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Let's move on to another tech story. It is on the Bloomberg Big Take Today and the title is the Apple Insiders in the running to succeed Tim Cook. Only one person you can talk to about anything to do with technology and Apple, and that's Mark German, Bloomberg, Chief correspondent on Bloomberg Technology joining us. It was so interesting when I read this because I don't think I have heard of anyone talking about succession with Tim Cook. But he's been around for a very.
Long time.
For having me.
That's right.
Cook has been around for over two decades at Apple now. He was named CEO in twenty eleven and obviously taking over for Steve Jobs. He's turning sixty five next year. He's one of the older CEOs in the S and
P five hundred. They have a management team that's essentially been the same cast of characters for a decade plus and they're in a precarious position right now, battling smartphone slowdowns, battling a shift of manufacturing out of China while trying to keep China still happy, regulatory concerns in both the US and the European Union. So there's a lot going on. But Tim Cook's getting up there, and it's time to
start thinking about who comes after Cook. And so my story this week takes a look at some of the options, and I'll just give you the quick summary here. If he were to step down in the near term, he'd likely be replaced by Jeff Williams. He's the chief operating officer. If he stays around about five years, as many expect, including me, he'd likely to be replaced by John Turnis.
He's the company's senior VP of hardware Engineering, and he's been playing an increasingly important role in product development and other aspects of the company.
So, Mark, this was a great point that you made in the story that you said, So Tim Cook, he's sixty three older than a lot of his peers in the average Fortune five hundred C suite company. But it's interesting because there was a quote from somebody you know saying, you know, if Biden Trump could be president at eighty
years old. Like, who's to say that Tim Cook can't stay on as CEO or that you know, someone else of one of his peers who's maybe also in that same kind of age range also couldn't be suitable for it.
Yeah, he certainly, you know, could stick around, right. I mean, if you can run the country at that age, you can run Apple at that age. But I don't think that's what Apple's board of directors or Tim Cook would want, to be honest.
Why not?
Well, I think there is a culture of passing the baton right in these corporations, and Tim Cook is going to want to give someone else a chance.
Right.
It's a technology company, and you know, many people want someone who you know, grew up in Silicon Valley, someone who is newer and more innovative, to take over these tech companies. So I just don't think Tim Cook at eighty years old would want to run Apple or should run Apple.
It doesn't sound like Tim Cook has talked a whole lot about this. You mentioned this was I thought this was kind of weird that of all places where Tim Cook has shared the most about, you know, his life after Apple, has been on a podcast with Dua Lipa didn't see that coming.
I don't know is she.
Presently did not see that coming, Like, is this like the place to go if you're going to drop some secession news.
Well, Tim Cook doesn't do many interviews, right, He does a few a year, and you know, to be fair, du Alipa probably asked the best questions of any interview that I've seen Tim Cook participate in a while, and she brought up the succession question. Obviously, that was a little surprising that she brought that up because it doesn't seem central to, you know, her line of questions that the rest of the podcast had. But she asked, and Tim Cook gave his most in depth comments on the subject to date.
You mentioned a hardware engineering person that may be taking over if it's longer than five years, Why not like an ai Ish person.
Well, it's not necessarily because John Turnus is a harderre engineering person that he's going to be taking over the company. It's mostly because he's in the right age range. He's so important to the company. He has excellent managerial skills, He's extremely well respected inside the company and within the industry. So he has a lot of things going for him other than obviously very important being the hardware engineering person. In terms of not an AI person, well, Apple's AI
person John Jane Andrea. Quite frankly, I don't expect him to remain at Apple for many more years, and I certainly don't think that he's prime to run the whole company. He joined Apple in twenty nineteen. For all intentsive purposes, he's an outsider. When you're at Apple, you really want to gain steam there, especially if you're going to be the next CEO. You really got to be there for
two decades. It's a cult, right, You're not going to see someone be able to be CEO who comes in from the outside and their head of AI for all intensive purposes, Like I said, is an outsider.
So when Steve Jobs was, you know, toward the end of his tenure, obviously he was battling cancer at the time. What kind of circumstances, you know, barring you know, a health crisis, which of course we hope that wouldn't happen, But what kind of circumstances do you think would be fitting for Cook to step down?
Under?
Well, Cook is going to run Apple as long as he wants to run Apple.
Right.
Like I said, I don't think that's going to be until eighty, but I wouldn't be surprised if he remains at Apple until seventy, right, And the circumstances would be when he feels it's time to pass the baton. No one is going to force him out. There's no retirement age, there's no requirement, So it's going to be as long as he wants to run the company, and so there's no circumstance that I think would push him out the door.
It also feels like managing Apple is also about and managing geopolitical relationships with China, Like how do you think that kind of overlays? Or are I making too much of a big deal about it and it's actually a cyclical thing and I should chill out.
Well, No, I think that's extremely central to the CEO role, right, And the thing that's going to test turnus the most is how do you operate on the world stage. Now, there's something else to really understand here. The CEO of Google Sundor Prichai, the CEO of Microsoft Satanadella. They are both engineers who took on the CEO role, just like I expect turnis to eventually right. But both of those people have an executive there that manage the relations for
them right. Microsoft famously has a president whose name is Brad Smith. He handles all the international relations, right soundor Prachai. They made their CFO Ruth porat Right. She now manages these international relations and these issues, So the CEO doesn't necessarily have to be the person who manages these relationships. The reason Tim Cook does it at Apple is not
because he's the CEO. That's because he's the best at it, right, And different CEOs are going to have different skill sets, And being the CEO doesn't mean you have to do everything. It means you have to do a mix of things, but have the ability to appoint the right person and put the right people in position to do the things that you're not good at.
Last one for you here mark thirty seconds. Tim Cook's talking about maybe life after Apple being something more philanthropic.
Any ideas on what that might be like.
Well, obviously he generated a lot of money while being CEO of Apple. My belief he's going to open up some sort of charitable foundation and make donations to you know, various places. I would say the best comp to This would be something like what Mackenzie Scott has been doing
or Lorraine Powell jobs. Both have opened foundations over the past, you know, several years and make fill philanthropic donations on a pretty targeted basis to specific entities constantly, and so I would expect the cook to do the same.
Really appreciate it, Mark, I know what's early where you are. We appreciate you getting up for us. Mark German Bloomberg a chief correspondent on global technology, and you can read this great story on Bloomberg and also at Bloomberg dot com Slash Big Take. Don't miss it.
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We also have a really interesting move here with HubSpot and Alphabet. Do I know those things?
I don't really know. Those things don't have a man deep saying, thankfully.
Jos and so does Narash Patel. So manyep Singh is Senior Technology Software Senior Technology analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence Naragepitel at Bloomberg Intelligence senior software analysts. Luckily they can have us covered on all of this, Garage. What is HubSpot and what does a Google slash alphabet want with it?
Yeah? Hi, Alex and HubSpot they are playing directly into sales and marketing software. Small player, well below the scale of Salesforce and Adobe. They have about two and a half billion in revenue relative to a forty billion salesforce scale, so much smaller. They target SMBs. Their average customers about fifty one hundred employees. So they offer this type of platform, which is about two hundred and ten thousand total customers to Google to maybe enhance some advertisement and leverage CRM
as a gateway for AI into software. For Google, this is.
A pretty big potentially acquisition.
So I want to bring in man Deep saying here, who's with us in the studio today?
Hey, Man Deep.
So this would be a company right now that's valued HubSpot, that is around thirty billion dollars.
So much talk of antitrust.
Going on in the tech space, Is this something like Google could really pull off?
I mean they could in theory simply because Microsoft recently bought Activision and that was close to seventy billion dollars, So you know, any acquisition here would not be north of thirty five to forty billion. So from that perspective, you know, given Google is not a player in application software, I think the antitrust argument is pretty weak in terms of, you know, preventing them from acquire HubSpot and in terms of why they are looking to buy an asset like this. Look,
Google's primary business remains ads. They're big on the you know, the foundational model side with generative AI. They have the cloud infrastructure, so getting a data CRM play for training
your models is something that is quite forward looking. I don't think the market fully grasps what they're trying to to do here, but it does make sense because in the end, if you have to deploy generative AI at the enterprise level, you need data and who better than a CRM company that has got data related to an enterprise system sales system. So it does make sense that they are trying to apply that kind of AI in the context of an enterprise.
Well to your point of you know, maybe investors not quite grasping it yet. Google shares more or less unchanged on the day actually slightly down, but you think this could be maybe a more positive longer term story for the stock.
I mean, these companies don't make acquisitions for inorganic growth. It isn't about the revenue contribution from hubsqat. It is more about how can they position themselves better at the enterprise level. And in the case of Alphabet, look, they've
never had an enterprise business before Google Cloud. So the fact that they have a thirty five billion dollars Google Cloud infrastructure business, they can add this DRM asset and then the generative AI aspect is huge because that's where everyone is expecting all the growth.
To be nearage.
Do you like the numbers that we're looking at here, I mean, what do you think it would be worth if Alphabet had to take it over, had to want it to take it over.
Yeah, this is HubSpot's landing at the high end of app software evaluation today it's about twelve times on a forward sales. Some of the comparable piers in SMB space are half of that multiple. So you know, giving Google's balance sheet, they have the appetite to keep pushing the valuation to a higher level. The offset here not from the numbers but from a perspective of HubSpot management, this is really their baby. They're going to have a very
hard time letting go. You have two active co founders and one is still very active in all product development. He's the current CTO, So there will be a little resistance from the management perspective.
So real quick on that could somebody else come in and make another bid that would make them feel better?
They probably prefer a Google that's not in CRM software versus a salesporce Adobe s a P type of company where they would just be rolled up into an enterprise portfolio.
So if we were to think man deep of how something like this could hypothetically be financed, obviously cash not a problem for Google. You think this is something they would buy and uh, you know, just with cash on the balance sheet, would go to a debt or equity market.
I mean, look if being bore shareholder friendly recently with the announcement of a dividend, so clearly they are making changes to their capital structure. I wouldn't be surprised if they go to the bond market to finance such a big acquisition with these rates. Yeah, but I mean Google is like triple A.
Yeah, probably basically cheaper than the government can.
Yeah, so I don't think financing is an issue, but the regulatory scrutiny is going to come no matter, you know, I whether they compete in that same space or not, given the size of a potential deal. But I think they can convince the regulators that this deal makes sense for them.
Can we go to Roadblocks for a second, because maybe you also cover this. So my knowledge of Roadblocks is this. My daughter comes in in the morning on Saturday and Sunday, takes my phone and plays Roadblocks on my phone Warrior cats.
That's all I know.
I don't really know what that means.
She knows to talk to anyone online and she basically makes cats fight each other and.
Get animals and you know, more than based up.
That's all I know what's going on.
But she plays a lot.
And I bet you she's using your credit card to make those Roadblocks purchases.
Alex Face, what are you saying?
I think Roadblocks wants her to do that.
But why is the stockdown like.
Twenty three percent?
Well so in this case, I mean engagement is what drives all these plats and the fact that we are going into summer months, it's kind of a natural to see some seasonality in terms of engagement coming down. So ours spent were three percent below consensus expectations, even though the user growth was in line with consensus twenty percent user growth. And to my mind, the long term story is still intact. They have the content to drive you know,
kids of that age, and they have the engagement. There will always be seasonality, and you know, once in a while the stock will react like this because the expectations were higher, but there was nothing on the call that suggested they're losing their engagement to social media. Yeah, and so I think this is the case of market being in that mood where if it's not a beat and a big raise, your stock is going to get hit. And you're seeing that with the robots tough crowd.
Yeah, you know, this is something that I wanted to
come back to. We I covered the economy in my regular job here at Bloomberg, and we actually we're talking to the lead economists of Visa not too long ago, and they had some great research out about how the gaming economy has really added like so much in terms of consumption just by virtue of so many people being on computers being exposed to so many more ads and buying more things, not just within the game, but you know in the broader internet at large, and I don't know,
it's do you like see the connection with that as well in this gaming world and how that's also just boosting aggregate consumption.
I mean, Roadblocks did call out virtual shopping being a
potential driver for twenty twenty five. So even though no one talks about metaverse now, the fact that you know, companies are still talking about virtual storefronts and the fact that you can do shopping on these kind of platforms down the line goes to show that gaming is something that everyone fields contributes to this AI wave as well as you know, largely e commerce connection in terms of you know, the storefronts and how the behavior could change down the line.
What are they sell in there? What can you buy on that shop?
I mean, like that was the whole promise of metawverse, that you can replicate malls in the metaverse. And so if I'm a Walmart that is setting up a grocery or you know, their shop in that kind of a virtual storefront, I can drive that kind of experience where people feel they are inside them all when they're sitting in front of a computer and they can do a lot of the shopping, which again was the promise of Meatowors.
There were probably three four years too early and it will take time to build that.
All right, Naraj, I know you're still here. Sorry, we need to get more info on roadblocks, basically, so I understand what it actually is. My daughter's playing it. What else are you working on right now in your sphere?
I think there's a big dichotomy with the valuations that are occurring in software. You're seeing the SMB companies like a HubSpot, which is a little bit moving against the wave. The rest of the companies are getting hit because small medium business spending is quite constrained, and you're seeing a significant downward push on valuation multiples for other companies like a Claviow, like a pay Call Pay loss a, a whole host of companies and app software.
All right, guys, I really appreciate it, Thank you so much. Can't get any more and can't get better than this. You're at Narajhpatel Bloomberg Intelligence senior software analysts joining us at man Deep Singh. He is Bloomberg Intelligence a senior technology analyst.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us Live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple card playing Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Just get back to Warner Brothers Discovery.
That stock us out by about four tens of one percent as Nor was talking about the company reporting sales and profit that fell short analyst expectations. Shocker lower TV ad sales plus poor performance of video games. So no one better to talk to than KEITHR. Mangana than Bloomberg Intelligence and Animal on US media. Why is the stock up on the earnings?
Yeah, it was a little bit of a mixed bag Alex so definitely ebitdah under pressure as always TV advertising, as you just pointed out, But they did have some bright spots and I think that's why we're seeing a little bit of enthusiasm here. So one thing that they did mention was that, you know, Warner Brothers in Discovery. It's obviously a merger. They've extracted so far about four
billion dollars in cost savings. They are now projecting an extra one billion dollars in synergies so that I think is something that you know, the street is definitely hopeful about.
And then you have the streaming business.
Remember this is the HBO business that has now been rebranded as Max and we're seeing some some green shoots here, so you know, subscriber growth had kind of hit a wall, but again we're seeing some reinviegration here. So they had about two million subscriber ads and they have a lot more momentum going forward because we're going to see a lot of overseas market launches.
But that's not real. The real story.
The real stories that the segment is actually profitable, and that is what has become the new gauge across the whole streaming landscape whether the streaming business can be profitable, and obviously Warner Brothers showing us how it's done.
I honestly, you know, I will admit I'm not part of the gaming worlds, but I was under the impression that this is a pretty strong segment of consumer spending, has a lot of people who are very active in the gaming world, and it seems like for Warner Brothers at least, this came down to one game in particular. How would you categorize that segment of the business.
Keep that.
Yeah, So Warner Brothers, I mean not necessarily known for you know, their video games in general, but they did have a huge blowout hit last year with Hogwatts Legacy that became one of the biggest selling games throughout twenty.
Twenty three and Harry Potter One.
Harry Potter One just huge, And so when they were comping this year, obviously they knew coming into this quarter that it was going to be you know, tough comps. But then they also had their release from this quarter, which was you know, Suicide Squad, which really did not live up to expectations at all, and then you have obviously that Harry Potter effect, and that just didn't bode well for them for that studio slash gaming segment.
The idea, though, right, is that the streaming part is going to wind up doing better and that will eventually offset slowing TV AD sales. Right is where are they on that sort of balance beam.
Yeah, that's such a great point, Alex, I mean that's the hope, right, That's what everybody's hoping for that this transition would eventually pay off and at some point like the streaming service would be better or at least equal to, if not better than, linear TV.
But I don't know.
I don't think it's actually going to happen, or it's going to take a very very long time. Obviously, we've seen kind of Netflix set the stage here for everybody else. This year, we're going to see them throughout something like ten billion dollars in profit. So we know it can
be done. I'm just not sure if who can do it, first of all, and if many people can or many streamers can kind of replicate that success, because if you kind of look at even the Max business, yes, it's good that they were able to show, you know, throughout kind of ninety million dollars in profits, but you're taking a business that was originally generating something like two billion dollars in Ibada every year, and so you know, you kind of then take it from two billion to you know,
even if it's going to be two hundred or three hundred million, that's just a fraction of what it was generating. And that's kind of the whole story in media right now. Right you're treating the TV dollars for kind of these these digital pennies, and so it does become a game of scale and that's where kind of this whole bundling concept comes in, because that helps you kind of not only get more subscribers, but it helps you reduce churn, which is really the biggest problem for streaming right now.
Another big story in media is obviously just cutting costs, right and Warner Brothers has done quite a bit of layoffs in the past year and it's and we had some additional Bloomberg reporting out this morning saying that CEO David Zaslov is looking to find more opportunities to cut costs and that more layoffs could be part of that. Is that something Eitha that you're worried about.
I mean, yeah, this has kind of again been a major thing that that Warner Brothers has been very good at, you know, cutting costs.
I mean they did this originally with.
Their first deal, which was the Discovery Script's deal, where they again they went in and they eliminated a lot of those extraneous costs. They're really very very good in terms of implementing you know, cost savings and synergies. And again they've kind of, uh, you know, reproduced that same playbook with the Warner Brothers Discovery mergers.
The thing with cost cutting.
Is it's it's it's very tricky, you know, because yes, you you can cut out a lot of extra duplicative costs, especially in kind of streaming businesses when you're combining two streaming platforms, but you don't want to cut too much. You don't want to underinvest in content. And I think what they're going to do here is it's not so much about the content side of things. It's more about
marketing and selling expenses. And that's again where you know you kind of yes, they're going to cut that, but that's again where you see how the bundling aspect could really help them, because that helps them save a lot of those marketing and advertising expenses.
Before we let you.
Go, what the whole like Disney plus Hulu and Max together.
I have a couple questions.
One how much is gonna cost?
Two?
How much should it cost? Three?
Will they tell me that that's an option? Or am I gonna weirdly double pay for a while? And four I forgot the fourth.
All great questions, All great questions.
Excellent trifecta with an optional plus one.
There was a plus one somewhere.
It'll come to me in my brilliance.
So Alex, what we're paying right now, if you want just the just Hulu and Disney Plus without ads is around twenty dollars on the nose, and if you're taking the Max product without ads, that's sixteen dollars, So combine together that would be thirty six dollars. Now, again they haven't said anything on pricing yet, so this is just me speculating, but I would think they would when they're kind of combining those three together, it would probably be at maybe a thirty dollars or.
A sub thirty dollars.
Price point to kind of make it really attractive in terms of will they you know, will you double bay?
I don't think so.
I think if you're a Disney Plus, existing Disney Plus or Hulu subscriber, you'll just have kind of an option when you log in saying you know this, this Max is available to you, and do you kind of want to switch your subscription now?
That's how I think they're going to do it.
And conversely, if you're a MAX subscriber, I forgot your third question me too, it.
Was much of a cause will they tell me about it?
And are you gonna end up double paying? I think they got them all.
I did remember my fourth one, the fourth one. Oh gosh, it went away again. Oh no, okay, I got a backup on cable Cube ahead. Is this just about like cable Is this basically what I did with like Verizon, but now I'm going to do it on my streaming TV.
It's very much the same idea. I mean, we're going back to bundling again. And I think what all of these services are trying to do. Alex and Mali's they're just trying to now create this super bundle. Remember, Disney and Warner have another sports JV a Sports a bundle that's going to come out in conjunction with Fox a little bit later. So now they have this this Disney
Max bundle. I think eventually they're going to you know, ask you to maybe have that extra super super bundle along with you know, the sports, the sports option as well. So it's really kind of them trying to keep you on their platforms as much as possible.
And isn't that just the name of the game.
We do that here at Bloomberg too, you know, always trying to keep people on the terminal.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, the all day log. So we're guilty of it. Two.
We understand where that goes. Keitha, thanks a lot, thanks for playing with us, keithing wrong and not and Bloomberg Intelligence, as senior media analyst joins us, Okay, so you're getting a couch delivered.
I get that.
Are you gonna sit on the couch and watch like all the streaming things?
I guess I have to decide which ones I'm going to be, you know, signing up for me? And I do have the TV already in some of these subscriptions, but I was under the impression, like I know, I've got Hulu Netflix. Those are each under ten dollars a month if you have the version with ads. These ones up here, we're talking like sixteen to twenty. Well you saw my face, right, So that's why I bring it up.
As Githa is like rolling off the numbers of how much people pay. My mouth keeps dropping and I'm like, I paid that much for these things. That's the thing is you say yes and you don't actually know where you're paying, and if you go through, you're like, wait, I'm paying one hundred bucks for all this?
Why did I cut cable to people?
It is YouTube YouTube.
I don't do no Hello. We know I watch Survivor, so I need that. And then I have a child and she needs options for when mommy needs to sleep.
She also needs warrior cats, which she could be knocking up my gout the card on that too. Things I am learning.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple card Play and Android Auto with a Bloomberg Business at You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa Play. Bloomberg eleven thirty.
With Molly Smith Paulsweeni is out today. This is Bloomberg Intelligence Radio. We cover all the top news for you through our lens of Bloomberg Intelligence analysts. They cover two thousand companies and one hundred and thirty into strees worldwide.
Here's what's so interesting to me, and I mean this is nothing new, but sort of the two speed economy that I feel like we keep seeing in that certain areas of the economy, the lower income spend more on credit cards by now, pay later, n if I be the small business sentiment all weaker, but companies, big companies, good earnings, earnings beats profit continues to grow, buybacks happening. Basically, the rich get richer in.
The por getpor It's sad, isn't it. Yeah?
We see that too in like some of the jobs numbers that are broken out by firm size, and we see that like way more of the hiring is also being done at firms that have at least five hundred employees. So interesting, great to be in a building like this, you know, but for much of America, what is it?
Like half of America works for a small business?
Right?
Is this something like that?
And then so even if you have wages keeping pace with inflation, if if big if, that's still sort of the cloud that goes a long way to explaining the cloud that we feel, even if we don't see it. Yeah, yeah, okay, clouds for TikTok, Yeah, go ahead.
That's just kind of sad. I hope we want to. I hope we talk about something more positive.
I don't know what today is somebody who covers the economy, you know, it's just I'm looking for the happier news.
I don't feel it.
Maybe Barry has it. You think he does.
I don't think he has it? Ok, Barry, do you have happier news right now.
Well, the silver lining and he does he did get that.
Barry Ridholts right here, founder of Ritsults Wealth Management, host of Masters and Business.
Take it away, Barry. What's the good news?
So the silver lining is whenever the economy sees a lot of these scams and frauds bubbling up from especially from social media and the Internet, it's usually because the economy is so strong and people have so much money that it attracts the fraudsters. I'm not saying the fraudsters disappeared in the middle of eight o nine, but you
really didn't. I see a lot of them other than the ones who were revealed by the financial crisis, like Bernie Madoff couldn't perpetrate his fraud anymore because you couldn't make up numbers anymore. But you know, it's a unfortunate side effect of a lot of wealth, is you know why do we people rob banks because that's where the money is.
I was talking about someone yesterday about bitcoin too, and just sort of having going down the scale in sort of the bitcoin products that are being offered, in the crypto products that are being offered, and the question marks around it as there's just so much.
Money slashing around. I don't know.
You're going to relate this to TikTok, aren't you, because that's part of where we're getting a lot of it our news and information. Right, What do you make of a whole byte Dance is now suing the US government for forcing a sale of TikTok, but then you still have, say Steve minus into TikTok in some way. What are you making of all this?
Well, let's give Byteedance credit for what they do better than either Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, which is they have created an algorithm that knows exactly how to tickle your dopamine receptors, and you know, once you fail, your down a rabbit hole of a particular type. On TikTok. My wife, it's all about rescue dogs on TikTok, and it's just endlessly charming videos about dogs that have been saved. But there's a darker side, whether it's investing or day training,
or taxes or go down the list. You know, some of the crypto scams, you can earn twenty percent a year back when the tax the risk free rate on the tenure was one and a half percent and here's what you do. You max out your credit cards, you go buy a house. You put this money, earn twenty percent, you use that to pay off the house, and hey, in seven years you own this house. And of course you're nothing like That sort of stuff is incredibly irresponsible, and it's all over TikTok.
How so i've I mean, I'm someone who admittedly is not on TikTok, but tell me what kind of posts that would come across in.
So for people who are not on TikTok what like, I'm not a big TikTok user. I tend to be more of a Twitter user. But one of my favorite follows on Twitter is TikTok Investors, And this is a person who is in the financial industry but not authorized to speak on behalf of their employer, so they have
to be anonymous. And they've been curating some of the most outrageous money losing videos from the experts from the finfluencers at TikTok, and as I wrote in a note this morning, they range from merely wrong to risky to actually criminal, where people are giving tax advice that if you follow the irs is going to have a little conversation and it's going to be expensive.
Well, but Barry, do you feel it as the as parts of the economy slow and as we go to a slowing or normalization aka liquidity comes out of the market, do these things stop or do you think like we're just in it now.
So here's the thing that I think people kind of overlook because we all have a tendency to see the world from our own unique perspective, and only some of us are paid to step back and look at the thirty thousand foot few. There is just so much money sloshing around the US economy. It's not just stocks and bonds. It's not just the six trillion with a t trillion dollars that flowed into five plus percent money market accounts. But you look at venture capital, you look at private equity,
you look at private credit. There is just trillions upon trillions of dollars in the US economy. And even as things start to slow from the massive fiscal stimulus of the pandemic era. Remember Keresact one was the biggest fish stimulus since World War Two? Who is ten percent of GDP. We've never seen something like that in a few generations.
Then Cares Act two both of those under President Trump then cares Act three under President Biden to say nothing of the other ten year long sort of infrastructure, semiconductor, all the other legislation that came out. There's a lot of money out there and it's going through the economy, and when people have been erroneously forecasting a recession, we can have a whole long, complicated discussion as to why
or why not a recession hasn't happened. But it comes back to too much money, too strong of an economy for a true, persistent and pervasive contraction to take place at this time.
Yeah, I mean, that's really the story of the economy all these days, right, that demand that just will not rein in last one for you quickly, Barry. We're saying in this note here on TikTok that investors should consider making changes on the very social media themselves.
Thirty seconds. What do you mean by that?
So you have to be very wary about claims that are just too good to be true. Turn one hundred dollars into a million. Hey, all you have to do is earn two percent a day. Seems kind of ridiculous. Don't pay taxes, just be on a boat on tax Day on April fifteenth, utterly ridiculous.
Some of the other stuff.
Here's why we're teaching our kids today trade from home. Yeah, I mean, really is this good advice for anybody? So be skeptical. Anything that seems too good.
To be true probably is.
All right, Barry, We really appreciate it. Fun to chat Barry wood Holtz joining us there. You can check out his Master's in Business podcast. Check that out. Definitely. It's almost telling me that his like twenty three year old son is like, let's talk to me about dollar yen, Like, how do I trade that?
In?
My colleague was like, please don't do that.
Far and above where I was a.
You're listening to the Bloomberg and tell Us podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
And it is an exciting day, particularly if you like Space. So Bloomberg Space is the newest editorial franchise within our far reaching newsroom, and it's launching today and it brings together the best reporters and editors in the game, including Lauren Crush, Bruce Einhorn, Kate Duffy, Todd Shields, and Eric Johnson to deliver some hard hitting enterprise scoops, documentaries, photography and podcasts all about dot do dot.
The business of space.
So for more inside stories of investments beyond Earth, from satellite networks to moonlandings, you can visit bloomberg dot com slash space for more.
And one of the stories.
Being featured is being included in the special section of the Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine titled Musk and Bezos Are Racing to Bring Americans back to the Moon. It discusses how NASA's hopes for a return to the Moon depend on Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Here to discuss all of this with us is Lauren Grush, Bloomberg US Space reporter. First of all, congrats on launching the
vertical that's no small feet. Definitely looking into that. I did a half hour special on space once and I loved it. It was so interesting, so thanks for doing that.
And also just to quickly confirm, this does not mean that Bloomberg is launching anything into space. Yeah, we are launching a vertical on a website about space.
It's hilarious how many people thought we might actually be sending something to space.
But if people really think that's.
Yeah, so let's talk about launching humans into space. If you're looking at Blue Origin or a SpaceX, how is NASA taking a different approach to Blue Origin and SpaceX this time round?
Right?
So, NASA is very intent on sending people back to the Moon for its Artemis program, its goal is to send the first woman and the first person of color to the Larner's surface. But the other main goal is to start a sustainable presence on the lunar surface other than you know, as opposed to the Apollo missions, where we just kind of went, we left flags and footprints
and then we came back and we were done. And part of that is stimulating commercial companies to create hardware that NASA can use to send people to the Moon, and then those companies can use that hardware to potentially turn a profit. And the big high profile companies are of course Elon Musk, SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin, which have both been tapped to create the lunar landers that will be used to carry humans to and from the lunar surface.
Lauren, I got to ask, as one of these mirror Earth links here, why is this important to send people to the Moon beyond just having the flags and the footprints.
Like, what is the you know, real.
Useful takeaway from having a presence on the Moon.
Well, of course there's the geopolitical one. You know, NASA has a lot of partnerships with countries all over the world, and Artemis is definitely a global program, So it's a way for us to foster, you know, these relationships with companies that want to send vehicles in hardware to space.
And then additionally it's kind of a proving ground. You know, NASA is hoping to eventually send humans to Mars someday, and the idea is that by living and working on the Moon, they can you know, come up with new technologies, new processes that they'll eventually use to send humans to the Red planet.
I guess I still just wonder, though, how is that like useful, you know besides just saying like we went to space, Like, what's there.
To be that?
I don't know? Am I missing it?
No?
There there?
That is part of the use you know, you know, obviously there are concerns about China also sending people to the moon. NASA you know, doesn't want you know, there is a bit of a race and that and that respect. But at the same time, there are all these kinds of side benefits that come from sending people to the moon.
A lot of the technologies that we use here on Earth have come from space exploration, and so by you know, making this that a goal, there are all there are going to be all of these side benefits that we that trickle down to us. And then of course there's the inspirational element of it too. You know, seeing a woman walk on the moon will definitely inspire.
Many young women to.
Hopefully want to become astronauts or join the space industry someday.
Well, and for a while, no one seemed to care about space launches anymore. Like that was sixties and seventies and we stopped kind of caring, and Jeff Bezos sending on a musk made it all really cool and sexy again. And now we have a space launch, we take it and we talk about it, and we own that, we have a vertical about it. I mean, now it's becoming something that is inspirational. Again, what company do you think is going to be the first to land humans on the Moon?
Well, that's a that's.
A great question and obviously something that we're going to watch over the next decade or so. So as of this moment, SpaceX is technically in the front running. They're supposed to land humans on the Moon as early as twenty twenty six. I think a lot of people are skeptical about that date just because of the amount of you know, technical things that they have to overcome, the
challenges they have. There's a lot of technology development they have to do, and also the deadline for their human lunar landing has changed.
A few times before.
Blue Origin says that they're hoping to land humans as early as twenty twenty nine, which may be a.
More realistic date.
However, they are looking to land a cargo version of their vehicle on the Moon as early as next year. SpaceX is also hoping to do an uncrewde landing of their hardware on the Moon as early as next year. So you know, it's anyone's game at that moment to see who can actually land something on the Moon. But
whoever does if that is Blue Origin. It'll be a bit of a shot across the bow, if you will, because Blue Origin has had execution problems, whereas SpaceX is obviously quite famous for, you know, rapidly launching and iterating and moving forward with its programs.
All right, thank you so much, Lauren, We really appreciate it. Congrats on the article, congrats on launching the vertical, and no small feet. Lauren Crush joins US now called Space Reporter for Bloomberg and for more inside stories of investments beyond Earth, from satellite networks to moon landing. Visits bloomberg dot com slash space for more. So I'm taking got a nice couch, by the way in the background.
I don't see how the couch is relevant to space. It's not going up there.
You go to Mars, you want a nice couch.
My couch is staying on Earth. It's getting in this apartment one way or another.
Okay, So you would not be on board for literally going to space is not your jam.
I mean, look, if someone's going to pay you know, the millionaires whatever dollars for my ticket, I'm sure it's.
More than a million.
Like, yeah, I'll be the beneficiary of that.
But like I don't know.
I still do struggle to see what's the utility of going to space?
Am I missing it? I get the whole inspirational aspect of it.
Like wow, this is so great, you know, and like the images of like you know, Armstrong with the flag, But why is this useful for us here on earth? Besides it's cool? Has anyone answered it? Did I miss it?
I mean I think it's learning. I mean I think it's learning stuff. Could you imagine you're going to learn.
How that's advanced and how we can build new couches based on what we learn in space.
Actually ignore the last little landage made her couch. They built it in space. That's why it's taken so long.
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