This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week.
And we may not have an overall recession, we're having a rolling recession. Econ of roll looks pretty strongly. It is when it comes to jobs.
The financial stories that shape our world.
Three major regional bank failures send shockwaves through the banking system. We're all trying to figure out what to make of generative AI.
Through the eyes of the most influential voices.
Welcome down, doctor Paul Krugman, Ryan moynihan, a Bank of America, deebro Lair of the Paulson Institute, well then Hubbard of the Columbia Business School.
Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
Forget about war in the Middle East and Europe, or whether the FED is going to cut or raise rays. All anyone is talking about is AI and Nvidia's tree growing to the sky. This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. This week we'll talk with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Romer about US trade policy, what it should let in and what it should keep out.
What we want to do is encourage as much flow of ideas around the world as we can, but we don't need to worry so much about the flows of ours.
And with former House Majority Leader Eric Canter of Mollis about the role of business in changing the direction of the Republican Party.
Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party.
It is much more of a populist party now.
But first we start with what the Fed's rapid increase in interest rates has meant for those who owe money. Years of record low interest rates naturally led to more borrowing, whether by the federal government or private individuals and companies.
When you have the real interest rate very low, like we had when I nominal interest rate, nominal bond yield was less than one percent, and real bond yields were one and a half one in three quarters negative, that's free money. And what that free money does is everybody goes in and they borrow and buy things and your until it's unhealthy.
But now that interest rates have risen to the five percent range, there's a piper to be paid, with borrowers needing to refinance loans as they come do. But the extraordinary thing that we're facing is a trillion plus dollars of debt that's coming due over the next three four years.
And that debt needs to get refinanced.
Even as banks hesitate to take more on their balance sheets.
If you raise those capital levels, they are going to have lower roe and factually they'll be less capital for lending, all.
Of which creates opportunities for what we call distressed investors and.
High ye olden loans. There's a lot of dispersion, meaning that if you look at ratings, for example, double b's are pricing in negative defaults, triple cs are pricing and high defaults. So I think if you can get these credits picked right and not make mistakes, you're going to earn nine to ten percent. And it's time to start doing that and.
To tell us where he sees these opportunities. Welcome town, Joshua Friedman. He's co founder and co CEO of Canyon part So, josh thank you so much for being back with this. Let's take a step back, as we say, we had really low, historically low interest rates for a long time. Lot Buiple took a lot of debt on and now they've come back up. So where do you see the most debt A massed out there?
Thank you for having me again on the show. I think when you zoom out today and try to look at the overall context. I think there are at least four sets of balance sheets that all are carrying an awful lot of leverage relative to historical levels, and in many ways unsustainable amounts. The first one is the federal government itself, which is sitting with thirty five trillion dollars of debt and managed to amass the last trillion in
record time, something like one hundred and six days. And the pressure that refinancing that debt, which has relatively short average maturities, is a lot of pressure on interest rate markets generally. So that's the first balance sheet. The second one, I would say, is corporate balance sheets. And as you mentioned, if you give something to people for free, they take on a lot of it, and what was free was debt.
So this balance sheet after balance sheet after balance sheet in the corporate world, mostly in private equity sponsored companies, where the level of debt is six seven eight times EBITITAH, and those maturities are rapidly advancing, and the rate of interest on those debt on that debt is quite high. Most of the floating rate debt was not fixed, and
refinancing the old debt today is expensive. The third set is real estate balance sheets, and in many cases people might have swapped or capped their interest rates for two years or three years, but they didn't cap it for twenty years. Or if they fixed their interest rate, it might have been fixed for five years or seven years or ten years, but you're well into that period. And when you have to refinance into a six percent plus environment from a three percent environment, you can't.
Sustain as much debt.
So it leaves a gap and there's going to be a lot of interesting opportunities in those balance sheets. And the final balance sheets that are really a little bit out of whack are banks, both national critical banks that hone a lot of commercial real estate loans as well as regional banks. And we're starting to see some of the exposure in those balance sheets. And what is causing well, well,
they're slowly tiptoeing back into the lending business. It's really constraining a lot of those activities that they might otherwise engage in.
Why are we going to sort out? If I can say the sheep from the goats, where are you going to see some bankruptcies? Some of these people really go away.
You're starting to see it. The number of bankruptcies has gone up statistically by quite a bit. And the place where you see that good company versus bad company in the most extreme light is in real estate.
You see bad real estate.
And what I mean by that might be markets that are having outflows of people that are never recovered from the COVID work at home phenomenon, where there are outmoded buildings that might have been built, like office buildings that are somewhat obsolete, that don't look like they're ever recovering. That we're sold for a price of X, and now the debt is trading at fifty cents or low or and the keys are being handed over. So those are really bad assets with bad balance sheets. There are other
properties in real estate that are very good assets. Let's just take simple multifamily in very good markets, fully leased, etc. Maybe rents are a little soft, but they're still okay, fully occupied. But the balance sheet when it has to be refinanced, when the constructions completed, the building is done,
it has to be permanently financed. The rate of interest is in the sixes, it's not in the threes, and therefore the proceeds that can be maintained in a sustainable way, are maybe half what the sponsor was expecting.
Now, I'm going to guess that Canyon Partners is more interested in the second of those than the first of those. So where are you seeing opportunities right now, Canyon Partners, where are you seeing you can step in and really play a significant role in really restructuring some of these.
Sure, well, there are certain deals that are just liquidations or pure bankruptcies, the ftx's of the world and others. Those can be very very interesting and last for a certain period of time. Those are a little bit anomalous. Maybe The much more systematic pattern is good company bad balance sheet six and a half seven, seven and a half times ebatah. But the value really does.
Exceed the debt.
It requires a careful study of what rights you have versus the borrower and what rights you have versus the other creditors, because we're in a gloves off environment and people try to take advantage of their positions to fix the balance sheet in a way that advantages themselves.
Josh, it's so great to have you, beck On Wallsher, thank you for being here. That's Josh Friedman of Kenyon Partners. Markets were off to the races this week, with both the S and P five hundred and the now setting new records. The SMP was up one point seven percent of the week that's ending at five oh eight eight. That's staying above the year end consensus of the Bloomberg Elves despite the l's taking their median number up by
fifty points. The NASDAC added one point four percent, while the yield on the tenure fell just over three basis points to end the shortened trading week at four point two five percent. To take us through the weekend, the markets, Welcome back now, Alicia Levine, bny Melon, the head of Investment Strategy and Equity Advisory Solutions. Alicia, great to have
you back with us. Thank you for being here. Thanks David, So, I guess first of all, how much of this was in Nvidia, I mean, in video is quite a phenomenon in the equity markets this week. How much of what we're seeing in the equity markets is really because the Nvidia effect.
So it's in Vidia, but it's not just in Vidia per se, because what in video represents is the next growth leg of corporate America, of productivity and of earnings for the fastest growing companies in America. So yes, it was that one company, but it's also what it represented is in that the AI revolution looks to be real. The growth is spectacular. It won't be the only company that benefits from So there are creators and there they are benefacturers from this, and so all that went into
the invidious story. So, yes, the numbers were terrific. They beat a high bar, right, they beat a high bar. I mean, it's remarkable, remarkable that the market rally, but the earnings were good, the outlook was great, and so that just rallied the whole complex related to AI.
There's been concern that the market's a little too narrow. We were talking about the Magnificent seven. I guess we talk about it all the time. Is there any indication that the market is broadening out a little bit?
So it's a great question because in some ways the Magnificent seven has turned into the feisty five. Right, So a couple of the larger companies are simply stumbling this year, not just on fundamentals but also on sock price. At the same time, you are seeing a broadening out to other parts of the large cap universe. We're not there yet in small cap, but we are in large caps. So the industrials are doing well, healthcare is doing well, parts of consumer are doing well, so that part of
the world it's broadening out. But that whole Magnificent seven I think, is going to crack apart. And now ELI Lilly is part of that as well, so that was not part of ELI Lily was not part of the Magnificent seven last year, So you're seeing a broadening.
It was a time not long ago when it was all about the Fed. Are they going to cut, how much they're gonna cut, how soon are they're going to cut? How much risk is there in the marketplace right now? But the Fed not cutting as much as we thought or hope they would.
So let's roll that question back a little bit. The real risk is inflation. That's the risk, and then of course the Fed's reaction function to it. So as long as inflation stays on this downward path, the Fed can cut and can cut by June. The big risk here is what happens with CPI for February reported in March. Right, If it's another hot month, then you could get some dislocation in the market. But where we stand today, I
think that the FED story is very understood. So the market very quickly went from pricing in six cuts to three cuts for this year, even as growth was better, Earning slightly better, and the markets just kind of digested it. So I think as long as the FED cuts by June, the story remains in tact, which is fair a bullish one, it's a strong one.
So that's monetary policy. We're on a fiscal policy because there's still some money coming out of the federal government under those bills that got enacted in prior years.
That's right, So I think there's no accident to note that those enormous two trillion dollar bills that came out of the administration that were passed a couple of years ago, the IRA, the Chips Act, the Infrastructure Act. Guess when the money really starts getting pumped into the economy. That is in twenty twenty.
Four, an election year.
So we're seeing one hundred billion dollars coming in from those acts this year into the economy. And at the same time, Congress both Democrats and Republicans, are passing a tax bill that also bring the fiscal stimulus into the economy in an election year, So I'd say that what that tells me is it's going as the year goes on, it's going to be harder to get the recession because
the fiscal policy is working towards growth. And so with that, I think that the risk of a recession that folks still want worry about because of the tightening of policy and the retraction and bank credit to the economy, it's being offset by the fiscal into the economy.
I know that historically markets don't discount geopolitical risk very well, but at some point do they have to start thinking about it. Where are we today?
We look to be fracturing. We look to be going back to a place where there are blocks, there's competition both militarily and economically, and for that you have to go back past the Cold War, because the Cold War was essentially two blocks, and we're going back before that. I'd say, ultimately, if you want to think of it this way, the US is really involved in a two front war right now, and the question is is there a third one?
Yeah, infascination. Sooner or later, the markets are going to have to deal with all this geopolitics. Thank you so much for Alesha Levin of BNY Mellon and this is 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 Weston. US trade policy is already playing a role in this presidential election as a leading Republican candidate, Donald Trump is calling for an across the board tariff of ten percent on goods imported from all countries and potentially much higher from China. Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Romer of Boston College takes us through the economic effects of tariffs.
I think we need a more nuanced view, and it's really one that goes all the way back to the origins of my work distinguishing ideas from objects. And what we want to do is encourage as much flow of ideas around the world as we can. But we don't need to worry so much about the flows of objects because we don't get very much benefit out of the trade and the objects. And as I'll describe that, there's some costs associated with those.
I think historically, as economists have told us that free trade is really valuable to growing the economy, that you have comparative advantage, really grow an economy. If you actually do cut back on free trade, do you have to give up growth in the economy. No, so you don't have to give up the growth because it's the trade
and ideas which is essential for faster growth. So, for example, if you've got a firm that invents, like a better pharmaceutical in the United States, you want them to be able to earn royalties on that all over the world because the returns to innovation will be higher and they'll discover more things. But that doesn't mean that the pill has to be manufactured in the United States. The firm can get the royalties just on the intellectual property and
have that manufactured anywhere. To give you another example, when during the seventies, Japan had gotten better at making cars according to these zero defect quality control standards, and we came to an agreement with Japan where we said, Toyota, Honda, those companies they can come and manufacture cars in the United States. So the ideas that they had developed they could earn a profit on, and US consumers could get
the benefits of higher quality cars. But we still had cars that were manufactured by workers in the United States. And that's the advantage of some kind of restrictions on the trade in goods is that we can actually protect the jobs and the incomes for the people who you know, unfortunately, for the last two decades, have really been left behind. One of the concerns repeated most frequently about tariffs is the effect that they may have on economic growth overall, even if they do save some jobs.
I don't think there's any debate among serious economists. From a macroeconomic standpoint, trade is good. Therefore, moving against trade is bad in terms of the impact on the overall economy. Whether we go into a crash and the depression, I'm not sure I would predict that, but it's bad on a micro level. The problem with free trade, so to speak, is that there were jobs lost. The opening of China into the WTO unabashedly, unquestionably caused US manufacturing jobs, but
the overall economy was better. Everything you and I bought was cheaper and better because it was made in China. And yeah, we can reverse all that. We can ban television, SATs and bicycles from China, and the consequences would be not I don't think disastrous, but.
They would be noticeably bad.
The way to cut it is high school educated versus college educated people. And if you look at something like life expectancy, high school educated people are dying younger. They're dying from these deaths of despair. If you look at employment, the average adult, the average number of adults who have a job in the United States has gone down, mostly because the people who are high school educated have such miserable prospects.
That some of them have given up.
The rest are staying there in the market, but they're they're really they're really suffering. So life expecting, see willingness to work. I mean, these are the kinds of underlying indicators that tell us life is not getting better. It's getting worse for a large fraction of the people here
in the United States. And we got to think about what do we do to give them a growth prospect like the rest of us have the college educated have What will make it so that they can see progress in their lives and even progress where their children will do better than they did.
It's not just goods that the United States and forces world broad It also welcomes capital investment, as Nippon Steel seeks even now to invest in US steal something the Biden administration is carefully reviewing.
This is a test for the Biden administration. Has their commitment to resilience and industrial policy in a serious commitment based on a desire to strengthen and make more resilient the economy, or is it a cloak for protectionists pandering to traditional industries with no genuine national security rationale. There is no remotely plausible national security rationale for questioning the nipon steel. Nipon US steel transaction Japan is a staunch ally.
The production will continue to take place in the United States. The result will be the infusion of more capital into the US steel industry. The result will be lower price steel as an input when a hundred times as many US workers are in industries that use steal as are in the steel industry self. So this should be a layup for policy makers who have the right motivations, and if it's not, it is a sign of very troubling economic.
Nationalism on the part of the United States.
I think foreign investment is by far the most important vector for moving ideas around the world. There's licensing, there's intellectual property, but it's really foreign it's firms that carry ideas. So NIP on steel could bring its ideas in about how it makes how to make steel or better, better,
more efficient methods. That's just like Toyota and Honda had these ideas about quality control, which interesting we were ideas developed by a professor in the United States deming, but nobody has States would listen to him, so he took the ideas to Japan.
They developed them.
They turned out to be fantastically important, and then we got them back through the direct foreign investment by those firms. So we definitely want us both to protect our firm's ability to go earn a return in other countries in the world, but also we want to fight for that. We also want to fight for the ability for the foreign firms that have good ideas to come and supply them to workers and consumers in the United States.
So you're an economist, of course, you're not a national security expert. How does national security cut across this petific because there are concerns it's some investment, foreign investment, particularly from some rivals, if not enemies, rivals in some US industries could actually undermine our national security.
Yeah again, I think I think people are like barking up the wrong tree here. I think that what we should really be thinking about on national security is we want to make critical security technology goods like chips in the United States so that if things get really bad, we control the supply, and we want to make things like masks, like for.
The next pandemic in the United States.
And we've gotten ourselves in a position where we are not self sufficient in chips or masks, So those are the things we need to invest in, and if necessary, put tariff barriers because it'll be a little more expensive to produce them here. But put tariff barriers or subsidized one way or the other make it profitable for firms to make those kind of goods here. We're doing that sum with chips. I don't think we're doing it as
much as we should with the medical technologies. But then moving out from the security sense of areas and the kind of emergency areas, we should be thinking about a way to make sure that there's a demand for these high school educated individuals to get a job in a factory that pays a wage and pays a wage which is higher than the wage that a worker gets in Vietnam, and to make that attractive for the firm to hire
the US worker instead of the worker in Vietnam. We're going to have to have either subsidies or tariff barriers.
Yea.
And I did only say that this could get us back to the system that worked for us in the twentieth century, because what we did was we reduced the number of high school educated individuals because a lot of people were getting college education. There was still a demand for those high school educated people in manufacturing. So a
reduction supply same demand, wages were going up. So both the people who got more education got higher wages, but the people who didn't get more education got higher wages because they were becoming more scarce. That all file apart when with globalization, where instead of hiring more expensive high school educated workers in the United States, firms just went anywhere in the world to chase the lowest wages. So this is like is going to be like a big
food fight, I think in the profession. But I think we have to get serious about the reality of this and not just keep talking about, well, we'll find a way to share the gains if we engage in trade. We've had twenty years and we haven't done any sharing of the games with those people who are so depressed and miserable and discouraged. So let's go back to what worked in the twentieth century.
Whatever the merits of free trade or protectionism, it is not at all certain how much difference the presidential election will have given the positions of the leading candidates.
What do you mean by a free trade agreement?
Right? Do you mean the traditional kind of US approach to a very very comprehensive, maximally liberalizing, aggressively liberalizing agreement. We're not doing that with anybody right now. It's actually insensitive to the dynamics in the global economy and the US economy right now to push on with that program, which may have been fit for the eighties and the nineties, maybe was starting to show its age in the two thousands and twenty tens.
It's twenty twenty three.
We need new policies.
Both gentlemen have shown that they are both protectionists. President Biden has kept on the tariffs that that President Trump had imposed on China. I do think though, that there will be some changes, particularly if Trump is elected. What he has already said on the campaign trails, this ten percent flat you know, tariff on all imports. I think there's a real question does he have the legal or
statutory ability to do that. If you actually go back to President Nixon's administration, he did that same thing in nineteen seventy one. He put an import ten percent import surcharge on all imports. Now we'll sort of see what happens. A lot of lip service doesn't necessarily transcend into translate into reality.
I think both the Democrats and the Republicans are moving away from this kind of like obsession about extreme kind of extreme free trade. There are some advantages to some restrictions on trade, and we've just got to think about what are the parts that matter versus what are the parts that don't matter?
And I think they're the biden Is trition.
It's been a little bit more thoughtful, or at least I'm hopeful they'll be more thoughtful about continuing to support the direct foreign investment even as they try and subsidize like the chip manufacturing.
That was doctor Paul Romer of Boston College coming up. Is either major party an ally of business these days? We ask former House Majority Leader Eric Canter of Molus, you.
Got the best shot at having advocates for an expanded free market system for lower regulations, lower taxes. As a Republican supporter, You're not going to see that with a Democrat.
That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston. Welcome now former House Majority Leader Eric Canter, vice chairman of Mullis So, Eric, welcome back. Great to have you on the program.
There's great to be here.
You have been known to be a Republican in the past, as best I heard a call. It strikes me as we go into this presidential election, things are a bit different these days in various respects. One could say that both the Democrats and the Replicans seem to be flirting with populism. How much difference is there between these two alternatives today as opposed to ten fifteen years ago.
The first of all, yes, I am a Republican. I'm still a Republican.
I am a limited government, fiscal conservative, pro free market republican.
And I do think.
That when you're looking at the two parties from a business standpoint, you got the best shot at having advocates for an expanded free market system for lower regulations, lower taxes. As a Republican supporter, you're not going to see that with the Democrats. So there's no question I think you are right. You know, Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party. It is much more of a populist party now with a lot of nationalistic tendencies.
But there was a time that was thought, whether fairly or unfairly, Republican Party tend to be more pro business. Democrats not so much. But Donald Trump has certainly not gone out of his way to be a friend to business, at least explicitly.
Well, I think that again, some of there are particular industries, particular companies that he has a beef with, and we've seen that sort of play out in his prior administration, and so I suspect if we see another Trump administration that you're going to again see some of that tension between certain industries, let's say the tech industry.
And some others that he's picked.
Out for particular ire But on the whole, if you look at what he did policy wise, from tax standpoint or regulatory standpoint, he's much more grounded in who he is as a business person than any Democratic nominee Joe Biden or otherwise whatever be.
What about trade, because certainly Donald Trump came in and imposed a lot of tariffs inclaring I would say some extradiny ruins under Section three oh one, which hadn't been used that much before that, and that was not always friendly to business some of the trade restrictions you impose. Is there a big difference between Democrats and Republics right now on the use of trade protection devices?
Well, you know, it's interesting to see those trade policies that were put in place by President Trump have really been continued by President Biden.
So there really hasn't been much of a shift.
I think US leadership in terms of trade, whether it's more trade deals or any kind of deepening of those relationships and a multilateral basis, even a bi level basis, I would say it is hard.
To come by now.
Free trade is not necessarily something that rallies either party, and I do think you're going to see a continued increase in protectionism. You've heard the discussion that President Trump has put forward increasing tariffs ten percent across the board. He's even mentioned a sixty percent in position in tariffs.
On goods coming in from China.
So I do think that you're seeing a ratcheting up of that kind of rhetoric that's going to manifest itself in some policy.
We've got a lot of geopulutive situations going on, and we've got a war in Europe, We've got a war in Gaza really with Israel Hamas, We've got tensions over in Asia as well. As you talk to Mollus's clients, is the issue of geopolgis rising on the agenda as they talk to you? Is it more concerned today than it was five years ago?
Certainly it's a topic of discussion all the time, and especially with multinationals if they're either European, Western based American multinationals, very concerned with what's going on in the Middle East. I spent a lot of time there, and certainly that's one of the most active places on the globe right now in terms of transactions and growth oriented policies. Same hand, you know, people are looking to see, hey, what's going on over in the levant with Hamas and Israel and
is that going to spread? And I think thus far we've seen that not spread. I don't think you Ron wants to see it spread so, yes, geopolitics is a discussion throughout most boardrooms and conversations that I'm having. But I also think, you know, it's it's one election. Because there's a lot of elections globally this year. One election matters most, and that's here.
Turn to the fiscal side for a lot of concern about what we're doing in terms of borrowing money, the annual deficit where it is, and the death that's accumulating and seculating. Quite quickly, I'm going to say I don't hear much out of either the most likely candidates, whether it's Donald Trump or Joe Biden right now about really getting on our arms around that.
Well, you know you asked about geopolitics and whether that's a topic of discussion, Yes, I do think more relevant to the deal world, which is what we do at MOLUS.
Is the interest rights.
And it's been very interesting to see the reaction of the markets after Chairman Powell has pretty much indicated that the time for raising rates is subsided, and now the market is trying to assess when there will be a cut, whether we'll be at this level for longer. But really very few people are talking about increasing rates this here, which is helping. I think the overall investor outlook for more transactions, more deals to come.
And when you.
Look at Washington and how they view interest rates, if the market's saying, hey, we can maybe live with some more certainty now at these levels, the problem is in Washington, these levels are very expensive given the debt load that
has been undertaken. And you're right, neither Joe Biden or Donald Trump are talking about how do we solve this fiscal situation we've got And obviously at the core of it for the federal government is the increase and expense at the entitle level, and that's a really tough and tricky political mindfield.
One of the things that business craves is certainty, predictability, whatever it is high, low it or is as we know what it is. I'm going to pick on your old shop now the House Representatives of the moment, because there hasn't been a lot of certainty coming out of Congress, and particularly I would say on the House represents side. How large a factor is that in business planning? How can you plan ahead when you don't know we don't even know we're going to fund the government right now?
You know, David, it is amazing to see how many years we've lived with that kind of uncertainty and let's just say alleged dysfunction in Washington, it is pretty extraordinary. At least a decade, if not more, there has been this type of uncertainty with whether Congress is going to be able to even come up with the spending plan. We are facing in short order, within a week the potential shutdown of the government, and then a week after that a larger potential shutdown of the government.
And that is combined with the.
Press that the Senate has now put on the House of Representatives on the foreign aid package.
So there's a lot of uncertainty.
But what I see in the markets today, in the business world is almost trying to tune out that noise because people feel like at the end of the day, Washington will figure it out. And I do believe, given my experience in that town, that ultimately on the floor of the House of Representatives, it's too eighteen that matters. That's the majority number to get anything passed, and well over two eighteen members want to avoid any long shutdown
or any real catastrophes. So I do think in the end, markets are right that it'll get there, but it is uncertain, so it doesn't help things.
Okay, thank you so much for being Gregort's really appreciate Eric. That's Eric Canter of Molus. Finally, one more thought. Daron Sorkin said, decisions are made by those who show up, but there are lots of people who take the other road, don't show up and don't get to make the decisions. Something we've come to ghosting. Ghosting is nothing new. After all, they made a movie about Ferris Bueller ghosting his high school teacher repeatedly over thirty years ago.
Fueller canda get dressed and come on over, Fueller, he has been absence of the nine times.
But this ghosting business is getting a bit more serious than simply cutting class in high school. Major tech firms like Google have failed to show up for testimony in front of Senate committees.
I'm deeply disappointed at Google, one of the most influential digital platforms in the world, chose not to send its own top corporate leadership to engage this committee.
And Elon Musk tried his best to ghost Twitter when he tried to get out of his firm commitment to buy the company for forty three billion dollars, only to be told by a Delaware judge he had no choice but to show up and bring his money with him, and he did even more than that.
Elon Musk made his present felt at the company's headquarters yesterday, posting a video of himself walking into the offic says, carrying a kitchen. Sinke betweeted entering Twitter headquarters. Let that sink.
In Employment website indeed reports on a whole new area rife with ghosting hiring people. According to its survey, a substantial majority of job applicants have ghosted there would be employers, often more than once, and even more remarkable, eighty seven percent of those surveyed reported that they'd gone through the interview process, accepted a job, and then simply failed to
show up on their first day. I've never failed to show up for an interview or a job, but years ago I was on the receiving end of my own form of ghosting, and it was the Supreme Court that didn't show up. I was a lawyer in private practice representing an engineering firm that had lost a case where the damages were more than the company it was worth.
The state rules, the firm had to post a bond and the full amount of the judgment, which obviously couldn't do as it didn't have collateral to cover the bond. I petitioned the court over a weekend for a stay of the bond requirement and asked the court to decide whether the bond was constitutional. The court granted my stay and agreed to take the case. And then we waited for the case to be set for oral argument, and
we waited, and we waited. After a couple of years, the case just went away as the appeal proceeded without the bond, which I suppose is what the court had in mind all along. But then again, long before Aaron Sorkin talked about decisions being made by those who show up, the Danish philosopher Soren Kickergor even more famously said, not to decide is to decide. That does it. For this episode of Wall Street Week, I'm David Weston. See you next week,