Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - November 18th, 2022

edition of Bloomberg Business Week. This week a gathering up global leaders on the latest geopolitical events, better than expected inflation report, and another one that says we shoppers, yet we're still out shopping. And oh yeah, Tim, right, that crypto problem continuing to unwind thanks to the collapse of ft X welve. More than that in a moment, Yeah, that teeny little company that's just sending shockwaves throughout the industry. Coming up on the program, we get a pulse check

on global trade conditions. We do that with former US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez. We'll also look at the state of US China relations after a meeting between President Joe Biden and China's Sejing paying at the G twenty, and we break down a key corner of the cloud software market with the CEO of Octa All of that to home. We begin with the cover story of a Bloomberg Business

Week double issue. The cover is about the crypto saga and collapse of f t X and Sam bank Man Freed that has been unfolding over the past couple of weeks and which continues to evolve and deliver headlines as we speak. Bloomberg Newscrypto reporter Oga Kariffe has been falling this so closely. She co wrote the cover. She's here to explain the fallout across the digital asset business and

well beyond. This has been, of course a huge shock for everybody who's been in the crypto community for a long time, and as well as new newer investors who came in in the last couple of years. You know, it's a complete shock because some Bankman Freed or Sbfest. He was known. He was sort of considered to be one of the most sort of trustworthy, if you will, people in crypto. He was testifying in Congress, he was

meeting with regulators. He had a lot of respect and a lot of a lot of weight in this industry, and all of a sudden he company has come undone a lot of respect and a lot of influence magazine covers is even he alluded to. He said he became overconfident as a result of that. All but one thing that I'm having a really hard time reconciling is the prominent backers of the company and the really sloppy, leaked

balance sheet that we saw. I mean, how does a company this big have such a lack of understanding of what it has on the balance sheet? Yeah, you know, it's it's incredibly surprising. And I think what this means that is that there wasn't enough oversight. There wasn't enough due diligence that you need for a company this size

with such caliber of investors. Typically you wanna for a company this size, you would have a board and you would have all kinds of you know, auditing going on and committees and you know, plenty of people who will be looking through what's going on. And what we find is that for FTX, a lot of it has been just you know, Sam bankman freed overseas in the entire operation.

You know, it's interesting, you know, you note to some of the other tweets that Sam bank Benfried has has done and talked about how he messed up different words that he used and blaming poor internal labeling of accounts. This is not someone who doesn't understand right how the sophisticated financial system works. If you look about his past experience, right, this is someone who should have known. Or do we give him some room for not having better systems in place?

How are we supposed to look at this? So, on the one hand, he is only thirty years old, but on the other hand, during this thirty years he has managed to do a lot. He was a trader at James Street, of course, the very highly respected quantic idea of trading firm, which gave him Wall Street cred and then he also ran Alameda since Alamda Research was his trading firm. Initially he Alameda essentially made money off of price differences so on different crypto exchanges and made quite

a lot of money that way. And then he branched out into actually running a crypto exchange in twenty nineteen, and so he had a lot of experience I would think with financial matters. So what repercussions could he face. He does keep tweeting over and over again that his number one priority is making it right with customers. We'll see if he's able to do that, what consequences could

he face? So in terms of his tweets, they're getting a huge backlash online because people don't trust don't trust him anymore and essentially just almost wish that he didn't even say anything because instead of this empty promises, in terms of what could happen to him, it's still unclear. Uh. You know, ft X is still in the process of filing bankruptcy of all of requisite sort of finitial bankruptcy documents. I'm sure there will be an analysis of what exactly

went drawing and who's to blame. Nobody has been charged with anything yet, so so I think it's going to be a pretty long and drawn out process. But but a lot of people are kind of convinced that somebody, you know, could face charges for this. Okay, it almost feels like an uber uber case of fomo. Right. You know, as soon as he got momentum, and you know, media

coverage created some of that momentum. You know, you had certain venture capitalists or Silicon Valley investors getting in and I'm sure friends were talking about, way, what do you guys onto Like, it's just you think about how the momentum and velocity that was created by SPF not giving him a pass. But you realize this can happen, you know, when there are frenetic investments that are out there. Absolutely.

I think we sort of until um this year, we were in this reaching crypto bull market where you know, prices were going up like easy. Everybody, all of the venture capitalists wanted to find the next unicorn and crypto. Uh and uh when when they saw you know this, very respected investors like Sequoia, you know, backing f t X. Uh. Perhaps some of them haven't done as much due diligence. Uh. It sounds like guess they should have just to check

things out. There are sort of standard processes for due diligence in any industry, but I think some of them may have been forgotten in the rush to get in. That was Bloomberg News crypto reporter Olga Careif on this week's cover story, be sure to head to Bloomberg dot com or the Bloomberg Terminal. From more on ft X and Sam Bateman, Freed and the crypto contagion. It's unbelievable, alright, coming up renewed hope for etholen relations between the world's

two superpowers. What the Biden, she meeting in the G twenty means for the global economy and for the prospects of avoiding future conflict. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. I'm absolutely believe there's need not be a new Cold War.

I do not think there's any imminent attempt on the part of China to invade Taiwan, and I made it clear that our policy in Taiwan has not changed at all. That's President Joe Biden speaking at the G twenty Heads of State and Government Summit held this past week in Bali, Indonesia, about the U S. China relationship. He and Chinese President Jimping met for about three hours, greeting each other with a handshake and conciliatory remarks in which they both called

for calming tensions. The two agreed to a series of goodwill gestures intended to improve ties after the first in person meeting between the leaders of the U S and China since the pandemic began. For more on where the two nations go From here, we turned to dex Or Tiff Roberts, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council's Agia Security Initiative and Mansfield Fellow at the University of Montana. Tiff is also the author of the Myth of Chinese Capitalism

and former Bloomberg Business Week China bureau chief. We asked him what to make of President Biden's comments. Keep in mind, this comes after I think maybe seven separate statements by Biden that the US would come to the defense of Taiwan in the case of an invasion by Beijing, and uh so that not surprisingly has gotten Beijing very riled up.

So Beijing, I think they would welcome this comment. On the other hand, Beijing has been saying for a while, you say one thing, you you the United States and Biden say one thing, but you you actually act in a different way, and they along with those other comments by Biden about supporting Taiwan in the military situation, there have been the repeated high level visits by various first by backing the Trump administration officials, and now those have

continued to core, most recently with Pelosi's visit to Taiwan. You've written about China you know China really well, and we talked about your book The Myth of Chinese Capitalism, and I you know, about the divisive system that was there that ultimately would be very challenging to the country's development going forward. How do you see it? I mean, is is Chinese capitalism working or do you see this

is a big undoing? I think they're unfortunately, you know, they have not made progress on getting the economy to work better, nor nor marketize it more. I mean, really we've seen the opposite under Sijm Ping for a number of years now, actually going back earlier, which is this increasing imposition of state control over the economy, continuing crackdown

on the private sector. And you know today what they're really dealing with is, uh, they're sort of the economy is suffering under the twin weights of both the continuing COVID zero policy, which is you know, been good at preserving life in China, which is important, but it's been deadly for the for the economy, and then also the continuing property crackdown. So I would say, you know, you they continue to struggle with the economy and the policy

really hasn't been going in the right direction. How are we as observers not in China. How are we as investors supposed to kind of read sometimes and move forward sometimes a step backward. Well, yeah, I think that's that's what you keep seeing, and maybe unfortunately it's too often one step forward and two steps back. And I think with the first with the COVID zero policy, I know, or the some signs of easing, obviously they're welcomed. People

have referred to them as baby steps. And ultimately the challenge they face there is they announced the easy, the

slight easings in COVID zero. You know, meanwhile, we've seen COVID surging across the country at Beijing, uh jung Joe, where the world's largest iPhone factory is, and down in guang Jo, and they simply can't ease up on these policies until, first of all, they have a much broader vaccination program across the country, particularly with elderly people who have a low level of vaccination there and uh and and and it's it's not gonna, you know, no matter

what they say about easing, they're gonna have to pull back until they actually start to get COVID under control. What do you hear from people on the ground there right now people you're in touch with about what life is like and how things have shifted over the last couple of years. First of all, I think there is a concern, as that we were discussing about COVID zero,

the rolling lockdowns of cities are continuing. I think there's growing frustration about that, even though there has been you know, there has been support earlier for for the government's efforts to try to keep people safe, but we're starting to see that, start to see fishers in that, if you will. I think the economy is a real worry about people, and there's also a growing concern about this politicization of the economy China and the US. How would you describe

the relationship in the way forward? Is it a good one? Oh? I think it's actually a troubled relationship. Unfortunately, you know it's there. It's really a competitive relationship. They are both see each other very much as their number one rival for for global superpower status. So the Chinese economy, will it still be the end in the world, has relied

on not not great news there. I think that, you know, because of some of the things we discussed earlier, COVID zero, policy at the crackdown on the property sector, but then larger structural issues. China is trying to make this transition from a you know, factory to the world model, which was investment in debt driven to a much more one driven by its own consumers, one driven by household consumption.

And that's a really tough transition that is going to mean probably slowing growth for a number eight years to come. Are we seeing the world divided up US and its allies, China and its allies at this point? I mean I think that you know, it has been divided up. It's it's yeah, we're seeing it slide further in that direction.

Two separate polls, I would say though that, uh, you know, the US has made some progress in in the last year two in terms of bringing more allies together, and you know, China has helped and in his own way on that as well. By just one example, its support for Russia related relative support for Russia related to the invasion of Ukraine has turned a lot of European countries away from China and made them feel that they have

more in common with the US. So, given the answers to your rapid fire questions from Carol just now, Tiff, what does it mean for investors the stocks that traded here in the US, The A d R s of Chinese companies have really been getting beaten up over the last year and a half. What does it mean for investors who want to be in the space. Well, I'm afraid we're going to see more beating up of stocks.

You know, Ali Baba for the first time ever, they just had their their massive singles Day, you know, are sort of our Black Friday of retail online retail sales, and this is the first time. Holli Baba did not announce what the figures were because they weren't very good apparently. Um I think that we're going to see, as I said,

a continued slow down in the Chinese economy. We're gonna see pressures on big multinationals are already seen with companies like Apple to diversify their supply chain out of out of China. The latest you know, lockdowns in Jung Joe on the world's largest iPhone factory just show that. So I think we're gonna have to have to see sort of a rere reckoning with global portfolios and the realization that China won't be the growth driver that it has been.

That was Tiff Roberts of the Atlantic Council's Agent Security Initiative. He's also Mansfield Fellow at the University of Montana, as well as former Bloomberg Business Week China Bureau chief. Morehead on the G twenty and why one former U. S Commerce secretary believes little was accomplished. That's coming up next.

This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the World Bloomberg eleven Rio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one of six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine six, to the country Sirius XM Channel one ninety and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol

Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stenovan on Bloomberg Radio. Well, the last few years have reminded us of how the world as we know it can be turned upside down in a moment, thanks to the global pandemic, the pushback against globalization, and rising in unexpected geopolitical tensions. We felt that again this past week. This was all the backdrop of G twenty as those leaders met in Poli last week.

Here the way in on what was done, or perhaps what wasn't done, is former U S Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez, who served under President George W. Bush. He's also the co founder and executive chairman of EmPATH, it's a human resources consulting firm, and he was not impressed with the progress made on some key global issues at this year's summit. Very rarely do you get any concrete decisions. One thing that the G twenty did do is issue

a statement against the war in Ukraine. Although it wasn't really unanimous, said there were a couple of there was language that tended to soften the demand, let's say, on the trade side. I found their statement to be very bland, very noncommittal. They talked about trade, but they talked about trade and relation to sustainability. So anytime you see the word trade, usually see sustainability. UM. Nothing about tariffs, nothing about protectionism, really nothing about globalization. So it was a

very weak endorsement of trade. UM. I agree that w t O needs reform and that goes ahead. I wish we had a reformed and strengthened w t O when all the tariffs started, But it seems to me like it's going to continue to be the status quo. How would you have advised that by an administration to go into this G twenty Yeah, I would, especially now that the mid terms are over. I would have leaned forward

a lot more on the importance of trade. Maybe the administration try to get a statement in there about trade and intellectual property and technology, but probably could not get the whole group to go with it. But yes, you know, the administration has really left some big value on the table. For example, the ct P p uh A trade agreement which will bring or open up a lot of countries in Asia for US manufacturers, US companies. That was an

Obama era agreement and nothing has happened. I would have aught that President Trump took it out because he was following protectionist policies, and I would have expected President Biden to come back in because it's for the good of the US. It's actually it's hard to explain because we're giving Asia essentially to China. Uh, they have our step which would unify Asia under one agreement, and the US

won't be part of it. So I think what's happening is that domestic politics are overshadowing and taking over any foreign policy. But you rarely hear any foreign policy strategy, um any doctrine of sorts. It really is behaving on the basis of what works domestically. Mr Secretary does feel like we've seen a lot of nations looking inward and maybe that's the result of the pandemic or they had to take care of their own even though it was a global pandemic. Do you feel like globalization and global

supply chains that era is over. There's no question that it's taken a pause, and how long that pause will last is really something to see. But companies who bring manufacturing back, while that's very welcome from the standpoint of jobs, it does raise the cost. At some point they're going to have to address that will always have lower cost foreign competition. So yes, bringing manufacturing back is a great idea domestically, but it is going to increase the cost um.

Different supply chains, Longer supply chains or even supply chains closer by they're not as efficient as they were, will also impact costs. I think it's really interesting right now and this is just anecdotally, but I am seeing more out of stocks than I remember seeing any time during COVID, and that what that tells me is where are you seeing that? What are you saying? I'm I'm seeing them at pharmacies and I'm seeing at grocery stores, basically the

two places where I go. And uh, it's incredible. It's just hard to find things. And the out of slash go on for a week or two, and that just means that the supply, the new supply change or what are supply change are being constructed, aren't working. We're not getting the right product to the right place at the right time. That was former US Commerce Secretary Carlos S. Gutierrez. He's also co founder and executive chairman of EmPATH. You're

listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up next, revelations of a toxic workplace for women in the highest echelons of Wall Street's most prestigious firm. This is not just a Goldman Sachs problem. This is a chronic problem across Wall Street and has been for generations that are in Financial journalist Bill Cohen on a hush money cover up at Goldman Sachs and his new book on the complicated history of another iconic American company, General Electric. This is Bloomberg.

You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovy from Bloomberg Radio. Wellow next guest has written about Goldman Sachs, the fall of Bear Stearns. He's written about the Duke Lacrosse scandal. He's written about his friends. His latest subject is General Electric. And it is so great to have with us in our Bloomberg Interreactor. Broker's studio, Bill Cohen, He's a former Wall Street m

and a investment banker. I think for seventeen years seventeen longtime financial journalist. He's been writing for Who's Who, a business journalism and more, including Business Week. He's author of many books, several New York Times bestsellers, former Bloomberg contributor, and I think you and I even anchored together at one point. We did good old days. Anymore, I'll just see myself out in His latest book is Power Failure, The Rise and Fall of an American Icon. Really delighted

to have you in studio. First of all, how are you? I'm great, Thank you, It's great to be here. Great to be back in this building. Honestly, it is really great. Right A long time ago, you've been busy tell us about this book. Well, Uh, there seems to be a strange pattern going on, Carol. Like you know, when I wrote about Bear Stearns, was sort of a metaphorical dead body on the ground, and I wanted to know how it got there. Same thing with the Duke Lacrosse scandal. Uh,

even the Goldman, I wanted to know how it avoided death. Uh. And with GE, you know, Uh, to me, it felt like also there was a dead body on the ground and I wanted to know how it got there. It's sort of like a mystery that I wanted to solve, and I felt compelled to solve it. So some for some reason, I made the crazy decision to go back to the founding of the company and try to figure out what happened. And even from the outset, things aren't

exactly the way they seem. People think that, you know, Thomas Edison was the great founder of GE, but in fact, by the time his company merged with another company, another electric company, Thomas Edison was already out of the picture.

He was just a small shareholder of a company that was controlled by JP Morgan and Henry Villard, with Henry Vollard being the CEO, and then it merged with Charles Coffin's uh, you know, electric company to form General Electric, and Charles Coffin became the CEO of the combined company, with Edison not even knowing about the merger, not wanting the merger, and him just like floating off, you know, over to New Jersey to you know, create some sort

of limestone mining company or something. So right from the outset, and then just one more thing, because it is darn interesting, is that was? And then in three was the big financial crisis and G almost went bankrupt. And if they didn't buy their debt back at a discount, if this sounds familiar, if they didn't buy their desk debt back at a discount with permission from JP Morgan, they would have gone bankrupt. So fast forward to today, and yes,

what we forward what we see with G today. How would you just where or when would you describe the turning point into you know, the quote unquote dead body that you see gees today? When did that start to die? But that, of course is the subject of much debate, sort of centered around the idea of whether sort of Jack welch uh, you know, bequeath Jeff immult a company that was not nearly as robust as Jack thought it was.

Jack thought he had bequeathed them a royal flush, and Jeff thought it was, you know, kind of a losing hand. So whether that's true or whether Jack actually left, I mean, he did leave him the most valuable company in the world, the most respected company in the world. But you know, he also Jeff took over from Jack on September seven of two thousand one. G E made the engines on

the jets. GEE had re ensured some of the buildings down at the World Trade Center, and they of course owned NBC Universe NBC which hadn't ran from with no advertising for you know, at least a week, costing GE hundreds of millions of dollars. So uh, and they lost some employees that day. And of course, uh, you know, everything kind of changed in governance after nine eleven. Uh. And so you know, Jeff thought he had gotten a very different set of assets and opportunities than Jack thought

he had bequeathed him. But so the question is, you know, did Jeff play the hand poorly or did you know, can make wrong decisions. I think really the turning point seemed to be, uh, the financial crisis, no surprise because because you know, g E owned G Capital, which was you know, like the third or fourth largest financial institution in the country, and everybody was focused on Wall Street going down the tubes. But G Capital almost went to

two down the tubes as well. Phil Cohen still with us his latest book, well known obviously to our Bloomberg audience and a former Bloomberg contributor. His latest book is called Power Failure, The Rise and Fall of an American Icon.

It is about g E. I want to ask you something, though, because you've written about Goldman sachs Um and our most read story in the Bloomberg has to do with Goldman paying out a twelve million dollars or well over twelve million dollars to a partner who complained internally about a toxic workplace for women in the highest echelons of Wall Street's most prestigious firm. This is our most read story all day today. I guess what I wanted to ask you is what is the right question to be asking?

Is this a Goldman stories that a Wall Street story, Like, what is it when we see something like this, which is, as our reporter said, this doesn't happen a lot, and it certainly isn't made public a lot when something like this happens. This is not just a Goldman Sachs problem. This is a chronic problem across Wall Street and has been for generations. You know, my first book was about Lizard, where I had worked for six years, and I had a chapter in their chapter fourteen called It's a White

Man's World, and it basically chronicled back then. That's that book came out in two thousand seven about the way women were treated at Lizard and it was not pretty okay. In my Goldman book, I also wrote about the way women were treated at Goldman, and I think I know some of these women who just you know, who brought this lawsuit against Goldman. Uh, you know, this is a

chronic problem across the industry. There's a lot of lip service paid to trying to treat people better, and not just women, but women in particular, and uh, you know, other people who don't have the opportunities they should have, you know, in this chronic you know that that goes back to sort of the original culture, of the original sins, if you will, of these firms, which were sort of like white male partnerships, and they were family owned businesses.

There were small, little family owned businesses. There was a Mr Goldman, there was a Mr Sachs, there was a JP. Morgan, there were three Lizard brothers, there were Lehman brothers. So these were all family owned businesses. They were very wary of outsiders, didn't want, you know, even to marry outside the family because they were afraid of deluding the ownership and the culture that they were creating at these firms.

It was a matter of trust. But of course as they got bigger and wealthier and more successful, they brought in other partners. Sometimes it works, sometimes it didn't, you know. And and at Lazard they were wary of bringing in, you know, women, They didn't think women could you know, do this work or wanted to do this work. And I remember they had one woman, and then the idea was to bring in a second one. And somebody, some fancy partners, said, why do we need a second partner,

we already have one. I was a second woman, We already have one. I mean, that was the mentalities. Yeah, Okay, whatever exactly. I mean, obviously that's killis and needs to change, but it's slow to change, and even when they give lip service to it, it's slow to change because it's not a particularly you know, pleasant work environment to begin with. It's very laborious, hard work, long hours. Nobody's gonna have much sympathy for people who work on Well Street given

how much they get paid. But it's not, you know, a great lifestyle. The work life balance is completely messed up and hasn't really changed dramatically. Uh you know, despite again what they say they're trying to do and pretending to try to do. So, you know, I hate to be a downer on this, but you know, the fact is, there's a long, long way to go on this. Though. I want to go back and talk a little bit about the culture at g E because for years this was a place that of cultures. Yeah, I mean, for

years this was a great place to work. They talk a little bit about how the culture they're allowed for the downfall of g was it. Well, you know, my my first job out of business school, uh inn was working at G Capital financing leverage buyouts of all things, which was sort of like the last thing I would

have ever expected to be doing in my life. At that point, I had been a reporter and have gone to business school, and then I was working at G Capital financing LBOs around the corner from here, and then I went and worked for the chief credit officer of G Capital up in Stanford, Connecticut. I always found g E to be, you know, quote unquote corporate. You know, I wasn't necessarily a real corporate guy, but I felt

it felt corporate. You know, there were there were there were HR departments before you know, Wall Street firms at HR departments. You know, there were uh lots of benefits and perquisites. You know. You I got a company car, you know, I got to take these trips and go on golf outings and things like that, and it was sort of like raw ra and really sort of American and sort of kind of white bready, you know, and you know it's okay. Uh, you know, I like the people.

I really like the people I worked with. I think they are quite unique group of people. And I really enjoyed interviewing the people for this book, and are from everybody from Jack, Jeff m malt, you know, even people like David Zaslov and David Calhoun and Dave Cody, that the David's who all have become very successful, they just loved Jack and they loved working at GE. I mean

it's incredible. I mean, having worked at a bunch of Wall Street firms, you know, and interviewed a bunch of people working in all sorts of Wall Street firms, you rarely get anybody who says how excited and glad they were to be working at Wall Street. But people really liked working at GE for for a long time, or at least during this you know, phase, until things sort of unwound. That's former Bloomberg contributor and veteran financial journalist

Bill Cohen. His latest book, it's on General Electric. It's called Power Failure, The Rise and Fall of an American Icon. It is out now. And that wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition to Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanivack. Ahead in our next hour, we'll hear from the CEO of logistics software platform shipp Oh on why she sees recession ahead, and the head of the software maker Octa on the

latest innovations when it comes to cloud infrastructure security. Plus why Google's moonshot lab is literally harvesting innovation right here on Earth. And then we've got a little slice of heaven from our Bloomberg Pursuits team. Stick around. This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus

global business finance and tech news as it happened. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick takes Tim Stinovin on Bloomberg Radio Bloody Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including OCTA CEO Todd McKinnon on everything from the collapse of FTX to the broader outlook in Silicon Valley in a year that has been very very uncomto textocks and the Indus Street. Todd will tell us why his firm, though, is poised

for a rebound. Plus we take a closer look at Google's famous innovation lab X and why it's so called moonshot factory is shifting toward more pedestrian projects with actual commercial applications. Our ax Chafkin has a great story in the magazine about a partnership with the fruit farming company Driskolls and Google's for a into a tech first. Up this hour, though, we've got a company that's moving things

around for its e commerce customers. We're talking about the shipping platform ship Boh, which makes some one million shipments annually. We certainly love companies like this. They have a great view of the overall economy momentum of things being bought in ship just moving around, telling us what's going on in terms of economic activity. We got up with the company's co founder and CEO, Laura Baron's Woo Laura, great touch out with you once again. Um, So, you've got

tons of thousands of businesses that Shippo serves. You work to use software to get them the best deals on their shipping. Give us an idea. I want to talk about business in a second, but just give us an idea of what you're seeing when it comes to the economy out there, because we're getting mixed reports from some of the biggest retailers out there. So we're a software platform that connects e commerce companies to a network of different shipping providers. So all of our customers there. They

need to ship there. They're selling products on the Internet and they need to move their products from A to B to the to the customers, and we're building that that software component there. Um, the carriers are doing the heavy lifting, they're doing the shipping, and we're building the technology giving access to discounted shipping rates and just helping SMB ship like retail giants. And now to your question around what we're seeing, Um, it is it is a

difficult prediction for this holiday season. I think what's what's for sure happening is that in previous years we've seen that there was a big spike around the big deal days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and we're seeing that change. We're seeing elevated shipping and elevated discounts just way earlier in the season, which is a very interesting track.

It's interesting. We don't yeah, we don't think that there will be as big of a spike on these two big like normal deal days, but those deals are happening much earlier in the season nowadays. And um, yeah, customers or consumers are writing access to discount products earlier on. I was gonna say, Laura I mean, I had to pick up something for my daughter and she's like, hey, mom, there's already a Black Friday sale, so you can get

it now now. So it's definitely happened. Having said that, I do like talking to folks like you because you do have a great indication of what's going on in the macro environment. What you are seeing in terms of activity and the upcoming holidays, does it speak recession to you. So we're for sure looking at a much softer queue for compared to previous q fors. But previous KEW fors were out of the ordinary as well, with pandemic limiting

us from like going to physical stores. So this year we're seeing a little bit of back to the previous trend lines um and the kind of or below kind of that is. That is what we're expecting also because consumers still have a lot of like the job market is still going strong, consumer spending is still doing okay,

but it's it's very hard to predict. I think we're like next year, we're for sure looking at a recession year, and uh, we're we're thinking that this holiday season will still be a good year for our good season for retailers remind us too. You talked about the business, and we appreciate you reminding our audience about what it is exactly that you guys do. But you do play into the e commerce sector. Who is your typical customer? Yeah, our typical customer is an SMB merchant. So SMB is

between five hundred and five thousand packages a month. Um, so it's a it's a pretty right wide range here, but our our typical customerships anything from fashion to make up, anything you can buy on the internet. And um, we're we've actually seen an explosion in the SMB segment during the pandemic, like more businesses getting started, more businesses moving online.

So that's the affect audience for us. And um, we're not enterprise, so Amazon and Target and Walmart are out of scope for US, but at like the smaller mid mark SMB, a mid market segment, that's our customer. What makes you so confident that we're going to see a recession next year? What's the data that you can point to that indicates that. Yeah, it looks like all indicators

the tech market is softening. We're seeing rounds of layoffs in the in the tech industry that will affect o our other industries later later on as well, And um, I think that is just calling the negative spiral there to consumer spending being being worse. People are just not willing to just spend on discretionary products. Inflation is at our record high, and we've seen the gas prisis rising,

So all all indications lead to a recession year next year. Um, but I'm not an economist, so fingers fingers crossed data, I'm wrong. That was Laura Baron's woo. She's the co founder and CEO of ship Oh. She mentioned that her customer basis can is mainly of SMB merchants, those being small and medium sized businesses, and it sounds like Laura is really, you know, prepared for a downturn in you

feel like the tone of conversations. I felt like, to some extent, fed speakers maybe starting to think about maybe slowing down in terms of the size of rate increases, but I thought in general leaders were more and more talking about the momentums coming down. Yeah, that's certainly what it seems like analysts too. It's just a question of where the market is compared to where people think the economy is going. Exactly all right, you're listening to Bloomberg

Business Week coming up. A Silicon Valley executive says he's poised to meet a growing need for businesses everywhere. Every industry across the world is trying to do more technology, whether that's adopt the innovation in the cloud, or keep secure and stop the risk of data breaches, or transformed digitally and build better customer experiences through the world world beating websites and mobile apps and identity is at the heart of that. Octa CEO Tom McKinnon joins us on

the other side, This is Bloomberg. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. One of the things we love to do regularly is check with CEOs of all different types and sizes of companies for insight, yes on their businesses, but also on the macro outlook. One such company recently was Octa, which is a roughly eight billion dollar market cap company. It's an identity and access management software firm

working in the cloud. Gugenheim upgraded the stock to buy earlier this month, saying the firm's valuation is quote too compelling to ignore despite challenges that will take several quarters to sort out. And Carol, you went straight to the source to find out why, Well, that means we went to the company right. Bloomberg Radio's Paul Sweeney and I caught up with Actors co founder chair in CEO Todd McKinnon.

He was joining us from the company's Octane twenty two product Expo event, and as a tech exec who has a front seat on disruption and innovation, we began by asking for his reaction to some big news of that day, and that was the sudden collapse of sand Bakeman Freed's crypto exchange f t X. I think we're all watching it and we're all trying to figure out what it means for the broader ecosystem. But one thing is for sure, Silicon Valley is in a different world than it was

a year ago. Everyone is making sure that we're doubling down on our most strategic and important initiatives, and maybe some of the things we were doing last year that maybe it wasn't necessary, We're we're not focusing on that as much as we are all of our core strengths, and that's why work so excited about this conference and what we can bring to the whole technology market with

our world class identity products. So, Todd, I'm just looking at the f A functional on the Bloomberg terminal and it looks like Wall Street analysts have you know, thirty growth revenue for the next few years. Top line for

you guys, what's driving that growth? Well, every industry across the world is trying to do more technology, whether that's adopt the innovation in the cloud, or keep secure and stop the risk of data breaches, or transformed digitally and build better stomer experiences through the world world beating websites and mobile apps and identity is at the heart of that. You need to log on employees at work and do it securely and make sure there's no fishing or any

data breaches. And you need to make sure you give your customers. You're building that great new app at your company. You're getting your subscribers or your customers or your citizens online to connect to you directly. And you have to have a great app and that starts with a great logging experience. And we have our help our customers and

organizations around the world do just that. You know, I seek some of that top line growth, and then I see your stock is down seventies some percent year to date. Is this just a tech washout or what's the street concerned about with with your name? I think there's a couple of things there. There's definitely valuations across the border technology you're down. And also, we took a pretty big, bold step a couple of years ago to branch out

into this important new market for US. It's called the customer identity management market, which is we serve with our customer identity cloud and that acquisition. Over the past couple of quarters, there have been some execution stumbles in terms of integrating that, and we're working through those now and

really excited to talk about our long term products. You're talking about that six and a half billion dollar deal, right AUTHO zero excuse me, So tell me about what kind of you know through put, if you will, that you're seeing already on that acquisition. I know it's early, but tell us about that. Well. It's, like I said, it's a really important strategic part of the market for us because traditionally identity management has been sold as part

of a monolithic platform. You got it when you bought Microsoft applications or you got it when you bought applications from IBM. But on the customer identity side, there's this huge untapped potential where engineers and developers and product people they're building identity themselves. They're spending their valuable time creating log in pages and password reset functionality and multi factor authentication. But there's a better way. Every hour they spend on

identity as an hour they're not spending on innovation. So we have this product, Customer Identity Cloud, which is the technology from the OS zero acquisition that can do it for them and free them up to spend every hour and every calorie they expend on great innovation and their products and not on identity, which were the experts in the macro environment right now, and the outlook for your business feels like a lot of enthusiasm, barring the crypto side,

um certainly the equity side of things because of that softer inflation print. How do you see the economy and the outlook for your business, let's say over the next six to twelve months. Well, we've started oct fourteen years ago, and over the past fourteen years we've seen unprecedented growth across cloud computing. Now, cloud computing is the default computing platform for every organization in the world. We've seen security risks and the how you could avoid risks with great

cyber posture. We've seen that become as important as ever and we've seen every organization want to connect with their customers online. And the macro economic environment is changing. Money. A year ago, zero interest rates, investments weren't weren't as focused and as scrutinized as they are now. And so no company, no organization, no industry is immune to that. But what's really giving us a very bright outlook for

the over the long term is these trends continue. Everyone is figuring out how they can adopt the latest technology for their force. They want to build world beating customer apps because in the time of economic uncertainty, many times it's the best time to double down on innovation so you can leap ahead of your competitors. We know this. In two thousand nine when I started Octa, we took

that time. There was an economic problem, but that the Great Recession, and we started Octa in this downturn, and it was a good time to focus on innovation and we we built the industry leading company because of that. Todd, How would you characterize the risk appetite in Silicon Valley these days? How would it be now versus a year ago. I think for the top end of the VC market it's as strong as ever. The overall amount of funding is way down, and you see that happening happen in

these cycles. But great entrepreneurs have great ideas. They might have to work a little harder to raise that round and the valuation certainly isn't going to be as high. But the best ideas and the best entrepreneurs they're getting funding. And I think that's will always be true because there's so much potential in technology. At OCTA, we are technology enthusiasts.

We believe that over the next five years as you're gonna see amazing innovation and collaboration technology and the ways to more more work more effectively and collaborate with teammates remotely. Especially on the security side as well. We think there's going to be security breakthroughs that make companies ten times more productive, which is why one of our core beliefs is that we believe in this world an open ecosystem of innovation where the best innovation can be used by

any company. That's the right way forward, and that's what we're trying to build. Hey, Todd, I think people are listening and they're like, Okay, wait, what are you talking about? So how does it affect you know, people in their workspaces and everyday leaving living break it down for us, We've been through the last three years with so many people working remotely, and we we've been as an industry and as a as a collective workforce. We we've done

a good job collaborating and communicating. But I think the tools that we use, whether it's chat or email or video conferencing, that they they weren't designed for this world where remote is almost the default, and working in a hybrid way in the office and remotely is the way every organ is station, every company operates. So I think when we get together in five years and we talk, we're gonna be amazed at some of the new technologies.

Maybe it's virtual reality headsets, or maybe it's a new kind of collaboration software that can mix a hybrid meeting where some people are remote and some people on the from the metaverse. And I'm not making a joke like I feel like it creeps into every conversation. Is this where the metaverse maybe has a real world application. I think about the metaverse is really an evolution of the Internet.

So today we use the Internet on phones and computers, but we're going to access the Internet on these VR headsets and these augmented reality devices. It's I think that's inevitable. I think it's it's a new way to interact with people, and more people over time will use these new devices. But it's the same Internet, the same way to work, the same way to collaborate, the same way to socialize

as we've seen in the past. That's Todd McKinnon. He's co founder, chairman and CEO of the identity management software developer Opta. Bloomberg Radio is Paul Sweeney taking apart in there as well. Up next to Bloomberg Business Week, how Google's Moonshot lab is using it's high tech gadgets to

help improve farming right here on Earth. This is Bloomberg broadcasting from the financial capital of the World Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one to San Francisco Bloomberg nine six to the country, Sirius, XM General one nine and around the globe, the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio dot com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stenovan on Bloomberg Radio. I think innovation.

You probably think about crypto, the metaverse, self driving cars from the likes of companies such as Google, and yes, some of that goes on at Google's innovation lab that's known as X so to do a few other closely guarded projects that are literally more down to earth. It's all in a story you'll find in the Technology section of the Double Issue. It's the current issue of Bloomberg Business Week. The editor of the magazine is Joe Weber.

He and business we call him this Max Jaffkin, are here to explain the fruits of the tech giants, a tech efforts. So this is an effort by X, which is the quote unquote moonshot Factory of Alphabet, which is the old Google X to bring you know, essentially Google's technology to farming. Back in the day, X was really focused on these kind of sci fi type things. Like Tim was talking about, um, you had self driving cars.

They were literally talking about space elevators um uh for for a while and basically over the last decade that has mostly either fallen apart or dialed back. We've seen a couple of these quote unquote moon shots be spun off, Weymo being the best and probably the biggest example, and a bunch of them falling apart. Glass fell on its face, a loon, which was the balloon internet thing didn't pan out. There was a kite, a wind powered kite thing that

didn't pan out. And a bunch of things that that although they panned out, they didn't really turn into the

sci fi thing in the future. Now. When you talk to the folks at X, what they say basically is like we are moving away from the kind of flashy for flashy sake and more towards real business business that could potentially drive profit for alphabet, which again a Google executive talking about profit is it's sort of a weird thing if you've been covering this industry for a long time, because you know, in the old days, the search engine just threw off so much money that they didn't even

bother talking about it elsewhere in the company. But they are, and so this is so what's happening at DRIST Goals is they built these rovers they're called they're smart car sized semi autonomous tractors that drive over the field take

pictures of plants. What they're lived doing, literally is is counting flowers, counting leaves and attempting to tell the farmers in this case drisk Goals, which is the largest supplier of the Big four berries, And what they're trying to do is tell them which of their plants are succeeding

and which aren't. And and that's an interesting problem because although drist calls is super sophisticated, you know, they do edtic analysis of in their breeding programs, no one really knows what how the genetics correlate to the health of the plant or the harvest ability, which is like how high off the ground the berries are. And so they're

basically using machine learning to deal with that. And Google uh mineral is the is the name of the project within within Google has plans to expand this to, you know, just to all sorts of areas. They've got another partnership with Syngenta, some major agribusiness um and a bunch of other partners partnerships and I think long term. You know, the play is to have some kind of cloud AI service for for the agoness. Mendel would be so happy.

But what I'm wondering is when did ag tech becomes such a thing for Google or is it about profitability and maybe another revenue line. Well, I think it's a couple of things. So one is if you look in the agg space broadly, there is a lot of interesting stuff going on, even on autonomy. Probably uh egg is one of the areas where autonomy has arguably you know, gone the furthest where you have you know, self dropped John Deere and other companies kind of pursuing self driving tractors.

So clearly, um, there's an opportunity there, um, And I think really what's happening Number one is alphabet is looking for any way that it can kind of broaden its scope. The last thing is when you talk to the folks at X and I spoke with Astor Teller, who is the his title as Captain of Moonshots, He's the head

of the Moonshot factory. He basically says that they have been really focused on climate as a challenge as a potential moonshot, and there is a way to see these innovations in agriculture having you know, a positive impact on climate change, because if you're able to say, you know, use less fertilizer, that sort of thing, you're going to have a carbon impact. What does it actually look like in practice? And and mineral is one way that we can.

But that voice is Joe Weber. He's captain of Bloomberg Business Week, captain of moonshots At. It's uh, it's like a sort of autonomous a t V. It's got rugged wheels, drives over plants very slow really, and there's like a weird little camera studio inside of the machine with flashes and stuff. It takes a picture of the plants and then goes into the cloud into this kind of AI system that is honestly not that different from the self driving car system or anything like that, and it it says, hey,

like is it what is this plant? How is it doing? How likely is it to produce fruit? Um? And and hopefully in the long run that allows drist Golls to say, is this a plant worth breeding, worth worth continuing with or is it one that should be you know, cast aside in favor of other strawberry varieties. That was Business

we call him this. Max Chaffkin, along with the editor of the magazine, Joel Weber, props to him for like being a straight suitor as we're all like kind of like coming out of Yeah, we tried to derail him many times and he just wouldn't play. Max is incredible, a true pro. All Right, you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week coming up, thinking about your upcoming Thanksgiving holiday feast? Then stop right here. How to be the host with the most and deliver quote a slice of heaven tiered

guess at the same time. I'm sticking around for that. How about you? You You want your cake and to eat it too, and I want it delivered to. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovik from Bloomberg Radio. We turned out to our friends with Bloomberg Pursuits for a guy to holiday entertaining. And it's tough to be the host with the most if you don't have the menu to match. Luckily,

we have the recipe for sweet success. We've got a list of the very best cakes and cocktails that America has to offer and you can save those home baking projects fore, or if you're like me, Carol, just never do them and instead you can just order the cakes straight to your table and focus on the drinks. Here the breakdown are a couple of our favorites. We got Bloomberg Pursuits editor Chris Rouser and our renowned food editor

Kate Crater. Kate joining us from her new home in London. Chris, I want to start with you count lots of mo watering delights in this section. And something really interesting happened during the pandemic when it came to shipping cakes. Suddenly a lot more people started doing it. Yes, so a lot of people during the pandemic started baking cakes. They started baking bread, and then a lot of the rest of us looked at those people and said, and I wish I had some bread and some cake, but I

am sure not baking. And we started having cakes delivered from Gold Belly and um. That has continued on even as the pandemic has lightened. UM. And every year we have a holiday entertaining section in Bloomberg Pursuits, one of our favorite sections. Kate usually takes charge. And we really wanted to do cakes this year, if we felt like everybody needed a slice of cake, So Kate picked out some of the best new and regional cakes to really

highlight across the US. I want to know, Kate, how the heck do you always I'm always amazed because there's so much stuff out there. How you whittle it down? Well, you know, it's so much work and research, Carol, hold on, I tell if you're joking here, like like, it's so hard to just you know, try all these cakes and order these cakes. But it is hard, right, you know, at some point, at some point you can kind of hit cake overload. But um, but it takes all it

takes a lot of research for that to happen. But it's really it's just cakes are so great, Like they look wonderful. And this is you know, around this holiday time, it's usually pie season and a lot of people will talk about pies, but people usually make those pies. And I'm like you, I will eat cakes all day, but I don't really want to make them. And so in the same with pies, Like so it's great to have a cake because it shows up like I think pies just sort of sitting on the table, but it cake

stands tall, its towers over everything else. So in the pie versus cake debate, cake will always win. You're reminding me that it's time for me to do my Twitter pie pole for Thanksgiving. But having said that, so Chris, let's talk about that cake that you featured on the cover, because this looks kind of amazing. Yeah, this is a strawberry crunch cake. And um, Kate actually into reviewed the

bakers in Detroit. Sokake okake Kate, what were they like? Um? So, the woman who started her name is April Anderson, and she's in Detroit. It's a place called Good Cakes and Bakes, and um it is something that's really made the city proud. Her um grandmother came from the South, from Mississippi. She was part of the great migration that came to Detroit. Um and as we wrote it, it sort of is like that kind of like made for TV movie story.

And April started using some of her family's Southern recipes. But she was also very inspired by the kind of junk food that she ate growing up. So this is a little bit I don't know if you guys know it, but there were some really kind of awful but also delicious strawberry, good humor, ice cream pops. This is a little If you look at it and think of that,

I think you'll see the connection it's got. It's delicious, delicious um strawberry cake interspersed with white cake and pink icing, but it's covered with crusts strawberry oreos um that gives it a like this beautiful neon pink, this neon pink color, but also this terrific textural contrasts. So it all comes together really really well. And zero calories. Man, that's see that part of the story, Carol, I have to say, um, and looking at the pictures like it's a variety of

cakes and colors and shapes and styles. But you know, the coconut layer cake. I'm not a fan of coconut, but can't I always feel like you go into a bakery, you're gonna see one. Not all coconut cakes layer cakes are the same, right, No, you have to be picky about them because, like you said, a lot of bakeries have them, but some people don't put that much thought

into it. And I would say, as a general rule, there are a couple of places in New York could have decent ones, but you're really well off mill ordering one from the south, and one of the places that has a really really good one is called Savanna's Candy Kitchen. Um. It's out of Georgia, obvious, and they make one where the cake is super moist and they pay attention to the butter cream and it's got like so much coconut on it it looks like the snow fell on it.

It's a commanding cake. There's also the element of historical cakes here. And I don't know if I'm the only one who had this association when I read that you can actually buy JFK's wedding cake. Who had the association with the Seinfeld episode from way back in the day where Elaine eats the cake from what does it think? It's like King Edward's wedding or something? Ja Peter Minsred, Yes, and it was so the kind of a throwback from me there. But I had that that thought when I

was reading this. Um, but you can actually thought, at least for me. Um. Speaking of regional differences, though, there's this beautiful cake out of Boston. Yeah, it's really great. There's um this very time honored family owned company called Montillo's Baking company, and they've been there for like seventy years and they made this, um they made this cake for JFK and Jackie Kennedy on when they got married in the nineteen fifties, and they also served at his inauguration.

And this again is like a yellow cake and it's got a fruity filling and just these very like lovely looking florets of more butter cream on top, and it looks like something you'd want to serve it an event. It's it's a great cake, and like you said, it has history, but they've also they definitely are there for all the Boston events. When Tom Brady was quarterback for the Patriots, they made a twelve hundred pound cake that I think was goal post was in the same of

goal posts, but kind of crazy. And of course he didn't need it, right, because doesn't he have that crazy diet. Like it's like, alright, listen, look at it. Alright, with cake, you gotta have some cocktails. And Chris, let's talk about I love this section that Kate also digs into, and this is about I'm not a cocktail maker. I don't really bake cakes, but these only take sixty seconds. This

gives me hope. Chris. Yes, so there's a new book out that focus on six these second cocktails, which are cocktails that you can make in less than sixty seconds um, which really rules out some of the things that our favorite mixologists in Brooklyn are always student, you know, singing the orange peel and stuff. None of that. Um. So these are actually really great, amazing drinks to make at home. The authors are Joel Harrison and Neil Ridley UM and we loved it and picked out some of her favorite

recipes from him. Yeah, they're really fun. They take some really really good shortcuts, good and smart shortcuts, Like they make an old fashioned instead of having to like stir and a sugar cube around, which obviously isn't too challenging, but it takes time. They add maple syrup and so

that gives it a delicious, earthy holiday flavor. And it's also smart because people generally have a little bit of maple syrup sitting around, you know, in their cabinet, on their shelf, and so it's a good way to use up ingredients that you have to make cocktails for yourself. Because it's that time of year, because people are variably stopping by. You can literally grab a couple of bottles and mix these drinks in the time that might take you to figure out what wine you're going to pour,

you know, that night. We also in the section have a festive spirits guide, which is we always kind of do a holiday gift guide for spirits. What do you give people to add to their personal home bar? Um, And we've got some great wines from our wine critic Ellen McCoy, like the two thousand fourteen Iron Horse Stargazing Couvey Brutes and some spirits too, So I would love everyone to check that out. All price points, all price points. Um. There's also some great things that I'm a big even

like during the week, I love to throw candles. I don't even care if I'm having like a hamburger. I just find it really fun. So you guys have some great choices in terms of getting lit when you're having your dinner party. But I want to end We've just got a few minutes lit. I'm not talking about the alcohol, but that's that too. But um, how to be a host with the most right We've all been hosts are gone to something And Chris, what are your thoughts on this section? It was a lot of fun to go

through it. So we went to Daniel Posts Sending, who's the grandson of m Only Post and he's the co president of the Emily Post Institute. She's obviously the great etiquette maven and they they've redone their book which came out just last month. Actually um and so we called him. He's an amazing resource. We call him all the sack and uh. We asked him about how to avoid major

holiday pitfalls. He had some really good advice. One of the things people basically go overboard and then they forget that the point of the holidays is like interpersonal interaction and having fun is opposed to gifts and showing and so one thing he always says, you have to be willing to accept the costs of entertaining. If your tablecloths are too nice, if your glasses can't be broken, don't have people over well, you know, if you're going to get lit at a party, like wine's going to spill

on the white carpet. Okay, what do you think about when you either are hosting something or you're going somewhere, What do you think about that side of the equation. I think the way that Daniel Postum setting looks at this is so engaging and really sort of makes you

think like, wow, I want to entertain like um. One of his other tips is that you should you know, when people come at you with their dietary restrictions, as they endurably do, you should turn it into an opportunity and the challenge and say like, Okay, this gives me an opportunity to do this, or I'll figure out the

one dish I can make. It speaks to everybody's crazy diets, but you definitely should figure out the best way forward and make sure that you addrest them because you really do want everyone to be happy when they sit down at your table. Do you have a favorite gift to get as a host? Who? Now, I want to say candles the hand. I want every one of these candles on these shelves. Al Right, guys, listen, have a wonderful holiday season, and so glad that you've given us this guy,

because it's lots of ideas and thoughts. Of course, our food editor of Blueberg Pursuits Kate Creator and of course the editor of the Pursuits team and section, Chris rouser Um, Happy holidays to you, all right, That wraps up the wee get edition of Blueberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us, and thanks also to Paul Sweeney who helped us out this past week. I'm all Masser and I'm Tim Stanavak. Be sure to

tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday. It starts at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch your daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News and check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find it at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bloomberg Business Week is available on newsstands now, at Bloomberg dot com and always on

the Bloomberg terminal. You can also see us on Bloomberg Quick Take, available at Bloomberg dot com, slash qt, and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV, and more. Have a great weekend, everyone, Time for cakes and cocktails. BC. This is Bloomberg