Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - December 30th, 2022

your too, Carol, you too. Over the next two hours, look back at the year that was, from the NonStop discussion over inflation and monetary policy globally to the crypto collapses and undoing of the individual considered that you know, the Jp Morgan of crypto, we're talking about Sam Bankman Freed. We are indeed so important was crypto This year, Business Week devote an entire issue to delve into the Crypto story,

what it's all about. It's a must read. Other issues took deep dives into the undoing of Roe, v Wade, the New Economy, good business, and more. A many stories this year. We're about the world's second biggest economy, though, Carroll, we talked about it a lot, and it's constant impact on everything we're talking about. China that's right more in a moment, and let's not forget the gift that keeps

on giving this year. Elon Musk and Twitter top tech stories in our Business Week Pursuits team, they talk about cars, they talk about museums. That's in our second hour. But on this New Year's weekend, we begin with a thoughtful and an omniscition to editor behind it all. He joins us every day on our daily broadcast and podcast. We're talking about Joel Weber, the editor of Bloomberg Business Week, along with another key member of the team driving coverage

at the magazine, Jim Ellis, Assistant managing editor. Alright, guys, a lot going on. A busy year. Hard to believe we're at the end of it. So, Joel, when you look back at this year, how do you think about it in your coverage? Well, there were a couple big themes and and you hit on a few of them. They're really eloquently. Kind of was preparing for this little

conversation with you. Um. I looked back and one of the first covers of the year actually was about the Winter Olympics, and that was the cover line was China's Games. And we had a really clever podium arrangement where g was at the top podium, and it really did speak to how much the world has changed since the last

time the Olympics were in China. Back then it was the Summer Olympics, and that story spoke to how much the global dynamics have changed from the Summer Games to these Winter Games, and um, it also speaks to uh China, and that was a bigger story that I wanted to take a couple of minutes and and talk through all the various facets of what the Chinese economy has been going through, what the people there have lived through, what some of the companies with global exposure and are rooted

there um faced this year, and also what that means is we start to kind of look ahead. Let's do that with a Jim Ellis, He's assistant managing editor of the magazine. Jim, it's pretty incredible to think about, you know, not just the impact that China has on our economy globally, but the key things driving our cover of China this year. If we start with the Olympics is sort of one of the book ends. What's the other book end at the end of two But at the end of two.

It's the idea that after a year of of following a COVID zero policy where they they've been willing to effectively shut down their economy at off and on throughout the year, and um, and since they're the world's factory shutdown factories for the rest of the world, they've suddenly decided, Okay, we're we're cool, We're gonna go ahead and open up. And it's turning out that the reopening of China after COVID is going to be just as difficult as dealing

with COVID. I don't think people really understood that. They didn't expect that, and it's sort of turned out to be sort of a shock. It means that three is not going to be this sort of joyous sort of bounce back, you know, in China, and for all the people around the world, the companies around the world to depend on them to do manufacturing, are still going to

have a hell of a time next year. One of the things that surprised me was, um, you know, just a few years ago, we always talked about if China ever sees growth go below seven, oh my god, you know, at the end of the world, I mean, China this year is probably gonna do about three point five. That is amazing. I mean you've basically seen the growth there slow dramatically over the last four years and they're not ready for that. But we're probably not ready for that either. Well,

you know what it's and it's interesting too. And I think about, you know, coming off the pandemic, globalization, pushback, supply chains, like, there's so many issues that go back to China. Uh. And I think about also something that the magazine covers so well, and that's Tesla and specifically it's exposure to China and what that means going forward. I mean, China if the economy opens up good but

also bad because of concerns about global inflationary pressures. But if it doesn't, what that does to global demand and global growth? Like It's investors have already sort of sort of awakened to this when they've been pulling Tesla's share price down in part because of of danger of Chinese business they're dropping. I mean we've seen um I guess recently Tesla saying that it might lower production at the Shanghai plant. By this is the first time this plant

has ever gone down from its maximum capacity. Other than when they shut Shanghai down for two months. I mean, this is an amazing thing to see this happen. And after months of basically having to wait forever to get your Tesla, Tesla is able now to provide you a Tesla within thirty days in China, there is no backlog. In other words, the business that is, you know, for them in their second most important market is truly slowing down and we haven't seen that before. Something is going

on there. And because they depend so heavily on China, not just for serving the Chinese market but also for exporting to Europe, this is a bad thing for Tesla. What about when it comes to competitors to Tesla in China. We often talk about them in the context of hundreds of different companies, but one of them in particular that Uh. You a story that you edited this year about out by d R b y D, which is broader than just electric vehicles, but it's a massive producer of electric vehicles.

It is um you know, Virtual Halfway supports it, a big investor in it, and it is Uh. It's turned out to be a very big supplier. They're a real competitor too, but also an exporter of cars to Europe and the rest of Asia. We normally don't think about China as this giant car exporter. But the strange thing, quietly because they don't export here to the US, but quietly, China is going to surpass the US in the coming year as an exporter of cars. I wouldn't have thought

that was possible five years ago. You know, one of the things that distinguishes b y D to GYM is their emphasis on batteries. Right this, right this is a battery company that happened to become a car company, and I think that is a really interesting place for us to think about the rest of what the auto industrys. But all of these American companies are are They're coming

out of slightly differently than the Chinese have. And the Chinese have a huge advantage in terms of having so much of their infrastructure already in this electric already there, and also having access to all sorts of you know, sort of medals, precious metals that are needed to actually build batteries, and um, what it's doing now is it's

uh forcing American companies to think differently. For example, GM and Ford now are talking about being willing to actually go into deals with um lithium producers, which is something that Tesla had not been willing to do, to go in and put money into these companies. They want to buy from them, but it didn't want to basically be

on the hook for helping support their development. This is a real change, but it's an opportunity that the US has now to grab a bigger piece of that business, because if you don't control batteries, you don't control the future of evs well, and China still want to be a big part of tourism, and you guys certainly did dug into that as well, and we've been watching it when it comes to some of the gambling names, the

US gambling names. But with incredible exposure to macau Um, what are we seeing when it comes to tourism and travel, because that's something you guys certainly covered. It's been a really tough time because of COVID zero. People have been unable to travel. There's been all sorts of restrictions to the typical places that Chinese tourists would go to. People forget that Chinese tourists had become the number one travelers in Asia, but they were also extremely important travelers in Europe,

especially for luxury brands. They love to travel to shop, and it's that was all cut off. International air travel for most people was cut off during the pandemic. Even when it came back for places like Hong Kong, you still had the quarantine, so people didn't take advantage of it. Moreover, Intra China travel, which had been the largest single domestic Arab market in the world, you know before the pandemic,

that has gone down dramatically. We're only now up to about thirty percent of what it was before the pandem m that's a huge drop for a very large market. Um people are afraid to travel. They hadn't been allowed to travel. Now they're afraid to travel because by ending COVID zero, you've let people jump on planes, You've let people sort of go outside their neighborhoods, but they're not

testing anymore. They got rid of the mandatory testing and for masses, and they also are letting people sort of go out without any sort of fix on where they go. They got rid of the tracking system. But what that means is this is a country where only one percent of the people have had COVID. There's no herd immunity built in there. So that's the reason why all of a sudden you're saying, oh, nine thousand new cases a day,

because this is virgin territory for the virus. This is not going to end well, right, Hey, jo is there some company or some CEO that came up in almost all of your planning meetings when it comes to when you think about companies in business in general, I mean,

can stop making news? Truthfully? I mean it started earlier in the year when we revealed that he actually had a massed a position in Twitter, and then uh, he became he acknowledged that and like put forward that he was going to buy it, and forty four billion dollars seemed like a lot of money, And then it really seemed like a lot of money a couple of months later, as the market sort of started to melt down and he tried to get out of that, and then we

had a very entertaining process that ended up eventually with him acquiring the company and tweeting. And maybe you've noticed it's like he keeps tweeting, Joel. Entertaining is one word. Hey, here's a hint. I have a feeling you're gonna be talking about it. We're not going to stop, al right, everybody, Thank you so much, appreciate it. That's Joel Webber, the editor of bloom Brig Business Week, along with another key member of the magazine driving coverage this year, Jim Alice,

He's assistant managing editor. Coming up, he delved into the major financial headlines of two and the Crypto story that just keeps on adding chapters. You're listening to bloom business Week. This is Bloomberg. Please sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stinevic from Bloomberg Radio. For just the second time ever in an entire issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine was dedicated to a single topic from a

single writer, Paul Ford's What is Code? You might recall that was the first That was a few years ago. This time around Bloomberg Opinions, Matt Levine gave us forty thou words on digital assets, a primer on the innovation that could forever change the way that we transact and how we view the world of finance. The October thirty one issue was dubbed The Crypto Story, Your Guide to What it Does, What it Means? And why it still matters.

Matt did have a helping hand on his way to compiling his definitive Digital Asset God, and that came courtesy of Bloomberg Business Week Markets and Finance editor Pat Regnar, and Pat joins us now to reflect on that journey, and perhaps he can also try to help us make some sense of the saga that we're continuing to see in this space, headlined, of course by none other than Sam Bankman freed and is now bankrupt Crypto Exchange f t X. So Pat, let's take a look back on

on how this came together, because here we are at the end of two How did you guys approach this idea of an actual takeover and how did you settle on You know, Matt Lavine, who I know is familiar to pretty much everybody who's listening right now. Yeah, well, with things like this, it really started with what does Matt want to do? Um, we we were really thinking about how to really get something out of him that

people would want to read. He has such a huge following and he's so crisp and clear on so many issues, from elon to sort of strange quarters of corporate finance, and here we have this topic crypto, where he was so often writing columns we would read every day and you would just go, oh, wow, this thing that I didn't understand, Now I get it. Because crypto has just been this thing that's lose so quickly that I think people have been kind of like chasing to sort of

understand like all of the things that are happening. And so what he did was really kind of explain it from the ground up, and I think in a lot of ways he ended up foreshadowing a lot of the things that we're talking about now. What's amazing, you know, to pat when I think about it, we all often said, oh, the crypto world, crypto, crypto, and we like kind of throw everything in one basket. And what Matt did is really pull apart the details, dig into everything specifically, provide

the transparency. I feel like we all needed to kind of understand the relationships and truly what it all meant. Yeah, I mean he really starts with kind of explaining like what a blockchain is, which you know, I'm often surprised you can talk to somebody for quite a long time and they'll be speaking to very authoritively about blockchain, and then you might stop and ask a very basic question and say, you know what, I'm not actually under percent

for I understand that part of it myself. So you know, it was like very refreshing, Like you know, you've been in the desert and somebody gives you a glass of water, so sort of just like somebody finally explained to you some of these fundamentals which can often be hard to tease out when reading things like white papers that you'll see online or somebody's proposing something, and like, you know, and honestly, a lot of what Matt saw was that

underlying a lot of this jargon and talk were you know, scams and things that would be best described as Ponzi schemes.

I mean that seems incredibly prescient with what happened, you know, just a couple of weeks after the issue came out, and then what happened in December as well, with the rest of Sam Bankman freed, and of course the collapse of of f t X. How do you view the crypto issue in the context of what continues to happen with crypto news that we read about and news that breaks, Like, is this some sort of reference guide for people to

go back to and and understand current events. Yeah, I mean, I hope that when people look at it they'll see it's like, okay, so here's a way to think clearly about all of the things that have happened and all of the little kind of um corners and side roads that you know, this story is going to go into. You know, you look at what s N Free is accused of doing, and you know some of it. There's a simple way of telling the story, and the simple

thing is customers sending money. He took the money, and he moved it over to the hedge fund, and then he lost the money, right Like, So at one level you don't have to think about it too hard. But then when you go a little deeper into what he's accused of doing, it gets a lot more complicated and mechanical more quickly. And so, for example, it has to do with well, what does it mean for something to be a crypto exchange? And how was this exchange using

margin and things like that. And the reason that stuff is important to understand is that, um, you know, Sam bank and Free has been laying the groundwork of a defense of what he's been doing. Um, and it kind of depends a little bit on people being I think,

maybe overwhelmed by some of the detail. And one of the things I hope is that you could you could read this and then you would have a firm enough grasp on the detail to see through why some of the things that he's saying are just mistakes maybe could be characterized as something considerably worse than a mistake. I gotta say, Pat and nothing against boring white papers, but

they're boring. And Matt tells this in such a wonderful read. Um, and then the way you and your team, the graphics, the pictures, the quote, the polls, like, it's just it's really pretty incredible to go through and and um, I'm not gonna say it's like reading a novel because it's reality, but it really was, um a treat and enjoy to read. And I have to say, you know, we get the magazines in the newsroom, and it was hard to find this. This is one that everybody was like, do you have

the crypto issue? Do Matt's crypto Issie do the business with crypto issue? Because everybody took it because they wanted to read it and understand it. And I'm curious what kind of response have you guys gotten from the bigger, broader crypto world or just the world in general. People would be very positive about it. God, as you know, they liked it a lot. But I've even heard from people who are some of the strongest crypto critics. You've said, oh, you know, we really like Matt in the way that

he explains to these things. Um, that that's been kind of pardning that. Uh, it seems to be well received across people with different opinions about this space which is now so very much on ourline. Okay, what's the future here?

How do you think about it? You know, I think that what's happened with SPX is a really existential crisis for crypto I think, Um, you know, one of the things that Matt lays out at the end of his piece is like, you know, they've they've built this large, complicated financial system, and the question is is it all a ponzi? Um? And or are they going to build something? And um, you know we're now looking at massive uh you know, alleged fraud at the heart of crypto markets.

It's not the first one, um, and we still you know, that's not just that's not only pushing prices down. It's really raising questions about like, you know, why would why would you put your money into this? Like the the simplest ways to invest are very you know, nervous making uh for people and um, you know, and then we still haven't addressed the question of what what are you building?

What what are you making? UM? I think that's gonna be really really tough on um, especially because you know, a lot of what's going on with FBX is about the stuff that people thought was building. You know. UM, people would say, well, bitcoin, like, you know, it doesn't have any intrinsic value. It's just sort of a bet. I'm sort of like a token price going up or down. I mean, that's you know, that's just like kind of the simple economics of bitcoin. It's just it's just a

pure bet on adoptions. Then, but like maybe the next thing that will happen is people will come up with tokens that give people, you know, util be and kind of represent um, you know, some kind of piece of the growth of a company. Well, what's name Like one of those tokens, Well, one of those tokens was the token that that f t x UH issued for itself and actually seemed to be a very big part of its lab right that it's like what, you know, what

is actually here that people want? And I think like people in the crypto community are going to have They've got a lot of work to do, um to to prove that this isn't just a place to speculate. Pat, I didn't hear you use the term magic internet money when you were describing that. Oh, that's for all right, that's the next full issue, um. Incredible work, Pat, Thanks so much for joining us. Happy New Year, Thank you.

That's Bloomberg business Week. Markets and Finance editor Pat Rignier still had on the New year's weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, where U S monetary policy goes from here as a year full of wallet breaking inflation and jumbo interest rate hikes comes to a close, or does it? That's the big question. Well, from pandemic labor constraints to the reversal of Roe v. Wade, US women have lost decades worth of progress in just a matter of months,

and it's costing the entire country dearly. We're gonna explain next. This is Bloomberg broadcasting from the financial capital of the world. Bloomberg eleve in Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine six to the country Sirius XM Chanel one nine team, and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week

with Carol Massier and Tim Stenove from Bloomberg Radio. In mid December, we saw Wall Street's hopes for a loosening monetary policy take a big hit. The Federal Reserve did dial back a bit when it raised interest rates by fifty basis points that followed four consecutive seventy five point hikes. However, fits you J Powell saying officials were not close to ending their aggressive campaign of rate increases and signaled borrowing

costs Wood had higher than expected. J. Powell also saying that the Central Bank would not cut rates until it's confident that inflation is moving back towards its stated two percent inflation goals. Higher interest rates and rising prices have been the prevailing economic themes in America over the past

year and really throughout much of the world. To help put it all in context as we head into the new year, let's bring in Bloomberg Business Week Economics editor Christina Lynn Blad Christie and I feel like it's been the story that keeps on giving. We just constantly talk about monetary policy in the US and globally. Um, how do you think about the coverage that you guys have done over the year and kind of where we are

ending up. I think about a word that Powell used a lot at the beginning, which is humble, and how the macroeconomics profession has been humbled because nobody really saw this coming and the persistence of it, if you be bowl, I guess said they would. But um, but here we are, and we have a cause like a glimmer of good news this week with the CPI print, you know, we're core inflation. I just you know, November that was the

smallest print we've had since August. So maybe the medicine is starting to work, and I think that's what everyone's hoping. I think that's going to be the big thing to watch in well. Speaking of themes, right, like, I do feel like the FED is for the most part had one message of like, you know, it's about getting inflation guys,

you know down and that's what we're focusing on. But at the same time, another theme has been consistently when it comes to the US economy is the strength of the labor market, and and that I guess gives the FED some wiggle room, but it's also kind of worrisome, especially when it comes to the wage pressures. Worrisome. I think it's one of the parts of the puzzle that people can't really figure out. I was saying to somebody that when after the COVID recession, every job support, you know,

it was amazing. You just couldn't believe house as it was coming back, especially compared to the previous recession after the financial crisis, which we had a long, grinding recovery, right jobless recovery was called, and this was just like, you know, boom, these jobs are coming back. And now though we're in this place where when those right A report come and they're strong, you know you avert your eyes. Oh no, you know, because you know that it means

that rates will stay higher for longer. You know, there's still a real, really high level of job openings. Companies are still creating jobs that they say they can't fill. Um and that and wage pressure is strong and at this point now we're seeing real wage gains because inflation is starting to trend down, but wage growth is still strong. So that's also going to be one of the things that everyone's going to be looking at going into next year.

It feels like, you know, there's data points for everybody, you know. Meantime, you know, strong market that's out there, but we've seen housing sloaded like it's just it's very difficult to make sense of it. Having said that, do you feel like, like like you mentioned the last recession coming

out of the financial crisis. I think about how the magazine Business Week and you and your team have covered kind of going back to the past, and we have talked a lot about Paul Bulker during the seventies and his inflation fight and what that might mean for what j. Powell has to do and the FED. I think that has been a big shadow, right, a larger than life shadow that has you know, loomed over Powell in the whole f O m C. There are many similarities but

also many differences in the way everything played out. Then I think now what haunts them is, you know, the ghost of Arthur Burns really who was the said chief who who thought he'd beaten inflation, and then you know, started listening too fast. And you know, we see that Wall Street is perennially hopeful that this pivot will come and you know, and they want the pivot to come

in they want the said to start cutting rates. Powell push back on that, you know, saying the most likely, you know, we see from the new economic projections that the cuts will not happen until well, I know we're gonna be talking about this a lot in the new year, no doubt about it. I want to get to another critical development that took place in two and that was the major setback for women's reproductive rights we saw take place with the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade.

It's a very personal story, but it also made us take a look more broadly at women and their place in their economy and really just kind of the setbacks. Christina, you've been one of the key voices as we unpacked the sweeping economic implications of that decision, as is Bloomberg News Equality team leader Rebecca Greenfield, and Rebecca, I want to bring you into this conversation as well. Tell us about this issue where you guys did UM some really

deep diving and some deep coverage of what had happened. Yeah, you know, the Supreme Court made a huge decision and overturned UM, what was almost fifty years of president and Roe v. Wade. And it really felt like a very big moment in US history, specifically for women who have made a lot of progress economically, UM, and otherwise in the US that seems to be slipping and this moment, the decision really felt kind of like a big turning point in the wrong direction for rights and in the economy.

So UM, we put this breaking point issue where we took the moment to step back and say, what is happening two women in the US? What I have to say? You know, you guys included in this coverage in the magazine This is Back in August, some numbers thirty three million women of child bearing age living in twenty six U states expected to institute abortion bands twenty four out of a hundred thousand. The US has the highest maternal

mortality rate ratio of any industrialized country. And then a trillion dollars projected increase in US g d P over a decade resulting from narrowing the gender divide in labor participation rates to levels prevailing in Europe. Wait very personal, very individual in terms of the impact you think about it, and but it's also there's business implications, economic implications for the setbacks of women that we've seen as of late

Christina also equality. We did a piece in which we looked at decades worth of economic studies that looked at the impact of abortion access and people have been able to get some very granular information and they looked at women who were not able to access abortion, you know, had higher chances of being poor, falling into debt, children that were also going to be poor. So it's the impact extends across generations. The Supreme Court decision came at

the end of two very trying years for women. Right. We had something that people called like this she Session, because when schools and childcare closed, some women had to quit working, right, And then we had lots of other things we had, you know, the we had a formula shortages in the US. I mean, who thinks that, you know, a major industrialized, one of the world's top economy you

cannot get formula for your child. There were just kind of these like drip drip, drip drip, and then came the Supreme Court thing, which is something that you know, people had positive for a while and there was even this League decision, but it was still was a shock, Rebecca, as you guys rolled out the coverage, I mean, what just kind of stood out for you in doing this

series of stories. Yes, I think the biggest thing that has to have re since the decision and was a big part of the coverage is that the way that the decision has played out is that it's really not solely about abortion and safe abortion and economic implications of that, but it's really becoming an issue of fave pregnancy and maternal health, and that really seems to be the really big risk that women place. There are safer ways for women to get abortions in places where it's not legal

than fifty years ago. That's true. We've written about that, and even in the places that have these near total abortion bands, but they're having these ripple effects on women who have wanted pregnancies that need to get medical care that that is an abortion but is not technically legal or it's not clear of its legal And we ran a big story by clear said it's about maternal mortality rate there, which are very high in the US for a developed country, and particularly high in parts of the

U S and she irrid in on this um rural area in Texas, But we've seen so many more stories since then in places that aren't you know, completely in the middle, you know, very with very little healthcare, where people who want to have children that are running up against these laws and it's very scary. Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

And I have to say with something that I always find Bloomberg Business Week does so well, Like you'll tell the big macro story UM and the data or the research behind it, but you also always have individuals so that you know, it's so easy to get lost in the data, Rebecca, but I feel like when you drill down and you tell individual stories, like we all can relate to it. That was the year that was for women. It led to the breaking point Business Week cover story

that was out back in August. We're going to continue with Christina and Rebecca about what three may have in store when it comes to women getting back some of their lost prosperity of more when our New Year's holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week continues. This is Bloomberg.

You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio, continuing our important discussion about what's next for women in the United States following the landmark reversal of Roe v. Wade earlier this year, we spent it forward and we're still talking with Bloomberg News Equality Team leader Rebecca Greenfield and Bloomberg Business Week Economics editor Christina Lynn Blad. Guys, you know, coming off the mid terms, I think we were all just kind of

watching so closely to see how it played out. Um, I do wonder mid term outcome and then thinking ahead to the next presidential election. Rebecca, let me start with you, do you think things could change for the better when it comes to women? Great question, so we hope so. Um. I told the election was super interesting because abortion ended

up being such a big issue for voters. There were a bunch of referendums and some days but specifically ask voters what they thought about an abortion of it wanted it to be legal. All of them indicated yes, people want abortion protections. That also helped some Democratic candidates in those days and in other places when in a year where a lot of people expected, you know, just the usual things to happen, where the other party does not empower the Republicans to get more votes. So it was

a really big galvanizing issue. So the election and of itself was super interesting from that. Absolutely, Christina, come on in on it, you know, as you it's what we want, right, We want to quotify them to law. For years, we lived this time waiting for a challenge to this precedent that might bring it down, right, it was always a possibility. So I am heartened. But yeah, by the results of the midterms that showed that reproductive rights were an issue

in voters mind. So yeah, yeah, I was very heartened by that. As we know, politics can go a lot of different ways in funny ways. When you look at three and I do feel like there's a lot of the issues that we talked about that will obviously continue into the new year. But Rebecca, what's kind of front and center for you? Definitely still abortion things I really shaking out even in states where you you know, we've

had predicted that there were these trigger band laws. There's a lot of lawsuits, there's a lot of challenges and balot measures even in very deep red states that's going to continue to play out. And then I think that there's this like three year long fatigue of especially working parents and working months that has not been any solution to that that nothing has been floated. I think that

I've moved floateded have fallen through. So it's just something we're always looking for and seeing if if it will happen, if they'll bring anything back or can get anything past help working parents. Christina, what's kind of front and center for you as you think about Well, I think for me it's it's looking at this this possibility of recession,

but also a job market that has defied expectations. Um stories that we've done talking to employers and which companies that had trouble staffing up after the COVID lockdowns are saying we're going to think twice and three times before laying off people in a downturn, you know what I mean. Not not so fast, of course, it gets to happen, but I mean I think that sort of people look at their sort of inputs of production, they really realize

how important labor is in the equation. And you know, now as we have an economy, it's kind of skewed highly towards services, so recession and yeah, and for me and and the labor market and and just to also dial back to what Rebecca was saying in terms of childcare, we have something looming that's a negative, which is money that was in the Biden stimulus for daycare centers and there was quite a chunk uh that money is going to dry up going into like at the end of

this year, in the beginning of the year, and you know, we've talked to some childcare providers and they're saying they don't know how, you know, they gave their staff wage increases to hang on to them because they were losing them to warehouse jobs and the you know, higher paying jobs, and they say, we don't know how we're going to be able to cope without this aid. And that has

a huge impact, and you think about the implications of that. UM. I know we could talk a lot longer on this, and looking forward to your coverage, both of you when it comes to Business Week's coverage in Thank you so much and Happy New Year. Bloomberg business Week Economics editor Christina Lynn Blad and Bloomberg News Equality Team leader Rebecca Greenfield always appreciate their thoughtful coverage and reporting. And that wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of

Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser, substad Eva back with me as we take a dive in the next hour down the big tech rabbit hole. Head in our next hour, Elon and Tesla Metta and Mark Ev explosions and a museum in the desert for the lucky few tech in pursuits. They're coming up next in our holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and

editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine. Plus global business finance and tech news as it happened Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stinebeck on Bloomberg Radio. Plenty of in our second hour of this holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the electric vehicles that are just so cool and so expensive they just aren't mad for the masses, They're just not for you. And

meet him not yet, That's part of the issue. Plus fine art from the Nevada desert and all the way to the Canals of Venice, and plenty of glitz and glamor in between. We celebrate the best of Bloomberg pursuits. In first Up this hour, we mentioned Evis Earlier the last hour we spoke about them at the top with Joel Webber and Jim Elis, and Joel mentioned the man that may be most synonymous with electrified transport on this planet.

You know what we're talking about, Elon Musk. Except Musk's ultra valuable e V Empire at Tesla did not appear at the top of his agenda for much of the past year. Instead, it was his forty four billion dollar purchase of the social media platform Twitter. Tell us make sense of what Musk really accomplished with his takeover, as well as some other key takeaways from the world of technology over the past twelve months. Let's bring in Bloomberg

Business Week columnist Max Chafkin. Max, I feel like there was so much to cover this past year, but a lot of it did. It did feel like every day there was something with Elon Musk. Yeah, you know, we've been writing stories uh here and other publications have two over the last almost like a decade about how poorly run Twitter has been. You know, it's this, um, incredibly culturally salient service. You know, obviously we love that's the

news agenda, journals are addicted to it. But but it has really struggled for a very long time to to

turn himself into a successful business. And I guess over the last year we've just seen maybe you know, comparatively, they were doing actually a pretty good job because Elon Musk, you know, world's greatest entrepreneur according to many people's you know, super respective innovator, has for for whatever reason, maybe these are problems of his own making, or maybe these are actually some of the challenges with Twitter has really really

really struggled to run this thing. And we have just watched kind of this rolling series of kind of media circus slash disaster. It almost feels like, you know, the political version of like the first six months of the Trump presidency or something, where um, you kind of can't look away. He's just dominating conversation. But it's also not

totally clear, um, what exactly been accomplished. You kind of took the words right out of my mouth because in reading your columns over the past few months, as Elon Musk has spent more time on Twitter. One thing that comes to mind is the way that acts with people tweeting about him, and it actually is similar to what we saw from President Trump when he was on Twitter. Talk to us a little bit about this idea that that Elon Musk is kind of like amplifying his own

voice in several different ways through fan accounts on Twitter. Yeah. So Musk has long had this kind of army of followers, but as he's become more active on Twitter, um and as he's sort of I think like leaned into this mode of conversation which involves, as you said, interacting with these fan accounts. Also, you know he talks to kind of his these these quote bought accounts that that post, you know, notable things. He said, it's it's a quote for me, Elon Musk. Elon Musk times in and says,

well said um and um. And you know, fans, anyone who comes in and says you know, you're a genius, or you're being persecutor or any number of things, you know, Musk is right there to buck them up. Now. That's why I think actually a pretty good strategy from a sort of marketing perspective. Musk is I think, even still, even with all the challenges at Tesla and Twitter, a really great marketer, kind of within a suitive marketing sense, kind of like I would argue Trump, but stuck in

the kind of bubble of Twitter. We've sort of seen the kinds of things that I think happened to a lot of us if we spend too much time on Twitter, kind of happened to Elon Musk, where where it almost feels like he's consumed with this ultimately meaningless conversation and maybe taking his eye off some more important issues, you know, one of which is, uh, this rocket company that he's he's running that's trying to get to Mars and the

other courses. Is this electric car company that you know faces some some serious challenges, and I think we're seeing investors um and maybe even car buyers react to that. I always feel like when there's a headline on Elon Musk, I'm always like, oh, Ellen, because it's like this weird individual who you have to give him his props in terms of pushing e vs out into the market much sooner than everybody thought. That the way he thinks, whether

it's SpaceX, whether it's the boring company. He really moves the needle on things and really thinks in a different way. At the same time, I've never seen a CEO of a publicly held company go out on Twitter and say things that could financially impact you know, his company, like how do you get your head around this? Well. Musk, you know, has always had this larger than life persona has given him a lot of power, and over the

years we've seen that sometimes create controversy. You know, with Tesla, when Tesla bought Solar City, like there was a bunch of lawsuits. It kind of looked like self dealing. You have a situation where Elon Musk can basically do whatever the heck he wants at these companies, which is something

you see across you know, other tech companies. Now it almost feels like with Twitter he reached escape Velocity or whatever, where it's not only does he have complete control, not only does he own it, but he's sort of operating with no kind of controls at all, where you know, where he came in with basically a bunch of his friends as his you know, executive team, and it really looked kind of like an army of basically Elon fanboys, and you know that is not even even the greatest executives,

even the greatest marketers. Um I think need good advice and maybe need to hear criticism, and I think that is has been a place where Musk struggled. Can I how do you think about for Elon Musk? Well? I think there are a couple of questions, Like one is, you know, if you want Twitter to survive and thrive, you're sort of hoping he loses interest he you know, maybe maybe he likes seed some day to day control

to people who actually know what they're doing. Or maybe he just kind of takes his foot off the gas a little bit and just instead of trying to constantly stir the pot, just tries to run this thing more efficiently.

You know, he is capable of that, and I think you know, one thing we have seen at Twitter is that, yes, like he's laid off huge numbers of people, have been huge lots of resignations, but some people have stuck around because even for all the craziness, Elon Musk is still a business hero and people want to want to work

for him even with all the downsides. And the other thing that I think is probably the more important question is Tesla, because you know Tesla, for years and years people have been talking about these other car companies are gonna have evs that are gonna be just as good as Tesla. You know, other car companies have advantages that Tesla does not have service marketing, and you have these competitive car companies coming, You have China being a huge

source of uncertainty, China super important to Tesla. And then you have Elon Musk lighting basically his main asset on fire, which is his reputation as brand, and that I think is going to create real challenges for Tesla and could lead to some disruption in the EV market if if Elon Musk doesn't find a way to kind of grab control. He said, you said Meta, so we got to go there, and you didn't say Facebook, which I thought was really interesting and also telling for one of your recent columns

about how mark it is. But I mean, for anyone who's covered this company for its its entire existence, you understand that the core business is still the business that makes money, and it's still the business that investors are are punishing right now. Well, I mean it's like speaking of potential CEO and competence. I mean, the crazy thing about the Elon Musk tenure is he's kind of made Mark Zuckerberg look good. And I feel like, if if Elon Musk had not, you know, been had such a

crazy two we to be talking about Mark Zuckerberg. How could somebody take this amazing asset. Facebook is an amazing service. You know, three billion people a day are using this thing. It's like half the world's population. It is a marketing engine like nothing the world has ever seen. And Zuckerberg basically about a year ago, decided no, no no, no, I'm done with that. We're gonna have you know, meeting rooms with no avatars and no legs. We're gonna have you know,

second life, but Facebook version. And you know, people have responded to that kind of the way that you would expect them to respond to that, which is they don't care. And you know, Facebook spent all this money, you know on Super Bowl ads. They ran a Super Bowl ad. In February, Zuckerberg goes on the Joe Rogan podcast, you know, biggest podcast in the world, one of the most influential

radio shows. There is no one cares um and we're talking about you know, hundreds of thousands of people using this thing called Horizon Worlds, despite the fact that Facebook has spent you know, something like thirty billion dollars and

that of course has severely damaged the stock um. You know, it's it's led to all sorts of questions about Mark zuckerberg leadership ability because again, just like with Musk, you have this guy who is basically the absolute ruler of the company and suddenly, you know, maybe for the first time ever, seems not up to the task. And that is I mean that maybe that's one of the big themes of two. We've seen these kind of you know, great leaders stumble in ways that they haven't stumbled before. Max.

Another theme of this past year has been, you know, the slump that we've seen in digital advertising, is that part of the problem. If we weren't in that slump, in the economic conditions that have created that slump, that maybe Meta wouldn't be in such a tough place that it would be better and we'd be all kind of more willing to deal with Zuckerberg kind of chap the company. And there are other factors here. Of course, you mentioned

the slow down digital advertising. Uh, you know, if if Mark Zuckerberg right here, he'd be you know, saying, you know, Tim Cook and coughing. Because of course, Apple has changed a bunch of the rules around digital advertising ways of

impacted Facebook business now. I do think the broadly speaking, though, what is happening is during COVID, during the pandemic, there was a lot more usage of these of these digital services and digital advertising you know, spiked, you know suddenly, probably because people are spending more time, probably because there was more money to be you know, people were just spending their you know, stimulus checks or whatever, and and that has gone away. We're going back to something that

looks like the way it was before. But like if you're Mark Zuckerberg, the way it was before was pretty good. I mean, you look at Facebook in twenty nineteen, and that was a dominant, successful company. And I think the argument that you know, maybe they should have instead of investing or losing really billions of dollars in the metaverse, maybe they could have just tried to show up the core business. That that's something that that you're seeing investors

increasingly kind of bring up. Although again, you know, people still do believe in Mark Zuckerberg, and you do still hear people talking about the promise of the metaverse, so you know it's possible that that this thing will eventually come to fruition. Although it has not been a good year for for Zuckerberg. I'm cloe with the metaverse. As long as I have my avatar has legs. That's all

I'm saying. I like my legs right. Also, check out Max has had some great reporting on Sam Bateman fried f t X, including the food behind the Crypto collapse. That was a really great story. Um Max Chapkin calumnist for the magazine, covering so many different things and of course all things tech. Max, thank you so much, thanks for having me. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up, we hit the road with our Bloomberg Pursuits team and

check out some sweet rides and amazing, aren't we do? Indeed, this is Bloomberg. Please sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stinevic from Bloomberg Radio. Alright, time for babbles and Bugatti's, museums and Maserati's and many inspiring and just really cool things in between. You like what I did there, didn't you? It's Chris Rouser. Chris Rouser is the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits. You can hear him chuckling at the great writing that Carol just read. He's our

We also joined Literation Writing one oh one. We're also joined by our intrepid auto columnist Han to Elliott. Every week a trip into the world of wow and wonderful. We do that in the world of Bloomberg Pursuits. So, Chris, how you know, going into the end of the year thinking about everything that Hannah has done throughout the year, throughout well, I mean, I don't want to put too much Hannah her career. Are you thinking about the end of the year issue? You know, Hannah has maybe the

coolest job of anyone in there. You know, we're talking about world Hannah, I'm talking about right in front of her. And you know, she test drives all these incredible cars, but she also has like a bird's eye view into the whole industry, especially when it comes to luxury cars,

uh and where the industry is going electric vehicles. And you know, she was talking about the cars that she reviewed this year, and she was talking about how she crab walked with like the electric hummer through the Desert and she drives these incredible Porsche's and and it was just so fun to think about everything that she's tried out um and everything that she's seen this year. So we had a lot of fun looking back at the

year with her favorite cars. Well, speaking of cars, I mean, I do feel like evs are there's gonna be a lot of buying next year. But how do you think about it from your advantage point? Hannah, Well, I have to say I was so happy this year with the offerings from the e V world. I mean, for so long, of course, it's been Tesla and then you know, we had like a Prius as a hybrid and some other sort of minor things. But this is the first year that really the luxury automakers gave us some real options

in the e V world. I mean, Audie has their Etron line, which include a small sedan and then like a hatchback thing and an SUV. BMW gave us multiple sedan and SUV e vs. We're seeing a whole EQ line from Mercedes of evs. So this is the first year where it has really felt like, wow, we have a lot of options, and I think it's been really interesting that is. You know, we start to hear some people say, I'm not feeling so hot about Tesla cars. You know, for many reasons, people are kind of ready

to like what else is there? And finally, we actually do have a lot of things to choose from. And we talk about this all the time in pursuits because luxury people don't always realize the way that luxury can

define the rest of an industry. You may remember Miranda's cerulean monologue from The Devil Horse product Um, but Tesla really, you know, it taught people that an e V doesn't have to look like a Lodgins, doesn't look like have to look like a toaster that you're driving, you know, and and we're hoping that people are learning about that this year. You know, Hannah has all these prescriptions that

she thinks that should happen in the next year. So not only like electric cars are gonna look better, they're gonna drive better, they're gonna have better luxury quality, but also they need to be cheaper, right Hannah, Yeah, you know I remember writing that story. And you know, the average price of an evy is almost seventy thou dollars, where the average price of a regular non e electric new car is closer to forty eight thousand dollars, so

there's still a really big price disparity. And it is true at the omit that typically evs are driven by weth your people. Well, if evs are going to save the world, they need to be driven by a wide range of people. It's not just about getting more high priced evis in the market, even though personally that's what that's what I love, um, it is really about, you know, giving a broad range from very affordable to of course a lot of options. Is this the one with a

refrigerated champagne cooler. I think many of them have nothing to drive a wagon, I know, standard issue rolls, Royce paraphernalia right there. It's interesting because you you don't you know, there's a lot of people who don't drive evs, I think are worried about range. They have range anxiety. But as you write in one of your recent pieces, most Americans are only driving what fewer than forty miles a day, so it's not necessarily that you need a longer range.

But you still write that you need charging to be better. What do you mean by that? Right, that's a great point. I think, um Now, really, what I hear and what I experienced when I drive these vvs is not really range anxiety. It's more about charging anxiety. And what I mean by that is the availability of chargers once you get there, that they're not broken, they're not occupied, and they're not going to take the twelve hours to charge.

All of those are things that um, yes, have to do with the network, the charging network that we need to improve, but also with charged times that these evs can have. Once they can charge quicker and quicker and quicker, that will really alleviate a lot of the anxiety that consumers have around evs, not just with range, but also with what is very valuable time. Yeah, and that's also an access thing, right, I mean, that's also more more

people can have it when that it's that's that's more robust. Now. Something we also talk about a lot is that the most green thing you can do is not even buy a new car. It's by an old car, which brings up is my favorite thing, which is which brings up one of me and Hannah's favorite websites, which is bringing trailer dot com You, Hannah and my dad. Yeah, there's probably lots of Dad's right. Not a week that goes by that Hannah doesn't send me a listing of a

Jeep Grand Wagon. Here, you need this, and it's down incredibly well this year, right, Hannah, it has done insane. Bring a Trailer was formed about ten years ago. This year they already clelled cleared one billion dollar in sales and they are on track to do about one point three billion dollars in sales this year, which is astounding. Now.

Bring a Trailer, of course, is the online auction website where you can search for any car basically and you can join a live auction and see bids put in real time and quotes, uh comments and and people talking about the car in real time. It's really addictive and it's really fun. And the beauty of it is the fees are so low, so it's really beat this old auction model of selling cars live, you know, under auction tens.

It's really fast, it's cheap, and it's really fun. I think people have, you know, this idea that the types of cars available and Bring a Trailer are those really inaccessible vehicle stuff that's super expensive. But you write that there's really you know, it really runs the gamut Oh, there's something for everyone. I mean, I get on and look. I mean, Chris knows, I've I've been a little bit obsessed with old corvettes, like C three corvettes. You can you can get on and find, you know, an old

corvette for ten thousand bucks. You can look for old broncos. You can look for old BMW wagons which actually are kind of going up in value. Um, you can. There's there's something for everyone again, And I think that's why it's so popular. Even if you're not actively fitting, you kind of think you could because not everything is that expensive, and it's really fun to get on and just live

vicariously through whatever auction you're following at the moment. What's really cool is it sounds like that's why this individual, right, the founder of the making right the Bloomberg fifty on the list this year. Yeah. I'm really happy that he has been on the list because the point of the Bloomberg fifty is to really highlight people who have up

ended their industries, and Randy really did that. You know, he comes from uh he worked at a BMW dealership UM in northern California, and he and some friends were sort of just trading car listings back and forth to each other, which is kind of how this idea was born. And he has really transformed, uh, the industry. Like I said, with something that is really accessible, easy, you get instant gratification.

And it has forced the other auction houses like Gooding, r M, Southby's, Bottoms to come up with their own ways of selling cars online. He he really showed this is a lucrative endeavor and it's forced the other guys to kind of follow, hurry up and and follow follow suit, all right, rap and around? Uh yes or no? How do you buy in a car this year? This coming year? No? I can't. I already bought two. I bought one last year.

Chris Rouser, No, no I need. I just need a vehicle that can transport a toddler and I already have that. To no way, I'm happy with this. Sad, I don't know. I've got a nineteen year old is like I got my license, It's time for a car. So well, thine she should buy the car. Tv D t B D guys, thank you so much, Happy New Year, Happy holidays. I thanks to Bloomberg Pursuits auto commist Hannah Elliott for all

of our great work. We love reading our columns this year, and we look forward to what's to come in still to come on Bloomberg Business Week, Chris Rouser sticking with us, and we're going to dive into the even pricier world of fine art. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial

capital of the world, Bloomberg. He Love the Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one does San Francisco, Bloomberg nine six to the country, Sirius xm chenal one Mine Team and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim

Stenova from Bloomberg Radio. It wouldn't be a best of Bloomberg Pursuits discussion if we didn't highlight some of the work and travel of our great arts columnist James Army. He is pretty incredible, You know that? Are you just saying that because he's with us right now? Kind of okay? Well, he is with love, I love you know. Just keep it coming please. In addition to James, we were also really pleased to have back with us Bloomberg Pursuits editor

Chris Rouser. He's gonna take us inside some of the most exclusive places in the art world and beyond time to go mind some art, Chris, I want to I want to start with you because you oversee the Pursuits section and kind of just how your approach this year when in the context of what James does in art, Well, the amazing thing about the Pursuits team is they have

an incredible level of access um. So when James goes to art fairs, for example, he knows all of the gallery and he knows some of the artists, and he gets invited into everything um. And one of the coolest things he did this year was he was the second journalist to go into the city, which is this giant, incredible art creation and then the Nevada Desert um and he was really the first journalist to go around and

talk about what it was like to be there. So we have all these incredible opportunities for coverage because James is such an expert and know so many people. Was

that like your favorite moment of the year? Really, it was one of these singular bucket list experiences that I had obviously known about for a while, because so what we're talking about is this art installation in the Nevada desert that has been under construction for fifty years, so not exactly a secret, but something that no one was allowed into, at least professionally for a really, really long time.

So it had been on my radar and basically this year they have finally started allowing people inside and I had been dying to go and managed to actually make the make the trek. So what was it like? So getting there is a whole thing. You know, it's around three hours from Las Vegas, but the first hour and

a half you're on highway, find smooth sailing. But then you get to this town of Alamo and you get into this kind of tricked out suv and you spend the next hour and a half driving through the desert and then you sort of appear at this massive installation, which at first you don't realize that it's there because most of it is excavated underground. So then you kind of get into it and all of a sudden you realize that you're in something that doesn't look like anything

you've ever seen before. Basically, it's utterly quiet because you're there totally by yourself. While I was walking through it, I began to figure out what the artist was trying to do, which is create a maximalist form of minimalism, which sounds sort of abstract, but in reality he was able to take the contours of the earth and create this kind of exquisite, almost three dimensional painting out of it. Tell us about the artists and and his history and

land art. Yeah, so he is a progenitor of this. This is Michael. This is Michael Heiser. He is sort of a like a cowboy. A whole part of land art was like saying that New York gallleries were way too fancy and pop art with way too glitzy, and they wanted to kind of go back into nature and impress themselves upon the land. So, of course the New York galleries are paying for all of this, but let's not focus too much on that. But he dug these huge trenches in a mesa, and he's done these kind

of concrete indentations in California. He's very much a person who not only places his own idea of minimalism on the land, but he gets people behind it, and he gets people to kind of get extremely excited about it and fund all of his crazy endeavors, and this is really the craziest of them all. Was there any risk that once you you took the trip, that there's a chance that you couldn't have gone to see it or

they wouldn't have let you in the end. Actually, I was delayed a couple of days because it rained, which is an unusual thing, um, and it washed out the road and made it totally impassable. But no, once I had been kind of locked into going, it was all pre arranged. The thing was that they kept saying no for a really, really really long time until they finally said yes, and I called up Chris and I was like, I'm getting on a plane. Can we go now? Or no?

Good luck? Well. And so it costs very little, I think around a hundred and fifty dollars, and that's just for the cost of transportation that they provide for you. Um, But that's assumes that you're in Las Vegas, which is not necessarily the case. When it was announced that it was open to the public, around ten thousand people applied

to visit in the first week. Um. It is very very sought after thing, and their whole attitude about it is that people should be able to have the experience that I had, which is this kind of quiet, solitary, multi hour long experience in it. And that means that they're really limiting how many people can come in at any time. Moreover, they don't let people in when it's bad weather, when it's raining, because they just can't get there.

So you can go, but there's a bit of weight that you'll have to expect to be able to make. But the good news is it's there and it's not going anywhere. Well, speaking of something that's there, and finally back is the Venice bien l A. The long delay due to COVID, you got to go there as well. How were the themes this year in terms of, you know, how they're thinking about the year. Let me just say that the Venice bion l A is why I have

stayed an art journalist. It is absolutely the most funds because they turn over the entire city of Venice to art. So you get to go into these private homes, you get to see all of the most cutting edge artworks which countries from around the world have brought. Um. You get to kind of trapes through the Jardini looking at these different pavilions filled with different national efforts. Um. It's

a huge deal. And beyond it simply being fun, it's actually super, super, super important because what it does is it charged arts basically the way that the rest of the art world is going to go for the next several years. Um. It's a it's a way of seeing what's going to be next. So for a while, the art world had been really inward looking, or maybe not even inward looking in the art world itself, but inward

looking on the people who are making the art. Very much about identity, politics, very much about nationality and background and biography. That has really begun to change, first to be kind of change in Venice, and now we're actually seeing it change in the art market itself. In Venice, it was all about the future. What it was about ecology, It was about climate change, very very interesting because it was trying to take an artistic perspective and really apply

it to something that affects everyone. Um. And sometimes it was successful and sometimes it wasn't. But it was very different than what we've been seeing for a while. There is one story I want to get to that you did. Um. This past year, James, and I feel like this is near and dear also to Chris, and this has to do with watches, Southbyes, Pablo Picassos. So Chris, first of all, this story, I mean watches, you guys do a lot of coverage. We know you love them, um, but they

have become quite the investment. Watches have had a kind of up and down year this year. Um. They became huge in the past couple of years on the secondary market, which is people buying pre owned watches online or at auction, and that was partially fueled by like the crypto craze. It was very much like a speculation sting and also a pride thing. Um. And prices have softened in the second half of the year, which is which is good,

I think. But Christie's and Sotheby's and the other auction houses have really started focusing on luxury because the whole secondhand market, from bags to cars to watches to jewelry has really really boomed. And there you know, they don't make as much money on a particular piece, like a Protech is not going to go up for as much as a Picasso, but there's a lot more protexts out there than there are picassos, and it's easier to play

a volume game with them. So James talked to the CEO of Southebys about their whole luxury strategy, which has really evolved in the past couple of years. It's interesting because for a while, quote unquote, luxury was something that was very much less than less prestigious, less interesting, less volume, less room for growth than art for a lot of these auction houses. And they realized relatively recently that actually this was a huge growth market that they could really

tap into. And that coincided with, of course, a lot of people board at home during COVID buying stuff, and there was a supply shock. Right If everyone all of a sudden has extra money because they're not spending it on travel or restaurants, and everyone decides that, you know, they're going to treat themselves to a fancy watch, well there's only a finite number of fancy watches out there,

as Chris can talk about. So ultimately auction has become a major beneficiary of people realizing that if they wanted a fancy watch, they were going to have to buy a used one, and that has become not only a source of growth for these auction houses, but a a real strategy for the way that these auction houses are charting their course over the next couple of years. You got to say, I can't wait for the coverage Pursuits

coverage in the coming year. It's always a fun thing and love kind of sitting in here and just chatting with you guys all about it to looking forward to it. Thanks for having us, Yeah, thank you. Happy New Year. That's Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser, along with arts columnists James Tarmy. Another amazing year of work from the entire team, guys, and we really barely scratched the surface. Carrol, Yeah, so much there to cover. Check it all out online at

Bloomberg dot com slash business Week. Our deepest thanks to Chris, James and all the other great individuals we get to work with. Jim Gaddy, Kate Crater, Hannah Elliott of course, are undercover reporter Brandon press Or, just to name a few. He's always worth a read, always worth of giggle. Uh And we just love reading your work and being able

to bring it out to the world. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up We wrap up our New Year's weekend programming with some final thoughts from the editor of the magazine, Joe Weber. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. We brought up our New Year's holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Weekend. With it, we want to bring back the editor of Bloomberg Business Week, Joel Weber.

Joel so much. We talked about the Top China, we talked about Ellen, a lot of important stories from the past year. That wholely issue devoted to crypto. How are you thinking about three already? Look, I think we spent a lot of time talking about crypto this year, and I don't think that story is over. You know an interesting thing here. There was a cover story we did in the middle of the year about the Lehman Brothers saga. We are more than a decade after Lehman, We're still

unwinding Lehman. And that story was about the consultants who come in and basically are squeezing every last dime out of the state of Lehman Brothers. Right, and here we are with Crypto. I don't know if it's gonna last ten more years to squeeze everything out that that was there,

but we are going through something. This Crypto winter that we've been documenting all year culminates with the Crypto story by Matt Levin and the magazine covered cover issue, and in that time since then, look you've got the ft X implosion, You've got more quakes, and it just feels like this industry that has been growing for a decade, but now it sort of feels on far shakier ground. So I don't think we're nearly done covering crypto. Next year.

As a business journalist, it excites me because there's gonna be much more to say, many more developments, and I don't begin to have a clue what those could look like, but we'll be there. But that also ties into I think another big topic here, which is the global economy and the American economy and what we're now living through in terms of interest race increases. It just speaks to what the economy we're all going to be talking about

this more next year. And the R word recession is one that we've been talking about a lot, but like whether or not America falls into recession, if it manages to stay out of it, if there's the soft landing, Like, we're not nearly done talking about j PAL and the FED or inflation, right, So so that's gonna be a topic of conversation. And boy, I hope we get to talk about markets going up rather than down, because that

was all we got to really do this year. So it's the short seller's calling and they're really ticked off at you. Well, that's I mean, that's my question though, and specifically about technology because if we think about sort of one change that we saw in two it was layoffs and Silicon Valley, the potential that tech sort of loses its mantle as being, you know, one of the

main drivers and engines of this economy. And I'm not saying it's gonna necessarily lose that, but it's it's not what it was in the era of low interest rates. Look like, I think we are having an existential moment

right now. I don't think that the tech industry is going away anytime soon, but I do think the valuations that we saw, the lack of profitability that a lot of these companies have had, We're in a moment now where the when the cost of money becomes exponentially greater, the appetite for risk comes down, and our alli becomes a consideration that probably hasn't been when money was free.

So I think we're just in a tough spot for a second, and it's going to challenge a lot of very smart people to really really push for things that matter. So I think the it's going to be an exciting time to watch. We're not nearly done with it. You think about some of the strides that had been made and where things like artificial intelligence could or could not go. It's gonna be a wonder It's a really exciting time to be alive and see where some of this stuff goes.

And in general, I am an optimist, so I hope that we can have more sun and less clouds next year. But it also does speak to like back to the crypto idea um something that largely like what's it for again? You know, like, is that is that going to be a thing that can continue tender or are we in a much more rational, tangible version of reality. Well, one of the best parts of our job is getting to work with you each and every day. That's Bloomberg business.

We get her Joel Weber, who is with us once again, a constant for us and the head of one of the best business publications in the world. I'm gonna go ahead and say the best business publication. We love working with you and the team, and thank you so much for joining us this year. Happy New Year, Joel, Thank you. And that wraps up the weekend edition, our holiday weekend edition, our New Year's edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio.

Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanovik. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday, starting at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch our daily broadcast. Check us out on YouTube just search Bloomberg Global News, and check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or

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