carol: welcome to bloomberg "businessweek," on radio and television. i am carol massar. david: i am david gura. coming up, the not so friendly skies of the airlines. the fall of united airlines. and a game changer. onid: that is all right here bloomberg television.

carol: so another great issue. this is an interesting issue and it talks about the dominoes for him and it is the fourth industrial revolution -- about the davos meeting. is that youhinking have all of these great minds gathered there in switzerland and i was struck regarding the such aand we think it is great piece and we're going to get into here in a few minutes. all been focused on that volatility of the chinese markets and we have been pointing our finger at the circuit breaker. david: the circuit breaker, yes, isis stopping trading and it a very provocative thing and that might not be the only thing going on here.

carol: indeed. also, running airlines. it is a very tough job. david: seo changes. there have been a lot of them. fine with many things, including other things like dealing with a passenger in a wheelchair. it by we are joined now our guest from new york. there was a giant, colossal merger that was supposed to be justuture of aviation and from the get-go, this is not what was happening. >> that's right, this is a company that thought was -- that people thought was very well run and that people were happy in it, and that really hasn't happened. you look at all of the different ways that you can measure the performance of an airline and this airline has done very

poorly. carol: i know i have had bad stories and they all have their problems. united, they with have really extreme problems. reliably worse. if you look at discount airlines, year after year they finish at the autumn of the barrel. customers are upset. if you look at customer satisfaction, it has been poor at united for a long time. about someoned who had palsy and there was not a wheelchair for them when they got off the plane. david: they were crawling off the current -- off the plane. crazy. >> yes, this was a disabled rights activist. they didthe plane and not have a way for him to get off the plane and he had to crawl off. united seems to find ways to

very vividly to anger people. david: if you look at united's and it does not look good. talking about the airlines and can you attribute this to the ceo or is this a greater problem than that? >> it clearly was not his fault. there were a few issues from united. they went through a very brutal bankruptcy. they had a very bitter workforce , but i think they're clearly were some poor decisions. if you look at technology and how to merge the two technology systems, and technology about how to handle labor systems. a real focus, i would think people would say, on cost cutting. unpleasants up being

for consumers, for employees, and also ultimately for shareholders. carol: what is interesting is that one thing that really rot them down, i inc. is that this wasn't really going on -- i think is that this wasn't really going on for the airline. >> in the fall, isaac had to step down. bloomberg had woken the story in april, and there had been this kind of sopranos style, new jersey political influence peddling, and as a result of the investigation there and united's own internal investigation, he eventually had to step down. ceo is recovering and the a heart attack interim ceo has been taking over, but tell us about this. munoz wasright,

trying to change the perspective of the airline, so he went out of his way to meet as many employees as he could and sent out an open letter to consumers. aroundssoon, who turned bason, who turned around delta airlines in the same perspective. carol: munoz had a heart attack? >> that's right, he had a heart attack, and it turned out he had a heart transplant last week. that is an incredibly serious procedure. carol: right, still recuperating. >> they're still looking at his return. but we will see. i fly united a lot still

because it is convenient for me, but there are still a lot of problems. >> that's right, if you look at time and statistics, they have pulled themselves up into the middle of the path. perception,customer they have made it ok, but financially, there is a time when jet fuel is very cheap and heading into the next year, it is going to be harder. terms oft pass them in being the number two airline. delta is doing very well despite the fact that they had a more recent merger. it is going to beat off. david: you talked about how united surveys its customers. carol: a lot. david: i think there are perceptions that the airlines are totally tone deaf. carol: how often? united and i say i am met at you and i don't want to spend

any more time with you. it is ridiculous. david: are they starting to pay more attention to the customer experience? >> i think so, i think so. some of these things were put in interim ceo and some of these take time. a all take a while to work out. united, they do listen. they are sort of looking at what customers think. david: finish the coffee. [laughter] >> that's right, change the coffee. carol: that's right, but they also looked at the boarding process. >> i did a cover story three years ago about the merger and the way i opened it was how they talked about the coffee. it were thinking about what kind of coffee they were going to serve and it was a labor-intensive process and they settled on one and then they had to change it. three years later, they have to do it all over again. it is getting back to zero, but they are headed in the right direction. carol: to give them a little

props, they were merging two huge companies, i am not saying it was easy, but it is not easy. >> know, and it is not just airlines, ceos ovaries -- ceos always always overpromise. david: it is easy to forgive them when you are not in the terminal. carol: we've got to run. [laughter] carol: still to come. david: we are going to look at the latest technology when bloomberg businessweek on television returns. ♪

carol: can technology shape the

gun control debate here in the united states? david: president obama brought this up last week at the white house. president obama: if we have the technology where you cannot unlock your phone unless you have the right fingerprint, why can't we do the same thing with guns? carol: we have a guest here who is ready to tell us that the answer is a little bit more complicated. we can put a microchip in a gun, it is not that complicated. we have had that technology since the 90's. you can use a radiofrequency device where you can use a ring or's -- or some sort. that is not the complicated part. is theplicated part politics. activists have been strongly resisting any move towards a so-called smart gun. going to say, if

the second amendment people wanted to embrace gun ownership, this would be a way to get people who have been hesitant because there is not a safer gun. right? paul: that is the argument that many people have had in mind, but it is outweighed at least in the inner circles of the gun rights movement, the nra and elsewhere, by the fear that they move towards smart guns is the first step down that proverbial slippery slope towards the confiscation of conventional firearms and then a situation or the government would be able to track who owns which firearm s. that is the argument. carol: president obama has come out with a directive to do some research, but is ugly to do some different -- but is that going to make a difference? is, prototypes

are already out there, and the question really is, whether there is a manned and whether ether there iswh gun ownerswhether would be interested in these kinds of things. thekey would be to win over gun owning circles in this country. david: i think what we hear from the gun rights groups is, yes, we do have this fingerprint technology on our iphones, and it doesn't work on them all the time. so they're saying, is it going to work when you need it? is it worth it? paul: there is something very unusual about the firearm, generally speaking, and it is that it works very well without digital technology. which hasr phone, been improved by the addition of computerization, unlike your car

or perhaps your refrigerator or dishwasher, a firearm still works to accomplish its lethal purpose with the same basic mechanics that have been used since the late 19th century. intong a finger chip print the gun does not make it any less deadly. there is really no point in tinkering with success, they argue, because guns work the way they are. officialsjanuary 1, put in a circuit breaker for the chinese market. four days later, it didn't work. david: how did it get put in and who decided to put it into the system? >> last summer, investors in china were so unhappy that the market was so volatile. stocks would go down five or 7%

during the day and it would happen almost weekly. that wers decided should let people come down and think about it if stocks go down too much. after 5%, we will take a 15 minute break, and reconsider. all,ze that it is ok after stocks seem like a great value, it is a perfect time to buy. if stocks continued to decline, at seven minutes, they would halt stocks for the day. markets,inese equities as you know, have become front and center for us again, but we have been blaming the circuit breakers for causing all of the volatility we have seen in china. but that isn't necessarily what we should be focusing on. some people said these circuit breakers were designed poorly, and that could be the this but really, managing

market is almost impossible because stocks have gone up so much in the last year. summer to the year before, they increased 150%. valuations on the shanghai shenzhen exchanges are the highest in the world. at a medium about 55, it is like double or triple other exchanges around the world. this is like internet double -- internet bubble levels. they are treating the average company like it was facebook or with google. they are definitely not all future alibabas. says we are just a tech company, we were a restaurant chain and now we are text complete. and then the stock goes up. david: some people are naming their stocks to sound more techier than they are. >> that's right, the market has

been manipulated very successfully. we found one ipo that went up 4200% in two months and then just a few months later said, we are restructuring, we are going to halt trading. as in china, companies have the ability to suspend trading in their own stock, if they say there is some news pending. a could suspended indefinitely. totallyhat could haven't read think >> for clearing this up for us. thank you so much for clearing this up for us. >> thank you for having me. carol: and coming up, we will have the rough road for women in hollywood. more on these details when we return. ♪

carol: do technologies such as cloud computing and software in economic situations? wonder if iteople causes economic harm. our next guest discusses this. us, robotsis out for washing dishes and some are saying that this is not the best thing. >> that's right, because it is going to basically automate labor and there is a lot of inequality that is happening across the world, especially when you look at the lower end of the manufacturing sector, for example. if robots permeate this in the way that we think they might in the next 50 years, that is going to eliminate a lot of jobs, and it is quite extreme. 80 million u.s.

jobs may be destroyed in the next 50 years thanks to robots. that is amazing. carol: you started your story talking about robert gordon over at northwestern university who plays a game called find the robot. does he think that robots are helping the way that we live in making us more productive? matthew: he is quite pessimistic. he is of the notion that all productive gains in the past 100 years are kind of threw the system that we have picked the low hanging fruit, so to speak, years arext 100 going to be much less productive. despite all of this enthusiasm about machine learning and all of this, when you get down to it, it is quite difficult to teach a robot to do simple tasks , like the laundry, for example. he is of the opinion that there is far too much optimism around the potential for this kind of fourth industrial revolution to make a game changing leap in the

way that we live and boost our productivity. david: so this could be the fourth industrial revolution, we cars,eam engines, we had and we had computers. i heard that it took a while until computers could make a difference in factories. matthew: it takes years and history proves that. for these technological advantages to work there ways through the system, it takes a while. whoad an economic historian looked at records of american factories 100 years ago and he posits that it took one generation, it basically took a new generation of plant managers to realize that we need to reorient our plant around electricity in opposition to the steam engine. even those were very optimistic about the impact that all of these digital technologies have on our life, they think that we are still years and years away

from this impact in productivity, and the data it would back that up because the place you would think that this is going to hit the most, which is labor productivity, is nowhere to be seen. we are in a slump right now. carol: let's talk about that. there were some statistics you pointed out. we expect to see gains in technology and advancements, but when you compare some of the data to past boom cycle, we're not seeing it. matthew: without a doubt. theave had two booms in past one hundred years, one from basically post-world war ii until the mid-70's where you saw about 3.5% annual growth of productivity and that went down about 1% in 30 years. then you had the i.t. revolution 1996 until 2003, and now we are about down to 1.5% after our jump there. was the yeart 1996 that we all had computers, we

had computers for a long time do to that, but it had to be connected to e-mail and all of the internet and the way that it works and working with less, essentially. even though i have a smart phone in my pocket that was created 10 years ago, it is hard to put that into official statistics and boost productivity. boost in the next 10 years, but right now it is nowhere to be seen. carol: now it is time to take a part of theetc. magazine, and for that, let's bring in julia goodman. david: julia, thank you. let's talk about kelly reichart, the director, who attracted a lot of attention 20 years ago at a film festival. might have had a big shot of success and has been under the radar for the last few decades. she came here with this

very quiet film and it has taken her a lot longer than some of her peers to make a career for herself. carol: you talk about kelly and what she has done over the last bunch of years, but it has not been easy for her to kind of get the recognition that you see of male directors. jillian: exactly, and also the kind of films that she makes. she makes quiet films that are not star driven. carol: low-budget, right? jillian: that is correct, low-budget. it has been hard. at heri was looking career trajectory, thinking about what we heard from movie stars in this last year about the disparity about what women make. carol: the sony e-mails, the hacking of the sony e-mails, that kind of brought it up to the front for everybody. and we areactly thrilled to do this story about her and thrilled to bring this to business week. she doesn't mind that

discussion but she doesn't want that to be the only discussion when you are talking to her. she is about making movies. jillian: exactly she does want to do the work and she just wants to make the movies. david: i was just looking at the stats of the movies that were made last year and the 10 top grossing movies out of hollywood last year, and not a single female hollywood director in the mix. carol: so wrong. david: are we seeing any effort to change that? jillian: there is an investigation underway, but it is clear that there needs to be some attitude changes and that theseanges artists are going to be able to take more work. carol: we are going to leave it there. thank you, jillian, so much. that does it for this week of bloomberg businessweek television. david: remember, it this available -- this edition is available on newsstands and online right now. carol: thank you so much for joining us.

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mark: coming up on "bloomberg best," the stories that shift --shaped the week in business around the world. oil prices were dropping what is , plummeting and what is ahead. >> i thought the bottom would be around $30. now we are around the silly season. mark: what do central bankers make of the rough start? >> if we look at the eurozone, it is picking up. we have an exclusive interview with brookfield's bruce flatt. mr. flatt: this is a residential tower.