Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news as it happened. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone, welcome to the weekend
Speaker 1: edition of Bloomberg Business Week. We've got a double issue
Speaker 1: of the magazine as we head into the Labor Day holiday,
Speaker 1: and Tim the unofficial official start to fall. It's getting
Speaker 1: cooler in this city. It's getting cooler. Still feels like
Speaker 1: a little bit summer weather. I'm not ready to get
Speaker 1: the pumpkin spice lodge case and the sweaters out quite yet. Sure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure. I do love fall, though we can't say
Speaker 1: good by the summer. No, I agree with you. Well,
Speaker 1: we've got a great program coming up. Bloomberg's Mark Bergen
Speaker 1: is joining us on YouTube's content moderation policy and why
Speaker 1: the company has struggled to crackdown on white extremism. It's
Speaker 1: all in his new book, It's called Like Comments Subscribe
Speaker 1: Inside YouTube's chaotic rise to world domination. Him and yes,
Speaker 1: of course, the countdown to the next FED meeting. It
Speaker 1: is on, but investors and corporate leaders are still sorting
Speaker 1: through FED Chairman j Powell's hawk ish message at Jackson Hole.
Speaker 1: Weighing in on that with his front row seat on
Speaker 1: global supply chains, we checked in with Paul Lunstrom, CFO
Speaker 1: of global manufacturing company Flex, and later on women's ongoing
Speaker 1: struggle for equality. Fitting timing too, as August marked the
Speaker 1: second anniversary of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment that
Speaker 1: was passed back in nineteen twenty. Alright, full equality, folks.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say, we're still waiting. Yeah, we are.
Speaker 1: It's been more than a hundred years. Yep. All of
Speaker 1: that to come. We begin with this week's remarks in
Speaker 1: the magazine, which also happened to be the Issues cover story.
Speaker 1: President Biden recently announced a sweeping package of student debt relief,
Speaker 1: you know that, for giving as much as twenty dollars
Speaker 1: in loans for some recipients. Bloomberg Opinion editor Remesh rotten
Speaker 1: Bazaar says that the bailout doesn't address the fundamental problem.
Speaker 1: Too many college students are getting a bad return on
Speaker 1: their investments. We spoke to remesh for is take on
Speaker 1: what Biden got wrong. I don't want to understate, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the impact that loan forgiveness is going to
Speaker 1: have for you know, a lot of Americans. You know,
Speaker 1: particularly you know the people who um, you know, we're
Speaker 1: on pell grants, received pell grants. So these are low
Speaker 1: middle income UH students you know, who are in many
Speaker 1: cases going to see their their debts completely wiped out.
Speaker 1: That's life changing for a lot of them. But you know,
Speaker 1: the the underlying issue remains, which is, um, we have
Speaker 1: a system in which, you know, in order to have
Speaker 1: a good paying career, um, you know, people feel they
Speaker 1: need to go to college, whether that's two years for
Speaker 1: four years, um. And for an increasing number of those people,
Speaker 1: the gains of going to college just don't match the
Speaker 1: costs of doing so. And that's what's putting them in
Speaker 1: a position where they are leaving with debt that they
Speaker 1: can't repay. You know, that's what's caused this bigger cists.
Speaker 1: So forgiving debts, it's going to help some people, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really solve the problem. How did we get here?
Speaker 1: Because schools say, well, wait a minute, we've got to
Speaker 1: attract teachers, We've got to attract facilities. I want my
Speaker 1: daughter to learn. I don't really care if it's the
Speaker 1: newest gym that she's playing in. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of factors. Certainly, there's been under investment in public institutions
Speaker 1: really beginning with the Great Recession. The bargain has flipped.
Speaker 1: Whereas government for a long time basically picked up most
Speaker 1: of the tab of the cost of college, now that's
Speaker 1: been basically flipped over to families. The student loan system
Speaker 1: exacerbates the problem because basically it provides a subsidy to
Speaker 1: institutions and removes any incentive for them to lower tuition
Speaker 1: so that people can afford it, because you can just
Speaker 1: take out federal student loans with federal government covers and UM. Institutions,
Speaker 1: you know, colleges don't really have to have no skin
Speaker 1: in the game. UM. And what we have seen, yes,
Speaker 1: but in order to to attract students, they have invested
Speaker 1: a lot of money and you know, improving the student
Speaker 1: experience and amenities facilities, not necessarily instruction and research UM.
Speaker 1: And that's all contributed to driving up these costs to
Speaker 1: the levels that we're seeing. What's the justification for tuition
Speaker 1: costs and college costs, you know, outpacing inflation by a mile. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean basically, you know, outpacing virtually every other service
Speaker 1: in our economy. You know. I think one thing that's
Speaker 1: important point out is that for students who attend the
Speaker 1: most selective colleges, colleges that that accept less than fifty
Speaker 1: of applicants, um, but it's a very small percentage of
Speaker 1: the overall student population. The return on investment over your
Speaker 1: lifetime is still pretty good. It's still probably gonna be
Speaker 1: worth your while if you get a degree from one
Speaker 1: of those institutions. The problem is that's not where most
Speaker 1: people are going to school. And um, what you have
Speaker 1: is the vast majority of Americans who are are going
Speaker 1: to colleges in programs that just are not delivering that return.
Speaker 1: And even worse, a lot of a third of people
Speaker 1: who enroll in college never get their degree to begin with.
Speaker 1: And it's really that cohort that is sort of the
Speaker 1: at the heart of the crisis of of student loaned
Speaker 1: at we'll re meastion. What I really like about your
Speaker 1: piece is that it ends on you know, I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily want to say optimistic, because there's a lot that
Speaker 1: has to get done for this to improve. But the
Speaker 1: word you use as aspirational, and let's say that members
Speaker 1: of Congress got along with one another and that everyone's
Speaker 1: on the same page when it came to higher education.
Speaker 1: If you could wave a magic wand and fix this,
Speaker 1: what would that look like? What's that aspirational element that
Speaker 1: you thought you write about. I think the big thing
Speaker 1: that needs to happen as there needs to be more
Speaker 1: innovation in the system. Consumers need more choices. The old
Speaker 1: traditional model is just not working for enough students, and
Speaker 1: so you know, we are way behind other countries when
Speaker 1: it terms comes to apprenticeships. UM, you know, work based
Speaker 1: training programs, the kinds of things that give people an
Speaker 1: alternative to having to go to four year universities try
Speaker 1: to get a bachelor's degree of unclear value. Um, we
Speaker 1: need more post secondary programs that are really geared towards
Speaker 1: giving people's skills that they can take to the marketplace.
Speaker 1: That was Bloomberg Opinion editor Remesh rotten Tasar with this
Speaker 1: week's cover story. You can read the full issue online
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg terminal and out on news stands. Now.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Quick Takes. Tim Spinovik from Bloomberg Radio. China continues to
Speaker 1: amp up its stimulus measures to help out its slowing economy.
Speaker 1: Might recall just over a week ago, China apping up
Speaker 1: that stimulus by another a truly in yuan or a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty six billion dollars US funding largely focused
Speaker 1: once again, tim on infrastructure spending. That support, though likely
Speaker 1: won't go far enough to counter the damage from repeated
Speaker 1: COVID lockdowns and a property market slump. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: can't get ahead of that. To help us make sense
Speaker 1: of the situation, Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney and I spoke with
Speaker 1: David Redal, president and founder of Retal Research Group. We
Speaker 1: started by asking what China's stimulus can do, especially if
Speaker 1: the country keeps opening and closing. We keep seeing the
Speaker 1: pressure caused by COVID. Yeah, that's a real concern. I
Speaker 1: think people have been a little bit naive ignoring some
Speaker 1: of the big issues that headwinds that China is facing
Speaker 1: these days. You talked about regulatory oversight. We, of course,
Speaker 1: in the last couple of years, had big crackdowns on
Speaker 1: big tech and data integrity and things in China which
Speaker 1: had a big negative impact on some of the a
Speaker 1: d rs. We've heard about COVID, the zero policy really
Speaker 1: being a hamstring in the economy. Of course, the property
Speaker 1: market overhang. The one thing I think people are really
Speaker 1: ignoring is a historic drought taking place in China. Food
Speaker 1: security is a big, big deal to Beijing, and this
Speaker 1: drought is a real threat. I have to say. We
Speaker 1: actually talked about it yesterday on air and talking about
Speaker 1: UM the Three Gorges, Damn and just what's happening in
Speaker 1: terms of the importance of water when it comes to
Speaker 1: powering UH facilities throughout China. Talk to us a little
Speaker 1: bit more about what you're hearing. I'm curious. I don't
Speaker 1: know whether you've been traveling back and forth yet from
Speaker 1: Asiana you often do. But tell us what you're hearing
Speaker 1: about this UH and it's impact on China specifically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't been to China itself for a while. I
Speaker 1: haven't been nearby but not in China for some time.
Speaker 1: But we have people on the ground there and they're
Speaker 1: saying it's just unprecedented seeing how how small the Yangsee
Speaker 1: River is. We're hearing a lot about the Rhine and
Speaker 1: the dramatic weather in Europe. We're just not hearing it
Speaker 1: as much about China, and it's a big deal. I mean,
Speaker 1: of their power comes from hydro power that's really under threat.
Speaker 1: If they have to replace that, they have to replace
Speaker 1: it with coal fired ants, which also consume a lot
Speaker 1: of water. They're arable land is really under threat from
Speaker 1: a drought that's impacting their bread basket, and the Beijing
Speaker 1: really wants to keep the impact away from individual homes,
Speaker 1: so they're turning off power to Tesla, to Apple, to Toyota,
Speaker 1: and that's just in the last ten days. This of
Speaker 1: course is at a time when they're really ramping up
Speaker 1: for US holiday Christmas season demand, and so this could
Speaker 1: be a real problem for supply chains. We've all learned
Speaker 1: a lot about how big of a farm exporter the
Speaker 1: Ukraine is um and how much you know, how much
Speaker 1: how big they really are in the global agricultural business,
Speaker 1: But how talk to us about the North China plane.
Speaker 1: How big is that? Yeah, it's shocking. I mean, their
Speaker 1: their production of corn and wheat is tremendous. Their production
Speaker 1: is about on par of wheat, about in par with Russia,
Speaker 1: and their corn is three times the production coming out
Speaker 1: of the Ukraine. So if they have a big drought Argentine,
Speaker 1: you had a big one just six months ago. It
Speaker 1: impacted their corn production by thirty three. If China has
Speaker 1: anything like that, they're going to be in the global
Speaker 1: markets buying a tremendous amount of corn and wheat. Those shortcomings,
Speaker 1: some analysis has shown, could mean they could be out
Speaker 1: there looking to purchase of the corn that's traded worldwide
Speaker 1: and of the wheat. Imagine the impact on North Africa,
Speaker 1: the rest of Africa, in the Middle East, which is
Speaker 1: already suffering from shortages of grain, and the impact on
Speaker 1: hunger and food prices around the world. It's really quite
Speaker 1: quite frightening. You know. We talked about I think about
Speaker 1: years ago when E. S. G. First Scott you know,
Speaker 1: was was up and running and people started talking about it,
Speaker 1: money flowing into it. David. You know, we talked about
Speaker 1: the material impact, uh financial, material impact on companies as
Speaker 1: a result of climate change in the environment. You know,
Speaker 1: we're not just talking about material impact. We're talking about
Speaker 1: you know, existence. I mean things we all take for
Speaker 1: granted globally, food, water, if you will, Um, these things
Speaker 1: are really threatened. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, people talked about
Speaker 1: rare earths about ten years ago and how China was
Speaker 1: really cornering the world market on rare earths. Rare earths
Speaker 1: are not that rare, they're they're ubiquitous. But China is
Speaker 1: the only country that's had the willingness to take the
Speaker 1: environmental hit to mine aggressively rare earths. Do you know what?
Speaker 1: Mining rare earth takes a lot of water. Tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of water to to to rinse those those ores and
Speaker 1: concentrate those rare earths. That goes into everything chips, microphones, speakers,
Speaker 1: displays of every sort. China is the world's source of
Speaker 1: something like a year of many of these rare earths. Now,
Speaker 1: if they're running low on water, they're certainly not gonna
Speaker 1: producing those rare earths for export, and that could really
Speaker 1: be a supply Chaine disruption. I am trying to make sense.
Speaker 1: There's delistings, there's regulatory you're talking about the water catastrophe.
Speaker 1: Let's just stick with the water story. How do you
Speaker 1: think this ultimately plays out longer term? Well, I think
Speaker 1: China is going to have to be much more efficient
Speaker 1: with their use of water. UM of their water consumption
Speaker 1: is industrials industrial consumption, so that on top of that
Speaker 1: is agriculture, and on top of that is residential. So
Speaker 1: clearly China has long been the inexpensive workshop of the world,
Speaker 1: being able to mobilize very large workforces very efficiently and
Speaker 1: effectively to build companies like Fox, Coon and so on
Speaker 1: that can be very responsive to develop world needs. Given
Speaker 1: the aging population, giving the pressure, given the pressures on
Speaker 1: their environment, including water, I think that's something the world
Speaker 1: can't count on in the next ten years the same
Speaker 1: way they did in the last ten years. So I
Speaker 1: worry about them exporting inflation the same way that they
Speaker 1: may have exported deflation in recent years. They can't make
Speaker 1: more water. You can print more money, you can't print
Speaker 1: more water. So they really need to be careful with
Speaker 1: the resource that they have. I think they're going to
Speaker 1: have to dial back usage. You know, David, with all
Speaker 1: the challenges that investing in China has been presented with
Speaker 1: over the last couple of years, of talking regulatory challenges, COVID,
Speaker 1: in their response to COVID their policies, there now some
Speaker 1: of these resource issues that you're highlighting. I have to
Speaker 1: ask the question of every e M investor that I
Speaker 1: talked to, is China even investable? China cannot be ignored
Speaker 1: from an investment point of view, second largest economy in
Speaker 1: the world, largest grow, fastest growing consumer market in the world.
Speaker 1: Really uh, the tail that wags the dog in terms
Speaker 1: of demand for commodities and all kinds of things. But
Speaker 1: I think smart investors are trying to find other unique
Speaker 1: ways to play it. Perhaps there are domestically listed plays
Speaker 1: that cover unique aspects of water treatment and water supply
Speaker 1: and so and so forth that provided an opportunity to
Speaker 1: benefit from the changes in the water landscape. Maybe there's
Speaker 1: regional players or other countries around the world that benefit
Speaker 1: from from China's current challenges. We've been talking to our
Speaker 1: clients a lot about Mexico as an alternative for supply
Speaker 1: change of China's under rusher. A big thank you to
Speaker 1: David Redal, President and founder of Retal Research Group. Still
Speaker 1: ahead on Bloomberg Business Week YouTube's effective yet uneven formula
Speaker 1: for fighting extremism. This is Bloomberg Veterans. Whatever you're going through,
Speaker 1: don't wait, reach out, find resources at v A dot gov,
Speaker 1: slash reach Dot's v A dot gov slash Reach brought
Speaker 1: to you by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs,
Speaker 1: and they add Council broadcasting from the financial capital of
Speaker 1: the World Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one
Speaker 1: to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius
Speaker 1: XM Chado one nine and around the globe, the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot com. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week. For years, everyone was welcome on YouTube, no
Speaker 1: matter how extream their view us. But as the social
Speaker 1: giant became one of the most visited sites on the Internet,
Speaker 1: the company has consistently struggled to adjust, and some staff
Speaker 1: say they kept a double standard when it came to
Speaker 1: moderating extremism on the platform. It's interesting, I feel like
Speaker 1: we've heard this before with social media platforms in general. Well,
Speaker 1: this is the subject though of Mark Bergen of Bloomberg
Speaker 1: his upcoming book the title Like Comments Subscribe Inside YouTube's
Speaker 1: Chaotic rise to World domination. An excerpt of the book
Speaker 1: is featured in this week's edition of Bloomberg Business Week magazine.
Speaker 1: Market business Week editor Joe Weber spoke with me and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg senior markets reporter Katie Greifeld. Joell started by asking
Speaker 1: why YouTube has worked to combat extremism but not all
Speaker 1: types of extremism. It does get this like very fascinating dilemma,
Speaker 1: but it's not just YouTube. It's always it, I think
Speaker 1: more than any of the company, just given its size,
Speaker 1: but it's something that it's effect at all all major
Speaker 1: Internet platforms. And partly I think there's there's a couple
Speaker 1: different reasons. One is just the nature of the way
Speaker 1: the government's work as that there there's been a lot
Speaker 1: more and Western governments pressure and willingness to sort of
Speaker 1: tackle Island Islamness extremism. Uh. And we saw like there
Speaker 1: are sort of tech collaborations that in mind. There are repositories,
Speaker 1: there are sorry, there are lists of like known terrorists
Speaker 1: that that YouTube uses and they can ban these certain figures.
Speaker 1: There's YouTube is a is a gigantic digital advertising is
Speaker 1: very responsive to its advertisers. Part of the book's opening
Speaker 1: scene is is this is June and seen when they're
Speaker 1: in middle of this major boycott over videos, some of
Speaker 1: which were like isis allies that you know, household brands
Speaker 1: were sponsoring, and these advertisers put pressure on YouTube and
Speaker 1: kind of force them to act in a way that
Speaker 1: they hadn't before. UM. And then once they were able
Speaker 1: to kind of clean up the system to make it
Speaker 1: amenable to the the these ads when like weren't sponsoring
Speaker 1: videos that marketers wanted, there was less pressure for them.
Speaker 1: So I think there's a combination where it was very
Speaker 1: easy politically addressing white nationalism is a more complicated, especially
Speaker 1: in the US contemporary of politics problem in the thread,
Speaker 1: and there was less pressure from regulators and advertisers at
Speaker 1: the time. How do people and machines do this? There's
Speaker 1: a passage from your book and indeed from this excerpt
Speaker 1: in the magazine that includes the phrase use your judgment
Speaker 1: when talking content moderation. That's not necessarily prescript rule. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that was So this was YouTube was really
Speaker 1: it's hard for us to appreciate, but this was in
Speaker 1: This was in two dozen six starting towards and five
Speaker 1: does and sixes, And I think when that this is
Speaker 1: they ran, like UM, some of their first sort of
Speaker 1: policy frameworks, and this was really before content moderation existed
Speaker 1: at the size and the internet and YouTube had a
Speaker 1: problem that Facebook and other sort of text based didn't have,
Speaker 1: which is they have video and they have moving images,
Speaker 1: and they have like complications and and all that brings
Speaker 1: and so I you know, this was a team that
Speaker 1: was pretty scrappy and sort of inventing this on the fly. Um,
Speaker 1: like a lot of them are pretty well versed in
Speaker 1: the like weird dark recesses of the Internet, and so
Speaker 1: use your judgment was there were at the time a
Speaker 1: lot more of a like humans sort of you can
Speaker 1: call it editorial perspective and judgment about where the lines withdrawal.
Speaker 1: And this was they sort of viewed YouTube as this
Speaker 1: was a community of users and video broadcasters and they
Speaker 1: they sort of wanted videos to fit within the boundaries
Speaker 1: of the community. You know, fast forward a few years
Speaker 1: that they've become this global platform and moderation is this
Speaker 1: very complicated process. So it's a complicated process where the
Speaker 1: company increasingly wants to rely on machine learning systems as
Speaker 1: much as possible, in part because machine learning systems can
Speaker 1: just process so much video better faster than humans. They're
Speaker 1: they're impartial, and they're less you know, the Google cannot
Speaker 1: be accused of biaus more if if they can point
Speaker 1: and say, like, listen, we have a we have a
Speaker 1: policy rulebook. Can we have machine systems we don't have
Speaker 1: humans with with biases making news, scysions decisions. One of
Speaker 1: the things that YouTube Ofpton says is that dealing with
Speaker 1: the threat of like Islamist extremism on the platform proved
Speaker 1: easier because you know, multiple governments agree on those standards, right,
Speaker 1: whereas with white nationalism there there isn't that same unanimity.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm wondering where does that Where does that
Speaker 1: leave things? Because it means that there's more reliance on
Speaker 1: AI and the code. You know, ultimately the code is
Speaker 1: what what runs everything here? Uh? Where does that really
Speaker 1: leave things? As as you know, society continues to have
Speaker 1: these massive flare ups. Yeah, I think, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that they've made some significant changes, and partially because
Speaker 1: of some tragedies that they witnessed christlike shooting. We talked
Speaker 1: about the story even the most recently Buffalo shooting. Like
Speaker 1: every time there is an incident like this um that
Speaker 1: is like often sometimes these events are like live stiment
Speaker 1: live stream on on YouTube. So they have taken action
Speaker 1: because of like pressure from their employee base and from
Speaker 1: politicians and from some of these big moment moment that
Speaker 1: was Bloomberg Technology reporter Mark Berg in his book Like
Speaker 1: Comments Subscribe Inside YouTube's chaotic rise to world domination. It
Speaker 1: hits shelves on September six. You're listening to Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovich
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Radio. Companies really the world at large, you
Speaker 1: meet Tim. Everybody continue to send more and more data
Speaker 1: into the cloud. That's been great for one service provider.
Speaker 1: We're talking about net App. The company recently reported earnings
Speaker 1: and sales that beat Wall Street estimates. That is, the
Speaker 1: storage and data management company saw continued demand across segments
Speaker 1: that defied supply chain and currency challenges. Net Up CEO
Speaker 1: George Curry and joined me and Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney to
Speaker 1: talk about the latest quarter as well as look ahead
Speaker 1: at what's next for the company. We're excited. We're off
Speaker 1: to a great start to our new fiscal year. We
Speaker 1: just completed the first uh fiscal quarter of the year
Speaker 1: and saw broad base demand and strength across all our geographies.
Speaker 1: We have set record highs pretty much across the board
Speaker 1: in terms of revenue, billings, gross margin dollars, operating margin dollars,
Speaker 1: and EPs for Q one. So I'm really pleased. It's
Speaker 1: always good to get off to a good start in
Speaker 1: the year. Yeah. Absolutely, that's a great way better than
Speaker 1: the alternative. Um Paul did break down some of your numbers.
Speaker 1: Your customer base has included the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet,
Speaker 1: hits Hachi, Intel, Tata. It's global in nature. It really
Speaker 1: gives us a good clue in terms of what's going
Speaker 1: on in the economy. How would you describe in terms
Speaker 1: of more color demand for your core products from your
Speaker 1: big customers. We're involved in helping our customers store, protect,
Speaker 1: and use their data for business advantage. We do that
Speaker 1: not only with data center equipment for their data centers,
Speaker 1: but as you mentioned, with cloud based services that are
Speaker 1: deeply integrated into the world's leading cloud providers Amazon, Microsoft, Google,
Speaker 1: IBM and others. And we saw a really good portfolio
Speaker 1: balance across all of our geographies and customer segments. Data,
Speaker 1: as you know, is foundational to competitive advantage, Understanding customers,
Speaker 1: working with your supply chain, UH and so on and
Speaker 1: so we continue to see demand strong and we've had
Speaker 1: to work really hard to have all the supply to
Speaker 1: meet it, and we continue to do that work. Taugh
Speaker 1: to us about the supply chain, it's it's been such
Speaker 1: an issue for so many businesses across so many parts
Speaker 1: of the economy, and and and it's a global issue here.
Speaker 1: How is it for your company now versus maybe in
Speaker 1: a year or two ago, and kind of how do
Speaker 1: you think it's gonna progress. I think a year ago
Speaker 1: was the really difficult time. We've seen kind of steady
Speaker 1: improvements in silicon availability, and I would say cautiously that
Speaker 1: we've seen stabilization. Uh, in terms of you know, the
Speaker 1: the silicon supply chain. It's still not where it is
Speaker 1: needed to be to meet all of our demand, but
Speaker 1: at least it's stopped backsliding. We have also been doing
Speaker 1: work to deal with some of the freight and logistical challenges.
Speaker 1: I think, as you know, the sort of the gap
Speaker 1: between demand and supply continues to get a little bit smaller.
Speaker 1: We demand still ahead of supply. We hope that these
Speaker 1: things get better over the course of our next twelve months. Well,
Speaker 1: I do wonder, I do wonder to George, how did
Speaker 1: supply chain issues or pressures or constraints impact your ability
Speaker 1: to you know, in terms of your adjustments or your
Speaker 1: outlook are raising your outlook estimates for the full year?
Speaker 1: You know, I think we have had to do a
Speaker 1: huge amount of work to be able to meet demand.
Speaker 1: We've had to re engineer products, We've had to source
Speaker 1: supply in multiple parts of the world, and sort of
Speaker 1: extraordinary measures to meet demand. I would say that backlog
Speaker 1: is still ahead of pre pandemic levels, so we're still
Speaker 1: in elevated sort of backlog situations and we'd love to
Speaker 1: be able to, you know, sort of make those products
Speaker 1: available to customers. Were working closely with our suppliers to
Speaker 1: do that. We did in our press release reconfirmed the
Speaker 1: full year guidance, which, given the currency movements subsequent to
Speaker 1: when we guided, is actually taking up guidance, as you noted,
Speaker 1: by about a you know, one or two points. So
Speaker 1: we feel good about you know, demand, We feel that
Speaker 1: we've got to go do the work and supply and
Speaker 1: continue to do the work to need it. So, Georgia,
Speaker 1: I love it. From your perspective, where is the biggest
Speaker 1: source of growth for your business? Here? Over the next
Speaker 1: five years. I'm going to ask you to think a
Speaker 1: little bit far out, which I know your board asked
Speaker 1: you to do occasionally, but on a five year plan,
Speaker 1: you're so many pieces of the pie that are you
Speaker 1: have some really strong growth dynamics. Where do you really
Speaker 1: think your focused should be? We really see the two
Speaker 1: big transformational trends are data driven business or digital business
Speaker 1: and cloud. You know, we on the data side, we
Speaker 1: help our clients store aggregate enormous amounts of data, whether
Speaker 1: it's for traditional applications like an E r P or
Speaker 1: you mentioned salesforce those kinds of applications, or for the
Speaker 1: really modern advanced analytics and artificial intelligence applications. We for example,
Speaker 1: work with companies like Semens Health and Years which makes
Speaker 1: medical imaging systems, and we use AI technology together with
Speaker 1: huge amounts of data to be able to make the
Speaker 1: life of a radiologist much easier. We can predict help
Speaker 1: them predict which patients are more likely to have COVID,
Speaker 1: or find cost effective ways to deal with the breast
Speaker 1: cancer and so on. So that's one data and the
Speaker 1: other is cloud. You see, there's a vast migration of
Speaker 1: customers to using cloud based technologies and we help all
Speaker 1: of the leading cloud providers as well as their end
Speaker 1: customers to make their cloud projects much more reliable, performance secured,
Speaker 1: especially security of data from attacks like ransomware, is a
Speaker 1: growing trend that we have really good solutions for. Carol,
Speaker 1: I think I'm even in the cloud. I know I am.
Speaker 1: You know if I'm in the cloud, you know it's
Speaker 1: a thing. It's a market. So, George, I'm looking at
Speaker 1: our PGeo function on the Bloomberg terminal that allows me
Speaker 1: to look at breakdown of your businesses by lots of
Speaker 1: different measures and by geography. I see that. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: a little more than half of your businesses in the
Speaker 1: US and Canada in Latin America, maybe about a third,
Speaker 1: thirty percent in Europe, and about fourteen percent in Asia.
Speaker 1: Going forward, where regionally will you be allocating more of
Speaker 1: your capital world you see more growth on a regional basis,
Speaker 1: We continue to focus on the biggest markets in each
Speaker 1: of those geographies. I think several years ago, about maybe
Speaker 1: five or six years ago, we decided to participate in
Speaker 1: the China market, which is the largest Asian market, through
Speaker 1: a joint venture with Lenovo that allows us to serve
Speaker 1: the vast expanse of Chinese customers with local partnerships and
Speaker 1: local knowledge of the local market. So the rest of
Speaker 1: the world we served through our own uh you know
Speaker 1: kind of sales and go to market organization and through
Speaker 1: partners and we're pleased with the strength of our you know,
Speaker 1: it's a balanced book of business. We've seen strong adoption
Speaker 1: of our portfolio across all the leading markets, and so
Speaker 1: I'm excited about what the future holds. Hey, George, I
Speaker 1: do wanted to and some of the major macro issues
Speaker 1: that are out there, whether it's near shoring, offshoring, on shoring,
Speaker 1: UH and then through on top of that your political tensions,
Speaker 1: which is creating all of that changes. How is that
Speaker 1: impacting you guys in terms of where you produce, where
Speaker 1: you do business. Clearly, it's a great question, Carol. I
Speaker 1: think clearly, over the last few years, both because of
Speaker 1: geopolitical risk but also just supply availability and risk management,
Speaker 1: we've built a diverse kind of geographic base for supply
Speaker 1: and manufacturing. We've moved our dependence from the Far East
Speaker 1: too much more local markets. So we manufacture heavily in
Speaker 1: Mexico and in some parts of Europe, we've moved, you know,
Speaker 1: our supply base from a silicon perspective into a diverse
Speaker 1: mix of silicon providers. And we've moved the way our
Speaker 1: systems are built. Rather than from highly integrated systems that
Speaker 1: have risk from one component, we're moving it to more
Speaker 1: of a Lego style building block models, so that if
Speaker 1: one component isn't there, you can slot in another one.
Speaker 1: We've had to do a lot of work. We continue
Speaker 1: to believe that the world's uh, you know, we need
Speaker 1: to think about supply rather than in the old model
Speaker 1: of just in time management to actually be risking supply
Speaker 1: to meet demand. Yeah, that's we've heard definite a lot
Speaker 1: of companies, a lot of different industries. Labor. You have
Speaker 1: about twelve thousand employees. How tough is it they get labor,
Speaker 1: health to is it they keep labor? I think it's been.
Speaker 1: It's a very competitive job market, especially for the type
Speaker 1: of talent software and cloud talent that we look for.
Speaker 1: We've got a really good value proposition for employees. They
Speaker 1: get to do great work in ah, you know, very
Speaker 1: supportive culture, and we are got a global population, so
Speaker 1: we can source talent wherever in the world. It is.
Speaker 1: Having the best talent in the world is a source
Speaker 1: of competitive advantage, and we've got good compensation programs to
Speaker 1: meet what what's needed. That was net absolutely George Curryan
Speaker 1: along with Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney. And that wraps up the
Speaker 1: first hour of the GET edition of Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanevik.
Speaker 1: Ahead in our next hour, more voices from the C suite.
Speaker 1: The CFO of the electronics manufacturer Flex on the global
Speaker 1: economy and manufacturing and managing supply chains for a host
Speaker 1: of household names. Yeah, exactly, their customer list. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're going to know all of these companies so well.
Speaker 1: Plus the CEO of Open Table. And while getting a
Speaker 1: dinner reservation feels more difficult than ever, now, going out
Speaker 1: to that meal is very much a planned event before.
Speaker 1: We have a lot of walk ins for our restaurants.
Speaker 1: People are now booking two or three days in advance.
Speaker 1: We used to think that bar seating was the most
Speaker 1: unattractive seat at a restaurant. We're seeing bar seating increase
Speaker 1: two folds because you want to be in the fray,
Speaker 1: you want to be around people and I think people
Speaker 1: are going to continue to crave going out and gender
Speaker 1: equality in America. We'll check out ubs is Own Your
Speaker 1: Worth report on female wealth empowerment plus formidable American women
Speaker 1: in the fight for equality. Historian Betsy Griffith shares lessons
Speaker 1: from the past. This is bloom Burg. This is the
Speaker 1: story of a very special woman. Just a few knew
Speaker 1: about her superpowers. In a matter of seconds, she turned
Speaker 1: herself into a great mathematician. She masqueraded as a regular
Speaker 1: person at work, but as a superhero at home. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows her as Gabriella. I still call her mom. Your
Speaker 1: hero needs you now, and a ARP is here to
Speaker 1: help find the care guides you need to help. Complete
Speaker 1: with tips and resources at a a ARP dot org
Speaker 1: slash Caregiving. Brought to you by AARP and the add Concil.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio plenty Ahead in our second hour
Speaker 1: of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the
Speaker 1: CFO Flex. It's a global manufacturing company working at defense, health, energy,
Speaker 1: housing in more Man. They have a cross section of
Speaker 1: the global economy. We're gonna get his take on macro conditions.
Speaker 1: I love talking to this guy. Yeah, it's not just
Speaker 1: like a cross section of the global economy. It's you know,
Speaker 1: different types of industries and then also just different regions
Speaker 1: of the world. Really incredible company to play and play
Speaker 1: into the supply chains, right, so so much. Yeah, really
Speaker 1: good conversation. Coming up. Another good conversation with historian Betsy Griffith.
Speaker 1: She discusses her new book, described by her former classmate
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton as quote an essential history of the struggle
Speaker 1: by both black and white women to achieve their equal rights.
Speaker 1: First up this hour, as the world reopens, an individual
Speaker 1: shift from buying stuff to doing things such as eating
Speaker 1: out or travel, that too, can create another supply demand imbalance.
Speaker 1: For clarity on that, we checked in with Debbie Sue,
Speaker 1: the CEO of the online restaurant reservation company Open Table,
Speaker 1: also a subsidiary of the publicly traded Booking Holdings. She's
Speaker 1: got great insight into what's going on in the restaurant
Speaker 1: industry because her company gathers lots of data on who's
Speaker 1: booking what and when. She spoke with me and Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Senior Markets reporter Katie felt, the restaurant industry has definitely
Speaker 1: seen a pickup in demand, and we're still seeing that
Speaker 1: kind of post pandemic pent up demand where a lot
Speaker 1: of us have been cooped up in our houses or
Speaker 1: our apartments, um and there's this need to engage and
Speaker 1: meet with people and oftentimes over a meal. And so
Speaker 1: I think we're still seeing uh, pent up demand and
Speaker 1: people going out. So that demand is really help steady,
Speaker 1: even in places in like New York, where Goldman has
Speaker 1: requested everyone come back into the office. In New York
Speaker 1: is one of those cities where versus city like San Francisco,
Speaker 1: for example, people are coming back. You're seeing those those
Speaker 1: lunchtime shifts starting to fill up, and so the city
Speaker 1: is definitely feeling more alive, and it's certainly it is
Speaker 1: very difficult to get a reservation on a Friday night.
Speaker 1: You're also seeing a New York tourist activity and travel
Speaker 1: activity really coming back in a way that we haven't
Speaker 1: seen in the last two years. So all really encouraging
Speaker 1: signs from and I swear I actually got an ivy
Speaker 1: during this program asking me to grab lunch in the
Speaker 1: fall from a listener and a source. So I guess
Speaker 1: the least lunch. Yeah, I'm gonna go. Of course I'm
Speaker 1: gonna go. That's what you call a flex, you know,
Speaker 1: making a reservation. I mean, I'm not making the reservation
Speaker 1: someone else can. But in any case, uh W. I
Speaker 1: am interested to situate this conversation in the broader economic
Speaker 1: landscape that we're living in, because all we talk about
Speaker 1: all day and of course this is on Bloomberg, so
Speaker 1: of course we would be talking about it, but we
Speaker 1: talk about inflation, we talk about recession fears, and you
Speaker 1: are seeing this pent up demand, Like you say, but
Speaker 1: how resilient do you think that is in the face
Speaker 1: of some of those big issues that we talk about,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, were certainly in a challenging macro environment.
Speaker 1: And I think we're in unprecedented times here because we've
Speaker 1: not had a recession that's followed, you know, with a
Speaker 1: two year or central pandemic, and so we're seeing that
Speaker 1: demand continue you to hold and I think even once
Speaker 1: you know, people stop revenge eating uh is what we
Speaker 1: like to call it here at open table with the
Speaker 1: shape of work and return to work and what what
Speaker 1: that whole thing. I think the future of work or
Speaker 1: how work is is different post pandemic. I don't know
Speaker 1: if we're ever going to get back to a world
Speaker 1: of how it was before the pandemic. So we have
Speaker 1: a lot of people who work from home or have
Speaker 1: a hybrid situation where now going out to that meal
Speaker 1: is very much a planned event. Like it it's it's
Speaker 1: a bigger deal. And we're seeing that in shifts of behavior.
Speaker 1: Before we had a lot of walk ins for our restaurants. Um,
Speaker 1: we're seeing a channel shift for for that, you know,
Speaker 1: regular casual walk in. No, people are now booking two
Speaker 1: or three days in advance. Hence, you know the common
Speaker 1: earlier being impossible to to find a reservation. It's because
Speaker 1: everyone's booking. Everyone's looking forward to that restaurant at the meal.
Speaker 1: We used to think that bar seating was the most
Speaker 1: unattractive seat at a restaurant. We're seeing bar seat and
Speaker 1: go across like a increase to fold because that's those
Speaker 1: are now very very desirable seats to sit at a restaurant.
Speaker 1: Because you want to be in the fray. You want
Speaker 1: to be around people, and so I think it'll be
Speaker 1: really hard to tell what's going to happen in this
Speaker 1: macro environment. But I remain very bullish on dining, and
Speaker 1: I think people are going to continue to crave going
Speaker 1: out and they will save pockets of you know, their
Speaker 1: discretionary income for that event. May Debbie, before we let
Speaker 1: you go, I want to get an update on the
Speaker 1: the Open Table business and how you're competing with other
Speaker 1: platforms like RESI for example. Give us an update there.
Speaker 1: We love competition here at Open Table. I think it
Speaker 1: pushes us to be faster and more innovative. We are
Speaker 1: slugging it out with them and other players all the time.
Speaker 1: At Open Table. We really believe that we are a
Speaker 1: true partner for our restaurants. UH. We stand by our product.
Speaker 1: We've continued to iterate um during the pandemic and post
Speaker 1: the pandemic, making sure that we give restaurants all of
Speaker 1: the tools Dane need to be running their businesses productively, efficiently, effectively,
Speaker 1: especially given this macro environment. We've launched features like direct messaging,
Speaker 1: where now you know hosts don't have to just be
Speaker 1: on their phones, s M, S NG and confirming or calling.
Speaker 1: You can do that directly through open tables products. So
Speaker 1: we're really looking at all the different ways that we
Speaker 1: can make um from the diner's point of view and
Speaker 1: from the restaurant's point of view, a more seamless dining experience.
Speaker 1: It's tough times that that this our industry has gone
Speaker 1: through some stuff in the last few years. The best
Speaker 1: thing you can do to support restaurants is to show up.
Speaker 1: Uh No, shows continue to be I have always been
Speaker 1: a problem, but especially post pandemic. Yes, please cancel your
Speaker 1: reservations if you know you're not going to. I mean,
Speaker 1: we had to cancel a reservation recently and it was
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, but we got around it by rescheduling for
Speaker 1: like a few months from now. Yeah. Okay. That way though,
Speaker 1: it is a lot easier on the rest of us,
Speaker 1: and of course the restaurant as well. Be considerate. Everybody,
Speaker 1: cancel if you're not going. This is Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovan from
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio Flex it's publicly held global manufacture and supply
Speaker 1: chain solutions company. It serves many industries with customers ranging
Speaker 1: from Apple and Cisco Systems to Ford and so many more.
Speaker 1: Tim needless to say, they've got a great sense of
Speaker 1: macro themes that we talked about every day on our program.
Speaker 1: Paul Lundstrom is the company's CFO. He gave us a
Speaker 1: bird's eye view starting with the strengths and weaknesses across
Speaker 1: different global industries, just to kind of walk you through
Speaker 1: the portfolio. We just had an earnings call a month ago,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that we talked about was
Speaker 1: a little bit of softening and some of the shorter
Speaker 1: cycle consumer product markets. But for us, that is much
Speaker 1: more than offset by you know, we continue to see
Speaker 1: very robust demand in a number of other areas, things
Speaker 1: like networking and connectivity, whether it's you know, cloud or
Speaker 1: five G that continues to be very very strong. Network
Speaker 1: security continues to be very very strong. Um a number
Speaker 1: of the industrial markets, including things like renewable energy. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know that probably seems obvious, but that that continues
Speaker 1: to see robust growth. We're we're quite pleased with what
Speaker 1: we've seen there. Even things like automotive, which is you know,
Speaker 1: you would expect demand to soften if the economy softens
Speaker 1: it up here in the automotive space. But but frankly,
Speaker 1: there's so much backlog and that whole sector is going
Speaker 1: through mus going through so much restocking. So what what
Speaker 1: is it holding up those products? I mean, we talk
Speaker 1: about chips all the time, but but really dig into
Speaker 1: that for us, like, where are you seeing the supply
Speaker 1: chain the bottlenecks right now? Well, certainly it's chips. To
Speaker 1: just give you a sort of a short brief answer,
Speaker 1: semiconductors has been a big bottleneck, but so of things
Speaker 1: like oversea logistics, you know, ports stacking up with containership
Speaker 1: after container ship. Who hasn't seen aerial photographs of that.
Speaker 1: But you know, from my standpoint, you look to the
Speaker 1: ROO cause going into the pandemic, the world economy was
Speaker 1: already doing pretty well and so in a lot of
Speaker 1: cases producers were just barely keeping up with demand. Now
Speaker 1: you sprinkle in COVID, you see production you know, shut
Speaker 1: down for four months on end, and a lot of
Speaker 1: different geographies. While at the same time you have and
Speaker 1: this isn't just a US thing, this is you know,
Speaker 1: world governments just just pounded stimulus, spending pounded it and
Speaker 1: so what that did was. I think demand did not
Speaker 1: go down like many thought it would. In some cases,
Speaker 1: demand actually went up. But then when you take the
Speaker 1: you take the away the ability for producers to produce.
Speaker 1: The backlog just went through the roof. And we've been
Speaker 1: trying to recover ever since. You mentioned some regional differences,
Speaker 1: and that's really where I want to dig into right now,
Speaker 1: is getting understand from you about where we're seeing some
Speaker 1: economic softness. And I know, look, we can talk about
Speaker 1: what we've seen from Europe over the last you months
Speaker 1: on some softness there and concerns about recession there, but
Speaker 1: where some regions with strength and where some regions with weakness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say, uh, I see less region to region
Speaker 1: and more product to product. And so you know, from
Speaker 1: from my vantage point, the shorter cycle consumer product markets,
Speaker 1: what is the short cycle consumer product I think of
Speaker 1: it as more commoditized electronics, you know, cell phones and
Speaker 1: laptops and that sort of stuff, um and and that
Speaker 1: over the last you know, quarter or two, we we
Speaker 1: have seen that soften up a little bit. It probably
Speaker 1: will you know, continue that way as as you look forward.
Speaker 1: But I would say that's worldwide. You know, that's not
Speaker 1: unique to one particular region where we continue to see
Speaker 1: robust demand is the more infrastructure related technology, you know,
Speaker 1: things like five G and and cloud continues to be very,
Speaker 1: very robust. But are there areas of the world that
Speaker 1: are sticking out to you where you're seeing weakness? Uh, well,
Speaker 1: the zero COVID policy in China is that's not going
Speaker 1: to help those those local markets. I think people want
Speaker 1: to get back to work and get back to get
Speaker 1: back to normal and so you know, we see it
Speaker 1: more from a supply chain perspective than than from a
Speaker 1: specific end market perspective. But yeah, that would be an
Speaker 1: example where it would be nice to get back to
Speaker 1: a little bit of normalcy. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you've navigated china zero COVID policy, Paul,
Speaker 1: Scale really does matter. You know, we have a very
Speaker 1: wide geographic reach and so we also have a very
Speaker 1: large supplier network, and so as things have been you know,
Speaker 1: coming on an offline in China over the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, frankly, Um, it's been a little easier for
Speaker 1: us to pivot, you know. I think, um, we can
Speaker 1: produce like for like, you know, from one region to
Speaker 1: the next without a whole lot of notice, and because
Speaker 1: we have a large supply chain network, it helps. So
Speaker 1: I think scale has been a big help for for
Speaker 1: a company like ours. I'm wondering about globalization and where
Speaker 1: we are in Before we went into the pandemic, we
Speaker 1: saw a move, uh at least from the United States,
Speaker 1: of trying to isolate China to a certain extent under
Speaker 1: the Trump administration's tariffs and policies. And during the pandemic
Speaker 1: we saw just how fragile so many of the global
Speaker 1: supply chains were. So now we're hearing from companies where
Speaker 1: they're on shoring or or re shoring or near shoring,
Speaker 1: you know, use the shoring word that you want to use,
Speaker 1: but they're moving production to other parts of the world.
Speaker 1: What are the themes that you're seeing. Well, yet, first
Speaker 1: of all, you just nailed it. I mean going back
Speaker 1: to the to the globalization and labor arbitrage that you know,
Speaker 1: and not just us China, I mean go back ten
Speaker 1: years ago. You know, it's it's been about labor arbitrage
Speaker 1: for for decades now, and Western companies have made the
Speaker 1: decision to produce in the Far East for for you know,
Speaker 1: a long long time because of all the issues that
Speaker 1: we've seen over the last few years. And you're right,
Speaker 1: you know, it started with with trade politics, and I
Speaker 1: would say it's been you know, across multiple administrations now
Speaker 1: where that that tone and rhetoric really hasn't hasn't improved. Uh,
Speaker 1: then you have COVID, then you have chip shortages, then
Speaker 1: you have logistics to spend shock after shock after shock.
Speaker 1: And so what we're seeing now is this trend where
Speaker 1: customers are coming to us and saying, we don't want
Speaker 1: to produce everything we want to be. We don't want
Speaker 1: to be captive to Asia anymore. We want to produce
Speaker 1: in Asia for Asia, but if you can, we'd like
Speaker 1: you to produce in Europe for Europe, in North America
Speaker 1: for North America because we're worried about our supply chain resilience.
Speaker 1: How tough is it to get employees around the world
Speaker 1: right now? Unemployment is low, and it's it's not just
Speaker 1: the US, you know, We're we're seeing it all over
Speaker 1: the place. You know, where there's there's labor shortages in Malaysia,
Speaker 1: there's labor shortages in China, there's labor shortages all over
Speaker 1: the place. And so that definitely puts put some pressure
Speaker 1: on the system and then we'll probably have some upward
Speaker 1: pressure on wages here for for a little bit. That's
Speaker 1: exactly where I wanted to go. Sort of this idea
Speaker 1: of inflation and to what extent you see in lation
Speaker 1: sticking around? What is your own as CFO Offlex, what
Speaker 1: is your own outlook on inflation? What are you planning for? Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: we're planning for higher for sure, and you know we
Speaker 1: do every thing we can to insulate the business from that.
Speaker 1: And you know, are are probably quickest, most readily usable
Speaker 1: lever is price and passing those inflations, passing the cost
Speaker 1: inflation on our side through to the to the end customer.
Speaker 1: That's not great for for overall inflation. And like, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to make a call on where we're going
Speaker 1: to be. I do like that the FED is is
Speaker 1: being more aggressive and trying to get this in check,
Speaker 1: but it could be around for a little while. That's
Speaker 1: Paul Lunstrom, CFO of Flex, a lot of really great
Speaker 1: insights in that interview. But I gotta say I feel
Speaker 1: like he's the hundred executive who's told us that high prices, Carol,
Speaker 1: are here to stay. Nothing transitory, right, No, no, you're
Speaker 1: not even allowed to say that word anymore. I know. Gosh,
Speaker 1: sorry about that, all right, Still to come on Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week. Women taking control of their wealth and society.
Speaker 1: Learning from the past when it comes to gender equality,
Speaker 1: we lean in big when it comes to women empowerment.
Speaker 1: Stick around. This is Bloomberg frondcasting from the financial capital
Speaker 1: of the World Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one
Speaker 1: to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius
Speaker 1: XM Chado one nineteen and around the globe the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week. On August nineteenth, Amendment was formally adopted into
Speaker 1: the Constitution. Congress celebrates his state every year with Women's
Speaker 1: Equality Day. We often talk about how the US, though,
Speaker 1: is still far from equal on many levels, men versus women,
Speaker 1: white women versus black women. Bloomberg recently reported that women
Speaker 1: still earn about seventy three cents for every one dollar
Speaker 1: that men make, not according to data from ADP Research Institute.
Speaker 1: This next half hour back to back interviews on women's
Speaker 1: social and financial equality, and on that UBS survey down
Speaker 1: that of women say they expect to outlive their spouses,
Speaker 1: but more than half of women that's say that their
Speaker 1: spouses take the lead when it comes to major financial decisions.
Speaker 1: That's pretty big disconnect. All right. Here with more is
Speaker 1: Carrie Scheffman, head of the Women's Strategic Segment at EBS
Speaker 1: Global Wealth Management, speaking with Tim and Katie Greifeld. The
Speaker 1: reality is that women do tend to, on average, have
Speaker 1: longer life expectancies than their male counterparts, on average by
Speaker 1: about five years. And that is the reality that we
Speaker 1: tend to see. I think about my own grandmother, who
Speaker 1: for whom we just celebrated her ninetieth birthday earlier this year,
Speaker 1: and she's been widowed for over five years already and
Speaker 1: then has been on her own um. And that's really
Speaker 1: I think part of the reason why in the catalysts
Speaker 1: behind a lot of the research that we've done here
Speaker 1: at UBS focused on women and financial well being and
Speaker 1: helping to ensure that women from all different walks of
Speaker 1: life and financial situations as generations, are are prepared to
Speaker 1: navigate their their financial journeys. Yeah, what's remarkable to me
Speaker 1: about this, this research that you did at UBS is
Speaker 1: that the US is kind of in the middle when
Speaker 1: it comes to women differring long term financial decisions to
Speaker 1: their spouses. On one end, you have women in Singapore
Speaker 1: say that my spouse takes the lead. The other end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum in Mexico. So you know, it's not
Speaker 1: just a problem here in the U S. It's a
Speaker 1: problem globally. But how do you explain the regional differences
Speaker 1: or or or regional variations here? Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's a great question. I think, Um, I think
Speaker 1: it depends on many different factors. I think it depends
Speaker 1: on demographics, culture, Um, how families are structured as well.
Speaker 1: Certainly that applies here as well, I would say in
Speaker 1: the United States in particular, which is where my team
Speaker 1: and I focus our efforts. You know, you also have
Speaker 1: to really take into it account the historical context around
Speaker 1: the topic of women and money, and this certainly very
Speaker 1: geographies as well. But you think back to something like
Speaker 1: it wasn't until nineteen seventy four that the Equal Credit
Speaker 1: Opportunity Act was passed, which gave women the ability to
Speaker 1: apply for credit, a credit card, mortgage, etcetera without having
Speaker 1: to have a male cosigner. I mean, nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: was not that long ago, so uh, there's there was
Speaker 1: a lot of there were a lot of barriers, I
Speaker 1: would say, and things that made it more difficult for
Speaker 1: women to gain equal financial footing until relatively recently, and
Speaker 1: certainly that I think played a role in all of
Speaker 1: this as well. Well, let's talk about partnership here, because
Speaker 1: according to your research, you write that women who approach
Speaker 1: long term decisions and partnership with their spouses reports soaring
Speaker 1: levels of satisfaction. So so how do people go about
Speaker 1: doing this? I mean, I do think that oftentimes in
Speaker 1: partnerships like these, there is one person who handles, you know,
Speaker 1: certain tasks and another person handles other tasks, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of divided between the two. Absolutely, and I think
Speaker 1: that's human nature a right, you know, if if you
Speaker 1: are in a marriage or partnership. Uh, we all have
Speaker 1: time constraints, no matter who we are, where we are
Speaker 1: in our lives. We have to take a divide and
Speaker 1: conquer approach. Certain things take priority over others. Um but
Speaker 1: I will say that when it comes to long term finances,
Speaker 1: it's critically important, whether you're single, whether you're married, whatever
Speaker 1: your marital status may be, that you have an active
Speaker 1: understanding of where you are in your financial life and
Speaker 1: sort of where you're heading. Um, both for you to
Speaker 1: be able to achieve your own goals, to whether any
Speaker 1: personal headwinds, but to also whether you know the more
Speaker 1: macro environment around you. UM. Our research actually showed, and
Speaker 1: you alluded to this, that only one in five heterosexual
Speaker 1: married couples here in the US actually share equally in
Speaker 1: the long term financial decisions. UM. And again, as you
Speaker 1: mentioned that the onset about half of women tell us
Speaker 1: that they differ those long term financial decisions to a
Speaker 1: partner or spouse. But I think it's a question of
Speaker 1: trying to make the time, trying to also overcome some
Speaker 1: of the company in scaps that our research has uncovered. Uh. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: sev of the women with whom we spoke said that
Speaker 1: they believe that women on on the whole tend to
Speaker 1: overestimate what's required to be financially engaged. So certainly trying
Speaker 1: to break down some of those barriers, so some of
Speaker 1: those misperceptions around what it takes to have those meaningful
Speaker 1: conversations about where you are and where you're head is
Speaker 1: financially um and the good thing and the benefit is
Speaker 1: that our research shows there's tremendous upside to being an
Speaker 1: active participant in those financial matters, particularly among couples. Whether
Speaker 1: it's greater satisfaction in your financial situation, higher confidence in
Speaker 1: achieving your goals, and my personal favorite, less stress and
Speaker 1: less arguments. That's Carrie Schaffman, head of the Women's Strategic
Speaker 1: segment at UBS Global Wealth Management. You're listening to Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim
Speaker 1: Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. A recent Bloomberg Business Week cover
Speaker 1: story spoke about American women at the breaking point, noting
Speaker 1: how the undoing a Roe V. Wade made everything far
Speaker 1: more precarious. Our next guest has written extensively about the
Speaker 1: advancement of women and struggles they faced along the way.
Speaker 1: She graduated from Wellesley College in the same class as
Speaker 1: former U S Secretary of State and former presidential candidate
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton. Her biography of Elizabeth Katie Stanton inspired a
Speaker 1: Ken Burns PBS documentary, and her new book chronicles the
Speaker 1: efforts of white and black women to advance sometimes competing causes.
Speaker 1: We're talking about his storian and author Betsy Griffith and
Speaker 1: her new book Formidable American Women in the Fight for Equality.
Speaker 1: Nine Bloombergs. Paul Sweeney joined me for this interview, and
Speaker 1: we began by asking Betsy about her approach for the book.
Speaker 1: I started with the question of what happened after women
Speaker 1: won the vote um and were added to the US
Speaker 1: Constitution on August hundred and two years ago today. What
Speaker 1: happened next? Journalists would say a decade later that the
Speaker 1: nineteenth Amendment promised almost everything and accomplished almost nothing. They
Speaker 1: made a huge stride to break into voting, but then
Speaker 1: white women rarely voted, and Black women were barred from
Speaker 1: voting by discrimination at the at the state level and
Speaker 1: voting laws, so these women had more to do. White
Speaker 1: women would pursue running for office and legislative agendas and
Speaker 1: sundry list of causes Black women had and even broader agenda.
Speaker 1: They wanted to safeguard Black Americans. They wanted to end
Speaker 1: lynching and discrimination and try some ways to secure equal rights,
Speaker 1: but it was so dangerous for them to behave in
Speaker 1: any public active manner that many of them uh acted
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, very quietly out of church basements as
Speaker 1: deacons or agricultural agents. So it's a It is a
Speaker 1: complicated story in American history, but I think we need
Speaker 1: to accept that our history is complicated, uh, and learn
Speaker 1: as much about it as we can. Women have made
Speaker 1: enormous gain since nineteen twenty, but we haven't come anywhere
Speaker 1: near far enough. Just um. Speaking in terms of economics,
Speaker 1: the jobs that the majority of women hold are in
Speaker 1: the lowest part of the employment sector. The jobs there
Speaker 1: are of kindergarten teachers are women. Seventy of public school
Speaker 1: teachers were only thirty eight percent of lawyers. Um, we
Speaker 1: are not. We think we've made a lot of gains
Speaker 1: because women are so much more visible and many women
Speaker 1: have UM succeeded enormously. But until a lot of women,
Speaker 1: more women have UM that access, that agency, that privilege,
Speaker 1: we aren't anywhere near there. So the fight is not done. Uh,
Speaker 1: and we're facing some setbacks now. The reference you made
Speaker 1: to the UM the whole reproductive rights issue. Women who
Speaker 1: can make decisions about when to have babies, how many babies, UM,
Speaker 1: the age of they are when they have babies, then
Speaker 1: can make decisions about education about their employment. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons women succeeded as rapidly as they did
Speaker 1: in the last fifty years was because they had reliable
Speaker 1: birth control and constitutional right to um and a pregnancy
Speaker 1: if they needed to. There are so many issues that
Speaker 1: contribute to the equal rights of black and white women, UM,
Speaker 1: and they still need to be addressed. Give us an
Speaker 1: anecdote from your book that released summarizes kind of the
Speaker 1: struggle in the early years. It's it is hard for
Speaker 1: women today to imagine not having any rights, not having
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties, not having the right to own
Speaker 1: property in some states, not keeping um their wages, Women
Speaker 1: did not serve on juries just because they got the
Speaker 1: right to vote. They didn't have a right to divorce
Speaker 1: widely or child custody, access to very few jobs, access
Speaker 1: to limited education still in the nineteen twenties. It's it
Speaker 1: seems incomprehensible to women today that women could have been
Speaker 1: um so powerless. The book is, you know, just a
Speaker 1: real narrative analysis of the decades long women's fight for equality,
Speaker 1: based upon all your research you did for this book,
Speaker 1: based upon everything you learned from this book. Again, over
Speaker 1: a hundred year period. Where do you think the women's
Speaker 1: movement needs to go from here? I think they need
Speaker 1: to recharge. Uh. The fight to get suffrage was more
Speaker 1: than a hundred years and it was called the long
Speaker 1: Hard fight. We made an enormous amount of progress beginning
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, and part related to reproductive rights,
Speaker 1: the availability of the pill, the road decision, but enough
Speaker 1: other things changed Legislative Change Title seven, Uh, but Equal
Speaker 1: Credit Act Title nine. Many positive things were propelling women forward,
Speaker 1: but then there came a huge pushback, um from conservative women.
Speaker 1: Women are not all one thing. There's there's enormous diversity, racial, economic,
Speaker 1: educational age, all those things that divide us. And there's
Speaker 1: certainly women and men who oppose the goals of the
Speaker 1: women's movement. And I think that we maybe have been
Speaker 1: writing on our success for a while and not expecting
Speaker 1: the pushback that we've been getting. In voting rights, in
Speaker 1: reproductive rights, women are still um. Women need accessible, affordable childcare,
Speaker 1: they need paid family leave. Those two pieces of legislation
Speaker 1: alone would have enormous impact on women's economic well being,
Speaker 1: their participation in the workforce. So there's more to do,
Speaker 1: and I think we need to think more broadly about
Speaker 1: women's issues. We've we will send the sixties. We've been
Speaker 1: saying every issue is a women's issue. But UM, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that feminists would have included food deserts, or
Speaker 1: the quality of education and poor regions of this country,
Speaker 1: or what happens in UM medical care. We're still seeing
Speaker 1: too much maternal and infant death and discrepancies in those treatments.
Speaker 1: We need to get back in the fight, and not
Speaker 1: just in the streets. We need to be lobbying, going
Speaker 1: to door to door electing people to the legislature who
Speaker 1: support those goals. I think we're in a real period
Speaker 1: of challenge and it will take a long time to
Speaker 1: win again unless there are just something dramatic happens in
Speaker 1: the two upcoming elections. All Right, So our Nancy Lions,
Speaker 1: who covers World of National News out a DC is
Speaker 1: shooting us a message and she says, you've got to
Speaker 1: ask Betsy about UM blue and pink timelines and how
Speaker 1: you divide history UM for women along the pink timeline. Uh,
Speaker 1: and something that we probably all don't know about. You
Speaker 1: can you talk about this a little bit? Sure it
Speaker 1: UM and that they're not much women's history was written
Speaker 1: before the nineties seventies, and it got written because the
Speaker 1: government got rid of the graduate student deferment, and so
Speaker 1: graduate schools emptied of men who went to the war,
Speaker 1: and women filled those seats. And when women are doing
Speaker 1: graduate work in history, like every other category of person
Speaker 1: who's done graduate work, you tend to study your own field.
Speaker 1: So women wrote about women, and they began to create
Speaker 1: some methodology about women, and one was to think about timelines.
Speaker 1: We have all learned the American history timeline from the
Speaker 1: colonial period to the federal period, to the Constitution, to
Speaker 1: the anti Bellum America to the reconstruction, industrialization, immigration, the
Speaker 1: twenties the thirties. That's our timeline, and it's dominated um
Speaker 1: not unsurprisingly, by presidents and generals and economic leaders. And
Speaker 1: that's where we all learned. And I believe most textbooks
Speaker 1: today are still divided in that way. The nineteenth Amendment
Speaker 1: doubled the size of the voting population and franchise twenty
Speaker 1: six million women, and you rarely get a chapter devoted
Speaker 1: to suffrage, and you always get a chapter about Jacksonian democracy.
Speaker 1: So the blue timeline marks events on your standard American timeline,
Speaker 1: a pink timeline suggests that all those blue events impacted
Speaker 1: women's lives, but there were other events, for example, the
Speaker 1: invention of the baby bottle, nursing nipple, or the tin can,
Speaker 1: or the sewing machine or the refrigerator that made women's
Speaker 1: lives enormously better. That wars many wars on the Blue timeline,
Speaker 1: affecting men and women differently. Wars are devastating for everybody,
Speaker 1: men and women, but there are opportunities of great economic
Speaker 1: advancement for women. They get to go into the jobs
Speaker 1: that were forbidden to them the Civil War. They become
Speaker 1: secretaries in the First World War, short war, but they
Speaker 1: got to be elevator operators and bus driver and of
Speaker 1: course all those Rosie the riveters filling up the factories
Speaker 1: during the Second World War. Right, you know, you know
Speaker 1: very well that the women's participation in the American workforce
Speaker 1: has not declined since. That was historian and author Betsy Griffith.
Speaker 1: Her new book is called Formidable American Women and the
Speaker 1: Fight for Equality nineteen. She joined Carol along with Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: Paul Sweeney. We're gonna have her back because I knew
Speaker 1: you would love her. I mean, I feel like I
Speaker 1: could sit and talk to her for hours because of
Speaker 1: what she has seen written about in just a different perspective.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if there's gonna be another ken Burns
Speaker 1: documentary based on this book. I don't know. We'll have
Speaker 1: to wait and see on that. And we just want
Speaker 1: to say our thanks to Paul Sweeney and Bloomberg Senior
Speaker 1: Markets reporter Katie Greifeld for joining us over the past
Speaker 1: week or so for a bunch of our interviews. And
Speaker 1: that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 1: I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanovk. Be sure to
Speaker 1: tune into Bloomberg Business Week. It airs Monday through Friday,
Speaker 1: starts at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: You can also watch her daily broadcast on YouTube. Just
Speaker 1: search Bloomberg Global News and check out our Bloomberg Business
Speaker 1: Week podcast. You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcast. Bloomberg Business Week is
Speaker 1: available on newstands now, at Bloomberg dot com, slash business Week,
Speaker 1: and always on the Bloomberg terminal. You can also see
Speaker 1: me on Bloomberg Quick Take available on Bloomberg dot com,
Speaker 1: slash QT, and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung
Speaker 1: TV and more. Have a great weekend everyone, Happy Labor
Speaker 1: Day everyone. This is Bloomberg. Hey guys, it's me Isabella
Speaker 1: Goms spilling in for Smokey Bear because he's got more
Speaker 1: to say than just only you can prevent wildfires, Like
Speaker 1: if you're outside enjoying a barbecue, don't let a hamburger
Speaker 1: distract you from fire safety. Make sure you aren't dumping
Speaker 1: your hot coals or ashes onto the ground because that
Speaker 1: could start a wildfire. So take wildfire prevention seriously and
Speaker 1: let's save the world one day at a time. Smokey
Speaker 1: Bear for the go to smokey bear dot com to
Speaker 1: learn more about wildfire prevention. Brought to you by the
Speaker 1: US four Service, your state Forster and the accounts off