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Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast. Big Big week. Yes, another FED decision, but what consumed most was the US presidential election that will send Donald Trump back to the White House. The so called Trump Trade kicked into action post election day, driving bitcoin to a record, spiking treasury yields, and sending stocks rallying. One
name benefiting Elon Musk's Tesla. More on the relationship between the world's richest man and the President elect, plus r convest Kathy wood on elon the elections.
The FED, and more.
We begin, though, with the aftermath of the US presidential election. The vote count ended a lot sooner than most anticipated, as it handed a definitive victory for former President Donald Trump and set off some soul searching for the Democratic Party. Trump's win is a tale of widespread discontent, creating a deficit too deep for Kamala Harris to overcome, so, writes Bloomberg BusinessWeek editor brad Stone. Brad joined us to help answer the question what happened?
Well, look, you know we always look back on our elections and sort of contemplate a pithy summation of what happened. So Trump in twenty sixteen kind of bringing Americans to reject Obama's globalist optimism. You know, you can go back Obama his message of hope after the Great Recession. And so I was really kind of thinking about, well, what
are we going to take from this? And the most obvious explanation, the big one that stands out, is that people were just dissatisfied with the current state of things economically. I mean, you had a president deep underwater and Biden his popularity is approval rating at forty one percent, twenty six percent of Americans dissatisfied with the direction of the company.
That's the easiest and most obvious explanation. But when I talk about the kind of muddy factors, I mean, there's just so much we don't know the fact that Vice President Harris lost ground with Latino voters, non college educated female voters, young voters, I mean, there's clearly something else going on here, and I think it will take a while for us to really look at the data and understand what went on.
One thing that's really striking to me again, the data is still continuing to sort of come out here, Brad, and there's been a lot of hand ringing by a lot of different groups here at this point. But turnout just wasn't there, even on the Republican side in terms of gross numbers compared to twenty twenty. Do you have any idea what happened there?
I mean, it's yeah, it's remarkable. I mean, maybe there's a little bit of political exhaustion. I mean the Vice president talked a little bit about that on the campaign trail. You know, in twenty twenty, the election we're comparing it to we were in the very midst of the pandemic. You know, maybe there weren't all that many alternatives at the time to getting engaged in the electoral process and voting.
You know, there might have just been something about the options and the candidates that voters had to turn them off. So no, I think, you know, when you look, particularly on the Democratic side, the depressed voter turnout was a major factor behind the across the board defeats Brad.
You know what's really striking to me, And we actually heard this from Jay Powell over and over again. He talked about how good of an economy it is right now, spot firing on all cylinders, inflations coming back to two percent, the unemployment rate is pretty in balance with where he wants it to be. That's not the message that I got in terms of this election. That's not the message that voters sent, especially in those swings dates. What's the misery index and explain how you looked at that.
Yeah, Bloomberg had I thought a very prescient article about a week ago that talked about how uneven that economic recovery was and that despite the overall positive kind of macro numbers on jobs, on inflation, on gas prices, that
you know, there are pockets of unhappiness. And we looked at the swing states where you know, states like Wisconsin or Michigan, Ohio, states that did vote for President Trump, where the misery index, as you say to him, that combination of inflation data unemployment data is still very high. And so there are things like population declines in some counties, still a stumbling recovery, high unemployment numbers that were clearly fueling the dissatisfaction that may have turned the election.
It's so interesting because it seems like the chattering class kind of thought that presidential candidate, who has been accused of so many different things, who has been determined by a court to actually be a fellon thirty four different counts, and has had so many struggles at least with the law over the last few years, oversaw not really what he would say, but no question that he was there on January sixth, and all the comments that he's made
about that have been well documented. But that just didn't matter at all in the end to voters.
Well, certainly not to a majority of the voters that turned out in the selection. You know, maybe it did propel some to stay home. You know, it may also be that people have short term memories. I mean, my colleague Mark Million rights in the BusinessWeek newsletter about nostalgia. Nostalgia can be a powerful political force, you know, make America great again. Reagan's Shining City on a Hill evoking these memories. So, you know, nostalgia as a political force.
I kind of like the idea, but it also maybe suggests that specific memories aren't as powerful as these vague
memories of a greater time. That in talking about making America great again and all the implicit things in that statement, you know that Trump is distracting people from the specifics of maybe how they felt about his leadership during the pandemic, how they felt about some of his you know, crimes alleged and otherwise, and brought their attention more on, you know, restoring this sense, maybe illusory, that he can help, you know, bring America back to some previous greatness.
So so, you know, I'm wondering about sort of the lesson, and it's not our job to sort of give a lesson to democrats here. But as I mentioned, there's a lot of hand ringing going on, and we've written about that. It's been well documented. But the Monday morning or the Wednesday morning quarterbacking.
This should have, would have, could have?
It sort of seems like in hindsight, some of it actually went back to the current president's decision to continue running until that became untenable.
Well, look, I.
Mean, Tim, I'm not a political analyst by any means, but you know, I would say you this. I mean, first of all, the margin of the victory you know, for Trump, was so big that you know, perhaps any one factor might not have even had made a difference. And two, you know the Democratic Party. You know the fact that there is no longer a chance or a hope of changing minds in Ohio, you know, my home state,
or Florida used to be a swing state. The fact that the Democratic Party doesn't speak to you know, middle class or lower class voters in states like Arkansas or Oklahoma, you know where you know, arguably voters there might appreciate some factors of the Democratic agenda, raising the you know, the minimum wage, restoring protections for healthcare and insurance. You know that they that the Democrats rely on, you know, three Midwestern swing states, the so called blue Wall, or
hope to turn Arizona or Nevada or North Carolina. It just feels like there needs to be an overhaul, you know, a rebalancing of expectations in the Democratic Party if they really hope to compete going forward.
Yeah, you know, fun you mentioned blue Wall, but I've heard people say they might need to rechange change the name of that given what's happened in the last three elections. Whereas Democrats only won the Blue Wall States in one of those last three, and that was in twenty twenty. Hey, I wanted to talk about with you some of the other stories that you and the team over at Bloomberg
BusinessWeek have been highlighting in recent days. There's been a lot of handwringing about polling and the idea that every poll that we got, save for a couple polls that people thought were outliers at the time, really showed this race neck and neck a coin flip. It's pretty remarkable to see the team. Chadwick, Mattlin and Alex Tansey argue that even though there was a red wave, we shouldn't be blaming the poles.
What's going on here.
I may not be so charitable as Alex and Chad on this one. You know, there is an argument, and polsters make it that, hey, the results were within the margin of error, so they weren't technically wrong. And Chad and Alex right that polsters are often more accurate than they are precise, which to me feels a little bit like, you know, when your football team loses and they still
say they played a great game. You know, it's like all these states, all the swing states, Sure they might have been within the margin of error, they're still very close, but they all underestimated Trump support. They were all sort of directionally wrong in the same way. And then you look at states like Florida or Texas, and they really extremely underestimated Trump's support, well outside the margin of error. And I think that, you know, polsters still haven't quite
figured out Donald Trump's support this time around. They waited their results, they tried to account for communities, like is the respondent in a rural area or how did they vote previously? And I just don't think they have quite figured it out or gotten it right. And I think, you know, if you were if you made the mistake once again of putting your faith in the polls, you are probably very disappointed last Tuesday night.
Yeah, that's a good point. In the outlier polls that I was talking about. I mean, there have been these, you know, sort of opium polls for Democrats out there, like the one we got Saturday night from Ann Seltzer that showed that Vice President Harris is actually leading in Iowa by a margin.
Of four Would she lose fourteen points?
Yeah, it wasn't even close. So it's pretty remarkable to see that. Do you think, Brad, that we have to as Americans have to adjust the way that we view polling or do we have to figure out a better way to.
Pull Yeah, I mean my opinion is it's a broken science. You know, it relies on a voluntary response from people that are now connected in all sorts of different ways. We're all besieged by text messages and spam and other kinds of unsolicited email, and so most people's instinct is to kind of reject an unsolicited query, and you know, and then you layer on top of that that we live in such a polarized environment that some people don't want to express their opinion because it might be you know,
they might they might feel judged by their community. And so I think, you know, the polling community needs to kind of come together and figure out if there is a path forward. And then, yeah, as voters is in the in the media, as the electorate, I think that relying on polling right now is very dangerous.
Help us figure out the path forward a little bit the best you can. Not asking you to make predictions, but you are one of the few people who has sat down with President elect Trump in recent months. You did that down at mar A Lago for a Bloomberg BusinessWeek cover story that really covered pretty much every gamut of the economic agenda of the president elect.
Give us an.
Idea of how you view, if any his agenda has shifted since then. It was before his assassination attempt, it was before the convention, it was before his selection of J. Dvans, and it was of course before he won the election. Versus what you've heard from him now and how he puts that into action in the coming months during the transition, and what that looks like January twentieth.
I mean, Tim, I just have no idea. He's feeling extraordinarily empowered. He's feeling totally vindicated. There will be no checks on the appointees to his cabinet, to judicial postings, you know. At the same time, like my impression of him when we did go down there in July and just watching him over these past ten years, is that, you know, he does see himself as a man of the people. He wants to be liked. It's extraordinarily important
to him to be liked and respected and admired. And I don't think that impulse goes away now that arguably he's not going to ever face election again. So when it comes to some of the things that he's proposed, you know, mass deportations or tariffs that could you know, according to economists, raise the rate of inflation. You know, he's not going to have any practical moderating influences. But you know, he doesn't want to. I don't think it's in his nature to want to do broadly unpopular things.
So I do wonder if that will end up being a check on some of his instincts. Although you know, the one thing that we heard from him on Tuesday night was he said, you know, promises offered, promises.
Will be fulfilled.
So I do expect him, you know, to come into office looking to immediately put points to the board and to fulfill some of the promises that he made on the campaign trail.
Look, I'm not going to ask you to give up what you're talking to new reporters about in your editorial meetings, but you have a job that requires you to think pretty clearly about what things will look like in the next few months, because they're responsible for assigning stories and understanding what people are going to be talking about in the future. How are you thinking about covering the president elect.
We're going to be looking very precisely at the challenges and battles ahead for the new administration, and we have reached out into the Bloomberg newsroom around the world to look at, you know, what is ahead in Europe and China, in immigration, cryptocurrencies, on on Wall Street, and in tech.
You know, we did.
We were thinking of it in terms of the battles ahead, and it'll be interesting now because I'm not so sure there will be battles. You know, Trump isn't going to have a lot of political opposition if he does control all three branches of Congress. But you know, certainly we saw today Gavin Newsom calling a special legislative session in California, a lot of the states girding to try to put checks on what the administration will do, either legislatively or
in the courts. And so's that's our approach, you know, to cover it carefully and to try to look forward rather than back and look at you know, what the Trump agenda will look like and what it will mean for business.
Well, we look forward to following the story closely and following it at Bloomberg Business Week. Brad really appreciate you taking the time to join us this afternoon. Bradstone is Bloomberg BusinessWeek Editor. He's also the author of four books, including the New York Times bestseller Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos
and The Invention of a Global Empire. If you do want to subscribe to Bloomberg Business Week and unlocked deep reporting and analysis from our reporters around the world, including unlimited access to the magazine, check out our offers right now at Bloomberg dot com slash subscribe now.
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The results of Tuesday's election may have come as a surprise to a lot of people, but not to Ed Price. When he was with us back in October, he shared with us what he learned on his summer road trip, driving across the country eighty five hundred miles from New York to San Francisco through Yellowstone and then back to New York through New Orleans. Complains about prices in the economy came from many people he spoke to, and there was not a Harris sign to be seen in the
rust belt. So he called it for Trump a few months ago. Now he writes, things may get seriously weird ed. Price is a former British trade official now non resident senior Fellow at NYU. He's advised members of the European and British parliaments.
The people have spoken. The people have spoken loudly. I'm just not sure if they've also spoken clearly. And by that I mean yes, obviously this is a massive endorsement of the Trump we know, is it also a massive endorsement of the Trump to come to what extent? Is this a cultural shift, a moment that is a pivot right in the zeitgeist? Or was it just about the economy? Was it really just that CaMLA didn't quite bite with the voters.
I'm not sure what do you mean when you write the people who identified Trump as a threat to democracy must now recognize him as the product of democracy or they risk belittling the system.
Right. So I'm one of those people, Right, I'm one of the people in public who not only called this, but I've been going around to anyone that will listen saying this guy is dangerous, like let's go and read some history, like he's clearly dangerous, and never mind me. Right, they are very prominent, famous Americans who have been doing the same thing, like Liz Cheney. What I mean by that is that now we have to shut up. Now
we have to get behind this result. Because if we now turn around as a cohort of predominantly disgruntled Republicans and Democrats and say, hey, you know what, this is illegitimate, or we go anywhere near suggesting that somehow it's not right, we are doing more or less exactly what Trump did on January sixth, maybe not physically, but this is the real problem, I think.
And is this democracy at work or democracy broken?
Well, I would say Europe is seeing a similar move toward what some would refer to as strong men or at least populism, that we've seen here in the US over the last eight years.
Right, yeah, okay, so fair, But so I don't know. I'm just trying to understand if this is part of the democratic process.
So here's the deep dark secret, guys. Okay, you know, hud around, right, We're not supposed to be a democracy we're supposed to be a republic, which is different. The original design was very mindful of populism. They wouldn't have called it that. Yeah, but the founders designed a constitution effectively to check a king, to keep a king in a box, because you needed some executive We all know this, right,
the Federalists, Jefferson, and all the rest of it. As we've trended through our rightful progressive history and we've sort of built this promise of seventeen seventy six into something real. We've also extended the franchise, extended this sense that you know, of human dignity to the point that we are now a mass democracy. That is not what the founders wanted exactly, because sometimes people can choose candidates that might be suboptimal
in their belief regarding democracy. So this is why we're stuck, right, This is the paradox.
I'm obsessed with this essay that was in the New York Times and it sent around to the team, and it says what we just went through wasn't an election. It was a hostage situation our major parties. It's written by Tyler Austen Harper, Assistant Professor of Environmental studies at Bates. But he says our major parties represents the interests of streaming magnets, the arms industry, oil barons, bitcoin ghoules, and big tobacco, often without even pretending to hear the needs
of voters. A political system like that is fundamentally broken. We consistently talk about money and the amount of money in politics. We talked about how much money was spent, how much money was maybe spent by a one billionaire. Yes, do you agree?
No, I don't agree with that. For me, that sounds sort of Marxist around the edges, right, just to say America's are right off, We're done. This is the line I'm trying to walk. Okay, I'll be honest with you. I'm horrified. I woke up this morning. I felt like I was on over or sick. That's probably a reaction a lot of people have had. I don't get it right. But he is elected. We cannot now say the whole system is broken simply because there was a mass pole.
I mean, the guy's gonna win the popular vote. What we have to do is how better civics. I don't, for the life of me know why we extend the first amendment to Russian troll farms for example. I mean, this is nuts. Okay, So it's third parties as well, right outside, right, And here's something that sort of scared me. Apparently the Russians were putting in threats in parts of the country where you could have swung around, right.
I mean, that's hey, crazy.
You said something really interesting, because I think you're feeling something that certainly I would imagine other Americans are feeling. But at the same time, you had tens of millions of people. And again the former president president elect will win the popular vote this time around, first time in two decades Republicans have done that.
It's pretty remarkable. They were obviously.
Saw his economic messages incredibly appealing. But now the rubber meets the road, and I would imagine I can't see the future, but he has to deliver on that promise.
Can you do that?
Look, I mean, the US economy is a powerful beast. It's outperformed my home country. For example. It makes money, it makes people richer, Right, I don't think that's within the gift of economic policymakers or presidents per se. Will he deliver on that? Again, I'd be lying to you guys how many times we chatted and I said, I don't know. Ye okay, I think he probably can if he puts certain you know, bits and bobs in place. But on that, I mean, let's just say one more
thing about this. For me, the Democrats have messed up wildly. This is not good. And one of the thoughts I had this morning when I was looking in the mirror was maybe I'm the deplorable, right, Maybe I'm the global elitist, elitist deplorable because I've sort of been looking at my neighbors thinking, oh god, you know, why would you vote for this guy? So if he does deliver it back to the core point, right, they were right and I was wrong.
So your net net takeaway bottom line is the democratic process has happened. Yes, get behind your president.
Up and until anything illegal happens. Now, this is also something that that could go down, and I worry that in a gray area if the new president does things that kind of tinker around the edges of the constitution. It's not an outright attack. There were many people in the system who don't quite know which republic am I loyal to? Here the office that is telling me to do something that I think is a bit sketchy or not right, and so this could be a problem, right.
I mean, do we still have checks and balances for now?
I don't know that the Supreme Court is balanced by design if he has a full sweep, right, I can't believe I'm about to say this on a honestly, the ultimate check and balance we have is the US Army. Okay, the military. I have full faith and confidence that the oath that they take to the Constitution is our ultimate backstop. But look, I don't want to be alarmist. I said
what I've said. He's one somebody somewhere in the Democratic Party is going to have to either resign or apologize because this is not not good for the Democratic Party at all.
Or he could be someone who gets into the office and realizes the kind of weight of that job, an importance of the US economy in the global economy, and do good.
Things for the US. I mean, yeah, like we don't.
Know, right, or the market, Jackson, or.
The market, like I keep thinking of the market, the financial You're going to check you.
That's a good point, Captain. Markets do what they want to do. Yeah, And at some point the way we're playing with debt markets will warn us and he may be an office when they do that.
Yeah, so interesting las to think about, to think about it. Thank you, Thank you so much. I thanks to Ed Price, former British Trade official, non resident Senior Fellow over at NYU, Principal for Geopolitical Forecasting at the Global Intelligence and Consulting from Ergo, joining us right here in our studio.
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Eleven thirty, we continue our post election coverage with a look at one of Donald Trump's biggest supporters this election cycle. Yeah, we are talking about Elon Musk, the Tesla CEO and world's wealthiest person according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index, spent more than one hundred and thirty million dollars on pro Trump efforts. He goes to town halls in the critical
state of Pennsylvania. He promised a one million dollar giveaway for swing state voters and appeared at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally with an even higher billing than the Republican's own running mate, jd.
Vance.
Trump's win sent Tesla's shares surging as much as fifteen percent the day after the election, marking its highest level this year. For more on the role of Elon in a second Trump term, we leaned on Bloomberg business Week columnist and contributor to the Elinink podcast, Max Chafkin.
When all is said and done, and we have all the filings, I would not be surprised if Elon Musk's contribution was closer to two hundred, if not even higher than that. But whatever it was, it's way less than the potential. You know, it's a paper gain of say fifteen billion dollars. And really that's the tip of the iceberg. Because Tesla, although it is a highly red related business, it does benefit from lots of government policy that could be impacted by by a new presidency. It isn't the
most direct impact. The most direct one is SpaceX, which is Elon Musk's giant defense contractor and rocket you know company, and you know SpaceX already has you know, huge contracts from the federal government. Trump on the campaign trail talked a lot about the potential for more contracts, you know, talking about a Mars mission which would would likely feature SpaceX prominently and be worth you know, billions, if not tens of billions of dollars. There's also potential government money
for Starlink Elon Musk satellite internet company. You know, Elon Musk has other businesses that could also benefit from this, the boarding company, which is you know, an infrastructure play, you know, Neurallink, that's federally regulated. This is a guy who does business with government regulators in one way or another all the time. And so he arguably, I think from the point of view of the Trump campaign or Trump supporters, he understands it. But obviously he has a lot to gain.
How does this work, though, Like I think about the training we all do as employees about conflicts of interest, and you can't have them, so, you know, we are regulators. On having a CEO of a publicly held company that has US government contracts, has global government contracts, having possibly a job in the US government Secretary of cost cutting perhaps, how does that work? How can it work? I mean, does he have to sell off his test the holdings to do this well.
So, so first of all, I think you should think about Elon Musk's influence in the White House to be at least partly informal rather than formal, because formal influence, like I don't think we're talking about a Senate confirmed position. I think that would be very hard. I think he does very much does not want to give up control of any of his companies or even have to sell stock or even have to put stock in a trust. He wants to continue running his companies and also contribute
to the White House. That's kind of how he has framed it.
So you know, my.
Guess is some sort of x you know, like not in the government, but having some sort of advisory role. You know, Trump did this a little bit in twenty sixteen, And I should also say one thing we learned during that time is that you know, there are formal roles in the White House, and then there is probably the most important important job, which is like who is speaking to Donald Trump regularly? And that I think we we
know Elon Musk is doing that regularly. He's clearly top of mind during that twenty five minute or so victory speech Elon Musk praise took up, like I don't know, between five and seven minutes. It was a substantial part of how Trump framed his candidacy and how he's thinking right now.
What have you learned just in the last I don't know six weeks about what Elon Musk's priorities are, given what he's posted on X, what he's talked about at rallies, and the influence that he would have on a second Trump administration.
Well, I think the priorities are the business priorities probably first and foremost. You know, we talked about immigration, all right, Yes, But I would say that Elon Musk has emerged. I think there were people as Elon Musk started to sort of dip his tone into politics, thinking that he would be a normal This would be like a normal business guy engaging politically, which is you write a check and you turn around and you're out of it, right, And I think Elon Musk has the intention of being a
political player going forward. That is, you know, I was getting questions from from friends and so on, saying, well, what's stopping Trump from just turning around taking Elon's money and not doing any of the stuff he wants not giving space as another contract. And the answer is, besides the fact that Elon Musk is a popular guy, that you could make the argument that Elon musk support was meaningful, you know, perhaps even push it helping to push Donald
Trump over the edge. But even if you leave that aside, Elon Musk is saying that he is going to be a major political donor in the midterm. So he has potentially millions, tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars more money that he is planning on spending. He is going to be, as he said, you know, the George Soros of the right, the power broker, the business guy who who can make or break your campaign.
So transactional or he likes politics all of a sudden, I.
Think he is. I think he's obviously interested in what in how he could benefit and that is very and so in that sense, yes, transactional, but I think I think you really need to look at this as a play for influence and for power that goes beyond just like any anyone contract or anything like that.
There's no shortage of folks and they've been all over cable news over the last two years former Trump administration officials who felt burned by the former president and president elect who are now opposed to him within his people, very the vice president, for example. What are the chances that that Musk relationship goes sour with Trump over the next couple of years.
I mean, I think, just if you look at the personalities, these are two men who really like to occupy the kind of main role, the central role. It's hard to imagine them being able to hang out in a room together and and defer to one another. That said, I think that the reasons that brought them together will keep
them together at least for some time. And you got to look at you know, we talked about the money, the political contributions to president to President elect Trump, but we should be talking also about X, these kind of in kind contributions. Elon Musk bought Twitter and now X, and he he invests a lot of money. He's lost a lot of money on this thing, but he has
really navigated it to a position of influence. He is, arguably, in addition to being the richest guy, the most important conservative media mogul, and and he's gonna so so he's gonna have a lot of influence over Trump over the next four years.
More important than Rupert Murdoch.
Yes, I think it's.
More important than more important, important than to Trump's own social media.
I mean, I think we have to.
How does Trump say?
Way?
I want to put it on Trump's social Sorry, we you know.
Elon Musk is already arguably the most powerful person in the world, and I think undoubtedly now you have to say, yeah, he's a candidate.
Max Chafkin, thank you.
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We are very pleased to have Kathy would for her first interview since the election of a Donald Trump earlier this week. Kathy shares of your flagship fund, the Arch Innovation ETF, surged more than eight percent on Wednesday, was the best day in more than a year, part of the risk entrade that we saw on optimism of a
second term for Donald Trump in the White House. And that's where I want to start with you, because when you were back on with us in October, you indicated without actually saying the former president's name, that you preferred a President Trump over a President Harris strictly from the standpoint of the candidate who you saw would ease the regulatory environment. So here we are. What does another Trump administration mean for you and the companies that are convesting?
Yes, regulation critical.
I think the regulations that have been creeping into the system, actually they started to creep in, they've just flooded the system and really gummed it up. So first, the biggest regulatory issues have been around the SEC, especially when it comes to digital assets or crypto legislation and the FTC as.
It relates to M and A activity.
I think both there are going to be big changes there and that is going to be the beginning.
I think of a lot of regulatory changes.
In his first administration, President Trump basically said for every regulation you want to introduce anyone in my administration, you must get rid of too. I think it's going to be maybe more dramatic than that this time around. And I also think having Elon Musk who announced that he'd like to name a new department, the Department of Government Efficiency. Get that doge doje he I think he's going to come into the administration. I don't think he'll be a
formal part of the administration. He'll be more in an oversight role there as as I understand.
Yeah.
Well, hey, Kathy, I want to jump in here because you mentioned a few things that I want to follow up on. What is Elon Musk? Have you talked to Elon since the election?
No, I have not talked to him since the election.
I did see on X that he was part of the family as they were taking the picture around President Trump's acceptance speech, So you know, I know he's obviously had a tremendous impact on the election. I think he had X made a big difference and his ideas around government efficiency, which will revolve importantly around technology. Artificial intelligence is doing wonders for the most bureaucratic organizations out there.
We know from Pallunteer that it is having a tremendous impact on insurance companies, underwriting process timelines dropping from two weeks to three hours, and even in the military MAVEN pallunteers working on MAVEN with the DoD for targeting the enemy. They have shrunk that department. They don't need as many people. They've gone from twenty to twenty people, which it's pretty amazing what's going on. And I think we'll see a
lot of attrition. Any employee lead the government probably will not be replaced.
I don't think he'll yeah, I just pick up.
I don't think he'll do two trillion dollars in government spending savings in one year. That might be a five to ten year And I think between technology and attrition and lower regulations, maybe the abolition.
Of certain departments, that they'll go a long way.
So you don't see him serving a formal role, but still overseeing some sort of department of government efficiency in an informal way. Help me understand what you see him doing and whether or not it could be some sort of threat to you know, he's a very busy man.
Yes, he's an unbelievable He's the inventor of our age. I think I said that in two thousand and fifteen for the first time when I was on your show with Carol Masser. At the time, he is the inventor of our age, and he is He comes into a problem, assesses it with first principles thinking, doesn't care how things have been done, and comes back with you know ingenious solutions to big problems, whether it's autonomous mobility in the
autonomous taxi space, or in the healthcare space, neuralink. He's in the social network space X in AI x AI, and a lot of people say and SpaceX of course the entire exploration going to Mars. I think a lot of people are I can't believe he can do this, But again, he cuts to the quick first principles thinking and surrounds himself with brilliant people, people who really want to solve the hardest problems in the world. And that's
part of the secret to his success. Very high standards and people who want to be held accountable to very high standards and want to really transform the world.
I want to go back to something that you mentioned at the top of our interview, Kathy, and that's the idea of some of the regulatory challenges that you said have cropped up over the last couple of years and during the Biden administration, specifically with regard to the FTC and the SEC not being present in a second Trump administration, how do you think the Trump regime will approach financial regulation given that he's vound to replace SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
What does that look like.
I think, first as it relates to crypto or digital asset regulation, they're going to replace Gary Gensler with someone who is much more open minded, I would say, and will let the legislative process work go to work. And the SEC is supposed to regulate and force laws. They're not supposed to create laws by enforcement, which is what Gary Gensler was doing. So I think that's going to
be important. I also think if you look at the public equity markets, I think the number of public companies out there right now has been cut in half in the last fifteen twenty years. The regulatory nightmare of being a public company has kept leaders of companies basically saying if I don't have to go public, I am not going public. And so I think we're going to see a lot more work in that regard to give you know, the average investor a shot at some of these moonshots.
So I think that's going to become very important. As far as the FTC, you know, the anti trust has gone way too far. You know, they were denying mergers and acquisitions that really the companies were tangential to one another.
They weren't even really in the same mind.
So we're seeing and yet at the time, at the same time, we've seen these megatech companies grow into you know, massive organizations and dominating their market. So they were denying mergers and acquisitions for you know, think about Jet Blue and Spirit Airlines. That was ridiculous, that was in the same industry, but one is going bankrupt now because because they wouldn't allow.
That m and a.
They were just dogmatic about it in you know, and didn't show to us at least any common sense.
You also mentioned last time you're on with us, you weren't wild about the idea of tariffs, and you know, since then President Trump said that tariff is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.
Do you think he.
Will follow through with his threat of broad tariffs? And how are you preparing and changing your investment style given the threat of tariffs.
Yeah, I'd love to talk about that because we've got more information. I think the way the President is looking at this is if he puts in place tariffs, the other side of that will be income tax and corporate tax cuts. And if you think about it, this is how America started. You know, President George Washington, we had no income tax back then. All the taxes were in the form of tariffs. I do think that they're not going to.
Be, you know, crazy tariffs.
They're going to be much more thoughtful and really focused away from our free trade agreement partners and towards those countries that have not been really letting our companies play on a level playing field within their countries.
So I think there's going to be a lot.
Of negotiation around that really really helping us. But I do think tax cuts, a tax personal and corporate tax cuts are going to be much more important than tariffs in terms of the growth engine that this economy needs. I'll comment on just a couple of other things. I know he wants a week dollar, but if he puts in place the deregulation and the tax cuts that we expect the dollars probably going up. And this reminds me very much of the early Reagan years. It's fascinating what's
going on. Except the first couple of years of the Reagan administration he had to deal with back to back recessions because Vulker was raising interest rates to fifteen percent plus. We've done that. Trump does not have to face that. We think that the Fed went too far, and I think it's important too, because what we expect now is there will be a lot of delayed activity as consumers and businesses try and figure out, Okay, how lower tax is going and how is the world going to change?
Am I going to get a better deal? So we're going to need lower interest rates. However, if we get the growth beyond that that tax cuts and these other measures are going to cause the dollar will probably go up. So I think that will be a surprise, but it's an anti inflationary force as well, and we're seeing commodities react to the dollar going up now in anticipation of these interesting policies.
And then I'd love to just say one other thing.
A lot of people talk about the deficit, and it is a big deficit in the middle of it's a rolling recession. But this deficit is worse than the worst deficit that Reagan faced at five point five percent of GDP. How did he get out of that? And Clinton following beyond him more through growth, not through tax increases. And you can add on top of that government spending restraint. So you know, this is this is going to be extremely healthy and very important.
I think for the stock market. The stock market.
Has gone through a period here of great concentration towards a few stocks, and now we think, and we've seen it in the last few days, there's.
Going to be a broadening out. We're very excited about.
Some Well, we'll talk about that in just a minute. If you're just now joining us, we're joined by Kathy Woods. She's a founder, CEO, and CIO of ARC and Vest. She joins us from Saint Petersburg, Florida. Kathy, I want to talk one more question on regulation and then we'll get to a little more on Tesla and Elon and you know, some of the big themes that you're seeing.
I'm wondering about from you, what you think specifically in terms of financial assets is being held back by regulators, Like what financial assets do you think should be opened up to the trade masses that haven't been.
Well.
It's interesting.
We launched a venture fund and we put it in we put it in an interval fund structure, which is regulated by the SEC, and we've had access to open AI and thropic data, Bricks, SpaceX, Epic, Discord, lots of companies that young people who don't need the income or net worth thresholds that venture funds require. They can get into our venture fund because it's in the interval fund structure.
I think we're going.
To see a much more of a loosening up. You know why we can offer our fund to retail investors for as little as five hundred dollars, it's because we're not taking a carry we're not charging carried interests twenty percent of profits. We do charge a higher fee than you'd get with public companies. And I think we're going to see the democratization increasingly of private companies as well.
I think this administration will advocate for that and well and will lower regulations, whether it's Sarbine Oxley, but regulations that have you know, tied companies and knots. It's very expensive to be a public company now, and so for any company. As the digital world and the physical world converge, we think that's a big theme going ahead. We're going to need the kind of cabal raising that the public
markets can offer over a long period of time. I think more and more of that's going to happen.
So, speaking of the digital and physical worlds converging, we got to talk crypto because bitcoin at a new rap close to seventy seven thousand dollars per bitcoin. Update your prediction for us of where you think bitcoin will go and when now that Trump will serve another.
Term, Yes, he's going to be very bitcoin friendly for sure, including building a strategic reserve of bitcoin. Senator Lummis has been at the forefront of advocating for that, so very exciting there. Our price target hasn't changed, except perhaps we're leaning more towards our bowlcase. Our base case is a million dollars by twenty thirty and if you go into Big Ideas Big Ideas from twenty twenty three in the bitcoinion section, you'll see how we get to that million dollar,
the building blocks of it. You know, it's a substitute for gold, so it's digital gold. It is going to be used as a new asset class. It is a new asset class for institutional investors, a very big idea starting with the spot bitcoin ETFs launched earlier this year, and of course we're very gratified that ARKP was one
of them. And it's going to be used as an insurance policy, both in emerging markets and in developed markets against confiscation of wealth, whether that means outright confiscation of wealth by corruption and so forth, perhaps in emerging markets, or by inflation. Inflation is a highly regressive text. Now, we don't think inflation is going to be a problem with this administration.
In fact, we.
Think that the floodgates of innovation are going to open up, and that we're moving into a world tending towards deflation, but good deflation. Technologically enabled innovation is deflation. Are so I think many people are going to be really surprised at how low inflation goes in the years ahead.
Kathy, I want to talk performance and get an understanding for where you see the future, because you've seen outflows every month in the ARK Innovation ETF this year except for this month, it's a year where you're underperforming the S and P five hundred by a wide margin. The RK Innovation ETF it's about flat, the S and P
five hundred up more than twenty five percent. What's your message to investors who've lost money with you, and do you worry that performance will lead to an extended period where you won't attract money.
Well, I think, as I've just described, innovation had quite a few obstacles during the last few years. So that speaks for itself. If you look at our performance, let's break it down. You look at our ARKW, which is our next generation Internet fund, very focused on AI and digital assets. It's up more than the market this year, more than I think it's twenty seven twenty eight percent. If you look at ARKG, which is our Genomic Revolution portfolio, it is.
Down twenty two percent.
And a big problem for that portfolio has been the lack of M and A.
You know, the absence of M and A.
This this group, if any, needs those liquidity events because big companies, big pharma companies, need the innovation that is coming out of the smaller company companies. So we think that's going to change. We also if you listen to now I don't know, I don't think he'll be FDA commissioner, but Robert Kennedy, you know he wants to clean up corruption in healthcare.
You know, they're a.
Huge lobbying lobbying organizations for pharma. They are not they are not out there advocating for the innovators. I think the most important thing he said is this, we want to go back to the rich tradition of the gold standard of evidenced, evidence based science in terms of healthcare, and the tools are here for preventative, predictive, personalized, and participatory behavior.
Healthcare.
So I think healthcare that the convergence of healthcare sequencing technologies, DNA, RNA, proteins sequencing technologies, artificial intelligence, and Crisper gene.
Okay, So I want to jump in here because and I'm glad you brought in I'm glad you brought up RFK because I had a question about that to you, Kathy, And I'm afraid it's probably our last one, just because we're running out of time. He's been a vaccine skeptic. You mentioned RNA technology, mRNA technology, what the COVID vaccines, the newish COVID VACAS scenes we're based on. Are you concerned that how he views public health is going to affect innovation happening in the space.
No, I'm not.
If you read what he said very recently, he sounds pretty libertarian about vaccinations. You know, there are some people who really feel it's important and others who don't.
And you live and let live. But one thing I'd like to say is.
This past administration has been a menace to what we're calling the multiomics revolution, which is going to be the most profound application of artificial intelligence and new technologies in history, going to cure disease. And yet as I look at the traditional analyst response to these drugs like Chrisper Therapeutics and Intelia that are starting to cure disease, and how they think that's bad business because they don't have an
annuity keeping someone keeping someone's symptoms under control. That's an annuity. They prefer that to a cure. In our latest Monday newsletter, it's called Disrupt ARC Disrupt you can find it on Twitter. You'll see that we believe that curing disease is going to make the patents of the companies with those cures two to twenty times more valuable than those other kinds. So I think there's a complete misunderstanding of the dawn
of the new health age. And I am so excited, so excited that the Trump administration is going to bring this new world to life for us.
Kathy would we always want more time with you. Thank you so much for spending a big part of your afternoon with us. We do appreciate it that it's Kathy Wood, the founder CEO and CIO over at Arc invest joining us from Saint Petersburg, Florida.
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 App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven.
Thirty plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the return of the New York Comedy Festival. Caroline Hirsch, founder of Caroline's on Broadway, joins us on this year's lineup of iconic comics and entertainers, including Bill Maher, Jerry Seinfeld, Bruce Springsteen, and Moore. Plus Sean White wants to make competitive snowboarding as globally powerful
as Formula one. It's all in the pursuit Ski Special First up this hour, something we like to feature each and every year on Bloomberg Business Week. Loriel Pere Women of Worth for the nineteenth year is recognizing nonprofit leaders
from around the US for their philanthropic achievements. This year, the beauty brand identified ten change makers from thousands of entrants who will receive a host of prizes, including twenty five thousand dollars, a mentorship from Lorial Paris on how to enhance their business efforts and access to the brand's national platform to amplify their messages.
For more.
On the twenty twenty four honourees, I was joined by Bloomberg's Katie Greifeld. We caught up with Ali Goldstein, president of Loreal Paris USA, and John A. V Row one of the ten honorees this year. Joonavi is president and founder of New Voters. It's a youth led national nonprofit. It engages high school students and helps them find their voice in politics. Ali kicked it off for us.
Loreal Paris Women of Worth. As you said, it's our nineteenth year of fulfilling This program is our great honor and it's really our essential philanthropic program that aligns to our tagline because You're worth It. As a brand, Loriel Paris strives to really truly support women's empowerment and the idea that everyone is worth it, and what that means is giving back to those and supporting those who are striving to help others. Women helping other women is integrally
part of our brand. Equity and Women of Worth is a program that does just that. So we recognize ten honorees every year.
We have an.
Extensive application program, and we find ten women doing great things with their ten organizations that span a spectrum of causes, and we support them and highlight what they're doing and
really recognize the efforts. For the most part, they're very grassroots, so we find programs that really need us and need our help, so things that are not fully developed and scaled yet, and we bring support, a bit of financial support, we bring awareness, we bring networking and mentorship, and we help them get this bit of the scale and support that they need to do all the great work that they're doing.
And of course, one of those women is joining us right now. Jenavi tell us a little bit about new voters.
Thank you, yeah, thank you so much for having me. We're a youth led five oh one c three dedicated to helping high school students find their voice in politics before they're old enough to vote and then when they become old enough to vote. So four million students graduate from high school every single year, and around ninety percent of them are eligible to register and vote by the
time they graduate. So this is a basically completely under targeted population by voter outreach campaigns, by actual campaigns, and when it comes to largely voter registration. And because of that massive number, if high school students alone, if eighteen year olds alone vote at the same rate as Baby boomers, eighteen year olds would be the deciding voice on every contested election in the country.
Well why don't they?
I mean, I think that a big part of it is that lack of outreach. There was a survey by a Circle at Top, which is one of the leading youth research institutions in the country, and they found that in twenty twenty two, less than fifty percent of eighteen to twenty four year olds were reached out to by any campaign. And when you think about eighteen year olds, if you think about just high school students alone, Like I know, I'm inundated with those messages being like John Oby,
we're disappointed in you donate to me. But I know that the high school students I work with aren't receiving those messages. They're not on these lists because a lot of them aren't going to be eighteen. Because you can register to vote in most states at seventeen if you'll be eighteen by the election, so they're not getting that outreach. Maybe they don't know they can register to vote in time.
And also there is, as i'm sure you guys know, just such a microscope on schools right now and fear of being political at all that they see civic engagement in voter registration as being part of that. And you can't really blame them because they are being targeted and
being harassed for doing things. So because of that, schools are really tentative to make voter registration even those schools are meant to prepare students for future life and being an act of civic and democratic participant is essential to that. They are not integrating voter registration into the programming. But logistical issues aside of you know, people getting reached out to. I also think that there is a lack of civics education in this country and a lack of seeing that
democracy and voting is a way to create change. I think that any discussion, and I if you guys have young people in your lives, I'm sure you know those like young people aren't apathetic, They're desperate to be heard on the issues that impact them impact our generation more than anybody else. It's just they don't see voting as a way to do that.
Would John Avy have been picked had that's not been an election year, So.
Okay, first, she would have been picked because she's fantastic and doing great work. But it is true that the honoreeson their question, you know what, I mean to give some love to but no, But in all seriousness, what's really fascinating about women of worth is the women and the organizations that we recognize are truly sort of a microcosma of what's happening at the time, and we see
that each and every year. And so it's true that, you know, what we see this year is programs around mental health, programs around sustainability, programs around voters like we see a surge in topics that are present and relevant for these times. You know, coming out of COVID, we saw a lot more in healthcare. So there's definitely a representative of sort of what's current at the moment in time, and we see that represented then in terms of the process.
You know, we receive a couple thousand, two to three thousand applications every year. We have a pretty rigorous process for recognizing and selecting the women. We invite our employees to get involved. We partner with Points of Light and an organization that helps us vent, and then we have, you know, we narrow down and we have a final group that we select with colleagues that we work with as well as our spokeswomen, Asia Naomi Naomi King, who's
very involved in this as well. Every year she helps select the finalists and she's with us at the ceremony in November to choose the final ten.
What does new voters look like post presidential election?
Yeah, no, I mean, I think the critical thing that you guys definitely know. But there are elections every single year. There's two elections every year. Some states there's four elections in a year, and civic engagement at the amongst everybody, but especially among young people has to happen every day, three sixty five sometimes three sixty six days a year. So we are operational in around four hundred high schools
across the country, largely in Pennsylvania and Arizona. And what we do is we support the students and we empower them to run voter tstration drives in their schools and get students who are both old enough to vote and also not old enough to vote to run a registration drive. In addition to that, every student is matched with a personal college mentor who helps them, you know, figure out
how to mobilize their school. How to you know, We're like, use the different social clicks at your school, you know, like day one, get the lacrosse captain and the football captain to get their their team registered, then the drum major on day two, and then day three like.
The mentioned debate team. You know much there.
Now, there are some there are some pools of people who are very civically engaged. There's actually and this actually leads into another thing that we do, which is research on high school political behavior, because anecdotally, you can probably think that, Okay, you know, the music kids and the debate kids are very registered to vote, and the stem kids and the athletes are probably less so. And there's actually no real research into high school political behavior and
civic engagement. Kind of following along this trend of they're not really being resources dedicated to high school students registering to vote. However, I do work with a number of incredible organizations through we lead a coalition called the New Voters Collaborative, which is around thirty forty organizations dedicated to high school civic engagement, everything from the YMCA to when we all vote, and we meet every month to talk
about high schoolivic engagement. But we also have a research network dedicated to figuring out why high school students vote or what makes them want to and that's all done by researchers nineteen years old and under John Vy.
What's the link now to registering these students and them actually going out and voting. Just because someone's registered doesn't mean they're going to vote.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
However, among high amongst high school students eighteen year olds, they actually found that around eighty to eighty three percent of eighteen year olds, once registered, vote will turn out to vote just as a controlled you know, looking at the voter file. So it is a pretty high conversion rate of registered voter to voter when it comes to eighteen year olds. I think that it is necessary though, to follow up any registration with conversations with information about
registering to vote. I mean, it's something they've found is as amazing as automatic voter voter registration is, which is when the DMV will automatically redshirt you to vote when you read short to vote. They found that that has really low conversion rates of registered voter to voter because it's not coupled with a conversation. It's not coupled with you know, this is why you should readshor to vote. So this is in no way saying that AVR shouldn't exist.
It's incredibly important and essential to eliminating barriers to registering to vote. But it also means that you still need to have those conversations in the classroom. And again that's something that teachers are afraid of doing. And that's why as a nonprofit, as a student led organization or youth led I'm no longer a student, we really prioritize having those conversations across the political divides regularly.
As we mentioned, John ave a Row just one of the honorees of the Looreal Women of Worth program this year. Ali give us an idea of some of the other nine and where they're from and what they're working on.
So the ten women are a highly diverse group, so they represent many many causes. They're represented across the United States, across age, ethnicity, and that is an important part of our program to really be as diverse as possible in terms of causes. There's quite a few very significant and emotional causes. So there's a woman named Laura Pohulis who runs an organization called Control Alt Delete, and she provides resources for women who are in domestic violence situations to
literally escape those dangerous environments. So she and her organization will literally come and rescue women and their children and help them get out of these organizations. There's another organization that is about helping refugees. We also know that's a very important topic of recent Her name is Mae Muna who organization is the Tea Foundation, So she supports helping refugees get on their feet following their move. And then
there are more health focused organizations. So Sherry Mathis les an organization called the Mammogram Poster Girls, which seems pretty straightforward but is so needed. And I think what she has identified is that women in under served, underprivileged neighborhoods are underrepresented getting mammograms. And we know you can prevent breast cancer through early detection or at least prevent mortality. You know, prevent the most significant issues with early detection.
So her organization is really about providing mammograms, free mammograms to women who normally don't have access to them, which is really really powerful. So the women are really fantastic. It's a fantastic It's a great group, all with amazing causes.
You've met all of.
Them, Joonavie, and so you've seen. I think what's also very powerful is we don't only just have the ten this year, but we have one hundred and ninety women behind it.
Talk about that a little bit because you've been coming on this program each and every year for as long as I've been doing this program, and every year you bring somebody, yes, and what they talk about are the resources that they have with this group of alumni.
Yes, So so you know what we what we do over time is you know, we give them awareness. We've we've evolved to be much more digitally led social so it was a bit more traditional when five years ago, when we've really moved how we activate the Women of
Worth to be much more modernized, so more digital. We've enhanced with a program called Global Giving, which not only do we give financial resources, but now we have an opportunity through GlobalGiving dot org for consumers to contribute to the organizations as well, and we've added a network through LinkedIn where we've connected all the one hundred and ninety women. And what you know, when you have one hundred and
ninety women, you can imagine there's overlapping causes. But that's not a detriment because now we have a network of women who can help other women who who've been in similar circumstances. So the women who were recognized ten years ago have evolved their organizations, they've scaled, they've learned, they've made mistakes, and now they can help the younger women, the newer women support their organizations. The other thing is next year is twenty is our twentieth anniversary, which is
super exciting. We are planning very big things. Our ambition is to bring back all two hundred women and make a real celebration of the impact that all of these two hundred women have had together over the last twenty years, which is really powerful and really exciting.
Well, now you have to do it.
I know it's on the record, on the record.
Ali Goldstein, president of Larel Paris USA, here in our Bloomberg Interactive at Brokers Studio. Also with us John A. V. Raw honoree, founder and president of New Voters. It's that youth led national nonprofit. They work to engage high school students to ensure that youth voices are heard and prioritized in politics.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us Live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Apple card Play and then broud Otto with a Bloomberg Business act or warned us Live on YouTube.
New York known for its comedy scene, and a big part of that has to do with the New York Comedy Festival, which kicked off this weekend. It's where the best of the best comedians from all over gather each year, and this year it's celebrating its twentieth anniversary with more than one hundred shows at venues throughout the five boroughs. We're talking names like Judd Apatow, Gabriel Iglesias, Bill Maher, Miss Pat, Tracy Morgan, and many many more. Caroline Hirsch
is the founder of Caroline's on Broadway. It operated from nineteen eighty one to twenty twenty two. She's also founded and produced the New York Comedy Festival for years. She joined us to talk about the Comedy Festival this month and the fine line between politics and comedy. We spoke to Caroline just before election day.
We purposely had the festival after the election.
Did you really have something?
Oh yeah, you can't get in the middle of that makes.
Sense, right, talk a little bit about that though.
I mean a lot of the comedians you have that who Carol and I just mentioned politics front and center for them, and I think a guy like Bill Maher, I mean, he's all over it.
Can't wait to see Bill.
I think he gave a little promo on his show about the New York comedy He's did.
He did, He's been. You know, he's Bill's kind of like a fixture. Last year he took a year off, but you know, he's back again. He's been in the festival for a number of years now, and we always usually have it, like actually one year we didn't have. We had it before and I think it was before Donald Trump got into office and he had some words to say about that. So I have to say, you know, Bill's been this guy that is really center. He call sings out the way he sees them, and I think
he's very honest. I mean, I love watching him and I think Bill's got a bigger career now than he's ever had.
Well, okay, so that's so interesting to say that, because one thing that's different now that he's doing is this Club Random podcast, which is so different than his normal show. Right, it's a weekly show on HBO is what he's known for, but he has this podcast that he like just sits down with people and does these long interviews, Like seems like everybody's doing this now.
I think, Yeah, Listen podcast is is the talk radio of today. So they're very interesting people. We have lots of podcasts in the festival that kind of like, you know, so how did he get made? You know, which is great, which is a group of people that got together one night at a party and said, hey, how did that ever get made for TV? And they created a podcast?
We love that. Well wait, so wait, so when you think about what you want to do with the festival and you've been doing for such a long time, and I'm sure there's evolution, and there's obviously you know, the iconic comedians you want, I'm sure our new voices. Tell us how you think about it every year?
Well, we we we think about it like the day after we like, you know, the middle of this November coming up. We'll think about next year, but it takes about a year to get everybody kind of in line and between the schedules and this and that. So you know, we have close to three hundred shows around New York City with you know, two hundred or more comedians that are around, so you know, we have something for everyone.
I mean, you know, we're at the greatest venues in the world, you know, the Beacon Theater, Town Hall, Carnegie Hall, and it's an array of great comedians like Nikki Glasier, Mattato Lane, Randy Rainbow, Michelle Batteaux, Rachel Branahan who played Marvelous Missus Mayzell, which is kind of a you know, look, there are two hit shows on TV today. They were The Marvelous Missus Mazelle and Hacks and they both kind
of centered around the life of drivers. Right so here you god, yeah, which is really good.
Well, but it's also a combination.
You've got a lot of musicians.
Bruce Springsteen.
We have Bruce, but Bruce is part of our big event because why stand up for heroes? Love it. It's something that Bruce is.
Nice, never questioned Bruce being anywhere, but.
He's been on the show for it's our eighteenth year of doing Stand Up for Heroes. He's been on the show for seventeen years. He took one year off when he was doing his Broadway show, and he's been a constant there. And he's very involved with vet issues and raising these funds. And we have a Stella line up this year.
And it is It is the twentieth annual New York Comedy Festival, and the Stand Up for Here, like the Stand Up for.
Here is eighteen years, it's eighteen years, and it's you know, over this time, we've raised over one hundred million dollars the veteran causes. And I just went over I'm on the board of the Woodchar's Foundation. I just went over a number of grants. We get ten million dollars in grants. This year. When there was a hurricane in Tampa, we were there helping out the vents. So we're like action packed, vetted the best way you could possibly be. And this money is well spent with the veterans.
I get to say, with veterans, I mean nothing funny about it that you know, we have individuals in our country who go over and fight and fight for freedom and to protect other countries, to protect Americans and American assets, and come home and then it's like they're forgotten and it's you know, I'm not going to get political, but it is great to see the efforts that you do and others to help them out.
Yeah, you mentioned Bruce Springs, but Jim Gaffagan, Nora Jones, Questlove, Jerry Seinfeld, John Stewart, Mark Norman, Yeah, Mark Norman.
Yeah, it's a great line up.
It's going to be What are you looking forward to?
You said, Bill said, yeah, I go to you know, get to see Bill. You know, Bill started with me in my first club on eighth Avenue, so we've known each other for years. I always excited to see him, to hear what he has to say. I'm excited for Like, did you know Bill was going to do well?
Did you think, like, what do you like?
What is it when you see somebody or you know this, this person's gonna be Bill.
Bill had great stand up he did forty years ago. Yes, so he was he was great at that and stayed with it and then politically incorrect got him to where he is today. So you know, he just was there tenacity and stayed with it and and did great. But we have a lot of people that have worked at the club for so many years, like Tracy Morgan, JB. Smooth, Miss Pat is at town Hall. Also, Adam Ray is playing Doctor Phil at the Beacon Theater. Jabooki Young White is also at the hard Rock. The hard Rok is
playing a big part in the festival. We have shows there practically every night at the hard Rock Hotel. It's great venues that that's there. We have a tribute to Gilbert Gottfried that's there, So it's it's kind of taken the place of the Caroline Space and we're doing all of those shows there at the hard Rock.
We're going to talk more about Carolines in just a minute, but I do want to get you to weigh in on the election stuff and just like the way that comedy has played in just over the last week. I mean, if you think about what happened at Madison Square Garden with Tony Hinchcliff in the way that that comment from him just dominated the news cycle, did you think we'd be talking about like a comic who's known for roasts, No, in.
Fact, in the President you know what you call it is like a bad booking, you know, just like a bad booking, and it shouldn't have happened. But then again, you hire Tony, you have to know what comes with Tony. It's like, you know, there's no filter, so you really can't you really can't filter a comedian like that, as you know from the Tom Brady roast. I mean, he was really out there, so you have to know, you know, so you know, the person that booked him on the show.
Maybe not something you would suggest for a political closing.
I would if I was in charge of that, but the comedians never, I would never put him up there.
So what type of comedian would you put up? Well, you know we.
Had we had we had Jim Gaffigan that was at the Al Smith dinner. Yeah, and that yeah, I mean he made points but a little more, you know, and he's tasteful, you know, he's a conservative, but he made points a different way. So there's a way to do it. So you have to know, you know, you have to know how to book it. So Tony was not the right person to be there at that time.
So can we assume that the festival since it'll be after the election that there'll be a lot of politically all right, close up on Caroline, Are.
You kidding me with this question?
I mean, well, what do you make what?
I know?
I know?
All right, so I asked the obvious.
I mean, I watched the late shows at night, and it's not a night that doesn't go by between Kimball and Colbert. It just doesn't stop. It's like I have to walk out of the room until the monologues over. It just it doesn't stop.
From a comedy.
From a comedy perspective, though, does SNL still carry the weight that it once did?
I think we're all talking about it, so I guess it does.
Yeah, really, yeah, interesting because I wasn't expecting you to say that. I was expecting you to say, Okay, well, you know, maybe podcast, YouTube and you know, these sort of things that get people. TikTok even it does, we talked about with you in the past.
But they repurpose everything from SNL goes onto all of those sites the next day, so that's where they connect with young people. They really do. I mean, I think I just read that SNL did a big deal right now with TikTok. There's a lot of stuff from SNL on there, so it gets repurposed and then it gets seen and it gets everybody just talking about it, so that when the news knows that Kamala Harris goes onto that, we all talk about it the next day. So it's a it's a good book for her.
I was gonna say, what about it being a springboard for young comedians in this dan and age? I mean, you used to be on SNL and that's where so many legends got their start, didn't I I thought.
I also read that Billy Crystal SNL passed on him and then he did you did care, and that he liked and then ended up on an that was probably I believe in nineteen eighty four eighty five, Dick Ebrisol came in.
Lord Michaels was not producing. Then Dick Ebersol came in and put him on, and then Billy just exploded again. Yeah, it's just kind of interesting. Carolines was like a good luck chure on for a lot of people.
So, so how do you think about bringing it back in some form?
Well, I think we want to bring it back in a bigger way, more of a big event that might happen or something or than that. Yeah, she looks guilty.
She looks like she's got something cooking.
Sat here a year ago.
You sat here a year ago and said you'll have something for us next time you're here. So we're still working on it.
We're still working on it.
Yeah, when you say bigger, you mean outside of New York too, Maybe?
Yeah, I mean, like you know, Caroline's like as the brand taking bigger and just outside of the four Broadway walls, it'll be in other people's walls.
One thing that we've we've talked about at Bloomberg BusinessWeek is this idea that Joe Rogan is trying to make Austin happen as a center for comedy like it happened in LA and New York.
Do you buy that.
I think he's done a good job of bringing a lot of comedians there. I don't know if it'll be the centerpiece of comedy, but he's bringing you know, the New York the New York comedians, and the LA comedians and the Dave Chappelle's to go in there. But you know, at New York is where it's at. New York is where it's at. New York is bigger than LA. With the comedy.
So how do you think about comedy and like the evolution of it. I mean, I grew up with a dad. I'm trying to think the roasts with like Dean Martin and like just and they still can you. But does it.
Really change in terms of what makes people laugh? No, I think it's you know, it's it's what makes you laugh. Is is the common thread of the joke because it happened to you, it happened to me. Hahaha, isn't that funny? So that's really why we all love comedy because it brings us together in way to enjoy something. And that's really why it makes you feel good. Yeah, and it's a stress reliever and you know.
Always talking about loving to laugh.
With comedy, you can take some of the bad news, it could be repurposed in another way.
That was Caroline Hirsch, founder of Caroline's on Broadway, also producer of the New York Comedy Festival taking place right now still head on Bloomberg Business Week Sean White's Next Big Trick, The best place to ski around the world and the right year to get the job done. It's all in Pursuits. The Ski Edition that's next This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen on Applecarplay and then Broun Auto with a Bloomberg Business act or watch us live on YouTube.
The average person probably won't be able to appreciate the acrobatics involved in a cab double cork fourteen forty. Maybe Chris Rauser can, but they can surely appreciate ski resorts with the best powder, slip side ramen shops, and hot springs.
To soothe sore muscles.
It's all in the Pursuit section of BusinessWeek magazine. It's out on newsstands now, at Bloomberg dot com and on the Bloomberg terminal. It's the Ski Edition, probably one of my favorite editions to talk about each and every year. We begin with famed Olympic snowboarder Sean White's mission to take the sport to new heights with us. We got the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits and also the Bloomberg BusinessWeek contributor who wrote the story about the Olympic champion, Jen Murphy,
joining us too. So back when I lived in Colorado in veil. After college, they had this thing called the snowboarder sandwich, which was free. It's totally free.
Okay, Okay.
You go to the place where you get the food, and you go to the saltines. You grab the saltines and you fill them with chilula sauce, and that's your lunch on the ski slopes.
Salty.
But it turns out it's not just you know, everybody who's a poor snowboarder, it's also the professionals who shockingly don't earn any money. Yes, snowboarding Chris, I was shocked.
To see this story has found his way to.
Our Everyone needs an editor. My editor is Chris.
Yeah.
Yes, snowboarding nationally in the US is on the rise, and there were It was up ten percent last year. There was something like nine point nine million Americans who snowboarded at some point or another. Skiing is actually slightly on the decline, But snowboarding as a professional sport has sort of only really ever had a patchwork of competitions.
Professional athletes actually end up spending more money than they can possibly earn, and it just doesn't have the sort of fan base that a lot of other sports have. So Sean White are probably our most famous snowboarder, decided to change that with a new organization called the Snow League, which is going to be a series of international competitions.
Hopefully you'll be able.
To watch it on TV and it'll actually they'll count as Olympic qualifiers.
So Jen Murphy, come on in here because you had an exclusive interview with Sean White all about his attempt to try to give it the F one effect, what's his big plan and who's.
Back in it.
You know, it's really exciting, I think for him, he obviously had his legacy as an athlete, you know, most decorated Olympian in snowboarding, and now this is his next legacy to really make this a sustainable career path for athlete. So it's going to kick off the snow You will kick off this March in Apson, Colorado, which is quite exciting. That has been home to the X Games for years and will continue to be. Sean has brought in some
seriously big investors. Some of them include Blackstone Inks, David Slitzer, former NFL star Larry Fitzgerald. Junior Range Sports is going to be advising on the media rights and the commercial partnership strategy, and you know, the big thing I think that's gotten attention from particularly from the athletes as a price pers you know, as Chris was saying, traditionally you just didn't make a lot of money from snowboarding competitions. People really had to rely on sponsors to help support
them and support their travel costs. That snow League is promising a one point five million dollars price perse and that will be split between men and women equally, and that's you know this, this sport hasn't seen that type
of prize money before, so it's really exciting. And I will also note, you know, in the media a lot of this cover drum as now League has talked about snowboarding, that it will also include free skiing as well, So not just snowboarding, but free skiing as well will be introduced in the later half of the first season, which will be in twenty twenty six.
We'll talk about the timing of this jen because it comes at a really interesting time for snowsports where we're seeing not necessarily an increase over the last few years in thenumber of people who are skiing, but an increase in the number of people who are snowboarding, So what's happening there.
Yeah, you know, this great book just came out, The Darkest White, by Eric blem and it looks back at the late snowboarder Craig Kelly's life. He sadly died in an avalanche, but back in the day, like he was, you know, Sean White went to his snowboarding camp like he was the first sighting true snowboarding star. And the
book chronicles the whole history of snowboarding. So, you know, in the late nineties and early offs, snowboarding was like the cool kind of counterculture thing to do and have this rise, and then it kind of started to fall off in people. You know, as the year in equipment got better and better, more people turned to skiing. And now we're seeing that change again and snowboarding is having this you know, other comeback, which is really exciting to see.
There's obviously the X Games, which I think people are familiar with, that has a lot of different kinds of sports both winter and summer. Are there other snowboard tours that are happening that are kind of catching on to this moment you're describing.
So now it's it's very interesting and it's you know, these leagues, including the Snow League, really want to move away from the term extreme sports and say action sports. It still sounds sounds action and extreme to me, but you know, they're they're focusing on this action sports. And I think that came from the Olympics. Really when the Olympics started including the halfpipe for snowboarding, freestyle skiing. Now
we have surfing, mountain biking. It's really the Olympics has put it on the very are of a much broader audience. And so a few days before Sean announced the Snow League, the X Games actually announced that they will be launching for twenty twenty six, the X League, which will be a new action sports. Now they have the X Games, which is just a competition, but this will be a
full on league. And then Natural Selection Tour is a more of a freestyle snowboarding competition that personnowboarders Travis Rice had started a few years ago. He has just I think only a week ago and recovered the same pursuits as well. He announced that he will be expanding to the Natural Selection Tour to surfing, mountain biking, and freestyle skiing.
So and you know, back in the day we had a few different snowboarding competitions like the Dew Tour by Mountain Dew and COVID kind of shut them down and the prize money wasn't there. But I do think you mentioned earlier, you know, the F one effect. The success of F one, particularly due to the Netflix series The Drive to Survive, really showed people that these more obscure sports have huge potential because the characters are so fascinating.
So both Sean and Travis Rice a natural selection, have said they are really leaning heavy on the storytelling and content. I mentioned, you know, creating some docu style series inspired by er. I've just arrived to really help put these athletes on people's radar. And even if you aren't into freestyle skiing or snowboarding, you're going to get hooked on following these athletes.
I would watch that, no question, and I think I think it's a pretty cool sort of like next move for somebody who's spent his entire life Chris in the industry, someone like Sean White, who is a legend to so many people, and don't forget, he's got the whole video game thing too, go for him and the luxury thing. The luxury which we love.
He is he's, you know, made snowboards from Montclair, like he has. He's a bunch of luxury sponsors and he wants to spread that around.
Get some of that biz.
Hey, Jen, I know you have to run because you're in Africa. I think you're about to get on a plane. But before you boarding a plus sure boarding? Before you do that, can we get like one minute on some gear ahead of the ski season. Because you've got a great piece in Pursuits about boots and skis what should we have our eyes on?
Oh that's such a good question. So I grew up snowboarding and I am a news skier, So this is gear is really exciting for me because a lot of the technology we're seeing out there. If you're an okay skier, this will make you feel like you've just improved going like you know, leaps and bounds in one season because the technology you are seeing. So I would say quickly, the Nordic Enforcer ninety nine is the ski I have
my eye on for this year. It has this cool new like they call it a pulse coore, which is basically an underfoot layer of rubber to kind of dampen the ski so you can get through chop your terrain without really like punishing your legs. I kind of joke and say it's the Goldilocks of all mountain, all conditioned skis this year boots which people have. You know, one reason I stayed away from skiing was because friends always
complained about the boots. And we're seeing saying you're so uncomfortable. We're seeing these really cool new boots, including a whole new boot brand called Gainom. They are becore certified. They have a whole new design which looks really weird, but it has a wider toe box and it doesn't sacrifice to a hole. So I would check those out there. That is from the Faction Company.
I wish I would haved go back in time and save my purchase from a couple of years ago and go and.
Try some of these.
Jen, really appreciate you taking the time. No, you got to run, Jen Murphy. She's a Bloomberg BusinessWeek contributor.
Chris.
One place I've always wanted to go skiing and I never have, and I'm not going to go this year is Japan. It is so hot right now, I know, well, so hot in the sense of like everybody wants to go skiing there, and part of the reason is because well, it hasn't been good snow in other parts of the world.
Yeah, you know, we should be optimistic about snow this year in other parts of the world because of La Nina. But I some of my best friends are all going Tonseco this year, and I am a fire with jealousy because we always write about skiing in Japan and how the powder is totally incredible, and it's you know, we got a little kids.
It's gonna be a long.
Time before I can get all the way out there,
like you Tim. But yeah, in the in the section this week, we have a guide to three of the places that three of the skis sort of centers that we recommend and that you know, you may not know so much about if you're skiing out in the West, particularly you may know Noseco, but you may not know Hakkaba Valley and Nozawa Onsen, which are two places which are actually a little closer to Tokyo and and maybe a little bit less known, but they have the same like
incredible powder. Hakaba Valley is known as the next Niseko, and you know, there's fun there's really.
Good hotels at all the places.
So if you don't necessarily want to get Toneco, but you can get to Japan, there's these other places.
Yeah, and I love how each of the resorts that you take us through sort of gives the pros the cons and like what to expect there. Ski passes are so much cheaper in Japan than they are.
In the US.
Well, everything is cheaper in Japan famously, but like this, but yes, oh yeah, like to ski passes everywhere.
Ski pass Yeah, the US is just so it's gotten so expensive for skiing. Speaking of expensive places to ski, you got a list of sort of like ski this, not that in pursuits right now about different places to go in the same region. So you have a couple here in the US, but also some in Europe as well.
Yeah, so in the print edition we have three places in Europe that we recommend because you know, a lot of times you know about a certain place, you hear your friends talking about Kurschevell, Machev something like that, and you want to go, and then whoa, it's crowded, expensive, I waited too long. And then there's other places right nearby, like right around the corner and that are, you know.
Less crowded but beloved by locals.
And maybe even better or more interesting. So instead of Courchevell France, we recommend you try Saint Nicola de Voce, which is which is actually part of the same Mont Blanc ski region, but it's less crowded and also less expensive, and it's accessible for more levels of skiers.
We just scratch the surface when it comes to the ski special in a Bloomberg Pursuits, so everybody check it out. It's on the Bloomberg Terminal, It's at Bloomberg dot com, Slash BusinessWeek and also on newsstands now. Chris Rouser, the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits. Thanks, thanks guys for Carol Masser. I'm Tim Stenevek. Have a good and safe weekend.
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 Terminale.