Yellen Sends Default Warning If Congress Fails - podcast episode cover

Yellen Sends Default Warning If Congress Fails

May 12, 202335 min
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Episode description

Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, shares her thoughts on debt ceiling negotiations and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's interview with Bloomberg on Friday morning. Aaron Levie, CEO at Box, explains how artificial intelligence will make his company more productive. Bloomberg Businessweek Freelance Contributor Christopher Beam talks about his Businessweek Magazine story The Crypto Winter Cost True Believers Much More Than Their Money. Hostess Brands CEO Andy Callahan discusses leading the iconic snack company in a more health-conscious society. And We Drive to the Close with David Dietze, Senior Portfolio Strategist at Peapack Private Wealth Management.
Hosts: Carol Massar and Matt Miller. Producer: Paul Brennan. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Speaker 1

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.

Speaker 2

As you know, President Biden and congressional leaders they are planning to resume discussions on the debt ceiling next week. They had been scheduled to meet today, but session was

postponed as Republican and Democratic staff members continue to negotiate. Meantime, as you've been hearing on Bloomberg, are Henry Horden catching up with US Treasury Secretary Jenny Yellen an exclusive from the G seven summit in Japan, and she says there's no satisfactory solution to solving the debt limit other than Congress basically acting to do just that, raise the debt ceiling.

Speaker 3

Here's some of that conversation.

Speaker 4

There is no satisfactory solution for the United States. A solution will be good for the economy and financial markets. Other than Congress acting to raise the debt ceiling. There are potential different paths that could be taken. If that doesn't happen. But there is not a single thing that can be done that will save the United States from considerable economic and financial damage.

Speaker 5

But this plan was outlined back in twenty eleven, and you were there at the FMC meeting about it, and it said that treasury principles and securities would be paid. Is this something that at least for contingency plan has been discussed with the president.

Speaker 4

So my understanding i was at the FED in twenty eleven is that this plan was never presented to the President and never approved.

Speaker 3

And would you present it now?

Speaker 4

Look, we would. You're working full time to work with Congress to raise the debt sealing. That's where our focus is. We know that the only good outcome is one in which Congress act acts, as it has many times, almost eighty times since nineteen sixty, to raise the debt ceiling. What global markets and American households and businesses need to see is that we have a Congress that's committed to paying the bills that we have incurred as a consequence

of our legislation, that we're not a deadbeat country. And if Congress fails to do that, it really impairs our credit rating. We have to default on some obligation, whether it's treasuries or payments to Social security recipients. That's something America hasn't done since seventeen eighty nine, and we shouldn't start now. So we've not discussed what to do if that doesn't occur with the president. Our focus is on getting it done.

Speaker 5

Because, as you know, treasuries are the bedrock of a global financial system, and the asset managers I speak to the investors, they don't have the luxury of not contingency planning, So at this point should they assume that debt may not be serviced if.

Speaker 3

There's no deal.

Speaker 4

Look, if Congress doesn't raise the debt ceiling, we face economic and financial catastrophe.

Speaker 3

One way or the other.

Speaker 4

And that's why our focus is on making sure that Congress does raise the debt sealing. I feel that that's something we're going to succeed at doing, and we're working hard to make sure that that gets done.

Speaker 2

That, of course, is the voice of US Treasury Secretary Johnny Yellen, speaking exclusively with Bloomberg's and Mary Horden earlier today from the sidelines of the G seventh summit in Japan. Hey, we want to get more on the dead ceiling, the looming deadline. We can just kind of get a handle of the US government's finances, especially by those people we pay to do.

Speaker 3

Just exactly that.

Speaker 2

Miami Gindus is with US President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Speaker 3

She's on Zoom in Washington, d C.

Speaker 5

Maya.

Speaker 2

It's been a while, but great to have you here with Matt and myself. I feel like we are constantly fighting for a responsible federal.

Speaker 3

Budget and never getting it, and we never get it.

Speaker 1

What you feel right, that is.

Speaker 6

It has been a long long time since we've had a responsible federal budget. The fiscal environment is getting worse, and it is in great, great connection with the fact that the political environment is getting worse. And we now have two parties that are so busy fighting against each other trying to either maintain or gain leadership majorities, that they aren't willing to do the hard work of budgeting, which means deciding what you want to do and deciding how you want to pay for it, And so we're

borrowing for pretty much everything. It's contributing to a bad fiscal situation, a bad economic situation, a bad national security situation, and UH it's it's tough to see what's going to turn this around in any meaningful way.

Speaker 7

So when was the last time we had, you know, a balanced budget. Is it just because of COVID that we're doing this tremendous deficit spending.

Speaker 6

No, it's been a long time sort of constant deterioration. So you'll recall that President Bush and then President Clinton put forth packages and President Clinton worked with Republicans in Congress put forth packages on track and Nu Gingrich and I mean there's a lot of dominici. Things were different back then. They did work together. They might not have enjoyed it, but they got some things done and they

got budget surpluses. But quickly after that we entered a period where we had wars that weren't paid for or unpaid for, tax cuts and recessions, all of which made the situation worse. Surpluses turned to deficits, But now things are much worse. We borrowed a lot during the Great Financial Crisis and COVID, and we should have Those were exactly when we should have borrowed. But we also borrow

when the economy is strong. For instance, the past few years, the economy has been so strong that we are plagued with inflation, the opposite of what you should be doing borrowing more. But we have borrowed for every single piece of legislation other than the Inflation Reduction Act, and that fiscal policy has exacerbated the inflationary situation.

Speaker 2

Well, so crisis problems in crisis are management or is it more I'm a big follow the money, and when I follow the money in Congress, it's all about election and making sure that you are playing to the right individuals, institutions, organizations, sectors to make sure you are back in Congress. And so then I always feel like we're not necessarily getting the smartest policy. We're just trying to do whatever we can do to make sure we get reelected, and that means not ticking off anybody.

Speaker 3

So how do that?

Speaker 6

To me?

Speaker 2

Is an incredibly broken system, and I don't know how we ever get around it.

Speaker 6

You have articulated the reason for my ongoing despair, which is I am not at all convinced that we are going to turn the ship around. As I watch the growing polarization and all the additional factors that are contributing to that polarization in this country, I think debt and deficits are one of the casualties of the fact that we used to have politicians who knew what they had to get done, put in place savings packages, lift the

debt ceiling. They'd fight about it, but they wouldn't threaten default in a way that where they work together enough to get things done. But importantly, some of those things were difficult. And the truth is political pandering works. So just I'll give you an example, social Security and Medicare. They both face insolvency. We have to make changes. It's not a political statement. Anyone can read the trustee. We

have to make changes. There's nothing to disagree there. There is plenty disagree on what changes we should make, and that's where the policy disagreement should be. But instead first

President Trump, now President Biden. After the State of the Union, pretty much everyone as out there promising not to touch those programs instead of using their important platforms to let the country know that we have to make changes so we can pay the benefits that we've promised and not face insolvency and not have across the board benefit cuts or provider cuts. But the politics of demagogue and Social Security and medicare are so successful. I am deeply concerned

about the presidental potential election. We're about to see where everyone is going to be tripping over themselves promising what they won't do instead of how they would actually fix the programs, and that's damaging.

Speaker 7

Maya, Why don't they I mean, we knew when the last budget was passed that we were going to have to lift the debt ceiling to pay for it, right, Why don't they just make that? Why don't they work that into the budget.

Speaker 3

And just got about forty five seconds?

Speaker 8

Maya, Yeah, Well.

Speaker 6

First, there has been no budget. The budget committees failed to do budgets, and we don't have a bugudget ready for next year and that's quite common. And second, I believe part of this deal that they have to lift the debt ceiling, which has to be lifted without drama,

should include a commission that does two things. Reforms our structural and balances everything's on the table, look at socialcurity, to look at medicare, look at taxes, and second, reforms the debt ceiling so it becomes an actual part of the budget process. Because we can't continue this way. It's too dangerous for the country and it's not effective. We need to fix our broken budget process.

Speaker 3

All right, Gonna leave it there.

Speaker 2

Hey, Maya, great to talk with you once again, Miam again as president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Joining us via zoom from Washington, DC. Let's just go home to our spouses. Hey, debt ceiling, Let's just raise it.

Speaker 3

Yeah, we have no debt ceiling.

Speaker 1

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.

Speaker 2

You know, all week we've been talking a lot about AI. The world is a wash in artificial intelligence. We had Google, we had ibmvolunteer this week, and I gotta say, Matt, ever, since Microsoft announced that ten billion dollar investment in Open AI's chat GPT, it's just been like off and running.

Speaker 7

Yeah. I don't know if we knew at that time what we were going to get, right, it was a massive amount of money, and I remember thinking, Wow, that's a lot that they're paying for this because until then AI I had never had a great experience with it. But now I'm obsessed with AI powered being. And by the way, I was also someone who I couldn't be

far enough away from being previously. Like if Being accidentally popped up on my computer, I changed it to Google as quickly as I could, and I'm made Chrome, like you know, my default. But now AI powered being is so much more useful to me than Google Search.

Speaker 2

All right, so this is good to know. So it's changing impacting your behavior. Let's see how it's changing things in our next guest life back with us. As the co founder and CEO of the three point eight billion dollar market cap content and file sharing company we're talking about Box. Aaron Levy is with us on Zoom from Redwood City, California, and Box just announcing its own integration of open ais chatchypt that was earlier this month. Eron anyway, nice to have you here with us.

Speaker 3

How are you house? Business?

Speaker 6

Good?

Speaker 8

Good, good to be here, and thanks for thanks for having me. We definitely are are extremely excited about AI and the role that it's going to have and how companies work with all of their most important content and information. And you know, really the big opportunity is when you think about how much data we have in the enterprise. That is sort of what we call unstructured data. So structured data is you know, stuff that goes into a database.

It's CRM information, it's financial data. Well, inside of your documents, it's all unstructured. It's your marketing materials, it's your contracts, it's your financial wait wait wait wait wait.

Speaker 2

Wait, So how is tell us how AI generative? AI is going to change things dramatically for.

Speaker 7

You, especially for customers, which I mean when I see, first of all, the utility of your company is undeniable, So I'm not downplaying it. But it's a box, right, we put stuff in and we take stuff out. How does AI help?

Speaker 8

Yeah, So, well, we store tens of billions of documents for customers, and so with AI, we can actually unlock what's actually inside of that data for the first time ever. So you can ask questions of your documents. You can you can look inside of a contract and figure out what terms in that contract might have the highest amount of risk. You can look at a marketing asset and ask AI to improve that marketing asset. You can look

inside of an HR document and ask questions. So it's a complete transformation of what we can do with all of the data we have in an enterprise.

Speaker 2

How does it move the needle for top and bottom line? So basically, how does it for you guys move the needle financially in terms of growth of users and or usage.

Speaker 8

Yeah, so we think it's going to just unlock the potential of what you can do with your content, so we can speed up productivity and an enterprise, we can make employees be able to have instant expert analysis on top of their data on demand. So again, imagine being able to talk to a lawyer instantly about the contract you're looking at, or a marketing expert about your marketing

asset that you're creating. And so all of a sudden you get all of the power of these advanced AI models and you can start to understand your data in completely new ways.

Speaker 7

So how do you think this is going to improve your your revenue? I mean, what's this going to add to to the top line or is it a bottom line booster?

Speaker 9

Yeah?

Speaker 8

I think it's ultimately going to be a major tailwind for enterprise software in general. We haven't, you know, you know, sort of finalized exactly how we're going to monetize or commercialize the product. We've we've first introducing the technology to a select set of customers. There will be some elements that we likely do charge for and you know that could provide a top line boost over the long term. But we also think that this is going to be

incorporated into all software. I don't think you're going to expect to use sort of, you know, less intelligent software in the future, and so I think all the enterprise software that we leverage is going to fundamentally be infused with artificial intelligence. And that's just going to be expectation that people have about their software going forward.

Speaker 7

Is it cheap or is expensive to use? I mean, how do I don't know, do you pay like a one time thing or license every time someone uses it? How's it going to work out in terms of what you pay for it?

Speaker 8

Yeah, well, we pay for the underlying usage of the GPUs that the AI models run on top of. And so every time you ask a question that has to go into a set of computers that that go and you know, process that data. That can be kind of relatively expensive, you know, more so than the usage of just a core CPU, but it's it's pretty manageable, and so we're going to you know, find an efficient way to price that into the product.

Speaker 2

Safe to say, there's still a lot to be learned, a lot to be developed, a lot to be fine tuned.

Speaker 3

When we're talking about.

Speaker 8

All of this eron, Yeah, I think there's Uh. What we've worked on is is fundamentally focusing on things like the accuracy and the reliability of the answers that you're getting back. So you know, you know that that sometimes you'll go ask chatchapt a question and it can do this thing called hallucination, which is it sort of makes up the answer in some cases. We've worked to ensure

that doesn't happen with corporate data. And the reason for that is we're telling the AI model to only answer the question based on the limited set of data that we're giving it, which dramatically improves its ability to answer accurately. And so these are the kind of things that we've worked on. Data privacy, data security, data integrity. Working with these AI models. We don't have any of the AI

models being trained on the data that we're leveraging. So we're building really a safe and securing compliance solution for enterprises to bring AI into their organizations.

Speaker 7

You know, what's very cool. Throughout the year, I get various tax documents in the mail, and I guess I put them in a file in my filing cabinet, a paper filing cabinet, right, okay. But if I could put them in box and then just forget about them, and at the beginning of the next year, hook up my tax software to box and say, hey, go find all of my tax documents, and then you have this AI setup, I wouldn't have to do anything.

Speaker 1

Right.

Speaker 8

That is certainly, you know, the potential of this exactly what you've just you know, thought about.

Speaker 3

You know.

Speaker 8

One of the things that's incredibly exciting is imagine you're inside of a sales organization of a large company and there's you know, hundreds or thousands of documents that have the answers to critical questions you might have. Now you

can just ask the question. You could say, what's the price of this product or what's the best way that we sell this technology to our customers, and AI will give you an answer back based on the existing assets that you have in the enterprise, as opposed to you know, waiting around for some expert inside the organization to hopefully be able to answer your question right at the right moment.

And so these are the kind of things that we're going to be able to do with all of the data we have leveraging AI.

Speaker 7

I don't think my pitch was juicy enough for Aaron. I think he's he's looking at a much bigger, scalable enterprise issues and I would just worry about.

Speaker 2

Doing my tim I do wonder Aaron, that where is it when you look at industries that you think will be the most uptick and most growth potential for you guys specifically?

Speaker 8

Yeah, I think industries that are very information heavy, so financial services, consulting, professional services, global manufacturing, lots of supply chain data. You know, these are these healthcare, government, you know, these are industries where there's a lot of documents. There's a lot of value that is trapped inside of those documents right now, A tremendous amount of intellectual property within these you know, organizations are trapped inside of files, and

AI lets us actually go and leverage that data. For the first time, we were talking to a customer within the media and entertainment industry and they had this great use case that literally you could not have been done before without AI, which is they have a sponsor that wants to be able to sponsor certain projects, you know, within the organization, and right now they rely on kind of you know, fortuitous luck that the advertising person happens to know all of the projects that might be possible

across the entire organization. They don't have a database where that knowledge is sort of kept inside of But now you can actually just ask the documents. You can say, well, which projects would be the most relevant to this particular sponsor. And so this actually is going to create new revenue generating opportunities for customers by being able to leverage what's actually inside of the data.

Speaker 10

That they have.

Speaker 2

All Right, good to check in with you, Aaron Levy. He is, of course, the co founder and CEO of Box, joining us on Zoom from Redwood City, California. One thing I would argue a Matt is that we're still kind of figuring this out.

Speaker 7

I just think there's so many use cases for it. I mean, it is a juicy, juicy technology.

Speaker 1

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter 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.

Speaker 2

We are going to talk a little bit about Twinkies and Hostess cakes, maybe some Big Texas Cinnamon Rolls and clover Hill Honeymuns, kind of hungry.

Speaker 3

These are all the.

Speaker 2

Brands and more that are under the Hostess brand's umbrella. They did report, by the way, early this week earlier some earnings. The stock initially popping on the news as much as five percent, but it did lose most of the gains by day's end following the report. Stock though up about seventeen percent so far in twenty twenty three. So let's get a look at the business I know.

Matt also talked with our next guest earlier in the week, Hostess Brands President CEO Andy Callahan, joining us on Zoom in Chicago.

Speaker 3

Andy, how are.

Speaker 10

You, Carol? I'm doing great, Thanks for having me well.

Speaker 3

Nice to have you here with us.

Speaker 2

Matt has been eating Twinkies and some other things heading into this interreparation.

Speaker 10

Can I just say I love the intro. Don't forget our boart Man cookie franchise as well. But we're proud of all of our brands.

Speaker 7

Yes, well, but Twinkie is the main I mean, TWNK twink is a ticker. I went out, I talked to Andy, I think yesterday he did. He said that they've changed, you know, they're they're constantly working to improve the Twinkies. And so I went out and I bought a lot of them, and I've eaten multiple and they are very good. They do taste better than I remember last time I had them. They still love the same, but just more kind of ziny a little bit.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 10

Well, being able to do great tasting and moist cake at scale is not an easy fee. We like it that way. It's hard to replicate our business, and we love bringing great, high quality snack products to consumers.

Speaker 7

It's moist, Carol.

Speaker 3

No, I like ristake too.

Speaker 2

Hey, let's get a little serious though, Andy, I do think about your business, like when you guys, what channel is it Walmart? Where is it that you really sell the most of your product?

Speaker 10

You know, one of the strengths of our portfolio. Obviously that customer is a large and important customer ours, but

we're leading in single serve sales and media consumption. One of the strengths of our distribute of our businesses, our distribution model, we're able to access almost everywhere that consumers are, and in the bake goods category, we're about ten points higher availability than our next closest competitor, and that's really due to the power of our supply chain, our business model, and our access. So all of our customers are important

to us. The diversification of our distribution is important. That customer you mention is obviously highly important, and we focus a lot on building sustainable partnerships with all of them.

Speaker 7

Where do you So I went to Dwayne Reid to get these? I did stop by the local you know, like single, like mom and pop.

Speaker 10

L r A.

Speaker 7

They didn't have Twinkies, So I went over to Dwayne read how do you get them into every shop? Or are you only focused on like CBS, Walgreens? You know, what's what's your distribution strategy?

Speaker 10

Yeah, so this is one of the beauties when we reimagine the business model that allowed us to create this great snacking business of modern contemporary business under a one hundred year old iconic brands that you talked about. We did it in a way with new technology allowed us to bring high quality products through a distribution system that's

really hard to do in bake goods. So for a Dwayne we read for example terrific customer Walgreens that we partner with, we have a distributor partner that are classic distributors that allow us to get it there. For some of our larger, maybe traditional grocery retail customers, we have a tremendous internal distribution network that we've we actually opened our distribution center several years ago and we go direct

to those customers through their warehouse. So it depends on the customer, but that partnership with our very important distributor customers allow us to get access to all small doors large c store customers as well as smaller ones.

Speaker 7

You'll toeen read had three separate displays they had with the bread products, they had some hostess a separate a separate hostess section. With the candies, they had a separate hostess section, and then right when you walk up to the checkout, they had a hostess section there as well.

Speaker 3

So it's called impulse buy.

Speaker 2

Like you're standing on the line and you're hungry, I've been there, I've done that. Hey, Andy, I'm sure You've gotten this question a million times. As you know, people focus on healthier eating, and I'm not saying that what you offer is not, but I'm just saying, you know, I have a twenty year old and she has been for years turning things around, looking what's in the product.

Speaker 3

How do you think about that moving forward?

Speaker 2

And are you seeing pressure you know, and demand from customers younger customers that you know they want you to shift some of what's in the product. And I think you have been to some extent.

Speaker 10

We have been. We're we are. You know, First of all, we make our products with real eggs flour like everybody does. There's certainly some other ingredients in there that allow us get through shelf life, but we're working to minimize them as much. From a consumer perspective, you know, nearly seventy percent of consumers snack indulgent snacks more than or snack more than at least seventy percent of the time and almost two half the time. That's been in an unrelenting trend over the years.

Speaker 1

Now.

Speaker 10

Consumer and there's a false choice that consumers that eat healthy don't also treat themselves or reward themselves with indulgent snacks. They can both grow and they are growing because consumers

snack more often and that's the trend's been happening. So we look to bring our snacks to consumers in a very contemporary way, whether it's a two byte bouncer that we just launched, or our new kaz Bars that are in multi pack form a smaller version or a larger one that we do in our C store for our male consumers that are looking for so we give them snacks. Snacks and indulgent snacks are on trend, and we do it in a very contemporary way. That's what brings them through.

Just we call it a moment of joy, and that's what our team works for to inspire these moments of joy when consumers are looking for reward, me, treat me. You got to get off to it.

Speaker 7

You got to get the Rock out of the day. You gotta get Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, to eat these on his cheat day.

Speaker 10

You know, Rock should Rock should call me? I bet you Rock Love would love our kas bars. The Rock would love these kas Bars and I know his kids would too. Millennial parents, young C store males. When we tested the kasbars, they love it because it brings the great cake we're talking about in a multi layered form.

Speaker 7

And every time I talk to you're pushing the kasbar. I will I'll bite.

Speaker 2

You know, Andy, He's gonna leave here and he's gonna stop at the Dwayne Read or something and find the kasbars.

Speaker 3

I'm just telling you, listen, listen.

Speaker 10

We do both. We do our contemporary icons Twinkies, cupcakes, ding Dongs, reimagining them with quality and bringing them to our consumers, and also bring out new innovation. They both are important.

Speaker 3

We gotta run. I'm hungry. That's all I'm going to say.

Speaker 2

Adie Callahan, CEO, over toastest friends on zoom from Chicago.

Speaker 3

This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 1

You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from three to six Easter 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, bomucle.

Speaker 7

A Journal. How about you let me drive them?

Speaker 10

Oh no, no, no, no, honey, please, I'll do the travels.

Speaker 2

I want to drive.

Speaker 3

It's a good question.

Speaker 9

Good time.

Speaker 1

This is the drive to the globe.

Speaker 9

Do for me?

Speaker 10

Think well?

Speaker 1

By Young Don on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 3

All right, everybody, let's get to it.

Speaker 2

We've got just about seventeen and a half minutes left in today's trading session, getting ready to wrap up the Friday trade as well as the week we got.

Speaker 7

I know, right, thank you.

Speaker 3

Why why are you so tired?

Speaker 7

I'm not. I just got very stressed out in the last few minutes.

Speaker 3

What happened?

Speaker 7

I'm trying to organize a big interview.

Speaker 3

Okay, all right, so well, let's focus now. You're a good guests coming up right now.

Speaker 2

We've got, as we said, Stock's kind of turning the corner but still in the red, but off their loads of the session. You get it to year note at three nine nine. Let's get to it with David Deet's back with us, senior portfolio strategist at Peeback pe Pack Private Wealth Management. They've got about ten billion dollars in assets under management, and he joins us on the phone from Summit, New Jersey. David, nice to have you here.

You know, what is top of mind because it does feel like it was a bit of a meth week. Although some of the action on the treasury side of things was certainly interesting, But I don't know. We are all looking for direction in terms of what comes next. What kind of visibility do.

Speaker 9

You have, Well, it's debt cap, debt cap, debt cap negotiations, and that is dominating mentality both on Wall Street, but also small business and on Main Street. You know, we just got a survey that showed that the sentiment of small business people is now at a ten year low. Consumer sentiment indexes released today showed the consumers rather six months low. And I think it's all because of the frustration in Washington as to failure to come together.

Speaker 3

Can I ask you something.

Speaker 2

If I walked on the street of Main Street, USA and I talked to people about the debt ceiling, I have a feeling I don't know that everybody would be that concerned.

Speaker 9

Well, I mean the hand, you're you know. On the one hand, you're right, you know, people are still going to send their kids to school next year. The probably going to go out for dinner this weekend. There's still have some idea to take a vacation in the summer. So in that sense it shouldn't be a problem. But we can't say, the risk of a default is zero percent, and all the experts are saying that no one really

knows what the effects would be. But the so called foundation blocks the treasury debt, if they were to become undone in default, what would be the fallout? It would not be pretty Yeah.

Speaker 7

Well, actually Anry Horden was just talking to Janney Yellen about that this morning, saying, you know, there's a lot of investment professionals out there who you know, they don't have the luxury of not caring about this issue, right, they can't make really a plan B. They need to be prepared in case there's a default. Do you have to adjust your strategy?

Speaker 1

That's a great question.

Speaker 9

First question every client today had on their mind was what are we going to do about that? But you know, we go back to time horizon here and I said, well, if you're in stocks, you shouldn't have a one or two month horizon. That ten year treasury is much below where it was just two months ago. So what people are saying in the marketplace, the experts are saying, in the short term, there's uncertainty involvetility. In the long term,

of course, the Republic will pay its debts. They've raised this debt cap thing about seventy eight times since nineteen sixty, and they will do it again. The one thing I love about this, Matt, is this is not an asteroid coming in from outer space. This is not putin and you know, an unknown quantity. These are just there. Our top leaders just have to make an agreement to push that kick that can down the road and we're going to be fine.

Speaker 7

David, what do you like right now? Let's assume that the debt crisis gets resolved and we and move on from that. What do you like in this market? We've had a pretty good run year to date. Obviously last year is awful, But where do you want to put your money?

Speaker 9

You know, everywhere except something that says we're all about AI. You know, if you strip out those ten AI popular stocks from the S and P five hundred, do you go from an eight percent year today gain to negative two which means, you know, quite frankly, Matt, we haven't done that well this year, and so anything other than chasing stocks because they have a big AI plan, you know, which could do as well as streaming did three years ago when that was announced, is something to be avoided.

But I mean, so we want to be diversified. I think you got to look at some of them.

Speaker 3

Well wait a minute, is can I.

Speaker 2

Ask you something though, David, Is it chasing AI or just being smart about it? I mean, you know, this technology AI nothing new. It's getting much more advanced. We've been talking about that over the last couple of weeks. You've seen Nvidia and a couple of names, a handful of names that have really been the reason why you see market averages when they do move up or when

they do rally, it's because of that AI connection. And yes, we'll figure out some of the stuff that doesn't make sense, but safe to say that this is going to impact our world in a pretty significant way.

Speaker 9

You know it will absolutely, just like the metaversas said that it was going to impact on.

Speaker 3

Level now.

Speaker 9

Well, so you know the AIS. It's not a hardline AI, non AI. Many companies say they've been incorporating AI like features for the last decade. Here's the thing. The large companies, no question about your your Microsoft, your alphabet, UH, your your meta platforms, they're incorporating that. They're not the pure plays. Fine, they will be big players in this and and and that's good. Where you I'm discouraging investors from getting involved with is the smaller companies which all of a sudden

have an epiphany. You know, BuzzFeed in January said, oh, we're going to write our articles for the AI that's doc trippled. There's been no follow through whatsoever. So that's where you really have to avoid.

Speaker 7

By the way, David, we got a guy coming on later who's gonna kind of gawk at all the people who lost money on crypto. And I was thinking, you could have done the same thing with the housing crisis, as you could have done the same thing with the dot com bubble. Amazon is one of your picks, and I just wonder what you think, where does it go from here? Because it's been an awesome ride for the last twenty five years, right, But can they grow anymore? They're already so dominant in online marketing?

Speaker 9

Yeah, absolutely, I love Amazon. First, it's down forty percent from its peak, so although it's been one of the best stocks that the planet's ever seen, is still well off of its highs. What I like is they are market leaders in the two best businesses in my view on the planet, FIRSTUS the cloud. We know the cloud's going to be growing at a double digit clip as far as the eye can foresee. The other one is

e commerce. I mean, what's easier and better than just clicking on your screen to get what you want delivered to your doorstep. And they're number one there. You know, in fact, they have twice the market share over the next competitor on the cloud, which is the Azure of Microsoft. So I love that. I'm not quite sure necessarily see the connection between e commerce and clouds. So in a worst case scenario, they could divide that company. We're seeing Ali Baba doing some of that over in China and

perhaps unlock shareholder value there. But I think here's an opportunity is trading matt at two times sales. You can buy as you're at Microsoft, but Microsoft trading yet eleven time sales. Even eBay, which is an inferior e commerce platform, the Amazon's training at a higher price for sales ratio.

Speaker 2

All right, good leave it on that note, Have a great weekend. David deets He is senior portfolio strategists and managing principle over at Pepac Private Wealth Management. They've got toughly ten billion in assets under management.

Speaker 3

Joining us, all of them. Let's get from summit in Jersey.

Speaker 7

I love cheap price to sales that's achieved.

Speaker 3

Yeah, honestly considering. Right, all right, you're listening and watching Bloomberg Business Week. I'm invited, right, Yeah, this is good.

Speaker 1

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