This is Bloomberg Business Wait inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
So, as you know justin, was a lot of news coming out of China this week.
It is, and especially when you're looking at their latest data. I mean, this was supposed to be the year where we saw big improvement in China's economy, but we're not seeing that yet when you're looking particularly in their data and what that means for the global economy. It is the world's second largest economy.
Carol, it's gigantic, enormous, so important. And there's a lot of news about the property market, Ali Baba earnings. And then there was of course news from the US about China today. I most read on the Bloomberg terminal President Biden calling China's economy quote a ticking time bomb. So this is kind of a little mind blowing since we all thought the US was renewing its engagement in a
positive way. Fingers crosswitch. So let's get to it with more on the Chinese economy and that difficult relationship, complex relationship between the two economic superpowers that are, for better or worse, inextricably linked. We're talking about the US and China, of course, with US Bloomberg News White has correspondent on the phone from Washington, DC and Bloomberg Economics chief economist
Tom Orleck on zoom in our DC bureau. Let me first get to President Biden, since that is top of mine among our most read break it down for us right now, Jordan Fabian, What did President Biden say and what was he thinking when he said it?
So, the President tends to get loose when he's talking at political fundraisers with dinners, and he did just that
yesterday evening in Park City. He went on a tangent about China and said that the country's economy is a ticking time bomb, that they are struggling with demographic issues with lower growth, and that it's a paraphrase that when bad things happen to bad people, they do bad things in return, and so sort of a warning shot not only you know about what the situation is like with China, but on you know, just another clarification of like how
the president personally views China, even as the administrations trying to achieve a rapprochmant with the Chinese government and hopefully set up a meeting between Biden and President g later this year.
Sounds like the edit function was off. It's happened to all of us. Hey, Tom Morli, come on in on this though. Does the President President Biden have a right have a point?
Though?
Is the Chinese economy a ticking time bomb?
So President Biden is clearly correct that there are a number of really serious problems in China right now. You've got all the distress in the property sector, and we just heard about High Country Garden, one of China's biggest developers, could be defaulting. Because property is the most important driver of China's great When you have problems in property, your problems everywhere else as well. So we've had trade data showing China's commodity imports coming down because they're not building
so many houses. We've had loan data showing a big slumping credit because when the property sector is going down, confidence takes a hit, and folks don't want to borrow money, don't want to start new projects. So President Biden is correct that there are some really really serious problems which China's policy makers are confronting. Does that mean that China is a ticking time bomb? Well, I wouldn't go quite
so far. If we look at the track record of China's policy makers dealing with problems without major blow ups, well they do seem to be pretty good at it. My suspicion is that in the years ahead, China faces a continued slow down in growth. But it is China going to blow up? Is going to have a kind of Lehman moment like the US did in two thousand and eight. I think the answer to that is probably known.
Jordan. I want to bring you back into this conversation because the Biden administration and this week did issue an executive order barring some new US investments in China in sensitive technologies, including ship makers obviously that have been on a tear in the US stock market this year. When you're speaking with your sources, how much of this is a potential issue for our economy?
Yeah, this is really encapsulated the delicate dance that the President has with China. He has been talking about doing this this kind of order for over a year now, even longer, and the first iteration of this was much broader and deeper than the final version was. And that's really because he again wants to set up that relationship,
get those ties back to a certain level. And whether that's gonna like, whether these I guess outbound the vestment restrictions are going to affect the economy, I think remains to be seen. You know, even though the terms of the order itself are narrow, you could have a broader chilling effect on firms looking to investing in companies working
on technologies like AI and quantum computing. You know, they might read that and sort of get confused, say, you know, what is really you know, half of a company's income on these subjects and just decide not to invest it off. But well, it'll take time to see whether that dynamic really plays out and tom.
When it comes to obviously the Federal Reserve here, is there any way that, with China's growth actually slowing, does that in some ways make the Fed's job easier when it comes to the inflation flight globally?
So the big issue for the Federal Reserve when it comes to China is how much is China's growth going to contribute to global inflation? Now, the fear at the start of the year was that if China came roaring back from its COVID lockdowns, what that could mean is surging commodity prices, high oil prices, higher prices for soft commodity like soybeans, and that could give an additional impulse to inflation. And exactly the moment when ED really didn't
need an additional impulse to inflation. As it happens, China did raw back in the first quarter, but that momentum has really faded extremely quickly. If you look at the trade data, if you look at the credit data, if you look at the price data from China, it's pretty clear that the challenge for China right now is that momentum is stalled in growth is weak, and what that means is that China's not giving that impulse to global
commodity prices. So the Fed's still got some work to do to bring inflation under control, but China, if anything, is going to be giving an assist on that project.
We've got about a couple of minutes left, and I do wonder how the two of you think about both China and the US getting lost kind of politically. We've got an upcoming presidential election. So maybe President Biden thinking about you know, voters and maybe what they want to hear when it comes to being tough on China. President g also, you know, thinking about his own stance politically in his country at a time when probably facing more
struggles than before. And I do wonder will the political focus potentially create more problems for these two superpowers that in many ways many would argue you still need each other and Jordan, you take that question first.
Yeah, No, I think you bring up a good point, which is that the political climate in the US doesn't really lend itself some sort of broad sign between the US and China. You know, the electorate is still pretty angry at China over you know, it's economic practices and also the COVID nineteen pandemic as well. And you have the President Biden's chief rival, Donald Trump. You're railing against China, and that's good to put pressure on finance to respond
in kind. And so you can look at the kind of the comments that he made on Thursday night and say this is really for domestic political consumption something. You know, President Biden is an old school Democrat. People like him and Chuck Schumer have long been skeptical of China, so this isn't necessarily coming from it a dis ingenuous place, but it does show the limits of what does administration achieve.
Hey, Tom saved you about forty second, same thing. I feel like President she has more pressure on him than he has in a long time.
So, first of all, I completely agree with Jordan Trump demonstrated in twenty sixteen the Saliens and the resonance which the China issue has with US voters. I expect him to be hitting that theme really hard on the campaign trail in the next year, and I expect Biden to be hitting the theme hard as well. The risk there is that they're buying a few more votes here in the United States at the expense of a bunch more
risk in the China relationship. For President She, well, it doesn't have elections, but it does have politics and a president in charge of a slumping real estate sector. They forget the Chinese hoaseholds have almost all of their wealth in real estate as some political political challenges to face.
Listen, both of you wrapping up what was a full week when it comes to US China news. Guys, thank you so much. Jordan Fabian white House, correspond at Bloomberg News on the Phone in DC. Timorlick, of Course, chief economist at Bloomberg Economics in our DC Bureau. Check out his column about the US is wrong about China.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern Listen on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.
Earlier in this week, there was some news PayPal rolling out a stable coin, the first big large financial company and a potentially significant boost to the sluggish adoption of digital tokens for payments. PayPal USD issued by Paxos Trust Company, fully backed by US dollar deposits, short term treasuries and similar cash equivalents. According to pakso so it is pegged to the dollar and will be gradually available to PayPal's customers.
In the US.
Actually I think that's according to PayPal. Anyway, we wanted to get to our weekly look of the world of crypto, and with us we've got a great voice. Charles Castcarilla is the founder and CEO of that blockchain company Paxos and he's on zoom in Miami. Hey Charles, nice to
have you here with jessin myself on Bloomberg. First of all, tell us about your company, because you've been doing this for a few years, right, and tell us how your world and everything involving with blockchain, how it has changed over the past few years.
Well, great to be on Thanks for having me on Friday afternoon here Paxos. We have i think distinguished ourselves from others in the industry by being firstly infrastructure only secondly being highly regulated. We have a trust company in the state of New York, and that means that we have great customers that rely on us, PayPal amongst them, but certainly others like Interactive Brokers and Ricado Libre Venmo
also uses us. And this infrastructure role that we play is for crypto assets, but also for tokenizing real world assets such as dollars and gold, and we've done other things as well. And so we really look at the transformation of the financial system as enabling blockchain to move
assets at the speed of the Internet. The economy keeps moving faster and faster, but the financial system isn't keeping up, and we can only imagine what it will looked like in three to five years, but it's going to require, I think a totally different type of infrastructure to make that possible.
Talk to us about this partnership with PayPal, because earlier this year they initially paused the development of their stable coin due to regulatory scrutiny. So what change did and allow this partnership to go through.
Well, you know, I think there's a lot of things that happened in the industry and it was a really difficult time. You know, we had the FTX value amongst other things. We had different types of regulatory questions that were raised around the entire industry. And I think as time has gone by, what you've been able to see is that there's a way to be able to operate in the industry, and I think think that's with regulation,
which is exactly how we've always operated. And you know, I think that it's exciting to see us move past where we were for the industry over the last six or nine or twelve months into I think a new
phase if you look at it. When PayPal launched crypto, and that was during the last crypto winter, they launched Crypto by sell and hold that was the biggest thing that happened in crypto, and I think just like then PayPal launching a regulated stable coin is the biggest thing to happen in crypto and blockchain, and it can fundamentally really shift how the whole economy works and how payments work for everyday people.
Do you feel like though that you mentioned all the crypto winter, right, that really just brought everything to a halt and interesting on a day when we've got some news on sam Mekmin Freed and FTX or sam Meankman Freed specifically. But what's interesting is I think I always think about Charles stable coins not only so stable, and we saw that with terror USD in May of last year. So what makes this one different and stable and ken stable coins ultimately really function as money?
Yeah, well, I think you know, there are different ways to create payment assets, and if you want a US dollar payment asset, it has to be US dollars. And what you saw in a lot of cases is people were saying something was a US dollar payment asset, but it wasn't. So maybe it was backed by nothing like Tarra, or maybe it was backed by a lot of other types of assets. That weren't just dollars. We do it in a very specific way at Paxos, and it's because
we have a primary regulator. We do it in a bankruptcy protected way, using a trust company that Paxos fails, all of our client assets are there. Those are really important protections, and what we do is we basically put it in US dollars, T bills and cash equivalents that mature in less than three months. That means anytime someone comes and they can come redeem for a dollar, and that type of protection is what gives someone the confidence that it's always going to be worth a dollar. It
always has been at Pasos. We've met every single redemption that anyone has ever come to our company for and will continue to be able to do that. But you have to construct it in the right way, with the right type of oversight in order to have the right types of consumer protections. And I think PayPal, ultimately they're the gold standard. Everyone knows PayPal, everyone knows they do
things the right way. They've engaged with regulators, They've been very very thoughtful about this, and there's a reason why they want to construct a stable coin in a regulated way and That's what I think is a fundamental difference from how anyone else has done it in the past. No one who's running a stable coin today or who has run in the past, has done it with the primary credential regulator.
Well, US regulators have been worried when we're talking about stable coins in financial stability and how they are backed by commercial paper. So how do you make sure your customer's money is safe?
Yes, I mean, look, commercial paper is not a dollar. It's pretty close, but it's not a dollar. Is really a liability of the US government, and you want it to be one that matures in a very very short period of time. So that's how we do it. We buy t bills that mature in under three months. We put it in cash and equivalents. We make sure that if it's repo, it's over collateralized by US treasuries and
it's one day, one day repo. So this is very very liquid, as liquid as you can get and as safe as you can possibly get, and we hold it in a trust company so the money is always segmented. If something happens and PAXOS was to fail, the client assets could be immediately returned to each of our customers.
So who's that's regulator?
Then it's the New York Department of Financial Services. And by the way, they oversee so many sophisticated institutions, from Bank of New York to Goldman Sachs to the Depository Trust Company, which you know is one of the biggest custodians in the whole world. So this is a very credible regulator. They have set the groundwork. It is very much the gold standard for crypto and for stable coin issuance.
So whenever you say yours is regulator and others are not, how is it different for the other players in that space.
But what's important is, firstly, we're operating from our trust company, which is a regulate identity. It's actually the same thing as a bank. It's organized under New York banking law, but it's actually safer than a bank because we don't make loans, so all the assets just sit there and trust. And then secondly, we have a primary oversight function from New York and what that means is everything that we do, not just the issuance, but all company activities are overseen
by our regulator. And so that's much much different than say money transmission licenses, where of course there's creating some oversight, but it's just on a state by state basis, and you're really overseeing the way you're interacting with customers in that state, as opposed to how the product is created and how the product is overseen. That's what makes it significantly different to have a primary prudential regulator, which, by the way, is very much in keeping with the legislation
that just passed through the House Financial Services Committee. I guess it was almost two weeks ago now, So help.
Me out here, because in our reporting with PayPal News, you know, our team putting out how back in February, the New York State Department of Financial Services that it had directed your company to stop issuing a stable coin branded by Binance. It was known as I think BUSD, and the regulator here in New York saying at the time that its decision was a result of quote several unresolved issues related to Paxos's oversight of its relationship with finance.
And I think one of the things that I'm not saying apples to apples, but I think with FTX, we realized, you know, that there were too many things going on in too many entities and the relationships. Weren't clear your comment to that and just got about forty seconds here.
Yeah, I mean, I think the way you should really understand Paxos is that we are an infrastructure provider of regulated products and we create white label products where other people's brands might be on them, for instance, in this case PayPal. In that case it was Binance, and you know when you have that going on, there can sometimes be a confusion, which we really work very very hard to try and avoid, and I think clearly in the case at PayPal, here it's really clear of how our
relationships are working together. What we're trying to achieve and what we're trying to make sure happens here is that you have a whole new way for payments to be able to move at the speed of the Internet. Get at the same time, have regulatory oversight.
It's safe to say, regulatory oversight, transparency, all of these are key in order for this really to work. Because we've seen the problems just quickly.
I'll be honest. We want more regulation. We're excited for more regulation. We think there's a place there really is no place for unregulated stable coins. Yep, you're not going to be able to get wide scale adoption without it.
Well, so glad we got some time with you and look forward to checking with you again in the future. Charles Cascarella he is the founder and CEO of the blockchain company Pacsos. Joining us on zoom in Miami, you're.
Listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the Bloomberg Business app, and YouTube. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
I never saw this, Jess, but earlier in the week, Bloomberg's Joe Constance writing in the Workshift Weekly newsletter about how, almost exactly one year since quiet quitting took over her recycle, there's a new workplace catchphrase that's entered the corporate lexicon, and it is called lazy girl jobs.
Have you heard about this.
I've heard a little bit about this, and I feel like it's definitely beyond the trend because of pandemic and especially younger generation.
Right, it's just like your job, right, low stress, Oh, low art rolls pay decently well, and they allow a lot of freedom and flexibility. Yeah, yeah, Okay, she's not gonna say that. Anyway, let's talk about it because it is the new it work trend. Back with us is Katherine Minshew. She's founder in CEO of the mew. She's on Zoom in New York City. Hey Catherine, good to have you here with us. It is interesting how we keep going post pandemic, how we describe kind of the
work world. Talk to us about lazy girl jobs. I kind of am a little taking a back. Maybe it's because I just saw the Barbie movie and I'm not loving this. But anyway, tell me about lazy girl jobs. What exactly you're seeing and what it's all about.
All right, So first, let's define the term. Lazy girl job is a term that began on social media. It's incredibly popular on TikTok right now, particularly among gen Z candidates, and the term defines a lazy girl job as one that can be done with home, can be done from home, comes with a fairly laid back or chill boss, ends at five pm sure sharp, so kind of classic working hours,
and earns between sixty or eighty K a year. I think it's a sort of half serious, half tongue in cheek celebration of not doing too much or trying too hard. And you can imagine for a lot of people, and especially women from other generations, the generation of lean in and hustle culture and girl boss, that the lazy girl job trend is very controversial.
Talk to us about how you ended up starting this because as you did major in political science, you learn multiple languages, You worked for US embassy in Cyprus, and then you also ran a vaccine introduction in Rwanda's so really unique experiences. What changed there to drive you to this parton?
You don't sound like a lazy girl, No.
Not at all.
That does not sound lazy.
I personally do not identify with the lazy girl job term, although I can talk a little bit about why so many people do. But you know, personally, for me, I'm what you'd call sort of an elder millennial, and I was someone who always wanted to love what they did, always wanted to find a career I was passionate about.
And so as you just said, you know, I tried a lot of different things in my path, and for me, starting the muse really came out of the fact that it's hard to figure out what you might love in a career. A lot of people don't land in a job right away that they that they care about, that they're passionate about. And you know, when I was coming out of these career moves in political science, management, consulting, vaccines,
I thought, why is this so difficult? And I was interested in what it would look like to build a technology platform and an online community that could help people make better career decisions. So that's why I started the Meuse. That's where the entire ethos of the Mews comes from. But it is interesting, right because I think we were built on this idea of love what you do, find
work that fits your values, your passions. And there's obviously a lot of trends right now quiet quitting, lazy girl jobs, which is a little bit of a in some ways an alternative, and it's people saying, well, maybe I don't want to work that hard or care that much. It's a really interesting time in the workforce.
All right.
So, Catherine, on your job placement platform that you have created and worked really hard to get there, I'm sure there's tons of jobs that's say lazy girl wanted in my office, I mean, help.
Me out here.
Is it like we're being reflected in what employers are looking for?
So I would say, as I think things, probably obviously no employers are looking for someone who is out there promoting themselves as a lazy girl. In fact, most employers are still looking for someone who is willing to go above and beyond, is willing to, you know, really get creative about handling whatever is thrown at them, solving whatever problems come their way. So I do think that for younger workers who are out there on social media branding themselves as a lazy girl or as looking for a
lazy girl, job could be pretty pretty challenging. It could cause a lot of problems in a job search if an employer comes across that. At the same point, there are jobs that have more work life balance than others. There are bosses that are more flexible, and so I think when I've talked to younger workers who bring up this lazy girl job trend and like, look, you can advocate for flexibility while still saying but I'm willing to
work hard. So I do think that that you're seeing this very interesting kind of clash in what a lot of workers are saying they want and what employers are insisting they need to actually hire someone.
So what's a typical lazy girl job?
So, ay, a typical lazy girl job is going to be a remote job, doesn't ask too much of someone, likely is a clean nine to five, almost to no after hours or weekend work. Often it is a job that comes with kind of a very casual boss, enough
money to pay the bills. And I think that I will say there's a deeper statement underneath all the kind of silly social media hubbub, which is that I think the last few years, and especially the COVID pandemic, have caused a lot of individuals to say, hey, life is short and it's precious, and I'm no longer willing to give everything to my employer. At the same point, I think that employers are saying, hey, look, you know, if we're going to pay someone's salary, we do want you
to show up. We want you to put in the effort, we want you to care. And so I think there's this interesting tension that a lot of you know, both candidates and bosses are navigating right now.
Yeah, I think it's kind of interesting and in a tight labor market, there's a lot of interesting nuances that come out and people and the worker, and I think in many ways it's good that the worker is in the driver's seat for a while, or should be more so in terms of wages and balance and.
So and so forth.
But I do wonder, you know, Catherine, in a recession, whether the lazy girl job is going to fly just really quickly.
Now I'm right there with you. I think in a recession it is not something I would recommend that a worker laike their hand and say, I know I'm crazy, I want a lazy girl job, even though I'm also right there with you about some of the underlying uh in the balance of power.
Well, she's never lazy, Catherine, Thank you so much. Katherine Minshew, Founder and CEO of The Muse. On zoom in New York.
City, you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch Just Live weekday afternoons from three six Eastern Listen on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or want us live on YouTube.
We do want to shift heres a little bit and get to a special section in the new Actually it's online I should say in Bloomberg Business Week, it's called the out of Office Special Issue, and joining us right now because we talked with Katherine Minshew a little bit earlier about the so called lazy Girl. There's a lot going on in the work environment, and there's some things that are very specific when it comes to this summer season. So with that, let's get to Bloomberg Business Week Special
Projects editor Rayhon Hermancy. She is on Zoom in New York City along with the editor at Bloomberg Business Week, Til Weber, here at our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. Out of Office.
Some of us are out of office right Rayhan, and some of us are are here at Yeah, Yeah, Bravo. So we've been talking about some special digital issues that we've done. We did a summer camp one to kick off summer, and we looked at our calendar and said, you know, this week in August is kind of perfect for an out of office special and so Rayhan championed this and put together this amazing collection of stories that really speaks to the moment because you know, as Zoom showed this.
Week, what is out of office?
Everybody's back in the office and yet the implications of this, I think are really interesting. So she went around and kind of commissioned this package of stories that are just a delight to read, and it starts with a story about Airbnb and how that dream is sort of maybe dead right right hand.
Yeah, I mean, like Airbnb, the company is very much alive, but what started, what the market created in terms of like people who started buying places or financing places with the idea that they could pretty easily do short term mentals has turned into much much, much more complicated situation.
And we had two Bloomer reporters, Natalie Lung and Jesse Devine, start talking to folks about like what it takes to make it as an Airbnb host these days, and it is like, you better have an Instagram wall a pickaball court like the and you better not have mortgage, a mortgage that's too high to be able to make ends meet.
So it's not the only thing, but I do think the economics of all of that up in some things. But talk to us about internships, right because August, you know, when you're an intern, you know you're there all the time trying to prove yourself. And August is sort of a unique month for that.
I know, you know it's so funny, like summer internships are such an institution, and they're kind of funny thing because a lot of your potential mentors are like out of the office, and you know, when we began talking about this issue, you know, it would be clear that, like whatever internships would come up, everyone had a story, like everyone remembers their first kind of foray, if you if
you had an internship. So we asked a journalist named Charlie Locke to kind of start collecting the best and worst of that experience. And I think it's a pretty fun story.
Can we talk about Pepperoni? What happened? What happened?
Why?
Why am I even asking that? What's the Pepperoni story?
Great?
I mean, you know, a classic experience of a summer internship is having a boss give you an assignment that you have no idea how to do, Like how could you? Like you're probably like, you know, barely twenty if that.
So our reporter talked to a guy we call Calvin the story who was asked he was entering into private equity firm and they were considering some kind of acquisition, so they were like, tell us the size of the pepperoni market, and he he went about it in a very specific way in which he found a quote from an executive I guess who said, you know the size of pepperoni market. You could blanket the US in pepperonis. So then he was like, got it. I'm going to
figure out from that what it is. So he did a lot of very creative math, very extremely wrong math, and we actually are own math, maybe not one hund percent. But at the end of the day he sized the market at roughly six point four quadrillion dollars, which is, as Matt Levine point out this week, more than the world's GDP six hundred times. So I was like, wait a minute, really go off the rail.
Just don't let the interns run the decks. That shows the size of the market potential.
Sun His bosses were like, yay, great, we'll hire you.
They not all of it made into the story, but no, no disorder, there was no And a long answer is also, no, our young Calvin did not in fact have a great summer at this private acuity firm.
But you know, but we did have a pepperoni joke to make about it.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, here is we were talking about it today.
Okay.
So another one in the package that I really I thought was marvelous was where Volkswagen is from.
And this is so European. They just shut it all down.
There's like a like a red light switch and they just flip it off and they're like, we'll be back in three weeks, rayhon.
What happens in the three weeks that they shut everything down.
First of all, they have quite to send off. So when we heard about this kind of you know, Wolfsburg is a company town. Like the plant there employees like tens of thousands of people, and there's the front office is also employs like tens of thousands of people, and they say the plant workers you have three weeks off every summer. And you know, the day we were there photographing for a few days and reporting. In the first day, you know, they have these like Volkswagen branded hot dogs.
I mean it's very it's very sweet and very seemingly German. So they have this big send off. There's like a band that comes to play the last shift of the factory workers out and then we spent a day in the town and you know, in the past apparently the town really shut down, and that was actually very bad for the businesses in the town, as you could imagine, like going on three weeks of a forced vacation is not everyone's you know, gonna make everyone's bottom line work.
So the town has actually done a lot of work to make like events happen to encourage some like staycations within Lurisburg. But it's just a charm. It's just like charming. It is just charming, and you know, hats off to the carmaker, you know, like giving three weeks off in the middle of the summer is kind of a great thing to do.
Yeah, but if you're looking for a restaurant to eat, I mean, is there even a place can go or is it like everything's just shut down?
Well, apparently in the past that was the case. Now, I mean some of the hours are certainly curtails. We found, but you can still get it won't be a Volkswagen branded hot dog, but I think you can still find one, and it's.
Curry worst like road work, you know, it's just like it's it's kind of it's charming.
I think it's just it's just very charming.
And I'm gonna say the best for last, and there's more. But do you want to talk about procrastination and the art of it?
Yeah? Yeah, So you.
See what I did there? I put procrastination last. Very nice, it's going to be very like kids, wake up.
I just what I just did? Take it away? Yeah. We Anna Holmes is a great writer. She's you know, probably best known for founding Jezebel. She's actually a former boss of mine and I did not know her to be a fascinator, but she left an office job and is writing a book and apparently this year has just found herself unable to do it, and so she got curious about like what what are the roots of procrastination? Like what what what are we doing when we procrastinate?
And she talked to a lot of people. There's you know, a whole market of course around productivity. Should you be so inclined to tap into it? And I don't want to spoil it because it's really good.
But that's why we procrastinate. Tomorrow go to Bloomberg dot com slash business peak and you can.
Get the whole thing.
You are so much fun. Rayon Pramanci. She is Special Projects editor at Bloomberg business Week. Joe Webber, Joe Webber, the editor of Bloomberg Business.
We thank you both. This is Bloomberg mac Journal.
How about you let me drive.
Honey please, I'll I want to try it.
It's a good question time.
This is the Drive to the Clothes.
Coming well by around to yield it.
On on Bloomberg Radio.
All right, everybody, just about eighteen minutes left in today's trading session, getting ready to wrap up the trading day and the trading week. As we said, though, it has not been a sleepy summer in this week of August, as we just heard from Denise Pelogren, FTX co founder Sam Bankman Free likely having to report to jail after our federal judge said he would revoke his bail because of a series of leaks. So we're going to get
more on that story in just a moment. In the meantime, we do want to get to the trade as we are nearing the clothes on this Friday, and we've got stacks bouncing around, little changed as we speak, definitely off their best levels of the session. Feel like that it's another day. We're focusing on the heel curve and treasuries to be specific. They moved up following a PPI report
that definitely had some for concerns. So let's get to it and let's get into the Drive to the close with Dana Dioria Cocio of the publicly traded wealth Management Fintech Investment. Their clients have three hundred and eighty four point eight billion in assets under management. She is with us on Zoom in Pennsylvania. Dana, good to have you here with us. Remind us about what you guys do in the clients that you work with.
Hi, thank you for having me. Yes, we're very much an asset manager and platform ecosystem, financial ecosystem for the advisor. So in terms of how we think about markets and the clientele we work with, it's all about advisors and retail and institutional clients who are working with their with advisors for their retirement, you know, college planning, any and all investment related needs.
So can I just follow in terms of the tone that you are getting from those clients right now, retail, institutional or other?
What is it?
Is it a more just one little nervousness about kind of the all in enthusiasm. It seems like from strategists and economists who are pulling off the recession call what is it?
It's interesting because we started the year with sort of, you know, this kind of broad based concern about recession coming, a lot of you know, expectation that maybe mid to second half of the year, and of course that didn't materialize. And by the way, also a lot of movement as we all know, into cash money market, fixed income type instruments, a lot of you know, a lot of the asset managers we work with, hundreds and hundreds of asset managers, a lot of interest in fixed income.
But of course none of that materialized. Right.
We saw a great equity performance in the first half of the year and sort of a fomo type interest takeover and you know, money kind of pouring into you know, the S and P five hundred and the UQQ, et cetera.
So I think, you know, you've seen this shift, and now, of course, you know, i'd say, I would say there's there's more of a case to be made for a potential soft landing or maybe a commer you know, if there is a recession, maybe less impactful, but you know, we're not out of the woods, and certainly there's a sentiment that we still have to kind of be cautious. A lot of you know, as you know, a lot of economists are kind of pushing out their call, you know, maybe not taking it off entirely.
What are you seeing in terms of positioning when it comes to your client when you're looking at say the equity markets versus fixed income also a new money markets have been such a hot topic, especially being able to yield more, But people have been questioning when is more of that money which is at around a record going to move over more to the equity market.
Yeah, so I think we are seeing some of that right where in spite of yes, flows to money markets because of course now you can get yield there that you couldn't previously get. And you know that that's I think impacted on interest in dividend payers. And you know, where you were looking to equities for a long period of time for income, now you're.
Getting that from fixed income.
So we've seen that, but there has been a shift and you know again that fomo idea where you know, you see an interest in just making sure that your equity position is positioned to pick up and you know, unfortunately people kind of chase returns. Right, This is just a phenomenon in markets that goes on forever, and you know what, we're advisor based that's responsible to keep that client disciplined in the portfolio and live through any kind
of market volatility. Their job and their focus is, you know, is a client in the right risk tolerance.
On the retail side of things, especially retail clients. I'm just curious if you're hearing seeing as people individuals who maybe have college loans, maybe working trying to invest, but getting ready to resume payments that they aren't going to be investing as much.
It's an interesting question.
I think, you know, there is there is sort of a lawl a little bit that you're seeing kind of within the industry around you know, dollars going into equity portfolios in general, kind of just the in terms of growth, I'd say, right, so not talking so much now about existing, but but you know, position and existing, but just the growth that you would typically see and I do think that you know, cash equivalents are kind of driving a
lot of that. We also, you know, one area that we have started talking about more when you're thinking about a true financial ecosystem and all the different parts of the portfolio that the client should be considering. You know, credit options are an area that I think, you know,
we're seeing increasing interest. This is an area where a lot of wirehouses already have you know, a standard size sort of credit line type, and independent advisors working with investment are looking at ways to access that as well.
Because of course, as.
You're thinking, okay, you know, how do I kind of sound how do I how do I prove the overall portfolio for recession? Part of that may be, hey, I want to establish your credit line now while I can do that, you know in case of you know, issues in my job or you know, potential where I don't want to have to sell out of my holdings, but I may have.
Cash forks today.
So it's interesting to the ways that you know, advisors top crop.
All right, we're gonna leave it on that note, Danna, thank you so much. Dana Dioria cru Cio with the publicly traded Wealth Management fin Tech Investment joining us on this Friday on zoom in Pennsylvania.
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