Skip to main content

tv   Bloomberg Business Week  Bloomberg  July 22, 2017 3:00pm-4:00pm EDT

3:00 pm
carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." oliver: we are inside the magazine's headquarters in new york. carol: what may be the most powerful media company you never heard of? oliver: the new face of pimco pleasant bess plans to do less talking and more investing. carol: not giving up on globalization. oliver: all that had on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ oliver: we are here with editor oliver: we are here with editor in chief megan murphy. let's talk about the business section, looking at the effects
3:01 pm
happening between qutar and its arab neighbors. megan: a continuing fallout that keeps unfolding in the middle east between qatar and some of its neighbors. they are accusing them of harboring islamists and not cracking down on terror. it has been a long-running incident and it is now imploding in terms of imposing bans. one of the biggest businesses affected his qatar airways. oliver: a company doing very well. megan: a favorite of luxury travelers in particular. whether it is emirates or qatar airways, they have clotted for out of nothing over the past two and three decades. moved into routes, competing on
3:02 pm
long-haul flights with some of the american carriers. there has been a big concerted effort by the american carriers, american, delta, united, to push back on that growth. saying they're basically getting unfair competitive advantages through their country's amends sovereign wealth. the american airlines would argue it props up the businesses. they are facing this much closer to home, having to redraw routes and skirt borders. oliver: big borders. megan: it will have a big effect on the business. oliver: is this something they view that they can wait out and resolve the sort of political hurdles that are there? and does not seem like it will be resolved anytime soon. megan: is a murky diplomatic incident. there are very different viewpoints, including between the president and his administration and people at the state department who say the so-called cause of this are
3:03 pm
factors that led to it and is not quite clear who is behind it, what actually happened, and whether or not it can be resolved immediately. frankly, it is not getting enough attention because so much of the american media and foreign media is focused on the trump administration writ large. never underestimate these airlines in terms of their willingness to push forward. we would not be in the situation where we had really strong carriers, beloved carriers if they had not put so much resources into establishing these brands. whether this is a temporary blip or long-term thing that will force him to take much bigger cost-cutting measures to the
3:04 pm
brand will play out in the next few months. oliver: in the features section, a great examination by felix gillette on a big media company and a growing one. was the most interesting part of the story to you? there is politics, media, interesting characters. : megan sinclair broadcasting is probably the most powerful media cavity that many businessweek readers will not really have heard of. it really points to a company that has 173 stations, mostly in smaller markets. washington, d.c. is an example. trying to get this deal which are being to purchase more stations has put them in the big markets like l.a., new york, etc. what is interesting is yes, they have a chairman who is very conservative and has pushed conservative political views and does so in these news broadcasts that they do in these stations,
3:05 pm
but also as someone who has done it with almost bizarre focus on cost-cutting. this is not glamorous broadcasting standards, a lot of shine and razzmatazz. this is bare-bones media pushing these views, pushing their idiosyncratic view of things the way they deal with paid placement. we cover it in the story were some of drive to the mcdonald's drive-through and it's emerged that mcdonald's -- it is a media takeover by someone you have never really expected. oliver: it is a fascinating story about a company that has far reach but not a big name. >> the sinclair broadcast group is one of the big winners in the media business in terms of the current mill you in washington with the trump administration. this company for years has been run by a family. they are a big supporter of republican politicians and causes. during the presidential campaign, after initially
3:06 pm
supporting ben carson, they threw their weight behind donald trump. having won the election, trump has created a regulatory environment that is very good to sinclair broadcast group. oliver: election of donald trump has been good for media because it brought in a lot of views, and has a get for this particular media group because their vision is aligned with trump's? felix: they have been running into regulations in terms of limiting ownership of local media in the united states, which is limited to 39% of the viewership for broadcast tv stations. they are really right at the limit. what happened -- when trump won, his appointment to lead the federal communications committee voted to restore an arcane rule that allows broadcasters like sinclair to discount essentially half of the audience from the
3:07 pm
uhf station. they restored this rule and weeks later sinclair announced the biggest deal in the company's history, they were acquiring tribune media for close to $4 billion. oliver: this company owns various broadcast stations. we are talking local news, cable, you turn on the tv and here's what happened around you. they want to essentially extend that to basically more cities and more areas? felix: they are already the largest owner of broadcast stations in the country. they on 173 stations currently. after the tribune acquisition, which is currently under review -- most people think it will go through. oliver: all that the dead?
3:08 pm
felix: no way that would've gone through hillary clinton won. they scored at the right candidate in, they wanted in terms of regulation change. now this acquisition will give them another 42 stations, including stations in a lot of big markets where they traditionally have not operated. new york, los angeles, chicago. oliver: big major cities. felix: they want to have essentially a nationwide network of broadcast stations. ultimately their goal, which they have been working on behind the scenes, is pushing the fcc to adopt a new broadcasting standard. some people call it next gen tv. one that is approved by the fcc,
3:09 pm
which could happen later this year on a voluntary basis, companies like sinclair will be of the start broadcasting in these new standards which will free up a lot of bandwidth to do other things. sinclair's vision is instead of having just one channel from the broadcast stations they on locally, they will start broadcasting a bundle of 25 to 30 channels. they also think they will be a will to sell various data services from those stations. it is a nationwide network and it is mobile, something you could get on your telephone or your tablet without having to pay for cellular data charges without -- you can watch it in your living room tv without having to pay a cable or satellite provider. oliver: of next, are facebook, google, amazon, and apple too big for their own good? carol: alibaba wants to dominate commerce. oliver: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
3:10 pm
3:11 pm
carol: welcome back to
3:12 pm
"bloomberg businessweek." oliver: you can also find us online at businessweek.com. carol: and our mobile app. oliver: a growing number of scholars and regulators want to stop facebook, amazon, google, and apple from getting any bigger. carol: that may be easier said than done. almost without noticing, these companies have gotten huge. not just in the united states for globally. let me throw out a few numbers because i think it really hits home. google has 77% of the search advertising revenue. facebook has 75% of mobile social traffic. amazon has 70% of the e-book market. those are monopoly-sized figures. no doubt they are monopolies. there is no court ruling, but this is what a traditional antitrust theory says is a monopoly. almost without looking they have gotten so big and so well, who
3:13 pm
cares? big is not bad. we have gotten over that issue a long time ago. there are now some study showing their bigness may have some bad repercussions. these are academic studies and there is enough research to show there is reason to worry. oliver: that brings us to the wind out. as a stock market reporter, we write time again about how they really been the major contributors to a lot of the bull market rally. paula: we love them. oliver: to size question has not really come under scrutiny until now. it feels like something that maybe people should be talking about. paula: it has been bubbling below the surface for quite a few years now. there is a general named namedre is a gentleman jonathan kaplan wrote a book
3:14 pm
called "move fast and break things." he is the one who is strongly pushing this idea that these are -- these companies are too big. he comes from the respective of the creators of content, musicians, photographers, journalists like us, book authors. they have been robbed or cheated out of their revenue because google, facebook, amazon have cornered the market. he used to be the manager of a rock 'n roll band, bob dylan and things like that. then he went on to run the annenberg innovation lab. he has a very interesting perspective. he was an m&a investment banker for merrill lynch. he has an interesting perspective from all of these angles. he is one of the major pushers of this idea that they are too
3:15 pm
big. academics have started looking at this. there are several studies showing that it is not that consumers are not benefiting. the issue is that this bigness is leading to things like inequality in wages, low productivity, the lack of startups. oliver: some answers to a lot of economic questions people have. paula: these are questions economists are asking all the time. what is productivity growth so slow? all of those roads are leading to amazon, facebook and google. carol: speaking of ambitious technology companies, alibaba once the bill of china's sports industry. >> we are making a stronger flavor than anyone in the chinese market has to develop a sports industry that has been underrepresented in china. oliver: alibaba does not seem like they need to seek out new revenue sources yet. i guess it never hurts to give expanding. i wonder why they are doing this now, taking measures to break up
3:16 pm
teams and money and give it support. jeff: they just reported earnings that were well beyond most expectations. is projected for the fiscal year ending in march they will see revenue growth between 45% and 49%. in seems like now is as good a time as ever to think about a 5-10 year window to finance this relatively tiny sports arm. a lot of runway to figure out how to build a sports market base. oliver: this not seem like something that is terribly urgent or the need to get it. it seems that it is like it -- let's get the ball rolling.
3:17 pm
jeff: the quotes in the story are really -- oliver: if i'm reading this, this sounds pretty good. my company is, why not? let's explore more. jeff: they are trying different things that are not even alibaba's bread and butter. sports merchandising beyond trying to use the company's throws of data on 500 million shoppers to figure out who should we target as to certain merchandise based in the purchasing histories or whatever based on where they live or whatever. if you bought a tennis racket somewhere in northern china, we can send you data on all the stuff you can sign up for online, all the way down to the local level online court times, coaching and that anything. oliver: there obviously are a
3:18 pm
lot of tools alibaba has to figure this out, but they are kind of battling an uphill game in which the chinese market does not spend a lot on sporting goods. they are virtually selling the sports fans, but also trying to create sports fans and get people excited about was happening around them. jeff: it is relative. the company sold or moved about 76 billion yuan worth of sporting goods related merchandise, about $11 billion u.s. that's about 1/10 the size of the u.s. market which is a lot smaller people wise. carol: president trump rethinks his nafta strategy oliver: and why house republicans don't like the sanctions bill doubled will punish the kremlin for hacking the u.s. election. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
3:19 pm
3:20 pm
3:21 pm
oliver: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, 99.1 fm in washington, d.c., and am 960 in the bay area. oliver: and in asia on the bloomberg radio plus at. carol: president trump is entirely debt is anti-nafta rhetoric. oliver: the white house now thinks tuneup might be the next move. >> it turns out his plan for nafta is much more moderate than you might expect given what he was saying on the campaign trail, the worst deal ever. oliver: many, many times. >> it is not like this is something he threw out once.
3:22 pm
he kept hammering on the campaign trail. even after he became president he came within a hair's breadth of just pulling out. he was persuaded not to. that was a positive sign for people who believe free trade with canada and mexico. the next stage was just this past week when the office of the u.s. trade representative came out with an objective the u.s. will have in talks on renegotiating the pact. they had to get congress 30 days notice before they began in mid-august. the plan is kind of modernizing nafta, not gutting it. carol: what happened between the campaign trail, and push back terrible deal, build a wall, whatever to more moderate stance? peter: a lot of people in the business community said in open
3:23 pm
hearings -- there were like 12,000 comments made on this plan -- actually free trade benefits united states. the benefits the people of the united states, companies, and it will be a shame to throw that away. oliver: any idea what the impetus been from our peers in this agreement on what they want? is there a similar line of sight anywhere? peter: it looks like the reaction to the trump administration put out there are the makings of a deal. there are certain things about nafta that are kind of old and need to be updated. we heard from the ministers of both canada and mexico saying helpful things like, yeah, this is a good blueprint for the modernization. oliver: house republicans are voicing objections to a sanctions bill meant to punishing moscow for interfering in the u.s. election. carol: it would make it harder
3:24 pm
for u.s. companies to do business in russia. here is matthew philip. matthew: the rare bipartisan bill we have seen these days. it basically calls to tighten up existing sanctions on iran, and more portly on russia. it's an attempt by congress to basically keep the president from being able to ease sanctions on the russian government, either from their meddling in the election or from their incursion into crimea. this is a regime put in place in 2014 by the obama administration to crack down on russia after their invasion of ukraine. they are trying to tighten those sanctions, but it has run into problems in the house. oliver: matt, the sanctions and the motivation behind them. sanctions in reaction to russia's actions in crimea or the u.s. election. the idea of keeping the sanctions to prevent the donald trump administration from easing those. what kind of language out there about what could potentially
3:25 pm
happen to sanctions? that the white house discuss lessening those? matt: congress wanted to send a message to russia. once the intelligence community can't with a report last december that said clearly they meddled in our elections, this is congress trying to take a hawkish approach to russia. also knowing perhaps the white house feels differently. they were trying to constrain president donald trump's ability to in the future negotiate one-on-one, bilaterally with the russians and offer something on the table for them in return for who knows what. this passed on a bipartisan basis in the senate. it has run into a lot of problems in the house because energy companies and other manufacturing companies in the u.s. caught up to this kind of late.
3:26 pm
they realized the way it is written, the way a few provisions in the bill are written, this could basically ring them out of a lot of lucrative foreign oil and gas deals. not just in russia, but all over the world. carol: we are talking tens of billions of dollars? $100 billion over the next decade or so that he was companies, oil and gas companies could miss out on? matt: current sanctions that apply to russia limit u.s. firms' ability to invest in projects in the russian federation, inside russia. what this new bill attempts to do is say, if there is a russian
3:27 pm
company with any stake, a 1% stake in any project and any place in the world, you can't be there. that all of a sudden expands greatly the sanctions regime and would ensnare lots of oil and gas projects all over the world were coming is like exxon and chevron and u.s. operators of foreign comedies like b.p. would have to divest and probably lose a lot of money. the estimate is it would cost oil and gas firms in the u.s. approximately $100 billion in the next 10 years. carol: the new subprime debt bomb in the bank to watch for signs of trouble. oliver: a car chief is doubling
3:28 pm
down on his globalist view of the future. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
3:29 pm
so we need tablets installed... with the menu app ready to roll. in 12 weeks. yeah. ♪ ♪ the world of fast food is being changed by faster networks. ♪ ♪ data, applications, customer experience. ♪ ♪ which is why comcast business
3:30 pm
delivers consistent network performance and speed across all your locations. fast connections everywhere. that's how you outmaneuver. oliver: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek," i am oliver renick. carol: why additional payments are not being taken out of india. how satellites are transforming space and earth. oliver: all of that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ oliver: we are back with editor in chief megan murphy.
3:31 pm
talking about more must reads. let's go to the finance section. santander, of the egg company. also connected to something people do not want to hear, subprime loans. >> this shows eight years from the crisis we have what appears to be a bubble forming, not in subprime loans, but in the auto market. giantre a spanish banking . in the broader term it shows how this risk is moving and migrating in an incredibly low rate environment. the inks are packaging and cases it isin many similar to the housing crisis. to be fair, this is not going to be the same thing where the marketf overall broad
3:32 pm
exposure is so big it could lead to a spiral. what is important, how much does consumers andt their level of risk they are taking on? the consumer pulling back and not enough credit worthiness? that is interesting about this story. interestingthat is in conversations we have had with investors. and they are very concerned about it. perhaps not from the systemic risk, but that same type of negligence is happening. one out of every 10 loans packaged into $1 billion of bonds according to moody's. so manych for yield -- of the same principles are still there. >> absolutely. and this is ais huge jump.
3:33 pm
whenever you see that jump, that should be a red flag. the other thing is, some of these are outright tactics. we talk about people lending the it, car out, repossessing pushing it out again to people they know cannot afford it. these are all things that really should not be going on anymore. if regulators cannot tackle this this is potentially another disaster waiting to happen in the subprime auto lending market. lot of ice on it. story -- carlos ghosn. megan: carlos, the subtitle is "davos lives." he is the ceo of the group. what this is really talking about is how he believes so much in globalism still.
3:34 pm
in an area where we see a pushing back on free trade in the u.k. and the u.s. under a trump administration, where we see broader global concern about immigration and its impact, we see people moving forward to more america first as we know it here, britain first in britain, that he is ruthlessly and relentlessly still pushing against this and touting the merits of the global workspace and touting the merits of almost trickle-down in what is best for a global workforce, global companies, global business is what is better for the world. that is a message that has largely lost a lot of its zing in this sort of populist backlash, -- backlash. it is really a fantastic profile of a man was a true believer in ideology which is markedly out of fashion. oliver: given his background that is so well described in the story you can see why he is a , critical global davos man whose
3:35 pm
reports of his demise have been exaggerated. >> carlos ghosn is the head of an alliance of car companies including nissan, renault, a -- and mitsubishi as well as other car companies in china and russia. he kind of has a reputation as a guy who takes companies that are on the brink of collapse or are struggling and brings them back to life. he did it first with nissan and renault. now he is trying to do the same thing with mitsubishi, which his alliance acquired last year. oliver: he is, right now at the very least, his career is as a sort of car star, if you will. he has acquired the ability to sort of turn these businesses around. we are talking from a larger macro perspective, his persona and what he represents is very interesting. tell us about his image and what he represents. >> yeah, he is sort of the ultimate davos man. that is a term for those who
3:36 pm
show up for the davos conference each year, the post-national elite group of businessmen. he really represents that species in its purest form. he was born in brazil, not just in rio, in the amazon basin in a state called krondonia which was very remote. his parents are of lebanese origin. he was educated in france. later became the first foreign ceo of a major japanese company, nissan. so he has this kind of reputation as somebody who crosses borders very easily. and he takes that unique ability to sort of blend into cultures and he has kind of adopted a philosophy where he applies that to his companies. for example, he thinks that, you know, these days, with brexit in -- brexit and of the election of trump, people criticize that sort of "post-national ethos." they say if you consider yourself a citizen of the world, you're really a citizen of nowhere.
3:37 pm
he stands up and goes against that. he thinks that a cultural identity is additive, not substitute of. -- substitutive. if you are born brazilian and absorb the french culture, it does not make you less brazilian, it makes you something more. oliver: also this week, a special version for mexico. carol: we spoke to editor in chief jonathan rees. jonathan: we are writing about how airbnb is working in mexico. to know that the growth rate of
3:38 pm
airbnb here is above the actually -- here is actually above the international average for this new company. carol: airbnb is your cover this week. i just came back from mexico. tourism is the part of the mexican economy. there is a lot more going on. what are the kind of stories you think you guys will be covering on a regular basis? jonathan some of the stories are : stories that you already know because we are taking most of the biggest or the greatest stories that you have already published the last two weeks. but, because we are going to be publishing this magazine every two weeks, we're going to include some stories regarding specifically mexico. we're talking about airbnb and the success it has in mexico city particularly, but it has a lot of success in cancun as well
3:39 pm
and some other places like los cabos. what we are seeing is in order to get some extra money for their daily basis expenses. carol: up next, what needs to be done to defeat isis off of the battlefield. oliver: our tech companies winning the fight over legislating biometric privacy? we are talking facial recognition next on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
3:40 pm
3:41 pm
3:42 pm
oliver: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am oliver renick. carol: i am carol massar. you can find us online on businessweek.com. oliver: and on our mobile app. carol: in the politics section, the u.s. led campaign against isis might be nearing a climax. oliver: defeating their ideology will take more than guns. the question is if the u.s. is ready. ramesh: we have made significant progress on the military campaign, so that is chasing isis out of its strongholds in iraq and syria, taking out its leadership, removing some of the foreign fighters who went to iraq and syria to fight with isis, moving them from the battlefield. there is slow but steady progress, taking back mosul, a
3:43 pm
big breakthrough for the coalition against isis. what we are still maybe not as far along as we should we, or the problem that will be there going forward is what to do with the ability of isis and other organizations to recruit, reach, and connect with potential recruits through online means, through the internet and social media, but also offline, through mosques and schools and gyms and prisons and all the other ways people become radicalized. oliver: the way the ground fight could be coming to an end, maybe not the total victory declared after the mosul victory, but at the end of the day, the numbers are dwindling. the cash flows are twiddling. what does that pressure isis to do? how do they need to rethink, and how do we expect them to rethink what they have been doing in terms of outreach and reaching beyond the middle east? romesh: they have been shifting
3:44 pm
the rhetoric from trying to recruit people to coming to the caliphate, the state they have created in iraq and syria they , have moved away and propaganda to encourage people to stay in their home countries and to commit acts of violence wherever and using whatever means possible. we have seen examples of that in europe over the last several months. and, you know, what is interesting and what is difficult for counterterrorism officials to deal with is that in many cases, the people acting on these messages do not have any firm connection to the islamic state. they are being inspired to carry out these attacks but they are not necessarily receiving direction from any central organization. carol: speaking of technology, and the focus on section, how biometric recognition is being legislated. >> it has been almost nine years
3:45 pm
since the first biometric privacy act was passed by one of the 50 states illinois. , the law is not perfect but it is a good start and will lead to a flurry of regulation around the country. since then, eight states have proposed similar or related legislation. we have only gotten just this year in may the second state to successfully pass it into law. it is the state of washington. it's law -- its law goes into effect later this year. there are serious doubts from privacy experts as to whether there is any meat to this law at all. if we go back to illinois very briefly, what they did was created a law that requires
3:46 pm
consent quite broadly from consumers, from you as a facebook user, linked in user to say you can use my face for biometric purposes, and as the company rolled out new technology they would ideally inform you. it also allowed private users to sue the state. if we go to washington, the consent rules are a little broader. privacy advocates will say that there are exemptions. the tech industry will say that it is more nuanced. how that plays out is a question mark, there is a gray area. it would because potentially for litigation, however you as a user in the state of washington do not have the right to sue under the washington law. only the attorney general does. that is modeled after the other law that passed, texas' law. privacy experts say, what is the point?
3:47 pm
if there is unlikely to be a -- to be any teeth, any action, to question if these companies are doing what they say they do in a court of law, why are we going down this road? it is setting a precident for other states to pass legislation that there will not be a ton of legal oversight for how these facial recognition technologies and biometric technologies are imposed going forward. carol: it sounds like the facebooks of this world, the googles of this world, and many others, they see the value of some of this biometric information going forward, and it sounds like they have stepped up lobbying efforts to push back on rules and regulations they are starting to see come down the road. >> absolutely. there is so much data at stake here. each person's iris scans, fingerprint scans -- scans, a skin of your face, the way you -- a scan of your face, the way you walk, can be monetized. you can be marketed based on all of these data points. one thing that would get in the way of success would be
3:48 pm
litigation. oliver: up next, dan iversen's plans to fill the bond king's shoes. carol: and the illuminati of cheese. oliver: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪
3:49 pm
3:50 pm
carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. oliver: i am oliver renick. you can catch us on the radio on sirius fm. and in new york. a.m. 1330 and when a 6.1 fm in boston. 99.1 fm in washington, d.c. a.m. 960 in the bay area. carol: in asia on the bloomberg radio plus app. oliver: in the pursuit section
3:51 pm
the profile of the mega-money , manager dan iversen. carol: his new plan on how it plans on killing the competition. oliver: here is reporter john gittelsohn. john he came into this : challenging situation. bill gross was synonymous with growth. he was like the bond king. then there was this generational power struggle at pimco, gross got pushed out and iversen inherited the firm that is hemorrhaging money is all of the -- hemorrhaging money, as all of these investors are like, what is going on with pimco? we put our money in nature of a protector money, not lose it. it is like an airplane that is in a nosedive. he has to take over the helm. and he has managed to basically stabilize this spiraling plane and now it is getting an upward glide path. oliver: that is consistent with what you would want from a bond manager, not necessarily that
3:52 pm
things went terribly under mr. gross, but again in the later stages the returns were subpar , relative to peers. it was a very different style that, what i take from your story here is that iversen essentially wants to eliminate the personality and the big portfolio managers that have a large brand. what he wants is just a company that is going to generate a solid return that you expect from a bond market. john the party line is we do not : want stars because they saw what happened when their bond king left. there was 300 barely -- hundred $50 billion that followed him out the door. -- there is $350 billion that followed him out the door. you do not want that to happen to your firm. you also want your investors to have enough confidence that, you know, the rock of gibraltar, to
3:53 pm
use another firm's emblem, is going to be there with your money. so what he has done is basically -- a lot of it is personality. bill gross is a charismatic guy, he is a mediagenic guy. he has a way of describing and coming up with great terms. oliver: anybody who has read his reports knows that he is not afraid to use some color. john: he likes analogy. he has used wiley coyote falling off a cliff for an analogy for where we are in the economy. dan is the numbers guy, 80 30 guy. -- a nerdy guy. when he was a little guy, he is to listen to bruce williams on -- he used to listen to bruce williams on the radio before he went to bed. most kids are listening to music or whatever. even he confessed that it was a little weird that he was turning into bruce williams talking before going to sleep at night and hearing what to do with your money. carol: in the features section, a look at a little-known government-sponsored marketing group, dairy inc..
3:54 pm
oliver: whose job it is to squeeze as much milk into products as they can. carol: we spoke to editor jillian gutman. jillian the good people at dairy management, inc., which is an industry kickoff program. all dairy farmers are required to pay $.15 per hundred pounds of cheese they produce. it is an interesting wide marketing agency. what they have done is they have embedded their representatives in big food chains like pizza hut and talk about to get them to use more cheese in their products. carol: is this a government group or an industry group or what is it? jillian: it is a government. it was started by the national dairy board started by the usda. oliver: you have this industry
3:55 pm
group that is government-sponsored, that is basically working with people, taking a cut from dairy and helping get product elsewhere. i love how you guys describe it, the cheese illuminati. jillian exactly, the guiding : hand, the secret organization behind everything that you eat. oliver: that is a good way to describe it because i did not know it existed. carol: me either. oliver: when you think about poverty emerging recently, they are behind a lot of them. jillian about the development of : the quesolupa, which you may of heard about at the super bowl, they debuted it with a huge ad campaign featuring george tokai. they sold 75 million of them in four months. these are chalupas with a full ounce of cheese. oliver: we could do a whole show on etymology of the word. jillian: there is a lot to unpack. carol: it took time, energy, and know how to figure out how to pack so much cheese in this.
3:56 pm
jillian this is something that : taco bell have been working on for 10 years before gary -- dairy management inc. scientists came in and help them figure out how to mass produce it. oliver: why are we talking about cheese and why the push into cheese products and dairy into various things? jillian: the dairy industry is experiencing a massive supply glut. you have got 1.5 billion pounds of cheese in cold storage and milk consumption is way down over the last 30 years. you have got farmers who need to keep producing more milk but because prices are going down and they need to sell more but , the more milk they produce, the farther down prices go. it is a vicious cycle. oliver: just to be clear, this will help viewers and listeners, these are the people behind got milk campaign. jillian before these big hit : -- jillian: before these big hit
3:57 pm
restaurant products, that was their best-known success story. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" of the desk is available on newsstands now. oliver: a lot of great stories, what is your favorite? carol: the mad cheese scientist, what is not to love? who knew that there was this government-sponsored industry helping out the dairy industry going into companies like mcdonald's and taco bell. capitalism with a helping hand. oliver: i like the idea of the illuminati of dairy. carol: you like talking about that. how about you? oliver: sinclair media. a media behemoth that is not one of the channels that you know but a collection of local stations. i have to split mine with carlos ghosn and the davos man and what it means, taking a backseat to other politics. carol: a lot of good stuff in this week has issue. -- week's issue. oliver: bloomberg television starts right now. ♪
3:58 pm
3:59 pm
4:00 pm
announcer 1: the following is a paid advertisement for crepe erase, the number one system for crepey skin. announcer 2: it can deliver stunning results on your arms, legs, hands, chest, and even your neck. announcer 1: featuring legendary actress and crepe erase success story, jane seymour. >> crepey skin makes me feel old. i am really sick of looking down

38 Views

info Stream Only

Uploaded by TV Archive on