim and I both have done waimos on
Speaker 2: the West Coast. I've also done them in Arizona and
Speaker 2: we kind of love them. So how's it all going down?
Speaker 2: Because all of a sudden it feels like everybody's all
Speaker 2: in on these driverless cars.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I have to say, I mean, just to start,
Speaker 13: you know, your experience of Waymo's, you know, being sort
Speaker 13: of surprised and delighted from the sounds of it, is
Speaker 13: consistent with it. You know, basically everything I hear at
Speaker 13: this point. You occasionally do hear people sort of to
Speaker 13: the extent that they denigrate you know, Waymos at all.
Speaker 13: It's just oh gosh, you know, I would be too
Speaker 13: scared to get into one of those. But you know,
Speaker 13: almost universally when you talk with people who experience it,
Speaker 13: you know, they get a kick out of it. You
Speaker 13: don't see you know, a ton of of sort of
Speaker 13: negative takes on sort of how they performed.
Speaker 7: They've held up quite well.
Speaker 13: The company has been forthcoming about its safety record and
Speaker 13: is pretty transparent about if and when it does have issues.
Speaker 13: I think things are sort of night and day in
Speaker 13: terms of how, you know, the company has approached things
Speaker 13: with with you know, in comparison to Tesla where you
Speaker 13: have Musk you know, for years sort of hyping up
Speaker 13: what is driver assistance you know, software that that he
Speaker 13: offers as something more than that and calling it full
Speaker 13: self driving, you know, not delivering it and until you know,
Speaker 13: this past weekend and once he has taken people out
Speaker 13: from behind the wheel, you know, on day one, we
Speaker 13: see these incidents that are that are pretty troubling and
Speaker 13: getting the attention of of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're going to talk more about those in a second.
Speaker 3: I want to bring in Max Chafkin, who's been following
Speaker 3: the industry closely. In Max, you've been when we've spoken
Speaker 3: to you in the past about the driver list car
Speaker 3: technology specifically weimo you've been you've been a little skeptical
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 5: I think everything Craig is saying everything you're saying is true.
Speaker 5: The questions around Weaimo are business questions. Essentially, is this
Speaker 5: more than a very very expensive, money losing attraction for
Speaker 5: tourists in a handful of cities, which it definitely is
Speaker 5: compelling in that sense, there are questions and these are
Speaker 5: questions that you know, even Weimo has acknowledged like they
Speaker 5: need to figure out they need to turn this into
Speaker 5: a money making business. They feel like they've gotten the
Speaker 5: technology to a point that's pretty pretty good, and now
Speaker 5: they're working on the business stuff and this Uber deal,
Speaker 5: of course, is part of that. That's part of why
Speaker 5: you're seeing the stock go up, and then you know,
Speaker 5: when you compare it to Tesla, the Uber stock go
Speaker 5: up compared to Tesla, Tesla is I think technically like
Speaker 5: a good way to think about this is they are
Speaker 5: years behind where Weimo is. Like Weaimo was doing some
Speaker 5: of the stuff that Tesla is doing, you know, years ago,
Speaker 5: like five years ago. There are ways in which Tesla, yes,
Speaker 5: is is impressive and ahead. There are a lot of
Speaker 5: Tesla is a lot of miles logged using its driver
Speaker 5: assistance technology, which it also confusingly calls full self driving.
Speaker 5: But Tesla is really at the beginning of this and
Speaker 5: like when we're like they have not even even this
Speaker 5: pilot program we're talking about very modest, it doesn't include
Speaker 5: members of the public, just a handful of influencers in
Speaker 5: a very small in a very small part of Austin.
Speaker 5: So just just very early. And everything that WEIMO is doing,
Speaker 5: both in terms of customers and then in terms of
Speaker 5: on the business side kind of makes that point just
Speaker 5: shows you how wide the gap is and how far
Speaker 5: Tesla is, at least at this moment from actually operating,
Speaker 5: you know, a money making robotech.
Speaker 2: All right, So this came up with the newsmorre. We
Speaker 2: show that there's no so some folks in some emerging
Speaker 2: market country that aren't sitting with a joystot joystick like
Speaker 2: actually driving the way.
Speaker 7: Most there are monitors. There are people monitoring the windows.
Speaker 5: I think the question they're not using joysticks, cording little
Speaker 5: steering wheels, they're not using little steering wheels, but they
Speaker 5: are there watching the waymo on that that's like part
Speaker 5: of the that's like part of the business problem for
Speaker 5: both of these companies. Like you potentially have like this
Speaker 5: very expensive piece of hardware, and then a bunch of
Speaker 5: expensive engineers, engineers who cost more money than Uber drivers,
Speaker 5: who are having to oversee these autonomous systems. So that's
Speaker 5: still a question with Waymo. It's a bigger question with Tesla.
Speaker 3: Hey, Greg, come on back in here, because you've covered
Speaker 3: the you cover more than just these two companies and
Speaker 3: also more than just the sort of driverless element here.
Speaker 3: But a question that I have is where does where
Speaker 3: does this technology leave the traditional automakers Because there was
Speaker 3: this promise from Elon Musk years ago. I mean I've
Speaker 3: lost count of how many years ago this was, but
Speaker 3: he basically said, you our Tesla will become more valuable
Speaker 3: because you will be able to essentially set this thing
Speaker 3: free as a robotaxi when you're not riding around in it,
Speaker 3: and you'll be able to charge for that. Where where
Speaker 3: does all of this lead to more traditional automakers?
Speaker 13: I mean, I think to your point, you know, there
Speaker 13: was a real sort of freak out in Detroit and
Speaker 13: Volfsburg and in uh, you know, Toyota City almost a
Speaker 13: decade ago now, because Musk started making these you know,
Speaker 13: pronouncements along along the lines of what you're describing, and
Speaker 13: everyone kind of panicked, right, and we saw you know,
Speaker 13: sort of everybody uh, you know, come put together plans
Speaker 13: to sort of answer what Tesla was up to. You
Speaker 13: saw GM acquire Cruise. You saw Ford you know invest
Speaker 13: in this company called Argo, uh and Volkswagen invested in
Speaker 13: them as well. You saw Toyota stand up its own
Speaker 13: uh sort of self driving you know, outfit and you know,
Speaker 13: higher sort of top notch talent for it. And you know,
Speaker 13: here we are, you know, roughly a decade later, you know,
Speaker 13: our goes gone bust. Cruise has has been sort of
Speaker 13: put out of its put out of business by GM.
Speaker 13: I think a lot of the established manufacturers are saying,
Speaker 13: you know what, we're going to try and make money
Speaker 13: off of these driver assistance systems that you know, kind
Speaker 13: of make the human driving safer or at least we hope,
Speaker 13: you know, can offer that benefit and this sort of
Speaker 13: safety and convenience.
Speaker 8: But you know, this is just not.
Speaker 13: Going to happen in sort of a major way for
Speaker 13: quite some time, and we can't we may not be
Speaker 13: able to afford to invest in it to the extent
Speaker 13: that a company like Google can.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and weimo Google, you know, even there, we're talking.
Speaker 5: I don't think we know the exact numbers because of
Speaker 5: the way that they report, report revenue and so on.
Speaker 5: But they they've they've dumped tens of billions of dollars
Speaker 5: into this. This has been an incredibly expensive endeavor, the
Speaker 5: kind of endeavor that really only a company like Google,
Speaker 5: a really handful of other companies can do. We even
Speaker 5: saw Apple Craig Craig didn't mention Apple, but they also
Speaker 5: got to try to get into this business and got
Speaker 5: out of it for for some of the same.
Speaker 2: Reasons, right, having super deep pockets.
Speaker 5: And the challenge here for Tesla is that a lot
Speaker 5: of the investors who are betting on this thing, and
Speaker 5: even to some extent Elon Musk, have sort of decided
Speaker 5: that this is the future that that you know, Musk
Speaker 5: has said this over and over. You shouldn't think of
Speaker 5: Tesla as a as a regular car maker. You should
Speaker 5: think of it as an AI company. And now here
Speaker 5: it is we're seeing the AI and and you know,
Speaker 5: it's just a long way from being you know, a
Speaker 5: fully fleshed out uh, you know, robotaxi service, and and
Speaker 5: that's and whether or not they can somehow get there
Speaker 5: in the in this, Like in the crazy timelines that
Speaker 5: Elon has offered, he said they're going to have something
Speaker 5: like one hundred thousand cars on the roadby end of
Speaker 5: this year. You know, just huge numbers, numbers that would
Speaker 5: blow Weymo out of the water if they delivered. Uh,
Speaker 5: I mean it's he's he's created a huge challenge himself.
Speaker 12: Well.
Speaker 2: I do also wonder about the value and Craig come
Speaker 2: on back in here, in terms of having whether it's
Speaker 2: Weimo for Alphabet and obviously the self driving for Tesla,
Speaker 2: the amount of data that they get and what they
Speaker 2: learn in terms of technologically creating these We've talked with
Speaker 2: our Steve Mann of Bloomberg Intelligence who's talked about the
Speaker 2: robotics and the manufacturing that has been going on in
Speaker 2: China and what technological capabilities that has given them. So
Speaker 2: I do wonder by these companies doing these kinds of things,
Speaker 2: what they ultimately get out of it. Is it's still
Speaker 2: a plus?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 13: I mean I think that's been the sort of go
Speaker 13: to messaging on Musk's part, right, is that you know
Speaker 13: my approach, you know, my being Ela Musk is you know,
Speaker 13: to put this hardware on every vehicle.
Speaker 7: I sell.
Speaker 13: It's a much cheaper and less robust you know, hardware
Speaker 13: set than WEIMO puts on its car. Sure, but people
Speaker 13: can afford to actually buy it. I can ingest all
Speaker 13: of this data, and you know, I can put more
Speaker 13: cars out on the road, bring in more data. Therefore
Speaker 13: I will eventually win. I think that stood to to
Speaker 13: reason to a lot of people. And yet we we've
Speaker 13: it is all sort of theoretical, right, We don't know
Speaker 13: whether you know, that data advantage will mean anything in
Speaker 13: the long run. And we've also sort of you know,
Speaker 13: heard from Musk, you know, sort of conflicting messaging in
Speaker 13: the years since he was you know, making that argument
Speaker 13: of well, we're we're you know, not going to sort
Speaker 13: of hardcode our cars. Uh, you know, based on all
Speaker 13: of the data that we bring in, We're going to
Speaker 13: just you know, sort of build a robust system that
Speaker 13: can sort of make decisions on the fly, and we're
Speaker 13: not going to try and you know, code into our
Speaker 13: cars what they should or shouldn't do. And so you know,
Speaker 13: there's sort of speaking out of both sides of his
Speaker 13: mouth and a lot of you know, sort of theoretical
Speaker 13: messaging on his part that that makes you sort of
Speaker 13: question whether or not, you know, he actually has the
Speaker 13: advantage that was sort of believed, you know, half a
Speaker 13: decade ago.
Speaker 3: Max, just want to bring you in for the last
Speaker 3: thirty seconds. Given Elon Musk's recently tumultuous relationship with President Trump,
Speaker 3: does that put the regulatory elements around self driving technology
Speaker 3: for his company? Does that put it at risk?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think they're real regulatory questions, also some
Speaker 5: maybe some securities questions, like people have made claims about
Speaker 5: Musks sort of seeming to exaggerate at times that said,
Speaker 5: I don't think the challenge here is a regulatory challenge.
Speaker 5: It's a technical challenge. It's on one hand Elon Musk
Speaker 5: saying these cars can operate totally autonomously, and you watch
Speaker 5: in the videos and they have somebody in the passenger
Speaker 5: seat with an emergency breake, probably somebody sitting in a
Speaker 5: control center and they're still struggling, you know, And so
Speaker 5: so that's the question how to make the tech work.
Speaker 3: Our thanks to Max Chafkin, Bloomberg BusinessWeek columnist and co
Speaker 3: host of the Elon Inc. Podcast, and Craig Drudell, Bloomberg
Speaker 3: News Global Autos Editor and the editor of the Hyperdrive Newsletter.
Speaker 2: Well, Max is going to stick around for our next
Speaker 2: segment as we go from driverless cars to the next
Speaker 2: reality star and billionaire that may be on the road
Speaker 2: to the White House.
Speaker 3: That's next on Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 9: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenoveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Well, he's a billionaire with decades of experience playing a
Speaker 3: rich guy in the press. He took a stick to
Speaker 3: a TV network. He starred in a primetime reality show.
Speaker 3: He's a fan of Ain RAN's The fountain Head. He's
Speaker 3: a fixture on the Manaverse podcast circuit.
Speaker 2: Is this Donald Trump?
Speaker 3: He likes crypto sounds like Donald Trump?
Speaker 12: Right.
Speaker 3: Yes, he's been mocked for being less accomplished and than
Speaker 3: his networth would suggest. And no, Carol, I'm not talking
Speaker 3: about Donald Trump.
Speaker 9: I'm talking about Mark Cuban.
Speaker 3: He's a sports mogul, a small business influencer, media personality,
Speaker 3: a healthcare disruptor, and perhaps the ultimate Trump foil. Max
Speaker 3: Chafkin and John Tazzi profile Mark Cuban and the forthcoming
Speaker 3: new issue of Bloomberg Business Week. It's the July issue.
Speaker 3: It's out on newsstands soon, but you can read the
Speaker 3: story now on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 3: Max is Bloomberg Business we call him this. He's also
Speaker 3: the co host of the Eliningk podcast. John is Bloomberg
Speaker 3: News healthcare reporter. Both join us here in the Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Interactive Brokers Studio. Max, I want to start with you.
Speaker 2: Wait, I want to know. Is it up in the
Speaker 2: food car court and you guys were grabbing some coffee
Speaker 2: and you're like that Mark Cuban guy and you're like, yeah,
Speaker 2: we gotta do a story.
Speaker 13: No.
Speaker 5: I mean the way the genesis of this is that John,
Speaker 5: who's been following the healthcare industry. You know, Cuban got
Speaker 5: on his radar because Cuban has been doing some really
Speaker 5: interesting things there. And where I got interested in it
Speaker 5: is all this buzz around Cuban as a political figure,
Speaker 5: and it seemed, you know, it seemed like an interesting
Speaker 5: thing because on one hand, he is this kind of
Speaker 5: somewhat googoi, somewhat unseerious reality TV personality. On the other hand,
Speaker 5: he's doing something serious in healthcare. And we've just learned
Speaker 5: that being a little goofy, being a little unseerious. Sometimes
Speaker 5: it can work politically. It obviously works politically really well
Speaker 5: for Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about the serious stuff that he's doing
Speaker 3: in healthcare, cost plus drugs. John Tazzi, Yeah, there's a
Speaker 3: good portion of the piece that's dedicated to explaining the
Speaker 3: intricacies of buying certain drugs in the US, and I
Speaker 3: was shocked to find the price differences.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 14: I mean, Mark Cuban lacked to this company that launed
Speaker 14: to the public, you know, several years ago, started working
Speaker 14: on it with an entrepreneur in twenty eighteen. Initially as
Speaker 14: kind of just an investment, just another kind of portfolio
Speaker 14: company put some money into, but he got really involved
Speaker 14: and became a co founder. And now this is sort
Speaker 14: of what he's spending a lot of his time on.
Speaker 14: He's going to conferences. He's going to like small wonky
Speaker 14: health conferences that you don't expect, you know, a lot
Speaker 14: of boldface names.
Speaker 3: At But there's something that really resonates with Americans about healthcare.
Speaker 3: You've written a lot about United Healthcare and the aftermath
Speaker 3: of the murder of a healthcare executive here in New
Speaker 3: York in December and the frustration that Americans had. There's
Speaker 3: something that's sort of visceral when it comes to tackling
Speaker 3: this problem. Yeah, and having someone like Mark Cuban do it.
Speaker 14: Yeah, And what he marked, what he did is he
Speaker 14: came in and looked at this market prescription drugs where
Speaker 14: there are just vast inefficiencies. There are things that make
Speaker 14: no sense, and we've written about.
Speaker 7: Them, we've talked about them here.
Speaker 14: You know, drugs that cost you know, thousands or tens
Speaker 14: of thousands of dollars in one place that you know
Speaker 14: are cost a tiny fraction of that for the person
Speaker 14: acquiring them, and you know, huge markups being taken in
Speaker 14: the middle And what he's trying to do is kind
Speaker 14: of go into those transactions and uh, sort of take
Speaker 14: out the middleman and make these medications available for people
Speaker 14: paying cash without their insurance at a more affordable price
Speaker 14: than they sometimes get when they go through the traditional channels.
Speaker 2: I got to say, you wade into something like drug
Speaker 2: costs and healthcare and all of a sudden, you're you know,
Speaker 2: you're tackling what has been, as we've been talking, one
Speaker 2: of the biggest problems that are around. And there are
Speaker 2: other billionaires who've been like tackling, you know, trying to
Speaker 2: trying to look for some solutions, whether it's Jeff Bezos,
Speaker 2: Warren Buffett, Jamie Diamond who teamed up. I remember, you know,
Speaker 2: we were all reporting and thinking, Okay, they're going to
Speaker 2: be able to fix all of this. Having said that,
Speaker 2: you wait into an area like drug costs, and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, it's a real political kind of field, right,
Speaker 2: and you wonder, Okay, what else does he want to
Speaker 2: do because it's a it's a big beast of a problem.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, I mean there's something inherently politically political about
Speaker 5: talking about this stuff, just because it's a thing that
Speaker 5: that makes people angry. Also, you know, a lot of
Speaker 5: the solutions here are going to require some form of
Speaker 5: regulation or government spending. And also Cuban is just politically involved.
Speaker 5: I mean he was during the Harris campaign during the
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four election. He was like a really important
Speaker 5: surrogate for Kamala Harris. He was on the campaign trail.
Speaker 5: He was kind of crafting or attempting to essentially sell
Speaker 5: Harris to the business community and sell Harris as a
Speaker 5: moderate on economic issues. And that is sort of you know,
Speaker 5: if you think about different directions the Democratic Party could
Speaker 5: go in twenty twenty eight, you know, one of them
Speaker 5: would be some sort of moderate approach. And Cuban is
Speaker 5: very attractive. And there are a lot of like Democratic
Speaker 5: political consultant types who are excited about this, a lot
Speaker 5: of Republican political consultant types who are thinking about this already,
Speaker 5: because not only does he have this kind of identity
Speaker 5: as a as a moderate, as a business guy, solutions oriented,
Speaker 5: but he's really good on camera and he's also good
Speaker 5: at sort of sounding like a real person. And that's
Speaker 5: the thing that kept coming up in my reporting how
Speaker 5: important that is. And when you look at when we
Speaker 5: talked to Cuban about like what went wrong with Harris,
Speaker 5: that's kind of what he Keety Cayden on you know,
Speaker 5: she didn't know how to sell, That's what he said,
Speaker 5: and that she you know, she wasn't herself. It's this,
Speaker 5: it's this kind of like incredibly difficult thing for a
Speaker 5: lot of politicians, and I think especially for the type
Speaker 5: person Mark Cuban is a business guy, somebody who hasn't
Speaker 5: been in that spotlight to be able to thread that
Speaker 5: needle to sound like a normal person while also being moderate,
Speaker 5: like it makes him politically potent.
Speaker 3: You know, I want to go back to this comparison
Speaker 3: that I was talking about earlier. Then you guys laid
Speaker 3: that out perfectly. I read right from your story. You
Speaker 3: actually suggested Max to Mark Cuban that he's had a
Speaker 3: similar career trajectory to President Trump.
Speaker 5: What happened, he did not, He didn't reactor. Well he
Speaker 5: can called it the meanest thing anybody's ever said to me.
Speaker 5: And John and I were sitting there with him, and
Speaker 5: I really did think for a second, dude, he was
Speaker 5: gonna throw us out, I know. And the thing is
Speaker 5: he was kidding to some extent anyway. But but he
Speaker 5: and Trump have been kind of publicly feuding for almost
Speaker 5: twenty years. It goes all the way back to The Apprentice,
Speaker 5: when shortly after Trump launched The Apprentice, Cuban launched his
Speaker 5: own show. They sort of traded punches back then, they
Speaker 5: traded verbal punches during the Obama administration. I think Cuban
Speaker 5: is sort of an effective critic of Donald Trump, partly
Speaker 5: because they are kind of similar, because they are both
Speaker 5: sort of professional billionaires, guys who play billionaires on TV,
Speaker 5: and Cuban is able to sort of effectively point to
Speaker 5: some of the ways that Trump's you know, personality, you know,
Speaker 5: sort of like the character he plays doesn't really live
Speaker 5: up to the reality.
Speaker 2: However, he didn't care his own reality show. He didn't
Speaker 2: do as well as Donald Trump.
Speaker 14: And the other point that Cuban makes in terms of
Speaker 14: their differences is that he is a self made billionaire
Speaker 14: and you know, kind of worked his way up, started companies, uh,
Speaker 14: you know, started selling trash bags door to door, you know,
Speaker 14: and that he has that background that that the president doesn't.
Speaker 2: I love the Highlight quote. The difference Mark Cuban says
Speaker 2: is he never had to start from broke.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: You brought up the difference between Apprentice and Shark Tank,
Speaker 5: and I do think that's an interesting It's an interesting contrast,
Speaker 5: and again it shows you why Cuban could be politically potent.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 5: On The Apprentice, it ends with this kind of ritual
Speaker 5: humiliation Donald Trump's firing someone, which course is very entertaining.
Speaker 5: And I think one of the reasons cuban show, which
Speaker 5: was called The Benefactor, didn't work is that Cuban was
Speaker 5: too nice.
Speaker 2: He you know, nice Shark I'm gonna I'm a huge
Speaker 2: fan of that show, and he's always the nice shark.
Speaker 5: So Cuban playing this kind of nice guy on this
Speaker 5: as a supporting role that was really effective.
Speaker 3: The the other thing I think made.
Speaker 5: Him sort of beloved both on Shark Tank, well initially
Speaker 5: on Shark Tank, was just the fact that he's the
Speaker 5: richest and most successful person there. He's the only billionaire
Speaker 5: of those judges, and he is the one who's kind
Speaker 5: of backing the goofy companies.
Speaker 7: He's taking it not.
Speaker 5: Quite as seriously in the same way that cubans as
Speaker 5: a sports owner, as the owner of the Mavericks. Part
Speaker 5: of what made him fun as an owner is that
Speaker 5: he's the billionaire, but he's also acting like a fan.
Speaker 5: He's running up and down the court, he's acting like,
Speaker 5: you know, goofy, he's booing, he's doing all this stuff
Speaker 5: that a billionaire would not normally do, and that, of
Speaker 5: course can be attractive.
Speaker 3: So that's the perfect segue to talk about the genesis
Speaker 3: of costplus drugs because as a shark on Shark Tank,
Speaker 3: he had this inbox where you would get all these
Speaker 3: emails you Max and John Wright in the piece John
Speaker 3: and back in twenty twelve or a few years I
Speaker 3: should say perhaps a few years after that, because it
Speaker 3: was around the Martin Screelly time. Yeah, twenty eighteen is
Speaker 3: when this guy, Allen Oshmyansky got in touch with him.
Speaker 9: Yep, what happened?
Speaker 7: Yep.
Speaker 14: So Alex Oshmayansky is a radiologist entrepreneur who is following
Speaker 14: the drama around drug prices and Martin Screelly raising prices
Speaker 14: of some older off patent drugs that attracted uh, you know,
Speaker 14: a lot of attention, a lot of criticism, and he said,
Speaker 14: why don't we start a company where we can make
Speaker 14: some of these drugs that are in short supply and
Speaker 14: kind of solve some of these problems in the market
Speaker 14: and kind of eliminate the window for people to take
Speaker 14: advantage of shortages by raising prices. So he came to
Speaker 14: you know, he cold pitched Mark Cuban through an email
Speaker 14: with this idea. The I think the company was originally
Speaker 14: called something like Osh's Affordable Pharmaceuticals.
Speaker 3: Doesn't have the same ring to it, doesn't have the
Speaker 3: same rings.
Speaker 14: But and you know, Cuban bit and he invests and
Speaker 14: kind of took an interest in the business, and it
Speaker 14: became what's now known as.
Speaker 7: As cost Plus.
Speaker 14: A lot of people who know Costplus know kind of
Speaker 14: the mail order website primarily for generic drugs, some brand
Speaker 14: drugs available, and mostly lower cost generics. But there are
Speaker 14: other elements they're trying to build out too, And you know,
Speaker 14: what they articulate is really they're trying to kind of
Speaker 14: build an alternative to the existing pharmacy benefit managers the
Speaker 14: way most people get prescription drugs. They're trying to build
Speaker 14: something outside of that system to compete with it. It's
Speaker 14: not really there yet as a full service solution. You know,
Speaker 14: there are a number of drugs you can't get. You
Speaker 14: often can't use your insurance through the site. It's not
Speaker 14: it's it sometimes can be much less expensive than going
Speaker 14: through your insurance, but it's.
Speaker 3: Not always our Thanks to Max Chafkin and John Tazzi,
Speaker 3: check out their profile of Mark Cuban in the forthcoming
Speaker 3: new issue of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 9: It's out soon.
Speaker 3: You can read the story now though, on the Bloomberg
Speaker 3: terminal and at Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 2: Still ahead on Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Breweries that forage for ingredients
Speaker 2: are blossoming across the United States.
Speaker 15: They don't really have a plan in the morning when
Speaker 15: they decide to brew beer, they might have like a
Speaker 15: rough idea of a style and then they just go
Speaker 15: out in the woods and see what they find and
Speaker 15: fill a bucket up. And you know, it could be
Speaker 15: like perilla herbs or bee bomb or fennel or you know,
Speaker 15: wild dandelions, even like nuts bark.
Speaker 8: And the funny thing is, which I always laugh about,
Speaker 8: is I don't know. I thought when it was like
Speaker 8: you taste like a blueberry ipa or something from Sam Adams,
Speaker 8: I think there's like a lot of science to it.
Speaker 8: Maybe they make like a tincture or it's no, they
Speaker 8: just throw blueberries in like they're brewing the beer, and
Speaker 8: they just host in a bunch of.
Speaker 3: Blueberries and a balanced investment portfolio in wine. Bloomberg Pursuits
Speaker 3: is coming up. This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 14: Watches most of your time perceived as a time cupsude.
Speaker 8: It's very chic and posh.
Speaker 3: The most powerful car made in the US.
Speaker 8: The beautiful interior, the iconic design.
Speaker 1: Now it's time to take a look at luxury with
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Pursuits.
Speaker 2: Searching for beer in the backyard. American sake I believe
Speaker 2: is how you say it is having a moment. We
Speaker 2: talked about this in the newsroom.
Speaker 9: Who cares how you say it?
Speaker 3: Just drink it, Carol.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, from the guy who like drinks tons of alcohol.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have had sake before. I don't drink it currently. Anyway,
Speaker 3: maybe after reading this I will, especially a certain American
Speaker 3: sake that is now being exported to Japan, which is
Speaker 3: a very big deal.
Speaker 9: Yes. Also, do you want to invest in wine?
Speaker 2: I just want to drink it?
Speaker 9: All right?
Speaker 3: It is time for Pursuits. You can tell by what
Speaker 3: we're talking about with us is the editor of Pursuits,
Speaker 3: Chris Rouser, along with Bloomberg Pursuits Deputy editor Justin Osan.
Speaker 3: Justin runs our award winning top shelf newsletter. Chris, I
Speaker 3: want to start with you. You ever see the whole section?
Speaker 2: Does that mean you had to drink a lot to
Speaker 2: do this?
Speaker 9: Chris doesn't drink.
Speaker 8: Drink. Justin had to drink, had to do a lot
Speaker 8: of sampling for this.
Speaker 2: How did that go?
Speaker 9: It was fun? Yeah, it's a tough job. But somebody's
Speaker 9: got to do it. I love that.
Speaker 3: Well, let's start in just envision some beautiful fields where
Speaker 3: maybe perhaps somebody would forage for ingredients not necessarily found
Speaker 3: in beer, because apparently that's happening right now.
Speaker 8: Yes, Foraging for ingredients to flavor beer and change beer
Speaker 8: and make new beer is a new trend across the US,
Speaker 8: and it's been something that we've written about here and there.
Speaker 8: Our beer writer Tony Rehagen is always telling us about it,
Speaker 8: and Justin wanted to do a big feature on all
Speaker 8: the different farms where you can go maybe you can
Speaker 8: help forage for the ingredients their flowers, their herbs, or
Speaker 8: you can just try new beers every season, And so
Speaker 8: we sent Tony off across the country to look at
Speaker 8: these different How did that go?
Speaker 2: What's that like? Is it literally taking a bucket and
Speaker 2: just like picking up things from the ground.
Speaker 15: Justin Uh, yeah, Yeah, they don't really have a plan
Speaker 15: in the morning when they decide to brew beer. They
Speaker 15: they might have like a rough idea of a style
Speaker 15: and then they just go out in the woods and
Speaker 15: see what they find and fill a bucket up. And
Speaker 15: you know, it could be like perilla herbs or bee
Speaker 15: bomb or fennel or you know, wild dandelions even like
Speaker 15: nuts bark.
Speaker 8: And the funny thing is, which I always laugh about,
Speaker 8: is I don't know. I thought when it was like
Speaker 8: you taste like a blueberry ipa or something from Sam Adams,
Speaker 8: I think there's like a lot of science to it.
Speaker 8: Maybe they make like a tincture or it's no, they
Speaker 8: just throw blueberries in like they're brewing the beer and
Speaker 8: they just tossing a bunch of blueberries. And that's how
Speaker 8: this is with all this stuff is very easy.
Speaker 2: I love how they call it a ground to glass. Right,
Speaker 2: we talk about farm to table, right, ground to glass?
Speaker 2: How big is this? I mean, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: for so long we talked about all the craft breweries, right,
Speaker 2: and I know they're kind of having it their own
Speaker 2: moment and maybe not so great, but it just sounds
Speaker 2: like how much of this is going on.
Speaker 15: So it's not it's not huge. It's you know, a
Speaker 15: select number of breweries across the country, but you know
Speaker 15: they're in you know, all the kind of major regions.
Speaker 15: You know, we have a wonder camera up in Main
Speaker 15: Scratch Brewing is one of the main ones that we
Speaker 15: profiled there in Illinois, like about two hours in Saint Louis, Portland.
Speaker 15: Organ of course, of course, yes, but they fucking but
Speaker 15: it's increasing and growing because as craft beer as an
Speaker 15: industry declines, people need novelty and what consumers are craving
Speaker 15: now is an experience. And what these breweries are really
Speaker 15: doing is they're not selling the beers in stores as much.
Speaker 15: They're trying to entice people to come to the brewery
Speaker 15: and really like drink it in nature and feel nature
Speaker 15: and feel this moment in time and think of beer
Speaker 15: in a in a more special way.
Speaker 3: So how do you do this in a single day,
Speaker 3: because the beer brewing process, from my understanding, is a
Speaker 3: relatively long process. So you're actually be able to infuse
Speaker 3: the beer with these in greens and drink it that
Speaker 3: same day.
Speaker 15: No, No, they would be brewing the beer and then
Speaker 15: you know, letting it mature.
Speaker 3: So it would still take a long time. Yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: but some of the ingredients are ready made and they
Speaker 3: can just add like they have the malt and the
Speaker 3: water ready made, and they can add whatever they forage to.
Speaker 9: That exactly, and that's how it works. But they're still
Speaker 9: doing this every day.
Speaker 15: They're doing it, Yeah, whenever they have a brewdet because
Speaker 15: it's all this is pretty small quantity, so you know,
Speaker 15: they might you know, have one consistent thing that they
Speaker 15: make over and over, like a dandelion I p a.
Speaker 15: Or there's this one beer font to floor called pine Zips,
Speaker 15: which is you know, made with like white pine and
Speaker 15: it's kind of needles.
Speaker 2: And would have gathered white pine trees. That sounds amazing.
Speaker 8: Sounds like a joke, though, is that funny? Like this
Speaker 8: tastes like piney, you know, and they're like because there's
Speaker 8: pine needles in it.
Speaker 3: You guys ever have your like beer brewing moment where
Speaker 3: like the bathtub in your apartment turned into sort of
Speaker 3: like a little brewery.
Speaker 8: That would absolutely no no, no gates.
Speaker 3: I walked in about ten years ago. About ten years ago,
Speaker 3: I walked in in my roommate. My roommate. I was like,
Speaker 3: it's weird in here. And my roommate at the time
Speaker 3: is like, I'm brewing beer, And I was like, how
Speaker 3: long is this going to take? And I went into
Speaker 3: the bathroom and you know, it's like your twenties and
Speaker 3: like you're sharing a department with somebody. The whole bathtub's
Speaker 3: like full of beer making stuff. I'm like, what are
Speaker 3: we supposed to do here?
Speaker 8: And you were like, did you even clean the bathtime?
Speaker 9: No, it definitely definitely didn't.
Speaker 2: What's really interesting though, do you guys write that scratch?
Speaker 2: I mean, they've had some James Beard nominations, right, which
Speaker 2: is really notable, and so this trend is definitely getting noticed.
Speaker 2: But there's some beers that have no hops, like so
Speaker 2: it makes me wonder can you even call it beer technically.
Speaker 15: Not it's called a gruet.
Speaker 3: Never even heard of a grud until reading this.
Speaker 8: Yeah, neither.
Speaker 2: That's why you read this stuff. We learn We learned,
Speaker 2: and it's.
Speaker 15: Like one of the oldest styles of beer, you know,
Speaker 15: before hops became like the primary like hopps in beer
Speaker 15: is for bittering and but you can get the same
Speaker 15: effect using different rbs.
Speaker 2: Bottom line, before we move on to some other stuff,
Speaker 2: is it good because the stuff did you? You sampled?
Speaker 2: So did you like it?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 15: I mean they're they're different. So if you if you're
Speaker 15: looking for your tradition that they are good. But I
Speaker 15: think for you know, depending on how adventurous your taste go,
Speaker 15: you know, it could be not as expected at first,
Speaker 15: but then like anything, you keep trying and it grows,
Speaker 15: it grows on you.
Speaker 2: Justin I think you should stop right classes glass is
Speaker 2: half full? All right, So let's go to what's having
Speaker 2: a moment that you ask? And I say suck because
Speaker 2: I said sak in the newsroom and everybody's like, no,
Speaker 2: not everybody, certain select people. So is it suck?
Speaker 11: Oh?
Speaker 2: It is? See what Why are you looking at me? Like?
Speaker 3: Oh, this is radio? Everything I do is with my
Speaker 3: voice or the record.
Speaker 2: He's staring at me like the daggers. All right, take
Speaker 2: it away. What's going on with sake?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 15: So American sake? You, I mean might just be surprised
Speaker 15: that sake is even made in America. I mean there
Speaker 15: are Japanese companies that have done it here, like Gege
Speaker 15: Khan out of the West Coast and then Desai. It's
Speaker 15: a premium sake. They just opened up a huge new
Speaker 15: facility up in Hyde Park, New York, near the Culinary School,
Speaker 15: and they're trying to make their premium sake using American
Speaker 15: water and rice. Is a huge deal. But there's there's
Speaker 15: all these places all over you know, Medford, Massachusetts or sorry, Midfield, Massachusetts.
Speaker 15: You have Arizona, they're using like nava hotee in flavorings.
Speaker 15: And you know Arkansas, so yeah, Arkansas is interesting. So
Speaker 15: the reason the whole industry has been able to grow
Speaker 15: is this farm called Isabel Farms and they grow premium
Speaker 15: sake rice that before they did it, nobody thought it
Speaker 15: could be grown outside of Japan, and so that because
Speaker 15: they've invested so much in this, they've become the main supply.
Speaker 15: And now they have a mill because milling the rice
Speaker 15: down is the first step in sake production, and they
Speaker 15: make it easy for these startups to do it. Also,
Speaker 15: the water is really good. In Arkansas. There's a one
Speaker 15: of the largest independences or Agami Sake, and they have
Speaker 15: a whole sake fest.
Speaker 9: And you know, it's still it's.
Speaker 15: Tiny compared to Japan. There's only like about you know,
Speaker 15: two dozen brewers, but then you know Japan has over
Speaker 15: a thousand. But it is growing again as like people
Speaker 15: want to try a local product. It has a good story, and.
Speaker 8: You know that it's growing in the US and shrinking
Speaker 8: in Japan.
Speaker 15: Right, Yes, yeah, that's actually the kind of coolest thing
Speaker 15: is as production or as consumption goes down in Japan,
Speaker 15: the US is now the number one consumer by volume
Speaker 15: of sake, imported sake, but then getting the bottle. There's
Speaker 15: a company called Brooklyn Kura which is now exported for
Speaker 15: the first time to Japan, and it's a premium product there.
Speaker 15: It's in a bunch of like fancy department stores. It's
Speaker 15: at the Peter Luger.
Speaker 8: Going to Brooklyn soake.
Speaker 2: Brooklyn is everywhere, and Brooklyn is popular.
Speaker 15: And the hope is that they've seen it before. We
Speaker 15: say fashion. If you bring something you know that was Japanese,
Speaker 15: it got popular abroad, you bring it back to Japan,
Speaker 15: then people think it's cool again and hopefully can like
Speaker 15: stoke consumption.
Speaker 3: Is there a sort of a corollary between sakke and
Speaker 3: wine and the way people think about where it's from,
Speaker 3: Different varieties, different processes of fermentation.
Speaker 15: Not as much so sak is interesting. It's more it's
Speaker 15: more like a beer than it is wine. It's it's made.
Speaker 15: There are different types of rice. There's different grades of
Speaker 15: polishing the rice down that make it, you know, different
Speaker 15: purities and flavors. There's some sparkling ones, there's unfiltered and
Speaker 15: cold and hot, cold and cold and hot. Most people
Speaker 15: drink it cold I think hot is for lower grades.
Speaker 9: So oh interesting, hot.
Speaker 8: Is for college. Hot is for when you're brewing beer
Speaker 8: in your bathtub.
Speaker 2: All right, So you want to invest in wine, you
Speaker 2: just have to have good taste, right, maybe a lot
Speaker 2: of money and just be a little patient. It's like
Speaker 2: Chris tasting lots of money? Do you sound like my mother?
Speaker 5: Chris? Is that all it is?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 8: It is much more complicated than that. And you know,
Speaker 8: it's funny things like wine or things like watches that
Speaker 8: you wear, like stuff that you participate in a on
Speaker 8: a regular basis sort of may suddenly seem appealing to
Speaker 8: invest in when it's a weird economic time, or just
Speaker 8: if you become like really a fan. And so you know,
Speaker 8: we've done these guides and pursuits how to invest in jewelry,
Speaker 8: how to invest in watches, how to invest in handbags,
Speaker 8: and we in are amazing wine Colonnists columnist Alan I
Speaker 8: was like, we got to do how to invest in
Speaker 8: wine because you know, totally a lot of people know,
Speaker 8: and it's a big industry that people participate in, but
Speaker 8: we haven't done a beginner's guide in a while, and
Speaker 8: so she really went into it, and it's very helpful.
Speaker 2: Is there a couple of things that we should can't
Speaker 2: top of mind real quickly.
Speaker 15: I think the main one is, just like one, check
Speaker 15: your expectations. You're probably not going to make money, so
Speaker 15: you might as well buy stuff that you like. It's
Speaker 15: a long term game. You're going to want to age
Speaker 15: it and then hire an advisor and like really research
Speaker 15: the fund. Mendels, I'm out, Yeah, you're gonna drink it, Carol.
Speaker 3: Sounds pretty good to be an advisors, just because then
Speaker 3: you can make the money regardless of you know, what
Speaker 3: happens with the.
Speaker 5: Value of that wine.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you though, in terms of wine, is
Speaker 2: it normally French wines that are gonna if you're gonna
Speaker 2: get something that's gonna go up in value, or is
Speaker 2: California good? Is there anything like in terms of regional stuff?
Speaker 15: Yeah, I mean traditionally it's a Bordeaux and Burgundy. They're
Speaker 15: like kind of slipping a bit right now. Italy is
Speaker 15: the one of the hottest places to invest in terms
Speaker 15: of return in California is getting more and more as well.
Speaker 15: Champagne region as well, But it's mostly like France is
Speaker 15: still you know, the heart of that it's the.
Speaker 8: Big guns and old wineries because the young independence and
Speaker 8: even wines that are really amazing, there's just not a
Speaker 8: lot of it to trade, Like, there isn't the volume
Speaker 8: that you need to trade to make any like. Liquidity
Speaker 8: is a big thing in that. Liquidity, which is hilarious, Yeah,
Speaker 8: is a big issue in this.
Speaker 3: You get a pond without even knowing, Hey, there's something
Speaker 3: else you hear about drinking your weedies. We'll just say
Speaker 3: that it's all about locally grown whiskey. We don't time
Speaker 3: to get to it, but I encourage everybody to check
Speaker 3: out the new issue of Pursuits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I got to say the investing in wine,
Speaker 2: you guys really just like lay it out of the
Speaker 2: things that you need to do. Bottoms up, everybody. Thanks guys,
Speaker 2: Chris Rouser of course, the editor Pursuits and Bloomberg Pursuits
Speaker 2: Deputy editor Justin Ocean.
Speaker 3: And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Speaker 3: from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: Sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week daily Monday through Friday,
Speaker 2: starting at two pm Wall Street Time, on Bloomberg TV,
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Speaker 2: Find our Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast at Bloomberg dot com, Apple,
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Speaker 3: now at Bloomberg dot com and always on the Bloomberg terminal.
Speaker 2: I'm Tim Stenebek and I'm Carol Master. A good and
Speaker 2: safe weekend. Everyone choice, some wine.
Speaker 5: Or some sake.
Speaker 2: Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines
Speaker 2: are coming up right now.