Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Why Intrepid's Travis Likes Leucadia
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg pm L podcast. I'm Pim Fox.
- 0:08Speaker 1: Along with my co host Lisa Bramowitz. Each day we
- 0:11Speaker 1: bring you the most important, noteworthy, and useful interviews for
- 0:15Speaker 1: you and your money, whether you're at the grocery store
- 0:17Speaker 1: or the trading floor. Find the Bloomberg p m L
- 0:20Speaker 1: podcast on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Bloomberg dot Com. We
- 0:32Speaker 1: have been talking a lot about how this year has
- 0:34Speaker 1: been better for stock pickers because there is more divergence
- 0:38Speaker 1: between shares and it's less of a macro story and
- 0:41Speaker 1: moving more towards specific company stories. Mark Travis knows this
- 0:46Speaker 1: as well as anyone President chief executive officer of Intrepid
- 0:49Speaker 1: Capital Funds with nearly one billion dollars under management based
- 0:53Speaker 1: in Jacksonville, Florida, and Mark, you know I'm wondering. I
- 0:57Speaker 1: was looking through some of your top picks and the
- 1:00Speaker 1: one that really caught my eye was Leucadia because this
- 1:03Speaker 1: firm is an interesting bet on the boutique Jeffreys, which
- 1:10Speaker 1: is at the heart of trading and a lot of
- 1:13Speaker 1: people think of as a bell weather for the rest
- 1:15Speaker 1: of Wall Street. Since the report earlier, given the fact
- 1:18Speaker 1: that we are seeing lower trading results out of some
- 1:21Speaker 1: of the banks. Does that weigh on your decision to
- 1:25Speaker 1: sell or buy Lucadia, Well, Lisa, it's a great example
- 1:29Speaker 1: of value lating security for us and in trepic capital.
- 1:33Speaker 1: When we bought it in the high teens, it was
- 1:35Speaker 1: at a discount to tangible book and as you're aware,
- 1:39Speaker 1: UM Jeffreys is a material part of that of it,
- 1:43Speaker 1: and it had been knocked down by fixed income trading
- 1:46Speaker 1: at Jeffreys and UM also National Beef. The spreads were
- 1:50Speaker 1: tight between UM, you know, cost of cattle and what
- 1:53Speaker 1: they could sell them for. That's since widened out, and
- 1:56Speaker 1: and UM Jeffreys is also reported improved fixed income trading UM.
- 2:01Speaker 1: So you know we've done well in the time we've
- 2:04Speaker 1: had it. I've followed Lukatia frankly since it was run
- 2:07Speaker 1: by UM Mr Cummings and Steinberg back in the day.
- 2:11Speaker 1: And it's really a kind of as some people refer
- 2:14Speaker 1: to as a mini Berkshire Hathaway, which I've also been
- 2:17Speaker 1: a shareholder, fortunately for a long period of time. So
- 2:20Speaker 1: UM they used to own a winery too, I believe,
- 2:23Speaker 1: and you used to get a discount. I believe you
- 2:25Speaker 1: were a stockholder. I mean, if the more you appeel
- 2:29Speaker 1: the onion PIM, the more you find it. Lucadia owns
- 2:33Speaker 1: um as. You know, it's got oil and gas, it's
- 2:36Speaker 1: got timber, it's got auto dealerships, It's got you know,
- 2:39Speaker 1: on and on. So UM, I think in a in
- 2:43Speaker 1: a world where there's very few miss priced securities, I
- 2:47Speaker 1: think it's not unreasonably priced, even at this point in
- 2:49Speaker 1: the you know, twenty six or seven dollar range. And um,
- 2:54Speaker 1: you know, I think if if Mr Hadler continues to
- 2:57Speaker 1: work as magic at Jeffreys, I think we'll improved share price,
- 3:01Speaker 1: not to mention the other subcomponent parts, it will hopefully
- 3:05Speaker 1: do well in addition to that. So Mark, I want
- 3:09Speaker 1: to ask you about one particular company that you want
- 3:11Speaker 1: to focus on. This is Sintel. And the reason I
- 3:14Speaker 1: want to do this is because I don't know whether
- 3:16Speaker 1: you've obviously I'm sure paid attention to the back and
- 3:19Speaker 1: forth between financial technology and the ability to test certain
- 3:23Speaker 1: systems and so on. They've got a big market in
- 3:26Speaker 1: banking capital markets as well as cards and payments. I
- 3:30Speaker 1: also note that there's the new chief executive coming into
- 3:33Speaker 1: Bank of New York, Mellon, who was formerly the chief
- 3:35Speaker 1: executive at Visa. So these kinds of industries are no
- 3:40Speaker 1: longer strictly banks or or strictly payment systems. What if
- 3:45Speaker 1: you could talk about sintell and how that caught your attention. Well,
- 3:48Speaker 1: I think that there are three biggest customers are m X,
- 3:52Speaker 1: State Street, and UM that acts and the way we
- 3:57Speaker 1: became involved, I believe of him is a pre announced
- 4:01Speaker 1: revenue decline. They pre announced maybe fifty million dollars off
- 4:05Speaker 1: the top, and it knocked the shares down, But I
- 4:08Speaker 1: think it was really driven by costco firing m X
- 4:13Speaker 1: and MX pulling back the throttle on discretionary I T spending.
- 4:17Speaker 1: UM management has bought a big sluck of slug of shares.
- 4:22Speaker 1: They owned a significant part of it already. I think
- 4:25Speaker 1: the h one Visa issue with Trump now and the
- 4:29Speaker 1: executive office is somewhat of a problematic for them, and
- 4:34Speaker 1: UM some of the other parts of the you know,
- 4:37Speaker 1: technology space. UM uh, there's concerned that they haven't adapted
- 4:42Speaker 1: to social media and whatever. But in the verticals where
- 4:45Speaker 1: they are, I think they have very good margins, a
- 4:49Speaker 1: lot of free cash flow, and UM, you know that's
- 4:52Speaker 1: that's the position we're comfortable to wait until that cash
- 4:55Speaker 1: bubbles forth and you get a price in the mid
- 4:58Speaker 1: twenties versus six seventeen dollars today. Mark what's your time
- 5:02Speaker 1: horizon when you're investing forever? All right? I wish we
- 5:06Speaker 1: all had forever? No, this is important because I feel
- 5:09Speaker 1: like right now people are saying things are very highly valued.
- 5:12Speaker 1: Perhaps they are, but you can't invest in nothing if
- 5:14Speaker 1: your time horizons forever. Well. Our our premise, Lisa and
- 5:18Speaker 1: Intrepid Capital Funds has always been somewhat different, as Pim
- 5:21Speaker 1: can not has head or shake his head one way
- 5:23Speaker 1: or the other. But our our premises we want to
- 5:26Speaker 1: find a material discount to a private market value using
- 5:29Speaker 1: pretty high discount rates in our cash flow, and or
- 5:33Speaker 1: we want to do an asset valuation break up again
- 5:36Speaker 1: not making aggressive of assumptions about the current market values,
- 5:39Speaker 1: and can we find a discount and if we can't
- 5:41Speaker 1: find one, will default to cash. So the analogy I
- 5:46Speaker 1: use for people is when prices are high, cash is high.
- 5:48Speaker 1: When prices are low, cash is low. Alright, So how
- 5:51Speaker 1: high is your cash holding right now? It's about how
- 5:54Speaker 1: is that compared to say a year ago. Well, I've
- 5:57Speaker 1: had some inflows, I've had some bonds uh old and
- 6:00Speaker 1: I've had some securities bought out. Um it's higher though,
- 6:04Speaker 1: I'm guessing it's six eight percent higher than it was
- 6:08Speaker 1: this time last year. And how is the distribution between
- 6:10Speaker 1: bonds and stocks changed? Stocks have come down, bonds have
- 6:15Speaker 1: held about the same. Really, is it? Is it government
- 6:18Speaker 1: or is it? It's always been kind of crossover paper alright,
- 6:22Speaker 1: to like the double and triple B kind of Yeah,
- 6:25Speaker 1: we dig around. The most interesting piece of paper on
- 6:27Speaker 1: right now is a Primaro mining convert um. It trades
- 6:31Speaker 1: about fifty eight since on the dollar. They have a
- 6:33Speaker 1: single mind in Mexico and the Mexicans going strike until
- 6:37Speaker 1: their wives tell them they have to go back to
- 6:39Speaker 1: work and then the bondle rally and or whatever happens
- 6:42Speaker 1: to goal prices. What's the biggest challenge right now to
- 6:46Speaker 1: get people interested in stocks? We keep hearing about e
- 6:49Speaker 1: t FS, index funds, low cost so on. People still
- 6:55Speaker 1: interested in actual companies, like investing in businesses. You know,
- 6:59Speaker 1: it's interesting and you mentioned that PIM we helped sponsor,
- 7:02Speaker 1: in fact, we sponsor Bloomberg machine. At the University of
- 7:05Speaker 1: North Florida, they have what they call the Osprey investment group,
- 7:09Speaker 1: and I go every year and listen to these kids
- 7:11Speaker 1: talk and they talk about the portfolio, and basically they
- 7:13Speaker 1: bring him in in September October and they manage the
- 7:16Speaker 1: money until April May and then they report he did
- 7:19Speaker 1: air quotes, go on. Manage the money, yeah, and they
- 7:24Speaker 1: you know, but it's a very trading centric philosophy and
- 7:27Speaker 1: a lot of e t f s and what have you.
- 7:30Speaker 1: And I made a comment to somebody recently, I said,
- 7:32Speaker 1: I think they're probably bright kids, but I'd have to
- 7:34Speaker 1: detrain them before they could work for me. So I
- 7:37Speaker 1: wish it was a free lunch in the capital markets.
- 7:40Speaker 1: I haven't been able to find one, and I don't
- 7:42Speaker 1: think e t s are not necessarily a free lunch. Um.
- 7:45Speaker 1: I want to find a good business at a good
- 7:47Speaker 1: price and hang onto it as long as I can.
- 7:50Speaker 1: I want of thanks very much for coming in and
- 7:53Speaker 1: spending time with us. As always, Mark Travisy is the
- 7:55Speaker 1: president chief executive of Intrepid Capital, based in Jacksonville, Florida.
- 8:13Speaker 1: I want to turn our attention now to a topic
- 8:16Speaker 1: of private equity and joining us as Eric Hershey is
- 8:19Speaker 1: the vice chairman and the head of Strategic initiatives for
- 8:21Speaker 1: Hamilton's Lane assets under management about forty billion dollars based
- 8:26Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, Eric, thank you for being with us here
- 8:28Speaker 1: in the studio. I just want to cast your mind
- 8:31Speaker 1: back to March one of this year. There were two
- 8:33Speaker 1: I p O s that kind of priced on the
- 8:35Speaker 1: same day. Right. One was Hamilton's Lane and the other
- 8:39Speaker 1: was Snap. The shares of Hamilton's Lane are up thirty
- 8:43Speaker 1: nine percent since the I p O and the shares
- 8:48Speaker 1: of Snap are down twelve How did you guys do this? Well?
- 8:54Speaker 1: I think this certly shows the interest in the alternative side,
- 8:57Speaker 1: that it's perhaps not as disappearing as an asset classes
- 9:01Speaker 1: as I think perhaps other businesses. But it was funny
- 9:04Speaker 1: we were kind of watching them along the way, and
- 9:07Speaker 1: businesses have nothing to do with each other, and yet
- 9:09Speaker 1: we were being kind of compared all the time because
- 9:12Speaker 1: it's where investors same day. Well, I have to wonder,
- 9:16Speaker 1: you know, last night Cowper's Board California Pension, the biggest
- 9:22Speaker 1: pension plan public pension in the country, said that it
- 9:25Speaker 1: was exploring direct investing in order to get around paying
- 9:29Speaker 1: private equity firm such high fees. Uh. Do you hear
- 9:33Speaker 1: a lot about investors, clients hoping to reduce their fees,
- 9:37Speaker 1: and do you expect this to be an ongoing pressure?
- 9:39Speaker 1: I think, Look, we live in a world where everyone
- 9:41Speaker 1: wants to get more for less, and it's whether it's
- 9:44Speaker 1: in the restaurant business, or whether it's in the investment business,
- 9:47Speaker 1: whether it's in the retail space. Every client consumer is
- 9:51Speaker 1: focused on trying to get the most value for their dollar.
- 9:54Speaker 1: And the pension funds are not any different. Nobody loves
- 9:57Speaker 1: to pay fees. But you gotta step back and ask
- 10:01Speaker 1: the question of just because you don't like to pay fees,
- 10:03Speaker 1: can you actually replicate the returns yourself with the resources
- 10:07Speaker 1: you have at your disposal. That I think is the dilemma.
- 10:10Speaker 1: I think we see it. We certainly hear a lot
- 10:11Speaker 1: of institutions talking about trying to bypass this and bypass that.
- 10:16Speaker 1: But then you sort of nod and say, okay, well
- 10:18Speaker 1: what does that mean for your own infrastructure, your own resources,
- 10:22Speaker 1: and can you actually attract and get the people necessary
- 10:25Speaker 1: to generate the performance that you're seeing across the asset class? Eric,
- 10:29Speaker 1: you're recently closed a fund. This is the Hamilton Lanes
- 10:33Speaker 1: Strategic Opportunities Fund designed to target private credit investments around
- 10:38Speaker 1: the globe. Just tell us quickly about the fund and
- 10:41Speaker 1: how much you raised and what was the target. Maybe
- 10:43Speaker 1: that tells people something about demand. Yeah, so we raised
- 10:46Speaker 1: a significant amount over the target. And I think what
- 10:49Speaker 1: it reflects is the fact that private credit is really
- 10:51Speaker 1: the booming part of our overall industry. I think when
- 10:55Speaker 1: you see as a kind of a yield starved overall environment,
- 10:58Speaker 1: you're seeing investors just rapidly you kind of redeploy public
- 11:01Speaker 1: fixed income assets into private fixed income assets, and so
- 11:06Speaker 1: the market on the private side much more inefficient. Frankly,
- 11:09Speaker 1: it's growing in scale. A lot of the practitioners the
- 11:12Speaker 1: banks have been kind of knocked out of the business,
- 11:14Speaker 1: and so you're seeing more of the kind of the
- 11:16Speaker 1: private market GPS kind of stepping in to fill that void.
- 11:19Speaker 1: And so again, returns have been very good. The spreads
- 11:22Speaker 1: against the public market have been very, very wide, and
- 11:25Speaker 1: you're seeing people who are happy to trade liquidity today
- 11:28Speaker 1: for higher returns, and I think that's been a real shift.
- 11:31Speaker 1: So the investment grade corporate on market in the US
- 11:33Speaker 1: is about five point nine trillion dollars. The high yield
- 11:36Speaker 1: public I'm talking about is one point three trillion dollars.
- 11:39Speaker 1: How big in context? Just putting that into context, how
- 11:42Speaker 1: big is this private debt market and how big has
- 11:46Speaker 1: it grown? So it's tiny in context of that tiny,
- 11:49Speaker 1: just like the entire private markets are tiny. We're looking
- 11:51Speaker 1: at fundraising statistics last year and total dollars deployed. If
- 11:55Speaker 1: you look at the total dollars invested across the entire
- 11:58Speaker 1: private equity landscape, it wasn't enough money deployed last year
- 12:01Speaker 1: to go buy Apple. I mean, that's the thing that
- 12:03Speaker 1: I think when you step back and put it in
- 12:05Speaker 1: context of the private markets are small in any metric
- 12:10Speaker 1: in comparison to the public markets, but they're growing. But
- 12:13Speaker 1: they're growing, and there's a lot of money chasing them.
- 12:15Speaker 1: How concerned are you about these UH securities becoming overvalued
- 12:19Speaker 1: at this point? Yeah? So I think the private markets
- 12:21Speaker 1: have gotten expensive like the rest of the markets have
- 12:23Speaker 1: gotten expensive. I think if you put the private markets
- 12:25Speaker 1: in context of the public side, there you actually see
- 12:28Speaker 1: that the private is still trading at a material discount
- 12:31Speaker 1: to the public markets, and it should. Again a real
- 12:33Speaker 1: lack of liquidity, and so again investors are kind of
- 12:36Speaker 1: weighing that. I go back to my earlier comment. I
- 12:39Speaker 1: think one of the things that's changing so much among
- 12:41Speaker 1: the institutional investors how they think and value and price liquidity.
- 12:46Speaker 1: I think, going into the financial crisis, most of them
- 12:48Speaker 1: frankly overvalued liquidity. I think coming out of this, many
- 12:52Speaker 1: of them are beginning to shift and say, we're pension
- 12:54Speaker 1: We're gonna be around for decades, if not hundreds of years.
- 12:58Speaker 1: We can probably start to take the chan ants of
- 13:00Speaker 1: putting a lot more assets in an ill liquid bucket
- 13:03Speaker 1: and take the better longer term returns for that. So
- 13:05Speaker 1: the pendulum is swinging back to h accepting a liquidity.
- 13:09Speaker 1: Eric Hush, thank you so much for joining us. Eric
- 13:11Speaker 1: Kush's vice chairman and head of strategic Initiatives at Hamilton Lane,
- 13:15Speaker 1: which oversees about forty billion dollars and it's based in Philadelphia. Well,
- 13:32Speaker 1: Netflix shares are soaring, everyone's back in love with this
- 13:36Speaker 1: video streaming service, and yet that cash burn just always
- 13:42Speaker 1: is amazing. To Shara Ovid, who joins us now. Shara
- 13:45Speaker 1: Ovida is a Bloomberg gad Fly columnist who has been
- 13:48Speaker 1: talking a lot about this over the past two days,
- 13:50Speaker 1: and I've been participating, so I thought, why don't we
- 13:53Speaker 1: just talk to each other. Let's talk to each other.
- 13:54Speaker 1: We need Yeah, we have the same conversation over and
- 13:57Speaker 1: over again, Shira. So what's going on here and why
- 14:01Speaker 1: are stock investors dismissing the fact that this company just
- 14:05Speaker 1: can't seem to make money? Well, look, everything is a
- 14:07Speaker 1: trade off right in in how you run a company.
- 14:10Speaker 1: And Netflix has made a concerted strategy to try to
- 14:13Speaker 1: grow its subscriber base as quickly as it possibly can
- 14:16Speaker 1: in the US and outside, and as a result of that,
- 14:19Speaker 1: it is hemorrhaging cash that haven't been free cash flow
- 14:23Speaker 1: positive for three years. In the last twelve months, the
- 14:27Speaker 1: free cash flow is negative two point one billion dollars, which,
- 14:32Speaker 1: as I pointed out in my Gatfly column yesterday's bigger
- 14:35Speaker 1: than the negative free cash flow at Tesla, which is
- 14:38Speaker 1: sort of notorious for burning cash like there's no tomorrow. Sure,
- 14:43Speaker 1: you know we've heard this kind of story before. When
- 14:46Speaker 1: you talk about subscriber growth, my mind turns back to
- 14:50Speaker 1: a O L and the idea that every month you
- 14:54Speaker 1: would wait for those subscriber numbers, and if they were
- 14:57Speaker 1: positive or exceeded estimates, then stock moved higher, if not lower,
- 15:02Speaker 1: and then eventually of course you sell the company to
- 15:05Speaker 1: Time Warner. Uh. This has got a market cap of
- 15:07Speaker 1: about seventy eight billion dollars, which I think equals maybe
- 15:12Speaker 1: what cash Apple has on its balance sheet. This is
- 15:16Speaker 1: sticky money, though, this is different than this is like
- 15:19Speaker 1: its own cable system, isn't it. Yeah, it's pretty sticky.
- 15:22Speaker 1: I mean, look, you can. Yeah, it's not very expensive
- 15:27Speaker 1: at least if you you know, for most households in
- 15:30Speaker 1: the US, that's not very expensive. And it is pretty sticky.
- 15:32Speaker 1: Although you can cancel Netflix at any time, right, It's
- 15:35Speaker 1: it's not exactly a good luck trying to do that
- 15:39Speaker 1: if you've got a family, Yes, exactly. I mean, look,
- 15:41Speaker 1: the fact is that a lot of Netflix subscribers really
- 15:44Speaker 1: like it and feel like they get a lot of
- 15:46Speaker 1: value out of that ten bucks a month. Well, they
- 15:48Speaker 1: got all the content to they get. The House of Cards.
- 15:50Speaker 1: Aren't just the new black, right, I mean, these are
- 15:52Speaker 1: all hit programs that you're not going to watch anywhere
- 15:53Speaker 1: else I'm not. I mean, look, Netflix has a hunt
- 15:56Speaker 1: more than a hundred million subscribers globally, in fifty million
- 16:01Speaker 1: in the United States. That's roughly half of the households
- 16:04Speaker 1: in the United States. With the broadband internet access. So
- 16:08Speaker 1: by any measure, what they have done to build this
- 16:10Speaker 1: company is incredibly impressive. They've changed the nature of entertainment. So, uh,
- 16:15Speaker 1: you know, him was saying that they have a market
- 16:17Speaker 1: cap of about seventy eight billion dollars, which makes them
- 16:20Speaker 1: a very expensive takeover target if someone were interested in that. However,
- 16:25Speaker 1: you do have to wonder if a conglomerate like Amazon
- 16:31Speaker 1: that has perhaps broader distribution and more diversified streams of
- 16:36Speaker 1: revenue might do well to own a company like this
- 16:39Speaker 1: rather than trying to go it alone and compete in
- 16:42Speaker 1: the content game. Is there any talk of that? Over
- 16:45Speaker 1: the years, Netflix has definitely been the subject of takeover speculation, rumors,
- 16:51Speaker 1: wish for thinking whatever you want to call it. A
- 16:53Speaker 1: Disney and Apple or among the companies that are often
- 16:56Speaker 1: mentioned as potential acquirers of Netflix. But yeah, it is
- 17:00Speaker 1: a billion dollar plus company, so with a takeover premium,
- 17:03Speaker 1: that's a hundred billion dollars even for Apple, that's a
- 17:07Speaker 1: very large acquisition, so it's no easy feet And also, look,
- 17:10Speaker 1: if you look at Amazon, that's a company that has
- 17:13Speaker 1: sort of built a mini Netflix on its own without
- 17:16Speaker 1: having to buy Netflix, and um, Apple and Facebook both
- 17:20Speaker 1: have uh web video ambitions of their own that they're
- 17:24Speaker 1: doing in how so, it's not impossible to sort of
- 17:27Speaker 1: replicate Netflix or get close to replicating Netflix without buying Netflix.
- 17:31Speaker 1: So Netflix expects to keep burning cash. What could they
- 17:34Speaker 1: do that would change your mind about how damaging our not? Uh? Well,
- 17:40Speaker 1: I I guess sustained subscriber growth would be helpful. And
- 17:45Speaker 1: at some point, right and I don't know when that is, UM,
- 17:49Speaker 1: they're gonna have to start showing that operating leverage right
- 17:52Speaker 1: that where that that switch flips and they start they
- 17:57Speaker 1: go from burning cash to generating cash. But until I
- 18:01Speaker 1: see that actually happening, I think it's just worthwhile to
- 18:04Speaker 1: keep reminding people this is not a strategy without risks.
- 18:07Speaker 1: And if you look at the stock market, it's pricing
- 18:10Speaker 1: in that Netflix is going to be totally fine. And
- 18:14Speaker 1: I'm just saying, look, this is a this is a
- 18:17Speaker 1: risky strategy where they're burning cash in order to grow
- 18:20Speaker 1: and maybe that'll turn out great or maybe it won't.
- 18:23Speaker 1: I want to thank you very much, Sharra Overday Bloomberg
- 18:26Speaker 1: Gadfly columnists when it comes to all things technology and uh,
- 18:29Speaker 1: I encourage you to read her latest column at Bloomberg
- 18:33Speaker 1: dot com. All right, let's visit them with our congressional reporter,
- 18:49Speaker 1: Laura lit Then she joins us from Washington, and Laura,
- 18:53Speaker 1: thanks very much for being with us. A long night
- 18:55Speaker 1: or a short night for Senate Republicans, Well, last night
- 18:59Speaker 1: was the long night for reporters trying to cover them.
- 19:02Speaker 1: But I don't expect tonight will be a late night now.
- 19:05Speaker 1: I think they're trying to regroup. And the first thing
- 19:07Speaker 1: that will happen today in the big moment, will be
- 19:09Speaker 1: when Senate Republicans have a caucus meeting at two pm
- 19:12Speaker 1: and try to figure out what they're going to do next.
- 19:14Speaker 1: And um, yeah, you know there's gonna be a lot
- 19:17Speaker 1: of feedback from McConnell from his rank and file. I'm
- 19:20Speaker 1: sure that there will be. I mean, this is a
- 19:22Speaker 1: huge loss for him. This is really this is the
- 19:24Speaker 1: first time ever that he's the leader of the Republicans
- 19:27Speaker 1: while they're in a majority. And how much does this
- 19:31Speaker 1: set back his agenda? It potentially causes some loss of
- 19:37Speaker 1: momentum for other issues they really have in the Senate
- 19:41Speaker 1: other than confirming Neil Gorssh which was an a plus
- 19:44Speaker 1: accomplishment for the Republicans of our President Trump. They have
- 19:47Speaker 1: largely been simply doing confirmations of agencies and assistant secretaries
- 19:53Speaker 1: and all kinds of positions after they moved from the
- 19:55Speaker 1: cabinet and have not really been moving very much in
- 19:57Speaker 1: policy wise. And this is a this is what they
- 20:01Speaker 1: spent half a year on in the House, in the Senate.
- 20:03Speaker 1: Uh And now they're going to have to try to
- 20:06Speaker 1: see if they have lost momentum on other issues like
- 20:11Speaker 1: the spending bills for next fiscal year, where they will
- 20:14Speaker 1: need some bipartisan support. It might give Democrats a little
- 20:17Speaker 1: more edge and those kind of talks over agency funding.
- 20:20Speaker 1: And there's also an effort by the Republicans to push
- 20:23Speaker 1: through a big overhaul of the tax code. Now, is
- 20:27Speaker 1: there some procedural issues that are affected by the fact
- 20:32Speaker 1: that this does not look like it will pass Because
- 20:35Speaker 1: I understand that the president has sixty days from the
- 20:39Speaker 1: time that he takes office. I believe in order to
- 20:43Speaker 1: let's say, undo legislation or executive orders that were passed
- 20:47Speaker 1: by a previous administration. That's not unusual. Well, that that
- 20:52Speaker 1: time period, if you're talking about the Congressional Review Act,
- 20:55Speaker 1: that that time perade passed us in May. That's what
- 20:58Speaker 1: I mean. In other words, now they're going to have
- 20:59Speaker 1: to put something together. Yes, and this is UH, you know,
- 21:05Speaker 1: turning away from the regulatory agenda which that related to UM.
- 21:10Speaker 1: They what will happen with healthcare is this vote is
- 21:13Speaker 1: likely to UM to fail. To the vote they're going
- 21:18Speaker 1: to turn to now as an alternative, which is simply
- 21:20Speaker 1: to repeal Obamacare and then replace it in two years.
- 21:23Speaker 1: And then what we end to pay will happen with
- 21:25Speaker 1: healthcare is that we will move into kind of like
- 21:27Speaker 1: bipartisan mode, UH with Democrats to talk about things like
- 21:32Speaker 1: hasse sharing, subsidies for insurers on the Obamacare exchanges, and
- 21:37Speaker 1: other things that can get support in both parties. Laura,
- 21:40Speaker 1: how did this develop so quickly? Because there was a
- 21:43Speaker 1: lot of back and forth and a lot of game
- 21:46Speaker 1: playing and moving the needle in different directions, and and UH,
- 21:49Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell had quite a bit of money he could
- 21:52Speaker 1: kind of play with trying to get UH senators on
- 21:55Speaker 1: board with him. And then all of a sudden overnight
- 21:57Speaker 1: boom to senators parted way together with McConnell giving him
- 22:02Speaker 1: UH to making it two votes short. Of the majority
- 22:05Speaker 1: that he needed to pass this bill. How did this
- 22:07Speaker 1: develop so quickly? It was a big surprise. In fact,
- 22:10Speaker 1: the President had just finished a meeting, probably about an
- 22:14Speaker 1: hour before the two senators Mike Lee and Um Jerry
- 22:20Speaker 1: Moran came out against the bill. Uh. He was meeting
- 22:23Speaker 1: to talk with seven senators, including two members of the leadership,
- 22:26Speaker 1: about strategy on the bill and about a path forward.
- 22:29Speaker 1: Lindsey Graham had just told me and other reporters that
- 22:32Speaker 1: he got off a cell phone with John McCain UM
- 22:35Speaker 1: heading into a Senate vote where McCain, whose surgery had
- 22:39Speaker 1: had deprived McConnell of the votes to proceed right away
- 22:43Speaker 1: over the weekend. H McCain was telling Graham. He said
- 22:46Speaker 1: that he was just itching to get back to Washington
- 22:49Speaker 1: and be back here next week to resume things. No
- 22:50Speaker 1: one was really expecting this, and what happened with the
- 22:53Speaker 1: two senators they announced right at the same time, and
- 22:56Speaker 1: it had the feeling of what we would call a
- 22:58Speaker 1: pairing where the two of them had need to do this,
- 23:00Speaker 1: then neither of them had to be the bad guy
- 23:02Speaker 1: who is the final death Knell and Um big surprise
- 23:05Speaker 1: enough so that at Bloomberg. We have people who monitor
- 23:08Speaker 1: social media. We had someone in Sydney, Australia who is
- 23:11Speaker 1: on duty who noticed their pair of tweets go out
- 23:14Speaker 1: at the same time and alerted us right away, and
- 23:15Speaker 1: we were uh writing stories for many hours after that. Now,
- 23:20Speaker 1: in the in the prospect of just repealing the Affordable
- 23:25Speaker 1: Care Act, what happens to it, Well, what what will
- 23:31Speaker 1: happen is they will fail to get the votes to
- 23:34Speaker 1: repeal it. We'll widely expected only a small number will
- 23:38Speaker 1: get the votes, so that after all this, they're not
- 23:40Speaker 1: even going to get some kind of uh pyr pyrate victory. Uh,
- 23:45Speaker 1: it would appear on that front. No, Uh, we don't
- 23:48Speaker 1: expect something to pass in the Senate. Uh. Paul Ryan,
- 23:52Speaker 1: I think if he put a vote like that to
- 23:54Speaker 1: the House, there's some question. Maybe something like that could
- 23:57Speaker 1: go through, but it will it will effectively die. I
- 24:00Speaker 1: believe after this voted, let's everybody be on record, um,
- 24:04Speaker 1: and then they will move on to something else, which
- 24:07Speaker 1: will be something that might get some more democratic support.
- 24:12Speaker 1: Laura Livin, thank you so much for joining us, and
- 24:14Speaker 1: I hope you get some sleep tonight. Laura Litvin, Congressional
- 24:17Speaker 1: reporter for Bloomberg who has been hard at work of
- 24:20Speaker 1: burning the midnight oil to follow the quickly developing uh,
- 24:25Speaker 1: I mean demise of this bill. Truly UH surprising. I
- 24:30Speaker 1: woke up and was not um, I was not expecting this.
- 24:36Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg P and L podcast.
- 24:39Speaker 1: You can subscribe and listen to interviews at Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud,
- 24:43Speaker 1: or whatever podcast platform you prefer. I'm Pim Fox. I'm
- 24:46Speaker 1: on Twitter at pim Fox. I'm on Twitter at Lisa Abramo.
- 24:50Speaker 1: It's one before the podcast. You can always catch us
- 24:53Speaker 1: worldwide on Bloomberg Radio