Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - May 31st, 2024 - podcast episode cover

Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - May 31st, 2024

May 31, 20241 hr 30 min
--:--
--:--
Download Metacast podcast app
Listen to this episode in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episode description

 Featuring some of our favorite conversations of the week from our daily radio show "Bloomberg Businessweek."
Hosted by Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec

Hear the show live at 2PM ET on WBBR 1130 AM New York, Bloomberg 106.1 FM Boston, Bloomberg 960 AM San Francisco, WDCH 99.1 FM in Washington D.C. Metro, Sirius/XM channel 121, on the Bloomberg Business App, Radio.com, the iHeartRadio app and at Bloomberg.com/audio.

You can also watch Bloomberg Businessweek on YouTube - just search for Bloomberg Global News.

Like us at Bloomberg Radio on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @carolmassar @timsteno and @BW 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.

Speaker 2

This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 1

Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend podcast. Top of Mind. This week, former President Donald Trump was convicted on all thirty four counts in his New York hush money trial, a landmark jury verdict, making him the first former American president to be found guilty of felony crimes. His sentencing now set for July eleventh. All the details can be found on Bloomberg dot com and of course, on the Bloomberg terminal.

Speaker 3

Our focus is on presidential candidate Donald Trump, now that we are about five months away from the November US election, and on the concerns of some voters about Trump forever. We'll explain what that means in a moment.

Speaker 1

Plus, Jamie diamond says there could be held to pay if one all asset class sours. We talk private credit with the folks over at Moody's.

Speaker 3

And how money and markets really work in this economy. That's the title of a new book by financial educator commentator in Bloomberg Opinion contributor Kylas Scanlon. Now, if her name sounds familiar, it's because she coined the word and the whole concept of the vibe session.

Speaker 1

Yeah, great conversation coming up there. All of that to come. We begin with the November presidential race. As a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump draws closer, political professionals are detecting an unusual concern for some undecided voters, the fears of not just four more years of Donald Trump, but Trump forever.

Speaker 3

And as far fetched as it may sound, the prospect of Donald Trump, should he find himself back in the Oval office and then never leaving, is weighing big time on the minds of some voters, so writes our Bloomberg BusinessWeek national correspondent Josh Green. His story featured in the latest edition of BusinessWeek Magazine, out on newstands now, on the Bloomberg Term and at Bloomberg dot com slash BusinessWeek.

Speaker 1

Josh is also the author of The Rebels Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, AOC and The Rise of the New Left, also author of Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming of the Presidency.

Speaker 3

We spoke to Josh before the Trump verdict.

Speaker 4

I've been talking to a Republican and Democratic strategist recently who'd mentioned that they were seeing something strange in the focus groups and polls they were conducting, and that is that a lot of swing voters were worried that Trump was going to declare himself president for life if he's reelected in November. And as I did some reporting on the source of these worries, basically this is something that

Trump likes to joke about. Of course, there was the January sixth riots that gave a lot of people pause. But it's a factor that I think isn't being paid a lot of attention to. But both Republican and Democratic strategists are seeing it and wondering if this is going to have an effect on the outcome in November.

Speaker 1

You know, it's interesting, and Josh, we don't certainly have to tell you, but this idea that Donald Trump will say something and people be like, well that's Donald Trump, you know what I mean, they're kind of dismissive. Is there something though different as he runs for a second go at the White House.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I think there are a couple of things.

Speaker 4

I mean, as you mentioned, the Trump people sort of laugh this off as this is just Trump being Trump. You know, he likes to say outrageous things to get a rise out of liberals. He's talked a little bit about well should I maybe serve three terms? But while a lot of people write it off as just Trump being Trump, this particular group of voters seems to be

listening to it and worrying about it. And as strategists have kind of plumbed the reason for this, they've come up with some interesting theories, and the best one I heard was that it was really what was driving the sphere was the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe versus Wade.

A Democratic strategist told me that what that did was convince a lot of ordinary voters that things they wouldn't have imagined possible, like Rovers' way being overturned or Trump abolishing term limit suddenly seemed real enough that these voters were worrying about it, and it seemed to be pushing at least some of them back into Joe Biden's camp.

Speaker 3

Well, you get into the piece that the idea of president serving only two terms, whether consecutive or not, hasn't been in the Constitution since the days of the Founding Fathers by any means. It was ratified in the nineteen fifties after FDR served more than two terms. Can you talk a little bit about the history of presidents since nineteen fifty talking about the potential repealed the twenty second Amendment or at least alluding to the idea of serving more than two terms.

Speaker 5

Yeah.

Speaker 4

Absolutely, I mean, as I did a kind of a deep dive in this piece, what was interesting was almost immediately when the twenty second after the twenty second Amendment was passed, popular presidents and their advisors in both parties have kind of objected to it. Ronald Reagan said in nineteen eighty seven he would like to overturn it. Democrats in the House of Representatives twice, once during Bill Clinton's presidency once during Barack Obama's tried to push legislation overturning it.

So it's something that popular presidents sort of chafe at. But that being said, that the hurdle to actually get it overturned in abolished urn onm It's is almost unthinkably difficult. It would require large majorities in both houses of Congress, that would require large majorities of state legislatures to approve it. So it's not something that's plausibly going to happen. And yet still people have learned that Trump is a norm breaker.

It's something that gives them pause and it's weighing on them as they make their decision on who to vote for in November.

Speaker 1

Hey, Josh, there are focus groups, and then there are focus groups by those who have been doing them for some time that maybe you sit up a little bit straight and take note, like I just do. Wonder is there something that just makes everybody kind of be like, wait a minute, there's something different this time around.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I think that's exactly what's going on. I mean, if you go back to twenty twenty and the January sixth uprising, it's sort of shaken a lot of people and made them realize that, well, maybe things aren't as smooth as we expect. Historically, when we conduct these focus groups and we throw out these kind of wild scenarios, voters usually push back and say, oh, that could never happen.

I was able to sit in on a couple of these and sort of see this myself, and people are just much more willing to believe that crazy things can happen, and that maybe one of those crazy things will be Trump declaring himself president for life. As implausible as that sounds, I think to most voters.

Speaker 3

Well, it was struck by a woman who you spoke to who actually said that she would vote for Biden even if he is in a coma, despite the fact that back in twenty sixteen she voted for former President Trump during that election. Talk to me a little bit about her thinking, Josh, and how this could move the needle with the undecided voters.

Speaker 4

Yeah, Well, the people I was focusing on in this piece really were that narrow group of undecided voters who are going to decide the election. A lot of committed Republicans like it when Trump talks about abolishing term limits. A lot of Democrats like to get upset about it, but their votes aren't really up for grabs on either side. So the focus of these focus groups and the voters that I talked to were people who had either been former Trump voters former Biden voters, were now undecided.

Speaker 3

The woman.

Speaker 4

You mentioned, Laura McCammon as a grandmother in Wisconsin I talked to voted for Trump in twenty sixteen, but as she's witnessed January sixth, she's listened to, you know, maga media figures like Steve Bannon talk about multiple terms. It scared her into deciding that she wouldn't risk another vote for Donald Trump. And she told me, as you said, she's planning to vote for Biden in November no matter what.

Speaker 1

Hey, you know, while we have you, and one thing we wanted to ask you, and this was certainly a story that we've been talking about this week a lot, and this has to do with Donald Trump. A video posted to his social media account, the report Yeah to his that referenced a unified Reich as a potential news headline if you won a second term. You know, Devil's Bargain bestseller. You know, you really got inside Steve Bannon and the road to the White House for Donald Trump

the first go round. How are you thinking about some of the terminology that's being you the rhetoric that's being used by Donald Trump.

Speaker 4

Well, this is something that we've seen going all the way back to Trump's first run in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen that kind of winking at the far right, either through phrases or memes or videos or what have you.

I don't know whether this was intentional or not, but you know, given Trump's background, given the praise he heaped on some of the Charlottesville protesters in twenty seventeen, another earlier controversy over anti Semitism, It's something that people in the press and people in the elector I think are

very alert to. So something like this pops up in a Trump video, you see the media pouncing, you see the attention to it, and it's something that the Trump campaign, either intentionally or unintentionally, hasn't really managed to fix and bottle up and kind of clean up their campaign. But I think we can see based on this it's something that we're going to have to keep an eye on going.

Speaker 1

Forward, right, and certainly those undecided voters are keeping an eye on too. That maybe explains what you just talked to in your story. Hey Bloomberg, Bloomberg BusinessWeek national correspondent Josh Green, Josh, thank you so much.

Speaker 2

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us Live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen on Apple car Play and then Brout Auto with a Bloomberg Business app or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 1

Also this past week, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Diamond says he expects problems to emerge in private credit and warned that there could be hell to pay. That's a quote, particularly as retail clients gain access to the booming asset class.

Speaker 3

JP Morgan and other lenders have been competing with the one point seven trillion dollar private credit industry, with giants such as Apollo Global Management taking on ever larger deals. We got an update and talked risks with on Arsov, global head of Private Credit and Financial Institutions at Moody's Investor Service.

Speaker 6

Everybody wants a piece of the action, meaning either to invest in the business or build a business, and we went when the business is relatively mature, and particularly now with the opening of the leverage finance market and I'm talking about direct lending specifically, we are worried that created terms will suffer and eventually there will be deals who

are done maybe less prudentially. When there was less competition, particularly between the public and the product markets and leverage lending. So we are concerned and we're seeing actually created terms of seriation. We are seeing competition for talent as well, and at the same time a lot of dry powder being raised that has to be deployed and maybe deploy the terms that are going to be less favorable for credators in the near term and media term.

Speaker 1

All right, so bummer for the creditors, right, the folks, you need to borrow the money. But having said that, as we kicked it off with Anna, the idea that so many people want to be a part of it. Doesn't that I'm playing devil's advocate a little bit, But doesn't that kind of spread around the risk in the private credit market so that there's not just one entity, one lending entity, if you will, that's kind of stuck holding the bag if things go wrong.

Speaker 6

It is Diversification is always good at risks. The issue is that our statistics have shown that the biggest fundraising actually is going now.

Speaker 1

Increasingly to the largest players.

Speaker 6

So therefore this is becoming a more concentrated market. Sorry for this has been a more concentrated market, both on the private equity side, but particularly private credit fundraising is indeed going to the largest and more established players. So with that being said, we are diversification is very interesting because it is the same pension funds, an insurance companies who are investing on the private equity side, and also over sovereign funds are also investing in the private credit

and so they're all increasing their exposure. The good thing is here this from a systemic risk perspective, these are different funds with different investment than underlying so there is not that big concentration of one type of a risk let's call it, you know, subprem mortgage, US suprem mortgage, or US office commercial real estate in one type of fund is diversified to many real moneys that have a long term perspective and long term investment horizon and also

without necessarily immdiate liquidity call or risk. So that's the good about this market. You're absolutely right the specification of the investment community and also not imminent liquidity draw that these kind of investors are coming in with.

Speaker 3

When I'm wondering, are you going to come on our show and say that private credit is not hot? When does that happen?

Speaker 6

You know what? That's so if you think about where we are in what eating. A lot of us have been talking about private credit as equivalent to direct lending, and direct lending is just another middle market now expanding to larger middle market leverage trends business, but private credit

is beyond that. There's a lot of talk about potentially the abs private credit market, which you know, if you listen to various pondents in anywhere between ten and forty trivia, any kind of asset from any bank that potentially can

be sold. Is that auto, is that aircraft receivables, is that actually data centers or explained as even you know, commercial real estate that the potentially can be packaged in a private securitizations that will have basically be deployed into the kind of the investner community, same insurance companies, pension funds,

summer funds. So therefore, if you take a broader picture of private credit or any credit provision that's not done by the banks but financing our economy, that means that this is going to be here to stay for quite a long time.

Speaker 1

So Moody's, we know who you are, and you guys look at these things and try to assess risk. So where's the risk and the private credit market today.

Speaker 6

So the risks are really again they are mostly housed again within institutional investors that are sophisticated investors and the sub funds and again pension funds have the largest part of this, then insurance companies, then sovereign funds. The growth into retail funds and is what we are being raising

as a particular concern. Look at where the new BBC Information and Business Development companies for benefit of your of your viewers here is that there is like the largest funds that have been grown is with retail or high net worth money. And the question there is these type of funds have a different kind of liquidity calls if you were, an ability for retail investors to basically call their money on a quarterly basis, right, And that's where

the biggest growth has been. So one can say, you can be Teble's advocate, Well, shouldn't retail and high netword individual also benefit from the growth of private markets.

Speaker 7

And the answer to that is of course.

Speaker 6

But the second one it's done in the prudential way sufficiently with the right disclosure, so afterwards they really know what they're getting and then they cannot get their money overnight.

Speaker 1

It's so funny that you said this. I was just having a discussion with someone in preparation for a panel, and this whole idea of even a credited investors, do they understand liquid versus ill liquid?

Speaker 8

Right?

Speaker 1

Because private credit not as long liquid is certainly kind of your bread and butter investments, and so do they understand going into one of them, or going into a private credit fund that if they need the money or want the money, it's not so easy to pull out? Correct?

Speaker 6

Exactly? So typically how these fonsor are orchestrated.

Speaker 1

And just got about thirty seconds.

Speaker 6

Yeah, yes, you can have a quarterly you know, small portion of liquidity is funds that have established or beck in this space have a provision of bank clients to provide for that and more liquid access. But not the point being is that investors need to really be aware that this is any liquid access and they're locked for some period of time and they cannot take their money back, and growth in that area can create disclosure risks.

Speaker 9

Risks that's what the fonds to watch for.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's just, you know, certainly a topic that fascinates us in a big way. Put a private credit story on the most on the Bloemberg, and it tends to be among the most right a.

Speaker 3

Million bucks a year salary. Some of those folks the.

Speaker 1

Firm, Anna are so global head of private credit financial Institutions at Moody's Investors Service, always fund to check and with you really appreciate it.

Speaker 2

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Easter on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 1

Dell was an interesting stock this week, closing at a record before earnings and then plummeting after earnings after its first revenue increased since twenty twenty two wasn't enough to impress investors high expectations for the company's AI server business.

Speaker 3

We recently heard how Dell is expanding its AI factory with Nvidia to include new servers, edge workstations, solutions and services advancements that speed AI adoption and innovation. You may recall to you that CEO Michael Dell has talked about aipcs being quote pretty standard in twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1

I will say some industry watchers and analysts are a little suspect about not just for Dell, but the whole thing out AI PCs.

Speaker 3

Maybe AI phones come sooner, yeah.

Speaker 1

Exactly, and maybe from Apple all right. In general, though, we wanted to hear more about what Dell is up to when it comes to AI, which you know, has been around for a long time, they've been working on it. For that, we turned to John Rose, he's Global Chief Technology Officer at Dell Technologies.

Speaker 3

We spoke to him before the release of Dell's latest earnings report.

Speaker 9

Last year, the first year of the AHI era, you know, I think most enterprises were trying to figure out what should they do, and largely most of the large enterprises did a lot of experimentation. This year is different. This year many of those initial experiments which we're really trying to figure out where to apply this technology for the

best return. You know, if you're an enterprise, you could apply aid to anything, but if you apply it to your supply chain or your product development cycle, or something that really moves the needle from an economic perspective, that'll have a bigger impact. So I think today most enterprises are triangulating on where to apply it, which then gets

them to the discussion of how to apply it. And that's where you know, the panel we add when we were chatting kind of went, which is, this is not a workload that's sitting on the side used by three people. This is the center of your enterprise. It's going to run NonStop, seven x twenty four. It's going to power your sales process, is going to power your customer satisfaction.

And so choosing the right place to run it, whether you know that gives you the best economic outcome, the best control, doesn't get you into compliance and regulatory challenges,

is really the dialogue that's happening now. And so a lot of the work we're doing that you mentioned on the intro around with our ECOSYSTM around Nvidia and Meta and everybody else, is how do we reduce the complexity to make that decision, How do we make it easier for people to get started, to not have to do everything, and to really get the platforms in place where they need them. In our opinion, one of the best places to do some of this stuff is clearly in their

own owned infrastructure. One it tends to be a CAPEX model. And two, it's in your control and it's much more predictable.

Speaker 5

John.

Speaker 3

For years, we've heard about the cloud being what's nimble and the cloud being the place that we can do this stuff in it secure, cure do this stuff for less expensive. I'm wondering the shift on premise is not a shift. It's been around for since before the cloud. But why are we seeing and talking so much about the shift right now?

Speaker 9

Yeah? This is Remember the cloud era was all about taking your existing workloads, your web servers, your email, your office productivity, and maybe trying to figure out a different way to operate if by a cloud wasn't just public cloud. The cloud model pervade everything, and so you know, the shift autonomous, automated elastic infrastructure happened with a set of applications that we understood.

Speaker 8

Well.

Speaker 9

The things we're building now look nothing like that. A large scale generative AI system for an enterprise is arguably the most demanding and complex workload you will create in your lifetime. And so you know, we're You could argue that, you know, an optics driven as a service model that gives you lots of agility, but you pay by the drip is not a very good outcome. If the thing you're running runs seven x twenty four at enormous performance levels,

you know you don't want that meter running. You want that meter to be predictable, and so it's just a different class of workload. By the way, we're big proponents in multi cloud. A lot of the time, the best place to develop your AI system is in one of the cloud providers because they have a great tool chain. The best place to test it might be there, Maybe the best place to train your models might be there because you only need the infrastructure for a short period

of time. But the minute it becomes inference that you're putting it into production and it's using your data, which by the way, most of that is on prem even today, then it starts to become a very different discussion, which brings kind of this modern on prem architecture that we talk about with the AI factory into play as probably one of the more logical places to start.

Speaker 1

Well, what is exactly the concept of an AI factory?

Speaker 9

Yeah, here's the important thing for people to realize. AI is a new workload, and by the way, it actually needs a new class of infrastructure, the type of compute is not CPUs, it's GPUs. The type of data is not traditional databases, it's vectorized data that lives in large language models. The kind of tools you use are different. And so what we talked about a Dell Technologies world

was not a new set of products exclusively. It was you really probably need to have a separate type of infrastructure for your AI than you do for the traditional things that you do those workloads that went through the kind of cloud migration we talked about, And what the AI factory is is it's an articulation of what that

infrastructure looks like. That it is accelerated compute, that it's a different kind of data architecture, it's a better and different type of networking architecture, and that it probably lives in a different footprint because it itself has different requirements than your legacy applications and the other applications you run

in either a public cloud or a private environment. And so the AII factory is how do you create a methodology and organize all the technology to put that in play, whether it's at a rack level or even an entire data center, that builds you the optimal infrastructure to run these new workloads that you're going to need. So think of it as just a paradigm shift. We're going to

have to build new infrastructure for this new workload. It might be redesigning or optimizing what we have, and it might be in fact being your data center build out.

Speaker 1

And it's really interesting and I think we might have talked about this at the Bloomberg Intelligence event, but about you know, technology companies, they compete, they work with each other, and it was interesting at Dell Tech World the keynote stage to see Jensen Wang and Video's CEO up there, and so there's really you know, you can see the partnership. You can see there's clearly a show support from in

Video to you guys at Dell. What is the nature of this partnership, especially when they make their own AI server racks, which makes you competitors to some degree.

Speaker 9

Remember, Dell is a unique company. We are obviously very large, and you could argue we're the largest technology integrator in the world. Now it means something to different people, but basically, like I don't build my own CPUs or GPUs, but what I do is I organize that technology into consumable units of it that my customers across the world can consume. Now when you look at what in Video is doing, they clearly are the provider of some of the better

GPUs in the world. There are other choices that we also work with. They also have organized their stack in a way that makes it very easy to consume, and I think that did a great job there. And so they have an early lead and it's importantly that they're they're making it much more consumable and they're keeping the innovation cycle up. However, their ability to engage with the large enterprise across the world. They don't have the we

OWT much larger salesforce. We have a global services capability, We have the largest supply chain that's secure in the world and technology and so. And by the way, you also don't just need the GPUs, you need the advanced storage services. You need to integrate it with your existing infrastructure. You need to talk to your existing data, which by the way, rides pretty much on Dell Technology storage systems. And so the nature of the relationship is, look, hey,

you're trying to build an AI factory. There are some leading edge parts that absolutely have to be produced. And one way to actually make sure that they happen correctly, is to integrate them into a system, an early system like what Nvidia does. However, those parts are decomposable and then they can reassemble into other form factors that companies like Dell can take to a much more scalable market.

The announcements around edge and other areas. We have the ability to reach more customers than anybody in the world. We need partners to help us build the technology to bring it to them.

Speaker 1

Is your partnership with Nvidia a little bit different? Is it a deeper one because you do have partnerships with other server manufacturers as well in others? Is it a deeper relationship or how would you call it?

Speaker 9

Yeah, we worked with you know, we worked with a lot of companies, and what I will tell you is the first one. It was the deepest. Last year we announced Project Helix, which was the first time anybody articulated putting all the parts together into something people could consume. So it has a significant first mover advantage. However, you know, like I said, we work with a lot of companies and we have a lot of partners.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I'm wondering how big John, the AI server opportunity is for Dell in twenty twenty five, and then how big it could be over the next few years. What are you folks talking about internally and externally?

Speaker 9

Well, so I'm a CTO, so I'm not going to talk about people.

Speaker 1

But are you really busy?

Speaker 2

John?

Speaker 9

I am extraordinarily busy. But let me paint a picture that's a little longer term, you know, and that is Look, we are, as I mentioned, we're in now year two of the AI cycle, the modern AI cycle, and year one was all about surprise, get organized. Year two is about the first kind of enterprise deployments and kind of the prototypes. What that means is that the enterprise buildout hasn't actually begun. And if we look at the size of the AA market today and what's going on, it's

a pretty interesting market. What's happening is we're building the foundational technologies, we're training the large language models that this is a very robust ecosystem right now, we are developing the tool chains, and as you can see from you know, just the state of the industry, it's a pretty exciting and a pretty significant shift that is in front of the enterprise cycle where conservatively, you know, most most people we look up with a long term The AI cycle

is about rebalancing a sizable portion of the work in the world into the machine layer, and so as that occurs, you know, it represents you know, sometimes we use the phrase we're in the training era. Now we're about to enter the infront ra for enterprise, which is AI gets put into production. When it does, you know, you can calculate imagine a world where you know, a third of the work is now happening in a machine layer. It's being done by a machine an AI system. What does

that look like? How big is that? Well, you can't calculate it accurately, but you know it's a gigantic number. And it's as big as the Internet build out, it's as big as the Industrial revolution. In many of the discussions that we have, the timing on it, it's an extended cycle. This will be a twenty year cycle, but we're about to enter that phase. And what it tells us is it's a significant amount of replumbing of enterprise.

It's building out AI factories, it's rethinking your data strategy, it's rethinking your footprint in the multi cloud, and all of that tends to give it our breath and depth in our ecosystem, drag us into an awful lot of customer conversations in a pretty active world, even in advance of the significant buildouts occurring on the inference side.

Speaker 3

So okay, So if we're only in year two when it comes to AI, where are corporates in their AI journey? How do they adopt their technology? We know Dell want a meaningful chunk of Tesla's AI rolled out, for example, but where are corporates in their AI journey?

Speaker 9

Yeah, the corporate As I mentioned before, last year, it was all about getting your feet on the ground, understanding the technology of earning what a large language model, earning what RAG was, and this year it's all about finding those first projects. The first projects are largely under development in most large enterprises, and some of them are emerging as chat thoughts and other services that we're starting to see. And there are definitely early examples of technology that have

been deployed as new offerings. But the full pivot where a company now declares that I am in the center of my business, you know, building my product, selling my product, servicing my product, engaging with my customers based on primarily an AI architecture that is still work to be done, and so I think you know at this point, we're still right now in most large enterprises, in the first proof of concepts, the first prototypes. But one of the things that's different about AI is it does not take

three years to build one of those. You can go from idea based on the tool chains available to having something in production that you can start to really do. And we're doing that inside of Dell make your developers more productive in a matter of months. And so the velocity of this cycle is something that we've never seen before, which means the gap between getting your feet on the ground and being in production and transforming your enterprise is not a ten year cycle.

Speaker 1

Hey, John, I keep hearing you know, you've said it, and I've had other guests, but when they talk about AI and in inference, right, am I saying it correctly?

Speaker 3

Yeah?

Speaker 8

Right?

Speaker 1

How is that different from AI training? And is that kind of a new concept or is that just something more complicated when it comes to generative AI.

Speaker 9

No, they're part of the same cycle that the idea behind AI is. Look, you're trying to have a machine do some kind of cognitive work, you know, answer a service call, sell something build a right code. In order to do that, the first step is that you must have that machine have some access to the knowledge necessary

to do that, which is what training is about. The difference in large language models is that we've developed techniques that allow us to instead of trying to as human beings, decide how to code, we've learned that if you just expose these new techniques, these new technologies, large language models, to a gigantic set of coding, just examples of coding, they will classify them, organize them, and create a neural network and interestingly enough, they will then be able to

replicate that intelligence, that behavior. And so the training phase is about taking gobs of data in the current phase, it's the entire Internet and run it into these models that create systems that can understand or communicate human language, that can code, And all that is is them deriving from a gigantic data set the knowledge that's contained within it to create a set of skills. That's training. Inference is totally different. Inference is that once you have that model,

now you want to do something with it. You have a thing that can code great well. Inference is when you tell it to code a program, to actually produce source code that does something. So they're just two halves at the same coin. One is learning to create the capability, the other is the act of using the capability and production.

Speaker 1

Hey, listen, something I got to ask you. It's a story that's on the Bloomberg and this has to do with Nobel Laureate. He's also an economics professor. We're talking about Paul Romer, and he was talking with our team here and he said, runaway confidence and artificial intelligence risks, repeating the mistakes of the crypto hype bubble of only two years ago. He says, right now, there's way too

much confidence about the future trajectory of AI. When people project this phote, I think they're at risk of making a very serious mistake. Do you think that there's too much confidence about AI? Do you think there's too much euphoria.

Speaker 9

And two answers to that in the general population. I think it's a very confusing space because we have basically the human race is maybe susceptible to science fiction, and we think that what we're producing is artificial general intelligence, and we're producing these these these sentient beings, these are non sentient beings.

Speaker 3

These are Yeah, technologies.

Speaker 9

Yes, yeah, maybe sometimes we all believe there's a path AGI, it's just not in the near term. That whole dialogue in that let's call it the consumer general market, which is primarily where most of the big public AI players play, is a risk because people think these have personalities. They don't understand the technology. When you come to the enterprise world, it is far more conservative. There is no enterprise in the world that's trying to build the terminator or a

sentient being. What we are doing is we're applying the techniques that we're pioneered in the public AI world large language model space to very specific problems within a corporation that could benefit from it, writing code, finding your customers, engaging to solve problems. Those are the things that are mattering. So enterprise is kind of boring, to be perfectly honest, versus what is in the art of the possible in

the public world. However, as you know, our industrial complex is quite large and the impact is much bigger.

Speaker 1

Great stuff already looking forward. The next time we get to catch up, John, Thank you so much. B well. Don Rose his global Chief Technology Officer Dell Technologies, joining us from New Hamps. You are listening and watching Bloomberg Business Week Carol Masser along with Tim Stanovic, and this is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Apple car Play and then brout Auto with a Bloomberg Business act or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 3

Well, Carol, if you've seen her or even uttered the word vibe session, then you can thank our next guest. Yes, okay, because she's the one who coined it. She's a former Associated Capitol Group. She's now a TikTok star. She's a financial educator and commentator. She's a blogger, she's a Bloomberg Opinion contributor. And she's the author of a new book. It's out now. It's called In This Economy, How Money and Markets Really Work. We got with us Kyla Scanlon. Kylo welcome, How are you.

Speaker 7

Oh, I'm good, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3

Congratulations on the book. People are putting out books about the economy quite a bit, you know, they're trying to answer a lot of the questions that people have. Trying to explain this. You take a different approach. What was the white space that you saw when you were sort of putting this all together.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 7

I mean the book is largely inspired from the content that I do, which just meant to be like fun and accessible, and so the book has sixty illustrations. The language is also accessible, and so I just really wanted to write a foundational guide to the economy that was fun, and so that's what the book is meant to be.

Speaker 1

Fun but smart, because these are important issues, right right, Yeah.

Speaker 9

Yeah.

Speaker 7

It talks about inflation, the labor market, gp all of those things, and so it's meant to talk about the important issues in a way that doesn't feel overbearing or complicated.

Speaker 1

Well, what's your interaction? Like, I feel like I have a bunch of nieces that are probably in their their in twenties, like early thirties and stuff, and there are ones that are very accomplished too, and they'll be like, you know, when it comes to money and all this stuff, like people feel lost. Why do you totally stop?

Speaker 8

Oh?

Speaker 7

I mean I think we do a disservice to people in terms of how we give them information about the economy.

Speaker 9

Yeah.

Speaker 7

I think it just can feel very convoluted, very complex, and I think often it's hard to get the right information that you need. And the economy is such a personal experience too, so a lot of people are like, I'd just rather avoid that then think about it. But I think if you give them the tools, like they'll know how to dig a hole or whatever, and so I think it's just overwhelming, But if you distill things down in an accessible way, it'll make it a little less overwall.

Speaker 1

Right, So how do you approach something like this because there's some really serious stuff in here, including monetary policies, So think like how did you kind of initially think about how you wanted to get into it?

Speaker 7

Yeah, Also I rewrote the book three times, so that's.

Speaker 1

That happens, right, Yeah, No, it was a.

Speaker 7

Grind, but like the whole idea was to use the illustrations as kind of a backbone of the book, and like, if you buy the audiobook.

Speaker 1

There's a visual like society right especially today.

Speaker 7

Oh yeah, and if you buy the audiobook, there's a PDF. But the book starts with the Economic Kingdom, which is kind of like the tape story of the economy, showing how everything is interconnected. Because I think that's like the most confusing part is like how do all these like what is the FED and what is monetary policy? I

don't care? And how does that interact? So everything kind of stems from that first drawing, and then the rest of the book is sort of an exploration of all those those topics with like little jokes interspersed and so, yeah, it's just it's been to be fun.

Speaker 1

I love that you go to the Federal Reserve because I do feel like if you bring it up in circles, are like, yeah, whatever, but you talk about interest rates, right, and then everybody like comes alive.

Speaker 7

Yeah. I just I think that people don't like, it's not anybody's full like economics education is not that accessible to use that word quite a bit, but I think that that's like you just have to talk about these things. And you know, I think part of the reason you know, to go to the BIB session topic that part of the reason that people freak out is like I live in a system that I don't understand or I feel

like I don't have the tools to understand. And that's the FED is really important to at least have a grasp on.

Speaker 3

Can you talk a little bit about how you got into it, because you were an associate at Capitol Group earlier in your career. You also sold cars at one point. Yeah, but talk a little bit about you know, your education and then how you how you got into this.

Speaker 7

Yeah, so you're up in Kentucky and I didn't have like I didn't even know you could major in economics until I got to college. And so for me, it was just kind of like, Okay, there needs to be some sort of tool out there that people can access, like me when I was at age that you can understand the world around you. And then when I was in college, I had a whole blog and like options trading, and so I've always wanted to bring people alongside a learning journey and now it's really about the.

Speaker 1

Economy and just you didn't go to Wall Street.

Speaker 7

Well, I guess Capitol Group is like the by side.

Speaker 3

You didn't, but you didn't stay there. I mean like you're could have been, like you could have been like a terminal subscriber, like.

Speaker 7

You know I was at one point.

Speaker 1

But exactly, so why didn't you stay with it?

Speaker 7

So I graduated into the pandemic and it was kind of like it's a personal journey, right, but like for me, I was like my life I think is about economics education, Like I really weirdly care about this so deeply, and I just wanted to bring people up to speed with the knowledge that I felt was important for them to get access to.

Speaker 1

We're interesting, I'm thinking about we're having this conversation because it's also a time, you know, with politics a little on, you know, a little crazy is that people say we need civic lessons again to really kind of understand how government works. But I also agree the same thing, like, you're right, we're taught algebra, calculus and all these different things, but really understanding how money works and flows and how

the economy. I studied economics too, and it was because I was interested in like understanding how this all works, and it really gives you such a great understanding of your own picture, but just more broadly, how it all plays together.

Speaker 7

Yeah, I mean, I think it's super important, and like I said, I think if you don't understand it, it can be just really overwhelming. And so yeah, that's the the goal of the book.

Speaker 1

So what is the economic kingdom?

Speaker 7

The economic kingdom is all that picture. Yeah, it's all the castles, and so it's maybe like a little reductive of an image of the economy. You could probably spend several pages on it, but it's just been to show the interconnectivity between everything. So there's a federal reserve castle or a monetary policy castle, like firing a caton into

inflation meant to represent rate likes. And Yeah, it's just like I do think that economics is so fun, And whenever I say that to my friends, they're like, please get away from us. But I do think like it can be really fun and interesting and it doesn't have to be so big, and it can have knowledge about it that is digestible.

Speaker 3

Well, we're seeing the effects of it play out right now with the difference in the way that people feel versus what the economy is telling us about historically low unemployment, a stock market that is at records, but people just don't feel good about inflation. People don't feel good about their situation in poll after poll. At the end of the day, it's about vibes, you argue, So talk a little bit about vibes and the importance of vibes when it comes to thinking about the economy.

Speaker 7

Yeah, and to caveat all the vibe discussion, like structural affordability is a massive issue, like we have a housing crisis, healthcare like child cares up like thirty two percent of twenty nineteen. Elder care is ten thousand dollars a month, And so that's not meant to reduce the conversation about the issues that we're facing as a society that has

an economy. But you know, the polls are hard, But like there was a poll that was released that said that fifty five percent of people think that we're in a recession, forty nine percent and people think the stock market is down.

Speaker 5

Yeah.

Speaker 3

I think there was a Harris poll last week, Hairst Guardian.

Speaker 7

Yeah, forty nine percent think unemployment is at a record high, and it's like the opposite, stock market's up twelve percent. We're not in a recession. Unemployments at a record low. And so I think it really is like, yes, we can acknowledge that the economy is tough, and there are parts of it that are tough, but you also have to acknowledge an element of reality. And I think that's where this ViBe's conversation is really important. How people feel about the economy really really matters.

Speaker 1

The sentiment matters, right. We see it certainly in the financial markets when you talk with individuals, and when you were thinking about this book, like, what is the number one thing that people just kind of miss in kind of understanding how the economy works.

Speaker 7

I mean, I think it's their importance within it. Like everything that we do is an economic transaction. Like I bought a cup of coffee this morning, That's an economic transaction. Like took the subway here economic transaction. And so I think people oftentimes will reduce their own importance and this big thing that we're all part of.

Speaker 3

You've got an entire chapter on here about housing in the American Dream. We just had a story about this. It's one of the most read on the Blomberg Terminal about how that American dream is slipping away. What are your thoughts around owning versus renting right now?

Speaker 7

Yeah, I think it's a really tough discussion. I think that it's really a wealth building discussion. So there's a chart from the Federal Reserve the distribution of financial assets that shows that the bottom fifty percent have all of their wealth tied into their home, the top ten percent have stock in like business ownership. And so I think the way that we think about housing probably has to change. It's a speculative investment that we live in, and it

has to probably be one of the two. It can't probably be both. And so I think that's kind of the conversation that we have to have around housing. But that's an extremely hard conversation.

Speaker 1

In terms of the chapters, is there one that was like the trickiest for you or that you were like really stewed over or didn't just rewrite it three times?

Speaker 7

Maybe even more? Yeah, I mean the problems chapter was hard because you don't want to come off as really negative and you also want to provide solutions to It's very easy to like sit and talk and be like, oh, things are bad, but it's much harder to provide proper solutions. And so I think it was hard to discuss the problems that we're facing because there are so many. But then the opportunities chapter was so much fun to write because there are ways to fix the issues we're facing.

Speaker 3

I'm wondering if you you know, you have you have the sub stack, you have YouTube, you have TikTok, you have Instagram, you have Twitter, slash x slash whatever it's called right now, how did you get a book deal?

Speaker 1

Yeah?

Speaker 7

No, that's a good question. So I wrote this piece back in July twenty twenty two about the Vibe session, and I didn't really think it would be any different than any of my other newsletter pieces. But then the New York Times was like the opinion section was like, would you want to publish with us? And I was like yeah, And then Penguin Random House reached out and they were like, have you ever thought about writing a book?

And I wrote books all throughout my childhood, Like my first book was when I was eight, about a penguin, and so I was like, yes, of course I want to write a book.

Speaker 3

Was that one Penguin Random House published I wish?

Speaker 7

Yeah, it was very I'm not like super woo, but I was like that's pretty boo boo.

Speaker 5

Yeah.

Speaker 7

Yeah, And so that was how the book deal came about. And then I really wanted to provide a static information guide rather than social media videos.

Speaker 1

What if, you know, if a younger generation doesn't get it right, or people in general don't get it right and understand their role in the economy, there's a cost.

Speaker 7

Yeah, totally. I mean I think there's a cost to like how we interact with on another, like the polarization I think some of the polls are super disparaging and concerning. And then I think also like if you don't understand the economy, I don't think you understand the potential that you might have, like you kind of get stuck in certain places or what.

Speaker 1

Do you mean by that? Carry that out for me?

Speaker 7

Yeah, I mean I think it's just like if you don't understand like the power that you might have to move jobs, like the strength of the labor market, relatives like quits and jolts, et cetera, that could hold you back. So I think that's a big part of it. I think not understanding that inflation going down doesn't mean that prices are going down, right, the strength of the economy.

And I think like mortgage rates are super important to understand, like why they're going up when it's a good time to buy home, etc.

Speaker 1

What do you think though, in terms of like we would talk about with mortgage rates and you know, people think it's too high, it's too expensive, can't do the American dream. Having said that, historically they're still kind of low. Yeah, Well, like how do you like, how do we like, how should we be thinking about that, or how do we teach.

Speaker 7

About that well, I think it's like relative, right, Like right now they're really high relative to where they've been.

Speaker 1

But the zero or the barely was the abnormal part.

Speaker 7

Right, But you get used to the abnormal part, right, You get used to it. And I think like we got very used to easy money. You see, like the startup industry right now they're really flailing around because money is very, very expensive. And I think also like homes didn't used to be the place to go to make

a bunch of money. Like I think it's from eighteen sixty to nineteen sixty, they only grew by like zero point to zero six percent, And now we really expect homes to do a lot of work in terms of building wealth, and so I think it's just all relative and relative to where we've been. We're in a weird spot, but we're always in a weird.

Speaker 3

Spot, and we do have these weird thirty more year mortgage products here in the US that are like, you know, kind of unique to us. Also, the housing market, we could do an entire show it's just about the housing market. I want to shift gears a little bit because I think a lot of people know you from your TikTok videos, especially post Federal Reserve days, where you've been known to portray one Jerome Powell on TikTok and it's they're great.

People love them. I love them. Have you heard from J Pellell?

Speaker 7

No, not directly, not directly.

Speaker 3

Okay, what do you mean by not directly?

Speaker 7

Well, I've had the opportunity to interview Mary Daley, who's the president and CEO of the San Francisco Bead, and she hasn't like said that anything about Jerome Powell, like knowing about the videos. But I know her and that's like, you know, second degree, and she's great. I really enjoyed.

Speaker 1

She doesn't say he kind of like he does.

Speaker 3

So he's on the terminal. He's on the terminal, so you can, you know, and you're you know, you're a Bloomberg Opinions triber, so you can always if he.

Speaker 7

Wants to say hi, i'd I'd love to chat.

Speaker 3

But not yet, No, no J pal yet. Who knows. Maybe when he writes his memoir, you know you're making the parents. Who knows?

Speaker 1

You do write about problems? What did you want to do with that?

Speaker 7

Why? Why I wrote about problems? I mean, I think the big thing with the problem section is to address. I think it's really important to like recognize, yeah, like you should feel the way that you do, and like there is validity to the feelings that you're having about like social media, the algorithms, the onliness crisis, mental health, et cetera. Like you have to talk about problems, but

then you also have to talk about solutions. And so that's why paired you know, problems and opportunities together, because I think it's doing a disservice to not talk about the issues that we're facing.

Speaker 3

So talk about the social media side of this, because you do have a section in the chapter und Problems just about social media, about social media making it worse. One challenge with that in your life, I would imagine, is that you have to be on social media and you have to be very visible because that's how you build your brand, that's how you build your business. What's been your experience with social.

Speaker 7

I mean it's been great, Like I don't think I'd be in this room without social media, so like I have to congratulate it for that. But then I think the way that I think about social media is that a lot of bad things do come from it, and that's why you have to create good things on social

media to contract the bad things. And so that's why I'm on social media and I do social media videos, is because that's where people go for news, that's where people get their information, and so you have to be where people are, especially if you want to educate them about the economy. And so that's how I think about social media.

Speaker 1

How do you think that it kind of plays out eventually that we social media in terms of acknowledging that my data, your data, Tim's data is really valua. It's what makes them ticket, it's what's made them into the largest market cap companies out there. Like how does that play out eventually? Like do we get recognition at some point for all?

Speaker 7

No, seriously, No, I think you're right. I mean there's been a lot of conversations about like getting paid for the data usage. I mean, I think it's kind of absurd that they're able to sell it and benefit so bigly from that and then you don't really have a say and where it goes and what you're being sold on.

Speaker 1

And I think that or just sold more stuff and like bombarded more stuff to get more data.

Speaker 7

And I think that's the issue, is that people are very tired of being constantly sold to, like everything is an advertisement, the attention economy, like your eyeballs are commodities, and I think that creates a lot of exhaustion under the surface.

Speaker 3

I'm wondering about economic decisions that you kind of make every day now that you didn't make before you wrote this book, Like how have looking how has looking into this stuff changed your own behavior?

Speaker 7

Oh, I mean I think that for me, I've always been sort of aware of what's going on, but I think now I pay attention to what people are saying a little bit more in terms of the book, like what they're thinking about inflation, because I think that you have to. I used to be very data driven, and I used to be like, inflation is going down, and you should feel better. But now I'm much more likely

to weigh opinion versus data. And I've yeah, yeah, because I've been you know, there's a lot of good papers on scrutinizing the data, like is the data actually represented? And of course data is a tapestry, right, Like we look at a lot of data points to figure out what's going on, but I think that they're there. It just deserves a little bit closer.

Speaker 1

Looking to now you do think about right sentiment, how important it is, But I do also wonder, you know, where a data driven company and there are data points that do tell what is going on, right, So there's that balance of you know, same thing. Like I always feel like in journalism you can always find the data points to tell any story, but there is also truth and information, right that's actually a representative of what's happening.

Speaker 7

Yeah, And I think that's why the Harris Guardian poll was so disheartening to see. And you have stick poles with the grain of salt, but like to to see that people think that the stock market is going down when it's just objectively not. Like that's really important to understand, and like that's where reality is. You can't have an opinion on things that are objectively true. And I think that's where that conversation gets really hairy.

Speaker 1

Yeah, you can debate the valuation and maybe say it's not right, Sue, but the move is the move right. It's just kind of this wacky time, really cool book. Like I said, I feel like I have a million people in my life that I want to give this too, because I think it's it's a really useful book and trying to understanding a lot of stuff. Congratulations, thank you so much, good stuff.

Speaker 3

Kyla Scanlan is the author of In This Economy, How Money and Markets Really Work. The book out today. She's a TikTok star and a contributor to Bloomberg Opinion, as well as a financial educator and so much more.

Speaker 2

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on applecar Play and ANDROYD Auto with the Bloomberg Business Ad. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty plenty ahead in.

Speaker 1

Our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including lessons from former CEO and co founder of Whole Foods Market John Mackie, unconscious capitalism and whether selling out to Amazon was it a good idea?

Speaker 3

Plus legendary guitarist and founding member of the guests Who and Bachman Turner Overdrive. Randy Bachman on taking care of business by auctioning off over two hundred of his guitar.

Speaker 1

I believe you have to say taken care of biz I was trying.

Speaker 3

To Readay, I don't know if we have the rights to that.

Speaker 1

I think I kept it within a limited amount, actually, and I would all say thank you that I didn't think.

Speaker 3

I don't think any court or jury would confuse that iteration of its being anywhere close to the original.

Speaker 1

Some people might be upset with creative expinking, though, that's my point. Oh okay, all right. Also this summer it's all about brightly colored gemstones. Courtesy of Bloomberg Pursuits.

Speaker 3

First up, he changed how we think about groceries. John Mackie co founded Whole Food's Market forty years ago, staying on until twenty twenty two years after selling to Amazon.

Speaker 1

John also co authored the New York Times bestseller Conscious Capitalism, his new book The Whole Story Adventures in Love, Life and Capitalism. He began our Chat at the beginning of Whole Foods, founded with his then girlfriend, Renee loss It.

Speaker 8

By the time in open I was twenty five, her name was twenty one, So I didn't have a business background, neither did she. But we were we were very young and idealistic and energetic, and we in the first stor was actually called Safer Way back in nineteen seventy eight. It was vegetarian store, and we just wanted to sell healthy food to people, earn a living, and have some fun in a lot of ways. That continued all through Whole Foods Market's destiny. We didn't have big growth plans.

That kind of came along after we relocated that first store, which was in an old Victorian house on a non commercial street. It was not a great place for a store, but the first real whole foods market. When we also emerged with another small natural food store, there were our friends and together we changed the brand a Whole Foods Market, fantastic location, and the store just took off. And then

we had a terrible flood. We knew we built in the one hundred year flood zone, but we had one hundred year flood in the first year and first and it had been seventy years since there had of been a flood like that in Austin. So that caused us to need to get a second store, and then that was successful too, and then a third store, and then I suppose we really started thinking bigger Back in nineteen eighty nine, when we opened our first store in California.

We were California dreaming, and we opened one in the Bay Area in Palo Alto, California that took off, and it's kind of like, wow, maybe we could even be a national company. So it's just changed a lot. But it wasn't like we were MBA students that had done this market research and decided we were going to build this national company. We were just young kids kind of having fun, and.

Speaker 3

For lack of a better term, it was much more organic than that very very good tim We've got. Thank you.

Speaker 1

Would you have liked anything to have gone differently? Like if you could change things?

Speaker 5

You know?

Speaker 8

A question I get asked a lot by media is something like, if you could go back and tell your younger self, what would you want to tell your younger self? And I kind of have three jokes that go along out. The first joke is it wouldn't matter, he wouldn't have listened to me, And the second joke is I would have told him not to get involved with that woman.

And the third one is is the truth. I don't think I would tell him anything because I mean not that I didn't make any mistakes, I mean a ton of mistakes, and I could have saved that younger self from making mistakes, but then I wouldn't have learned the lessons I needed to learn. And it all turned out so well. Right, So even in the sale to Amazon, you're I think so, I mean yeah, I mean, people ask me if I have regrets. Do you regret selling

to Amazon? And the answer is no, I regret the circumstances that that made that the best alternative for us. It was the best alternative. If I could go back to that time, I'd make the same exact decision. And the deal has worked out pretty well for Whole Foods. I mean, people don't realize that Amazon let us drop our prices. We needed to lower our prices to combat the whole paycheck narrative, and they helped us. We could have done that on our own as a pro public company,

not easily. It would have been the markets wouldn't have tolerated the short term sell off in the stock, but we dropped it four times in the first two years. Under Amazon. They took the long term view, and then they also raised the pay of everybody in our company. In the first six months they made you know, they went in with a fifteen dollars minimum wage and everybody else had to go up from there, so Amazon, and then when COVID hit, I mean, how could ah Foods

have possibly done a lot of delivery Amazon's technology? So Amazons was a great partner for Whole Foods.

Speaker 3

It's been a couple of years since you retired as CEO, and I'm wondering if today you can walk into a Whole Foods and just buy something.

Speaker 1

A couple of points.

Speaker 8

The first one is if you're an entrepreneur and you create a business, it's a little bit like you're a parent and you have a child. Your child grows up and you can guide that child, but the child's not you, and the child's going to make some choices you don't agree with, and that's okay.

Speaker 3

You still love your child.

Speaker 8

So his Whole Food's doing exactly everything I would if I was still CEO. And the answer is, of course not. But one of the gifts that I gave to my successor, Jason Beekle, who who is the one I wanted.

Speaker 9

I picked Jason, and one of.

Speaker 8

My gifts to him was not to be hovering and watching and second guessing him. Just you know, as I have a mantra. Now it's not my problem any longer. And that's a gift to Jason, because then people aren't coming to me complaining about stuff they know I'm not going to listen to them.

Speaker 1

Conscious capitalism. You co founded that movement and simply put, it's right. You know, we're thinking about business benefiting everybody, multiple stakeholders. Many would argue, you know, we talk about it in the business environment too, right, a lot of investors saying, I think about multiple stakeholders. The business Roundtable like talks about it. So you know, I feel like we talk a lot John about the wealthier individuals at a company are doing really, really well and it's not

necessarily trickling down. Has conscious capitalism, I'm curious how that has evolved in thought for you if it still holds, I.

Speaker 8

Mean conscious capitalisms Now, I feel like it's being attacked on two fronts.

Speaker 3

It's being attacked.

Speaker 8

The traditional capitalists are attacking it because they're concerned they don't want the owners to lose control of the business, and rightly so the owners and the investors get paid last, after all the other stakeholders are paid. But then on the we'll say on the left, the anti capitalists, there's what time to weaponize it in order to take power from traditional capitalism. And it's like, no, no, conscious capitalism is not an economic system. It's a management flows fee.

It just really has some very basic principles. First principle is is that every business has this potential for higher purpose besides only making money. I mean, my body produces red blood cells. If I just stop producing them, I'm going to die. But that's not my purpose in life to produce red blood cells. Business must make money or it will die. But that's not exactly why it exists. Why does it exist to create value for its customers.

Speaker 3

That's why it exists.

Speaker 8

Doctors heal people, teachers educate, Architects design things, Engineers construct things for customers. So do is business and so it has this higher purpose and it should articulate that higher purpose that unifies stakeholders together.

Speaker 1

Well, then do you think there's enough of conscious capitalism going on in society? There's capitalism going on, but do you think there's enough of conscious capitalism going on?

Speaker 3

I would like there to be.

Speaker 8

First of all, there's a lot of what I call unconscious conscious capitalists. They don't know that they're conscious capitalism. But the second key principle or that the stakeholders are interdependent. That doesn't mean all stakeholders are equal, no, I mean the customers are obviously the most important stakeholder, that's why the business exists. And who's second most important, Well, probably the investors are, and then probably the team members are third.

After that, then you have suppliers, and you have the communities that we're all.

Speaker 5

Part of it.

Speaker 8

They're all important, they're all interdependent, and a conscious business is going to take care of all of them, recognizing there is a ranking, there is a hierarchy, and there should be businesses. Not people judge business because it doesn't act altruistically all the time. And it was like, what

part of our society does. It's human nature to be both both self interested in looking out for yourself and looking out for your families first and then, but also generous and caring and compassionate.

Speaker 5

We're both.

Speaker 3

We're complex beings.

Speaker 8

This bifurcating people and they're either all completely altruist or they're completely selfish and greedy bastards. That's just wrong. That's not the way human nature is, and business isn't that way. But no other part of our society is either.

Speaker 3

You talk about this in your book, and you learned a tough lesson. I think it was back in two thousand and nine and you were hiking on a trail and you found that the Wall Street Journal had published editorial that you had written. They called it the Whole Foods Alternative to Obamacare, Eight things we can do to improve healthcare without adding to the deficit, and it got you in some hot water at the time, people boycotting your stores. My question for you is not about is

not about that. It's about what do you think you can say now that you are no longer CEO of Whole Foods that you weren't able to say during your entire career because you were worried about people boycotting stores or people coming after you.

Speaker 8

It's a great question, and my big learning from that experiences is that people do not separate the CEO from the company, or at least the founder or the entrepreneur company. I thought, look America, free speech. I'm expressing my personal views. But no one saw it that way.

Speaker 3

They saw it.

Speaker 5

This was Whole Foods views.

Speaker 8

And so there were boycotts and there were bycotts, and there was hundreds of letters coming into maybe even thousands of letters and emails coming into our board demanding I be fired. So I kicked a hornets nest and it's like, so I went away from that realizing, Okay, I get it. I can't. I don't want to hurt my child, you know, So I'm not going to speak up. The board actually instructed me never ever again write an op ed piece that we haven't signed off and approved.

Speaker 3

So so what could I say today?

Speaker 8

I could say anything I wants to say, except I'm a place in my life where I've concluded that political talk just gets people so riled up. Today we're like these two big tribes that hate each other, and people are constantly trying to sort you out which tribe are you in because do I love you or do I

hate you? And it's like, I'm kind of not in either one of those tribes because I really believe I believe in capitalism, I believe in I believe in personal liberty and freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and I don't fit into the two big tribal boxes. So I can now speak about politics only I'm more or less decided I don't want to.

Speaker 1

But is it an interesting coming off the pandemic where and George Floyd, the killing of George Floyd, where we did see CEOs come out and take positions, and I feel like employees wanted their CEOs and leaders to take positions, and we talked about the importance of it. So what is the balance for a leader who is running a company and maybe there are some really important issues out there where they should take a stand.

Speaker 8

Here's what I did at Whole Foods during that period of time, and this is what I'd actually recommend for other CEOs to do as well. First of all, if an issue is directly related to the purpose of your business, you like you should take a stand. Whole Foods took stands on animal welfare, seafood sustainability, things that direct the organic agriculture, regenerative agriculture. These are things that are directly

important to our purpose and why we exist. So I think definitely those are things appropriate to speak up on. But then it's like all the social justice stuff that's not really Whole Foods markets. We can't solve all the problems in the world. We've got our We're a mission driven business and we have to focus on our business. So I remember telling team members that were wanting me to speak up on these issues, and I said, listen,

I believe in freedom of speech. So whatever you want to do when you're not at work at Whole Foods, you should do that. You want to advocate for certain political changes, you should do it. But while you're working for our company, we want you to focus on the purpose for why we exist. And we're here to nourish people in the planet, and so that's a big cost to help people be healthier, eat healthier food. Work on that on our time, and then do whatever you want

on your time. And because I can't separate myself as again, I don't, As I told you from the two thousand and nine thing, there's no way I'm going to come out and take these political stands. I can't even my board and wouldn't let me do it anyway. We got kicked really hard on that one. I'm never going to do it again.

Speaker 3

I understand that idea of sort of staying in your lane when you're at business, but I also think that in this day and age, there are issues that can affect a business even if you don't think they will. We were talking about affordable housing earlier and the fact that the majority of New Yorkers don't earn enough to live in New York City at a rate that would be deemed you know, affordable thirty percent of your salary.

So what happens to a business if it can't find employees because the people can't live in that area where the business is.

Speaker 1

I did a whole piece when you Guys opened in Detroit, like it was a big deal to go into that area.

Speaker 8

First of all, I do I really empathize for that position, because I know when I was CEO Whole Foods that most of our team members that work in our Manhattan stores don't live in Manhattan, right They're living in the Bronx or Queen's or Brooklyn or some other place.

Speaker 5

So I am.

Speaker 3

Empathetic to that.

Speaker 8

However, I have a different you know, I mean, I'm going to speak up on politics.

Speaker 5

Really briefly.

Speaker 8

I mean, the reason we don't have enough affordable housing is because we've regulated it out of existence. And I always people ask me what to do about this problem. I say, we ought to create just like some countries create enterprise zones where the rules don't apply, there'd be so if a city like New York would set aside and places in Manhattan. That would be sort of free building zones where they wouldn't have any taxes for housing. Affordable housing would not be taxed, would be no real

estate taxes. You'd have different sets of regulations, say on the disability acts. You go to Europe and you don't have all of the you don't have to put an elevator in everywhere and.

Speaker 5

These areas.

Speaker 8

I'm not saying those regulations aren't good, but I'm saying if we want to have more affordable housing, that really drives the cost of housing up. And thirdly, manufactured housing is the way to do it, to make affordable housing. If you look at where most poor people in America live, they live in mobile homes. They live in manufactured housing, which is far more affordable. That's not really legal inside

many cities. But if we allowed manufactured housing to come in and deregulate some of these areas, you would find Manhattan could have plenty of affordable housing.

Speaker 1

Interesting, we have forty five seconds left. Your book is called The Whole Story. There's so much more in there, and I wish we had more time. I don't know, why do you want people to read this book?

Speaker 8

This book is first of all. It reads like a novel. It's fun, it's full of joy, it's full of love. I mean the things that I talk about in the book or creativity, entrepreneurship and love, and this trace is my own personal growth both emotionally, psychologically as a leader and spiritually. It's a fun read. I really think people read it, they're going to like it.

Speaker 1

I hope you can come back because you obviously have lots to say and it's really engaging and fun. So good luck with it. Maybe when it comes back to the coaper book paperback. Rather have you come back? John Mackie, he's co founder of Whole Foods Market, joining us here in studio his latest book. His new book is entitled The Whole Story Adventures in Love, Life, Life and Capitalism. So joining us here in our studio.

Speaker 2

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen on Apple card Play and then Brote Auto with a Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 1

Released in nineteen seventy, covered many times over since, just one of the many songs from the talented guitarist, songwriter and performer rockstar Randy Bachman, who founded two rock bands, The Guests Who and rockman Turner Overdrive, writing hits such as American Woman, let It Ride, you Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, and of course taking care of business.

Speaker 3

And this past week he auctioned off over two hundred of his guitars, some of which he used to perform some of those iconic songs. It all went down at the Julian's Auctions Music Icon sale at the Hard Rock Cafe here in New York City.

Speaker 1

And tim we got a glimpse into his rock and roll lifestyle and why he decided to auction off many of his iconic guitars. Here's Reddy Bachman joining us in studio about life on the road.

Speaker 10

When the gig is done and the thousands of screaming, Yeah, you're in a car with a bunch of guys where you've been on the road for two months and you don't really like each other anymore, and everyone else is going home with their loved one to a snugly home bid and the kids with a babysitter and the fireplace burning, and you're all alone on the damn road for thirty sixty ninety days and it's that's the flip side. The

other side is wonderful. It's your teenage dream. You want to believe like Jimmy Hendricks or the Beatles, er Lady Gag or whatever you want to be. Yeah, you go and be that because you have this little talent that you've been given as a kid. And it's really amazing when you get to do what you want and make a living at it.

Speaker 5

That's the good side of it.

Speaker 1

It'd be really successful.

Speaker 5

As what the travelers killer.

Speaker 3

What was the point for you that it sort of shifted from living out that teenage dream to feeling like, Okay, I want to be home.

Speaker 5

It happens every tour.

Speaker 10

It happens daily, But did it happen earlier teenage dream? Now I'm here on this great thing. I'm plugging with my guitar sale.

Speaker 3

But look, to be fair, you're traveling a ton, still got to go tour.

Speaker 10

You get home, you get anxious to go on the road. You get in the road, you get anxious to go home. If you ask an actor do you like movies or stage? They say yes, You're like one or the other each time, and you've got to do kind of both to be fully rounded. You can't make a living in this business. I can't be an athlete and play a home game every all the time. You got to go away. So all these glamorous gig regards of getting hundreds of millions of dollars to play baseball, there's a downside.

Speaker 5

But the episode's big.

Speaker 1

Now we feel that sometimes, right, We love travel, we love our jobs, but you know, it's nice to be home and we love that. We're gonna talk about the auction in the moment, but I want to ask you. In researching, we came across that Elvis Presley's motto taking care of Business was inspired by your band song. Have you heard this?

Speaker 5

Yes?

Speaker 10

I was a big fan of Elvis. I played crossco violin from the age of five to fourteen, and I got tired of playing classical music audition for the Winnipeg School Junior Symphony and flumt quit playing.

Speaker 5

Went home. That's it.

Speaker 10

I'm never playing the violin again. The next day I saw Elvis on television and said, what is that. Oh, it's called rock and roll. That's called the guitar, and that's called Elvis. All you play on violin is melody. You're playing the top line. So my cousins had a guitar. I got their guitar. I could play everything because I was playing violin by ear. Even in the classical music, my teacher played first Chaikovski or Chopin, and I would

play it. So I started playing lead guitar boom, and then I'm in the guests who and then here I am. Because of Elvis. A few years ago, after he passed away, Priscilla was doing an HBO special in Graceland. She said, oh yeah, we were driving to the La airport to fly back to Memphis, and Elvis heard a song on the radio by a Canadian band, taking Care of Business. He went, boom, I want that TCB lightning bolt right away, but a big butt of boom, and that became his

model for his band. It's on his tombstone. Nobody else can use that. I wrote the song. I can use taking care of Business. He can use it.

Speaker 5

And that's pretty cool.

Speaker 10

I have a buddy. He's waiting somewhere for me to show up. Incredible dude singing taking care of business together. Okay, not too soon.

Speaker 1

That's pretty cool.

Speaker 3

The auction is something we want to talk about. Yeah, two hundred guitars.

Speaker 5

Yeah, and I still have a couple hundred.

Speaker 3

That's that's that's what I wanted. All your care's the shoes you.

Speaker 5

Have in your closet.

Speaker 3

You don't know.

Speaker 5

I don't know how many guitars I have.

Speaker 1

I don't even tell my husband. No, it's interesting. My husband also plays guitar, not you know, but a lot of fun. But it's like, you can never have enough guitars? What is that?

Speaker 5

How many shoes do you have? All?

Speaker 2

Right?

Speaker 1

Don what it's done? You not to justify? So why are you selling even some.

Speaker 10

Of them when you travel? I want to be like Chuck Barry or a lot of these other guys. You have a home in London, home in la So you don't. We're sick of motels. You'll drive three or undred nights to sleep in your own bed for a couple of hours. So at home in London, Covent Garden, Santa Monica, Toronto, outside of Toronto, Oakfield and Victoria can't.

Speaker 5

Go to them.

Speaker 10

Shut down for three or four you can't go to your home. You sell everything, ship it to me. You end up with four lawnmowers, four toasters, hundreds of knives and forks and hundreds of guitars all coming to your house. You got to rent a storage space and you can't see them. They're all in a storage so you've got to open a door and go in and look at your stuff in storage. So it was time to sell it.

Speaker 3

These guitars, though each one of them has a story.

Speaker 5

A lot of these do a lot of them.

Speaker 10

My American Woman nineteen fifty nine less Paul is a rare guitar to begin with. You only made a couple hundred each year, and the fifty eight, fifteen, nine, and sixty are very rare because they were the last time they made it with a certain glue that when they put the neck in the body, that glue permeated the wood in the pores and then petrified. The guitar has this brain and it's very heavy. Guitar weighs fifteen pounds. You imagine that on your shoulder for four hours every day.

You end up doing this all the time. It's just dynamic tension. Your muscles do that. And I had to get a lighter guitar. But I played that one sitting down. But it's the sound of an American woman and no time. All the guests who hits and a lot of bto guitar solos were that guitar. I just didn't play it on stage, was too heavy to stand up. So then I start to play strat Fender stratocaster. So the two white strats I used with bt R, they're their number

one guitars. They played on You Ain't Seen Nothing yet, Let It Ride. My Les Paul was an American woman, no time. So these are iconic guitars that have played a number one singles and then all the albums on both sides of it. So I'm hoping they get a good home because sooner or later, you leave home, or your kids leave home.

Speaker 5

My kids are leaving home. They don't necessarily want somebody adopts them.

Speaker 10

And the American homing guitar is bought by Slash or Lenny Kravitz, who deserve it, and it has another.

Speaker 5

Hit it plays.

Speaker 1

Has anybody reached out to you?

Speaker 10

There's a magic in these guitars. We just picked them up. They were traveling with us all day and playing them. And when you plug it in and play it, you've heard the sound before, even though it's strange to you, you've heard it on the radio so many times, even the rhythm to let it Ride and things like that. There's a kaching when you hear it.

Speaker 1

When you play it again, is there any part of you that's like maybe in a min't to let it go?

Speaker 10

Yeah, they were handing for me one at a time. Last I was a little showcase and I go, shit, I don't want to sell this. But I haven't played it for eleven years. I'll probably never played for another eleven years. It's time for it to get a new It was flying for somebody to play them.

Speaker 1

You know, rather that than they're sitting in their cases right in a storage room or in your home, the.

Speaker 10

Legal lawyer's library. They don't go to the books anymore. It's all on the computer. This is like the guitars. You can't get to the guitar. They're all in storage.

Speaker 1

Unbelievable. Having said that, you need to share with our audience about the lost guitar. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3

It's one guitar that will not be auctioned off.

Speaker 10

No, I just got it back after being gone forty seven forty eight years. Oh, it was stolen from a hotel in Toronto or doing a bto album there ad vantaged there's no internet then, so I had to fax all the guitar stores. I ended up in a frenzy buying Gretz guitars. I went through my midlife crisis and buying grets guitars. I asked over three hundred and finally sold them to Fred Gretch. It became the Fred the

Gretch Museum in Savannah. George job. But this one that was stolen I kept searching for and we got a notice back a couple of years ago. Tall and I my son were doing Back When, Back When train wreck every Friday night on YouTube because there were no gigs, and the guy said, I found your Gretch guitar. It was in Tokyo with a guy named Takeshi was like the Brian Setser of playing rockabilly on this big orange gretch. Yes, and my daughter in law is Japanisa. She got set

up assuming him translated everything. He offered the guitar back. I went and founded Sister Guitar from the same year, two digits off in the Cereal numbers so I could trade him.

Speaker 5

I like guitar.

Speaker 10

We couldn't go to Tokyo, but the Canadian bassor said I'll get you as a as a diplomat. You don't have to do two weeks of isolation being COVID tests. That every day their Canada offered free tickets. Was like everybody doing a good deed.

Speaker 5

For this guitar. And we went there.

Speaker 10

They wouldn't let meet toa KESHI or see my guitar until I walked on stage on Canada Day, July, the first in the Canadian com So to the filming. This is being a film. They want to see my face when I saw this guitar. It's like if you your childhood bike or your dog got run over by a truck and then somebody later came to, Oh, your dog had poppies, and here's a poppy and it's just like your dog. It's Skippy is back, right, So get my guitar up.

Speaker 1

Skippy was back.

Speaker 10

They filmed it and it's going to be a film coming out very soon being edited right now.

Speaker 3

It's Netflix. Maybe maybe if they did high Okay.

Speaker 1

All right, well will you come back when.

Speaker 10

It's I will, that will be a whole different story. That's the guitar I've gotten out home. It was number one guitar with the guests, who and Beto with all their hits and albums, and maybe I'll have a number one again on Rotten Tomatoes or something when the film comes out. But my son and I cut an album that's coming out that's a soundtrack to the movie.

Speaker 5

Of the Lost Guitar. You never know, you never know. It might be my magic feather, might be my dumbbow. You can fly. Here's your magic guitar. Another hit song.

Speaker 1

Do you have a favorite hit song of your own?

Speaker 10

I think it might have to be taking care of Business. But many teachers come to me that teach handicapped kids, altruistic kids, very advanced kids, and to get all their attention in the morning, they always play taking care of Business.

Speaker 5

All these little kids left your attention deficit or whatever. And also guys going in desert.

Speaker 10

Storm in their tanks to battle playing taking care of Business or playing American women in their tanks.

Speaker 5

They're going to fight.

Speaker 10

When the Canadian astronaut was in there, he played taking care of Business. I got to say that song thanks to Elvis and me.

Speaker 1

He's like, wow, got to feel pretty cool about this. Got thirty forty seconds left here. What do you want people to know about the auction?

Speaker 5

Well, there's guitars.

Speaker 10

Some of them are on display at the hard Rock You can't afford a guitar, Go down to the camera, take a picture of the guitar. Some of they're going to sell for millions of dollars. The fifty nine that's Paul. They're all going Mark and Authors went for one point four million pounds or.

Speaker 5

Something like that.

Speaker 10

This was a replica reissue. Mine's a real one from fifty nine?

Speaker 1

Are you You stopped playing violin and went this way?

Speaker 5

A should get beat up with the violin I put under my armor startday morning. All the guys would beat me up. We're playing hockey. It's winter peg.

Speaker 3

Right our thanks to Randy Bachman, founding member of the bands the Guests, Who and Bachman at Turner Overdrive. Not every day that we get a real life rock star now Bloomberg Studio.

Speaker 1

That was so cool. We could have kept on going because I feel like even after the mics were off, we just kept talking with him and it was pretty cool stuff.

Speaker 9

All right.

Speaker 1

Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, we say goodbye to quiet luxury this summer and delve into bold high design, gem setting, gold shaping and very expensive to Laurie.

Speaker 3

Yeah, I'm not going to say goodbye to quiet luxury.

Speaker 1

Okay, Hey Tim, you do you Okay, but we're gonna do us.

Speaker 3

Bloomberg Pursuits is next. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each week day starting a two pm Eastern town Applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 1

It is time for Bloomberg Pursuits, and this week it is the Jewelry Special, featured in Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine, which is out on newsstands, now, online, on Bloomberg dot com, and of course always on the Bloomberg terminal. It is Tim about loud and shiny accessories.

Speaker 3

Loud, I love it. We're talking eighty two. Thanks well. Aluminum and white gold of brace. Let's say one hundred and seventeen thousand dollar necklace some men's jewelry. This is really interesting and a much more affordable. Thirty six hundred dollars yellow gold and titanium pendant. All in this week's section of Bloomberg.

Speaker 1

Pursuits here with more the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rouser, along with Bloomberg contributing jewelry writer and founder of law Patiala, the Luxury encyclopedia Kristin Shirley. Guys, So good to have you here with us, Chris, you guys have done these sections before. I always feel like it's fun to go over. But how are you guys thinking about it? And how did you realize it was going to be about kind of Boulder kind of accessories for this summer.

Speaker 3

Yeah.

Speaker 11

So we do this jewelry special in BusinessWeek every year, and we cover jewelry throughout the year, but then around in summertime, we usually try to think see what the trends are, what's out on the market, what people are being to the big jewelry shows. And Kristin is an industry expert and she goes to these shows and she's a great jewelry writer. So basically I call her up, Kristin, what's going on? Well, what are you saying out there? And she said, this year people are having fun.

Speaker 3

Come on in, Kristin, because I'm curious about how they're expressing their fun. How is this fun? Manifesting in jewelry because you argue that quiet luxury is out the window this summer, and in its place is stuff that's loud and fun.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 12

I think there has been historically a lot of danky jewelry that people have been wearing, wearing lots of armstacks, you know, layering necklaces, and then a lot of Demi find companies got into the mix selling things that were more affordable, so everyone kind of looks the same, even if you've spent a lot of money on your pieces.

So now collectors are really looking for ways to express themselves with significant pieces that a demi fine jeweler really can't recreate, and that's coming out with really bold gemstones, big chunky pieces of jewelry, and really fun, exuberant design.

Speaker 1

Hey, Kristin, before we get into some of the pieces, I mean, and I really like big and bold, but I agree, like you go to Instagram and it's like everybody layering necklaces and rings, and it's all kind of smaller pieces. How much of what we're going to talk about in just a moment often then kind of finds its way into the broader consumer space and style space.

Speaker 12

This will all be coming probably to the regular consumer space, I would say in a couple of years, but they'll never be able to recreate the same looks of these absolutely fabulous gemstones and amazing diamonds. That's one reason why Demi Fine jewelers do so well with real small diamonds, smaller crystals, because you can't really tell the difference on a small scale. Once you get to really significant gemstones, there's really no way to replace that.

Speaker 11

So on the opener page of our section, there is this photograph that I really love by Joanna McClure, and it's of these three huge necklaces, one by Briany Raymond, one by Bell Parone and one by Retrovi and their gold their beads. There's one with these sort of plum colored calsenite beads and I feel like Kristen. First of all, these are very price upon request and very expensive, but it's the kind of look, right that could be reproduced all the way down to a J Crewe at some point.

Speaker 12

Oh yeah, I mean, you know, J Crew would always do those big beads, but the look will be different because it will be you know, plastic beads or beads covered by ceramic, not like these absolutely stunning gemstones. Yeah, I mean, you know, brass gold plated for sure, but I don't think you'll ever get quite that safe look, especially if you're a collector.

Speaker 1

Wait, we're not going to get the bib necklace. I really love the bib necklace.

Speaker 12

What is it?

Speaker 1

Nineteen seventy I mean that is so cool.

Speaker 9

M hmm.

Speaker 12

Yeah. So Briany she collects the State Jewelry and sells a really beautiful curation from her Manhattan showroom. And this piece is so stunning, you know, it could have been released today. You look at it and you're like, oh wow, that's from the nineteen seventies, and you really have no idea.

Speaker 3

Can we talk about price upon request for a second, because usually in Bloomberg pursuits we get prices, and I was surprised to see in the section this time, Kristen that there are a few instances where the price isn't there. It says price upon request. I'm requesting to know the price of these things. What's going on?

Speaker 12

Well, a lot of the times it's because they don't want to publicize this because they want to keep their mystery. But sometimes it's because they want to be able to negotiate with top clients. You know, if you buy XYZ, this will be a little less expensive, And they don't ever want to seem like they're getting this discounts because then clients will always express discounts. In the high jewelry world, it used to be you can negotiate on pretty much anything.

So a lot of brands have pulled back on publishing prices so that they don't appear to be getting discounts even though they really are.

Speaker 3

So it's not famously if you have to add, I know this is grad but if you have to request it, then maybe you can because maybe it's negotiable. Yeah, well, apparently you do have to ask, Hey, we'll talk about men's jewelry a little bit, or did you want to talk about one else first?

Speaker 1

I just want to just give a few seconds, if you will, to the Greek jewelry designer that you guys like, spend a page talking about what's significant about this individual and what he's been doing.

Speaker 8

So.

Speaker 12

Nikos Coolis is an absolutely amazing independent Greek jewelry designer. He has a really defined aesthetic. If you're in the jewelry world, you look at a piece, you automatically know that it's Necos and I think that's really hard to do to stand out as a designer because there are so many independ the designers and a lot of what people are doing really looks the same. But he has a really unique vision. I love the way that he

sets gemstones. There's a ring on the page, and instead of placing the diamond in the center, it's offset on the top. Same on the collar that you see on the bottom. This stunning emerald isn't set inside the necklace, it's set on top and above it, which is kind of unusual. You'd think you'd see it sort of dangling down like a pendant or set into the middle. So I just think it's really interesting what he does. He's

at the top of his game right now. He's having tons of press, really having a moment with his high jewelry, and he's about to open two new boutiques in Athens, including a maid to Measure attelier for he crafts the most incredible pieces using really rare jumpstones.

Speaker 1

And Beyonce wore him recently for her Cowboy Carter tour, So yes, yeah, little props there.

Speaker 3

Speaking of having a d men's jewelry is having a moment, and we're not just talking about like that chain that Mark Zuckerberg wore a few weeks ago that people are talking about. That's not what we're talking about. Only did you.

Speaker 4

Hear, Chris?

Speaker 3

He said, only you would be talking about that. You're right, you know. At first when I started reading this, I was like, are they going to mention Zuck? And they did. So Chris talk a little bit about who's who's kind of at the forefront here.

Speaker 11

So I am at the forefront.

Speaker 3

I don't see jewelry right in that.

Speaker 9

I'm wearing a.

Speaker 3

Bracelet, Okay.

Speaker 11

I We in the section have been pushing jewelry for men for a long time, particularly brooches or pins, And over the past couple of years, you've seen on red carpets,

especially Hollywood celebrities wearing men wearing tons of brooches. And then athletes, particularly NFL players, either when they show up for the draft or even before games or when a couple of them went to the met Gala, they wear statement necklaces, they wear rings, they wear bracelets, And this is trickling down to kind of regular guys who see these men and look up to them, and big jewelry companies are now getting into the business of what they're

calling high jewelry, which isn't really hy jewelry. Hi jewelry is really like the big things that we were just talking about, but price on requests exactly, but more elevated stuff with eighteen care of gold with diamonds, expecting that men going forward are going to spend more money on jewelry and on like very noticeable, unsubtle jewelry.

Speaker 1

High design watches, Chris, that's a big thing.

Speaker 11

Yeah, So jewelry watches, watches with gemstones and kind of like avant garde designs have sort of been in the background in the watch world because sports watches are really big vintage watches, and this year kind of marked by a sale that Sotheby's did the of what they call rough diamonds, which were vintage high design, high jewelry watches.

This has become a trend where both in the vintage market and at retail for new watches, people are really getting into kind of high design, really weird looking stuff, including this Cardier cuff, which is like is a bracelet that has two flat ends on one end has a watch and you can look at the time through the reflection on the other end, and there's just very cool, striking.

Speaker 1

Kristin, I mean watches, right, Like, I feel like we've gone through cycles with watches where they're practical, they're electronic, their technology, and then they're pieces of art again.

Speaker 12

Yes, I think that now that more women are collecting watches, brands are investing more in really beautiful, high jewelry watches. A lot of them have mechanical movements as well, so we're seeing, if you already have everything, what else can

you have? And they're creating these watches that are really so striking, Like when you see them, when I saw a lot of them in Shanda, they really do take your breath away because you're wondering how they work, how do they get the mechanics in there, and they're just really stunning the way that they look at time. You know, if you have everything, what do you get a really wild watch?

Speaker 11

That should be our new Pursuits tagline. If you already have everything, what else?

Speaker 1

Think that?

Speaker 3

How about how about a one of a kind ultra modern necklace design that uses two crossing strands of eighteen carrot rose gold that end asymmetrically in bright ceramic swoops.

Speaker 12

Kristin, I love that necklace. So this is by tap In, a New York based jeweler known for using beautiful gemstones and colored ceramic in really unique and interesting ways. And this piece is incredible. It uses aquamarine and each one is about seventy five carrots, which is massive. You could never make a necklace with dim under emerald of the size because it would be you know, tens of millions of dollars if they even exist. So it's just really,

really a stunning piece. If I ever saw anyone wearing this, I would fall over.

Speaker 1

It's gorgeous. I'm partial to aquamarines and it's off the charge.

Speaker 11

Queen has a really amazing tr with huge aquamarines because it's the collector. Christen said, they can be so big and they're so beautiful.

Speaker 3

It's one.

Speaker 11

It's one of my favorites.

Speaker 1

It's gorgeous. It's it's like looking in the ocean is what I love. All right, you got to go there, loafers. I feel like I could see them both on you, Chris and on you well not maybe two, but just quickly, let's wrap up with Twinkle for your toes.

Speaker 11

Yeah, we were thinking about you know what else, what else fits with this say goodbye to quiet luxury theme and bright colors and bold patterns and a big thing this summer is colorful loafers, penny loafers, you know, regular loafers, boat shoes, but with high quality like materials and cool crazy colors. And so we found really a bunch of great ones from Belgian shoes, from Ferragamo, from Taft and really like them.

Speaker 3

Come on, Tim, I'm just looking at him.

Speaker 1

Just looked at my looked at Chris's shoes.

Speaker 3

Chris, He's wearing very practical like I, you know, dropped my daughter off at school before I took the subway into work from Brooklyn shoes.

Speaker 1

But even Bass has a two tone color chechnicolor loafers.

Speaker 3

They're in this year, the end of quiet luxury.

Speaker 1

Carol, Kristin, are you in on two tone colored loafers or colorful loafers?

Speaker 9

Why not?

Speaker 3

Good answer?

Speaker 1

I love a little Papa color.

Speaker 2

All right.

Speaker 1

We gotta rap guys really fun stuff and as we kick off the summer, I really appreciate it.

Speaker 3

Hey, a big thank you to Kristin. Shirley Bloomberg's contributing Jewelry Ryder and founder of La Patiala, and to the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rouser.

Speaker 2

This is the Bloomberg Business Week podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Journey alone.

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android