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Hi, everyone, welcome to the Bloomberg Business Weekend Podcast. After another non stop week full of earnings from the likes of Netflix, Tesla, Intel, GM and many many others, we also had a twenty billion dollar currency swap deal between the United States and Argentina, We had US sanctions on Russian oil giants, and then gosh, I forgot this was early in the week. A big media company, Warner Brothers Discovery in play big time.
I think it's fair to call this a mega busy week, and I don't to get ahead.
Of ourselves capitals, capital letters on all of.
It, but we should get used to it because next week is going to be really busy too. I know, right, Okay, We're going.
To keep it here.
We're going to keep it on what happened over the past week Our highlights for the weekend, explaining that deal between the United States and Argentina, the why, the why now, and why that country. We're going to get all of that and more in just a moment.
Also President Trump's move backing off of an isolated United States. It does feel like this is kind of going on. It's all in a rare Earth's deal with Australia to fight China. This was kind of one of the first big moves that someone pointed out that maybe the US isn't going to go it alone here.
And speaking of the President, we've got his top antagonist. It is the cover story of the latest issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine.
Plus in our second hour, Amazon Robotics chief technologist on robots in the workforce of tomorrow, Cheat Coats on how to improve your overall wellness totally into that and Tim Yes, we know we're all about generative and agentic AI LM's, but a lot is happening when it comes to quantum computing. Just asked the mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
We did.
That's all happening. In our second hour.
We begin with an agreement signed this past week by the US Treasury with the Central Bank of Argentina. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessant characterized the Treasury's twenty billion dollar swap line with the crisis pro nation's central bank as a quote economic stabilization deal, an agreement that is, quote a bridge to a better economic future for Argentina, not a bailout. We had so many questions about this, and there was really one voice we wanted to turn to.
Bloomberg New Economy editorial director Eric Shatzker. He's covered numerous global financial and market cycles. He's interviewed various Latin American leaders, including Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro and former Argentinian President Mauricio Macri. Eric also had the September cover story on Secretary Scott Bessant for Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
I think we can unpack this in three ways. One is why is the US doing this? The second is what exactly have we got here? And the third would be how might it all end? Perhaps in tears. I'll take on the why. And this actually goes back to that story you mentioned that I did about Scott bessen
the Treasury Secretary for Bloomberg Business Week in September. I spoke to the Treasury Secretary back in late July, and at the time he told me that one of his overarching goals in office as the Secretary of the Treasury was to quote unquote lock in dollar supremacy. And I
asked him, well, how do you do that? And he said, and I didn't appreciate the significance of it at the time, was by facilitating swaps through the Treasury Department, as opposed to the way that swaps have traditionally been facilitated, which is by the FED from central bank to central bank. Now there is precedent for this. The Treasury Department did that from Mexico back in the mid nineties the Peso crisis,
and it helped, and maybe it'll help Argentina. But it appears that under the Trump administration, the government's focus is on again cuts to the why. It's not just about locking in dollar supremacy. It's using the dollar as an economic tool to support countries with which the United States feel it has some kind of ideological kinship or some kind of trading relationship. It's not like Argentina has been one of America's major trading partners.
It has not.
The amount of bilateral trade that goes on between those two countries is a fraction of what it is with the United States in Mexico, or the United States and Canada, or even the United States and Europe. So in that respect, it's unusual. I think. If you think about it though, in terms of locking in dollar supremacy and using the dollar as an economic tool, a tool of geostrategy, if you will, it begins to make a little more sense.
You said that different elements that we could we could talk about with this. One is how another one is how this could end.
Well, let's talk about what is it that we're actually talking about here. You mentioned that the Treasure Secretary today talked about it as a bridge to a better economic future and not a bailout, and not a bailout. But the operative word there is bridge, because bridge means something from here to there. In other words, what's the there? This is a bridge until when?
Right?
Is it a bridge until after Argentina's Mitrum elections on the twenty sixth of this month Sunday? Is it a Trump seems to suggest as much the other day when he said, well, you know, if Malay doesn't win we'll get rid of the swap line, So that's one possibility. Is it a bridge until Argentina decides to abandon the Peso peg, which starts an acre the Minister for Deregulation
and State Transformation said was in the cards. Is it a Is it a bridge until the twenty billion dollars runs out, which might happen because Argentina was burning through a billion and a half dollars worth of foreign currency reserves a week a billion and a half a week before the swap line was put in place. Is it until Argentina's economy can eventually support an exchange rate at
this level It certainly can't right now. Or maybe is it a bridge until I don't know, President Trump just loses patience or President Malay does something to annoy him.
It's a lot to be any of those. It's a lot of questions. It's a lot of like possible scenarios. You know, Bloomberg reporter that Jamie Diamond is visiting Argentina kind of an unprecedented show of support for the government. Mean, at the same time, we've had I think it's the Wall Street Journal reporting that banks are having a hard time kind of getting around this without some kind of guarantees.
Nobody knows. Nobody knows what Argentina is pledging as collateral. In fact, nobody has seen the agreement. To our knowledge, the banks themselves, which you're playing intermediary roles here, don't know what Argentina has agreed to pledge. You know, so that the United States isn't just on the unlimited losing end of a bad trade. And that is possible here, right.
The big difference between what's going on here and the comparison that everybody wants to make with the trade that broke the Bank of England that the Treasury Secretary was involved in that he worked for George Soros and Stan Druck and Miller back in the early nineteen nineties. The big difference here is that then the UK had nobody backstopping them. Now Argentina has the United States backstopping it.
But as I say, nobody knows until when nobody knows if there are any mechanisms that have been put in place to make the US taxpayer, if you will, hole, should the Treasury Department sustain losses on this trade. I've heard that Argentina's uranium reserves may be involved that some kind of preferential access to Argentine markets might be involved.
Who knows. It's just it's like it's like a ready aim fire, you know, or a fire you know, ready aim in the sense that the swap line was put in place, and then it appears, since no document has surfaced yet, that all of the mechanics behind it are being taken care of after the fact. I don't know, but my point is that if anybody knows, he or she hasn't put in his hand to say, hey, I know.
The Treasury Secretary, as you mentioned, described this as a bridge to a better economic future for Argentina, not a bail out. Is the not a bailout part a fair way to describe it in your view? Is this not a bail out?
I think a bailout is in the eye of the beholder in some respects. It's unquestionably a gift to President Milay ahead of these mid term elections. It isn't working for the time being right. The PAESO fresh weakened today to a fresh low, and Argentine bonds which had gained earlier on the formal announcement of the sagree and have since given up those gains and I think are posting losses, so it would appear to be a gift in the sense that the PASO exchange rate or the PEG to
the dollar is unsustainable. Milay doesn't want to allow the PAESO to float freely. He wants to maintain this peg so that Argentine inflation is under control. A critical critical economic consideration going into the midterms. So even if Argentine, I like, there's no question if the PAESO peg were to be abandoned today, it's not like inflation would Inflation would show up immediately, but it wouldn't show up in
official statistics. Excuse me for some time to come. But Argentines are so conditioned to this, they know what would happen.
Again, I want to go back to and I know we've got a couple more minutes here, but Eric the US involvement, and again it may be a relationship President Trump wants to have with the President of Argentina, But I mean, Bloomberg editors wrote an opinion piece why isn't the IMF coming in here? And the other question we as a group have been trying to figure out, is it also to kind of keep China at Bay is there that aspect as well.
Argentina also has an existing eighteen billion dollar currency swap with China that goes back well before Sturtzenegger was the central Bank governor. I think it may go back to twenty fifteen, and perhaps even before that. There has been some talk that one of the conditions behind, or at least one of the underlying conditions to this swap with the Treasury would be that Argentina somehow winds up that
previous swap agreement with the Chinese. Who knows as far as why the IMF isn't involved, I think the easy answer to that question is how many months would it
take the IMF to get its act together? This was something that this was a perceived need on the part of the Argentine government the Malay government heading into these critical midterm elections that there's no way, there's no conceivable way that the IMF, in my mind, given everything that we've observed in our careers and everything we know that precedes that there's no way that it could possibly act it without much haste.
So before we let you go, how could this end? What could it mean for the US If it's a bad trade, well, if.
It's a bad trade. It could. I find it hard to believe that the United States would put itself in a position to ultimately lose money, but it may lose money on paper and have to recover that money, just like somebody who has been left holding the bag on a bad debt by liquidating some kind of Argentine assets or somehow you know, turning preferential access into Argentine assets or Argentine markets into value over time, that wouldn't look good. And again it all depends on how long this bridge is.
We have seen in the credit markets that you can paper things over for an awfully long time before either things reflate and you're able to shout at par or you have to ultimately take some losses. So it's not like that's necessarily going to happen next week. It's not like it's necessarily going to happen next month, next quarter,
even next year. But if Malay doesn't succeed, and if the Argentine economy doesn't continue to revive and inflation doesn't remain under control, it's hard to see how the speculative pressure against the peso won't continue, and we may even see I don't know We can only speculate here that twenty billion dollars may not end up being enough.
All Right, we just got schooled by Eric Shatsker in a good way, in a good way. Thank you so much, Eric, so appreciate it.
It's what we needed to know.
Bloomberg New Economy Editorial Director Eric Shatsker.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily podcast. Catch US live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch US Live on YouTube.
Trump's administration is involved in talks for a US company to access one of the world's largest untapped deposits of tungsten. This is a metal used by the Pentagon to make ammunition, projectiles and other weapon read.
Yeah, it's really interesting, right. We continue to see that Rare Earth's share space move as a result of these headlines coming out from the White House. Keep in mind, as to mention President Trump signing that landmark pack with visiting Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albani's to boost America's access to Rare Earth's and other critical minerals. It's an effort to counter China's type grip on the supply chains of
key metals. Now, the two governments will jointly invest in a swath of minds and processing projects in Australia to boost production of commodities used in advance technologies, everything from electric vehicles to setment conductors and fighter plants. It goes into a lot of stuff too.
In a story on the Bloomberg, our next guest says, quote, this is the most significant bilateral minerals cooperation we have seen between two major Western countries. Here to explain why is Graceland Asker, and she's director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Study. She joins us from the Washington, DC bureau of Bloomberg News. Graceland, welcome back to Bloomberg Business Weekdaily. It's always great to
have you on the program. I do want to start with the bilateral minerals cooperation that we are seeing between the United States and Australia. Why is all of this happening right now?
It's so great to be back.
You know, this is a really big deal, and it's a big deal because this is minerals cooperation that's going not just from conversation, and we've been doing years of talking about minerals to actually putting the resources in to develop really strategic projects. I mean, we've agreed to commit one billion dollars each to be deployed within six months on strategic projects, and this could be Alcoa's landmark gallium refinery.
Keep in mind, China has cut us off of gallium, really crucial material for semiconductors, and this gallium refinery is going to produce one hundred tons a year in Western Australia. That may not sound like a lot, but remember the US only uses about twenty tons of galli in the year, so it's actually really significant to Australia announcing equity in a rare earth project there.
But what we've also.
Seen is the first time that these countries are making a concerted effort to counter China. So you may have seen that both countries have committed to preventing Chinese acquisitions of new projects, both within their own countries but also using diplomatic instruments. In other countries, we've seen a commitment to using price price support. So really, when you take the summation of all of these different efforts, We're really seeing rubber hit the road with a country that has
enormous geological potential. We're talking about forty minerals that the US identified as critical. Incredible financial market gets in deep technical expertise.
Is this all bottom line about putting kind of a hold on China?
This is about countering China from a supply and a demand perspective. You know, let's be totally honest. This year was a wake up call for the whole world until now. A lot of the export restrictions on critical minerals we're really targeted at US here in the United States, but the multiple rounds of restrictions this year actually hit companies around the world, like these recent rare earth export restrictions.
Australia is still on the other.
End of them.
So what we're really doing is we're uniting with our allies and again Australia being the one country that has fought beside US in every war since nineteen eighteen, right to say, okay, if we work together, we can actually start to counter China in a meaningful way.
Very then significant again, because it feels like we have gone through a bunch of months where the US is like we don't need you. We're going to do it alone. We're going to build up stuff supply chain, so and so forth. At least this is coming from the administration to do stuff here in the United States. This feels like it's very significant the US saying wait, we actually need to have global partners on this. And this is
kind of a big message. Again I'm going to point out to China and really the world at large.
And this is a really important message because I want you to understand the historical relationship of Australian mining. Historically, Australian minerals have flow have gone to China for processing. So it's a highly vertically integrated industry between these two countries.
So this was a pretty big disruption. You know, if we roll out restrictions on China, no, and really bat deny, but for Australia where those minerals go to China, this is a really important realignment with US and breaking from what has been their historical trade relationship as it relates to the mining industry.
So I guess the question that we have is about the US companies that are a part of this, and we've spoken to quite a few of these. We spoke to US antimony. Gary Evans over there a critical mineral, not.
A rare earth per se, but.
In the same space, and with the idea that you know, they're getting a government contract, not investment from the government, but a government contract to actually buy antimony for Defense Department purposes. But I'm curious about US company's role and if there is such an opportunity for many different US companies right now to take advantage of this. And look,
we have an investing audience. They want to know which are the companies that are best positioned right now to be in a place where they can be the ones that benefit from this increased need for critical minerals.
So one of the big parts of this a new Framework agreement is that they will we will strategically together identify priority projects in companies.
One of the.
Early leaders here is Alcoa. Again, Alcoa is a Philadelphia based company who is now building this gallium refinery through support from the Department of War, and it was announced by the US and Australian governments yesterday. Again, I want to take you back to the fact that gallium is a no brainer of a priority for both sides because it was a commodity that China cut us off from earlier this year. So really, when we start to look at what are the winners going to be, I mean
rare earth. Obviously we're going to see linus being really important. But broadly speaking, for some of these minor medals, which antimony is one of them, we've seen tungsten emerge in the news quite recently. These minor metals are going to be the ones where we're highly vulnerable and where we do not always have the geology to make it work, and where Australia often does.
We both have questions, but Carole, you go first, Well, I want.
To go back forgive me if we're abouts around, because it's just sometimes you know, the brain is a little slow and things settle in. But Grace, what I want to ask you is going back to, as you said, a big deal for Australia to do this because they have been so intertwined with China when it comes to Australia exporting large quantities of raw minerals and then China processing. I mean, this has been a very important trading relationship and so we know US and China has been antagonistic
for a while, but to have them do that. That's really significant.
It's extremely significant. But you've been seeing that growing tension for but probably the last seven years. Remember that Australia was the first country to the ban howway back in about twenty eighteen. They also legislation to prevent foreign interference in their higher education sector. More recently, there was a one point twenty five billion dollar Australian loan that was given to build the Iluca refinery.
For rare Earth.
One of the t's and c's of that was that off take had to go to allied countries. But now what this really does now I mean, is it starts to potentially re architecture supply chains in a meaningful way. Australia, for example, is the biggest lithium producer in the world. They produce about close to sixty percent over a world's lithium. Over ninety percent of that actually goes to China for refining. If that didn't happen, China would lose its grip on
lithium ion batteries. So what this deal really stands to do is re architecture supply chains, not just from mind but down to the manufactured good.
So if we think about this in the context of the leverage that China could still have even after the US makes deals such as this and deals with allies, where's that leverage.
The leverage is still there in the short term with rare earths for sure, no doubt. Right although Australian Australia's Linus was the first company to separate heavy rare erths earlier this year outside of China, but it's going to go beyond that. There was a line in this framework agreement that actually said that the US and Australia will
work with other international partners on price support mechanisms. So this conversation is likely to extend beyond these two countries to the G seven later this year to think about how do we scale these partnerships up even more so, really, what we're starting to see is an economy of scale that we're creating for the minerals and the processing capabilities. I mentioned that our COED deal earlier, that our COED deal is also getting Japanese financing.
It's actually a tripartheid effort.
So an example of how this bilateral is going to set the stage for what's probably going to be a much bigger play of countries to counter China.
How do we figure out, you know, especially as we see investors, you know, pushing up shares on all of these stories about the relationships, the investments by the US government and various critical mineral companies, how do we figure out which is investor speculation, you know, kind of chasing a trade. Do you think it's misplaced or is it a bit irrationally exuberant, or you think these investments, these relationships,
this is the build out. It's happening, and with good reason, because the demand's going to be there.
The broader buildout of the sector, when it comes to mining, being much more strategic, is absolutely here to stay. And it's here to stay for a couple of reasons. One of them is we are diversifying away from China, right, But the second thing we have to remember is that certain of these commodities, I need a lot more in objective terms, I need a lot more copper to electrify, to build data centers, to build defense technologies.
So it's also the growing demand.
So I'd say the larger macro trend in prioritization is here to stay. And again remember that the US Australia relationship, it's a continuation. It was being built under the Biden administration as well. But what you know, the other thing though is you know, there are going to be fads that come and go when it come to specific minerals. There's no doubt, right some things are going to you know, hit media attention. Certain deals are going to hit media
attention and they're going to fall away. Not everything that this government is looking at is going to succeed, but what we are hoping is that the right number of them succeed to create a more resilient supply chain. But there are a lot of coming and goings.
Yeah, certainly the relationship with Australia is on our radar right now, given the visit of the Prime Minister. But I'm wondering what other countries the US could ally with that would be able to offer some sort of countermeasure to China and its capabilities.
So countries that like I'm looking at with interest Japan in South Korea, particularly because of their midstream and downstream capabilities. I'm looking at the UK. There have been you know, there's been some interesting acquisitions there, at least Come Metal by USA, Rare Earth, that's an interesting one. The EU again it's an interesting jurisdiction there as some minerals, I mean things like Solvey for their permanent magnets in France.
An interesting one again with some conversations happening with the US as well. So there's certain pockets of interesting transactions happening from a global north obviously from the global south. Brazil is still a very interesting jurisdiction to US because they have the heavy, rare earth that can come back and be separated here in the United States.
Everything we need to know.
Thank you, Thank you, Doctor Graceland Basker and Director of the Critical Mineral Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty whole show.
Democrats are more disillusion than they've been in decades, Sped up with agings, leaders frustrated by a party adrift and unsure who their next standard bearer should be, but yearning for someone to take on Trump So right Josh Green and elaiju Kemisher for a Bloomberg BusinessWeek California Governor Gavin Newsom has leaped into the breach. He's on for the podcast a ballot Measure and tweets Governor Newsom is spoiling for a fight with the President he is.
Indeed, It is the cover of the new issue of Bloomberg Business Week, out on newsstands, now online, and on the Bloomberg terminal. Bloomberg BusinessWeek National correspondent Josh Green is the lead author of the Profile of the Governor. Josh is also the author of several books, including the number one New York Times bestseller Devil's Bargain, Steve Bannon, Donald Trump, and The Storming of the Presidency. He joins us Josh from Washington, DC.
Josh, great to have.
You here with us, I mean, Gavin Newsom. He went from one of his lowest political points earlier this year, as deadly fires burned in southern California. She's now being a potential leader of the Democratic Party. That seems quite a turn. How did this happen and how dark was it for him?
Well, yeah, as you guys said in that nice intro. He was our cover story, our cover profile this week, went out to the Sacramento spent some time with him, talk to him. For a lot of people nationally, I think outside California. The last time they really keyed in and focused on Governor Newsom was back in January, during the wildfires.
Things were out of control.
Trump was the new president, was sort of insulting him, tweeting negative things about him, and so, you know, he told us that was really the low point I think
of his governorship. But what's interesting is that over the last couple of months, partly due to some things that Trump has done, Newsom has re emerged on the national stage as perhaps the most important Democrat right now, because he is in the middle of leading a ballot initiative that would create as many as five new Democratic House districts.
And Democrats nationally are pretty much without power. They don't control the White House, they don't control either House of Congress, but they're very much hoping to win back the House
next November. And so Newsome, by dint of his ability to kind of run the table in California, get this initiative on the ballot, has suddenly become important in preserving Democrats' chance to win back some shred of power to confront Donald Trump with next November, and of course that would vault Newsom himself into even more prominent role as Democrats look for somebody to lead the party in twenty twenty eight and out of the Trump era.
Does that proposition have widespread support in California right now? I mean, former Governor Ronald Schwarzenegger has spoken out recently against it. What did you find in your reporting?
Yeah, it's not clear that it does.
I mean, what's going on, just to kind of clue in viewers, is that Trump and Republicans have been very aggressive about deciding to redraw or try and redraw congressional districts in red states across the country as a way of kind of putting their thumb on the scale in midterm elections in a way that would help Republicans withstand what I think most people expect to be an electoral backlash.
So the fear for Democrats is that Republicans essentially rewrite the rules and you know, take control or keep control of a House of Representatives that they think they ought to be able to win, and so new some value to the parties that he's been able to kind of come in and I think offset this if this ballot referendum wins. But it's not clear that it's winning by
a lot. The latest poll I've seen has it at about fifty percent in favor, about thirty five thirty six percent of pose and the rest undecided.
So it really could still swing either way.
And as you said, there have been prominent Republicans like former Governor Arl Schwarzenegger have come out and said, no, we don't want to do this, We don't want to create these democratic districts.
And so we'll see.
But I think the expectation among the experts that I've spoken to is that this probably will prevail, and if it does, Democrats nationally, I think are going to breathe a big sigh of relief.
Josh. We want to dig more into this profile piece of Gavin Newsoen, but I just want to on this referendum, this ballot referendum. How important is it to new some specifically, how important is it to you really Democrats more broadly, as we all are kind of looking at the upcoming midterms and what it means and what it says about President Trump's administration.
Yeah, it's a great question. The answer is that it's really important to both of them. I just explained on kind of the national democratic side why it's important. But for Newsom himself, I think it's especially important because you know, he is somebody who has long been thought to.
Have presidential ambitions.
Democrats are obviously looking for a new leader in twenty twenty eight, but talking to people around Washington, around the country, in Democratic circles, there could be literally dozens of people running. And so if this ballot referendum does pass, it will be a real validating credential for Newsome. He's one of the rare Democrats right now who isn't a position of power.
And if he's able to lead his party.
To victory on this ballot initiative and help Democrats win back the House for Representatives in twenty twenty six, he can go out and say look like, I'm out here, I'm fighting Trump, I'm doing things, I'm helping the Democrats party, and that's just not something that a lot of other elected.
Democrats can say right now.
And I do think it's going to lead to a lot of excitement and a lot of national attention and Newsome himself, as I mentioned, as we mentioned it some like in the profile, has spent a lot of time trying to raise his profile online, doing everything from you know, YouTube to Twitch to Twitter to x to try and raise his visibility. So I think a win on this ballot initiative would really help him in that regard.
I always think about COVID and like how much he became so prominent, and we covered certainly everything he did during COVID and what was going on in the state, but he really became a national figure.
Especially during that visit to the French laundry. As Josh points out in his piece, which what did he call that? In his podcast? Josh he quoted in the piece.
I think he said it was like his most boneheaded move he made this governor, and not a lot of people would disagree with that. But you know, he is prone to the occasional scandal. So that's part of the excitement of following Governor Gavin Newsom. So it does a lot of exciting things, both for good and for better.
So let's talk about that a little bit. As a California and I followed Gavin Newsom for decades at this point, one thing that just always surprises me though, is where he was and who he was with early on in his political life. I mean, there's the famous photo shoot was at any Lebowitz with Kimberly Gilfoyle, his former wife, who is now you know, she was linked to one of the Trump's sons romantically. She's now the ambassador to Greece. What is his political history? You dive in here, there's
connections to the Getty family. You really go really far back generations.
Actually yeah, I.
Mean he's had this fascinating life. You know, his his father and grandfather were kind of big time political fixers in San Francisco, which gave him entree into the kind of wealthy world of San Francisco politics and business. While at the same time, you know, his mom after his parents divorce, was a single mom who worked three jobs, so he kind of really grew up with a foot in both worlds. I think he's always been drawn to
the camera as a politician. As he said, there's a famous Vanity Fair cover shirt shoot back when he was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle. You know, he managed to be a very high profile mayor of San Francisco, conducting or allowing gay marriages back before the Supreme Court had allowed that first got him on the national stage. But he's also you know, good looking, telligenic guy who really wants to have his profile out there, and you know, has
a lot of political talent. I think that the challenge for Newsome as governor California, and we get into this in the piece a little bit, is that there's a lot not to like you about California right now at a time when you know, Americans are more and more concerned with inflation and the high cost of living. California has sky high home prices. It sort of struggles with a lot of the things that Americans struggle with generally, whether it's high gas prices, high unemployment, homelessness.
So all of these things are.
Subjects at Newsom and Business Week spoke about, talked about and try to kind of war game out of the
piece whether this is something that he can overcome. And as Newsome himself said too, you know, he's got a real pitch I think for Democrats nationally, which is that California is this engine of dynamism, whether it's tech or AI or business, and really conducts itself in a way that I think Newsom would describe as the polar opposite of the way Donald Trump runs the US economy, with a focus on kind of industrial nostalgia and looking back, Newsom is very much a California guy, almost seems like
a venture capitalist at times, kind of.
Pitching his state.
And I think it's going to be interesting to see whether Democratic voters connect with that and decide this is the guy that they want leading them forward.
Josh, Dude. Democratic voters also connect with the way he's begun using social media, kind of playing President Trump at his own game with AI generated content and caps and so on and so forth.
You single this out.
Certainly in the story. Does that resonate? Is that what Democrats want?
I mean to me, this is the most interesting part of the profile is, you know, a couple of months ago, Newsom turned the governor's Twitter feed into this kind of mockery of Donald Trump and the way he comports himself on social media with these all caps tweets kind of mocking and insulting him, and you know, AI generated images of Trump eating MacDonald's Burger's kind of stuffing his face, and it was basically kind of meant to get down in the mud with Trump, and it's something that's caused
a ton of attention, a ton of engagement.
A lot of.
Democratic voters are seeing this and engaging with this online. I know in my own life, people relatives in mine are not particularly political, would have no reason to be interested in Gavin Newsom were suddenly asking me about him because of his wild social media persona. So in an
intention getting sense, I think it's helped him. Whether or not this helps him like win votes in purple swing states three years from now, I'm still a little bit skeptical about that, but you know, partly the race right now, if you're a Democrat is the race for eyeballs and attention, and there's no question.
That Newsome is doing that kind of.
More aggressively and in a more interesting way than any other Democrat on the scene right now.
Is it a risk politically for the constituents in California? Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, spoke at Bloomberg screen time earlier this month, and she talked about collaborating with President Trump in the of the disastrous wildfires. If there is another big natural disaster in California before Gavin Newsom's term is up. Does he have to go begging to President Trump? And President Trump says, no, You've made a mockery of me.
Yeah, I mean it's a good question.
I mean one of the things we talked about with Newsom and this piece is that he essentially, you know, Trump had kind of written him off back in January, before he'd even taken office, had kind of turned on Newsome, and Newsom had said, you know, in the past, they'd
had a good working relationship. Back in the twenty eighteen Paradise fires in California, he thought Trump had been pretty helpful, but this time around he wasn't, and Newsom had to kind of force his way into Trump's sphere and orbit in order to get some of the help that California needed. I think it does run a risk when you kind of intentionally mock and insult someone, especially as a Democratic governor, if you need to then turn around and ask that
president for help, it could be problematic. On the other hand, Trump as president has pursued a scorched earth policy against just about every Democrat, every blue state, in every blue city that I can think of, regardless of whether or not the mayors and governors of those States have insulted
him personally and gratuitously the way Governor Newsom House. I'm not sure in the end will make much of a difference, but it'll certainly be something to watch if there is another big national disaster in California that requires federal help.
Fascinating staff. I wish we had another fifteen twenty minutes.
Josh with you.
That's always the case, Josh Green, National correspondent at Bloomberg Business This is the cover story of the issue New Issue at Bloomberg Business Week.
Find it on newsstands.
It is on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg dot Com. His profile so much detail.
Love it.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a computing breakthrough from Google when it comes to quantum computing, we check in with the mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee, who is looking to make his mark in that space.
Plus Xenax in your ears, an all in one face fixer, maybe some ketamine therapy. Those are just some cheat codes on maybe how to improve your overall well innes It's courtesy of our Bloomberg Pursuits team.
I'm just going to stick to getting lots of sleep in drikutts.
I think there's okay, just to throw it out there. There's also like the walking uphill treadmill one.
That I love, no but makes sense. Love it, yeah, love it exactly.
Just a little just a little preview of what's to come.
All right, love it, love it all right. First up this Hour addressing the future of work and how robots play into that. The New York Times reported this past week that Amazon executives believe the company is on the cusp of its next big workplace shift, and that is replacing more than half a million jobs with robots. So the question will the future of work include robots or is it all hype? I mean it already kind of includes robots, right.
How do you know I'm not one? I don't know.
I did see you plug yourself.
In the Sometimes I feel sometimes I feel like it's neither here nor there. Well here with more on what Amazon is up to is Ty Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics. Ty joined us from Amazon's Delivering the Future twenty twenty five event out in California.
We are fourth Delivering the Future event here and there's a bunch of press that we have here and we made a couple of big announcements in robotics. The first is in our manipulation robot that we call blue Jay. And what blue Jay the way that you can think of that as we can you can take three assembly lines and put it in the same footprint of one.
What it does is help eliminate the menial, the mundane, and the repetitive, and it could pick more than seventy five percent of the inventory that we actually sell in our sortable network, which is a really big deal. I'm really proud of that. And I also say there's something interesting about blue Jay as well as compared to our other bird manipulation systems Sparrow and Robin, it took us about three years to kind of design, deploy and get
out to our frontline employees. We have actually done blue Jay with the power of AI and just over a year, so it's really the pace of innovation.
I think one of a lot of people think about Amazon and robots. I just want to jump in because we don't have a ton of time, but I like that. I want to we'll get to some of the other announcements. They think about the Kiva Systems robots the big acquisition at the time, you know, twenty twelve, that was a big acquisition for Amazon, and they've seen pictures of the way that those can move large loads of things across warehouses.
But if you were to go into a state of the art Amazon warehouse today, what would you see That's in addition to those Kiva robots.
Yeah, in addition to the world's first goods to person fulfillment strategy, which was just a really good idea where we have more than a million robots that we manufacture action in Massachusetts doing that job every day. You're going to see more of the unstructured fields, right, So, you're going to see green robot that we call Proteus that can move big cargoes of packages to the right dock
at the right time. You're going to see many more manipulation systems that they we have in there, eliminating kind of the repetitive motions that they we have no one wants to lift a fifty pound box box all day, Robin does that, Cardinal does that. Moving into some of these proteus bound carts that we have, you're going to see much more collaborative robotics, right. So that's where we build our robotic systems to enable people to augment what people are capable of. And we really believe in the
philosophy of people and machines working together. How can we build a tool set that enables our employees to do their job not only more efficiently, but also with better safety in mind?
All right, So there's this robot arm called blue Jay. You just talked about it. You know, you guys are using this AI agent called Iluna, and then you're also working with augmented reality glasses to be worn by dry and delivery trucks in the field. There's like so much going on. Step back for a moment, because you guys have a lot of data.
You look at what you're doing.
I'm just curious investors who are thinking about Amazon and what you are doing, how do they think about the long term, like ROI return on investment when it comes to the investments you guys make in robots, is the goal about labor efficiency, through put speed or is it margin expansion kind of tie across your fulfillment operations?
What is it?
Yeah, well, definitely the efficiency. We think about efficiencies and how can we gain efficiency through all the chain of our fulfillment processes for sure, And you mentioned data and data is the fuel for AI systems. Data has allowed us to bring think of the body of being our robotics, but bring the mind to robotics, allowing it to be
more adaptable, more fluid. You can almost think of this as the ability to pour our robotics systems into any size building, scale of building to amplify what our employees are already doing. We want to give them an amazing tool set and we see that when we do that, we're more productive. Right when you do robotics, right when you do collabor of robotics where you need both people and machines doing what they do best and they do different things better, that it allows you to be more productive.
And when you're more productive, that allows you to invest more in people. We've skilled more than seven hundred thousand of our employees, which is a great stat and also in our robotics we've expanded from the Kiva days. We've expanded from just a movement solution to now movement and mobility and sortation and storage and perception systems, packing systems that have really changed the game for our customers. That's a big deal to us.
What ty you know, well you need less workers, and I got to bring it up. You know, The Times had a story out They talked about interviews and a cash of internal strategy documents that they saw that it reveals that your execs think that the companies on the cusp of its next big workplace shift. I'm reading from the Times and replacing more than half a million jobs with robots, so you know, we know things change. I'm not in a horse and buggy anymore. I don't make
things piecemeal. I get it. I don't get tons of faxes and I don't get tons of pieces of physical mail. Thank god, things change. Having said that, is Amazon, do you guys believe that you're on the cusp of a workplace shift and that you won't need as many workers because the advancements in robotics, Well.
There's no doubt that things change. I mean, and we're actually really proud of that day and Amazon is that we avoid stasis at all costs. We change and we adapt, and the nature of tasks definitely changed. There's no doubt about that. We are laser focused on efficiencies inside of our buildings. But when it comes to that article, that article was speculating ten years out right, that's a ten year speculation, and it's hard to say what's going to
happen in the next ten years. But I can tell you what happened in the last ten years, the last ten years, which is when we seriously invested in robotics, that we created hundreds of thousands of new jobs and new job types. And there's been no employer in the United States that has employed more people than Amazon in ten years. I mean, that's and that's the power of efficiencies and building your robots in way that's applied and real that actually augments the human potential.
All Right, my brother Sam, I like a dog with a bone. So does that mean ten years out it could be less jobs or we just don't know or you don't think that's the case, Well you.
Have to think about I mean, there's jobs and there's tasks, right, so of course we're changing the nature of tasks. Like I'm very bullish on eliminating every menial, mundane and repetitive job out there. Nobody wants to do that, so we're going to change those tasks one hundred percent. But we can again, as history has shown, we continue to create jobs right with the goal of two things. Can you
have it all? Can you be more productive which means more efficiency, and can you also create a safer environment for employees? And we're actually doing both. That's what history has shown. In the last ten years. We have created better than thirty percent reduction in our overall recordable injury rate over the last five years because of our robotics and also much more efficient. For example, our latest generation filment center in shreport is twenty five percent more efficient.
You can have it all, but you have to build your robotics in the right way that empowers people.
We're speaking with Ty Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics. When we think about hiring for these one off or seasonal events like the holiday season, our Amazon Prime Day, I'm wondering how you're putting pencil to paper right now and thinking about those numbers and to what extent automation has reduced Amazon's dependency on seasonal or hourly labor for holidays, for prime day. What does that look like or what will that look like this year next year.
Well, it's the same philosophy of empowering employees, whether they're temporary or the full time employees with the world's best machines that help them do their job. It's the same philosophy. I'm really proud of the fact that this year we're going to offer more than two hundred and fifty thousand temporary jobs for our employees to come in during the holiday season. Those are good paying jobs. I'm really happy
about that, really pleased with that. And I'm really pleased with the work that our women and men have done in the robotics field, designing the pioneering these new physical AI systems that help them do their jobs better.
I got to say, one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is what's going on overseas, whether it's China, whether it's Japan. Bloomberg has done some reporting about service industries in Japan because they have a labor shortage that
they are leading increasingly on robotics. Have you been over there and looking at what they're doing, And I'm just curious if you're seeing some things that are pretty impressive, and that the US, as a creator of things or its role in the robotics industry, has to keep a watch.
On what's going on in other countries.
Yeah.
I think it's easy, especially in robotis, to get distracted about what other people are doing. I think anybody can make a YouTube video. I think anybody can kind of pop in and overflate something. But if you come into our world, our world is all about application. So final thoughts is that robotics when done the right way, when you reframe your relationship with machines, you can enable more productivity, create greater efficiencies, and create a more safer environment for employees.
And this collaborative mindset that we've had that we've done for the last ten years really does make the day.
Ty Brady over at Amazon so appreciate it.
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm e sternup on Apple car Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, just Say Alexa Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Some news this past week in the world of quantum computing. Google ran an algorithm on its Willow quantum computing chip that can be repeated on similar platforms and now performed classical supercomputers. A breakthrough, it said, clears a path for useful applications of quantum technology within five years.
The folks in Chattanooga, Tennessee, have been thinking about quantum computing for years. The first commercially available quantum network in the US was established there. That was back in twenty twenty two. We should also note that last year Bloomberg Philanthropy is named Chattanooga one of twenty five cities selected for its American Sustainable Cities Program. Bloomberg Philanthropies is founded and supported by Michael R. Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP.
Now Chattanooga Sustainable Cities program still ongoing, and so we wanted an update on their quantum network. Back with us was Tim Kelly, Mayor of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Also Janet Raeberg, President and CEO Elective EPB, formerly known as the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga. That company it provides energy, internet,
phone and more in and around Chattanooga. The environment today, how is it in terms of running your city, being a mayor in a political environment that's a tough one, an economic environment that may be tough.
Yeah, it's tough, but you know, running cities is an eminently practical exercise. And I will say, you know, our mayor's races are nonpartisan. They always have been, and I stayed.
In that lane.
Again, I mean, I'm not here to catalog my political beliefs. They're pretty confusing to most people anyway. I'd say, you know, Republicans think I'm a Democratic, and Democrats think I'm a Republican. I'm probably doing a pretty good job. So you know, I look, that has served me well in this environment, because again I believe, as does a lot of folks of Bloomberg as do rather, but that cities are really the foundation of our economy. I swear ninety percent of
the GDP's generateds we're all innovations generated. So I'm focused on whatever is best for Chattanooga. So I can work and have managed to work with people on both sides of the aisle, and you know, in the best interest of my city.
Do you find yourself getting pulled into the social issues that seem to define our era right now? The stuff that does dominate cable news, whether you're talking about the right or the left.
Yeah, I mean I find myself, you know, I find people attempting to pull me into those but I think I've gotten pretty good at wrestling my way out of them and trying to just translate back into simple terms. You know, is this what's best for the city? You know, does it work or does it not work? I mean, sometimes you can't avoid those political issues. It's not as though,
you know, I don't have my own beliefs. But again, I think you, just as a mayor, have to take a thoroughly practical approach to what's going to work best for the city.
All right, So when you think about what's best for the city, let's talk about that, because you are on the ground talking to people what they need, what you need to make sure you have a good economy, strong economy, not just today but in the future. That quantum computing that you made it back in twenty twenty to tell us about, kind of give us an update for someone who didn't hear the conversation when you were last on with this kind of where you guys are with us.
So I'll give you the cliff notes version, which is that you know, we took advantage of a large federal low interest loan way back when during Clinton and Gore to put in a giant municipal fibre network, and that gave us the first and fastest municipal fiber network in the country. We had a lot of folks move in during COVID because you know, you can get one gig of symmetrical speed for sixty seven bucks a month.
Yeah, pretty great.
You can get twenty five gigs of speed at your house in Chattanooga. But it turns out that you can also do quantum computing on large loops of dark fiber, one particular type that uses photons and trapped ions, which is where ion Q began to become interested in Chattanooga. So we opened and Janet can talk more about it. The first commercially available quantum network, and it is starting to attract a lot of investment and attention.
So Janet, come on in here, because one thing that we're trying to understand is what the practical applications of quantum technology are. We spoke with Ed Ludlow the coast of our Bloomberg Tech program a little earlier and Carol agreed, I mean you thought healthcare first, he said healthcare also, this is one area of application, but it's still kind of the world where we're thinking about what this tech
can do, not necessarily seeing what it can do. Have we seen any material things be developed as a result of this technology and what you're doing in Chattanooga.
Yeah, So ian Q has been working on a lot of different type of application with different industry, and so we were interested because we're in an electric company and so we have all the data for them to help
us optimize our grid. So we're doing a partnership actually with Ionq, Nvidia, and Oakridge National Lab as a full way partnership to help do use hybrid computing until quantum computing can get to where it needs to be to help us with some grid optimization problem that we can't solve today in.
Terms of energy demands. Tell us about that. That is like what you are seeing front and center. The AI conversation narrative has moved from the spend and chips and so on and so forth, like to basically, all right, do we have enough power to do all of this? And there is certainly a power scramble among the big hyperscalers. What are you seeing on that front?
Yeah, and I think that's a nationwide, you know, issue with with the energy problem. And as AI gets better as an energy problem, right, Yeah, I mean as AI gets better and better the more energy that it's going
to need. And so that's where quantum comes in. Very important to the part of that solution is that quantum computer, once it gets to the phase that it needs to be, is it can solve things at a much faster rate, which uses less energy than a classical computer because it can do things in parallel versus sequential as a classical computer.
Today, Where do you get the energy that you sell to people in and around Chattenoga?
Yeah, so we buy it from TVA Tennessee Valley Authority, and so they generate the power and we distribute it to our customers.
How do they generate it?
They have a diverse mix of portfolio from hydro, different types of renewables to natural gas, and so you know they're continuing to look at other options.
Do you see that mixed going now?
I was just going to say, they're also very much on the front foot in terms of advanced.
Nuclear Do you see that mix?
This is either of you.
Do you see that mixed changing and focusing less unrenewables more on nuclear as a result of the changes out of Washington.
I think you're going to see that, you know, and again, regardless of your political affiliation, if you just kind of look at the math, there's no way around nuclear, right. I do think they are giving us or EPB more latitude to generate some of our own power because of the anticipated demands. And I think we still have a lot of headway on solar, So I mean, I think we'll contin and we've got a lot of things we can do with hydro. We're going to actually start using
biogas at our wastewater treatment plant to generate electricity. So we're looking at any in all ways that we can generate.
Because my understanding when we talk about SMRs, the small modular reactors, it's ten fifteen.
Will remind us, Will Wage reminds us who covers this here at Bloomberg News that we're not there right now, it's a while we are not, but we have a pretty significant nuclear footprint with TVA already in the tendency.
What would you tell people who are still kind of nervous when it comes to the nuclear footprint that you guys have. You know what you know, fine, people do it, Okay, do it across the country or do it in another country.
But you know the feeling here in the I mean, I.
Grew up next to a nuclear power planet. But I'm fine, right, I'm a little weird.
But what would you say about that?
I mean, the technology has come a long long way. Yeah, that's what I would say. Man, I'd say, go do your research, do your homework.
They're not.
I mean, that's why we have these discussions, That's why we.
Have the fears.
But but there's just not absent fusion. I will say the state in the University of Tennessee is also working very very hard on fusion technology. Absent that breakthrough, there's really not.
That's what I'm waiting for you.
When we're talking about quantum today and we're talking about Google, we're talking about Silicon Valley. How do you get people to think about Chattanooga, Tennessee, and not Silicon Valley, not New York City, not Austin, Texas when they're thinking about where they want to live to have a job in technology.
Coming on Bloomberg is a great first step. No, I mean, look, we talk about this all the time. It's a mid side Southern city with kind of a funny name, and there's a bit of cognitive dissonance there. So you know, look, we are out telling the story. I mean, I was just in Detroit last week at a sustainable mobility conference. We were at the Quantum World Congress. I mean, at some point it's you know, the evidence is mounting. We are it's not just smoke. We are doing the work and it's working.
Is it? Is it?
If you build it, they will come mentality, I think, So have they come?
Yes, they have come.
I mean again we had you know, we now have independent verification that you know, ten twelve thousand people moved to Chattanooga during the pandemic very you know, degree talented people that could work remotely. And I think again, our job, my job as mayor, is to help break that glass ceiling so that we have the level of business investment and again can build up our academic horsepower to be able to sustain those knowledge economy jobs.
Jenna, you know, when we think about quantum computing, we spend so much time to talking about you know, large language models and generative AI and kind of where that's agentic AI. You just talked about the power aspect or the use of less power when it comes to quantum computing. But I mean, should our conversation be shifting in terms of what we are having for an investing audience when we talk just so much about AI generally versus quantum Well, I.
Think that with quantum computer, when it gets to you know, at the level it needs to be, you can team it up with AI and get even more powerful algorithm that comes out of it to be able to solve more complex problems. So I don't think it's one or the other. I think it's going to be a combined of you know, how do you combine that and use less energy and be able to build algorithm more efficiently.
So help me because when we talk about the data center build out, so does that go hand in hand with the buildout of quantum computing? Is that part of it?
So right now, it's you know, the we're building a quantum computer to kind of learn more and be able to help accelerate and advance that technology with companies like ion Q, and I think once it gets to where it needs to be, then well we can team it up with AI.
Okay, yeah, yeah, and many of the implications with quantum.
I'm asking basic questions because I feel like we spend so much time talking about the AI, but this is something that increasingly is coming into the dialogue.
Yeah.
Now, I'm just going to say the logistics is a huge vertical in chattre Go as well, and I think the implications for quantum for logistics have huge implications for lower power demand and a lower carbon footprint, right, because you're going to waste a lot less time getting stuff from A to B. Right with root optimization we're going.
To have to do because we talk about like the power drag or the power demand and the cost. Mayor Kelly, I'd be remiss not to ask you you are trying to build a city where everyone has an opportunity to thrive and prosper. We talk so much about the case shaped economy. There's a lot of people who aren't thriving and prospering in this environment. Thirty five seconds, what's a message to send to everybody?
Well, we are working very hard to reform our workforce fillment system so that we so we don't leave folks behind. And I think we have some significant opportunities to do that, and we are in the midst of doing that again. It's tough out there, Yeah, and I think it's going to fall more to the state government and to philanthropy frankly to kind of take up the slack in the meantime.
But I mean, we have to play the long game, and the long game is we need some significant change to the way that we do education workforce development in this country so that we don't leave people behind.
Yeah, it does feel like in terms of education, we're starting to think about that.
Come back soon.
I'd love to kind of continue this conversation if we may. Mayor Tim Kelly of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Janet Rieberg, she's the President's CEO elect of EP be joining us right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Burger Studio.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
I felt like being well has turned into another job. From health trackers reporting our every step and snore to pricey longevity clubs and celebrity endorse up bits. Like I say, Tim, sometimes it feels like protecting your overall wellness can be.
A lot of work and really hard and also a little expensive. Yeah, okay, thankfully we can cheat or maybe boosting if that makes us feel better. Yeahat the word cheat, I don't know. Yeah, it's so hard, I don't know. Okay, to cheat their cheat days with us with a list of wellness hacks to try, is the Bloomberg Pursuits Editor at Large, Chris Rouser. It is The Pursuit's cover story of the October issue of a business week magazine. It's available now online, on the terminal and on news stands.
Before we get into some of the individual cheats, I already have my favorite.
Wait, can we just say, first of all, Chris, you look marvelous.
Oh thank oh my gosh, thank you.
You're very welcome cheating.
Now, go ahead, what's your favorite?
I just want to talk about the overall tone of this and how it all came together, because I think it. Is it because there's a moment happening with wellness? Or is it because we're all getting older?
Oh?
I think both, Okay, both of those things. The reason we uh, the reason I to look at it and have us do a package on it was I had a couple of injuries earlier this year where I had a foot surgery, you guys remember, and I fractured my elbow and I couldn't work out. And the three of us, I know are fitness people, and when you cannot work out, you become mentally unwell.
Very true.
And so I just and when I finally was able to work out again, you know, I'm in my mid forties, it's like hard to get back in shape, put muscle on, lose weight, whatever. And I was like, you know what, I really wish I had a little cheat something where I could like really get back in shape faster. And
it turns out there is one. There is a stem suit called the Catalyst suit, which is basically like one of those as seen on TV ab zappers from the nineties, where you put it on your whole body and it electrocutes you while you're working out and it activates more of your muscles.
Wait, electrocute YOUO?
Yeah, did it hurt?
It?
Hurting is not the right word. It feels. It's like a buzz. It's a very intense buzz, and it can be quite uncomfortable, not in a painful.
Way, like I said, but no pay, no gain.
Yeah, you really gotta get used to it. So there's this suit that activates your muscles like supercharge your workouts and actually can get you back in shape faster. And so once I started doing that, I was like, well, what other cheats are there? And I got everyone on the team looking for different chets for wellness, fitness, eating, sleeping, all that.
Well.
I do want to say, if you want to know more about the stemsuit, the Catalyst. Catalyst is the company that owns it. Brandon Kennedy's the CEO of the company that owns the stemsuit that Chris is talking about. We had an extending conversation with him and Chris a few weeks ago. You can check it out on our podcast feed to learn more. Little spoiler, Chris says, it actually works.
It works. I do.
Yeah, it's nice.
Okay, let's talk about some of these other tricks. Some of them involved needles, that's true. Some of them involve treadmills. I want to start with my favorite. It's old school. It's walking up hill. Oh yeah, because you know we think about cheats. This one doesn't even seem like a cheat to me, because this is like keeps you in shape. This is what you do. But apparently you can do this three or four days a week and you're not going to feel the effects of like having gone on a run or something.
Yeah, so a lot of these cheats are things where you still have to put in work. So like with a the stemsuit the Catalyst suit, you have to exercise, but just to exercise while you're getting electrocuted, so it works better. And walking up hill is an old school thing that like celebrity trainers tell people to do because it burns calories a lot, but it also doesn't wear
you out. So if you're doing if you need to save your energy for big lifts because you're trying to become like a Marvel superhero, you don't want to be running a lot and that also burns that also like gets in the way of building muscle, whereas walking uphill is great, it's not too strenuous, but that's like really the best way to burn fat.
I love that.
I also like the soul renewal. I feel like, you know, when I think about massages, I'm like, you're gonna do my feet right, So, but this is so easy, Like if you do pet they often say, roll your foot on a ball.
Yeah, this is just rolling your foot on a ball. Not only does it make your feet feel better, which actually makes your whole, your whole walking around feel better, but it actually can calm you down. It's actually something that can sort of soothe your mind.
Tim, I think we should get a collection of balls for our team.
Okay, yeah, you think that'll work.
To com you down?
You think it'll do anything.
No, we could just throw them, that's true.
The idea of this package was there's so much information being thrown at us, like you guys said earlier, where there's like a million manosphere podcasts talking about sleep, about eating, about when you eat, about just every little supplement you should take, and there's so many supplements. And you know, BusinessWeek has covered Brian Johnson, the never Die guy who wants to have the sort of metabolism an eighteen year old and has like used his son's platelets injected into him.
Like it gets really crazy and it gets really expensive, and so we were looking for things that are just easy that you can do that actually make a difference.
That alone, to me, just men getting so involved. Like women we kind of have always been obsessive about this stuff, but men really getting into it and thinking about it.
Yes, because it's very quantified, it's very it becomes a hobby, it's competitive. Yeah, it just has really like been attractive to men for a while. This for the past few years.
Got another one that you like, well, I want I tease that we were talking a little bit about needles and the peptides thing kind of got my attention because in endurance athletics, this is getting attention right now too, along with like boosting testosterone, stuff that in the past has been sort of dubious in terms of like competitive rules and what has been allowed in terms of antidoping. What's up with peptides?
So, Peptides are basically long strings of amino acids that tell your molecule, tell your cells what to do and how to behave and for so for like testosterone, for example, you know you used to get testosterone injected just like straight up testosterone. Now people are injecting things like cel morale and which tells your body to make testosterone, which actually is which is better because if you if your body gets used to getting testosterone injected, it won't make
it on its own. So you know, there's there's peptides that will do everything for make your skin more tan, you know, make you sleep better at all this stuff, and then we go v and ozempic. Those are peptides.
Which I did not know.
That was kind of eye opening for me.
So yeah, So there's a lot of kind of off label on label things that are going around, and the big most popular one is NAD or NAD plus. And doctors caution that when you're getting this from like an internet company that that you know has doctors, you still really don't necessarily know what you're getting if you're ordering this stuff online, especially if you're ordering it in a
more even more sketchyway. So if you want to get into this stuff, definitely talk to a doctor who knows you and that you work with.
What does the FDA say about all this? I mean, obviously with wegov and those the GLP ones, they're regulated, but I'm just curious.
Yeah, because of changes in rules that happened during during COVID, basically where people can deliver this kind of stuff online, the regulation is a lot less It's just like a lot less tight.
I was saying, about peptides, and I think because there's a lot of cosmetic stuff has peptides, right, yeah, yeah, so this is maybe like just injecting what.
Speaking of, how do we tighten up that face? I didn't know you could do these massages or these sculps that actually make your face look different. I thought it was like, I thought we all had to go the what's who's the who's the Kardashian who got the amazing plane facial?
Yeah, that's what Chris Chris Jenner. Okay, that is not a big cheat, that's not a little cheap.
Okay, because that's extensive.
That's like face off from John Travoltage level. What we're talking about is a fashion facial, which is when you go in and somebody basically massages the face, your face, and the fascia is the is the lining of your muscles, and they can kind of rearrange how your face is and uh, you know, if you have a big event or like your wedding or something, you can go in and for a couple of days it'll look snatched.
Come on, now I'm gonna watch I'm gonna be looking over at Tim. He's gonna be like doing these weird things.
To apparently they also like you can put on gloves and massage you're inside your mouth.
Yeah, that's part of it. Yeah yeah, and that can also help with like if you have pain with TMJ and stuff like that.
Okay, all right, well listen, sometimes an old thing is actually good. Maybe not, you don't feel that way about your body in your face, but when it comes to warn barber jackets.
Oh yeah, so this is it's fall. Fall was late to arrive in New York City, but it finally came and it's cool, and that means it's barbera coat season, which is all the finance bros and gals and and my mom.
Throw on their Chris Guilty at Barbara coats.
And you know, I always remind my friends every fall that you can get your barber coat rewax. So barber coat is like a wax cotton mostly waterproof jacket that people used to wear for hunting in like the UK, Prince Charles is always wearing one, or King Charles rather, and uh, so you can get it rewax so that
it will last longer. And people keep on these coats for decades because they you can sort of you can keep re upping the waxing and they last, and then the longer that you've had it, the better it looks. It's like worn in, it's got this great patina. So I started looking at other companies that sort of offer those services so that your clothes can age and look cool and old.
Yeah.
Well, speaking of that, you talk about how increasingly gen Z is looking for stuff that is aged and well worn, this idea that it's been loved in the past, and Barber is actually getting in on that by buying back old coats and fixing them up and reselling them.
Yeah.
So if your coat has gotten too worn and you don't want you don't want it anymore, I really want to start over. They'll buy it back for you and give you a store credit, and they'll deconstruct the coat and they'll reuse it for other coats. And so now they sell They have a whole reloved program where they'll sell coats that are kind of patched up, mixed in match coats. Sometimes they have the tartan pattern on the outside.
They can look really funky, and they sell them at a lower price because they're you know, sort of recycled items, upcycled items, and gen Z really likes that and they find that they get a lot of younger shoppers coming into.
But I was surprised that you say the prices start at like three twenty five, so they're.
Not like they're not cheap.
They're not cheap like even the recycled I have to say, but.
That's like a Patagonia cos I mean, that's what a jagger.
No exactly exactly, but I see that in a younger generation. I see with my daughter, like she likes to go whether it's consignment or like stuff that's been already a little bit around the block and a little bit of weird and tear in.
Some things are sometimes really nice.
Well, you think about resale sites, which are huge, and for a long time it was like I got to find things that are in mint condition on the real reel, Like I want this bag that looks like no one uses it and it's changing a bit, and now it's now it's like, oh, I want to find something that looks like it's been loved and it's been worn, because we always want, you know, our geans to look kind of beat up. But if you get genes from a store that are like pre beat up, it looks really fake.
It looks like a factory someone went and scratched, like the lines in the lap. But if you go to Levi's, they buy back jeans and then they resell old jeans and like, what's better than a beat up pair of Levi's, Like, and you know, gen zs and younger people are really into that and really good for the environment as well, and that's part of it. They're very into sustainability.
Didn't you just buy a recycled, not recycled, an old watch and you actually said?
Yes, I love this. As we wrap up here, one.
Of my favorite watches is this old Gerard Parago triple calendar, which is a very old fashioned kind of watch, and the like the day and the date are so tiny it's hard to read, but it looks great and I h and I got it fixed up because it was parts of it weren't working, and they were like, okay, do you want us to polish it and make it, you know, make it new and replace the gold here and I was like, no, do not polish it. I want it exactly as it was. I just want it
to work. And that's a thing in watches now, people want it. They don't want things polished, they don't want things updated. They want it to be exactly as it was.
Let the record show Chris is wearing not one, but two watches right now, the the Analog on his left wrist and the Apple Watch Digital on his right.
Risk.
It just wants to be balanced. That's what it's all about.
Love these cheets, Love you, Chris, Thank you so much. Really appreciate it, really appreciate it. Bloomberg Pursuits Editor at Large, Chris Rouser.
And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thanks so much for joining us.
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