Twitter Whistle-Blower Testifies and Market Selloff

tell you how. Plus Twitter shareholders of Proof must forty four billion dollar buyout, as the former head of security testifies on Capitol Hill saying Twitter's executives are misleading the public and security risks are a ticking time bomb. What it means for Musk's attempt to get out of the deal, and my one on one with Melinda French Gates on a new report from the Gates Foundation that shows the

Wall isn't doing so great. We also talk about the changing philanthropic landscape, how she's taking action post route, and her relationship with Billy. We're gonna get to all of that in a moment before let's stick further into the cell off of what it means. Victoria Green is the chief investment officer at g Squared Private while she joins us. Now, Victoria, what do you make of this, and so suddenly in

the session. Uh, today was when a reality met expectations on inflation, and I think the market had gone into this. Maybe the Fed isn't pivoting, but we're definitely a peak inflation, and today was a wake up and a cold slap that inflation is still here and it's very, very sticky inflation. There's no on your just about energy. I think the surprise on food and housing, medical expenses, veterinary care, A lot of areas that we thought was getting better really

were it. So I think today was a step back into the reality. The number one, the Fed's gonna go seventy five bass points, Number two four present terminal rate maybe too low. And number three we're still in a sticky inflationary environment that may prove the difficult to bring down, especially food prices. Right now, what do you make of what happened with tech? In particular? What distinguishes the tech part of this sell off from the rest of the

sell off? Sure, so tech stocks tend to be very growthy stocks, higher multiples, promising higher than the market growth, right, That's why you buy them. They're supposed to grow faster, but you're paying more today for a dollar future earnings, And every time you see something like this for real rates arising, the fattest hiking. It really kind of checks

of how long the duration stock do you want? You kind of want stocks that are awarding you for owning them now, and most tech stocks tend to be needing growth and promising further future growth. So right now it's kind of a show me, like what can what what kind of income can you produce for me? How successful are you? And you didn't see anybody that was immune from me today. It was a total washout on tech and and any of them, including the apples and the

market stofts of the world. But you have to consider very blea chip tech stocks did not hold up well, and we saw like the semiconductor sector really takes some more pain today, and I think a lot of that is repressing expectations for global growth. The fact we're going to be in a high key inflationary environment and the fact that it's a very very very high probability this

continues to slow down, and that puts pressure. Like we saw with the video, if we see PC and gaming slowdown, people are not upgrading their computers as frequently that's just gonna put pressure on a heating the growth multiples they need to go because the worst thing you want to do is own a growth stuff that stopped growing, because then what do you really own your own add So the big question is, of course, are the market is going to be back up tomorrow? What do you think?

Or is this could today be some sort of turning point to a further drop, a more prolonged drop in market. Yeah, we unfortunately do see this as a bear market rally that we're going to retest our lows. You know, we did see the supports hold around thirty nine on the SFP five hundred, so you do have a little bit

of a support there. But I think as we digest, you really have about a week now between now and when the Fed speaks, and I think people are going to get very nervous about what the Fed's gonna to do. You saw some traders talking about a hundred basis points, you know, is it gonna be fifty and fifty to end out the year? And this really this reality of the tightening cycle. And then step back, not just about the United States, but about what other economies around the

world they're doing, how much they're tightening rates. What that may do for adjustable rate mortgages. You know in the US we're only about seven percent adjustable right now, but now in Australia, the UK, Spain, they're very much higher adjustable rate and they're gonna be hit with these industrates. So I think it's too early to buy the dip. At some point we'll hit oversold again, but I think

we're gonna retest down to the thirty six hundreds. You might get a relief rally, but don't get fomo about the market going up. I think you've got more downside pressure. So how are you deciding or changing uh potential decisions about where you park your money and how much of it goes into growthy uh to use your word tech and not. I think right now it's more of the

value play the blue chip pelly. We want stocks that have defensible motes, you know, what are their cash flow is gonna look like if the world continues to slow. The problem with the core inflation rising is it really directly pressures the consumers. There's nowhere to hide, doesn't matter if you're eating out or at the grocery store. You know, when we have some factors that are gonna make food worse. You know the Avian flu that has caused the shortage,

so eggs and chicken are more expensive. I think you really want to hide in quality stocks. Also, the land of Tina, right, there is no alternative. As these treasury yields come up suddenly, you kind of do have an alternative to park some in some really short tragury bills. Don't wanna take any duration risk. But if you look across the landscape, you now jury what bills yielding well above the average diving and yield, and we know those

are gonna keep coming up. So the world of Tina is also rotating, and you may see a flight to safety. You saw the tear yields hit the highest in fifteen years. You're seeing a lot of pressure on the rates market. But if you hide at that very short end, you may be able to make some money as you wait out the worst of this. All right, Victoria Green g Squared Private Wealth. Always good to have you, Victoria, Thanks

for breaking it down. Coming up all you needed out about cestimony from the Twitter whistle blower and what it means for Elon Musk. That is next. This is Bloomberg It took me maybe thirty minutes to reach out to an employee and say, what do we know about this person? And then it only took that person maybe ten minutes to get back to me and said, Okay, here's who they are. This is the address where they live, this is where they are physically at this moment. They're on

their phone. We know their phone number. We also know all of the other accounts that they've tried to set up on the system and hide, and we know who they are on the other social media platforms as well. It was an edge of your seat kind of testimony from former Twitter executive turn whistleblower Peter's at cos at Co, slamming Twitter's management, it's operations, and calling its security risks

a ticking time bomb. Here's some of what told the Senate Judiciary Committee Twitter leadership is misleading the public, lawmakers, regulators, and even its own board of directors. What I discovered when I joined Twitter was that this enormously influential company was over a decade behind industry security standards. To put it bluntly, Twitter leadership ignored ignored its engineers because key parts of leadership lacked the competency to understand the scope

of the problem. But more importantly, their executive incentives led them to prioritize profits over security. They don't know what data they have, where it lives, or where it came from, and so unsurprisingly they can't protect it. And this leads to the second problem, which is the employees then have to have too much access to too much data and

to too many systems. There was not an easy ability for me to mind which engineers had logged into which systems and what and what data that they had accessed. I did explain this to Mr Dorsey. My understanding is he did not understand this prior to bringing me in, and that was one of the reasons that he was understand it. Now. I believe after seeing CEO, does he

understand this? Um? I believe since he has been there for ten years and rose up through the ranks in engineering, and he has talked to the engineers and they have told that yes. I believe. Yes. I'm reminded of one conversation with an executive when I said, I am confident that we have a foreign agent, and their response was, well, since we already have one, what does it matter if

we have more? Let's keep growing the office here to discuss Adam Kovakovitch, Chamber of Progress founder and CEO, as well as Bloomberg's own Alex Borenka, who covered the hearing today on our live blog. Adam, I want to start with you. What was your initial reaction to Za Those testimony seemed like not a good day for Twitter. Yeah,

he claimed that the company's security was lacking. I think the company, we know the company has disputed that in detail, and others have pointed out it was his responsibility to strengthen and security. This role. This question of whether the company's security is sufficient, I think will ultimately be one for the Federal Trade Commission to determine. I will say that when I worked with in tech companies, you know, no company lights have likes having their internal disputes and

challenges are publicly. That may be especially true here given that there were clearly conflicts between Peter's Echo and Paragua Aggerwal, But ideally even the dust settles companies can often learn from criticism and improve from it. I think with with security that it's a hard topic because despite the kind of the political table pounding, the reality is nuanced. Twitter has had a few high profile hacks, but they're they're

not a regular occurrence. And I think in the realm of security, you know, every day without a hack, of which Twitter has had many, is a success. Of course, there's no prize for a day without without breaches? Could could most companies in including Twitter do more to improve security? Almost certainly? Does Twitter do security better than most companies?

Almost certainly, Alex, what were your big takeaways about, you know, sort of the big revelations here, and uh, you know what this might actually mean for its dispute with Elon Musk, given that it didn't seem like bots and spam, which his his his main point of contention really came up. Yeah, so I'll start with the takeaways that are not Musk related.

Related to what Adam was saying. There was allowed a lot of political table pounding and a lot of calls for increase enforcement, increase regulation, and Emily, there are some kind of surprising allies in those calls. You saw folks like Lindsay Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, aligning with Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts, saying we're working on

something to um better regulate tech companies. Your word, Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley also lean into this idea, and Senator Blumenthal actually suggests that maybe we need a new regulatory agency to regulate big tech. All of that is very much in the realm of d C, and this ongoing conversation of the role of big tech and UH where regulation comes in. The Ellen Musk part UM kind

of plays into a little bit of that. What we heard from Zach Coo in terms of UM what he described as almost a cultural UM kind of aspect of the company, where he said the company kind of fights fires, moves from fire to fire. UM was the quote, makes short term changes. Isn't thinking long term about security? They're only really thinking long term about growing revenue and users.

So UM, that point right there, Emily, even though it's not specifically UM one of the three reasons why Ellen has given to back out of the deal UM, I think that would be the one that Musk might be most interested in. He has kind of leaned on this idea that the board, UM and the executives have misrepresented data. So while we didn't hear a lot about bots or spam accounts, that cultural element might be the one that we see pulled into the argument that Musk is poised

to take into court in October. Interesting, Adam, what do you make of that? Are Bloomberg Intelligence analysts have concluded they don't think this testimony will have a material adverse impact on Twitter's attempt to hold Musk to this deal. They still think there's a seventy seven zero percent chance this deal goes through. Um, you know, what do you think about what zach Co said that could potentially rise to the level of impacting whether or not this still

happens at all. Well, I'm not a stock analyst, I do agree. One of the things that was surprising to me was the extent to which the bots question really didn't come up today. And that was surprising to me because in the past of the things we have seen a lot of is particularly Republicans in Congress, fairly eager to uh talk about Twitter in a way that you know, is very much in line with Musk's goals, And so

that was a bit of a surprise for me. But I don't think that I you know, I think that that is really a separate process, right And what was unique to me about this was interesting because I compared this a lot to the Francis Howgan testimony last year around Facebook, which I think led policymakers to introduce a number of bills. There were eight different bills introduced last year as a result of the Howgan testimony, mostly dealing

with social media. But today's testimony was really uniquely about Twitter and its security practices. I think that question is most likely to be looked at in great to tail by the Federal Trade Commission. And then the question of bots really, which didn't come up today, is, as we know, a central question of the litigation that that the companies engaged with musque. So I don't think that there wasn't anything necessarily new today that came out of the hearing

that I think changes the direction of the litigation. Well, and comparing it to Frances how testimony, UM, you know that was really impactful, seemed to have a significantly adverse effect on h Facebook, which you know has since changed its name, has been you know, still working on um trying to clean up its reputation in part in response to that and of course other things. Um, you know, one more question about the Elon Musk part of this um Alex Twitter has responded saying that they stand ready

and willing to complete the merger with Elon Musk. They say, point six percent of shareholders today approved Elon Musk doing this deal. That was expected. But you know, Twitter still, Twitter still saying we're gonna make this happen whether you like it or not. Yeah, it's a it's a funny situation, Emily, right, Um, where the owner could be a man who has now had three ticks in the IDOL want to do this deal bucket. Um. I think that that shareholder approval that

you saw today is significant. Um. It was expected, but it is significant. UM that at least that very large majority thinks that this is the best kind of path forward for shareholder value for this company. Um. But certainly, Emily will we'll be following the play by play going into October. We've already seen a little bit of drama. The judge coming to Mosque seeing you need to give up your text messages. Uh, the judge going to Twitter

saying you need to reveal more data. So they're certainly going to be UM more fencing back and forth as we go into the next couple of months here. Um, but this at least is kind of another checkbox for this deal to continue. To that litigious end that we're set on right now. Now, Adam, one of the interesting things that Zacho said is that Twitter is more concerned about foreign regulators than US regulators. What did you make of that? And and and if it'll goed, uh, potentially

the FTC into taking more aggressive action or other regulators. Yeah, as you as you point out, the FTC has an existing consent decree that's eleven years old with Twitter. It will surely take a close look at whether um it is living under the terms of that. But I don't think there's any doubt. One of the things that was a big topic of conversation today was whether the federal government has enough resources. You saw Lindsay Graham talking about let's create a new agency, but the reality is that

we're not funding the agencies we have. The FTC. Last year there was a proposal, for example, by the Biden administration to create a whole new bureau at the FTC focusing on privacy and data security. And that's a very good idea, but unfortunately Republicans killed that proposal right that was going to be a billion dollars and more funding, including some of the same Republicans who were complaining today about the FTC not doing enough. So there's a lot

more policymakers can do. They can also pass a consumer privacy bill. They've been stalling on that, and the FTC has been looking at this question of issuing more comprehensive data security rules for all company needs to follow. They've been reluctant to do that. They prefer and said to reach settlements with individual companies, but the problem is that doesn't set clear security rules for other companies to follow.

They've just recently kicked off a rulemaking and I think there's a good case to be made that rulemaking should focus as much on data security as on privacy. Uh, Alex, what's next? Uh, we're now about a month away from the day that this trial is supposed to start. Elon

Musk the Twitter, Yeah we are. What's next is going to be continuing this kind of evidentiary process for them against this backdrop of what's going on in d C. Emily, Um, you know there's a home in security hearing tomorrow where one of Twitter's executives will be there alongside Meta YouTube and TikTok execs as well. So I think for Twitter they'll have these kind of um dueling perhaps distractions, um, big ones at that for whether or not this deal

gets done. With Musk, we saw that Musk was walking today. He was tweeting, perhaps a little bit cheekily. But we do know that with Elon Musk sometimes the jokes do turn serious. Um. So I'm sure that there will be continue to be um kind of bobs and weaves on that side of the deal as well, in as in d C. In terms of if there is any kind of action here, um to Adam's point, after Francis Howgan, the Facebook whistle blower, did um, you know, go down

to Washington. There are a lot of bills proposed. There hasn't been a ton of significant changes yet. So if there is any moves on the kind of political worry side on data privacy, um, if history is any guide, those might be a little bit slower than what we might see on the than the the deal that is expected to go to court in October. All right, bloombergs Alex Barnka, Adam Kovakovich of the Chamber of Progress, thank

you both for your commentary today. Obviously, we're going to continue to watch every twist and term Meta says it needs its rivals to share some of their most closely held secrets in order to defend its antitrust suit. Meta has subpoenut a hundred thirty two companies for documents, including snap, TikTok and Clubhouse, and it says this will help its argument against the FTC lawsuit claiming the company has a monopoly in social networking. A trial isn't likely until at

the earliest. And it was a huge night for streamers, particularly HBO and Apple at the Emmy's last Night Warner Brothers, Discovery, It's HBO taking home twelve awards, mostly thanks to Succession and White, Lotus and Apple to call the Top Comedy Award for ted Lass, Netflix scoring three Emmy wins, including Outstanding Lead Actor for Squid Game. The Emmys have become a focal point of the competition between the largest media and tech companies and their streaming services. Welcome back to

Bombre Technology and Emily Check in San Francisco. Let's Dick with the techdown turn bringing Robert camp Will, portfolio manager at Upholdings. Robert, how are you moving your money around right now after a day like today? Well relative to earlier this year when we kept watching tech fall today, the entire market fell with it, So that's a little bit of a different setup for investors. And you've you've got a lot of investor conferences going on right now

that software companies are reporting reasonably strong numbers. They're not softening their guidance, they're not pre announcing a bad quarter. So we have we have yet to hear on the micro side of things from what companies are reporting that things have in fact worsen. But what what you're continuing to see is these multiples are moving around really fast.

And you know that came from the ten year interest rate expectations being the highest they've been in twelve years, and so we've seeing that hit tech the hardest because as as you've covered, you know these boltics will come down a lot. But we still see some pockets of expensiveness in tech, So we don't think the market is

necessarily bottomed everywhere. Where are the pockets. Well, you've got Snowflake still at at at thirty times revenue, and it's a it's an excellent company with an excellent product, and their customers are really excited about giving the company more money, but they're also plowing every dollar of gross profit into

sales and marketing. So as we've been talking more about this profitless tech um, we've been we've been seeing the tech universe splinter here a bit where you've got companies that, let's say streaming and e commerce that have been showing low returns on investment for for years now, and it's unlikely that that those companies are going to recover because Amazon building another fulfillment center is not actually generating a

lot of cash flow back to Amazon. But on the other side of the spectrum, with what Meta is building, with what's Google, Google's building every dollar that Google puts into capex or new head count, they see sixty more cents of operating cash in the next year. So we see two worlds forming within the tech universe here with with with those that are generating, you know, real incremental positive returns and are rapidly shifting our portfolio there as

quickly as we can. So the question remains, of course, how much worse is this gonna get. I mean, a lot of people thought that, you know, J. Powell was bluffing, and I wonder if this is some vindication for him and for the FED, and does it make you more

inclined to say, yes, we're heading into a recession. Well too, if we're going to talk economics, it does the more credibility that J. Powell has, uh, the better off the US dollar is, and what it would happen since his last couple of hawkish comments was he said, no matter how things maybe looking like they're going to improve, I'm

gonna stay stubborn with my interest rate hikes. And what the market did over the past few weeks is they heard those comments, they thought, wow, is inflation really going to get better? Because that's good for everybody. And you saw the market trade up. We were up almost five and a half percent this month going into today, and now we're starting over today as if the month is

starting all over again. So I think that that J. Paul has absolutely rebuilt some of the credibility that he lost in being behind the curve, you know, a year or so ago. And you know, if he's able to sustain that, we're going to have a stronger dollar. And that's that's a great, great news for for all domestic investors here. So what do you think happens tomorrow? Right? You know we're all wondering, is this is this a bottom is do we have further to fall or are

we going to swing? You know, do we swing back into the green? And today's just a blip in reaction to this, you know, bad inflation data, um the you know, we we we we do our best to analyze the present, not predict the future. The market does have a funny way of of of going in the opposite direction that it did the day before, though rarely in the same magnitude.

There's also a ton of studies out there that also talk about the night effect and how you know, most of the money that's actually made in the stock market happens when the stock market is closed, and that very well could happen in a situation like this if if folks come in tomorrow thinking the market is oversold. But you look at where we are in the quarter, it's we're nearing the end of September, We're nearing the end of the third quarter. Companies are gonna we're about four

to five weeks away from another earning season. Uh. And that's a really important one because we're now in that period of the year where you're already seeing growth rates accelerate. Adobe has been reporting e commerce numbers that have been accelerating over the year before. Uh, they've been reporting relatively low price inflation in digital goods specifically. So what you're gonna be looking for in these earnings calls just a month or so away is that businesses are continuing to

report strong numbers in spite of some pretty challenging macro headlines. UH. And so we're reasonably we feel reasonably good about the businesses that that we're owning here going into the fourth quarter. And you don't get a lot of opportunities to buy companies of this magnitude, with these growth rates and these cash flow margins that you know, a lot of the tech space is offering right now. Robert Cantwell Upholdings Portfolio Manager, always going to have you here. Robert, thank you for

stopping by coming up. Traditional finance and blockchain collide. What is behind the new pilot project from Swift, the global secure messaging system for financial institutions, and what it means for people moving money everywhere? Mr is Bloomberg. It's time now for our crypto reported big news the world of finance today. Big news Swift, the messaging system used by financial institutions globally to convey instructions on tens of millions

of transactions every day is testing out blockchain. Our crypto contributationally Bostic has more on the Shanale. What exactly happened today. Well, the idea here is that blockchain can be a key piece here of what is critical financial infrastructure. When you think about Swift, you don't think about a day to day emily, because it's really underlying the entire global financial system, barring a few regions as we know, remember a certain Russian banks were caught off in Swift in the wake

of the start of the war in Ukraine. But remember this does connect banks globally. It is essentially a lifeline between the banks in terms of being a messaging system and a way to really kind of track what's going on among different firms across countries around the world, hundreds of countries and thousands of messages routinely. So why does blockchain matter Because this is something that is involving the

fintech company Symbiont. It is involving City Group, which is one of the largest transaction banks in the world that also is one of the most global banks in the world, Vanguard Northern Trust. And remember these are all companies that deal a lot with the safety and security of just

the movement of assets around the world. So the testing of blockchade would really be a potential to really upgrade critical infrastructure simply with how messaging and communication works just across financial institutions of so many types across the world. So how long will this pilot be running and if it works, could we see a potential big change in

the underlying technology here. Yeah, and listen, remember the reason I brought up the Russia issue as well is because when they were really cut off in certain institutions were cut off from Swift, there was a lot of concern emily about Russia China really developing their own type of Swift or arrival to Swift, to be able to develop their own critical infrastructure by means of technology UH and other infrastructure to really start to communicate to build a

new essentially financial system. And you do see some traces of that and some acceleration of that this year. So the idea of using blockchain to really strengthen infrastructure among

the Swift system itself is their potential. Yeah. Absolutely, But you know, when you think about blockchain itself, there is a huge debate in the fintech community, in the banking community, is blockchain the best technology to really be used to communicate among all of these entities, and is it the safest, is it the most secure, Because that's what it comes down to at the end, at the end of the day, I remember, this is a way to really kind of

put the network together. But at the end of the day, the banks and the financial institutions themselves are responsible for the data and the safe and security of that data. So there are some applications that can really be helpful in the future clarity tracking that data in terms of the firms themselves taking a look and seeing what's possible in terms of a money laundering fraud within their own firm. But again they have to make that decision emily if

blockchain is the best means to do it. Fascinating. Thank you for breaking down that some of this is wonky stuff and helping us better understand it. Bloom Works, Shannelli bossik As always appreciate it. Melinda French Gates says the pandemic has stalled progress on critical issues like poverty and climate change, calling gender inequality the most alarming that's coming from new findings in the Goalkeepers Report released by the

Bill of Melinda Gates Foundation. Back in March of last year, French Gates told me women weren't in crisis as the pandemic dragged on. I asked her about the state of women. Now, take a listen to what she had to say. I would say, still in crisis. You know, women's livelihoods were destroyed by the pandemic. Whether you were in the informal sector maybe in South Africa, or whether you have a job. Women are saying I can't do my job at the

same intensity as before or at all. If I don't have safe and affordable childcare, that is just a problem. And so we've pushed women out of the workforce, and we have so many girls across the world who are not in school anymore. How could a recession or a prolonged economic downturn make this worse, Well, it could mean, I mean inflation also makes it worse. Right, So that economic downturn, the fact that it's you know, more expensive to get food or to get fuel, means that we

are seeing already more hunger around the world. And we're seeing because of the Ukrainian crisis. You know, there's less food to support Africa, and so we're seeing even more families in a state of hunger, and particularly women. Of all the people who are food insecure, three out of five or women. The report doesn't mention the overturning of Row versus Way, but you have made clear that you think America has taken a huge step backwards. What is

the Foundation doing to support abortion rights? What are you doing at Pivotal to to support abortion rights? And you know where do you think the work and the urgency needs to be focused. Well, at the Foundation, we're continuing to work on family planning and that's for low and middle income countries because women are still crying out for that. And at Pivotal, I'm really focused on how do we get more women in political positions of power in the

United States. We would not have these laws overturned if we had more females in our House of Congress and in our Senate. Of that, I'm certain now when it comes to the Foundation, you and Bill have said that if you found you could no longer work together, that you would step down as co chair. Bye. How is your working dynamic evolved? Are you finding that you can continue to work together, and do you think you'll still

be there next year when that deadline comes. So Bill and I have worked effectively together for a very long time, including while we were going through a difficult time in our family life and through a divorce. We showed up. We worked then and during the pandemic, and we do today. We now have a board. We met for the first time with our Board of trustees last week in person, and what I think they would all tell you is that Bill and Melinda remain completely committed to this institution

and to working effectively together. And that's what we're doing today. So how is the board going? I know you added a few new board members up to four. You said you would might consider adding more. How has that changed the dynamic and do you think you'll add any additional members? I think for right now we have the board that

we would like to have, and that's fantastic. We met for the first time, and the way it's changing the dynamic is they're pushing on our thinking and that's what we wanted from a board, and we wanted good governance. It was just time. Know Bill and I aren't getting any younger. And what I know is that the board asked fantastic questions last week about resource allocation, about partners, about our internal teams and how we're working and incentivating

and motivating them. So I'm really looking forward to even more discussions with the board. I want to get back to that Gate's Foundation report, the Goalkeeper's Report, which finds that almost every indicator of the un sustainable Development goals is off track for achieving them. By Jamie's Immerman joins us now. She leads the Foundation's work to increase low income women's economic empowerment through access to and use of digital financial services. Jamie, thank you so much for joining us.

So what is your big takeaway from this report, aside from we're moving way too slow? Yeah, thanks Emily. So, I think looking at the Goalkeeper's Report that came out today, we are seeing big takeaway is that women have been taking a major hit. Gender equality UH is stalling and falling behind. Melinda said, it's so well, and we are in a state right now where the hits just keep coming.

We've got inflation UH, floods in Pakistan, climate related crises, food and security, and we're really looking for ways that we can find new tools and interventions that can help us overcome some of these really difficult situations that we're finding ourselves in, UM, the pressures that women are facing in labor force participation, in ability to recover looking for those points of light um in the darkness, as Melinda had said, And I think you know, the one point

that we are actually seeing progress that we got to highlight in that Goalkeeper's report in gender equality is around financial access. And for the first time since we've been tracking this data and recording this data, we actually are in the last year seeing the gender gap and financial

inclusion narrowing. And that's during even this really challenging time. UH. And it looks like a lot of that is due to growth of mobile money, especially in developing countries and UH women taking up mobile money services in the last couple of years. Talk to us about what you mean by mobile money, because you're talking about this as a tool that can help increase gender equity. What do you mean by that and how does it work? How is

it working? Yeah, So mobile money is essentially a basic financial product that you can access on a basic phone with basic connectivity. That's essentially a service that is in large part provided by your network operator. UH. And so it is a financial tool UM that where you can receive money, send money, maybe even save a little bit

of money. And in the developing world, tons of interesting innovations that are half being UM with mobile money, where it's connecting to other types of UH tools and things that women need, like the ability to pay for healthcare services, to pay her children's education fees, to buy goods and services, to sell her own goods and services if she has a small business, pay utility bills, UM, even pay your toll UM when you're driving down the highway in Nairobi.

So it's a it's a it's an alternative to bank based financial services that we're seeing in the developing world, and it's and it's very popular because the barriers to entry for a mobile money account are much lower than a bank account, and there are you know, the majority of people in the world still eight four have a phone, whether it's a basic phone all the way to a smartphone in their hand, So you can bank on your phone without it being a bank account that usually has

more stringent requirements for opening that account, and those types of stringent requirements tend to be disadvantages for women. Well, it's good to know that on at least one measure, things are getting better. That's said. You know, horrible day in the public markets today. You know, new numbers that show inflation is still rising. Um, how much do you worry a prolonged downturn could set women back even further

than they've already been set back. Yeah? Absolutely, I mean we're seeing a lot of pressure on women, I know. I think what we're seeing is that digital tools and being able to participate in the digital economy and the new digital future that we see coming. And we saw massive acceleration of digitization globally in the last couple of years.

It is going to be through being able to fully participate equally in the economy of the future that is going to help move us from them just trying to keep track and not fall too far behind and maybe recover a little bit to be actually becoming like a resilient, robust economy and society. And that's true everywhere in the world.

So we need a gender equal digital future. We need to have women on equal footing with both access to digital tools, access to digital the digital economy, and equal footing on the ability to use the digital tools that are out there. UM. And that are coming, and I think through all of that is where we're going to see a lot of acceleration in the pace of change.

We saw mobile money accelerating the last couple of years because we found ways to make it accessible to women to meet their needs to try to get that equality and access, and it's helped women not only get through this challenging time, but to actually recover out of it. And so I think it's going to be a kind of a multi all hands on deck approach that we're going to have to take in order to ensure that the tools of the future are things that are in

women's hands and made for women. And I think that that's going to be what gets us through to the next uh more resilient future that we're gonna need to find yourself, well, here is to progress and faster progress. Thanks for shining a light on this. Jamie's Immerman, Deputy director of Digital Connectivity and Gender Equality at the Gates Foundation. That doesn't For this edition of the show, I'm Emily Chang. This is Bloomberg