This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week.
The global push into infrastructure, breaking the IPO logjam in tex.
The financial stories that sheep.
Are were cutting inflation without losing jobs. Do we need rate cuts and if so, how many? Investing in a time of geopolitical turmoil.
Through the eyes of the most influential voices.
Ten Rogueff Economists of Harvard, former FDIC had Shila Bert ge CEO, Larry Kulp, San Francisco FED President Mary Daily.
Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
From Beverly Hills for the Milkin Institute Global Conference. This is a special edition of Bloomberg Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. This week Karen Carneal Tambor of Bridgewater on the geopolitics of industrial policy.
Everything you're seeing in industrial policy officially, it's doing something else.
Former Treasury Secretary Stephing the noution on his plans to buy TikTok.
I do believe the algorithms could be rebuilt. So my plan if we were to purchase it would be to rebuild the technology under US leadership.
And Barry Stern like the Starward Capitol and why he's so unhappy with his alma mater, Brown University.
They should be shown the door, and I don't want to pay for them, so I don't want to support university houses that language.
We began the week at Milking with Mark rowan Apollo CEO, on the surge in private credit and why he believes it's a better way to go.
If you look over time, we had eight thousand plus public companies in the US. We now have just over four thousand public companies. We should logically expect, therefore, to be more in the private arkets. And I don't think people actually appreciate the scale. And this is not just US, but it's US and Europe. Eighty percent of companies over one hundred million revenue are private, eighty percent of employment private. Why would we not expect a growth in the private marketplace?
So why is it a better mousetrap? I mean fundamentally, I think about banks as being intermediaries, sort of between people putting capital up and people needing capital. Why is private a better intermediary than the big banks?
So let's work, let's work in reverse. What needs?
What are the needs for financing today? We're financing infrastructure long term, We're financing, energy transition, really long term we're financing the new economy, data centers, power really long term, long term financing needs. What a banks do well. Banks borrow short and then long. They are not ideally situated to be investors in long term assets, and so regulators when they look at the funding for the economy, they only have two choices, the banking system or the investment marketplace.
Increasingly since two thousand and eight, regulators have chosen the investment marketplace to provide financing. Now you come to the investment marketplace and you have two more choices. You have daily liquid fonts or you have long term investors who are trying to match long term liabilities and long term assets.
I think the choice is obvious.
Do we really want to create more instability in our public markets by matching long term financing needs with short term daily liquid files?
I don't think so.
We are watching the logical outgrowth of changes that started in two thousand and eight, that accelerated through a zero rate environment, that were exacerbated by COVID, that were then refreshed by SVB and FRV.
And this is not just happening in the US.
It's happening everywhere in the world, regulators are looking at the choice of how they fund their economy, and they're choosing investors over banks. That doesn't mean bank's shrink, It just means on the margin, the growth is going to the investment market.
Plitz. Are there some things that public markets do better than private markets? You've described some of the things private does better than public. Are there some things that public really does better.
Look, we have in the US, in particular, a focus on daily liquidity. You want something that is daily liquid if you want pricing every single day, you can only accomplish that in public markets. Private markets are not going to give you daily pricing. They can give you an indication of pricing, nor are they going to give you immediate liquidity. So if you want something that's immediably liquid,
you're talking about the public marketplace. If you want access to vast amount of capital today, because that's where the capital is, you're talking about the public marketplace.
But if you're look at.
Talking about matching long term capital needs, you're really talking about the private marketplace.
When you talk about daily pricing. Some people here transparency. That is to say you have transparency in the public markets and not in the private markets. Is that right?
I don't really think so. So let's start in the fixed income market. You own a public bond, Can you sell that public bond?
Maybe?
On average, it takes about five days to sell an investment grade public bond today when you see a price or a quote that's for a very small subset of the bond market. In the private market, can you sell your bond?
Yes?
On average, probably takes you about five days to sell your vont What we're watching is we're watching as private markets get bigger. We're actually watching increased liquidity in private markets. It's not to say it's the same as public markets, it's not. But this notion of transparency is actually itself an interesting thing. Are private market's not transparent? This is the argument that i'm the regulators make. They talk about
private credit as a threat to the system. Well, every dollar that moves out of our US banking system makes the system more resilient. Banks are leveraged ten to twelve times, investors zero leverage, mutual funds zero leverage, BDC's one point five times leverage, retirement services companies eight times leverage. Everything that moves out of the banking system deleverages.
So we've been talking about structural changes within the financial industry actually that have made private markets evolve. What about larger forces what we're looking at right now. We've gone through a period of extraordinarily low interest rates, a lot of liquidity. As I say, some other places have pumped a lot of money into the system for good and sufficient reason. We had a pandemic, we had a great
financial crisis. As that tightens up, as I assume it will, how does that change the equation for private It.
Is absolutely the driving force.
I mean, this is focusing on the urgent, which is what we were talking about before we came on Era versus the important. This is the important thing that's happening in our business. At our recent partners off site, I put up a slide that said, in two thousand and eight, Apollo forty billion of AUM twenty twenty three, six hundred and fifty billion of AUM, we grew fourteen times. We outgrew Apple, We we outgrew Microsoft. Pretty impressive stat next slide,
were we lucky or smart? We were lucky. You can't possibly plan on growing your business fourteen times, but you can position the business in a way that you take advantage of powerful tailwinds or trends.
What were the tailwinds?
Two thousand and eight, we had a financial crisis which puts most financial institutions in the.
Western world on defense.
People who had made promises to retirees, to pensioners, and had other obligations that were fixed all of a sudden needed to look elsewhere for rate of return. They were willing to consider that perhaps private markets offer an alternative.
So Marco's turn to a different subject that you've been involved in. That's what's going on in the university and college at campuses right now. You've been involved, particularly at Pennsylvania and the Wharton School for a good long time on the board. Have things changed on college campuses or has there always been thus and it's just been triggered by this Israel Guiza Phenomona.
Look, I think we've actually seen a lot of change take place over time. So I have a very favorable memory in my experience at the University Pennsylvania campus. But think more broadly, US universities were the were and are the envy of the world. We can destroy that, we can lose it. Why are kids there? Why did we think they were there? Be exposed to different points of view, learn how to think, critical reasoning, critical thinking, maturation. Is
that what they're getting today. I think in some places it is what they're getting, and in some classes it is what they're getting. But what I saw at the University of Pennsylvania and when I spoke out against, was a dominant narrative that was taking hold on our campuses. Call it a post colonial education, call it what you will. It gave rise to an institutionalization of a point of view, that there were favorite groups and disfavored groups, that there
was acceptable speech and non acceptable speech. I'm not sure that's the job that we all signed up for, or that's the university that we signed up for. Where we're watching today on these campuses is nothing more than the outgrowth of twenty years of bad management. If you have a dominant narrative on campus, do you have academic freedom?
Do you have freedom of speech? I have seen over the past few years, as I've really stepped up my involvement, professors, department chairs who are afraid to speak their mind because their thoughts, their speech goes against the dominant narrative. What we're watching today on campus is we're told are leftists. We used to think leftists were liberal. This hardly seems liberal. This actually seems illiberal in the most extreme way. Why haven't they been cleared out? Won't listen to Ben Sas
at the University of Florida. We're all about free speech, We're all about the right to protest. But there's a time and a place and a way you violate and trespass. There are consequences. Why would we not deal with them everywhere and that way. Certainly protests that were inconsistent with the narrative that we find on our campuses have and will be dealt with in that manner. Speakers are regularly shouted down, Professors, euersy administrators who did not react in
that way without that kind of moral clarity. They now have encampments. Once you have encampments, you have the potential for violence. You have other considerations that come into play. But make no mistake, outside agitators, not mostly students, trespass danger to our the rest of the students and the rest of the community. This is what twenty years of a dominant narrative has done.
Having seen it from the inside, where is the failure?
The failures in multiple places, But I think it starts with me and with us as trustees. We were asleep at the wheel for twenty years. Part of our job was to provide balance. I do not think the popular frame of a campus today where trustees and alumni are fighting professors over academic freedom.
Is actually correct.
I actually think the appropriate frame is university administrators who maintain this dominant narrative are fighting professors for academic freedom. Trustees and alumni are here to provide balance. We have been asleep at the wheel. We have not done what we were supposed to do. We did not object as these dominant narratives took hold, and it is our job I believe to support long term excellence in education, academic research, freedom of expression, freedom to disagree. That's not what we
have on many of our campuses today. We've got a long way from academic excellence.
How is that corrected without the trustees overstepping their boundaries. I mean, you know, and I know when you sit in a board there are certain things you really need to do. You don't want to run the thing day to day. You don't have trustees there to be micromanagers. How do you have the proper role for the trustees without overstepping boundaries.
There's a question of overstepping.
I think the danger right now is far from trustees overstepping the bounts. I think trustees, for the most part of these big institutions, myself included, have failed to act. We have not done our job in the most fundamental way. I don't think we are anywhere close to the line of overstepping our balunts. Most universities operate in a shared
governance manner. Transparency is often the best disinfectant. I do not believe at the University of Pennsylvania or a many of these campuses, the vast majority of professors actually believe in this dominant narrative. We as trustees can assure anonymous polling representation across the faculty, lots of other things that we can do to developing a strategic plan goes a long way. And as you said, it is not the job of the trustee or the alumni for that matter, to run these universities.
This is best left to professional administrators.
Mark, thank you so much, really great to have you on wolsterby as Mark Rowan, he is CEO of Apollo Global Management. Coming up, we've turned from the politics on US campuses to the geopolitics of industrial policy around the world with Karen Carneal Tambour of Bridgewater. That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
This is a special Milk And edition of Wall Street. We're coming from Beverly Hills. One of the subjects of this year's Milk And Conference was how investors respond to an increasingly fractious world. We host a panel of major chief investment officers, including for Bridgewater and Timasik, and we start with Karen Carneal Tambour on how geopolitics may be driving the move toward industrial policy.
And I think we've gone to a world where it almost seems desirable to people to see lack of convergence, to see diversions. You talk to businesses and you know there's the ups and downs every day of what's happening in the US China relationship.
But they get the direction.
They understand that they need to get out of having that much relies on China, and they're setting up for constantly talking about resilience. What is resilience means? It basically means you got to double do what you're doing and make it more expensive than it was before because you weren't in China for no reason. You were in China because it was the cheapest place to be, because that's where you had capital, because that's where you could set
up most efficiently. So to go set up a double do, to go create resilience such that if there's a problem, you have a different way of you know, getting your
goods or creating them. That's expensive. So I think the biggest implication for investors is that we were kind of in this world where there is like almost a gravitational pull like all else equal of inflation to I don't know, zero one percent, and that was that kind of underpinned a lot of the investment landscape because it meant that central banks could always be easier than usual because.
They didn't really have any tension.
If there's no inflation, you might as well just be as easy as you can at all times. What's the downside, there's no inflation, And this shift in geopolitics has been one of the really important drivers kind of smacking us out of that world to a new era where the gravitational pull of inflation is higher. Maybe they're more like
two percent. Not a disastrous number, but one where that tension actually starts existing because you have all this structural spending that people feel they have to do whatever the price. Some of that is just remilitarization. Without some of these geopolitical pressures, you wouldn't have that. But countries around the world are basically saying I need to spend more on military activities. Some of it is corporate spending on redoing their supply chain, and the third type I'd mentioned is
everything you're seeing in industrial policy. Officially it's doing something else. For example, the ira is going after climate, but I don't believe that spending would have been there without that backdrop of geopolitical competition and that sense that if China is willing to spend so much state money going after their strategic goals, why aren't we.
Karen Bridgewater has been thought of in terms of China for some time. You have a long history there, and when you were talking about Asia, I don't think you mentioned India.
So I'm curious about China with respect to India and for that matter, other wlads like Vietnam and Indonesia as foreign direct investment has seemed to fall in China. How do you assess India as an alternative to China and for that matter, Indonesia other Asian countries.
I think India is fascinating. It is still meaningfully smaller than China, as you know, just kind of what the markets are like, and more difficult than China to transact in. So if you look at China, I don't know, seven years ago or something, it was very difficult for a
global player to practically be in China. And so even if you weren't worried at all about geopolitics, about them confiscating your assets or anything, just logistically the question of like how do you buy a bond or how do you buy a stock was a challenging one to work through, and now a lot of that shifted and it's significantly easier. Though it's obviously still harder to buy a Chinese asset.
I shouldn't say obviously they could have made it easier, but still easier to buy a Chinese hard to buy a Chinese asset than say a European asset, but a lot of areas have come down, so today China is accessible. You can as a global investor build up a relatively meaningful allocation if you want to, and you would get this like extremely uncorrelated exposure that, in my view, even with pretty disastrous outcomes in China, may have reasonable return because the pricing is just so pessimistic.
Geopolitics went to court this week as TikTok sued the US government over its forced sale. We talked at Milkan with someone who wants to buy it. Former Treasury Secretary Stephen Minuchin, missus Sager, give us your sense of the US economy right now?
How strong is it?
Where do you see weaknesses?
For the parts of the economy have continued to be quite strong, and obviously we're seeing inflation still being very sticky. So you know, the market has moved towards less great cuts this year. I do think we're going to continue to see a slow down of the US economy at these levels of interest rates.
So you always worked for President Trump. President Biden's a different man, different economic policy. Is there anything you see in the Biden ofpal policy that you approve of you think they've done a good job with Look.
I think there's certain things that they've done that have been okay, But I think there's been a very different economic adject and prior to COVID, we saw the Trump tax cuts were really working. I think to the extent that we hadn't had COVID. We were seeing an increase of the economy and the cuts would have paid for themselves and we were seeing very robust economic activity. Now, obviously in COVID we had to spend a lot of money. I think had we not spent the first two trillion dollars,
we would have had a worldwide depression, not recession. But I think in hindsight, we went on to spend too much money, and I think when the Biden administration came in, they continue to spend too much money, and I think these deficits are going to come back and be a real problem.
We have a very strong US dollar. Is that a good thing for the economy.
I think it is a good thing. I mean, for one, the dollar is the reserve currency of the world, and that's allowed us to finance these very large deficits. But over time this is something we can't be reliant on. I think the dollar will continue to be the reserve currency before the foreseeable future, but we have a responsibility to get our financial situation back in shape.
What are the issues is pending right now? Are the Russian assets central back assets that have been seized in Europe and the United States? What should be done, if anything, with those. Do you have a view about whether we actually should be taking those assets and basically giving them to Ukraine for rebuilding Ukraine because of the war.
Well, first of all, I think the sanctions programs are very important, and it's a major foreign policy tool that the US has, And I've always said, because we are the reserve currency, we need to be careful about how we use it. So the first part of this is making sure we put in place sanctions and re enforce them. I'm very concerned that the Russian Oale sanctions and the Iran oil sanctions are not being enforced. We're seeing laborant violations of those, and I think that has to be
enforced now. In regards to what you do with the money, the money needs to go through. They're a legal process, score a legislative process, and I think there should be a healthy debate. But I think using the Russian money to rebuild Ukraine after the war is something should be seriously considered.
Since you left the government. One of the big moves you made, least the New York Community Bank buying it. I give us here says to why that was a good move. There's a lot of concern about regional banks right now, although you know regional banks personally pretty will.
I've been in the banking business for a long time. During the financial crisis, I've bought three banks from the FDIC. We've branded the largest bank actually headquartered here in southern California, one West. I've known New York Community Bank for the last ten years. You know, this was a merger of three institutions, and in them coming together, they didn't tap the proper procedures for one hundred million dollar bank. They ran in some issues with real estate. So we raised
over a billion dollars of capital. A very large portion of that will be to build robust reserves. And we've come out with a three year plan to restore profitability to the bank, and by the end of twenty twenty six, the management team is we'll deliver on a plan that gets the bank to an eleven to twelve percent return on tangible common equity and eleven to twelve percent CET. Want to make it a well capitalized bank.
One of the things you've expressed interest is in TikTok or by buying it from byte Dance. We now have legislation with any years I send less than a year now that unless they do something different, they're going to have to sell it.
Are you still incident TikTok Fond's still very interested in buying it, and to the extent they want to sell it, we're spin it off. We very much want to pursue that. I support that Congress passed the bill and has now been signed into law. I will say this has had just incredible overwhelming support with Republicans and Democrats. This may be the only thing that everybody agrees on the fact
that it's on one hundred and sixty million phones. I do think it's the security issue in the US, and I'm glad I see it it's being addressed.
One of the big issues is the algorithm. Right, this is very powerful for TikTok. Does the deal still work if the algorithm doesn't come with Tikta Well.
The Chinese government has been very clear that they won't give an ex work license on the algorithm, and I understand that we have sensitive technology that we don't want to transfer to them, and they don't want to transfer this to the US. I've actually spoken to a lot of tech companies I'm working about rebuilding this. I do
believe the algorithms could be rebuilt. So my plan, if we were to purchase it would be to rebuild the technology under US leadership, make sure that it's all disconnected from bytdance going forward, and that it is very rope Boston secure.
I understand at one point you says you might talk to the former President Trump about this possibility. Do you have a sense of where he is on this deal.
I haven't spoken to him since the law has been passed on this. I've spoken to him on other issues. But you know this started under his leadership, so I'm sure he understands the national security issues and it was under this his leadership that this really started.
You now are very active as a probate basket banker. We have TikTok as a possibility, we have your community bank done. What's the theory of the case, what's the connection you what sorts of deals are you looking at?
So we have three areas that we focus on, which are areas that we have a lot of expertise. The first is technology with a big focus on national security and cyber Along with myself, General Dunford, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is one of our partners. We also have the person who ran the Cyber Task Force for the government. The second area is spintech and financials. Again, my General Council was General Council at Treasury and understands
all the regulatory issues. I've obviously been around banking for forty years. And the last area is entertainment and where you know, in my previous life I made a lot of entertainment investments and where we're a big believer and what we call new content and TikTok fits right in with that.
Boy, you talk about a lot of turmoil the entertainment industry, there's a lot of turmoil in media. We see it everywhere we look right now, concluding with Paramoid most recently, but Mileshop Disney, you know, has had some difficulties. There's a lot of challenges Water Brothers Discovery as well. What do you make of that? What is the future for the media entertainment business?
I mean, I think to the extent these companies can execute properly, there are very very good opportunities, particularly given how low some of the values are on traditional media. I don't think the traditional media is going to go away overnight, but there's no question there's a complete transition in the market from the way when we grew up from network TV to streaming and not just streaming to you know, short form video and lawn form video that we see on TikTok, we see on Instagram, we see
on YouTube. So there is a whole new distribution model. Having said that, you know, great content has a lot of value, and a lot of these media companies have an enormous library of great content that can be my So I think distribution is a very important issue that there needs to be a transition.
Coming up, we turned for a former Treasury secretary to a former House Speaker, and that's Paul Ryan about what's at stake for global Wall Street in this year's US elections. That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
This is Wall Street Week. I'm David west and we are here in Los Angeles from the Milican Conference, and one of the subjects is the election coming up on particularly what it means for the economy and for investors, so they get through that we have somebody who knows the economy terribly well as well as no I telling about elections. He's Paul Rhime, former Speaker of the House, is also at TENEO and now is partner of Solomeir Capital. So, mister Speaker, thank you so much for jebet.
It's going to be with you, David.
The most basic question for a lot of Bloomberg viewers is we have the election coming up, President's election, other election, the entire Congress. What is the biggest economic issue at state what could make a difference to the most of the economy.
Number one would be tax policy. What's the tax go to good to look like? What's tax policy looking like in the future. Number two, I'd say tariffs. So number three, I think it's reasonable to assume the next president is quite possibly get to face a debt crisis.
You don't know when that is or.
Exactly what fulm that takes place, but a lot of physical policies, online, tax policy, trade policy, debt policy, therefore interest rates.
Third thing you mention was debt crisis. Debt crisis for the next president. Whoever the next president is, take us through that. We've all been talking about the debt and the deficit, how much it's growing. He says, it's a problem. Nobody does anything about it. It hasn't really come home to loost yet.
It doesn't see it's what's a debt crisis loop like bond auction failures. I mean, it's not inconceivable that once the Fed's done cutting rates and people aren't buying bonds is readily and you've got us and all these other industrialized countries with the same problems, aging baby boomers, entitlement programs, unfunded papering this, you know, floating all this paper in the world markets. You could have an oversupply of bonds.
And it's not inconceivable on my mind. In a handful of years next presidency, an auction or two fail and then the Fed steps in and buys our paper, and then they're really monetizing debt. It's bad for the dollar, that's bad for dollar dominance.
That's an interest rate problem.
You know this terribly well, can we get our fiscal house in order without increasing taxes. I'm not saying we shouldn't cut some spending due. But can you do just one and not for the other?
Yes, you can. For sure.
I can show you how to do it. I passed four budgets in Congress that did it. But in politics is that's a political question. My guess is if you have divided government, there's gonna be a mixture of both. I believe you can have a better, faster growing tax code that still gets you higher revenue lines than what we have today without doing damage to economic growth. Now, the way I would do it would be a cash flow tax to actually form. That's not the way Joe
Biden would do it. The question is can you get more revenue for the federal government to get our debt under control, hoppled with entitlement reforms, and do it in a way that doesn't sacrifice economic growth. I think the answer is yes to that, but nobody's talking like that these days. I guess the question is what could you do now, knowing we have debt problems in the future. I think there's a couple of things Congress could do.
They're not but maybe they'll get something done. I think stable point legislation would be a good step in the right direction. That could be helpful that could be done this year, but I don't see anything other than that on the horizon.
Okay, a speaker, thank you so much for joining us year. That's Paul, Ryan Tanail and Solomere happening. Real estate has been something about punching bag for investors, and one of the topics for discussion this week has been whether we've seen the worst of it. Barry Stern looked off. Starwood Capital was outspoken at the Milkon conference, and we asked him about where he is looking for pockets of opportunity.
The good Fox Data senors are good blocks today, anything with power. It's true. I think it's just interesting to see. You know, the real estate is not you can't use one word to describe in real estate, there's you can play up and down the capitol side. You can make mortgages, mezzanine mortgages, preferred equity, equity investments. You can buy homes, you can buy students housing, senior housing, you can buy land, you can buy a single fan for rent, build to rent,
you can buy industrial. I mean, there's so many different flavors and it's hard. The one thing that is true about the real estate market today is because of Powell's rate movement. We have a sort of a balance geat crisis. You know, we don't have an asset level crisis. For the most part, the asset classes, at least the United
States are fairly in balance supply and demand. There's a little bit of oversupply of multi family in some of the growth markets, but that will get absorbed over the next eighteen months and we'll be back to a very
healthy rent profile, I think. But for the most part, people are gonna have trouble refinancing their debt because interest rates shows five hundred basis points, and also many of the traditional lenders, like the banks, are backing out because they're full up to their gills in real estate loans.
Markets react to things like interest rates, like we're from home, they also often overreact. Have there been overreactions on the downside for office for example some places, or on the upside for data centers because we hear so much about data centers because they're a danger getting overbuilt.
There's a regulator in data centers because the project is so expensive that if you don't have at least you can't finance the construction. So it's almost impossible to overbuild it, they will be people will buy land in the hope of getting power, in the hope of getting a tenant, and they may wind up losing a bunch of money if they paid too much for land and it has no alternative use other than their dream of someday getting power power source. So I don't think.
I think.
I think with Stanley Druckenmiller was at this conference and he said, like, it might be over hype short term, but it's under hype long term, and I think that's probably true. What we try to think. I try to spend time thinking about is AI's implications on the real estate markets, power things going to change, and then what's going to do to de stabilize or support some of
our tenants? Right, so, which ones will go the way of the Dodo bird, what industries will be heavily impacted, and will they come up with new applications that require them to keep as many people just doing different things,
or will they just have people do everything. I was listening to Jenson Wang speak at a conference the other day, and he showed how they can build a boat through AI, a very complicated supertanker, and then he said, we can build the factory that builds the boat, and then we'll build the robots that build the boat in the factory. And I'm like, where are the workers? What do we do?
I was thinking, well, I'm going to continue to best heavily in resorts because everyone will have all this time off and they'll be working from our hotels in Hawaii. I think Ai, I think it is just the beginning. I can I know how it's going to change so much, and it's very exciting. And also, Terri, is.
There a day of reckoning coming in real estate?
The great thing about our system is capital willjust and find the opportunities. I do think it's going to be a rolling wall of thunder and you're going to every time alone matures, it's a negotiation or an explosure. There's an extension. A barer tries to come up with money, he doesn't have it. He has to go to people like us or in the old days there are doctors and lawyers and friends and raise the money to pay
down the debt rather than give the asset back. It'll be market by market, asset by asset.
You mentioned return to office. It wasn't that long ago. It wasn't return to office in New York. It was just leaving New York all together and moving to Miami. Yeah, have we seen peak Miami for the time being, because there was a time that everyone's rushing down there with their employees and things that and now you're here, maybe not so fast coming back a little bit.
Miami has an issue because of schools. It doesn't have enough schools, and that that's probably the reason Miami's slowing. But Amazon just announced they're moving taking fifty thousand feet. There are a lot of companies that would move down if they could get their employees' kids into schools, which is impossible. So you got to be very bullish as Citadel,
which obviously left Chicago. I mean, they alone have decided they're going to make Miami into the financial capital of the United States, and they have the power to do that. Ken is very philanthropic, and he's moved a lot of fifteen hundred people into the market, and that affects the housing market. We still were waiting. I mean, if I was really smart, I'd just buy all the houses and coral gables and sell them to the Citadel employees as
they moved down. I don't think Miami's peaked. I think with Miami in Florida have sort of cycles because they get overbuilt, but they're ever higher cycles. You just have to have stamina and stay with it. The housing market, you know, a four million our house became a ten million dollar house, and now it's an eight million dollar house, but it's still twice what the guy paid for it four years ago, and really good stuff. I mean recently,
Barry Dillar moved down. Jeff Bezos has moved down. I anticipated the climate, you know that obviously the weather's bettering the winner. I anticipated the tax savings, and obviously for the darkness Blue States, it's material. I didn't anticipate how welcoming the state is to business and how success is actually a praud and not vilified. So I think for businesses that's that's a nice thing. The state wants you to succeed, and they want to attract business and maybe
the Blue States. I mean, the governor of Larida said, I guess he got on a phone call with the governor of York and said, you know, stop taking my peoples all. He says, every time you talk, I get another ten.
Barrier made the news this week about Brown You've been a loyal supporter of Brown. Have done awful lot of good for that school. You said for the time being, as I understand, you're going to really suspend further diasans. Why were you so upset about what they data is? I understand what they did is they agreed with the students they would talk about divestment. They just talk about it. What's so wrong about talking?
I think schools and the country needs to get back to facts, get to the truths. One in one is two, It's not four, even if the students tell you it's forwards two. And I think I think the only place, the number one place you should seek the truth teach the truth is universities and schools of our education. If in fact, these universities don't approve bds, they don't divest from Israel, the kids will say, people like me influence the board. They need to know the facts first. I
am about the facts. And if you know the facts, and then your pro Palasini or pro Hamas. I'm not anti. I think I believe in Tuesday solution, but I don't believe in the right to return because there'll be no Israel.
So given what we know, what should Brown have done it for that matter, not just Brown Colombia, my alla man of years in Michigan. This is a problem across a lot of Hollywood.
If they should the adults.
Do encourage free speech and debate, not violence, not hate speech. No child should have a fear for his safety walking around a university campus. Get rid of the agitators. I mean it should occur to somebody that the first the attack on Israel on October seventh was right. The rumor was the Saudi Israeli peace conflict was going to be solved.
This well orchestrated campus demonstration happened after I ran shot three hundred missiles into Israel, and Israel responded with sort of a light touch, like we can get you, but don't you know where here? And then they pulled back right because the administrations that don't do anything, and they kind of did, but nothing right. The world sentiment was shifting against Israel. Unleashed the krack and let the kids
protest all across the United States campuses. It was well orchestrated by these SJAP and all these organizations that are being funded by some left wing organizations. If I were the president of Brown, I would say we stand with the democracy and free speech. We stand Israel's not an aparte. I'd state, here's the proof, Israel's not committing genocide. Here's the proof. If you don't like it, I understand, that's great, leave your keys on my desk and go to another university.
You know, my father survived Germany, so I have a lot to say. I'm just not going to be quiet about it.
It's clear you feel strongly about it, and a lot of people feel strongly about it. But when you make a decision like I'm not going to contribute for the time being, is that an expression of your views, your principles to the phils was talking about, or is it an attempt to change behavior? Do you think it go beyond an expression to actually change behavior?
Like I don't. I don't think these universities. Christina Faxson is a great president at Brown University. She's trying really hard. She's got she's got. You know, these universities have very left leaning faculties. You know, you should not have a preten year professor who said there was no Holocaust. How can that person how can you teach that at Columbia University?
How could that person have a job. And if you thought that was fair, If you had a professor who said there was no slavery, it didn't happen, would you have him as a tenured professor. Or if a professor who's saying celebrates and thinks that the at Cornell who thought the Hamas should be celebrated killing innocent children and parents, I mean they should be shown the door. And I don't want to pay for them. So I don't want to support a university of houses. That language.
That was Barry Sterling of Starwood Capital. That does it. For this special episode of Wall Street Week, coming from the Milkene Conference in Beverly Hills, I'm David Weston. This is Bloomberg. See you next week from back in New York.