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Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Wee Weekend Podcast.
Speaker 1: So this past week, yes, we got another jobs report
Speaker 1: and another Fed decision. Bottom line, folks, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to the Fed, we are still data dependent and
Speaker 1: more inflation progress is needed. The Essential Bank did signal
Speaker 1: that rate hikes are unlikely, dampening a narrative Tim that's
Speaker 1: creeping into a lot of our conversations as of late.
Speaker 3: In the meantime, Amazon and Apple were among the big
Speaker 3: earnings this week as we continue to make our way
Speaker 3: through quarterly updates. All important and among our most read
Speaker 3: stories this week, as are the protest on college campuses
Speaker 3: around the country involving pro Palestinian protesters.
Speaker 1: We had a great voice on the protest from a
Speaker 1: long time Columbia University professor, none other than Nobel Laureate
Speaker 1: Joseph Stieglitz. He weighed in on the protests. He also
Speaker 1: talked about FED policy, the economy, and the Road to Freedom.
Speaker 1: It's the subject of his new book Love More in
Speaker 1: a Moment.
Speaker 3: Plus and what we are calling Our Deep Think Hour.
Speaker 1: David E.
Speaker 3: Sanger, the Pulitzer Prize winning White House and National Security
Speaker 3: correspondent for The New York Times, on his latest book,
Speaker 3: It's called New Cold Wars, China's Rise, Russia's invasion, and
Speaker 3: America's struggle to Defend the West.
Speaker 1: David E. Sanger and Joseph Stieglitz two authors with some
Speaker 1: deep thoughts on some of the most pressing issues of
Speaker 1: our time. We begin with Nobel Laureate Joseph Stieglitz, Professor
Speaker 1: of Economics over at Columbia University. He was Chairman of
Speaker 1: the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton and a
Speaker 1: former Chief Economist of the World Bank.
Speaker 3: He has written many books, authored numerous research papers on
Speaker 3: many aspects of economics, equality, and more. His latest subject
Speaker 3: matter covered in a new book entitled The Road to Freedom,
Speaker 3: Economics and the Good Society. Our conversation done just before
Speaker 3: the latest FED decision began with the Fed's commitment to
Speaker 3: that two percent inflation objective.
Speaker 4: From the point of view.
Speaker 5: Of economics, having two and a half or even three
Speaker 5: percent inflation is not a big deal. You know, the
Speaker 5: two percent target was pulled out of thin air. It
Speaker 5: was not based on economic science. What we want to
Speaker 5: be sure of is that we don't have runaway inflation.
Speaker 5: And inflation has clearly been tamed. It's been brought down.
Speaker 5: It's stable. It electuates from month to month, but it
Speaker 5: is not a major problem. We should be focusing on
Speaker 5: other things, continuing economic growth, making sure that all Americans
Speaker 5: share in that growth. Those are the kinds of things
Speaker 5: that we ought to be thinking more about.
Speaker 3: So, Professor Stieglitz, should the Fed abandon the two percent
Speaker 3: inflation goal? Should they have a different inflation goal, a
Speaker 3: different metric that they should be held accountable to.
Speaker 4: Yes, I think they should.
Speaker 5: I think they should be talking about keeping within a
Speaker 5: range to maybe three, three and a half four percent.
Speaker 5: You know, there's actually some economic science that says, especially
Speaker 5: in a time of major structural change such as we're
Speaker 5: going through, having a little higher inflation actually is helpful
Speaker 5: in reallocating resources in the presence of downward nominal rigidities
Speaker 5: of wages because What guides the movement of resources from
Speaker 5: one place to another is relative wages. And if some
Speaker 5: wages are sticky downward, you want other wages to go
Speaker 5: up enough to move labor, and that means you're going
Speaker 5: to have to have more inflation. So actually a little
Speaker 5: higher inflation is actually good for the economy.
Speaker 1: Do you think the FEDS management of the economy has
Speaker 1: been a good one in terms of policy?
Speaker 5: Quite frankly no, But bluntly, let's go back to when
Speaker 5: inflation broke out after the pandemic and the Russian invasion
Speaker 5: of Ukraine. The question was what was the cause, the
Speaker 5: primary cause of the inflation.
Speaker 4: It was unambiguous.
Speaker 5: It was the pandemic and war related interruptions in supply
Speaker 5: chains and rising prices caused by shortages of oil and food.
Speaker 5: It was demand shifts. People wanted to live in different places,
Speaker 5: and that meant housing prices went up where there was
Speaker 5: a scarcity, but didn't go down as much where there
Speaker 5: was where people didn't.
Speaker 4: Want to live.
Speaker 5: In parts of New York, raising interest rates actually impeded
Speaker 5: the ability of the economy to respond to that kind
Speaker 5: of structural uh. To that that kind of challenge, we
Speaker 5: needed to build more houses in the places where there
Speaker 5: was a scarcity, and having higher interest rates actually works
Speaker 5: makes it more difficult. They also have a model of
Speaker 5: economy that's based on competition. That might have been true
Speaker 5: some time ago, but we have an economy with a
Speaker 5: lot of market power at firms are trading off. If
Speaker 5: they raise their prices, they get more profits today, they
Speaker 5: lose profits in the future, and in that trade off,
Speaker 5: when you raise the interest rate, they value those future
Speaker 5: losses less, and they were induced to raise their prices more.
Speaker 4: So margins go up.
Speaker 5: And a marked aspect of the inflation that we've just
Speaker 5: been through is that markets have increased enormously.
Speaker 3: Hey, Professor Stieglitz, I just wanted to speaking of the FED, Carol,
Speaker 3: I know you would all.
Speaker 1: When went before. We have a bigger, broader question, and
Speaker 1: it's certainly been a bigger to jump in on that. Well,
Speaker 1: what do you think then we should be cutting rates already,
Speaker 1: that we're behind the curve right now?
Speaker 4: Yes, I think the risks are asymmetric.
Speaker 5: I think with Europe already slowing down in recession, we
Speaker 5: don't know where China is going to be going. I
Speaker 5: think proudents would have us going back to a more
Speaker 5: normal infrast rate. The higher interest rates are really not
Speaker 5: going to be taming inflation.
Speaker 4: That that model was wrong.
Speaker 5: In another way, they dramatically had said that we're going
Speaker 5: to need five percent of inflation for five percent unemployment
Speaker 5: for some time in order to get inflation down.
Speaker 4: They were absolutely wrong.
Speaker 5: We got inflation down where in a period where we
Speaker 5: kept unemployment relatively low. So they are analysis of the
Speaker 5: economy was just off. And meanwhile they have put at
Speaker 5: risk our banking system. We had a problem in Selcom
Speaker 5: Vallet Bank partly because of the enormous changes in terms
Speaker 5: structure which their policies led to. And we're facing a
Speaker 5: debt crisis in the developing countries and emerging markets.
Speaker 4: So there's enormous one sided risk. I believe in the
Speaker 4: policies that they've been pursuing well.
Speaker 3: On the FED, Professor Stieglitz, I got to ask you
Speaker 3: about this Wall Street Journal report that broke last night
Speaker 3: that said how former Trump administration officials are coming up
Speaker 3: with plans to take on the independence of the Federal
Speaker 3: Reserve essentially at one end of the spectrum, even allowing
Speaker 3: if President Trump gets re elected him to weigh in
Speaker 3: on FED policy when it comes to interest rates. Talk
Speaker 3: a little bit about your reaction to if this were
Speaker 3: to come to fruition, how important the independence of the
Speaker 3: FED is and if that would really put at risk
Speaker 3: the model of the independence of the US financial system.
Speaker 5: Well, I think Trump is himself a major argument why
Speaker 5: you want to have independence.
Speaker 4: Of the FED.
Speaker 5: You don't want somebody who doesn't understand monetary policy, who would.
Speaker 4: Put at risk the long run.
Speaker 5: Stability of the economy for the short term electoral advantage
Speaker 5: of having a hot economy right before an election. That's
Speaker 5: precisely why there is an argument for independence. So you know,
Speaker 5: I believe in the accountability of the FED. It is
Speaker 5: a public institution.
Speaker 4: We had.
Speaker 5: Previous chairman of the FED. We're very cognizant of that.
Speaker 5: I remember Paul Voker saying Congress created us and Congress
Speaker 5: can uncreate us. So there is a kind of accountability
Speaker 5: that responsible heads of the FED understand. But we certainly
Speaker 5: don't want Donald Trump to we run monetary policy, all right.
Speaker 1: We do want to dig into your book because you've
Speaker 1: been thinking a lot about the meaning of freedom, and
Speaker 1: I think we throw the word abown a lot. I
Speaker 1: think the folks who created the United States are founding
Speaker 1: fathers thought about freedom a lot and the difference though
Speaker 1: between what that really means, and maybe it comes down to,
Speaker 1: as you think about it, the values that we all
Speaker 1: have in society tell us about how we need to
Speaker 1: kind of maybe redefine freedom and what it means in
Speaker 1: terms of citizens more broadly and generally as well as
Speaker 1: economically in terms of their success.
Speaker 5: Sure, you know, I approached the issue obviously as an economist,
Speaker 5: and as an economist we think of freedom is free
Speaker 5: to do what you can do. What are the choices
Speaker 5: that you can make. Somebody who is at the point
Speaker 5: of starvation doesn't really have any freedom.
Speaker 4: He has to do what.
Speaker 5: He can to survive, and so expanding the set of
Speaker 5: choices that individual is available is a way of saying
Speaker 5: that he has more freedom. And here there are a
Speaker 5: couple of ideas I put forward in my book. The
Speaker 5: first is that in our integrated urban twenty per century economy,
Speaker 5: one person does the expansion of his freedom may lead
Speaker 5: to less freedom of others. Isaiah Berlin, the great Oxford philosopher,
Speaker 5: put it this way. He said, freedom for the wolfs
Speaker 5: has often meant death for the sheep. And in the
Speaker 5: context of the US, for instance, freedom to carry an
Speaker 5: AK forty seven means that people will die, and it
Speaker 5: means that our school children are not free from fear.
Speaker 5: They have to learn what to do if a gunman
Speaker 5: comes into the classroom and teachers have to go to
Speaker 5: school worried about whether they'll be attacked. Freedom not to
Speaker 5: wear masks is exposed taking away the freedom of others
Speaker 5: to live.
Speaker 4: So we.
Speaker 5: Have to balance these freedoms. There are trade offs. Many cases,
Speaker 5: those trade offs are easy. Freedom to pollute takes away
Speaker 5: the freedom to have somebody with asthma to even live,
Speaker 5: let alone the freedom of all of us to live
Speaker 5: on our planet. So there, I think we have to
Speaker 5: constrain the freedom of the polluters and the freedom of exploiters.
Speaker 1: So we're talking with Joseph Stiegletz, Nobel Laurate economist, professor
Speaker 1: of economics at Columbia University, and we're talking about his
Speaker 1: new book, The Road to Freedom, Economics and the Good Society.
Speaker 1: All Right, So if we rethink Professor Stieglitz the idea
Speaker 1: of freedom, so it's maybe more inclusive or it's a
Speaker 1: broader definition, how do we do that within society? With corporations,
Speaker 1: the need to be profitable for those we are in
Speaker 1: earning season. We look at companies and their reports and
Speaker 1: that's how we kind of measure them, grade them. What
Speaker 1: does government need to do? How can we maybe be
Speaker 1: better if you will for more.
Speaker 5: First, let me emphasize that in the world i've just described,
Speaker 5: there's an important role for regulations. Corporations often don't like that,
Speaker 5: but we have to remember the purpose of our economy
Speaker 5: is to improve the lives and livelihoods of our citizens.
Speaker 4: It's not the other way around.
Speaker 5: That the economy is supposed to serve society, not the
Speaker 5: other way around.
Speaker 4: There's another aspect.
Speaker 5: Regulations can actually expand the freedom of.
Speaker 4: All of us.
Speaker 5: Think about stop likes. If we don't have stop likes,
Speaker 5: we have gourdlock. None of us has the freedom to move.
Speaker 5: Stop likes orgs are a little bit of coercion, mean
Speaker 5: that I have to take turns, but by taking turns,
Speaker 5: we all have more freedom. And that basic idea extends
Speaker 5: much more broadly. People don't like to pay taxes. That's
Speaker 5: a they often feel kind of coersion. But when those
Speaker 5: tax revenues are used productively, like they were to invest
Speaker 5: in the internet and invest in the m R any
Speaker 5: platform that led to the vaccine against COVID nineteen.
Speaker 4: That expands our freedom to do.
Speaker 5: And so we have to look at this in I
Speaker 5: would say in a little bit more holistic way, Well, I.
Speaker 3: Want to go to your taxes point, because I'm curious
Speaker 3: if you could wave a magic wand or implement some
Speaker 3: sort of tax policy here in the US. What would
Speaker 3: it be, How could you reinvent it? Would you broad
Speaker 3: in the tax space, would you lean more on corporate taxes,
Speaker 3: would you tax wealth more? What, in your opinion, would work?
Speaker 4: Well, I begin by.
Speaker 5: Analyzing would are some of the key problems on our
Speaker 5: society faces, And one of them is inequality one of
Speaker 5: the reasons. And a second problem is the growth of
Speaker 5: market power, which has been enormous in the last few decades,
Speaker 5: and those two are obviously linked. When you have more
Speaker 5: market power, the fruits of that market power go to
Speaker 5: those at the top. We also have more economists called
Speaker 5: monopsity power firms have market power over workers and have
Speaker 5: driven down their wages.
Speaker 4: Significantly below a competitive level.
Speaker 5: So I want to have more anti trust policy, more
Speaker 5: competitive labor market policies. But that can take time. Meanwhile,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of monopoly rents. And so part of
Speaker 5: what I would begin by doing is increasing corporate colfix taxes,
Speaker 5: which are not a tax on return to capital, they
Speaker 5: are tax on this monopoly profits. I'd also like to
Speaker 5: have environmental taxes firms that are engaged, including the environment,
Speaker 5: on to pay for the damage that they're doing. Remarkably, America,
Speaker 5: those at the top pay a lower percentage of their
Speaker 5: taxes than those down below. Even some of our richest
Speaker 5: people have commented that they think they're right more wrong.
Speaker 1: Well, can I ask you, like on a day when
Speaker 1: we're looking at a company and forgive me, I'm just
Speaker 1: singling out because it popped. Shares of Alphabet are now
Speaker 1: a two tillion dollar market cap company this week, you
Speaker 1: know next week. Last week, we've been obsessed with, certainly
Speaker 1: what we call them mag Dificent seven, the big megacap
Speaker 1: technic companies. They're very big. Amazon, we talked with an
Speaker 1: author recently, so entrenched certainly in our world, and you
Speaker 1: think about their reach. Are these the companies the individuals,
Speaker 1: whether it's an Amazon, whether it's a Meta, whether it's
Speaker 1: an Alphabet that you think you talk about growth of
Speaker 1: market power isn't too much at this point in your
Speaker 1: view that something needs to be done to rain them
Speaker 1: in or do the benefits outweigh the downside here.
Speaker 5: Well, they do give benefits, but they have a lot
Speaker 5: of downsides. They need to be better regulated. Europe has
Speaker 5: done a better job at regulating them. The digital harms
Speaker 5: are quite obvious and have been by now well documented.
Speaker 5: But talking narrowly now about market power, I think we
Speaker 5: ought to do what we can to limit their market power,
Speaker 5: but tax the groups of that market power, of the
Speaker 5: revenues that they get at a much higher rate. You know,
Speaker 5: if you ask the question, would Jeff Bezos or the founders.
Speaker 4: Of Google.
Speaker 5: Or Zuperbird stop working if we tax their wealth in
Speaker 5: a way, say a three percent you know, so, any
Speaker 5: answer is obviously they would continue to work.
Speaker 3: Do you think that they would leave the United States?
Speaker 5: Well, we have imposed what we call an exit tax
Speaker 5: that those with a lot of wealth and don't feel
Speaker 5: who don't feel loyalty to the United States can leave.
Speaker 5: We allowed them to leave, but they have to pay
Speaker 5: a tax that represents attacks on their groups of the
Speaker 5: wealth that they've accumulated while they've been in the United States.
Speaker 5: And that that tax is significant and it is a deterrent.
Speaker 5: Not it may be that we ought to consider raising
Speaker 5: that tax, but I don't think people like at Zuckerberg
Speaker 5: Musk are going to leave the United States. They realize
Speaker 5: the benefits of American citizenship.
Speaker 3: We're speaking right now with Professor Joseph Stieglitz, Nobel Lauriate Economists.
Speaker 3: He's a professor of economics at Columbia University. He's got
Speaker 3: a new book out, The Road to Freedom, Economics and
Speaker 3: the Good Society. Professor, as I mentioned, you are up
Speaker 3: at Columbia. You've been there for a long time. We've
Speaker 3: been watching everything that's been happening on the campus there,
Speaker 3: as well as campuses including USC, Yale, MIT. The list
Speaker 3: continues to go on here in the United States, as
Speaker 3: we've seen pro Palestinian protests and encampments take over some
Speaker 3: of these campuses. Freedom in the academic context, how are
Speaker 3: you looking at the pest protests and the context of
Speaker 3: freedom of speech.
Speaker 4: That's a good question.
Speaker 5: I mean personal me comment that up where my office is,
Speaker 5: which is the Manhattanville campus, things are very quiet the
Speaker 5: Business school at the Business school, but you've been.
Speaker 1: On campus a long time. And you've seen different protests
Speaker 1: over the years, and it seemed to be I was
Speaker 1: there when there were protests, and it seems like that's
Speaker 1: what students are should be doing, exploring and pushing back
Speaker 1: when they don't feel like things are right. But what
Speaker 1: is the what is it those protests in the context
Speaker 1: of freedom of speech?
Speaker 4: So I agree with you very strongly.
Speaker 5: I'm actually happy the students are engaged in the world,
Speaker 5: you know. That's that's one of the things I try
Speaker 5: to kept them to be interested in the world, and
Speaker 5: also to reason about the world, to come to understand it,
Speaker 5: and to debate how could or should things be changed.
Speaker 5: So that's a good thing. And in my own life,
Speaker 5: protests have played a very important role. Back in nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty three, I was down there in the march in
Speaker 5: Washington with Martin Luther King, and you know that speech
Speaker 5: he gave about I have a dream has been a
Speaker 5: lifelong inspiration to me. So even civil disobedience in certain
Speaker 5: circumstances can be an important mechanism for social change. We
Speaker 5: have a special responsibility, of course, to make sure on
Speaker 5: our campus that all views get heard, that we can have.
Speaker 4: Civil debates and so on. The one hand.
Speaker 5: Academic freedom is really important, and I really took offense
Speaker 5: to Speaker Johnson coming up to our campus and calling
Speaker 5: for the resignation of our president. I hadn't seen anything
Speaker 5: like that, maybe since the HUAC hearings the House on
Speaker 5: American Activities Committee back with McCarthy in the fifties. I mean,
Speaker 5: that kind of direct interference in academia is just unheard of.
Speaker 5: And we know some of the Republicans have been trying
Speaker 5: to undermine universities because universities teach children how to our
Speaker 5: young our youngsters, our young men and women how to think,
Speaker 5: and a lot of people don't like that idea that
Speaker 5: they should be thinking for themselves. But at the same time,
Speaker 5: we have to create on campus a community where all
Speaker 5: voices are heard, and I think we're actually working very
Speaker 5: much towards that. There were only a few people raising problems,
Speaker 5: and I think having outside educators like the speaker is
Speaker 5: not helpful.
Speaker 1: We're going to leave it on that note. We always
Speaker 1: appreciate hearing you talk about hearing from voices. We always
Speaker 1: appreciate hearing from you. Professor Stieglitz, Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Nobel Loride Economist, Columbia professor Joseph Stieglitz here in New
Speaker 1: York City. Check out his book his latest book, The
Speaker 1: Road to Freedom, Economics and the Good Society. Really appreciate
Speaker 1: us spending some time with you.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 3: L After the Cold War ended, there emerged a theory
Speaker 3: that Western liberal democracy had triumphed over fascism and communism.
Speaker 3: The theory was perhaps most notably put forth by the
Speaker 3: political scientist Francis Fukiyama, who argued that we'd reach quote
Speaker 3: the end of history, peace among nuclear superpowers. The Nazis
Speaker 3: were gone, the Berlyn Wall had fallen. It turns out
Speaker 3: things didn't exactly go the way that the West thought
Speaker 3: they would. The world didn't embrace the Western a form
Speaker 3: of liberal democracy. Russia invaded Georgia and Crimea, and then Ukraine,
Speaker 3: where it's in its thirty year of fighting. China over
Speaker 3: that time has risen to become the second largest economy
Speaker 3: in the world with its own global ambitions In other words,
Speaker 3: there are other countries that want to be superpowers.
Speaker 6: David E.
Speaker 3: Sanger is the Politzer Prize winning White House and National
Speaker 3: Security correspondent for the New York Times. He wrote the
Speaker 3: best seller The Perfect Weapon. His new book out earlier
Speaker 3: this month. It's called New Cold Wars, China's Rise, Russia's invasion,
Speaker 3: and America struggled to defend the West. David joins us
Speaker 3: from Washington, DC. David, congratulations on the book.
Speaker 6: How are you?
Speaker 7: Thank you? Thanks very much. It was an exciting and
Speaker 7: many it was fun exercise to go write this.
Speaker 3: Well, you write in the book that the revival of
Speaker 3: the superpower conflict took Washington by surprise. When was Washington's
Speaker 3: surprise by this?
Speaker 6: At what moment? When?
Speaker 3: And why why were we so caught off guard?
Speaker 7: Well, we were caught off guard for a couple of reasons.
Speaker 7: The first is that we had worked from that assumption
Speaker 7: that you described, that the end of history had come here.
Speaker 7: And while Fukiyama famously wrote it, he wasn't the only
Speaker 7: one to subscribe to it. Most of Washington subscribed to
Speaker 7: some version of that theory. The second reason is that
Speaker 7: we lived in a world of self delusion. We spent
Speaker 7: twenty years focusing on terrorism as if terrorism was the
Speaker 7: central challenge to the United States rather than the major
Speaker 7: nuclear armed and rising technological powers around US. Thirdly, we
Speaker 7: took way too long in doing the pivot to the
Speaker 7: Asia Pacific area. We talked about it for years and years,
Speaker 7: we still haven't fully sort of focused the US on that,
Speaker 7: And it really was not until the past few year years,
Speaker 7: twenty years, more than twenty years after nine to eleven,
Speaker 7: that we sort of woke up to the fact that
Speaker 7: the central challenge for US over the next few decades
Speaker 7: will be not only Russia and China and the world
Speaker 7: that they are building around them, but the interaction between
Speaker 7: Russia and China, which was exactly what Nixon and Kissinger
Speaker 7: were trying to interrupt when they recognized China in the
Speaker 7: early seventies.
Speaker 8: What were some of the warning signs that the optimism
Speaker 8: was misplaced that you kind of came across in your research,
Speaker 8: you know, speaking to five different presidential administrations and different
Speaker 8: geopolitical experts.
Speaker 7: Well, Emily, it's a really interesting question because this was
Speaker 7: a bipartisan error. R I mean, this is not a
Speaker 7: Democrat or Republican thing. Was Bill Clinton who went to
Speaker 7: Beijing University and declared the Internet will set you free
Speaker 7: and undercut the Communist Party of China, when in fact
Speaker 7: it became part of the system of exquisite control that
Speaker 7: the Communist Party put together. It was George W. Bush
Speaker 7: who floated down the Never River with putin one of
Speaker 7: their two dozen meetings in where they were talking about
Speaker 7: Russia joining the European Union and maybe one day in
Speaker 7: the future, who knows, might even become a member of NATO,
Speaker 7: the alliance that was created to contain the old Soviet Union.
Speaker 7: So this was not Democrats or Republicans. But among the
Speaker 7: delusions was that national interests, territorial interests, interests in authoritarian
Speaker 7: control would not come ahead of their economic interests. We
Speaker 7: assumed that China was so invested in the United States
Speaker 7: and vice versa, that confrontation between the two countries could
Speaker 7: never happen, and that in Russia's case, that they so
Speaker 7: valued the oil and gas revenue that came from those
Speaker 7: pipeline in New Europe that they would never threaten the
Speaker 7: possibility that those could get cut off. And in fact,
Speaker 7: the Europeans never really gave them any reason to think
Speaker 7: it would be cut off until after the full invasion
Speaker 7: of Ukraine in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 3: David, I want to start with an anecdote that you
Speaker 3: include in your book about a President Biden visit to
Speaker 3: New York City just a couple of years ago, back
Speaker 3: in I believe it was October of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: where he made some comments at a fundraiser that I
Speaker 3: think struck a lot of people as pretty shocking. Explain
Speaker 3: what happened.
Speaker 7: So this was October twenty two, as you said, and
Speaker 7: the President for the past few days had been getting
Speaker 7: a string of some of the most alarming intelligence reports
Speaker 7: you can get as president in the United States. They
Speaker 7: indicated the intercepts of Russian commanders in Ukraine at a
Speaker 7: moment when the Russians were doing very poorly in Ukraine,
Speaker 7: indicated that they could be preparing to use tactical nuclear
Speaker 7: weapons against Ukrainian military sites. If they had gone ahead,
Speaker 7: it would have been the first use of nuclear weapons
Speaker 7: in Anchor since the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the
Speaker 7: second of two American bombs in nineteen forty five. And
Speaker 7: so the President's got this fundraiser, it's being held out
Speaker 7: of all things at the house of James Murdoch. It's
Speaker 7: the one of the few Democrats in the Murdoch family.
Speaker 7: Big fundraiser, So there are all these you know, East
Speaker 7: Siders who were walking around with their wine and looking
Speaker 7: at the art exhibits and getting ready to tell their friends.
Speaker 7: They had cocktails with the president. And Biden comes in
Speaker 7: and he says, we face the greatest nuclear possibility of
Speaker 7: nuclear use since the Cuban Missile crisis, which had been
Speaker 7: sixty years before that very week, and he went on
Speaker 7: to describe the possible ability that they are dealing with
Speaker 7: a leader in Vladimir Putin who might make use of
Speaker 7: a nuclear weapon because of the great nuclear paradox of
Speaker 7: the worst the Russians did to hire the chance that
Speaker 7: they would reach for their arsenal, and that began a
Speaker 7: remarkable period of time in which the US scrambled to
Speaker 7: get China and India among others, to tell the Russians
Speaker 7: there is no space here for the use of nuclear weapons.
Speaker 7: Put In back down. But something has really changed in
Speaker 7: this war, and that is, for the first time in
Speaker 7: post Cold War history, or really since the end of
Speaker 7: World War Two, we have the possibility that nuclear armed
Speaker 7: states are going to threaten to use nuclear weapons against
Speaker 7: non nuclear armed states, and that changes the world.
Speaker 8: So your book is titled New Cold Wars, and I
Speaker 8: noticed that now it looks like the New Cold Wars.
Speaker 8: It's Russia and China and then the U, whereas in
Speaker 8: the prior Cold War it was basically one country versus another.
Speaker 8: Can you talk about the dynamics of almost the US
Speaker 8: being I don't want to say outnumbered, but it's clearly
Speaker 8: not just one country versus another country. This new clus That's.
Speaker 7: Right, and that's a great question, e Lee. I don't
Speaker 7: think we're outnumbered because the US has something that Russia
Speaker 7: and China doesn't, which is a vast network of allies,
Speaker 7: which is probably our greatest strength and certainly enables US
Speaker 7: to extend our military, economics, technological reach. But those alliances
Speaker 7: are not as widespread as American officials would like you
Speaker 7: to think. There are probably fifty countries that are in
Speaker 7: the alliance together to back Ukraine, but that leaves another
Speaker 7: one hundred and twenty that are either lined up with
Speaker 7: the Russians or standing on the sideline. Those who say,
Speaker 7: don't make us choose between these two different groups. The
Speaker 7: dynamics are completely different. In the Old Cold War, it
Speaker 7: was largely a military contest against the Soviet Union, and
Speaker 7: within that largely in nuclear context. In the New Cold Wars,
Speaker 7: it's Russia and China to very different powers. China on
Speaker 7: the rise, Russia struggling and really only has the power
Speaker 7: of a disruptor. But they have found great utility in
Speaker 7: coming together and bringing in countries like Iran, which is
Speaker 7: providing the drones and maybe one day the missiles for
Speaker 7: Russia's use, North Korea, which has gone from being isolated
Speaker 7: by all to suddenly being a critical supplier to the
Speaker 7: Russians as well. It's a different relationship than in the
Speaker 7: old Cold War because when the old Soviet Union would
Speaker 7: go visit mal it was the Soviets on top. Now
Speaker 7: it's the Chinese on top, and we don't know what
Speaker 7: that partnership, it's not really a full alliance is going
Speaker 7: to look like. But it's probably the single most important
Speaker 7: factor in America in international relations today and certainly in
Speaker 7: American strategy today, and we need a way to go
Speaker 7: figure out how to go deal with it, manage it, maybe.
Speaker 3: Interrupt David, you spent so many years reporting, not just
Speaker 3: from Washington, but on the trail, not even on the
Speaker 3: campaign trail, like on with the presidents, traveling with the
Speaker 3: presidents all over the world to many of these places
Speaker 3: that you talk about. We know how the Cold War
Speaker 3: ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall. How do
Speaker 3: you think this Cold War ends.
Speaker 7: It's a great question. We're so much at the beginning
Speaker 7: that I don't even think we can think about the
Speaker 7: middle much plus the end. You know, the old Cold
Speaker 7: War had a sort of surprising start, the speed with
Speaker 7: which the Soviet Union turned from an ally of the
Speaker 7: US and World War two to an adversary just in
Speaker 7: a matter of years. And then it had a long
Speaker 7: middle and it had a surprising to Americans, very satisfying
Speaker 7: ending with the collapse of our adversary without any direct
Speaker 7: confrontation obviously Korea, Vietnam and the other proxy wars along
Speaker 7: the way. Anybody who's looking for a similar pattern in
Speaker 7: these new Cold Wars is probably going to be disappointed,
Speaker 7: because for the next few decades this will be the
Speaker 7: shaping competition for the United States and its allies. Some
Speaker 7: points that may be good. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 7: forced the United States to think about national security differently.
Speaker 7: We now understand how semiconductors are at the core of
Speaker 7: American national security. The TikTok debate is about national security
Speaker 7: right in ways that we did not even a few
Speaker 7: years ago. But what worries me is that in this
Speaker 7: presidential campaign, we are so wrapped up in our internal
Speaker 7: divisions over so many issues, cultural issues, and so forth,
Speaker 7: that we aren't even debating what our strategic approach to
Speaker 7: these adversaries has got to be. And I can't think
Speaker 7: of a more central issue for the next American president.
Speaker 3: David thirty seconds. We only have thirty seconds left. How
Speaker 3: does it change if it's Biden who wins in November
Speaker 3: or Trump if he wins in November.
Speaker 7: If it's Biden, I think it's going to look a
Speaker 7: lot like it is if it's Trump. The traditional American
Speaker 7: allies are going to begin to think about their Plan B,
Speaker 7: and their Plan B may be defending themselves without the US,
Speaker 7: and that may mean getting their own weaponry, including nuclear weaponry,
Speaker 7: because they can no longer rely on the American alliances.
Speaker 3: Wow, really gives us something to think about, David. I
Speaker 3: really appreciate you taking the time and joining us during
Speaker 3: the book tour. David d Sanger Politzer Prize, winning a
Speaker 3: White House and National Security correspondent for The New York Times.
Speaker 3: His new book It's out now, New Cold Wars, China's Rise,
Speaker 3: Russia's Invasion, and america Struggle to Defend the West. David
Speaker 3: Sanger of The New York Times. You're listening to a
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Business Week and this is Bloomberg Radio.
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Speaker 1: Eleven thirty Plenny Hen in our second hour of the
Speaker 1: weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the Michelin Guide. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course for fine dining, we know that, but it's
Speaker 1: also now rating hotels, Yes, hotels, and tim it requires
Speaker 1: more than a spawn a pool to get those coveted
Speaker 1: Michelin keys. It takes a certain experience.
Speaker 3: I guess you could say that. Plus if that experience
Speaker 3: includes an oyster safari, yeah, a high speed ferry, maybe
Speaker 3: watching Romanian Orthodox monks play the Simantran. Then you're in luck.
Speaker 3: How to make your trip to Europe this summer go
Speaker 3: further without sacrificing luxury. Courtesy of Bloomberg Pursuits. First up
Speaker 3: this hour, the new issue of Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 1: It is out. It's all about technology and how in
Speaker 1: this historic election year it is clearer than ever that
Speaker 1: the industry is playing a key role in the geopolitics
Speaker 1: and policing that shape our world.
Speaker 3: One sector that is at the center of so much semiconductors.
Speaker 3: One chip company with its own set of troubles. Well,
Speaker 3: it's Intel. It once defined Silicon Valley, and it's spent
Speaker 3: a decade flailing and it's now overshadowed by Nvidia.
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week columnist Max Chafkin and Bloomberg News US
Speaker 1: semiconductor and networking reporter Ian King right about Intel's taking
Speaker 1: its future on Ohio. It is the Tech Issues cover story.
Speaker 9: Well, well, Max and I were looky enough to actually
Speaker 9: get to walk up and look at the physical manifestation
Speaker 9: of this, and it was really a technology sort of
Speaker 9: fork in the road with a technology called EUV made
Speaker 9: by a company called a SOML. Key key part of
Speaker 9: this process of making these semiconductors, and Intel, you know,
Speaker 9: had a choice whether to adopt this technology with all
Speaker 9: of the problems that it had at the time and
Speaker 9: worked them out, or whether to basically put it on
Speaker 9: hold and persist with existing technology. And that turned out
Speaker 9: to be a blind alley technologically. It's opponents, its rivals, TSMC,
Speaker 9: some songs said no, no, we actually fancy having a
Speaker 9: go at this. We think we can make it work,
Speaker 9: and they did, and they took the lead away from Intel.
Speaker 3: Which brings us to today, Max and where we are
Speaker 3: when it comes to not just Intel's problems, but also
Speaker 3: what the US government is now trying to do in
Speaker 3: order to well alleviate the situation at least for the
Speaker 3: United States. Give us an update on where the money's
Speaker 3: coming from and where it's going right now.
Speaker 10: Yeah, so Intel, you know, as of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 10: has a new CEO, pack Gel Singer, who essentially his
Speaker 10: pitch it was like, bring back the old Intel people
Speaker 10: know Intel for you know, manufacturing.
Speaker 6: He was there for years. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 10: Sorry, As you mentioned that, this is this is a
Speaker 10: guy who's been at Intel except for a brief interlude
Speaker 10: at EMC. He's been at Intel since like nineteen seventy
Speaker 10: nine he mentored under Andy Grove, the legendary CEO, and
Speaker 10: it was sort of like get back to manufacturing. This
Speaker 10: was a defining feature of what made the company successful.
Speaker 10: Which it's helpful in two ways. One is that you know,
Speaker 10: in a lot of ways, like chips are a volume business.
Speaker 10: If your volume starts to go down because you're manufacturing
Speaker 10: and so great, that's going to have lots of knock
Speaker 10: on effects, right. And it's also helpful because of politics,
Speaker 10: because Gelsinger was reading the political moment in a very
Speaker 10: savvy way, and you had Joe Biden get elected, you know,
Speaker 10: on the with the promise of restoring industrial capacity. You
Speaker 10: had as Ian said, you know, the lockdowns and the
Speaker 10: chip shortage sudden realization, and you had you know, China
Speaker 10: and the fact that TSMC, which is based in Taiwan
Speaker 10: is you know, is very close geographically to to you
Speaker 10: know China, to to to mainland China, and the prospect
Speaker 10: that Beijing could decide to you know, like invade and
Speaker 10: that would put the chips that that we rely on
Speaker 10: at risk. So so you have this kind of swirl
Speaker 10: of strategic reasons, political reasons and Intel now is betting big.
Speaker 10: I mean you mentioned Ohio. They're also doing major projects
Speaker 10: in Arizona and also in Oregon where they both those
Speaker 10: places they've had, you know, significant operations before, and you're
Speaker 10: talking about you know, tens of billions of dollars and
Speaker 10: then the Biden administration coming in with their own money,
Speaker 10: you know, nineteen point five billion dollars from the Chips
Speaker 10: Act on top of some state funds. So it's a
Speaker 10: lot of money on this thing. We need to say, like,
Speaker 10: this is risky. There's no guarantee this is going to work.
Speaker 10: TSMC right now has a pretty substantial lead.
Speaker 1: And they're also building plants here in the United States.
Speaker 10: Max, Yeah, they're building plants again with support from the
Speaker 10: Biden administration.
Speaker 6: Again, this is a big strategy.
Speaker 10: Although when you look at you know, the size that
Speaker 10: the binding White House is given more money to Intel
Speaker 10: than than than any of these other companies, and what Intel
Speaker 10: is trying to do here is very ambitious. You know,
Speaker 10: this Ohio site is enormous. I mean, you know, you're
Speaker 10: I went there at the end of last year, and
Speaker 10: you know, it looks like a kind of like a
Speaker 10: muddy field.
Speaker 6: Doesn't look like all that much.
Speaker 10: But it's basically goes on as far as I can see,
Speaker 10: and already you've got you know, fourteen hundred people working there,
Speaker 10: construction workers. I mean, there's a lot of action there.
Speaker 10: If it were built out, I mean, this would be
Speaker 10: like a hundred billion dollar site. It would be, as
Speaker 10: Gelsinger likes to, you know, brag, it would be one
Speaker 10: of the or would be the biggest chip factory in
Speaker 10: the world.
Speaker 1: All right, so ian so right now, a massive muddy field,
Speaker 1: but it's not going to be that way. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of money going into it. It takes a couple
Speaker 1: of years to get this up and running. So I
Speaker 1: wonder first of all, the time that it's going to
Speaker 1: take for Intel to get this done and ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: what guarantee does it have that this is the right bet,
Speaker 1: that this is the right strategy. Where will the marketplace
Speaker 1: essentially be maybe in a few years.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean if I if I knew that, I'd
Speaker 9: be in a different position.
Speaker 1: But fair with us, Yeah, tell me the questions, right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Now, that's that is absolutely the tension that exists
Speaker 9: right now. Just because he's building these plants doesn't mean
Speaker 9: the orders will come, right that's very important. Intel on
Speaker 9: its own, Intel at its current level is building way
Speaker 9: more capacity than it needs. The bet, and it's very
Speaker 9: clearly a bet, as Max pointed to, is we're going
Speaker 9: to build all these plants, and then we're going to
Speaker 9: persuade these companies that hated us, that will suffer at
Speaker 9: the consequences of our strength for years, to give us
Speaker 9: orders and we're going to build their chips as well,
Speaker 9: because that's the way we're going to play this. That's
Speaker 9: the way the world is going. This outsourcing model is
Speaker 9: only going to get stronger, and the only way we're
Speaker 9: going to win in this is to be part of it.
Speaker 9: So far, they don't have any customers. The only customer
Speaker 9: is themselves, and that's not enough to basically fill all
Speaker 9: of these plants are going to get built.
Speaker 6: That's thing that that is the challenge.
Speaker 10: I mean the assets that they have, and one of
Speaker 10: them is this you know, this machine that that that
Speaker 10: Ian mentioned, which Gelsinger managed to negotiate early access to.
Speaker 6: So so we actually.
Speaker 10: Saw when we were in Oregon one of two of
Speaker 10: these machines that exist in the world. The other one,
Speaker 10: you know, is at the ASML you know, headquarters so
Speaker 10: it's really the only one that was fully assembled. They
Speaker 10: have early access to that. Maybe they'll that'll allow them
Speaker 10: to help jump ahead. The other thing that's probably more important,
Speaker 10: because you know, all the other companies are also going
Speaker 10: to get this awesome looking.
Speaker 6: Machine, uh, is political.
Speaker 10: They they have an advantage in that they are kind
Speaker 10: of an American national champion. And we've even seeing the
Speaker 10: Biden administration talk that way, talk about the fact that
Speaker 10: like we as a country need to support this because
Speaker 10: if Intel were to fail or to get broken up
Speaker 10: or to exit you know, leading edge manufacturing as AMD,
Speaker 10: you know, their main competitor did, that would be a
Speaker 10: problem for the US. So so there is the prospect
Speaker 10: of further political support.
Speaker 1: For their security concerns like this plays into big time.
Speaker 6: Exactly national security.
Speaker 10: And you know, Gina Raymondo, the Commerce Secretary, you know,
Speaker 10: just some weeks ago, sort of floated this possibility of
Speaker 10: a second Ships Act, right like kind of now, who
Speaker 10: knows if there's the political will for that, but it
Speaker 10: does seem like Intel has a disadvantage that some.
Speaker 6: Of these other companies don't.
Speaker 10: And and though it remains to be seen whether they
Speaker 10: can capitalize on it.
Speaker 3: Talk about what you saw Ian at d one X,
Speaker 3: the company's research and development fab just outside of Portland,
Speaker 3: and describe the scene for us.
Speaker 9: The one in D one X, to be honest with you,
Speaker 9: is a bit like Times Square. There are way too
Speaker 9: many people there because there's a lot of work going
Speaker 9: on and a lot of experimentation, a lot of research
Speaker 9: and design. If you go to a typical production fab,
Speaker 9: there's nobody there, and there's nobody there for a reason
Speaker 9: because everything's running smoothly and everything's done by robots. If
Speaker 9: you see two or three people in a production line,
Speaker 9: that's about how it should be, so you know they
Speaker 9: there's just it's very difficult to convey to people what
Speaker 9: is going on in all of these machines, because it's
Speaker 9: all going on in these machines, and that's a good sign.
Speaker 9: If there are people there, it's a bad sign. So
Speaker 9: you think of an auto factory and robots and things
Speaker 9: like that, there's no comparison in the level of complexity
Speaker 9: of manufacturing that is going on in these chip plants,
Speaker 9: and the numbers alone reflect that. Nineteen and a half
Speaker 9: billion sounds like a huge amount of our taxpayers money
Speaker 9: going towards one company, but compared to the amount of
Speaker 9: CAPEX that they have to deploy in a year, it
Speaker 9: really isn't very much at all.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 10: And when you go into these places, I mean, just
Speaker 10: the procedure of getting in is complicated and creates a
Speaker 10: sense that, you know, you're entering the holy of holies.
Speaker 3: You're doing something like you're not scrubbing in for surgery.
Speaker 3: It's even cleaner there.
Speaker 10: It's much cleaner than surgery. And you know, you have
Speaker 10: to put on special gloves and then a gortech suit
Speaker 10: and a hood and a mask and then and then
Speaker 10: gloves over your gloves.
Speaker 6: And you know, it's.
Speaker 10: Funny because you're going through this entire process because the
Speaker 10: air in this clean room is called room the main
Speaker 10: factory floor has to be you know, way a thousand
Speaker 10: times cleaner than a hospital operating room.
Speaker 6: But that air doesn't.
Speaker 10: Actually touch the chips, like I mean, even there, you're
Speaker 10: a long way because the chips are protected inside of
Speaker 10: an even cleaner environment, inside of these robotic things. And
Speaker 10: and like even to see the features that are being
Speaker 10: cut on these chips, you know, you obviously can't see
Speaker 10: them with a naked eye. They they're even on the
Speaker 10: newer chips. They're they're not even the features don't even
Speaker 10: refract lights, so it doesn't you wouldn't see any evidence
Speaker 10: of them. You'd have to use basically an electron microscope.
Speaker 10: So again, like Ian saying, it's just a level of
Speaker 10: manufacturing complexity that is extremely sophisticated and novel. You know,
Speaker 10: Gelsinger said, you know, each wafer, the chips come from
Speaker 10: these big silicon discs that are called wafers. Each wafer
Speaker 10: is an experiment, and you do really get that sense.
Speaker 10: You know, all of these companies are making these extremely
Speaker 10: high stakes bets every couple of years, and if it
Speaker 10: goes wrong, as Ian mentioned, you know, then you can
Speaker 10: turn this you know, great American industrial into something that
Speaker 10: is really gasping just in a few years.
Speaker 1: This line, I love the epscene, cost complexity and time
Speaker 1: involved in this microscopic ballet makes sense only if you
Speaker 1: can do it at high volume, which means having tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of wafers in production at any given time.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a big bet Ian, big bet by Intel.
Speaker 1: If this doesn't work, then what for Intel?
Speaker 9: I mean the economics are brutal, as we were just indicating,
Speaker 9: and we saw very recently, Intel has put the numbers
Speaker 9: out there for its manufacturing operations. It's been brave and said, look,
Speaker 9: this is where we are, this is how much better
Speaker 9: we need to get the difference between making money and
Speaker 9: losing billions of dollars is very, very small, and it's
Speaker 9: all about yield. It's how many of these tiny things
Speaker 9: can you make and how many per production run can
Speaker 9: you get out of this amount set fixed amount of
Speaker 9: money that you're getting in there, The yield everything, it's
Speaker 9: just so difficult. And if at the end of it
Speaker 9: you're not first to market, your second or third to market,
Speaker 9: you're late something like that. Maybe these things that can
Speaker 9: sell for tens of thousands of dollars each, suddenly you're
Speaker 9: selling them for less than a cost to make. So
Speaker 9: it really it's hard to convey just how quickly this
Speaker 9: industry can change and how brutal it is.
Speaker 3: Our thanks to Bloomberg Business Week columnist Max Chafkin and
Speaker 3: Bloomberg News US semiconductor and networking reporter Ian King, check
Speaker 3: out the new issue of Bloomberg business Week All about Technology,
Speaker 3: includes stories about crypto being hot again, GM kicking Apple
Speaker 3: out of its cars in the the uaw taking notes
Speaker 3: on a Swedish testlass strike. Those stories of the new
Speaker 3: issue now on newsstands, online, and on the Bloomberg terminal.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week still ahead. Also in
Speaker 1: the new issue, summer travel, including Europe on a Budget.
Speaker 3: And the CEO of the Amicelin guide on expanding into
Speaker 3: hotels and what it takes to be an inspector on
Speaker 3: restaurants a hint, you get to eat out a lot.
Speaker 3: It's a tough job.
Speaker 1: To get perfect for you.
Speaker 6: You know, I know I would totally do that.
Speaker 3: It eats a lot everybody. If you don't known, you
Speaker 3: imagine that job. That would be an amazing job.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
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Speaker 2: on Apple car Play and then Bright Auto with a
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Speaker 3: You might remember our recent weekend show and podcasts. We
Speaker 3: talked about some big news, but I loved it.
Speaker 11: I'm not talking to you, okay.
Speaker 3: Michelin is capitalizing on its renown as an arbiter of
Speaker 3: fine dining through its annual Star awards for restaurants, remember
Speaker 3: those max out at three stars. What they're doing is
Speaker 3: they're making further inroads into the hospitality sector, so Carol.
Speaker 3: To that end, the Michelin Guide this month awarded its
Speaker 3: first honors for hotels, giving just twenty four establishments in
Speaker 3: France the highest three keys rating. So instead of thinking
Speaker 3: about stars for restaurants, think keys for hotels.
Speaker 1: Makes sense.
Speaker 3: These keys are coming to the US.
Speaker 1: We've got a great guest with us. Grendel polinek is
Speaker 1: the CEO of the Michelin Guide. He joins us here
Speaker 1: in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker studio. First of all, is
Speaker 1: it Michelin or Michelin? How are you supposed to say it?
Speaker 11: In France, we say Micheline.
Speaker 1: Michel Okay, sold this, Carol, it's just so funny, like
Speaker 1: when you talking about the newsroom. First of all, welcome,
Speaker 1: so nice to have you here with us. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to see how you guys have done. It's
Speaker 1: not a pivot because you're still doing restaurants. But talk
Speaker 1: to us about what you're thinking was of expanding into
Speaker 1: the hospitality further into the hospitality industry.
Speaker 11: Member for sure, and what people know of obviously of
Speaker 11: the famous Michelin styles highlighting the best restaurants in the world,
Speaker 11: as well as famously unanimous inspectors. But what people don't
Speaker 11: know is that Michin has been rating restaurants for the
Speaker 11: beginning of the last century. Because first it was both
Speaker 11: an hotel and restaurant guide and we are really back
Speaker 11: int three with recommended selection and recommendation of the best
Speaker 11: hotel in the world. Two weeks ago we revealed the
Speaker 11: first distinctions with the hotel keys in France because it's
Speaker 11: obviously the first destination in the world.
Speaker 1: All we talked about for our weekend broadcast. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: courtesy of our Pursuits team who covered it. It was great.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and yesterday, because the US is the main tourism
Speaker 11: market as a destination, but also because American people are
Speaker 11: traveling the world, we decided to disclose the first keys
Speaker 11: for the US. So one hundred and twenty four properties
Speaker 11: have been awarded with one, two or three keys, and
Speaker 11: eleven with at a three key level.
Speaker 3: Okay, take a step back and just you know, the
Speaker 3: history of the Michelin Guide has been one of there's
Speaker 3: this like lore when you talk about the history of it.
Speaker 3: And the idea that the whole motivation for creating this
Speaker 3: guide was to get people to travel to restaurants more
Speaker 3: so they could sell Michelin could sell more tires.
Speaker 11: And absolutely and today the Mission God is still part
Speaker 11: of the cork Michelin and the original idea was just
Speaker 11: to lead people to travel more to help the motto
Speaker 11: is fine their way and to find the best places
Speaker 11: to stay and to eat.
Speaker 6: Is that philosophy is still say?
Speaker 11: I think the philosophy is still the same, and also
Speaker 11: the value because what is called for the Mission God
Speaker 11: is independence. We have a team of professional inspectors so
Speaker 11: working full time for Micheland it's great and selecting restaurants
Speaker 11: and hotel paying their bill in full to make sure
Speaker 11: that we share the most trustworthy, reliable and up to
Speaker 11: date information to the food isign travelers.
Speaker 6: So you can get a job.
Speaker 3: Just go into restaurants and hotels sign me yeah to
Speaker 3: report on this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have actually some new Desert Kid creator goes
Speaker 1: to restaurants. Having said that, do you feel like it's
Speaker 1: almost a sweet spot in terms of what's going on
Speaker 1: in hospitality because it does feel like what people might
Speaker 1: cut back. It just feels like everybody is out there traveling,
Speaker 1: and especially Americans, but in general.
Speaker 11: Yes, and definitely we feel that there is a need
Speaker 11: because there is basically too much information today in the
Speaker 11: travel industry, so people need an advice to make up
Speaker 11: their choice. And the Mitchin is really a selection so
Speaker 11: to ease your life and also to be an antidote
Speaker 11: to boring travel, because we are recommending places that have
Speaker 11: truly that are truly authentic, you know, that have a
Speaker 11: superman done, so that they have something as specific to
Speaker 11: offer to ensure a memorable experience.
Speaker 1: And talking about first of all, how somebody becomes an
Speaker 1: inspector in terms of really for the restaurants, it's rigorous.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about that.
Speaker 11: Well, let's say last year I received more than eight
Speaker 11: thousand applications to be an inspected. People don't realize that
Speaker 11: it's a full time job, so that we only recruit people
Speaker 11: that have a formal training in the industry hospitality or
Speaker 11: reference back off house, front of house. Then there have
Speaker 11: been working in a resturance or in an hotel, and
Speaker 11: then we have a training process about two three years
Speaker 11: with more senior inspectors on the field. And as an
Speaker 11: inspectors you have to eat out lunch and dinner about
Speaker 11: three hundred times a year.
Speaker 7: Me.
Speaker 3: I know, look it think it sounds great, but it's
Speaker 3: a lot, it's a lot of.
Speaker 1: Fool and you're not around in the evenings.
Speaker 11: Yeah, it's a lot, of course, But what is important
Speaker 11: is they have to remain anonymous also just to ensure
Speaker 11: they have a regular customer experience, because we work for
Speaker 11: the customers, so they pay the bill in full as well.
Speaker 3: Eight thousand applications for how many spots?
Speaker 11: So today we recommend worldwide sixteen thousand refurans, six thousand hotels.
Speaker 11: But there are also a lot of rations and hotels
Speaker 11: to visit without retaining them as part of all selection.
Speaker 11: So there is plenty of restaurants and hotels to visit.
Speaker 11: But I won't share the number of inspectors working for measurs.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, how many they are called inspectors.
Speaker 3: I want to get an idea undercover of the rate
Speaker 3: of acceptance. So if you have eight thousand applicants, like,
Speaker 3: are they.
Speaker 1: Only like getting it hard?
Speaker 11: Only very few?
Speaker 6: And are we talking like a dozen? I'm not.
Speaker 11: What I can tell you because today we are covering
Speaker 11: the world. We have Russian selection in more than fifty
Speaker 11: different countries that we have the more than twenty different
Speaker 11: nationality of inspectors men and women. And what is important
Speaker 11: also is to be able to have a proper understanding
Speaker 11: of all the hospitality and food culture of the world, because,
Speaker 11: for example, inspectors bathed in the US, they also contribute
Speaker 11: to the selection in France, in Europe or in Asia
Speaker 11: as well as we have europe and or Japanese inspector
Speaker 11: coming to the US to contribute to the selection.
Speaker 1: You definitely obviously have standards. I get it, and you're
Speaker 1: being very you know, you're very secretive because you want
Speaker 1: to make sure that what is reported is just very
Speaker 1: true and accurate. And I'm curious. Then, as a result,
Speaker 1: is there a cap on the number of guides of
Speaker 1: places you would put out because you are expanding a lot,
Speaker 1: so do you to make sure that you are getting
Speaker 1: it right? Is there a cap?
Speaker 11: No, We are very consistent with the approach as well
Speaker 11: as the value, So we have a no quota approach,
Speaker 11: so we recognize the quality where it is and whatever
Speaker 11: the style of the cooking, whatever the style of the place.
Speaker 11: So it's really the depending on what the destination has
Speaker 11: to offer and what can be sayd is you know,
Speaker 11: the culian every scene of the world as well as
Speaker 11: the hospitality offer is really booming in terms of quality
Speaker 11: and diversity.
Speaker 3: Is there any chance that expanding can dilute the brand?
Speaker 3: Are you concerned about that?
Speaker 11: I would on the contrary, because one of the strengths
Speaker 11: of the Mission Guide is first that it is the
Speaker 11: reference for the local people and got Japanese people will
Speaker 11: consider the Mission Guide that's the ultimate reference for Japanese food.
Speaker 11: The French as the ultimate reference for French food, whether
Speaker 11: creative or traditional. So we are the local reference, and
Speaker 11: that's the reason why the international travelers trust Mission Guide
Speaker 11: because they will have access thanks to the recommendation of
Speaker 11: the Mission Guide to an authentic local experience.
Speaker 1: Like I think people would be surprised that you guys
Speaker 1: are in Colorado, right, you launched it last year.
Speaker 11: We launch it last year, last year. Okay, so today yes,
Speaker 11: we are covering we say, only seven men destinations in
Speaker 11: the US with all ration selection. But definitely the plan
Speaker 11: is to cover the US as a whole and to
Speaker 11: be able beyond the US to recognize all the culinary
Speaker 11: culture and the hospitality culture of the world.
Speaker 1: So even if it's a place like Colorado where there's
Speaker 1: only maybe a handful of places that actually got to
Speaker 1: start from you guys. That's that's okay, that's that's valuable
Speaker 1: to you.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 11: But the point is, you know, more than ever there
Speaker 11: are great places to recognize everywhere.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 11: So, because we don't come provide on the value of
Speaker 11: the ratings and we need the resources to make it.
Speaker 11: We are expanding gradually, fast, but gradually. And the plan
Speaker 11: remains the same. It's in the years to come to
Speaker 11: be able to cover the US as a whole, to
Speaker 11: make sure that we left no stone on turn so
Speaker 11: on that.
Speaker 3: How do you choose the cities that you're expanding to
Speaker 3: and when do you expand to them? And talk about
Speaker 3: detailed deals that you guys have with local tourism agencies now.
Speaker 11: But first of all, it's always the mission decision first
Speaker 11: based on the culinary potential, okay, and so we will
Speaker 11: in all priority. Of course, we take into account also
Speaker 11: whether it's the tourism hot spots, yeah as well, and
Speaker 11: what's the value of the mission guide Because I think
Speaker 11: your question is related to the to the business model
Speaker 11: is let's say, or qualify audience. Okay, So discerning foodies
Speaker 11: and travelers. And basically for the for the guide, we
Speaker 11: have the revenues from rations booking okay, from hotl and
Speaker 11: bookings okay of course, and we have also partnerships with
Speaker 11: you know, brands fashion, food and beverage that are willing to.
Speaker 1: Be exposed towards agencies.
Speaker 11: And tourism agencies or governments that are willing to leverage
Speaker 11: on the Mission Guard as a platform to promote their destinations.
Speaker 1: But you're not going to do it if you don't
Speaker 1: like the place.
Speaker 11: Obviously, you know, we have a lot of the men
Speaker 11: to expand today. We have to manage expectations because inspectors
Speaker 11: are scarce resources. We need to hire them, we need
Speaker 11: to train them, so we expand only when there is
Speaker 11: a very mature culinary potential.
Speaker 6: Is the Micheline Guide profitable on its own?
Speaker 11: On its own, it's really sustainable. But I won't be
Speaker 11: able to share the detail of the results because it's
Speaker 11: Michelin as a group, don't share the details of the
Speaker 11: different business line results.
Speaker 1: I want to know what an inspector makes.
Speaker 6: It doesn't an inspector. You know what an inspector doesn't make?
Speaker 3: Food for themselves as an inspector.
Speaker 6: Doing every meal.
Speaker 7: It's a really hot restaurant.
Speaker 11: Is that's a good point? You know, today sometimes it's
Speaker 11: quite a challenge to get access to some of the
Speaker 11: retaurants that are almost of a good so there are
Speaker 11: nobody and yeah, they have to to blend in the crowd.
Speaker 11: So we do not have VIP treatments, so we have
Speaker 11: to queue. We have to make sure that we are
Speaker 11: pushing the doors. But we also have to change the
Speaker 11: phone numbers and the credit CUD numbers to make sure
Speaker 11: that we remain unanimous.
Speaker 3: How many times does an inspector have to eat at
Speaker 3: a restaurant to make a determination.
Speaker 11: So one of the golden rules is that the same
Speaker 11: inspectors is never going back twice to the same reference
Speaker 11: and stay another inspector or several inspectors. We come again
Speaker 11: and again, but then it's up to them to decide
Speaker 11: how many times they have to come back. You know,
Speaker 11: it's depending on the cons instancy of the food offer.
Speaker 11: And it's the same for the hotel. You know, we
Speaker 11: come as often as necessary, but it's truly a human approach.
Speaker 11: It's not an algorithm. It's about leaving the experience yourself.
Speaker 3: How many stars do you think he's going to give
Speaker 3: us after this?
Speaker 1: I'm a little afraid, but I know of you give us.
Speaker 1: How many stories would you give us?
Speaker 7: At least three?
Speaker 1: Full the smile. This has been so cool and so interesting.
Speaker 1: Promise you'll come back as you guys continue to expand
Speaker 1: the brand.
Speaker 3: And yeah, next time in disguise though mess.
Speaker 6: Lovely.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Grendel. Paulinecki is the CEO at
Speaker 1: The Michelin Guide, joining us here in our studio. I'm
Speaker 1: going to go travel makes.
Speaker 3: Me want to go on vacation, makes you money, need
Speaker 3: some good food and restaurants.
Speaker 1: I'm hungry. We're always hungry. All right, this is Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 1: Ignore the algorithm, forget what your friends told you, block
Speaker 1: out the in law's advice. Instead, prioritize the only preferences
Speaker 1: that really matter yours, and if that includes a vacation
Speaker 1: in Europe for less. Yeah, even better.
Speaker 3: Well, it's time for Bloomberg Pursuits. It's the Summer Travel Guide.
Speaker 3: We're joined by Bloomberg Pursuits travel editor Nikki ck Stein
Speaker 3: and the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rouser. The entire
Speaker 3: section of this edition, by the way, devoted to Europe,
Speaker 3: with a little bit of Tots sprinkled in there as well.
Speaker 3: Chris Rauser, I want to start with you and just
Speaker 3: give us an overview of in the Pursuit section of
Speaker 3: how you think about the summer travel section.
Speaker 12: We always try to find a theme or something that
Speaker 12: ties to what's going on in the world, and in
Speaker 12: this case, this isn't just focused on Europe. It's Europe
Speaker 12: for less and this is a this is a big
Speaker 12: summer for Europe. The Paris Olympics are happening, and we've
Speaker 12: done a lot of stories that we've talked to you
Speaker 12: about about how hotel prices are now like on the
Speaker 12: regular over a thousand dollars a night right for less
Speaker 12: is relative, well that's true for less, well for less
Speaker 12: than a thousand dollars. Of that context is everything, and
Speaker 12: so we Nikki had the idea to just like, look
Speaker 12: at all these less crowded, less expensive, less known corners
Speaker 12: of Europe, and it can't. She came up with so
Speaker 12: many really wonderful places to go.
Speaker 1: Well, can I say the first paragraph that I read
Speaker 1: into you about ignored the algorithm forget what your friends,
Speaker 1: that's your words, your thinking. I have to say, reading
Speaker 1: your story, I just kind of want to do exactly
Speaker 1: what you did, So tell us about your journey.
Speaker 13: So the irony of exactly what you just said is
Speaker 13: that what we did was a pretty spontaneous trip, and
Speaker 13: it's very hard to recommend recreating a trip that was
Speaker 13: so beautiful because it was so spontaneous. But that said,
Speaker 13: my husband and I got a couple of days of
Speaker 13: childcare courtesy the in laws who came to take care
Speaker 13: of our two kids, and we had no clue what
Speaker 13: to do with ourselves. We didn't want to spend a
Speaker 13: thousand dollars, and I we did want to go somewhere
Speaker 13: that required jet lag because my son can't handle that,
Speaker 13: and we ended up finding this gem of a destination
Speaker 13: called Summerset in the British countryside, where a hotel had
Speaker 13: been on my radar called the newt that I had
Speaker 13: desperately wanted to stay at, and it's a huge kind
Speaker 13: of farm estate with a beautiful and Wardian mansion at
Speaker 13: the center of it, and we said.
Speaker 1: Let's go there.
Speaker 12: I want to underscore two things about this, So this
Speaker 12: story about Summerset is the opener of the section. And
Speaker 12: this didn't start as a thing that Nicki and I
Speaker 12: planned for her to cover. This was just a vacation
Speaker 12: that she went on with her husband. And it's very Actually,
Speaker 12: we don't do things that way normally because actually, if
Speaker 12: you're doing if you're covering an area for a story,
Speaker 12: you have to plan out where you're going to go,
Speaker 12: you have to see the new, what's new. It's kind
Speaker 12: of not always fun. So it's very rare that we
Speaker 12: transfer like a personal vacation into like a story. But
Speaker 12: this was so fun and so great and also so unplanned,
Speaker 12: which is the other very unusual thing for Nicki as
Speaker 12: the travels are at Bloomberg, who plans things metigulously to
Speaker 12: a tea and she just in this case, just let
Speaker 12: friends recommend places to go, let the staff at the
Speaker 12: new recommend places to go, and it just became this
Speaker 12: really wonderful road trip.
Speaker 13: It was liberating, and it was affordable. Guys, Like, one
Speaker 13: of the places that we stayed at was less than
Speaker 13: two hundred dollars a night.
Speaker 1: I'm just putting that out there.
Speaker 3: Even the new a place you've wanted to go to
Speaker 3: for years, is relatively affordable, even though it's like a
Speaker 3: you call it a top fifty hotel in the world
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 13: So you know the World's fifty Best Restaurants list, Yeah,
Speaker 13: that also started applying to hotels.
Speaker 1: Last year.
Speaker 13: The same organization started ranking hotels the same way that
Speaker 13: they rank restaurants, and the new appeared on the first
Speaker 13: edition of the World's Fifty Best Hotels list. The rates
Speaker 13: typically started around six hundred and fifty dollars a night.
Speaker 13: Obviously that shifts a little bit depending on the season,
Speaker 13: but when we were there, that was what the prices
Speaker 13: started at. And when you compare this to kind of
Speaker 13: like a baseline price in Europe right now for a
Speaker 13: fancy hotel being a thousand dollars a night, Honestly, it
Speaker 13: might sound ludicrous to some people, but that's a great deal.
Speaker 13: I mean, this little town of Batcom that we went
Speaker 13: to is literally a chart, a pub and some houses
Speaker 13: there's a dairy and that's it. I mean, the dairy
Speaker 13: is actually in the next town over, Let's be clear
Speaker 13: about that. It was the smallest place I think I've
Speaker 13: ever gone to a hotel to stay in, and yet
Speaker 13: it was such a special experience because the entire town
Speaker 13: seemed to pour in with their wellies and their dogs
Speaker 13: for Sunday supper, and like there was something so convivial
Speaker 13: and participatory about that. It's hard to quite capture.
Speaker 3: Summerset is not exactly like when you scroll through Instagram
Speaker 3: and you see where all your friends are going. No,
Speaker 3: where they're going? Why Somerset? What's it known for? How
Speaker 3: did you end up there?
Speaker 13: So obviously I knew that the new was there, and
Speaker 13: so that kind of started the idea. But I asked
Speaker 13: around because I had the same impression. I was like,
Speaker 13: is this really where I want to go? And so
Speaker 13: I asked a friend who who lives in London and
Speaker 13: spends a lot of time in the surrounding areas. I said,
Speaker 13: do I want to go to Summerset or should I
Speaker 13: maybe just go to the Cotswolds, which is the more
Speaker 13: common destination outside of London. It's more of the posh
Speaker 13: country side escape.
Speaker 1: And so she said to me, she said, the Cotswolts
Speaker 1: are so over.
Speaker 13: The Cotsolts have been overrun with all of these Londoners
Speaker 13: in range Rovers, Somerset.
Speaker 1: Is so much better. Oh my god, that told me.
Speaker 1: Is reading through it was just magical and it was
Speaker 1: just like I felt like I was on the journey
Speaker 1: with you. So I love that you guys kind of
Speaker 1: just did it that It wasn't necessarily the plan and
Speaker 1: it was just fun to go. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I just kind of want to do everything. We have
Speaker 1: a few more minutes and maybe go through some of
Speaker 1: the rest of the section. You do, guys, go into
Speaker 1: some really top European spots right now, European hot spots,
Speaker 1: and a way to kind of do it maybe a
Speaker 1: little less expensively, and.
Speaker 3: Then little remember, yeah, everything's relative.
Speaker 12: I'm always like, we go, Chris, we do. We don't
Speaker 12: usually do this, but we we go through a bunch
Speaker 12: of hot spots like the French Riviera in Portugal on
Speaker 12: the bally Eric Islands, and we tell you, Okay, if
Speaker 12: you want to go on a more expensive version of
Speaker 12: this trip, here's where you should stay amazing hotels, or
Speaker 12: if you want to splurge. You know, here are some
Speaker 12: other places you should stay. So like in the French Riviera, there's,
Speaker 12: for you know, three hundred and eighty dollars a night
Speaker 12: you could stay at the might say this wrong, Chateau
Speaker 12: de Thiol, seventeenth century seaside resort. Or you can spend
Speaker 12: fifteen hundred dollars nights at a rev Santropez. And so
Speaker 12: we just go through a bunch of places and provide
Speaker 12: really interesting examples of place.
Speaker 1: When to go to the Louton hotel ifordible? I know,
Speaker 1: that's a affordable one three hundred and fifty dollars a night.
Speaker 13: By the way, the idea for this conceit was that
Speaker 13: you could also mix and match these places so they
Speaker 13: compliment one another, which.
Speaker 1: Is kind of what I felt like you did a
Speaker 1: little bit on your journey, right, Yeah, I love that
Speaker 1: high low.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Exactly where do you want to go?
Speaker 3: I want to go to Cold Hawaii. Can you imagine? No,
Speaker 3: cold Hawaii?
Speaker 1: Like somebody said, you got to go to cold Hawaii. Okay,
Speaker 1: what's cold Hawaii?
Speaker 7: Guys?
Speaker 12: Cold Hawaii is the coast of Denmark in the Jutland,
Speaker 12: which is literally the big part of mainland Denmark that
Speaker 12: jumps out into the water, and it is a great
Speaker 12: region for surfing, which is why people call it cold Hawaii.
Speaker 12: It's a great region for surfing and it's colder, and
Speaker 12: we you know, it has grown. Tourism has grown there
Speaker 12: a ton, because this is something we've covered before. People
Speaker 12: are moving into looking at the Scandinavian countries in the
Speaker 12: summer because it gets quite hot in the Mediterranean, and
Speaker 12: suddenly this kind of off off the radar place that
Speaker 12: mostly surfers and maybe like hippies and artists know about.
Speaker 12: And now tourism less you grew more than one hundred
Speaker 12: percent because other people are figuring it out.
Speaker 13: It's amazing, right, And a big part of it is
Speaker 13: that you don't need a wet suit to swim in
Speaker 13: the water anymore.
Speaker 6: Sure, better better for us, for.
Speaker 1: Better for worse global warming.
Speaker 13: Right, we heard last summer about fires in Greece, crazy
Speaker 13: like one hundred degree plus days every day throughout Italy,
Speaker 13: throughout you know, all of these more common destinations. So
Speaker 13: actually this sounds kind of great.
Speaker 1: I think we need to talk a little bit too,
Speaker 1: because I know I think it teased it earlier in
Speaker 1: our broadcast about the Belgian city and its open air
Speaker 1: museum where Eiche tell us.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I bet you've never thought about going to Leish.
Speaker 13: I have, Okay, my name is Carol, and I've never
Speaker 13: thought that.
Speaker 1: Neither had I.
Speaker 13: But our writer Paul Tellis ended up there kind of
Speaker 13: by accident. His daughter had a ballet audition there and
Speaker 13: that's how he first ended up there, totally by chance.
Speaker 13: And what he discovered was that the city is covered
Speaker 13: in these enormous murals and street art installations by very,
Speaker 13: very prominent artists, and the concentration of these works in
Speaker 13: such a small town makes it feel truly like a free,
Speaker 13: open air museum. And he has found himself going back
Speaker 13: because he's so intrigued by it, and it has it
Speaker 13: has become his obsession, and now it's kind of mine.
Speaker 3: Too, Okay, speaking of obsessions Romania, this is really interesting
Speaker 3: because I think a few months ago you were in here,
Speaker 3: maybe both of you were, he.
Speaker 6: We were talking about exactly.
Speaker 12: It was one of our places to go in twenty
Speaker 12: twenty four.
Speaker 3: And you're kind of following up on that with this
Speaker 3: idea of a Romanian holiday.
Speaker 12: Yes, we like to dive into the places that we
Speaker 12: recommend at the beginning of the year later in the
Speaker 12: year to tell you exactly how to do it. And
Speaker 12: this has I think been on both me and Nicky's
Speaker 12: like personal lists for a while because we were very
Speaker 12: interested in it, so we had Lily Are, the Bloomberg
Speaker 12: travel writer write all about it.
Speaker 13: So this kind of started a few years ago. If
Speaker 13: I'm being totally honest, I met this woman, Ra Lucas
Speaker 13: Biek at a travel conference and she owns a company
Speaker 13: called Beyond Dracula, and her whole personal mission has been
Speaker 13: to convince people that there's more to Romania than the
Speaker 13: mythology that surrounds Count Dracula and his so called bram Castle,
Speaker 13: which people in Romania will tell you he had nothing
Speaker 13: to do with. Of course, he's a fictional character.
Speaker 11: But you what, no, just kidding, but it is a
Speaker 11: cool castle.
Speaker 13: The tour of the castle has become really cheesy and
Speaker 13: very touristy. It's like the only tourist trip in the
Speaker 13: entire country, so we tell you to go see it
Speaker 13: from the outside and have a picnic on the grounds
Speaker 13: rather than commit to the entire tour. What people might
Speaker 13: not realize is that Transylvania is a broad countryside region
Speaker 13: with lots of beautiful architecture, colorful towns. King Charles has
Speaker 13: a house there. He is vacationed there for years. He
Speaker 13: sources the honey for Buckingham Palace from beehives in the
Speaker 13: tiny town of Siki Sora, which when you see pictures
Speaker 13: of this town you will want to.
Speaker 1: Go there too. That's the one in the magazine, right,
Speaker 1: it is. It's like a story book. Yes, totally, totally.
Speaker 1: We have to mention to twenty seconds of toads because
Speaker 1: it's part of the section.
Speaker 13: Quickly, So, okay, this section wasn't all about my life
Speaker 13: and my travels, but my straw tote bag did break
Speaker 13: on my spring back trip, and I did carry my
Speaker 13: five year old daughter's state backpack all around a five
Speaker 13: star resort.
Speaker 1: So this was funny enough.
Speaker 13: We had the story conceived before all of this happened,
Speaker 13: but it gave it really new urgency. And here's a
Speaker 13: beautiful roundup of great tope bags that are new for
Speaker 13: the summer. And you've, I mean, honestly, you've got to
Speaker 13: get one of these because you got the MZ Wallace one.
Speaker 7: I did.
Speaker 1: I love that brand. I know, I was just in
Speaker 1: the store this is.
Speaker 13: And I guarantee that the strap won't break on it
Speaker 13: the way that my other one did.
Speaker 1: You guys a gem so much stuff. I want to
Speaker 1: do it all. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: That's Bloomberg Pursuits Travel editor Nikki Eckstein and the editor
Speaker 3: of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rowser.
Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast of a Little Apple, Spotify,
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