carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." julia: we are inside the magazine headquarters in new york. carol: the republican tax-cut proposal. who gets what? julia: saudi arabia, what is at stake? all that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ carol: we are here with the editor in chief, megan murphy. you have a big focus on tax reform this week. in the business section we had a

graphic evidence of the house plan. megan: it's a credible, serious attempt to implement major changes to the u.s. tax structure. also there is so much at stake with this politically. it is fascinating a year after the election we are now getting to what republicans universally say is there real thing that really have to get done now, tax reform. when anyone tries, there is a reason why it has failed traditionally. the u.s. tax code is so complex and are somebody vested industries and sectors and people and special interest groups that for so long have relied on a lot of parts of the tax code that in a normal system you would not have had. what is fascinating about the house plan is number one how much it raises the deficit.

carol: the second is and how to make the numbers work, how much they looked at smaller, limited parts of the code that will make a difference but have really strong entrenched interest. julia: when you add the pieces together to make the money, as long as you have the votes. if you look at the republican party, this is what it comes down to. megan: i'm glad you brought that up. the initial vote is what i would describe as botched. rollout ofial this plan is what i would describe as botched. it was so transparent how much the benefits would flow not only to the wealthiest but to the top 1%. i think there was an acknowledgment among the republican party it did not do enough to help their base voters and their core working-class, lower-class, upper-middle-class workers. they made an attempt to correct that. in trying to correct for that and move forward, they have alienated states, areas of the country that have higher pockets of upper middle-class earners.

new jersey, new york, places with higher state taxes who will be resistant to some of these changes and have little political reason now to stay and what would call the trump train, even if tax reform is such a core republican ideal. it will be fascinating to see how that plays out and if he has the political will to move the party. carol: elections this week having an impact potentially? megan: massive impact. you see it all over this crime as a democratic tsunami. big wins in virginia and new jersey. younger voters, where are they in 2016? they came out in force this week. what is interesting is how many republicans see this and say trump will not take the over the line, particularly in purple states. they used to be called swing states. and move away and form their own political ideology and way from the bannon nativism impulses.

new jersey and virginia showed there were serious choices to be made. julia: we can't go too far from chapter four. -- tax reform. in the united states, we have evolution of taxes in the united states. justin fox. what explained the thinking behind this? megan: we asked justin to go back. how did we even get here? when people read it they will be fascinated to see not only the different eras we have gone through. we are so focused on cut, cut, cut, we forget the purpose of taxation which is the pay for revenue. it is fascinating.

justin put it far more eloquently than i ever could about as far we have come. we are the same federal percentage and gdp. carol: he talked about alexander hamilton. he goes all the way back. we have more from justin fox. justin: it seems like definitely since the early 1980's it has become this constant obsession. carol: that is what president reagan did massive tax cuts. justin: in 1981, he did his big across-the-board tax cuts and this other big thing they got very little attention while it was happening which was index the tax brackets to inflation. before then when inflation was in double digits in the 1970's people were bumped into higher tax brackets all the time even though they were not any wealthier. that was, i think, one of the big things that drove the 1970's

tax revolt. carol: he reminded us historically the idea of taxes was to raise revenue for the government. justin: yeah, and it is sort of an obvious point and in theory the whole idea of taxes. carol: i feel like tax reform has become such a political football. justin: a lot of it is. i'm sure there are elements of this before, but starting in the 1970's and then into the 1980's and 1990's, there was much more serious analysis by economists and political rhetoric about the economic impact of taxes. part of that is just because taxes are 17%-18% of gdp now. in the 1800s, it was about 2% of gdp. how you structure the taxes does matter more. sometimes, like in the whole discussion about the current tax package, it just seems like so much of it is -- it will do this for the economy or it will mess up the income distribution in this way. there is some attention, but it is squeezed, to the side of will it help us raise more money to

pay for government or not? carol: will it according to the numbers? justin: it will reduce revenue. i don't think there is any -- even people very much in favor of it the way it is structured now, give up increase the deficit and reduce revenue. even if results in a big increase in economic growth. carol: you remind us we have been living in modern tax policy. will it ever end? there was a point in the country's history that we do not have taxes. or kind of a no tax -- justin: we did in it did not work very well. this was after independence, 1776 to 1789.

the articles of confederation, the initial constitution of the new nation had no provision for the federal government to raise taxes. they were supposed to ask the states nicely. carol: good luck with that. justin: that was a constant struggle during the revolution and one of the big reasons why people from all the states where, ok, maybe we should put something together so we can raise money. that was a key element of the constitution and it made clear congress could levy taxes. julia: making tax reform the cover image with the job of chris. carol: lawmakers are working on tax or form package. the magazine spent a lot of space on talking about taxes this week. what did you think about? chris: taxes are not the most visual thing. we decided to do something more typographic. the idea was to create something confusion ofhe

the tax system. we came up with this idea of taking tax terms and overlaying them. julia: as you say here, the confusion the tax system generates, yet in the bold white is evidently understand. why is the taxes in such a mess? chris: we wanted the headline figure first and you are searching through in trying to find the words. carol: class of the cover i was like waiting minute, i'm completely confused. which is exactly what the tax system is about. really clever. did you have a lot of ideas you thought about or not really? chris: we went through a bunch of different options. we started with some weirder ideas. julia: the color choices are punchy. chris: we tried a lot of different colors. this one has a sort of midnight color. the brown color we chose appeared in the charge for the

reagan era. carol: when there was a lot of tax reform. chris, thank you. carol: the hedge fund titan behind steve bannon may not be finished with politics. julia: unions see a rise in allegations of sexual harassment. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." julia: you can find us online at businessweek.com and the mobile app. carol: billionaire robert mercer is known for bankrolling the nationalist movement that elected president trump.

julia: he may now be listening himself to be even more politically active. zach: mercer is the co-chief executive officer of renaissance technologies, the most profitable hedge fund in the history of the world. he is also kind of the financier behind this brand of insurgent republican nationalist insurgency that propelled donald trump to the presidency last year. carol: he was involved with steve bannon and breitbart big-time? zach: he met bannon in 2011 and has been his atm for various projects. he pushed it in a populist, nationalist direction. mercer basically bailed out breitbart news when it was floundering and turned it into what it is today which is this incredibly successful voice for this populist, nationalist random conservativism. julia: why is he resigning

from renaissance technologies as the co ceo and at the same time selling breitbart news? he is selling it to someone quite close to him. just explain what is going on here specifically. zach: he made his announcement he was stepping down from renaissance and made a bunch of comments about his political views. this is a person who never discusses his political views publicly at all. julia: he kind of did not need to. zach: you can see who he is giving money to. and set up a lot of speculation about whether he is stepping back from bannon's projects and being this conservative mega-donor. carol: is he? zach: he made a bunch of statements where he says he denounces milo yiannopoulos and distances himself from steve bannon.

politicse talk about all the time but i make my own decisions, almost like he is talking about his barber or cabdriver. carol: not someone who he has funded big-time. zach: essentially he has bankrolled bannon's suite of projects over the last three or four years. julia: i made the point about breitbart news. if you're suggesting perhaps some of the politics of steve bannon and milo he does not agree with, breitbart news may be going somewhere but not very far. just explain what is going on with his conservative values. zach: josh green and i wrote the piece talked to people around mercer and bannon.

this is not really about stepping away from bannon or a change of direction in his politics. if anything, this might free him up to do more because the sale of breitbart. he is selling it to his daughters. his daughter rebecca, is middle daughter, has always been the one most hands-on in terms of breitbart. she has been the one calling it -- calling in ideas or complaining about coverage. carol: and working closely with steve bannon. julia: unions have championed themselves as advocates of safe workplaces. josh: the largest labor federation in the united states, the afl-cio had its national convention a couple of weeks ago. it happens every four years. it started in an unusual way. the federation's president read to all the delegates from the recently strengthened code of conduct against sexual harassment and other kinds of misconduct. and actually presented for all

the delegates contact information for two people they could report any kind of inappropriate conduct to. he told me that morning there was a zero-tolerance policy at the afl-cio and he thought the federation was on the cutting edge, and if not wanted to be on the cutting edge of these issues. carol: this is not just about reaction to what has been going out in terms of harvey weinstein, a reaction of companies coming out and saying their policies. this was going on within the afl-cio specifically? josh: there has been this reckoning throughout the culture post harvey weinstein about sexual harassment and misconduct. it is now roiling the u.s. labor movement. what it was that led to some of these announcements people can speculate about. the code of conduct goes back to march, to the executive council meeting they had been. we now know it is the case there

have been serious allegations within the afl-cio, even about conduct allegedly going on during that same executive council meeting at which they were approving this new code of conduct. julia: rich trunker, it was his chief budget officer in the spotlight. explain a little bit about what happened. josh: the chief budget officer of the afl-cio, we reported was accused of inappropriate behavior towards female administrative assistance in the office. we reported that the response from the afl-cio, to the allegations which included pressuring a woman to have a sexual relationship with him and suggesting he could protect her job if you did, the reactions to those allegations from the afl-cio was a series of disciplinary measures including two weeks suspension and making him pay for the cost of additional training around these issues. but he did not lose his senior staff position at the

federation. it was an outcome that many of the former staff i spoke to did not think was sufficient. the outcome changed when we reached out to the afl-cio, telling them we plan to write about this issue. a couple of days issue terry stapleton resigned from his job. carol: president trump hunts for deals in asia and especially china. julia: south korea's hopes for a successful winter olympics next year are fading fast. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ julia: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can also listen to us and radio on sirius xm, 106 fm

in boston, am 960 in the bay area. julia: and in asia on the bloomberg radio plus app. in the politics section, president trump withdrawal from the transpacific partnership has put him in a difficult position with asian commerce. carol: he saw that firsthand on history to the region. the region.ip to peter: trump in one of his first acts pulled out of the transpacific partnership, the big 12 nation trade deal of countries along the pacific rim that was a high-quality trade deal and a sense and have a lot of the components in at the u.s. was pushing for like intellectual property protection, restraints on the ability of state owned enterprises to subsidize their company, to get subsidies from the government and so on.

it had a lot of things that countries were reluctant to give and had been won over intense negotiations, like trench warfare. when trump pulled out of that a lot of people saw as a backward step for the u.s. i think now we are seeing that turned out to be the case. carol we have seen it is better to be part of the street agreements. peter: think about a u.s. multinational doing business with multiple countries. if each country has a separate deal with domestic content rules or 100 other things, that sort of splinters commerce. it is exactly the wrong way to go. you want a common set of rules across all the markets you play in. carol: where does it leave president trump and his team

when it comes to negotiating trade? countries don't want to do bilateral agreements with him, do they? peter: not right now. i talked to a tree expert today it was saying -- who was saying the u.s. will find it slow going with the likes of japan and korea because they will say the status quo is not terrible. if we think trump will put the spruce to us and making fairly strong demands, we may be better off sticking with what we have. we will help trump save face by going to the motions of talking but we will not make any concessions. they may be trying to out wait him. carol: south korea is preparing for the 2018 winter olympics. julia: they may have trouble shrugging off north korea, corporate scandals. and empty seats.

carol: there is a lot going on. cristina: it is like a perfect storm of bad stuff, as we found out. it is not just the threat of the north that may keep people away. at home south koreans are demoralized by all of these scandals that have involved some big-name companies that are also sponsors of the games. carol: talking about samsung? cristina: samsung is one. and they don't have any big champions in the game this year. in previous years they had an ice skating, which is also depressing. carol: meanwhile they are building, putting the final touches on everything? cristina: they will be ready. like sochi in russia where reporters were on social be a cynical these photos of missing manhole covers and dirty water. the door of my hotel room fell

off in my hand. when we checked in on the facility that will host the opening and closing ceremonies, that was mid-october, it was done. the area is already a tourist area. mostly domestically. it has facilities. it will be a high-speed rail link from seoul. people will be able to stay in seoul and take the train in for the day. there has not been as much spending required. carol: i'm sitting at home and i'm listening to this and i'm thinking, how close to the border of with north korea? cristina: 60 miles. carol: are people buying tickets to events? do they anticipate tourists coming in? checked, they had

only sold about 30% of the 1.1 million tickets. carol: that sounds low. cristina: it is true -- we have seen from past games ticket sales accelerate as he get closer. you are saying we have forgotten this was going to happen. they are saying when the torch relays start, that is when the world wakes up to the fact that especially winter games are happening. that just wrapped up. they are saying the last three months are crucial. still, they acknowledge they are running behind. the ironic thing is they have sold more tickets to international buyers. there is only about 350,000 tickets set aside for international buyers. 320,000. much bigger portion for south koreans. they are doing better with international buyers than they are at home. julia: saudi arabia channels one of the most prolific billionaire investors. carol: what it may mean for the future of the middle east. julia: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

julia: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: still ahead, what is behind saudi arabia's purge? as it arrests princes and businessmen. julia: plus, the brothers who bought a country in africa. carol: out of the box ideas and a holiday giftgiving guide. julia: all of this still to come on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ julia: we are back with editor-in-chief megan murphy. one of the big stories this week has been the focus on saudi arabia. ♪ julia: we are back with editor-in-chief megan murphy. one of the big stories this week has been the focus on saudi

arabia. this gentleman may not be the face according to saudi arabia of the country but as far as international investors are concerned, the prince is someone that they recognize and have done business with. megan: detained in this crackdown in something that was so surprising. we cannot underestimate how much this has sent reverberations around the world for not only the kingdom and the middle east but for the american investing community. this is a man incredibly well known for investment in companies like apple and twitter. carol: citigroup. megan: how much money he pumped

into that in the 1990's. this is a man whose kingdom corporation, what he has built and what he represents in terms of the modernization of the kingdom, had mostly women working for him, was supportive of allowing women to drive, and was a forward-looking international face. i think there is a lot of people surprised that are closer political rivals in saudi arabia, he is the one that has emerged as the focal point. carol: people likened it to in the united states, arresting somebody like bill gates. for people who were not familiar with them, it is huge. megan: he has a partnership with bill gates with the four seasons buyouts. this is a man with friends in high places, not only the business titans, but the political titans. a very prominent face. close ties with the media. accessible and transparent. this goes down to what the corruption initiative in saudi arabia, what people are looking at this, and we talk about this throughout the magazine this week, what does this portend for the future? is this a crackdown, there has been widespread comment on whether or not some of the saudi billionaires including the

prince have siphoned off money to funds their own largess ,their excess spending habits, that is what is being closely watched. what does it mean? is it a slide to the kinds of autocracy that we are not used to seeing? julia: if you're going to reform a country like saudi arabia, it is going to hurt. you need to send a message at this stage that if you are hurting, the the upper class, the royalty are also going to hurt with you if they indeed are corrupt and have been dealing in this way, not in an honest way, that perhaps they should. and that is the message they are trying to send. megan: that is such a great point. the crown prince, in targeting some of the wealthiest people, detained right now in this is $33 billion in individual worth in this crackdown.

what is interesting is we have heard from people from the region who say that some of the reformist agenda -- this is a crown prince who is looking to radically transform the economy away from oil dependency into a modern business economy. did he view these people as impediments? perhaps. but it also signals that as i progress away from this society we have built, -- as i pushed us away from the society we about, these people need to see. carol: people have called it the palace purge. he is trying to make significant changes. we talk about others, but there are ministers and folks within the government that are also purged. >> we have talked to people who say that the support for this reformist agenda was not universal. this is the initiative.

for a country that moves almost in lockstep, the factions and the traditional split of power cannot be underestimated. the house of saud was split so that intentionally there was not as much incentive to consolidate power behind one faction. between the military, the government, the economy. now we see this concentration of power around the crown prince. he seems to have been able to consolidate that. whether or not he can pull off his agenda, there are a lot of expectations. julia: he has put his credibility and reputation on reforming the country. has he bitten off more than he can chew? megan: that is the key question. peter: there is no doubt that the crown prince, the heir apparent wanted to move out some of his rivals, particularly the head of the national guard who was a favored son of the former king and posed a threat.

the national guard was the only military branch that prince mohammed does not control. now he does. there was something else at work. it was billed as an anticorruption campaign, and i think there is some truth to that. there is no question that this prince is serious about transforming the economy. he wants to remove the layer of sinecure and handouts that has burdened the economy and sapped incentive for investment and entrepreneurship. he is doing two things at once here. julia: the thing that is unusual for the international audience to see, just a week after we had all of the big names in saudi arabia talking about how the country is going to be opening up and becoming more liberal at the same time as his massive corruption crackdown.

can those things be consistent? peter: that is a good question, and it goes to the paradox of this 32-year-old crown prince. he has only been in office for a couple of years. he is feeling his way. there is one thing i can tell you, having spent many hours with him last year in an interview, and he is absolutely certain of the path forward for himself. he is cocksure that he knows best for saudi society and is ready to pursue that. it is this dual track. it is imposing these reforms from on high, where he will tell the saudi people and try to create policies to promote entrepreneurship and say to them you have to go to work. we cannot survive on oil revenues. look at what has happened to the price. look at the budget deficits. at the same time, as you pointed out, he is doing things in an oppressive manner like an autocrat.

he is arresting people like the prince who is the so-called citicorp prints. prince. rp in hisow in dentention desert camp. carol: someone well-known to financial circles. i want to go back to the crown prince. he is playing to his base of people under 25. is that correct? peter: he has identified a constituency, so to speak. not that he needs one. he is an all-powerful prince. he has identified his constituency, and that is this youth in saudi society were thewhere about half population is under 25. many of them are well-educated or becoming well-educated. there is real frustration with job opportunities. there is an understanding and a desire to integrate with the global values system in terms of

the place of religion in society as well as things like climate change and other global concerns, so he is playing to that base. i think you shares some of those values. he certainly likes to talk about silicon valley and tech and identifies himself as a sort of steve jobs figure. carol: we discussed the cover image of the global issue. julia: everybody talking about saudi this week and the changes we saw in terms of crackdown and corruption. you chose a bold cover, the prince. >> we wanted an image that shows power and him contemplating his domain and where he is going to take the country. carol: where did you get that image? did he sit for you? >> this was a pickup. we went through a lot of options and really wanted to find one where you connect with him in a way. julia: he is young. he is smiling.

he is talking. to find one where he looks pretty fierce. you say it with words on the cover as well. this crackdown, you call it a revolution. >> this place nicely with the last cover we did with him, he was smiling and more jubilant and now he is taking a more serious tone. carol: i also thought the darkness of his clothing, it is ominous. >> we pushed the image of little -- a little bit. we wanted to feel, to play into the darkness of the photo. julia: the look on the photo as well. we do not know where this is going. carol: up next, amazon, apple, and google race to speak india's languages. having most important economy in africa came to benefit one powerful family. ♪

♪ julia: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can find us online on businessweek.com. julia: u.s. tech companies are trying to differentiate themselves in india. carol: they are finding being on the subcontinent is king. announcer: amazon as well as google and apple have made a concerted effort to tailor their virtual assistants, whether it is siri or google assistant which powers the messaging app or amazon echo run by alexa for a local market in india which is increasingly full of not only first-generation internet users but people learning to read for the first time. people who do not speak english

as their first language and people who would rather talk to their computers than typing to them. carol: it sounds like you in a world where more things are being individualized and customized that it makes sense that these virtual assistants would be more customized to the market they are selling into, but this is still an unusual move. >> the companies involved, particularly amazon, moving into germany a year ago. for the first time shipping these smart speakers to india in a real way and this is after they put in the effort to use linguists and speech scientists to help developers train it to among other things speak a blend of hindi and english which was challenging to develop for because it is a test that ai has not gone through before. blending two languages in a way that you can combine the spelling and grammar in each to create a third fusion that means something different.

carol: it is not just about getting an accent right, it is about understanding indian culture and holidays. it is all in by these tech companies. jeff: the big objective is to make systems that sound more inherently indian. whether that is having a particular accent or recognizing that independence day is august 15 and not july 4. wishing you happy to wally -- dwali. carol: one indian born family has come to wield incredible influence in south africa. julia: we talk about the group -- gupta family. >> these three brothers from a nondescript part of india immigrated to johannesburg, built something of a business empire with interests in mining and information technology and the media, and in the process, it is alleged, have attained an incredible degree of political influence, both over the current president but also over a number of important ministers.

the heads of state owned companies. what they are accused of doing with this influence is running the government for the benefit of their family. and really, it has created an incredibly severe crisis in south africa, by far the worst such crisis since the end of apartheid, and one that is shaking that society to its core. carol: i want to get to the impact on south africa because it is significant, but tell me about the trajectory of the gupta family within the south african government. is it the case of being in the right place at the right time? >> there is some of that, but it was that they came to south africa initially when the country was booming. it was opening to the world after years of international sanctions. there was money to be made. introductions were made at opportune moments that allowed

the eldest brother to make some powerful friends. one of them was jacob zuma, who, around 2005, emerged as a possible future president. what is interesting is that the gupta's rise coincided with a time 10 years after apartheid when the national africa conference was really splintering. there was a moment where rather than being unified, the party was experiencing a schism. that was the moment when the guptas were able to apparently insert themselves and to befriend jacob zuma and become one of his key allies. carol: they are very smart on a lot of levels. they did hedge political bets and tie themselves to zuma, but they also employed members of zuma's family before he became

president, and that created some kind of relationship. >> that is correct. particularly president zuma's closely associated with the guptas. he has become a director or shareholder in many companies in their orbit. he was hired in 2005 when he was in his early 20's. a very indicative detail is that he was involved in a very serious car accident that killed one commuter. his first call after the crash was to the youngest of the gupta brothers rather than to anyone else. that tells you how close he is to that family. i should stress that the family denied all of these claims. they say they are merely businessmen who are not engaged in politics, or not lobbyists, arrangements with the government. since these allegations have not

been proven in court, they have not been charged with any crime. what emerges is a picture of savvy operators. three men who understood that they were operating in a fluid system. south africa is a place that had a new government where the critical officials are former guerrilla fighters. there is not a long tradition of democratic governance. if you are a political entrepreneur, if you like, and you do have some money and skill to deploy, you can get quite far quite quickly. julia: up next, why cloud coders are so excited about an application coming out of google. >> from travel to watches to exercise, the best gifts for this holiday season. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." julia: you can listen to us on the radio on sirius xm, 1130 am in new york, am 1330 in boston, and am 960 in the bay area. carol: and in london and in asia on the bloomberg radio plus app. julia: a look at something for geeks. carol: this makes it easier to store code on the cloud. >> a huge deal for all of us. >> i think a lot of the advancements that have been made in terms of the chip industry and the hardware and the evolution of software, there is a disconnect between those things and frameworks were built for specific hardware. you have these big gaps, certain

kinds of security holes and bugs. you have another company that works on containers that solves a lot of these inefficiencies and pushed software forward. a reason you are having these big pushes towards cloud computing, aws with amazon and google and alibaba, they are building these colossal businesses. all of them say this is very early, there are still a lot more businesses that could use on demand and on center storage. this is one way you can test the cloud. you can use some of these containers with some of your data, store that on the cloud but keep core data on your premises, which is what a lot of companies want to do for security reasons. carol: it is a little complicated but for something like philip, for their app, it may been able to turn on their lights faster.

>> in software, time is money. if they can reduce something like a three second lag, it may sound trivial, but for the engineering team, that is a big change. they did not tell me basically what cost savings, savings but they hinted that it does reduce a lot of the costs they put into previously maintaining and running the software. you have a lot of companies like phillips, which is over a hundred years old, trying to keep up with the times and modernize and connect all the devices to the internet. in order to do that securely and in order to do that efficiently, you have to have the latest cutting-edge software tools. carol: now to something really exciting. the annual gift guide. >> it is not always easy to think of your friends as, this is a guy, this is a girl, this is a kid, this is an adult. we break it up to travel, you have an active family member, if

you have a fashionista in your life. we tried to break it down to what people like and care about. carol: let's talk about travel and adventure because there are cool items. >> one of my favorite things that we have is a simple idea. it is $99 and it is a beautiful map of the world or you can get a map of america. it is for families that want to keep track of where they have traveled in the world. it is a vintage looking map and you just put a pin where you have been. carol: also great headphones, you include something with that? mark: we also have these headphones made by a company called adle. handstitched leather. it is a little fancy. someone might not know that you have high-tech headphones on but you will know. carol: do they make good sound? mark: they have great sound.

it is good for tuning out the world and keeping to yourself. carol: you also include a skin vitality treatment for people into travel adventure. mark: masks are such a thing now. men, women, teenagers love wearing masks. that particular mask is a popular one, and it comes in four stages. when you get off of the plane and you feel like somebody slapped you, you are tired and dehydrated. it pumps it up for you. carol: the thing i definitely want is the shirling eye mask. it goes for $500. sounds yummy. >> they are adorable. you know how some butterflies or moths have eyes on their wings to fool predators? fendi has adopted that into masks.

it is a real eye opener. >> bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. >> we were tax mad. >> heavy on taxation, but we were looking at what was going on among u.s. lawmakers as tax reform works its way through congress. a deep dive into the history of taxes. a reminder that taxes were first thought about to increase revenue. they have become such a political football. great story and great information. julia: we go lost in the process. favorite? >> saudi arabia. what an incredible story. >> the week prior was about reform. this week the crackdown on corruption and the consolidation of power for the crown prince. what does this mean when it involves a billionaire businessman in saudi arabia but

-- that everybody outside the country knows so well? carol: well known for audience and it is just beginning. julia: bloomberg television continues now. ♪

scarlet: i'm scarlet fu. this is "bloomberg etf iq." we focus on the assets, risks, and rewards of exchange traded funds. ♪ scarlet: fcc chairman jay clayton works to streamline the agency's approach to approving new etf's, a welcome sign for the industry. bitcoin is in your future as the cme announces plans to announce bitcoin futures contracts, paving the way for bitcoin etf's. video games are a $100 billion plus industry. we dig intis