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A Monday of single best idea after the cacophony coming off of Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Very difficult to pick two ideas today out of great conversations. The teamworked all weekend a sort of piece together not where are we now? But into the Joint Session of Congress on Tuesday. Kaylie Lines and Joe Matthew has that for you, just sort of where are we now? Linking together economics, finance, investment and international relations. On international relations, my first request yesterday
Sunday was Peter Trubowitz in Austin. Years ago they developed the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Government, which you know, you do, it's no big deal, but then boom, it came out in a big way. Is a huge academic success. And part of that LBJ school success was Peter Trueboitz. He now holds court at the London School of Economics. On our Secretary of State, the gentleman from Florida, Peter Truwitz.
So my view, and I've said this and I'm on the record, I believe he won't last very long. And that's because it's pretty clear anybody that was watching on Friday or watched the Saturday Night Lives boof of It realizes that Marco Rubio is very uncomfortable is basically pivoting one hundred and eighty degrees from things that he said about the war Putin's War in Ukraine two years ago, you know. And so the question is can he carry
the brief and you know, you know or not? To me, he seems like he's not a particularly relevant player in the administration.
Peter Troubert's riveting there on all that's going on in our political malstream, both in his London and in Washington and New York. Try to get the full interview there with Peter TROUBERTZ. It was very, very valuable. David Bonnson was with us from the bonson Gropies out on the left coast. It's usually, you know, wealth management and you know, what are you doing, what are you doing with cash
and all that. But somewhere in the middle of the conversation today he gave a clinic on the raging debate that Paul Sweeney loves and that is okay, there's a share buyback, just give me a dividend.
First of all, share buybacks don't actually happen most to share. About seventy five percent of share buybacks and the S and P five hundred replacing shares that were given out in compensation, so they're not a return of payment. But you can't eat a share buy back, and aut of investors out there need to buy groceries and do real things with cash, and the risk every dividend you receive is de risking the investment. It's real monetization, and to
share buyback is compounding your risk. Now, when the stock keeps going up, that can be a very good thing, but it isn't the same form of capital return. But in Cook's case, the issue has the incentive to do dumb things of money. Now, for Apple it doesn't matter with that kind of free cash flow, But what do they spend on the electric vehicle experiment? Eight billion dollars
they set on fire. If you're returning dividends to shareholders, you don't go spend eight billion dollars on a little side project.
There have been any number of discussions in this over the years. That was the single clearest discussion I've ever heard. David Bunsen just absolutely spectacular there. Whatever your opinion here We got some great feedback from people. One former media executive emailed it and said, look, buybacks, you know are great. There's no tax treatment versus dividends which you're taxable, and on and on the debate goes. We'll continue to bring that to you as we look at investment and your
commute across America. We just got in the February numbers. We're humbled. Thank you so much. And then many different ways to listen to us on radio, to use a phrase from another time and place. On YouTube, you subscribe to Bloomberg Podcast Special thank you to David Weston for his incredible interview with the Secretary of Treasury late Friday. To say it went viral is an understatement. I'm Bloomberg Podcasting again. Subscribe to YouTube and on YouTube podcasts. This is single best I am