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Alex Steele and Paul Sweeney, You're live here in a Bloomberger Interactive Brokers studio in sweltering New York City. Are also streaming live on YouTube, So head over to YouTube dot com search Bloomberg Podcast. A lot of stuff coming out, a lot of earnings coming out. We had Eco data today, retail sales solid, and on the earnings front, we had some of the big investment banks report here, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America's Charlie was just reporting stocks at
fifty two week highs, both of them here today. So Allison Williams is going to break it down for She's a senior anild. She covers all these big banks for Bloomberg Intelligence. She joins us here in our studio. Alison, let's start with your former firm, Morgan Stanley. Stocks up two and a half percent today, fifty two week high. What did the street like here.
I mean really strong institutional numbers. I mean it was a great quarter for trading and investment banking, So equities trading really I think a source of strength. Morgan Stanley doing better than expected across the board and just really well. So equities trading I think was the standout. Fixed income, you know, was sort of mixed, but really compared to a year ago. I think that's strong that those revenues
are turning out to be resilient. And on the investment banking side, investors are excited that there could be momentum coming into the into the next quarter. You know, M and A still just historically low, so improving from a low base. Same thing with equities, but I think reasons for optimism, especially with the stocks in general doing so well.
Now for Bank of America, when I think a Bank of America, I think it a corporate bank, you know, making big loans to big corporate customers around the world.
What did you see there, so, you know, I think the demand is for loans is still something that we're looking more for the second half. If we do get the FED rate cuts, that is definitely going to be a help. And I think for Bank of America what people are excited about is that it could be the trough. So Bank of America saying that it's going to be
the trough, this will be the weakest quarter. But keep in mind that they are baking in the FED rate cut expectations and some loan growth in the second half. So we'll see if they can deliver that. But definitely telling investors what they want to hear today in terms of the fourth quarter, a little bit higher entry rate, firming that up, and again that the you know, most of the weakness could be behind us.
So does that mean that if we don't get FED cuts that were in that Bank of America is going to have some problems here.
I think where the disappointment will come will be loan growth spurred by FED cuts. Right, So I think that some of the loan growth that they're factoring in is based on that we heard from Wells Fargo where they're you know, still a lot more cautious on the loan growth side. And commercial and industrial has been a weak spot. Credit card is has been a strong spot.
You know.
When I was in banking, one of our most lucrative businesses that the Chase Man had bank was this leverage lending, you know, lending to companies that don't have assets or inventory and any kind of just lending into cash flow. It's a little bit more risky. It's tough to show your credit officer where the collateral is for this loan. But we made a lot of money doing it's a private credit market. How's a private credit market been poaching on that business?
So actually you would have been making this would have been a good quarter for you. I know you'd be happy. The first quarter was good, second quarter was good. And I think that if you look at some of the most recent statistics that we've seen, is that banks are still doing a lot of that refinancing. Right, So a lot of the business that's been happening in the debt markets, debt fees, a source of strength across the banks supporter has been refinancing, and that leverage lending business has been
doing well at the bank. So even though private credit is certainly raising a lot of funds and a product in demand, banks are still getting their share of refinancing in their leverage one volumes. And that's you know sort of you saw like the huge growth at City Group and the numbers at Gold and sachs where they have relative strength in those businesses. High yields another area that's doing really well.
Back to the consumer, so we'll have Paul do them and banking stuff, all the consumer stuff. What about chargeobs on their credit card losses for Bank of America? Was that higher lower? Where did that come out in general?
I would say there, So their provisions overall came in in line. We did see, you know, charge offs in the car business, charge offs and commercial real estate. So those are areas that we're watching, but you know, controlled and in line with expectations. I think the area of weakness that we saw in card this quarter was at City Group. They have a private label business that's it tends to skew on the lower income side of things.
You're seeing losses come in above their targeted range. There is a seasonal pattern to that, and so there are expectations that that could come in, but I would say the second quarter did not give us confidence in those expectations. So I think that is continues to be an area
for watching. It's not necessarily a big area for the big banks that we're talking about today and the ones that I cover, but I think it's important to watch, you know, for the overall economy and to some of the other card names such as Synchrony.
CEO at Morgan Stanley, we have a new CEO, Ted Pick, I guess with a little bit of hindsight here does it seem like it's kind of working and everybody's kind of found their place, and.
So it seems like, you know, he's talking with conviction. I think the boldest statement he made today was with regard to the margins and the wealth business. So the wealth business, as you know under the former CEO and a lot of acquisitions, wealth and asset management is the predominant revenue and profit engine. It's what investors are watching.
The wealth margin was something where Pick early in the year took off some of the upside under the prior targets, and that thirty percent wealth target, I think is a question among investors if they can get there. And Ted really trying to instill confidence that he is a believer the wealth flows at Morganstone I would say, you know, that is the probably the number one thing I think that that we watch for them, and that did come
in week this quarter. The fee based part of those flows were relatively resilient, so some puts in takes there, but I think the wealth flows do bear watching, and that that really has been the engine of optimism investors, like you know, the tilt towards the recurring fee based business, and so I think that the have to continue to deliver and deliver on that thirty percent margin that Pick is confident, and.
Then I'll go to sort of what the macro read is from Morgan Stanley because also on the call, Ted Pick said that you're going to see normal M and A return unless there's a full bown recession, and he thinks we're in the early stages of multi year investment banking leed cycle.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, but we've been hearing that for so many quarters now and you're starting to definitely, you know, feel more of the doubt coming from analysts. Right. So the twenty twenty one, amazing twenty twenty two disaster, the lift that we got last year did not materialize. I would say that so far this year EM and A has been disappointing again, and you know you can see in terms of the reported fees and the announcements, right, so both of those have been disappointing. It does tend
to pick up late in the year. It does tend to pick up after elections, so I think it'll be hard to get for that particular business line, you know, sort of the momentum people are looking for perhaps until after the election. But on the underwriting side, I think is where you're seeing, you know, perhaps more of the
momentum and strength. Goldvinzachs, though who is tends to be the biggest and reported revenue, did say significant uptick in their pipeline, debt, underwriting and advisory where the areas of strength.
Right.
Very good, Allison Williams, Thank you so much. We appreciate that. Alsa Williams covers all the big banks for Bloomberg Intelligence. Joining us here in our New York studio.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play 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, playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Alex Steel alongside Paul Sweened is in Bloomberg Intelligence Radio. We bring you all the top news and analysis with our great Bloomberg Intelligens analyst team. They cover two thousand companies and one hundred and thirty industries worldwide, and occasionally we go across the pond and check him with Craig Trudell. He's Bloomberg Global Autos Editor and he joins us. Now, so many fun things to talk about, but let's just start with Tesla for a second, because the news was
quite staggering. They're going to hire nearly eight hundred new employees but didn't. Also they just fire a lot of employees.
Yeah, this is very Elon Muskian of Tesla in that it sort of you know, depends on the day of what's going on at this company. So yes, a few months back on the heels of Tesla selling about twenty percent fewer cars than it did in the fourth quarter, Elon Musk wasn't particularly happy with that. With that quarterly showing, he wanted the company to cut headcount by a commensurate amount, so roughly twenty percent. So you know, for contexts, you know, this is a company that you know, had quite a
few employees at that time. They started the year with around one hundred and forty thousand, so that would mean
twenty eight thousand people being let go. It's unclear whether they got to that, but it is absolutely clear that, you know, certain parts of the company were decimated, I think most notably the super Charging team that really turned a lot of heads because it was a you know, aspect of this company that has been looked at as you know, such a sort of feather in their cap that they really you know, invested where others didn't and built a charging network that worked whereas others have not
worked very well, particularly in the US, and so it is kind of shocking to see you know, such a significant you know pulling of people followed by a you know hiring spree of sorts.
So do we know kind of what type of roles they're hiring for. Are they hiring.
People to bend metal or are they looking to like some software guys for AI and all that, the.
Robotax for the superpower people, the superhero Yeah, I think, you know, we we did report even weeks back that some of the Supercharger people, who are you know, a part of the team that was really uh you know cut to a very significant degree, were brought back.
Relatively quickly, notably the woman who was running that group, uh you know, was has not been brought back. Uh, and there were some reports that maybe she you know, kind of tried to protect her team and what was you know, dismissed as a result of that. So, uh, you know, in terms of what parts of the company are hiring, it's it's it's pretty broad, but I would say, you know, the data that our very own Kara Carlson
has has crunched. Service is a big aspect, which is maybe no surprise in that, you know, the summer season is a busy one for Tesla. People are out, you know, driving for vacations. It's warm outs, they're running their air conditioners, you know, to the extent that you do need the service and electric vehicle, that's one of the things that
is common. So, you know, one of the interesting aspects of this story is that you know, we we did speak with with people who were a part of this job job cutting who you know, said that they were surprised that some of the service and salespeople, you know, that that the company you know, clearly needs at a time of you know, busy service work and you know,
a company that's struggling to to sell more cars. Uh, you know, we're seeing you know, some people being brought back there, but it is very widespread, I think notably as well. Uh, you know, AI and robotics is definitely you know, an area where everybody is you know, looking at very closely because of you know what this sort of new priority is or or emphasis is on the part of Musk.
You know.
Craig Bloomberg is also out with a story David Welch that GM's Mary Barris says the automaker won't sell a million evs next year, So just another story, another data point about kind of maybe where the ultimate demand or lack of demand may be for EV's. What's the latest feeling within the industry about how this thing's going to evolve at what pace.
Yeah, we've we've seen a really dramatic pullback on the part of GM and Ford in particular. I feel like, you know, Stillantis, you know, formerly FIA Chrysler. They were sort of slow in the first place, you know, making this transition and have you know, not necessarily had much to pull back from. But I would not be surprised if they sort of you know, joined the quote unquote party in terms of you know, maybe dialing back sort of the ramp at which they you know, try to
you know, produce more electric vehicles and sell them. But but it is very interesting to see you know, GM and Ford you know, really be sort of welcomed with open arms by the White House, you know, Mary Bara being lauded by Bidens as leading the EV trans that really you know, ticked off Elon Musk and helps explain why, you know, in the last few days we've learned that he's been you know, planning to spend quite a bit of money on you know, contributing to to packs to
get to Donald Trump reelected.
Well that was my thing is that the Musk Trump love affair I find to be quite interesting because if we can just game out that the love affair is also so President Trump would be more nice to evs, is the huge change that we're expecting with alternative energy and the IRA and a Trump administration maybe not going to happen. I mean, just looked at solar stocks yesterday. They got smoked because of it, but Tesla didn't.
Yeah, it is surprising. I mean maybe if you're trading Tesla, you sort of reckon that, you know, the CEO very very publicly endearing himself to the candidate will sort of, you know, come back to benefit him down the line, and maybe some of these threats to do away with electric vehicle tax credits and so forth will fall by the wayside.
Uh.
You know. Elon even went so far, you know, in the last day or so to to sort of claim that that, you know, doing away with subsidies would only help Tesla. I don't know how exactly he squares that circle, but perhaps it's a matter of Tesla is you know, the strongest of the companies that's trying to make this work and is for this along, and so taking subsidies away would would hurt you know, competitors even more so
than it would Tesla. But it certainly wouldn't be good for for Tesla to lose access to seventy five hundred dollars for a lot of its its customers in the US or would be customers. And so, you know, I do think it's very interesting and we've we've heard very similar sort of intev rhetoric on the on the part of jd Vance, his running mate, and so I think it's it's not only Trump who's you know, sort of campaigned against evs, but but his running made as a yesterday.
Hey Craig, thanks so much for joining us. Always appreciate talking to you. Craig Trudell, He's Global autos editor for Bloomberg News, joining us via zoom from our London Queen Victoria Street headquarters. How about this, Since April twenty second,
Tesla stock is up seventy eight percent. Such a move had there's such a negative sentiment there for you know, four or five quarters here again as the market's trying to discount what is the demand I really like for evs and going forward, and I think definitely a turn around here, So take note of that. Now a big marketing cap stock as well.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Affo card playing Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Okay, So the Eco news of the morning was that retail sales number coming and better than estimated. So retail sales off you back out auto and gas. It was about eight tens of one percent in June. That retail sales Control group was up nine tenths of one percent. Sure, they're like doing it in areas where prices have come down, so there's still some price sensitivity to it, but it was pretty strong, So we want to get more on that with Jill Blindshard, president of Enterprise Client Solutions of
Advantage Solutions. She joins us now from Chicago, Illinois. What did you make on the numbers, Jill, Yeah.
It's so first of all high and thanks for having me back. Boy.
I am trying to temper predictions, let's say, because consumer demand is still a really big concern in the back half of this year. A year ago, eighteen percent of CFOs said that they were concerned about the effect of consumer demand on their business.
That is now tripled to fifty.
Four percent, and so prices are up twenty to forty percent plus choose your category. In most cases, the wages haven't kept that same pace, and so there is a big impact on many households across the country. Consumers have been notoriously price sensitive even before the pandemic, and that waned a bit with cod when they couldn't spend on services and they diverted that to goods.
But now they're both back, and they're back at higher prices.
And so consumers have to find less expensive alternatives to achieve those same outcomes. They're still traveling, they're still eating out, but the overall transactional value for those is down. And so I'd say I'm trying to temper my predictions for the next six months.
What is upflation?
I love that, right, so super you know.
So first of all, I have fallen prey to this, and so I'll give you my confession here. Inflation is this concept of finding new uses for existing products. So think of things like an all over bodied deodorant, cereal as an economic option for dinner, frozen vegetables a liua fresh vegetables to save on waste.
How about this ready pickle cupcakes. That's a thing. And it's not just the cake, it's the frosting. I've fallen prey to dog wipes.
I don't know how they're different than a regular wipe, but I feel better about putting that on her paws. Hair sunscreen and TikTokers explain, this is expensive. It's hair sunscreen, so you spray it on your on your hair, so it doesn't so so the sun doesn't do change it. And uh TikTok is riding the social wave. Check out the hashtag late night stack. They are virtually creating a fourth meal, and manufacturers are eager to ride the that wave.
So there's a lot of examples of inflation out there as manufacturers get really creative and trying to get their products into more places.
I'm I just I don't understand, Like, isn't the point like you want the bleachy sun blonde look like people pay for that. I don't know what I'm not This is gonna get off topic, but I'm gonna do some homework on this. I'm gonna do some research. I'm gonna talk about my feelings. Okay, So what about these unusual strategies, Like are people willing to actually, you know, pay for that? How does a traditional retailer just say, guys come to my store and buy stuff like basic stuff?
You know.
So the word of month I think is creative.
And so we just heard about a very creative strategy from manufacturers and retailers as well as consumers are also getting very creative. So retailers are doing the things that we've seen before. They're pricing their promotion strategies. You know. We'll talk today about some of the significant promotion things happening this summer. But let's talk about the unlikely business pairings and collaborations that we're seeing across retailers today to
find new business synergies and drive traffics. So, for example, look at Uber joining forces with Instacart and Costco. Coles is going to put the babies r us stores and some of their stores, much like that they did with Sephora. McDonald's has a partnership with Krispy Kreme. And these things have dual benefit. So first there is these say things on labor and real estate of operating multiple stores as
one store. And then there's that unique in store experience that the younger generations really like and they're great traffic drivers. I know that when I take an Amazon package back to Coles, I have to pass five departments each way to take that package back. So really creative solutions by retailers too.
What are consumers doing here? Because we hear about inflation really hitting folks that maybe don't own stocks, don't own bonds, don't own real estate. Now they're the ones that are really being hit by inflation. How does that get reflected in a retail sales number that shows some pretty good strength this month.
You know here too, back to my word of the month, creativetivity or creative consumers are also getting creative.
We know that they're getting better and.
Better at seeking and finding those deals. Here's an interesting stat We surveyed over one thousand shoppers to find that one third of those shoppers are buying their groceries in bulk, and they're sharing with their friends and their neighbors, which is a great way for the lower income household to enjoy the savings that come with larger products that have a better price for counter for ounce. Typically speaking, the lower income households on fixed budgets are forced to buy
those smaller products because of that lower price points. So this is a great option for them. And by the way, there could soon be an app for that, because there's an app for that in South Africa today, so it's only a matter of time until it gets here. I have no idea how that would work, but we also never thought that we would share rides with perfect strangers in a car that's driven by a perfect stranger.
Of what we do that is really interesting and that would definitely certainly live in an apartment complex like that could make things quite interesting as well. Just so everyone's clear, I did research sunscreen for your hair. It's really for your scalp. But I still think like why not wear a hat? But fair point, this is why it's inflation. And I was just looking at you can get a twenty five pack of mini pickle cupcakes at Baked by Melissa's for thirty seven dollars. Wow, that's like a lot
of money for little, teeny tiny cupcakes. Anyway, this is kind of your point. So, Jill, what have we learned though about all the discretionary fun stuff like services, spas, vacations, getaways, the stuff that was doing really well.
You know, sonsumers are have pent up demand for that.
They're just finding lower cost ways to achieve those, and so we might be seeing more in value, but I'll go back to the transaction or sorry, in volume, but I'll go back to the transactional value typically speaking, that's down. So they're doing more of that that we've done before, but they're doing it at a lower rate.
So I see.
Yeah, Joe, how about the back to school that's probably the next shopping season for you that you get a sense of how retaillers are doing, how consumers are doing. What's the expectation for back to school this year?
So, you know, kudos to the three big retailers who really created a summer of savings and really jumped jumped into trying to create a season and what is otherwise a lower season right now, So we just got done with the Walmart Deal Days, Target Circle Week, Today's the kickoff of Amazon's summertime Prime Days. All of those have discounts on thousands of items with a focus.
On that school and no.
Plus, Amazon is doing things like ropping a new deal every five minutes, and so they're really swinging for the fences in terms of capturing trips, creating sales, and trying to meet the consumer with economic value.
What do you think will happen if the Fed cuts rates? And I say that because if all of a sudden we get relief and there's fifty bases points of cuts in the next four months, do people have a lot more money to spend? Is it actually an increase spending?
Oh, we talk a lot about this.
I mean, typically speaking, lower interest rates feel the purchases of large things like cars and homes, and so when they're making those purchases that might actually trickle down to small, smaller spends within the household, but typically speaking initially they don't have a near end effect on those smaller spends. That said, consumers are very attractive to enticing loan options. So let's talk about the buy now, pay later market. That's up twelve percent on a year over year basis.
It accounts for eighty seven billion dollars in debt. There's lots of different figures out there. It's expected to grow at a twenty five percent tagger over the next set seven years. So let's hope that consumers can pay those back because they come with very very steep late piece as well as credit risk. But it's indicative of the fact that consumers are enticed by attractive loan options.
Talks about like trading down. Are people trading down from I don't know, Walmart and a target to maybe the dollar stores? Do we see that activity or they just try to be more frugal within the targets and the Walmarts of the world.
Oh boy, you know, I'm not fine when somebody gives the answer mixed, But I'm going to give you the answer mixed.
A lot of households actually are trading down.
The reason that I see mixed though, is that we see some of those mainstream retailers trying to be a dollar store.
So they're trying, so they are, they're.
Rolling out more and more smaller packages at lower price point to be able to capture that dollar, that dollar trip. So it's really it's really but overall though a trade down.
It just varies whether.
We're talking about trading down in categories like a stage to Aposta, treading down in channels from mainstream grows for to dollar, or trading down in brands from premium brand to a value or even private label.
So great, Jill, we really appreciate you. That was just so interesting. I'm like now deep in the whole of all this weird stuff of upflation. So that's going to stay with me for a while. Jill Blanchhard, President of Enterprise Credit Client Solutions, have Advantage Solutions, Joining us from Chicago, Illinois.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business Act. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
We are live in the Active broke A studio right here in midtown Manhattan. It's like one hundred degrees out today. Yeah, are you psyched that you're back in the office?
Subway platform is gonna beat something I'm looking forward to today.
Oh yeah, ditto, ditto. And this is when you want to be working from home, right you get the breeze Jersey. Sure he's broadcasting from the beach there, it is.
That's my jam, But that's not the case. We are here in the city and I want to talk commercial real estate because this is just a critical, critical issue for the economy, for banks obviously, for the folks involved in the real estate business. And there's no better person to talk to for commercial real estate than Douglas Durst. He's a chairman a Durst Organization. Joining us live here on our Bloomberg at Directive Broker studio. We appreciate that, Douglas,
Thank you so much for joining us here. The party line out there is commercial, particularly office real estate in urban areas, it's bad and it's going to get worse. So maybe we don't know how bad it is, is that the case or there are different layers under.
That, it's certainly the case that you don't know how bad it is because it's not bad, Okay. In our portfolio, we are almost ninety five percent least across the portfolio except for a building that we started construction pre pandemic had to stop, and at eight twenty five Third Avenue, we're now about forty percent least in a year. Our other buildings are mostly fully occupied. At twenty nineteen, pre pandemic, we had three large office buildings vacated because tenants moved elsewhere.
Those buildings are eleven fifty five where we just moved to one Bryant Park and building.
Yeah, I mean, like you have some of the really amazing buildings. Do you have thirteen million square feet of prime Manhattan office real estate like one Brian Park, like one World Trade Center? So how is it like to fill those buildings now? And what's the rent like and what's their pricing power? Like you just walk us through because you prime off this real estate.
We do, and the rents are higher than a pre pandemic. Bank of America just took additional space our space at one Bryan Park, So that's why we had to move to eleven fifty five. We're signing leases in eleven fifty five, which is a building that was built in nineteen eighty four was vacated in twenty twenty eighteen by White and Case. We completely redid the building, added new windows and new air conditioning.
Is that the one on sixth Avenue. That's the one on this so I used to work there. We called it to Dusk Star because it was like this huge black tower of nothingness.
The Darth Vader building.
Exactly.
Yes, okay, so and you fixed it, you made it pretty.
We did.
We actually we were there until we moved to one Bryant Park and we were all a little worried about moving back because it had been very dark. But it's now very bright and as I said, it's ninety five percent full. I just toured the space of Global Relay. Most people have not heard of it. It's a fintech company and they're moving from Northwest Canada. They took the top of the building. They made a spectacular build out. I think it's one of the best in the city.
It certainly equals space here at Bloomberg, which is terrific space. And they're going to be hiring over three hundred people for their new office. This was their first office in New York City. Fintech is a big movement mover in the office economy. The other issue that people don't realize is the tech companies start out very small, but as
soon as they move in, they're expanding. We started what we call durst Ready, which allows tenants to move right in small space short term leases, and most of them stay and expand. Some some don't work out, obviously, but uh, it's it's the new companies, the new industries that are really growing in New York. The older industries are just not growing and that's not an issue.
So what I guess what I've learned about the commercial real estate market over the last several years, and I've learned, you know, exponentially what I knew before is that if you have a quality buildings, and like the Bloomberg building here is in a quality buildings not a plus. Fine, your your least your occupant occupancies are great. But if you're anything less B or C, those are challenging. And those are some that people are concerned about the values,
concerned about the debt associated with those buildings. How do you see that part of the New York market, the B and C.
Level, the B levels, it really depends on the ownership and what they've done. We have buildings I don't I would consider as okay, okay, but the first building we built six fifty five Third Avenue. When we built it, it was two hundred East forty second Street. You know, preferences for address has changed, so it's now a third Avenue address. It was vacated to about forty percent two years ago. It's now eighty percent least as I said it was built in. I didn't say nineteen fifty five.
And we keep investing in our buildings, keep modernizing them, and that way we add, we add tenants or keep tenants.
So when we talk about in a macro sense, ah, the Fed's gonna lower rates, et cetera. Does that What does that mean to you? When you're already in a position where your buildings are mostly occupied, you can raise your rents. What does that mean?
Well, it means that the office market is not a monolith. There are buildings that are going to continue to do well and others that are going to fail. But those buildings that don't survive are going to be purchased at a lower cost, people are going to invest in them, and they're going to come back. Because the office market is continuing to grow and expand, where we leased a million square feet last year, which is the highest we leased in the past six years. So the office market
is good. There are buildings that for because mostly interest rates. When when interest rates triple I think close to triple, the values go down. And that's if you have If you're financed at seven you're eighty percent. We only we try and stay under fifty percent. All of a sudden, your building is worth half of or not half, but yeah, considerably less than what it was and you cannot refinance.
So that's kind of where I want to go.
What is the lending market like today for commercial real estate? Does it depends? I mean, I assume your relationship with your bankers are very strong. But for the average commercial real estate, how are things up there?
For the average commercial real estate and even for us, it's very, very tough. The FED has really clamped down on all commercial real estate and they do not realize that it's not monolithic, that not all buildings are in
bad shape. We had to struggle for some of our loans to me put it that way, we had to really push to get our loans renewed right, and no matter how much we showed that we were in good shape, it's the FED that's pushing the reserves for banks that make it difficult for them to make these loans.
Before we let you go, Are you buying right now?
No, No, there's We're continuing to improve our buildings to invest our money in new buildings. There are a lot of people out there, a lot of these funds which we don't have at this moment, who are going to be picking up properties. So the market for the buildings that don't work is very strong.
Really great to get your perspective. Thank you so much for coming in. There's one hundred degree degree day. We really appreciate that. Douglas Durst, chairman of the Durst Organization, resides in my former employment. I mean, we're going back twenty years, but still, yeah, I worked at White and Case. I was a paralegal man. Oh oh yeah, I worked at night. I worked from four pm until midnight.
Wow.
Yeah, okay, I did really great, amazing things like FedExing documents and faxing things. Fact, because that was still a thing. Page and look.
At me now looking up.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business Act. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station Just Say Alexa playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
All right, let's go to Jody Schneider, now a political news director for Bloomberg Television and Radio. She's standing by in Milwaukee. Jody, the event, obviously last night was President former President Trump walking in with the bandage on his ear and then declaring that VP pick of JD. Vance, Senator from Ohio, walk me through what you learned last night?
Well, yesterday we did have that on the announcement of JD. Vance as the pick was done in the afternoon, and then he showed up at the at the venue here at the convention Hall earlier in the evening. And then last night we did see former President Trump, uh, the almost nominee he will well he's been he's been now designated as a nominee who just has to give a speech on Thursday night, but he and JD. Vance were shown together. Neither of them spoke their speeches will be
Wednesday and Thursday night. But it is clearly a passing of the torch to a new generation, making sure that this is the Uh, the whole philosophy of MAGA and president former President Trump's philosophy has been given now to a new generation because the vice presidential pick jd Vance espouses those same principles.
Well, he didn't always espouse those same principles. Did he give us a little sense of kind of how jd Vance has evolved over the last several years as a politician.
Yeah, that's right, he said, And he said some well noted differences with former President Trump. He once called him noxious. He has. He's somebody who was a First of all, he had a business career before he was a politician. He was a venture capitalist. He wrote a best selling book, Hill Billy Elogy, which is said to be, Uh, some of the principles in there about how he grew up poor in Ohio and kind of overcame that. It's been said to be a populist book, trying to reach out
to more working class voters. Uh. He evolved from that and then became a United States Senator from Ohio. In recent years he has honed very closely to the principles that Donald Trump UH talks about, and he is said to have been a favorite UH that Donald Trump's sons Eric and Donald Trump Junior pushed for him because they saw him as would he would continue the magabrand Donald Trump's brand.
Into the future.
He's notably, he's thirty nine years old, not even forty years old, you know, a whole different generation than Donald Trump.
It was interesting, Jody, because part of the rhetoric yesterday after the potential assassination was that President Trump was speaking about unity, which is something he doesn't do very often.
JD.
Vance, however, went to the far right and was saying, look, blaming President Biden for the attack on President Trump, very very divisive, and so some of people were talking about the fact that would President Trump pick a United vice president? He didn't. Did he do that because he also will stay divisive? Or does it give now President Trump the ability to be more of a unifier of the Republican Party while JD. Vans holds the holds the core.
Yeah, that's a good question, and I think there is some of that. You know, Donald Trump now can sort of say, okay, you know, we don't want. You know, he can come out, especially since he was a target of an assassination attempt. He can come out and say there's no place for political violence. And Jade Vance can kind of, you know, be the tougher one on that right. He can be the one that says the things that Donald Trump, the top of the ticket doesn't want to say.
But clearly there had been some talk of perhaps, you know, Donald Trump was going to pick somebody who could reach out more, say to women voters, to racial minorities for instance, you know, trying to get some of these swing state voters. But this is very much a doubling down on the brand, doubling down on you the core of their constituency, the white male, working class voters.
All right, Jody, thank you so much for joining us. Jody Schneider, she's a political news director for Bloomberg Television and News. Joining us remotely from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the site of the Public National Convention.
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