Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - September 2, 2022

and Tim the unofficial official start to fall. It's getting cooler in this city. It's getting cooler. Still feels like a little bit summer weather. I'm not ready to get the pumpkin spice lodge case and the sweaters out quite yet. Sure, Yeah, I'm sure. I do love fall, though we can't say good by the summer. No, I agree with you. Well, we've got a great program coming up. Bloomberg's Mark Bergen is joining us on YouTube's content moderation policy and why

the company has struggled to crackdown on white extremism. It's all in his new book, It's called Like Comments Subscribe Inside YouTube's chaotic rise to world domination. Him and yes, of course, the countdown to the next FED meeting. It is on, but investors and corporate leaders are still sorting through FED Chairman j Powell's hawk ish message at Jackson Hole.

Weighing in on that with his front row seat on global supply chains, we checked in with Paul Lunstrom, CFO of global manufacturing company Flex, and later on women's ongoing struggle for equality. Fitting timing too, as August marked the second anniversary of the certification of the Nineteenth Amendment that was passed back in nineteen twenty. Alright, full equality, folks. I'm just gonna say, we're still waiting. Yeah, we are. It's been more than a hundred years. Yep. All of

that to come. We begin with this week's remarks in the magazine, which also happened to be the Issues cover story. President Biden recently announced a sweeping package of student debt relief, you know that, for giving as much as twenty dollars in loans for some recipients. Bloomberg Opinion editor Remesh rotten Bazaar says that the bailout doesn't address the fundamental problem. Too many college students are getting a bad return on their investments. We spoke to remesh for is take on

what Biden got wrong. I don't want to understate, um, you know, the impact that loan forgiveness is going to have for you know, a lot of Americans. You know, particularly you know the people who um, you know, we're on pell grants, received pell grants. So these are low middle income UH students you know, who are in many cases going to see their their debts completely wiped out.

That's life changing for a lot of them. But you know, the the underlying issue remains, which is, um, we have a system in which, you know, in order to have a good paying career, um, you know, people feel they need to go to college, whether that's two years for four years, um. And for an increasing number of those people, the gains of going to college just don't match the costs of doing so. And that's what's putting them in a position where they are leaving with debt that they

can't repay. You know, that's what's caused this bigger cists. So forgiving debts, it's going to help some people, it doesn't really solve the problem. How did we get here? Because schools say, well, wait a minute, we've got to attract teachers, We've got to attract facilities. I want my daughter to learn. I don't really care if it's the newest gym that she's playing in. There are a lot of factors. Certainly, there's been under investment in public institutions

really beginning with the Great Recession. The bargain has flipped. Whereas government for a long time basically picked up most of the tab of the cost of college, now that's been basically flipped over to families. The student loan system exacerbates the problem because basically it provides a subsidy to institutions and removes any incentive for them to lower tuition so that people can afford it, because you can just

take out federal student loans with federal government covers and UM. Institutions, you know, colleges don't really have to have no skin in the game. UM. And what we have seen, yes, but in order to to attract students, they have invested a lot of money and you know, improving the student experience and amenities facilities, not necessarily instruction and research UM. And that's all contributed to driving up these costs to the levels that we're seeing. What's the justification for tuition

costs and college costs, you know, outpacing inflation by a mile. Yeah, I mean basically, you know, outpacing virtually every other service in our economy. You know. I think one thing that's important point out is that for students who attend the most selective colleges, colleges that that accept less than fifty of applicants, um, but it's a very small percentage of the overall student population. The return on investment over your

lifetime is still pretty good. It's still probably gonna be worth your while if you get a degree from one of those institutions. The problem is that's not where most people are going to school. And um, what you have is the vast majority of Americans who are are going to colleges in programs that just are not delivering that return. And even worse, a lot of a third of people who enroll in college never get their degree to begin with.

And it's really that cohort that is sort of the at the heart of the crisis of of student loaned at we'll re meastion. What I really like about your piece is that it ends on you know, I don't necessarily want to say optimistic, because there's a lot that has to get done for this to improve. But the word you use as aspirational, and let's say that members of Congress got along with one another and that everyone's on the same page when it came to higher education.

If you could wave a magic wand and fix this, what would that look like? What's that aspirational element that you thought you write about. I think the big thing that needs to happen as there needs to be more innovation in the system. Consumers need more choices. The old traditional model is just not working for enough students, and so you know, we are way behind other countries when

it terms comes to apprenticeships. UM, you know, work based training programs, the kinds of things that give people an alternative to having to go to four year universities try to get a bachelor's degree of unclear value. Um, we need more post secondary programs that are really geared towards giving people's skills that they can take to the marketplace. That was Bloomberg Opinion editor Remesh rotten Tasar with this week's cover story. You can read the full issue online

on the Bloomberg terminal and out on news stands. Now. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Spinovik from Bloomberg Radio. China continues to amp up its stimulus measures to help out its slowing economy. Might recall just over a week ago, China apping up that stimulus by another a truly in yuan or a hundred and forty six billion dollars US funding largely focused

once again, tim on infrastructure spending. That support, though likely won't go far enough to counter the damage from repeated COVID lockdowns and a property market slump. Yeah, I just can't get ahead of that. To help us make sense of the situation, Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney and I spoke with David Redal, president and founder of Retal Research Group. We started by asking what China's stimulus can do, especially if the country keeps opening and closing. We keep seeing the

pressure caused by COVID. Yeah, that's a real concern. I think people have been a little bit naive ignoring some of the big issues that headwinds that China is facing these days. You talked about regulatory oversight. We, of course, in the last couple of years, had big crackdowns on big tech and data integrity and things in China which had a big negative impact on some of the a d rs. We've heard about COVID, the zero policy really being a hamstring in the economy. Of course, the property

market overhang. The one thing I think people are really ignoring is a historic drought taking place in China. Food security is a big, big deal to Beijing, and this drought is a real threat. I have to say. We actually talked about it yesterday on air and talking about UM the Three Gorges, Damn and just what's happening in terms of the importance of water when it comes to powering UH facilities throughout China. Talk to us a little

bit more about what you're hearing. I'm curious. I don't know whether you've been traveling back and forth yet from Asiana you often do. But tell us what you're hearing about this UH and it's impact on China specifically. Yeah, I haven't been to China itself for a while. I haven't been nearby but not in China for some time. But we have people on the ground there and they're saying it's just unprecedented seeing how how small the Yangsee River is. We're hearing a lot about the Rhine and

the dramatic weather in Europe. We're just not hearing it as much about China, and it's a big deal. I mean, of their power comes from hydro power that's really under threat. If they have to replace that, they have to replace it with coal fired ants, which also consume a lot

of water. They're arable land is really under threat from a drought that's impacting their bread basket, and the Beijing really wants to keep the impact away from individual homes, so they're turning off power to Tesla, to Apple, to Toyota, and that's just in the last ten days. This of course is at a time when they're really ramping up for US holiday Christmas season demand, and so this could

be a real problem for supply chains. We've all learned a lot about how big of a farm exporter the Ukraine is um and how much you know, how much how big they really are in the global agricultural business, But how talk to us about the North China plane. How big is that? Yeah, it's shocking. I mean, their their production of corn and wheat is tremendous. Their production is about on par of wheat, about in par with Russia, and their corn is three times the production coming out

of the Ukraine. So if they have a big drought Argentine, you had a big one just six months ago. It impacted their corn production by thirty three. If China has anything like that, they're going to be in the global markets buying a tremendous amount of corn and wheat. Those shortcomings, some analysis has shown, could mean they could be out there looking to purchase of the corn that's traded worldwide

and of the wheat. Imagine the impact on North Africa, the rest of Africa, in the Middle East, which is already suffering from shortages of grain, and the impact on hunger and food prices around the world. It's really quite quite frightening. You know. We talked about I think about years ago when E. S. G. First Scott you know, was was up and running and people started talking about it,

money flowing into it. David. You know, we talked about the material impact, uh financial, material impact on companies as a result of climate change in the environment. You know, we're not just talking about material impact. We're talking about you know, existence. I mean things we all take for granted globally, food, water, if you will, Um, these things are really threatened. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, people talked about rare earths about ten years ago and how China was

really cornering the world market on rare earths. Rare earths are not that rare, they're they're ubiquitous. But China is the only country that's had the willingness to take the environmental hit to mine aggressively rare earths. Do you know what? Mining rare earth takes a lot of water. Tremendous amount of water to to to rinse those those ores and concentrate those rare earths. That goes into everything chips, microphones, speakers, displays of every sort. China is the world's source of

something like a year of many of these rare earths. Now, if they're running low on water, they're certainly not gonna producing those rare earths for export, and that could really be a supply Chaine disruption. I am trying to make sense. There's delistings, there's regulatory you're talking about the water catastrophe. Let's just stick with the water story. How do you think this ultimately plays out longer term? Well, I think China is going to have to be much more efficient

with their use of water. UM of their water consumption is industrials industrial consumption, so that on top of that is agriculture, and on top of that is residential. So clearly China has long been the inexpensive workshop of the world, being able to mobilize very large workforces very efficiently and effectively to build companies like Fox, Coon and so on

that can be very responsive to develop world needs. Given the aging population, giving the pressure, given the pressures on their environment, including water, I think that's something the world can't count on in the next ten years the same way they did in the last ten years. So I worry about them exporting inflation the same way that they may have exported deflation in recent years. They can't make more water. You can print more money, you can't print

more water. So they really need to be careful with the resource that they have. I think they're going to have to dial back usage. You know, David, with all the challenges that investing in China has been presented with over the last couple of years, of talking regulatory challenges, COVID, in their response to COVID their policies, there now some of these resource issues that you're highlighting. I have to ask the question of every e M investor that I

talked to, is China even investable? China cannot be ignored from an investment point of view, second largest economy in the world, largest grow, fastest growing consumer market in the world. Really uh, the tail that wags the dog in terms of demand for commodities and all kinds of things. But I think smart investors are trying to find other unique

ways to play it. Perhaps there are domestically listed plays that cover unique aspects of water treatment and water supply and so and so forth that provided an opportunity to benefit from the changes in the water landscape. Maybe there's regional players or other countries around the world that benefit from from China's current challenges. We've been talking to our clients a lot about Mexico as an alternative for supply change of China's under rusher. A big thank you to

David Redal, President and founder of Retal Research Group. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week YouTube's effective yet uneven formula

for fighting extremism. This is Bloomberg Veterans. Whatever you're going through, don't wait, reach out, find resources at v A dot gov, slash reach Dot's v A dot gov slash Reach brought to you by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, and they add Council broadcasting from the financial capital of the World Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius

XM Chado one nine and around the globe, the Bloomberg Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. For years, everyone was welcome on YouTube, no matter how extream their view us. But as the social giant became one of the most visited sites on the Internet, the company has consistently struggled to adjust, and some staff say they kept a double standard when it came to moderating extremism on the platform. It's interesting, I feel like

we've heard this before with social media platforms in general. Well, this is the subject though of Mark Bergen of Bloomberg his upcoming book the title Like Comments Subscribe Inside YouTube's Chaotic rise to World domination. An excerpt of the book is featured in this week's edition of Bloomberg Business Week magazine. Market business Week editor Joe Weber spoke with me and

Bloomberg senior markets reporter Katie Greifeld. Joell started by asking why YouTube has worked to combat extremism but not all types of extremism. It does get this like very fascinating dilemma, but it's not just YouTube. It's always it, I think more than any of the company, just given its size, but it's something that it's effect at all all major Internet platforms. And partly I think there's there's a couple

different reasons. One is just the nature of the way the government's work as that there there's been a lot more and Western governments pressure and willingness to sort of tackle Island Islamness extremism. Uh. And we saw like there are sort of tech collaborations that in mind. There are repositories, there are sorry, there are lists of like known terrorists that that YouTube uses and they can ban these certain figures. There's YouTube is a is a gigantic digital advertising is

very responsive to its advertisers. Part of the book's opening scene is is this is June and seen when they're in middle of this major boycott over videos, some of which were like isis allies that you know, household brands were sponsoring, and these advertisers put pressure on YouTube and kind of force them to act in a way that

they hadn't before. UM. And then once they were able to kind of clean up the system to make it amenable to the the these ads when like weren't sponsoring videos that marketers wanted, there was less pressure for them. So I think there's a combination where it was very easy politically addressing white nationalism is a more complicated, especially in the US contemporary of politics problem in the thread, and there was less pressure from regulators and advertisers at

the time. How do people and machines do this? There's a passage from your book and indeed from this excerpt in the magazine that includes the phrase use your judgment

when talking content moderation. That's not necessarily prescript rule. Right, Yeah, I thought that was So this was YouTube was really it's hard for us to appreciate, but this was in This was in two dozen six starting towards and five does and sixes, And I think when that this is they ran, like UM, some of their first sort of policy frameworks, and this was really before content moderation existed at the size and the internet and YouTube had a

problem that Facebook and other sort of text based didn't have, which is they have video and they have moving images, and they have like complications and and all that brings and so I you know, this was a team that

was pretty scrappy and sort of inventing this on the fly. Um, like a lot of them are pretty well versed in the like weird dark recesses of the Internet, and so use your judgment was there were at the time a lot more of a like humans sort of you can call it editorial perspective and judgment about where the lines withdrawal. And this was they sort of viewed YouTube as this was a community of users and video broadcasters and they they sort of wanted videos to fit within the boundaries

of the community. You know, fast forward a few years that they've become this global platform and moderation is this very complicated process. So it's a complicated process where the company increasingly wants to rely on machine learning systems as much as possible, in part because machine learning systems can

just process so much video better faster than humans. They're they're impartial, and they're less you know, the Google cannot be accused of biaus more if if they can point and say, like, listen, we have a we have a policy rulebook. Can we have machine systems we don't have

humans with with biases making news, scysions decisions. One of the things that YouTube Ofpton says is that dealing with the threat of like Islamist extremism on the platform proved easier because you know, multiple governments agree on those standards, right, whereas with white nationalism there there isn't that same unanimity. So I'm I'm wondering where does that Where does that leave things? Because it means that there's more reliance on AI and the code. You know, ultimately the code is

what what runs everything here? Uh? Where does that really leave things? As as you know, society continues to have these massive flare ups. Yeah, I think, I mean, I think that they've made some significant changes, and partially because of some tragedies that they witnessed christlike shooting. We talked about the story even the most recently Buffalo shooting. Like every time there is an incident like this um that is like often sometimes these events are like live stiment

live stream on on YouTube. So they have taken action because of like pressure from their employee base and from politicians and from some of these big moment moment that was Bloomberg Technology reporter Mark Berg in his book Like Comments Subscribe Inside YouTube's chaotic rise to world domination. It hits shelves on September six. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes. Tim Stinovich from Bloomberg Radio. Companies really the world at large, you

meet Tim. Everybody continue to send more and more data into the cloud. That's been great for one service provider. We're talking about net App. The company recently reported earnings and sales that beat Wall Street estimates. That is, the storage and data management company saw continued demand across segments that defied supply chain and currency challenges. Net Up CEO George Curry and joined me and Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney to talk about the latest quarter as well as look ahead

at what's next for the company. We're excited. We're off to a great start to our new fiscal year. We just completed the first uh fiscal quarter of the year and saw broad base demand and strength across all our geographies. We have set record highs pretty much across the board in terms of revenue, billings, gross margin dollars, operating margin dollars, and EPs for Q one. So I'm really pleased. It's always good to get off to a good start in

the year. Yeah. Absolutely, that's a great way better than the alternative. Um Paul did break down some of your numbers. Your customer base has included the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, hits Hachi, Intel, Tata. It's global in nature. It really gives us a good clue in terms of what's going on in the economy. How would you describe in terms of more color demand for your core products from your big customers. We're involved in helping our customers store, protect,

and use their data for business advantage. We do that not only with data center equipment for their data centers, but as you mentioned, with cloud based services that are deeply integrated into the world's leading cloud providers Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM and others. And we saw a really good portfolio

balance across all of our geographies and customer segments. Data, as you know, is foundational to competitive advantage, Understanding customers, working with your supply chain, UH and so on and so we continue to see demand strong and we've had to work really hard to have all the supply to meet it, and we continue to do that work. Taugh to us about the supply chain, it's it's been such an issue for so many businesses across so many parts of the economy, and and and it's a global issue here.

How is it for your company now versus maybe in a year or two ago, and kind of how do you think it's gonna progress. I think a year ago was the really difficult time. We've seen kind of steady improvements in silicon availability, and I would say cautiously that we've seen stabilization. Uh, in terms of you know, the the silicon supply chain. It's still not where it is needed to be to meet all of our demand, but

at least it's stopped backsliding. We have also been doing work to deal with some of the freight and logistical challenges. I think, as you know, the sort of the gap between demand and supply continues to get a little bit smaller. We demand still ahead of supply. We hope that these

things get better over the course of our next twelve months. Well, I do wonder, I do wonder to George, how did supply chain issues or pressures or constraints impact your ability to you know, in terms of your adjustments or your outlook are raising your outlook estimates for the full year? You know, I think we have had to do a huge amount of work to be able to meet demand. We've had to re engineer products, We've had to source supply in multiple parts of the world, and sort of

extraordinary measures to meet demand. I would say that backlog is still ahead of pre pandemic levels, so we're still in elevated sort of backlog situations and we'd love to be able to, you know, sort of make those products available to customers. Were working closely with our suppliers to do that. We did in our press release reconfirmed the full year guidance, which, given the currency movements subsequent to when we guided, is actually taking up guidance, as you noted,

by about a you know, one or two points. So we feel good about you know, demand, We feel that we've got to go do the work and supply and continue to do the work to need it. So, Georgia, I love it. From your perspective, where is the biggest source of growth for your business? Here? Over the next five years. I'm going to ask you to think a little bit far out, which I know your board asked you to do occasionally, but on a five year plan, you're so many pieces of the pie that are you

have some really strong growth dynamics. Where do you really think your focused should be? We really see the two big transformational trends are data driven business or digital business and cloud. You know, we on the data side, we help our clients store aggregate enormous amounts of data, whether it's for traditional applications like an E r P or you mentioned salesforce those kinds of applications, or for the

really modern advanced analytics and artificial intelligence applications. We for example, work with companies like Semens Health and Years which makes medical imaging systems, and we use AI technology together with huge amounts of data to be able to make the life of a radiologist much easier. We can predict help them predict which patients are more likely to have COVID, or find cost effective ways to deal with the breast cancer and so on. So that's one data and the

other is cloud. You see, there's a vast migration of customers to using cloud based technologies and we help all of the leading cloud providers as well as their end customers to make their cloud projects much more reliable, performance secured, especially security of data from attacks like ransomware, is a growing trend that we have really good solutions for. Carol, I think I'm even in the cloud. I know I am. You know if I'm in the cloud, you know it's

a thing. It's a market. So, George, I'm looking at our PGeo function on the Bloomberg terminal that allows me to look at breakdown of your businesses by lots of different measures and by geography. I see that. Yeah, but a little more than half of your businesses in the US and Canada in Latin America, maybe about a third, thirty percent in Europe, and about fourteen percent in Asia.

Going forward, where regionally will you be allocating more of your capital world you see more growth on a regional basis, We continue to focus on the biggest markets in each of those geographies. I think several years ago, about maybe five or six years ago, we decided to participate in the China market, which is the largest Asian market, through a joint venture with Lenovo that allows us to serve the vast expanse of Chinese customers with local partnerships and

local knowledge of the local market. So the rest of the world we served through our own uh you know kind of sales and go to market organization and through partners and we're pleased with the strength of our you know, it's a balanced book of business. We've seen strong adoption of our portfolio across all the leading markets, and so

I'm excited about what the future holds. Hey, George, I do wanted to and some of the major macro issues that are out there, whether it's near shoring, offshoring, on shoring, UH and then through on top of that your political tensions, which is creating all of that changes. How is that impacting you guys in terms of where you produce, where

you do business. Clearly, it's a great question, Carol. I think clearly, over the last few years, both because of geopolitical risk but also just supply availability and risk management, we've built a diverse kind of geographic base for supply and manufacturing. We've moved our dependence from the Far East too much more local markets. So we manufacture heavily in Mexico and in some parts of Europe, we've moved, you know, our supply base from a silicon perspective into a diverse

mix of silicon providers. And we've moved the way our systems are built. Rather than from highly integrated systems that have risk from one component, we're moving it to more of a Lego style building block models, so that if one component isn't there, you can slot in another one. We've had to do a lot of work. We continue to believe that the world's uh, you know, we need to think about supply rather than in the old model of just in time management to actually be risking supply

to meet demand. Yeah, that's we've heard definite a lot of companies, a lot of different industries. Labor. You have about twelve thousand employees. How tough is it they get labor, health to is it they keep labor? I think it's been. It's a very competitive job market, especially for the type of talent software and cloud talent that we look for.

We've got a really good value proposition for employees. They get to do great work in ah, you know, very supportive culture, and we are got a global population, so we can source talent wherever in the world. It is. Having the best talent in the world is a source of competitive advantage, and we've got good compensation programs to meet what what's needed. That was net absolutely George Curryan

along with Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney. And that wraps up the first hour of the GET edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanevik. Ahead in our next hour, more voices from the C suite. The CFO of the electronics manufacturer Flex on the global economy and manufacturing and managing supply chains for a host of household names. Yeah, exactly, their customer list. I mean, you're going to know all of these companies so well.

Plus the CEO of Open Table. And while getting a dinner reservation feels more difficult than ever, now, going out to that meal is very much a planned event before. We have a lot of walk ins for our restaurants. People are now booking two or three days in advance. We used to think that bar seating was the most

unattractive seat at a restaurant. We're seeing bar seating increase two folds because you want to be in the fray, you want to be around people and I think people are going to continue to crave going out and gender equality in America. We'll check out ubs is Own Your Worth report on female wealth empowerment plus formidable American women in the fight for equality. Historian Betsy Griffith shares lessons from the past. This is bloom Burg. This is the

story of a very special woman. Just a few knew about her superpowers. In a matter of seconds, she turned herself into a great mathematician. She masqueraded as a regular person at work, but as a superhero at home. Everyone knows her as Gabriella. I still call her mom. Your hero needs you now, and a ARP is here to help find the care guides you need to help. Complete with tips and resources at a a ARP dot org slash Caregiving. Brought to you by AARP and the add Concil.

This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine plus global business, finance and tech news as it happens. Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messier and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio plenty Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including the CFO Flex. It's a global manufacturing company working at defense, health, energy,

housing in more Man. They have a cross section of the global economy. We're gonna get his take on macro conditions. I love talking to this guy. Yeah, it's not just like a cross section of the global economy. It's you know, different types of industries and then also just different regions of the world. Really incredible company to play and play into the supply chains, right, so so much. Yeah, really good conversation. Coming up. Another good conversation with historian Betsy Griffith.

She discusses her new book, described by her former classmate Hillary Clinton as quote an essential history of the struggle by both black and white women to achieve their equal rights. First up this hour, as the world reopens, an individual shift from buying stuff to doing things such as eating out or travel, that too, can create another supply demand imbalance. For clarity on that, we checked in with Debbie Sue, the CEO of the online restaurant reservation company Open Table,

also a subsidiary of the publicly traded Booking Holdings. She's got great insight into what's going on in the restaurant industry because her company gathers lots of data on who's

booking what and when. She spoke with me and Bloomberg Senior Markets reporter Katie felt, the restaurant industry has definitely seen a pickup in demand, and we're still seeing that kind of post pandemic pent up demand where a lot of us have been cooped up in our houses or our apartments, um and there's this need to engage and meet with people and oftentimes over a meal. And so I think we're still seeing uh, pent up demand and

people going out. So that demand is really help steady, even in places in like New York, where Goldman has requested everyone come back into the office. In New York is one of those cities where versus city like San Francisco, for example, people are coming back. You're seeing those those lunchtime shifts starting to fill up, and so the city is definitely feeling more alive, and it's certainly it is very difficult to get a reservation on a Friday night.

You're also seeing a New York tourist activity and travel activity really coming back in a way that we haven't seen in the last two years. So all really encouraging signs from and I swear I actually got an ivy during this program asking me to grab lunch in the fall from a listener and a source. So I guess the least lunch. Yeah, I'm gonna go. Of course I'm gonna go. That's what you call a flex, you know, making a reservation. I mean, I'm not making the reservation

someone else can. But in any case, uh W. I am interested to situate this conversation in the broader economic landscape that we're living in, because all we talk about all day and of course this is on Bloomberg, so of course we would be talking about it, but we talk about inflation, we talk about recession fears, and you are seeing this pent up demand, Like you say, but how resilient do you think that is in the face of some of those big issues that we talk about,

as you mentioned, were certainly in a challenging macro environment. And I think we're in unprecedented times here because we've not had a recession that's followed, you know, with a two year or central pandemic, and so we're seeing that demand continue you to hold and I think even once you know, people stop revenge eating uh is what we like to call it here at open table with the shape of work and return to work and what what that whole thing. I think the future of work or

how work is is different post pandemic. I don't know if we're ever going to get back to a world of how it was before the pandemic. So we have a lot of people who work from home or have a hybrid situation where now going out to that meal is very much a planned event. Like it it's it's a bigger deal. And we're seeing that in shifts of behavior. Before we had a lot of walk ins for our restaurants. Um, we're seeing a channel shift for for that, you know,

regular casual walk in. No, people are now booking two or three days in advance. Hence, you know the common earlier being impossible to to find a reservation. It's because everyone's booking. Everyone's looking forward to that restaurant at the meal. We used to think that bar seating was the most unattractive seat at a restaurant. We're seeing bar seat and go across like a increase to fold because that's those are now very very desirable seats to sit at a restaurant.

Because you want to be in the fray. You want to be around people, and so I think it'll be really hard to tell what's going to happen in this macro environment. But I remain very bullish on dining, and I think people are going to continue to crave going out and they will save pockets of you know, their discretionary income for that event. May Debbie, before we let you go, I want to get an update on the the Open Table business and how you're competing with other

platforms like RESI for example. Give us an update there. We love competition here at Open Table. I think it pushes us to be faster and more innovative. We are slugging it out with them and other players all the time. At Open Table. We really believe that we are a true partner for our restaurants. UH. We stand by our product.

We've continued to iterate um during the pandemic and post the pandemic, making sure that we give restaurants all of the tools Dane need to be running their businesses productively, efficiently, effectively, especially given this macro environment. We've launched features like direct messaging, where now you know hosts don't have to just be on their phones, s M, S NG and confirming or calling.

You can do that directly through open tables products. So we're really looking at all the different ways that we can make um from the diner's point of view and from the restaurant's point of view, a more seamless dining experience. It's tough times that that this our industry has gone through some stuff in the last few years. The best thing you can do to support restaurants is to show up. Uh No, shows continue to be I have always been

a problem, but especially post pandemic. Yes, please cancel your reservations if you know you're not going to. I mean, we had to cancel a reservation recently and it was fifty bucks, but we got around it by rescheduling for like a few months from now. Yeah. Okay. That way though, it is a lot easier on the rest of us, and of course the restaurant as well. Be considerate. Everybody,

cancel if you're not going. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovan from Bloomberg Radio Flex it's publicly held global manufacture and supply chain solutions company. It serves many industries with customers ranging from Apple and Cisco Systems to Ford and so many more. Tim needless to say, they've got a great sense of macro themes that we talked about every day on our program.

Paul Lundstrom is the company's CFO. He gave us a bird's eye view starting with the strengths and weaknesses across different global industries, just to kind of walk you through the portfolio. We just had an earnings call a month ago, and one of the things that we talked about was a little bit of softening and some of the shorter

cycle consumer product markets. But for us, that is much more than offset by you know, we continue to see very robust demand in a number of other areas, things like networking and connectivity, whether it's you know, cloud or five G that continues to be very very strong. Network security continues to be very very strong. Um a number of the industrial markets, including things like renewable energy. Uh, you know that probably seems obvious, but that that continues

to see robust growth. We're we're quite pleased with what we've seen there. Even things like automotive, which is you know, you would expect demand to soften if the economy softens it up here in the automotive space. But but frankly, there's so much backlog and that whole sector is going through mus going through so much restocking. So what what is it holding up those products? I mean, we talk about chips all the time, but but really dig into that for us, like, where are you seeing the supply

chain the bottlenecks right now? Well, certainly it's chips. To just give you a sort of a short brief answer, semiconductors has been a big bottleneck, but so of things like oversea logistics, you know, ports stacking up with containership after container ship. Who hasn't seen aerial photographs of that. But you know, from my standpoint, you look to the ROO cause going into the pandemic, the world economy was already doing pretty well and so in a lot of

cases producers were just barely keeping up with demand. Now you sprinkle in COVID, you see production you know, shut down for four months on end, and a lot of different geographies. While at the same time you have and this isn't just a US thing, this is you know, world governments just just pounded stimulus, spending pounded it and so what that did was. I think demand did not go down like many thought it would. In some cases,

demand actually went up. But then when you take the you take the away the ability for producers to produce. The backlog just went through the roof. And we've been trying to recover ever since. You mentioned some regional differences, and that's really where I want to dig into right now, is getting understand from you about where we're seeing some

economic softness. And I know, look, we can talk about what we've seen from Europe over the last you months on some softness there and concerns about recession there, but where some regions with strength and where some regions with weakness. Yeah, I would say, uh, I see less region to region

and more product to product. And so you know, from from my vantage point, the shorter cycle consumer product markets, what is the short cycle consumer product I think of it as more commoditized electronics, you know, cell phones and laptops and that sort of stuff, um and and that over the last you know, quarter or two, we we have seen that soften up a little bit. It probably will you know, continue that way as as you look forward.

But I would say that's worldwide. You know, that's not unique to one particular region where we continue to see robust demand is the more infrastructure related technology, you know, things like five G and and cloud continues to be very, very robust. But are there areas of the world that are sticking out to you where you're seeing weakness? Uh, well, the zero COVID policy in China is that's not going

to help those those local markets. I think people want to get back to work and get back to get back to normal and so you know, we see it more from a supply chain perspective than than from a specific end market perspective. But yeah, that would be an example where it would be nice to get back to a little bit of normalcy. Can you talk a little bit about how you've navigated china zero COVID policy, Paul,

Scale really does matter. You know, we have a very wide geographic reach and so we also have a very large supplier network, and so as things have been you know, coming on an offline in China over the last couple of years, frankly, Um, it's been a little easier for us to pivot, you know. I think, um, we can produce like for like, you know, from one region to the next without a whole lot of notice, and because

we have a large supply chain network, it helps. So I think scale has been a big help for for a company like ours. I'm wondering about globalization and where we are in Before we went into the pandemic, we saw a move, uh at least from the United States, of trying to isolate China to a certain extent under the Trump administration's tariffs and policies. And during the pandemic we saw just how fragile so many of the global

supply chains were. So now we're hearing from companies where they're on shoring or or re shoring or near shoring, you know, use the shoring word that you want to use, but they're moving production to other parts of the world. What are the themes that you're seeing. Well, yet, first of all, you just nailed it. I mean going back to the to the globalization and labor arbitrage that you know, and not just us China, I mean go back ten

years ago. You know, it's it's been about labor arbitrage for for decades now, and Western companies have made the decision to produce in the Far East for for you know, a long long time because of all the issues that we've seen over the last few years. And you're right, you know, it started with with trade politics, and I would say it's been you know, across multiple administrations now

where that that tone and rhetoric really hasn't hasn't improved. Uh, then you have COVID, then you have chip shortages, then you have logistics to spend shock after shock after shock. And so what we're seeing now is this trend where customers are coming to us and saying, we don't want to produce everything we want to be. We don't want

to be captive to Asia anymore. We want to produce in Asia for Asia, but if you can, we'd like you to produce in Europe for Europe, in North America for North America because we're worried about our supply chain resilience. How tough is it to get employees around the world right now? Unemployment is low, and it's it's not just the US, you know, We're we're seeing it all over

the place. You know, where there's there's labor shortages in Malaysia, there's labor shortages in China, there's labor shortages all over the place. And so that definitely puts put some pressure on the system and then we'll probably have some upward pressure on wages here for for a little bit. That's exactly where I wanted to go. Sort of this idea of inflation and to what extent you see in lation sticking around? What is your own as CFO Offlex, what

is your own outlook on inflation? What are you planning for? Uh, Well, we're planning for higher for sure, and you know we do every thing we can to insulate the business from that. And you know, are are probably quickest, most readily usable lever is price and passing those inflations, passing the cost inflation on our side through to the to the end customer. That's not great for for overall inflation. And like, I'm not going to make a call on where we're going

to be. I do like that the FED is is being more aggressive and trying to get this in check, but it could be around for a little while. That's Paul Lunstrom, CFO of Flex, a lot of really great insights in that interview. But I gotta say I feel like he's the hundred executive who's told us that high prices, Carol, are here to stay. Nothing transitory, right, No, no, you're not even allowed to say that word anymore. I know. Gosh, sorry about that, all right, Still to come on Bloomberg

Business Week. Women taking control of their wealth and society. Learning from the past when it comes to gender equality, we lean in big when it comes to women empowerment. Stick around. This is Bloomberg frondcasting from the financial capital of the World Bloomberg eleven Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM Chado one nineteen and around the globe the Bloomberg

Business app and Bloomberg Radio dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week. On August nineteenth, Amendment was formally adopted into the Constitution. Congress celebrates his state every year with Women's Equality Day. We often talk about how the US, though, is still far from equal on many levels, men versus women,

white women versus black women. Bloomberg recently reported that women still earn about seventy three cents for every one dollar that men make, not according to data from ADP Research Institute. This next half hour back to back interviews on women's social and financial equality, and on that UBS survey down that of women say they expect to outlive their spouses, but more than half of women that's say that their spouses take the lead when it comes to major financial decisions.

That's pretty big disconnect. All right. Here with more is Carrie Scheffman, head of the Women's Strategic Segment at EBS Global Wealth Management, speaking with Tim and Katie Greifeld. The reality is that women do tend to, on average, have longer life expectancies than their male counterparts, on average by about five years. And that is the reality that we

tend to see. I think about my own grandmother, who for whom we just celebrated her ninetieth birthday earlier this year, and she's been widowed for over five years already and then has been on her own um. And that's really I think part of the reason why in the catalysts behind a lot of the research that we've done here at UBS focused on women and financial well being and helping to ensure that women from all different walks of life and financial situations as generations, are are prepared to

navigate their their financial journeys. Yeah, what's remarkable to me about this, this research that you did at UBS is that the US is kind of in the middle when it comes to women differring long term financial decisions to their spouses. On one end, you have women in Singapore say that my spouse takes the lead. The other end of the spectrum in Mexico. So you know, it's not just a problem here in the U S. It's a problem globally. But how do you explain the regional differences

or or or regional variations here? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a great question. I think, Um, I think it depends on many different factors. I think it depends on demographics, culture, Um, how families are structured as well. Certainly that applies here as well, I would say in the United States in particular, which is where my team and I focus our efforts. You know, you also have to really take into it account the historical context around the topic of women and money, and this certainly very

geographies as well. But you think back to something like it wasn't until nineteen seventy four that the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed, which gave women the ability to apply for credit, a credit card, mortgage, etcetera without having

to have a male cosigner. I mean, nineteen seventy four was not that long ago, so uh, there's there was a lot of there were a lot of barriers, I would say, and things that made it more difficult for women to gain equal financial footing until relatively recently, and certainly that I think played a role in all of

this as well. Well, let's talk about partnership here, because according to your research, you write that women who approach long term decisions and partnership with their spouses reports soaring levels of satisfaction. So so how do people go about doing this? I mean, I do think that oftentimes in partnerships like these, there is one person who handles, you know, certain tasks and another person handles other tasks, and it's

kind of divided between the two. Absolutely, and I think that's human nature a right, you know, if if you are in a marriage or partnership. Uh, we all have time constraints, no matter who we are, where we are in our lives. We have to take a divide and

conquer approach. Certain things take priority over others. Um but I will say that when it comes to long term finances, it's critically important, whether you're single, whether you're married, whatever your marital status may be, that you have an active understanding of where you are in your financial life and sort of where you're heading. Um, both for you to be able to achieve your own goals, to whether any personal headwinds, but to also whether you know the more

macro environment around you. UM. Our research actually showed, and you alluded to this, that only one in five heterosexual married couples here in the US actually share equally in the long term financial decisions. UM. And again, as you mentioned that the onset about half of women tell us that they differ those long term financial decisions to a partner or spouse. But I think it's a question of trying to make the time, trying to also overcome some

of the company in scaps that our research has uncovered. Uh. Surprisingly, sev of the women with whom we spoke said that they believe that women on on the whole tend to

overestimate what's required to be financially engaged. So certainly trying to break down some of those barriers, so some of those misperceptions around what it takes to have those meaningful conversations about where you are and where you're head is financially um and the good thing and the benefit is that our research shows there's tremendous upside to being an

active participant in those financial matters, particularly among couples. Whether it's greater satisfaction in your financial situation, higher confidence in achieving your goals, and my personal favorite, less stress and less arguments. That's Carrie Schaffman, head of the Women's Strategic segment at UBS Global Wealth Management. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim

Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. A recent Bloomberg Business Week cover story spoke about American women at the breaking point, noting how the undoing a Roe V. Wade made everything far more precarious. Our next guest has written extensively about the advancement of women and struggles they faced along the way. She graduated from Wellesley College in the same class as former U S Secretary of State and former presidential candidate

Hillary Clinton. Her biography of Elizabeth Katie Stanton inspired a Ken Burns PBS documentary, and her new book chronicles the efforts of white and black women to advance sometimes competing causes. We're talking about his storian and author Betsy Griffith and her new book Formidable American Women in the Fight for Equality. Nine Bloombergs. Paul Sweeney joined me for this interview, and we began by asking Betsy about her approach for the book.

I started with the question of what happened after women won the vote um and were added to the US Constitution on August hundred and two years ago today. What happened next? Journalists would say a decade later that the nineteenth Amendment promised almost everything and accomplished almost nothing. They made a huge stride to break into voting, but then white women rarely voted, and Black women were barred from voting by discrimination at the at the state level and

voting laws, so these women had more to do. White women would pursue running for office and legislative agendas and sundry list of causes Black women had and even broader agenda. They wanted to safeguard Black Americans. They wanted to end lynching and discrimination and try some ways to secure equal rights, but it was so dangerous for them to behave in any public active manner that many of them uh acted behind the scenes, very quietly out of church basements as

deacons or agricultural agents. So it's a It is a complicated story in American history, but I think we need to accept that our history is complicated, uh, and learn as much about it as we can. Women have made enormous gain since nineteen twenty, but we haven't come anywhere near far enough. Just um. Speaking in terms of economics, the jobs that the majority of women hold are in the lowest part of the employment sector. The jobs there

are of kindergarten teachers are women. Seventy of public school teachers were only thirty eight percent of lawyers. Um, we are not. We think we've made a lot of gains because women are so much more visible and many women have UM succeeded enormously. But until a lot of women, more women have UM that access, that agency, that privilege, we aren't anywhere near there. So the fight is not done. Uh, and we're facing some setbacks now. The reference you made

to the UM the whole reproductive rights issue. Women who can make decisions about when to have babies, how many babies, UM, the age of they are when they have babies, then can make decisions about education about their employment. And one of the reasons women succeeded as rapidly as they did in the last fifty years was because they had reliable birth control and constitutional right to um and a pregnancy

if they needed to. There are so many issues that contribute to the equal rights of black and white women, UM, and they still need to be addressed. Give us an anecdote from your book that released summarizes kind of the struggle in the early years. It's it is hard for women today to imagine not having any rights, not having in the nineteen twenties, not having the right to own property in some states, not keeping um their wages, Women did not serve on juries just because they got the

right to vote. They didn't have a right to divorce widely or child custody, access to very few jobs, access to limited education still in the nineteen twenties. It's it seems incomprehensible to women today that women could have been um so powerless. The book is, you know, just a real narrative analysis of the decades long women's fight for equality, based upon all your research you did for this book, based upon everything you learned from this book. Again, over

a hundred year period. Where do you think the women's movement needs to go from here? I think they need to recharge. Uh. The fight to get suffrage was more than a hundred years and it was called the long Hard fight. We made an enormous amount of progress beginning in the nineteen sixties, and part related to reproductive rights, the availability of the pill, the road decision, but enough other things changed Legislative Change Title seven, Uh, but Equal

Credit Act Title nine. Many positive things were propelling women forward, but then there came a huge pushback, um from conservative women. Women are not all one thing. There's there's enormous diversity, racial, economic, educational age, all those things that divide us. And there's certainly women and men who oppose the goals of the women's movement. And I think that we maybe have been writing on our success for a while and not expecting

the pushback that we've been getting. In voting rights, in reproductive rights, women are still um. Women need accessible, affordable childcare, they need paid family leave. Those two pieces of legislation alone would have enormous impact on women's economic well being, their participation in the workforce. So there's more to do, and I think we need to think more broadly about women's issues. We've we will send the sixties. We've been

saying every issue is a women's issue. But UM, I'm not sure that feminists would have included food deserts, or the quality of education and poor regions of this country, or what happens in UM medical care. We're still seeing too much maternal and infant death and discrepancies in those treatments. We need to get back in the fight, and not just in the streets. We need to be lobbying, going to door to door electing people to the legislature who

support those goals. I think we're in a real period of challenge and it will take a long time to win again unless there are just something dramatic happens in the two upcoming elections. All Right, So our Nancy Lions, who covers World of National News out a DC is shooting us a message and she says, you've got to ask Betsy about UM blue and pink timelines and how you divide history UM for women along the pink timeline. Uh, and something that we probably all don't know about. You

can you talk about this a little bit? Sure it UM and that they're not much women's history was written before the nineties seventies, and it got written because the government got rid of the graduate student deferment, and so graduate schools emptied of men who went to the war, and women filled those seats. And when women are doing graduate work in history, like every other category of person who's done graduate work, you tend to study your own field.

So women wrote about women, and they began to create some methodology about women, and one was to think about timelines. We have all learned the American history timeline from the colonial period to the federal period, to the Constitution, to the anti Bellum America to the reconstruction, industrialization, immigration, the twenties the thirties. That's our timeline, and it's dominated um not unsurprisingly, by presidents and generals and economic leaders. And

that's where we all learned. And I believe most textbooks today are still divided in that way. The nineteenth Amendment doubled the size of the voting population and franchise twenty six million women, and you rarely get a chapter devoted to suffrage, and you always get a chapter about Jacksonian democracy.

So the blue timeline marks events on your standard American timeline, a pink timeline suggests that all those blue events impacted women's lives, but there were other events, for example, the invention of the baby bottle, nursing nipple, or the tin can, or the sewing machine or the refrigerator that made women's lives enormously better. That wars many wars on the Blue timeline,

affecting men and women differently. Wars are devastating for everybody, men and women, but there are opportunities of great economic advancement for women. They get to go into the jobs that were forbidden to them the Civil War. They become secretaries in the First World War, short war, but they got to be elevator operators and bus driver and of course all those Rosie the riveters filling up the factories

during the Second World War. Right, you know, you know very well that the women's participation in the American workforce has not declined since. That was historian and author Betsy Griffith. Her new book is called Formidable American Women and the Fight for Equality nineteen. She joined Carol along with Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney. We're gonna have her back because I knew

you would love her. I mean, I feel like I could sit and talk to her for hours because of what she has seen written about in just a different perspective. And I wonder if there's gonna be another ken Burns documentary based on this book. I don't know. We'll have to wait and see on that. And we just want to say our thanks to Paul Sweeney and Bloomberg Senior Markets reporter Katie Greifeld for joining us over the past

week or so for a bunch of our interviews. And that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanovk. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week. It airs Monday through Friday, starts at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch her daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News and check out our Bloomberg Business

Week podcast. You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. Bloomberg Business Week is available on newstands now, at Bloomberg dot com, slash business Week, and always on the Bloomberg terminal. You can also see me on Bloomberg Quick Take available on Bloomberg dot com, slash QT, and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV and more. Have a great weekend everyone, Happy Labor

Day everyone. This is Bloomberg. Hey guys, it's me Isabella Goms spilling in for Smokey Bear because he's got more to say than just only you can prevent wildfires, Like if you're outside enjoying a barbecue, don't let a hamburger distract you from fire safety. Make sure you aren't dumping your hot coals or ashes onto the ground because that could start a wildfire. So take wildfire prevention seriously and let's save the world one day at a time. Smokey Bear for the go to smokey bear dot com to

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