Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Apple Is Ready to Make Long-Awaited Push Into Smart-Home Market
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- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios.
- 0:04Speaker 2: Podcasts.
- 0:05Speaker 3: Radio.
- 0:06Speaker 4: News.
- 0:09Speaker 5: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
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- 0:24Speaker 2: A lot of tech news out there. We want to
- 0:26Speaker 2: get to that. Matthew Bloxham, Senior Media and Tech Analyst
- 0:28Speaker 2: for Bloomberg Intelligence. Usually in London, he flies all the
- 0:32Speaker 2: way over here to New York, the world's financial capital.
- 0:35Speaker 2: And where is he today? He's at the Bloomberg offices
- 0:38Speaker 2: in Princeton, New Jersey, because that's where Bloomberg Intelligence Week,
- 0:42Speaker 2: that's where we got our start. Boy, how many years ago?
- 0:44Speaker 2: 17 years ago, we started Bloomberg Anthology down there in Princeton. Matt,
- 0:48Speaker 2: thanks so much for joining us here. I want to
- 0:50Speaker 2: start with Apple. Looks like Mark Gurman was reporting here
- 0:53Speaker 2: from Bloomberg News. Apple making plans to push into the
- 0:57Speaker 2: smart home market with a smart home hub code named J490.
- 1:02Speaker 2: That just rolls off the tongue. Talk to us about
- 1:05Speaker 2: what Apple's doing here in the home market.
- 1:09Speaker 6: Yes, I mean, obviously, they've been kind of pushing gradually
- 1:11Speaker 6: into the home market for quite some time, but mainly
- 1:13Speaker 6: through the kind of home speaker market with their kind
- 1:16Speaker 6: of HomePod and the HomePod Mini, which I think, you know,
- 1:19Speaker 6: hasn't been a runaway success the way you'd expect an
- 1:23Speaker 6: Apple product to be, I think, and, you know, Some
- 1:25Speaker 6: of that, I think, is the cost of the device.
- 1:27Speaker 6: Some of it, you know, it kind of is playing
- 1:29Speaker 6: to the Apple ecosystem. Some of it's about the fact
- 1:33Speaker 6: that Siri hasn't been actually that great as an AI assistant.
- 1:37Speaker 6: And it's been up against some pretty strong rivals in
- 1:40Speaker 6: the likes of Amazon and Google. So I think, you know,
- 1:43Speaker 6: this is a kind of revamp of that strategy in
- 1:45Speaker 6: the addition of this kind of home hub technology. devices,
- 1:48Speaker 6: kind of a concerted effort to kind of really push
- 1:51Speaker 6: forward and make a bigger splash in that market, you know,
- 1:55Speaker 6: and create these, you know, smart homes where you can
- 1:57Speaker 6: control your heating and a whole bunch of other things,
- 2:02Speaker 6: you know, through this kind of centralized hub. So let's see,
- 2:05Speaker 6: you know, so far it's not been a great hunting
- 2:07Speaker 6: ground for Apple, but maybe with this kind of revamp
- 2:10Speaker 6: and in particular with Siri AI, they can have a
- 2:14Speaker 6: better performing product and gain some more momentum.
- 2:17Speaker 7: Turning our attention a little bit more toward AI, the
- 2:20Speaker 7: news that the Federal Trade Commission is really looking at OpenAI, Anthropic,
- 2:25Speaker 7: and other AI companies around the safety of their products
- 2:30Speaker 7: amid recent cybersecurity incidents.
- 2:33Speaker 2: What are your thoughts.
- 2:34Speaker 7: With respect to how this may change those companies or
- 2:37Speaker 7: what changes may be on the horizon for them as
- 2:39Speaker 7: a result of this probe?
- 2:41Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, what I have to say is there's
- 2:43Speaker 6: just like so much going on across the industry when
- 2:47Speaker 6: it comes to safety. You know, collaboration, cooperation, agreement between
- 2:52Speaker 6: companies and, you know, the extent to which some of
- 2:55Speaker 6: this is anti-competitive or not. And, you know, whether it's
- 2:58Speaker 6: kind of really necessary. So I think there's so many
- 3:01Speaker 6: different things going on. Obviously, we have the kind of...
- 3:04Speaker 6: The agreement signed by close to two dozen execs with
- 3:09Speaker 6: Donald Trump and President Trump yesterday. So I think it's
- 3:13Speaker 6: an evolving space. I think the fact that we saw
- 3:16Speaker 6: that this agreement signed by so many executives does point
- 3:21Speaker 6: to the fact there are real concerns out there that
- 3:23Speaker 6: need to be addressed. Agreement within the industry is definitely
- 3:28Speaker 6: the quickest way to kind of make progress on this.
- 3:31Speaker 6: Possibly some kind of legislation is going to come at
- 3:34Speaker 6: some point in the future. But as we all know,
- 3:36Speaker 6: legislation takes time. There's a lot of differing views amongst
- 3:41Speaker 6: politicians about what legislations would look like. So I wouldn't
- 3:45Speaker 6: see anything coming any time soon on that front.
- 3:48Speaker 2: Matthew, I guess we're also waiting on IPOs for some
- 3:51Speaker 2: of these big AI names, Anthropic... OpenAI, it seems like
- 3:56Speaker 2: maybe they're kind of pushing these things back a little
- 3:59Speaker 2: bit for a variety of reasons. Where do you think
- 4:01Speaker 2: the market reception would be for some of these big IPOs?
- 4:06Speaker 2: Because the numbers they're talking about are pretty darn huge.
- 4:09Speaker 6: Yeah, they are. And, you know, I think that the
- 4:11Speaker 6: first number that people are looking to, particularly when you
- 4:14Speaker 6: look at Anthropic and OpenAI, is their annualized recurring revenue
- 4:19Speaker 6: or run rate revenue. And obviously that's been kind of
- 4:21Speaker 6: growing materially over the last 12 months. So as their
- 4:25Speaker 6: businesses scale. But that's kind of really the number that
- 4:28Speaker 6: these IPOs are going to be anchored on and the
- 4:31Speaker 6: revenue multiple you can get against that. So, I think
- 4:34Speaker 6: ultimately that's kind of still the most important thing. And
- 4:37Speaker 6: if perhaps they're delaying it, maybe it's a sign that
- 4:40Speaker 6: the momentum in their revenue isn't coming through as quickly
- 4:44Speaker 6: as they hoped. And playing into that, when investors look
- 4:47Speaker 6: to the longer term, they're trying to assess what is
- 4:50Speaker 6: the addressable market for these companies. And that's, I think,
- 4:53Speaker 6: where these kind of AI safety concerns come in, is
- 4:56Speaker 6: that if there are going to be more guardrails about
- 4:58Speaker 6: the pace at which they develop their frontier models, to
- 5:02Speaker 6: what extent does that slow the pace of adoption and
- 5:05Speaker 6: the revenue opportunity on a kind of three to five-year view?
- 5:09Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 5:16Speaker 5: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 5:20Speaker 5: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
- 5:23Speaker 5: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
- 5:26Speaker 5: you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- 5:31Speaker 2: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, he spoke with Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow
- 5:35Speaker 2: from OpenAI's Dev Day in San Francisco. He spoke on
- 5:39Speaker 2: concerns over AI safety, saying they will happily slow down
- 5:43Speaker 2: releases when needed.
- 5:45Speaker 8: When we need to make a decision about slowing down
- 5:49Speaker 8: our training or our model release so that we can
- 5:52Speaker 8: make more progress and put more of our attention into safety, alignment, monitoring, security,
- 5:59Speaker 8: we will happily do that. Now, of course, we're going
- 6:01Speaker 8: to continue to make progress, but the world should always
- 6:05Speaker 8: have confidence in our safety cases, in our safety claims,
- 6:10Speaker 8: and that we are going to be responsible with this technology.
- 6:13Speaker 4: All right.
- 6:13Speaker 2: That was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking with Bloomberg's Ed
- 6:17Speaker 2: Ludlow from OpenAI's Dev Day in San Francisco. We're now
- 6:20Speaker 2: joined by Ed Ludlow, Bloomberg tech host. I believe he's
- 6:24Speaker 2: down there in L.A. somewhere. You never know where this
- 6:26Speaker 2: guy is. Ed, thanks so much for joining us here.
- 6:28Speaker 2: I guess this whole safety guardrail thing, that narrative, it's
- 6:34Speaker 2: just not going away, is it? How do you think
- 6:37Speaker 2: this plays out?
- 6:37Speaker 1: What does Mr.
- 6:38Speaker 2: Altman think?
- 6:40Speaker 9: Yeah, I think what's been interesting over the last 24
- 6:42Speaker 9: hours is there is a combination now between the action
- 6:47Speaker 9: that OpenAI will or won't take on either delaying the
- 6:50Speaker 9: release of a model or pausing the training of a
- 6:53Speaker 9: generation of model and whether or not and when it
- 6:56Speaker 9: goes public. And so, you know, the way that Sam,
- 7:00Speaker 9: he actually pushed back on me pretty hard because I
- 7:02Speaker 9: asked him, is it that going public is incompatible with
- 7:06Speaker 9: the idea that you need to slow down the cadence
- 7:09Speaker 9: of release and pacing at the frontier?
- 7:11Speaker 2: And he said, not quite.
- 7:12Speaker 9: The whole point is that when you are a newly
- 7:15Speaker 9: public company, that's when it's most difficult.
- 7:18Speaker 2: You know this, Paul, right?
- 7:19Speaker 9: You know what it takes to go public, all the
- 7:21Speaker 9: internal audit, the requirements of you within 12 months of
- 7:25Speaker 9: going public. I think his point is like, it's not
- 7:28Speaker 9: just that you have your duty to shareholders. They want
- 7:31Speaker 9: to see growth, profit, et cetera, and that that's incompatible
- 7:34Speaker 9: with delaying or slowing down. It's that it's a body
- 7:38Speaker 9: of work, two bodies of work that require a lot
- 7:41Speaker 9: of the company. And so that was a fascinating discussion.
- 7:45Speaker 7: In the news as well with respect to their IPO.
- 7:49Speaker 7: What could open AI lose by waiting? Yeah.
- 7:54Speaker 9: So, what was interesting, we broke this story yesterday with
- 7:58Speaker 9: some curious timing, I have to admit, because it happened
- 8:00Speaker 9: during the keynote at their Dev Day. But sources are
- 8:04Speaker 9: telling us that they are in talks with their existing
- 8:07Speaker 9: investors to do a private market round, which you can
- 8:10Speaker 9: kind of see as a bridge to an IPO happening,
- 8:14Speaker 9: whether it's next year or even 2028, right? Like what
- 8:17Speaker 9: I hear a lot from sources is like, people are
- 8:20Speaker 9: pretty supportive with OpenAI taking its time anyway. And to
- 8:24Speaker 9: be fair, we talked to Sam Altman and OpenAI CFO
- 8:27Speaker 9: about this idea and the way that the CFO Sarah
- 8:29Speaker 9: Fryer put it is, you know, there is market demand
- 8:33Speaker 9: for them to do a private market round. But they
- 8:36Speaker 9: will go public eventually. They will go public when the
- 8:40Speaker 9: timing is just better. The environment right now is not
- 8:43Speaker 9: the right environment for them to do it. But I
- 8:45Speaker 9: think answering your question, my understanding is that everyone's pretty
- 8:48Speaker 9: calm about it, actually. The acceptance that Anthropic will likely
- 8:53Speaker 9: go public first.
- 8:54Speaker 2: So to the extent that there is another private round,
- 8:58Speaker 2: I'm assuming it's going to be at some higher valuation,
- 9:01Speaker 2: suggesting that at least the private market is still bullish
- 9:05Speaker 2: on this AI story.
- 9:07Speaker 6: Yes.
- 9:07Speaker 9: So the valuation that we reported is about $ 1. 4 trillion,
- 9:11Speaker 9: which would be up from $ 900 billion-ish, $ 850 billion to
- 9:16Speaker 9: $ 900 billion in its last private market round. Again, what
- 9:22Speaker 9: Sarah Fryer said on the record, because I said, here's
- 9:24Speaker 9: what we reported. What can you say was that there
- 9:27Speaker 9: is market demand for them to do this? You get
- 9:29Speaker 9: the sense this is the investors pushing them to do
- 9:32Speaker 9: it rather than them needing money. Because don't forget, when
- 9:35Speaker 9: they raised one hundred and twenty two billion dollars earlier
- 9:38Speaker 9: this year in a single round, that was a record
- 9:41Speaker 9: and all that money sitting on their balance sheet. So
- 9:43Speaker 9: right now there's like all this this debate about how
- 9:45Speaker 9: much cash they burn through for the compute. But they
- 9:48Speaker 9: do have a lot of cash, right? You know, sitting
- 9:51Speaker 9: sitting there ready to use.
- 9:53Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 10:00Speaker 5: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live
- 10:04Speaker 5: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
- 10:07Speaker 5: Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Listen on demand wherever
- 10:11Speaker 5: you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- 10:15Speaker 2: There's some bond deals out there in the marketplace right here.
- 10:18Speaker 2: I'm talking size. Paramount Skydance out with something like $ 51
- 10:23Speaker 2: or $ 52 billion. I don't know what's going on out there.
- 10:26Speaker 2: That's a lot of debt for a media company. Stephen Flynn,
- 10:29Speaker 2: it's his job to figure it all out. Stephen Flynn,
- 10:31Speaker 2: he's a credit analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Covers all the tech, media,
- 10:34Speaker 2: telecom space here. Talk to us just about the structure
- 10:38Speaker 2: of this deal. What's the company doing now in the marketplace?
- 10:41Speaker 6: Sure, Paul.
- 10:41Speaker 10: They're raising a lot of debt. They're bringing in a
- 10:44Speaker 10: lot of money. They're hitting various markets. They have two
- 10:48Speaker 10: components to the debt. There's the first lien debt that's
- 10:51Speaker 10: investment-grade rated.
- 10:52Speaker 4: They're doing loans, and they're doing U.S. dollar-denominated corporate bonds.
- 10:56Speaker 10: On the high-yield side, they have second lien bonds that
- 11:00Speaker 10: are high-yield rated, and they're hitting both the dollar market
- 11:03Speaker 10: and the euro market in high yield.
- 11:04Speaker 4: So there's multiple parts, they're hitting multiple markets.
- 11:07Speaker 7: In your opinion, what would be sort of the first
- 11:09Speaker 7: sign that that debt reduction plan is not working?
- 11:13Speaker 4: Well, let's hope it does work because they are putting
- 11:15Speaker 4: on a lot of debt. They're going to have a
- 11:17Speaker 4: lot of leverage.
- 11:19Speaker 10: What's expected is the company is going to be implementing
- 11:22Speaker 10: a ton of cost synergies, right? So They're starting out
- 11:25Speaker 10: with high leverage, but the goal is to de-lever, right?
- 11:27Speaker 10: And there's two components there, right? You could increase your
- 11:30Speaker 10: EBITDA to lower leverage, or you could reduce your debt
- 11:33Speaker 10: or net debt balance. So they're going to do two things.
- 11:35Speaker 10: Number one, they hope to grow the EBITDA, but a
- 11:37Speaker 10: big part of that is the cost synergy. So if
- 11:39Speaker 10: you look at the two companies, combine them, you're talking
- 11:42Speaker 10: about $ 12 billion of EBITDA.
- 11:43Speaker 4: They're looking for $ 6.
- 11:44Speaker 10: Billion of annual cost savings within three years. That is
- 11:47Speaker 10: a huge number. So that growing EBITDA will lower your
- 11:51Speaker 10: leverage ratio. Also, Once you get past a year or two,
- 11:54Speaker 10: they should start to generate a significant amount of free
- 11:56Speaker 10: cash flow.
- 11:57Speaker 4: And that free cash flow will be used to reduce
- 11:59Speaker 4: the debt. And that will get you to de-lever over
- 12:02Speaker 4: the next three years.
- 12:03Speaker 2: Bloomberg News is out with a great story on this
- 12:05Speaker 2: deal today. Just saying, hey, they wanted to get this
- 12:08Speaker 2: deal done like six months ago, or if not more.
- 12:12Speaker 2: But they had some delays, state's attorney generals kind of
- 12:15Speaker 2: holding up the deal. So that delay... What's happened in
- 12:18Speaker 2: those six months is interest rates have gone up dramatically.
- 12:20Speaker 2: So now this is going to cost them a lot more.
- 12:22Speaker 2: How much of a problem is that for them?
- 12:24Speaker 4: Yeah, it is going to cost them a lot more, right?
- 12:26Speaker 10: So if we think about it, they first announced plans to,
- 12:30Speaker 10: I think they offered $ 30 a share back in December
- 12:32Speaker 10: of 25. They agreed to $ 31 a share in late
- 12:35Speaker 10: February of this year. And you think about where the
- 12:39Speaker 10: credit markets have gone over.
- 12:40Speaker 4: That time, it's gone higher, right? So if we look
- 12:42Speaker 4: at the generic U.S.
- 12:44Speaker 10: 10-year Treasury bond, It's up about 100 basis points from
- 12:49Speaker 10: about 4.2% to 5.2%. The IG market is up about
- 12:52Speaker 10: 110 basis points up to about 6% in total. High
- 12:56Speaker 10: yield markets up about 160 basis points. It's now on
- 12:59Speaker 10: average 8.3%. So if you think about that significant rise
- 13:03Speaker 10: in the underlying markets, obviously in Paramount, they're issuing.
- 13:08Speaker 4: A lot of debt. It's going to come wide, right?
- 13:10Speaker 4: It's going to cost them a lot of money.
- 13:11Speaker 10: But if you think about that change, In total, they're
- 13:15Speaker 10: raising about $ 57.
- 13:16Speaker 4: Billion of debt with all the different markets that we
- 13:17Speaker 4: talked about.
- 13:19Speaker 10: An extra 100 to 150 basis points, that's an extra
- 13:21Speaker 10: $ 570 million to $ 850 million a year in interest expense.
- 13:26Speaker 7: Oh my goodness.
- 13:27Speaker 10: Now, the company is expected to generate significant free cash flow.
- 13:31Speaker 10: This will clearly put somewhat of a dent in that
- 13:33Speaker 10: free cash flow, but- hopefully the company will have the
- 13:37Speaker 10: capacity to deal with it.
- 13:38Speaker 2: You're a credit analyst. You don't rely on hopefully. I'm
- 13:42Speaker 2: an equity guy, so I say, ah, it's all going
- 13:43Speaker 2: to work out the way I buy the stock. You
- 13:45Speaker 2: guys really look at the numbers and can they actually
- 13:47Speaker 2: do it?
- 13:48Speaker 10: Yeah, well, like I said, we hope they can. But no,
- 13:50Speaker 10: the bonds are coming wide, right? So if you're a
- 13:53Speaker 10: bond investor, you're saying, hey, I have significant concerns, right?
- 13:57Speaker 10: Medium mergers don't have a great track record. There's a
- 14:00Speaker 10: lot of synergies that they have to cut.
- 14:02Speaker 5: Right?
- 14:02Speaker 10: There's some uncertainties there, but it's going to be a
- 14:04Speaker 10: big name in the market and it's coming really wide, right?
- 14:07Speaker 10: So if I don't own it and it performs or
- 14:09Speaker 10: if it tightens, I'm.
- 14:10Speaker 4: Going to underperform. So that's going to force people to
- 14:13Speaker 4: be involved.
- 14:14Speaker 7: The new secure debt will basically place them above unsecured
- 14:17Speaker 7: debt holders currently for Paramount.
- 14:20Speaker 1: How much of a problem is that?
- 14:22Speaker 7: And what does that mean for those investors who are
- 14:24Speaker 7: already investing in Paramount debt?
- 14:26Speaker 2: Sure.
- 14:26Speaker 10: So it's going to be a complicated capital structure with
- 14:29Speaker 10: many layers, right? So like you said, the first lien
- 14:31Speaker 10: is the first priority.
- 14:32Speaker 4: That's investment grade rated.
- 14:33Speaker 10: The new bonds they're offering are second lien, which are
- 14:36Speaker 10: high yield rated. Now, there's some legacy debt on the
- 14:39Speaker 10: Warner Brothers side that's exchanging at the second liens, and
- 14:41Speaker 10: then there'll be some stub pieces. You referenced the legacy
- 14:44Speaker 10: Paramount unsecured debt. So that will be behind a few.
- 14:47Speaker 4: Layers of debt.
- 14:49Speaker 10: Now, those bonds are yielding much more. They're trading at
- 14:51Speaker 10: large discounts to par. So a lot of those risk
- 14:54Speaker 10: factors are already in where the Paramount bonds are trading.
- 14:56Speaker 5: So it's interesting.
- 14:57Speaker 10: Paramount bonds were a part of the investment grade index
- 15:00Speaker 10: until I think it was March this year when they
- 15:02Speaker 10: got their last downgrade to junk.
- 15:04Speaker 4: They fell out of the index and into high yield.
- 15:07Speaker 1: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.
- 15:14Speaker 5: You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live
- 15:18Speaker 5: weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android
- 15:21Speaker 5: Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever
- 15:24Speaker 5: you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.
- 15:29Speaker 2: Well, the New York Times investigation found that DraftKings built
- 15:33Speaker 2: a machine learning model that scored customers by how much
- 15:36Speaker 2: they would lose for each free bet or bonus they received.
- 15:41Speaker 2: That's raised some concerns here, and it's a subject in
- 15:43Speaker 2: part of our next guest's opinion column. That's Gautam Mukunda.
- 15:47Speaker 2: He's a lecturer at the Yale School of Management, and
- 15:49Speaker 2: he is a Bloomberg opinion contributor. We are in the
- 15:53Speaker 2: era of warped entrepreneurship. What do you mean by that, Gautam?
- 15:57Speaker 3: So this is a DraftKings story, but it's not just
- 15:59Speaker 3: a DraftKings story. And for DraftKings, I'd almost just want
- 16:03Speaker 3: to ask the people who are doing this, if you
- 16:06Speaker 3: told your mother that what you did was using the
- 16:09Speaker 3: data science skills that you acquired over years of painstaking
- 16:12Speaker 3: work to find people who are problem gamblers and extract
- 16:16Speaker 3: the last bits of money from them and make it
- 16:18Speaker 3: harder for them to sort of separate themselves from their
- 16:20Speaker 3: gambling habit, Would you feel proud of yourself? Like, is
- 16:24Speaker 3: that something that your mom would say, gee, I'm really
- 16:26Speaker 3: glad you did that, son?
- 16:29Speaker 2: I sort of hope not. But I don't think it's
- 16:31Speaker 2: not just a.
- 16:31Speaker 3: DraftKings story, although the issues of gambling, you know, sort
- 16:35Speaker 3: of online sports gambling, what it's done or something we
- 16:37Speaker 3: really should address. It's that we have created a version
- 16:41Speaker 3: of too much of American capitalism that's sort of oriented
- 16:44Speaker 3: around predation, around making life worse for your customers and
- 16:48Speaker 3: your counterparties, gathering money for your sort of returns for
- 16:52Speaker 3: yourself instead of creating wealth, which is what capitalism is
- 16:54Speaker 3: supposed to be about.
- 16:56Speaker 7: In my opinion, what the most striking part of your
- 16:58Speaker 7: piece was is basically the dichotomy between this aspirational capitalism
- 17:05Speaker 7: and this predatory capitalism. And you had mentioned in centuries past,
- 17:09Speaker 7: we really were better at reining that in. What are
- 17:13Speaker 7: ways in which you see that possibly happening again in
- 17:17Speaker 7: this age of globalization, in this age of having so
- 17:21Speaker 7: much information about others at your disposal very quickly?
- 17:25Speaker 3: Yeah, I think there are two thrusts that we could take.
- 17:28Speaker 3: One is sort of issue by issue, area by area, right?
- 17:31Speaker 3: We just say that, look, It's not, you know, I
- 17:34Speaker 3: would just say broadly, allowing online sports gambling nationwide, that
- 17:37Speaker 3: was a Supreme Court decision. It was a catastrophically bad one.
- 17:39Speaker 2: It should be reversed.
- 17:40Speaker 3: But there are other, like, you know, you see private
- 17:42Speaker 3: equity companies that are monopolized in construction of fire trucks
- 17:45Speaker 3: and then jacking up the prices. There's just no excuse
- 17:47Speaker 3: for that kind of thing. Antitrust was designed for that.
- 17:50Speaker 3: We need to do that much more aggressively.
- 17:52Speaker 2: But the broader one is the idea that.
- 17:54Speaker 3: We need to reorient the American economy around people who
- 17:57Speaker 3: make things instead of sort of people whose idea of
- 17:59Speaker 3: running a company is how do you squeeze it for numbers?
- 18:01Speaker 3: The classic problem here is Boeing. We all watched what
- 18:05Speaker 3: happened to Boeing and its slow recovery now. But, like,
- 18:08Speaker 3: if you were running an airplane company, you should think
- 18:11Speaker 3: that your product is airplanes and not a stock price.
- 18:15Speaker 3: And that involves sort of a pervasive attempt to de-financialize
- 18:18Speaker 3: the economy and really put it in charge of people
- 18:20Speaker 3: who like to make things, as opposed to just people
- 18:24Speaker 3: who are playing games with it.
- 18:26Speaker 2: But we've trained generations, and one could argue the backbone
- 18:30Speaker 2: of American capitalism is to maximize profitability for shareholders, full stop.
- 18:35Speaker 2: Are you suggesting something different? So I am, because.
- 18:39Speaker 3: It's sort of very important to say this. I do
- 18:41Speaker 3: this to my students every year. I'll ask them, do
- 18:44Speaker 3: you as a CEO in the United States have a
- 18:46Speaker 3: fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder returns? And most of them
- 18:49Speaker 3: will say yes, and they are wrong. That is a
- 18:52Speaker 3: matter of black letter law. It is not something that
- 18:54Speaker 3: is hotly debated in the law. You as a CEO
- 18:57Speaker 3: have a responsibility to exercise your best business judgment in
- 19:02Speaker 3: the interest of shareholders.
- 19:04Speaker 2: That's not the same thing.
- 19:06Speaker 3: And so, yeah, Paul, I would say very simply, The
- 19:10Speaker 3: model we have created that does this, it's not just
- 19:13Speaker 3: bad for workers and the environment and stakeholders and society.
- 19:16Speaker 2: It's bad for shareholders.
- 19:18Speaker 3: Before we had this model of short-term shareholder primacy, shareholder
- 19:22Speaker 3: returns were better than they are now.
- 19:25Speaker 7: I'm going to ask a deeply philosophical question right now.
- 19:28Speaker 7: So how do you untangle the idea of American individual
- 19:33Speaker 7: achievement that is obtained through that particular sort of edge
- 19:38Speaker 7: that somebody might have? So you had noted that that
- 19:40Speaker 7: kind of edge to take advantage of others is what
- 19:45Speaker 7: really is launching a lot of this really predatory capitalism.
- 19:48Speaker 7: What needs to happen to the American identity, especially as
- 19:51Speaker 7: it pertains to business, to not say, I'm going to
- 19:55Speaker 7: get my economic advantage at all costs, even if that
- 19:58Speaker 7: means harming another person?
- 20:01Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that is an ideological shift and
- 20:04Speaker 3: it goes everywhere from schools, but the most important thing
- 20:06Speaker 3: is incentives, right? That we need to shift, if you
- 20:10Speaker 3: change incentives in such a way that this sort of
- 20:12Speaker 3: behavior is not rewarded, the norms will start to shift
- 20:15Speaker 3: with it too. And it's not just about incentives, but
- 20:18Speaker 3: sort of saying like, if we find out that you
- 20:22Speaker 3: as a company are treating gambling the way the opioid,
- 20:26Speaker 3: making gambling into the next version of the opioids epidemic
- 20:28Speaker 3: in the United States, we should probably intervene before it
- 20:32Speaker 3: gets that bad. And if we go after the people
- 20:34Speaker 3: who do it strongly enough, that will change incentives. But
- 20:37Speaker 3: the broader question, and I think it's like a really
- 20:39Speaker 3: powerful one, right, is in the 1950s, Peter Drucker wrote
- 20:43Speaker 3: about the fact, he said that if you were a
- 20:45Speaker 3: top graduate of a business school, he said you wanted
- 20:48Speaker 3: to go to General Motors or Ford, you wanted to
- 20:52Speaker 3: go to a place that made things. He said you
- 20:54Speaker 3: would be ashamed, ashamed of yourself if you went to
- 20:58Speaker 3: a place where you were just allocating capital. And that's
- 21:01Speaker 3: a very different model of the world. And it's one
- 21:05Speaker 3: that historically the United States has had that you can
- 21:07Speaker 3: sort of see ways in which you go back where
- 21:09Speaker 3: this idea that we really care about making great things,
- 21:12Speaker 3: not just short-term returns.
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