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There's been so much optimism, Carol, about the future of AI, the future investment. People are watching the markets from here, dazzled by the same numbers that you're seeing. But optimism is not the same thing as hope. And this is a conversation that we wanted to bring you here just to give you a sense of the diversity here of thought.
At Milkin, look no further than John Paul Bryant. That's correct, Operation Hope, founder, chairman and CEO, who's out with a new book, Capitalism for All, with a forward I note by none other than Michael Milkin. It's great to see you and welcome back to Bloomberg TV and Radio. Well it's our honor. So we've got billionaires bumping into each other here talking about opportunity, investment, the future. Are they talking about hope when they sit down with you?
They're talking about hope with a business plan? Okay, I mean you mentioned I'm chairman of Operation Hope, thank you. I'm also chairman of Brian Greadventures and so it's for profit and a philanthropic vision. I understand balance sheets and income statements and capital sacks and I've raised and deployees five billion ols with the capital. But it's all about unleashing untapped human potential at scale. I'm a lot of emerging markets, and so I think we've been looking at
this entire conversation in the wrong way. And essentially what my book says is what you guy. What some people see is social I see as market development. So nineteen seventy two, my book makes this case that the experiment's already been made. Carol's mother, your mother, and my mother. In nineteen seventy two, white or black couldn't get a a credit card or a loan unless her husband co
signed it, couldn't get a bank account. In nineteen seventy two, blacks and affirmative action teed up what Nixon codified as affirmative action, gave it to women and to be blunt white women, which was I'm fine with white women, open the door to all women. Women today are third of the US economy, eight to ten trillion dollars.
Great transfer of wealth going to women, also one.
Hundred percent coming. That's eighty eight to one hundred trillion dollars of wealth transfer the next ten years, and women are forty one percent of all businesses in America today, So without women getting that necessary step into the economy, we'd be a secondary nation today. GDP wise, they're a third of our GDP. Black and Latinos are forty percent, about about sixty seven trillion dollars of all GDP, so that's a meaningful, meaningful portion. Immigrants are twenty just under
twenty percent of GDP for this country. And you've got ten thousand baby boomers walking out of the economy every day because they're retiring, and by twenty thirty four they'll all be gone. So what I'm talking about in this book is about emerging markets. I'm talking about literally the future of the biggest economy in the world. And my rich friends, even my poor friends, do better if only
to stay rich. So when people understand me, they understand that I'm going to bring them customers, I'm gonna bring them market share.
Let's go there. Because we've talked with you before. You know, if anything I've learned in doing businessors for a long time and even being at Bloomberg like you and I have been talking money intersects with everything. Follow the money that's right, and so here you're talking about you know Black and Latinos like money follows market, So why hasn't money followed this? We were talking about affordable housing here
at Bloomberg. We've talked about that with you, like why isn't money going to these areas where there's money to be made?
President Bill Clinton once said it's hard to get somebody agreed to the truth on the lives paying their paycheck.
Wow, what does that mean? That means here in today?
It means people want a sugar hie. They live in the moment.
Some people are afraid to open their mouth because they're afraid of being persecuted, prosecuted or targeted in the moment. So people sort of go along, get along until things change because things are working for them at the moment. So we're in a transactional environment. It's in the moment. Uh. But people who I talked to offline all know that you've got a plan not for three months or even three years, you got a planned for you know, ten years and thirty years. And so I just think that
moments change at the moment, and no pun intended. People are in a survival mindset versus a thriving or winning building mindset, which is really the American ethos, So you need the bottom in the traditional thought process.
The bottom doesn't have seats at the table.
You and I tell you that I'm here in the middle class. By the way, this is not even a bottom issue. The middle class have got too much month at the end of their money. You're making two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, you're a third of those of living from paycheck to paycheck, one hundred thousand dollars a year, half of those of living from paycheck to paycheck. So this is becoming everybody's issue, but they don't have
seats at the table. Thank you, Michael Milkin to make sure that I am here for this as his voice, and.
We'll hold that for a moment, because when you walk around here, we're very impressed by the diversity in ideas here at Milkin. Does that need to be matched by diversity in culture. This is a reflection of the c suite and the boardroom, and you have the ultimate perspective on that.
And I love that you mentioned that because we've been at Milkin in years past, Joe and we talked about diversity inclusion big time. Nobody talks about it anymore.
I'm gonna gain and these private rooms that I have been in, particularly Sunday night was a big, you know, private dinner. Michael Milkins actually brought up, he repeatedly, repeatedly, the power of immigrants, the necessity for it. I'm going to commend him for saying out loud what most people are afraid to say, which is this is a positive, that positive, not in that negative, that immigrants have actually caused more income to the US government, to the economy
and tax receipts. Then they calls by farward thirty years. So I like math because it doesn't have an opinion. Mike calls me his little brother because we think in the same way. But Mike can't bend the c suite. He can't put somebody in a CEO position, so he can only invite who sit there and leadership. Unfortunately, it looks pretty uniform. I do believe the world's changing. I have I met with a number of these CEOs, a
number of these billionaires. They all what they say to me privately is very encouraging.
What do they say without giving who? What are they saying to you privately? John? That gives you hope.
We're in full support of what you're doing. We think that you've made a brilliant business case. Thank you for giving us a new language, inclusive of economics that's not fraught with political dynamics.
In it.
The color is green, not black or white or red or blue. Let's fold in behind that. Let's wait for the moment when you know, when everybody can come together again, which we believe is sooner rather than later. People are just, you know, as you know, markets a dynamic. The current stock market moves a lot on a sentiment. Yes, and so I think people are riding the wave, and sometimes
some things are more comfortable as a conversation. I think things have been in the last couple of years uncomfortable to address difficult issues other than to be angry about it. People are now saying angry is out of strategy. I really hope, like every by the way, we've got the extremes in both parties that are driving agendas both parties. I hope that the Mayor of New York and the White House administration. I hope the mayor of the Mayor of la all read this book and steal ideas from it.
I don't want credit for it, but the majority of this country is actually pretty moderate. I mean, forty eight percent of this country are basically independence and you've got almost half of each party who say, I don't really like the rhetoric in my own party, but they don't have a voice. So I'm trying to talk economically through math to give reasonable people and reasonable thought of voice. And it's about what I'm about, what I'm for, not what I'm against.
All the while, states are redrawing their congressional maps to potentially make things even more partisan in Washington red versus blue. If anger is not a strategy, we need a new playbook. I cover Washington with carols, in New York covering markets. How do we get out of this morass?
You go far enough of the North Pole, you end up south. So look, this is going to go until it goes. But we're the two hundred and fifty anniversary of American it's one hundred anniversary of Black History Month.
You can't make this up.
The whole country is having one huge calonic right, it's one huge family fight after this, Yes, yes, we realized that fighting is not an answer. Anger is not a strategy, and yes I was angry, and I okay, did that give you more market share? Did that pay your mortgage? Did that pay your car note? Are you better off?
Or you know?
Is it really everyone wants to be an American, but Americans and we need to not stop knocking each other because unless we want to speak Mandarin in twenty years, meaning Chinese because their economy is we got to figure out whether we're better together.
The Bible says the house divided cannot stand.
So I think that we're in the short term, we're gonna we're gonna fight, That's what families do. I think we're gonna find that something's worked, some things didn't. We're gonna have clarity of vision, and we're gonna comet rainbows after storms. We're gonna come back together again.
So do you think it starts with the midterms? John, and I would love to, You know, we talk specifics with you, like what if you could change two or three things, be it political, private, private or public sectors. Go into specifics for us, what would you change.
I would have financial literacy for all. I'd make it a civil rights issue with this generation, whether you're black and brown, urban or white rule, financial literacy is a requirement K through college.
I would love that because we've been talking about it for decades.
I would read. I would not shut down to the proper of education. I give it a new mission. AI upskilling. I do a Marshall Plan for America. I'd upskill all Americans. Don't Walmart has brilliant. They didn't fire people, they were training them in. AI is brilliant. It'll be a dip in jobs with AI. And then it's gonna be a surge on the other side, because it's gonna be your job not replaced by AI. Your job replaced body who can use AI. So I'd make AI and financial literacy
future literacy. I would then give an intern a tax credit for internships, a tax credit for apprenticeships, a tax credit to sponsor a school, and entrepreneurship, a tax credit for a sponsor for sponsoring a small business UH and investing some capital and intellectual capital to get them spooled up. I would I would use the tax system to inspire economic growth and expansion of markets.
I'd build more houses.
I would incentivize affordable housing votes of single family, and I'd let single family go from rent to own right for the rental companies rent to own as a and incentivize that returning inventory back into communities, and then give a pathway for that through financial literacy. And I'd raise credit scores to seven hundred, by the way, because seven hundred credit card communities don't write, they go shopping.
I mean, these are simple, non controversial.
So you said, what's the reckoning look like in the miries?
I think people are just sick and tired of being sick and tired.
But does that mean a Democrat takeover of.
Here's here's even the Democrats don't have the answer because.
The pendulum swings.
Yes. Look, I'm not a political uh No.
I'm saying I'm saying that people want change. They're going to make a decision about who's on the ballot books, but you're going to see them. What they're really signaling is I'm saying I'm not I'm not saying I want you or I want you. What I want is not this. So I'm going to rattle this cage. America is going to rattle this cage. And that's signaling that if somebody can get in the in the in the solutions business, I'm for you. If you can be in the I'm
a radical movement of common sense business. I'm for you if you can actually have me, create a situation where you actually listen to me and my day is better to marvel than was yesterday.
I'm for you.
At some point, somebody's going to get that message. I think the ideal politician has a Republican head and democratic heart.
I know one, but I'm not going to mention who that is.
I am. I certainly have no political ambitions whatsoever. Make that saying that in the camera.
But I am a capitalist with a heart, and I want a movement. I do want to finish that. This is the third reconstruction.
Twenty thirty seconds, Really quick, John, I know you can do this.
I stumped you.
You did, and now I lost my place.
Twenty to thirty seconds.
Oh are you talking to President Trump? Do you have a voice in the White House? Real quick? Twenty seconds?
I know, minution, I know some of his people. If they call me, I answer the phone.
Trump taking your calls.
I'm not involved in politics. I don't think this. I don't think right now my voice is helpful. I think that when people want to talk reasonably about reasonable stuff and have solutions at the end of problems, I'm gonna get it done.
Party.
And that's not a party, by the way, it's an operating system. I want to get something done.
Thank you for waiting while my synapsies started working, John.
O'Brien, I might have made my bait nothing. That was nothing, nothing for all
Of the book who we're going to continue with much more for Milk and he is, of course, John O'Brien.