The Great Mask Debate Continues

at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. Well, during this fourteen months of this pandemic we have Bloomberg Radio and television have been so fortunate to have access to a wide range of experts that help us navigate what we need to know, what is important and here uh at Bloomberg Markets on Fridays, we've been chatting with Lawrence Sour. She's the associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins

School of Medicine. I should know that the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins is supported by Michael R. Bloomberg found our Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies. And Lauren, you've been so good to us over these months, kind of keeping us up to date on you know, they're really important news about this virus and the therapeutics and and now the vaccines, and I guess one of the questions is now is I don't have a question. We got a question all TV up, All right, you want

to you want to go that route? You go that route? Now? Well, I just we've been talking about it, at least I have Lauren no, so we were. We joke around about this American dream mall all the time in Rutherford, New Jersey, and it just made me think, Um, it's going to be a place where there's a ton of people gathered, and I wonder what an expert would think about going

to a place like that right now. I mean, even if you're vaccinated, would you feel comfortable going to it doesn't have to be there an Orioles game, or maybe you're a Nats fan, would you be comfortable going on the t I mean, do you go to these places where a lot of people are gathered, and then I

assume you're vaccinated, would you wear a mask or not? Yeah? Well, I want to start by saying, of course I'm an Orioles fan, but um, I think I would feel safe in ball parts, especially if they're maintaining the sort of

seat social distancing that they've been doing. So the seat restrictions. UM. Interestingly, you know, I think we're seeing some of the fall sports like football, UM go back to full stadium capacity, and I'm not sure i'd be ready for that my personally, of course i'm speaking, but I think that an outdoor setting where you feel like you're not up against people for long periods of time, where you have that space to move, I'd be comfortable there, but probably would still

wear a mask. Maybe not if I was sitting in my seat and felt like I was, you know, six ft away from people, but when I headed back to the concessions or when I went to the bathroom UM or in you know, coming and going from those spaces. So that's like always the biggest challenges when people get sort of crowded together as they're entering or exiting the stadium.

UM UM. An indoor mall for an extended period of time, I'm not sure i'd feel comfortable there, and definitely not UM other sort of indoor spaces where you have no control over how close you are to people. Well to continue, I mean, you know, I'm a long suffering New York Knicks fan, Lauren, and but fortunately they are back in the playoffs and they have. They're opening their playoffs this weekend at Madison Square Garden, the world's most famous arena.

Of course, they're gonna have fifteen thousand fans there, and I believe the capacity is maybe seventeen or eighteen thousand, so it's pretty darn full indoor arena. But that's apparently, you know, as per the New York and CDC guidelines. That's okay, yeah, I mean it's so it's it's all about what your personal comfort is once you've been vaccinated.

I think, you know, we do want to keep as much of the distancing, as much of them asking as they can, just because it protects people who either can't be vaccinated or have chosen not to. And so you know, it is a little bit of that, you know, doing

something for someone else piece. But I also think that, um, if you're comfortable and you've been vaccinated, and you've you know, gone your full vaccine schedule, so either one or both doses depending on what you got, and waiting that two week carry it after UM, and you do feel comfortable and you don't feel like, you know, there's maybe another family member in your household or someone that you spend a lot of close time with it is at risk,

then I think it's a different it's a different calculus, right, And if you feel comfortable, maybe keep that mask on you in case you find you find yourself in a situation where you'd feel more comfortable having it on, or where you're entering into somewhere where it does feel like masking is more appropriate or even required, because I think one of the outcomes of this new guidances that we're having, you know, patchwork masking with quests, and so you want

to have it ready if you need it. But if you feel comfortable and you you feel like you're not gonna put anyone else vulnerable at risk, and I think that that's a different question. I think we're gonna be wearing masks in like five years. You know, I've been thinking a lot about that. Actually, It's it's hard to assess because I do feel like as a country, we've been pretty resistant to masking. Um. I have to say,

the drop in some of the other restiratory infections is appealing. Um. You know, some countries have have had a long masking culture and and they you know, it just feels like part of daily life. I think we'll have to see what happens with vaccine coverage and how ventilations laughed. Yeah, and if we can make some really good changes to our buildings, take this opportunity to do that. I think.

I think that there's a potential that we will see at least sporadic mask wearing for a long time to come. I think it'll be really interesting, Lauren, to see if we really do make ventilation changes building changes. Um. And that is, like you said, that would be great for us on on a whole um number of different disease issues. Uh. I actually like wearing a mask occasionally, but I've recently found that maskne is real that that happens, and it's difficult to get rid of. So I guess you gotta

wash your face. I guess a little bit more. Lawrence Hour from the Johns Hopkins School Medicine, thank you very much as usual for joining US. Now. I have been pretty pumped. Talked to Bill Studebaker. He joins US today, President and chief investment officer at robo Globo. Uh, robo globe bull. Sorry, I'm sure people probably make that mistake

a lot. Robo globe bull. Um. He is going to talk to us about AI five g autonomous vehicles, robotics, and semi conductors, which is obviously what makes it so cool. But um, Bill, you've got a bunch of E t F s that you have created their UM. The robo et F is the most famous, but you also track AI with TH H and Q and health tech with H T E c UM. I noticed they all seem

to be doing equally well this year. If I look back over the past twelve months, each one is gaining UM more than fifty Why do they track each other so closely? Well? I think, uh, good morning, and thanks for having me. I think what you're seeing right now is that you know, these are technologies, particularly with robotics and AI, that are being applied to all industries, in

all markets. And these were years ago, you know, viewed as niche applications, where you know, fast forward eight years later, we couldn't be more convicted and how these technologies are changing the way we live and work and in healthcare, the exciting thing now is that we're in the process of beginning to cure chronic disease. I mean, healthcare as we've had it has been really sick care. Someone gets sick and you basically go and you know, try to take a remedy to to uh, you know, prevent it

from spreading, not always just curing it. Um. But now we're moving into a completely new, uh digital realm. I mean, healthcare is less than one percent digitized, and people going forward, I'm not going to live until their seven year eighty try one twenty plus because we've left the ability not just to arrest the signs of aging, but in some cases reverse it. So build I'd love to get a sense of you know, one of the key issues throughout anology right now is the real basic building block of

technology semi conductors. Can you explain to me and to our listeners how it got to a point where there's this acute shortage of chips out there and how long's it going to take to wind its way through? Well, that's a that's a good question. I think it's pretty similar to most you know, signal industries. They're capital intensive companies are always reluctant to add too much capacity once

they have to manage your business, you know, for shareholders, etcetera. Uh, And the industry right now that we're seeing it's going through really unprecedented times with the supply environment and you know meanful inleventory plenishment is not going to happen until

very likely the first half of twenty two. UM. And I think what you're seeing now is the need for semiconductors is really exploding as we're having advancements in five G and edge computing and basically all of our assets that are around us UM have seven connectors that are assumed to be, if not now beginning to aggregate data and communicate with US. So, UM, the whole world is becoming tecrified and digital and digitized. What what how did

this work out? Because I know you used to be a portfolio manager, right, So, UM, what made you decide to start creating these e t F s at Robo Global? And you know, I'm always fascinated by it because I think this is the way that UM, younger generations are are really investing and going to invest, especially over you know,

the mobile phone technology, etcetera. Well, I guess I was fortunate to set my career kind of looking at technologies and industrial companies and was pretty focused on the concept of automation. As I was kind of looking around, you know, UM began to think to myself and my and my partners were you know, we're gonna be increasingly automating everything and we've kind of started up robot We looked around and you know, how can we want to invest in

the theme of automation. That weren't any dedicated hedge funds doing anything in automation. UM. You know, how about venture capital, private equity? Very little obviously nothing going on in UH in the mutual fund long only world. So we we knew that there were dedicated pure flight companies you know, likened to sturgical you know, like for Nook, etcetera. But if you would in the classic Wall Street gigs and pulp the word robotics, you know what companies would populate that? Nothing?

How about if you pulled up AI that was just kind of an Elon must science fiction term. So we actually were the first company ever to have gone out and created essentially UMU, the SMP, the nasdack UM, which is the robo Global Index to track robotics and AI. And we've done that for healthcare in avay shouldn't um and we've also done this for AI. So that's kind of unique, uh in terms of what we've done. Hey, Bill thirty seconds, what what's the sector that's really getting

your attention right now. Well, it's really hard to isolate to just want I mean, I think one thing it stands out. I think a lot of your listeners would understand his e commerce. I mean e commerce because the pandemic before, um, what's sort of a luxury, Well, it's been turbo charged where it's a necessity. E commerce screw for five last year. When you look around into North America warehouses, I would say less than five percent of

warehouses are heavily automated. So we're beginning um to see even increasingly more technology that's being put into speed up fulfillment and supply chain. And this is going to go on for years of not decades. Yeah, absolutely fascinating, And I think you're you're definitely right there because everybody has to match Amazon, right have always, They've all got to get it to you in twenty four hours or less. Bill Studebaker, their president, chief investment officer at Robo Global,

This is Bloomberg. Yeah, I'm really digging these big takes, Matt. I mean, these are some pretty juicy stories in Bloomberg News. You know, it goes really deep and today is no difference. Tom or like. He's the chief economist for Bloomberg Economics. He joins us Uh And what I like about Tom is he spent over a decade in China, in Beijing, working and living there, so he's got a great global view.

And the story that they did today, it's got a really cool headline world dominating superstar firms get bigger, techier, and more Chinese. Tom, tell us what you guys and your team UH looked at here when you looked at some of the really big global companies. Thanks Paul, great to be on the show. Um. So, what we've done if we've taken a grand historical sweep um and kind of look at the evolution of the biggest distis in

the world over the last thirty years. We pulled data from the Bloomberg terminal on their market cap, their profit margins, their tax rates, how much cash they've got, where they're from, and what they do and use that to tell a story about what the biggest firms in the world looked like back in and what they look like today. And as you said, the sort of the type of captures some of the big themes we're looking at and move east more Chinese firms at the top of the global rankings.

We're looking at a shift from big oil to big tech, and we're also looking at big firms which really just operate in a different way to how they did thirty years ago, doing less capital spending, been employing less workers, and that has some important implications for the way the economy works. You know, so I used to be a big dead Kennedy's fan. Um, I guess I still am a big dead Kennedy's But I used to listen to um Jello Biafrau talk about his social justice concerns and

this was one of them. You know that the world was going to be increasingly controlled by a smaller number of consolidating companies. And to me, this story boils down to three um important data points. Number One, the top fifty companies in the world are now worth twenty eight percent of global GDP. Thirty years ago, they were less than five percent of global global GDP. Number two, UM, they're not spending as much money creating jobs. Thirty years ago,

they were spending nine percent of revenue on capex. Now it's three percent of revenue on capex. And number three, they're not paying um as much in taxes not nearly as much as tax in taxes as they used to. I think thirty years ago it was like thirty five percent, now at seventent. So I just think, Um, the interesting question raised by this article, which I obviously loved Tom by the way, is, um, what our government it's going

to do about it? I mean, are you gonna try and raise taxes in a global way, which we can see is difficult and maybe not even fair. It kind of destroys the idea of competition. Are you going to try and break up these companies because they're too big? Are they you know, have they become oligopolies in some way? I mean, what what? What? What do you think the governments are going to try and do about it? Yeah,

I think that's a that's a great question. Um. And if you think about sort of the grand sweep of economic history for the last fifty years or so, there was this moment at the beginning of the the Reagan Revolution in the US, the Thatcher Revolution um in the UK, which really tilted the playing field in favor of corporations and against workers, right, And that was the kind of the beginning of this this trend towards bigger and bigger firms,

paying smaller and smaller amounts in taxes and keeping more and more profits. It's for their owners. Um. So the question is has the pendulum swung too far? How are we now at a moment when policy is going to start shifting back in favor of in favor of workers, in favor of greater competition. And there are some signs that that's happening. Right. We've got the Biden administration talking about a global minimum tax. Um. We've got different bits of the US government taking aim at some of the

big tech platform companies saying you're operating in an unfair way. Um. And globally, we've got China taking a swing at some of its big tech champions, companies like Ali, Baba, ten Cent and ma uanum So. I mean, who knows. The corporate lobby is obviously incredibly powerful. And these films are also big because they're providing things which add value. Right, I like my iPhone, I like being able to order things on Amazon. But there are some indications beginning of

a pushback. So true, we want our stuff. We still want our stuff, right, Yeah, we want our stuff. I mean, who could imagine living through the pandemic without the benefits of ordering on Amazon here or Ali Baba in China, who could do their job without searching for information using Google. I mean, right, there's a reason Google has become a

verb is because it's an incredibly valuable service. Um. So, even as we think about some of the costs of these superstar firms, we also need to remember that they're superstars for a reason, right, They are providing goods and services that people really value. So, Tom, I think you know, right now we have the Biden administration proposing a kind of minimum tax and maybe taxing foreign profits and things like that. Is taxation one of the areas that can

maybe be addressed most quickly or in the nearest term. Yeah, So there was this there was this striking presentation by this academic at Davos a couple of years ago. UM Davos of course the sort of the main gathering point for the world corporate elite, and this academic came in and said, you know what, if we're going to talk about inequality, we need to talk about tax. If we try and have a discussion about inequality without talking about tax it's like we're having a discussion about putting out

a fire. Without talking about water. UM. The tax really has to be at the heart of this. UM. Taxes on corporations. UM. That's a challenge for any country in the world. UM. And of course, as the Biden administration is now discovering, if you try and do something globally, if you try and say, you know what, we need a global minimum to prevent companies shifting profits around to dodge paying taxes in the place where they're actually doing business, well,

that's an even harder discussion. Yeah. Absolutely, especially when you have you know, a country like Ireland who only charges twelve percent UM and they're happy with it like that. Um, they want they want Apple and Google they're paying their twelve You gotta guess they make a lot of money with that as well. But it's a longer conversation. Tom, thanks so much for joining us. Tom or like there with his look at our big take, This is Bloomberg.

I want to get over right now to Kyle Stock and just quickly wrap up something that's been obsessing me of late, and that is the Ford F one Lightning. We first saw the electric pickup truck, I think almost by accident when Joe Biden was hanging out at the rouge on Wednesday, and I was underwhelmed. But the more I look at it, the more stoked I'm getting for this electric truck. And it's got huge ramifications for um, you know, the entire industry. So Kyle, what do you

think about it? Yeah, big vehicle for them and everyone. For me, it comes down to two things, whichever else is talking about. Two is the price, which is shockingly low. Starts at forty grand or less. Yeah, and who knows how bare bones that one's going to be. But in terms of to get in like that's cheaper than the new electric Mustang that's you know, after incentives, it's comparable with the regular of one. So everyone was surprised about

that count me as well. And then um, the front, the huge it's joking trunk up front, which is just brilliant because normally would have to hold a six point two later v eight and now it's got nothing in there and coolant and spark plugs and all the other things that they don't need to worry about now. So what I love is that, um, if my power fails in some sort of armageddon um or you know, zombie situation, this truck can power my house Paul or yours or

if we live together our house for three days, that's awesome. Yeah, Kyle, is this I mean, I mean for the US market, it seems to me this U S market doesn't go electric until the four electric. I mean that's kind of how I feel about it. This is it could be a big, big moment. Well that's what's crazy about this.

I mean everyone's talking about how it, you know, competes against other trucks, but honestly, like this thing is going to compete against the Honda Accord, it's going to compete against everything because there's really you know, there's no guilt anymore. Um And I think most people have like a a little bit of a secret truck fetish. So my mom wants one badly, and as we know, she's right about almost everything. I will say, we uh, my wife also

wants a truck. And it's like a different truck every couple of days because Kyle does these Instagram reviews of whatever cool vehicle he's driving, and she follows him and then she'll he'll do like a review of the Defender, and then she'll send me his review and be like, we have to get the Defend or look what Kyle did on The Defender, so I recommend you follow Kyle Stock on Instagram to check out his work. You can also get his stories on the Bloomberg terminal. This is Bloomberg.

Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can subscribe and listen to interviews of Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter at Matt Miller three. On Fall Sweeney, I'm on Twitter at pt Sweeney Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide