carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. julia: i'm julia chatterley. we are here inside the magazine headquarters in new york. carol: in this week's issue, can jeff bezos, warren buffett, and jamie dimon create a new model for the health care system. julia: investors bet big. carol: marvel's "black panther" at the box office. julia: all that ahead on "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ carol: we are here with the editor in chief of "bloomberg businessweek," joel webber. let's start in the business section. a story that is fascinating came

out a couple of weeks ago. it is about a trifecta of individuals, well known individuals, warren buffett, jeff bezos, and jamie dimon talking about fixing the health care system. joel: right. the biggest guys around. the details around this still remained kind of hazy. what will actually be the solution in health care? how are they going to try to fix this? they're trying to find a ceo who can spearhead this initiative in the three companies. amazon.com, berkshire hathaway, and jpmorgan. what has been interesting, and where we try to pick up the narrative is the reaction within the industry. because the health care industry, amazon is at the door, this is a big deal. that is where we picked up. julia: this is not what we were expecting from him as a foray -- amazon as a foray into the health care. we should make the point that at the moment they are tackling the

situation with their individual companies. as you point out, what does this mean ultimately for all of the individual players here? the insurers, the pharmacies, the middlemen in particular? carol: pharma, right? joel: right. all of this is a massive cocktail of what is happening in health care? why do prices keep getting so much higher? and consumers feel like they are getting the shortest straw of all. what the speculation is there are middlemen, pharmacy benefit managers, and that is where there seems to be a focus that this triumvirate can bring to bear. julia: yes, because the big pharma say look, we are not mispricing the drugs. a lot gets creamed by the guys in the middle, the insurers. the guys in the middle, the benefit managers as you point out. carol: when it comes to drug pricing, this does not totally makes sense. the drug companies set up pricing, then there are refunds that come into play, and the relationship between big pharma, the pbm, and the health insurance companies has been a cozy relationship. joel: and it is very opaque. carol: right. joel: that is why this triumvirate is causing turbulence in the market.

carol: yes. joel: because what they could bring to bear, what if we negotiated directly with pharmaceuticals? carol: cut out the middlemen. joel: hypothetical. we don't know what will happen yet, but if you could do that you would put downward pressure on a bunch of this opaque market that is proving to maybe be a little too lucrative for some players. julia: in the middle of this you have a u.s. administration talking about repealing and replacing obamacare. obviously, we have seen some failed attempts, and the president talking about drug pricing as well. joel: this will be an ongoing story that all of us will be watching. and this is just the appetizer we want to give you, because we are just trying to inform you. because this story will be one we will be watching throughout the year. so think of this as the appetizer. understand the players, and we will get to an entree soon enough. julia: yes, what about the main course? let's jet to the u.s. cover and the asia cover this week.

we are honing in on boeing, a huge industrial. joel: it is an amazing story, in part because of what boeing has been able to do as a business. and if you look at the dow, it has basically been the top performing stock in the dow in the past year. carol: shareholders are happy. joel: investors are ecstatic about this. how did they do it? that is what the story is about. and there is a lot of nuance to that, because basically everyone else in the world, other than investors and employees, are like, boeing is hurting us. [laughter] julia: yes. they are flexing some muscle. joel: that is an understatement. carol: on that note, let's go to this story about the boeing ceo. he is driving everybody crazy, except for investors. we got more from julie johnson. julie: we think we know boeing. they had been around for 100 years. but in year 101, they have

overtaken ge to be the most powerful and largest industrial company, and they have really started to shake up the marketplace in ways that we are just now exploring, and whose effects we do not know. julia: their old slogan used to be "working together." how far does that slogan apply to them today? julie: boeing today is really in every speech you hear a senior executive give, that the phrase comes up, "compete to win." and this is a company that seems unafraid to play hardball, to knock heads together. and if people do not like the consequences, they don't seem to care. julia: how much of this has to do with the new ceo? i mean, i call him new. he has been around since 2015, dennis muilenburg. you described him as turning unapologetically hard-nosed under his reign. julie: i think boeing has always been a tough competitor.

but dennis is very driven, personally. he is extremely charming in person and charismatic. but again, he just -- he has this goal of making boeing a global industrial champion, sort of a 1990's era ge. he is -- you know, his foot is on the gas. this is a company that seems right now determined not to let up. so i think in some regards, companies reflect their leaders. so that might be true of what we are seeing at boeing today. julia: the share price has doubled since january of last year. it is the best performer in the dow, so investors clearly rewarding them at this stage. >> > they are happy.

julie: yes, absolutely. and one of the things that is kind of fascinating is ge has imploded for shareholders who want to have large industrial stocks in their portfolio, boeing has sort of become the only game. and i think boeing has, in terms of their share price, benefited tremendously. but at the same time, it's sort of reflective of the underlying strength of the business. they are very focused right now on profitability. really shaking up the supplier community with some of the ways they have gone about gaining that profitability. and they are contracting. but that is a very high-level picture, you know, with a thousand little details needed -- that has sort of made it come together. julia: the cost initiative they are running now, partnering for success, critics have called this pilfering from suppliers. just give us a sense of what

they are doing and what they are achieving, because it is creating a fundamental reshaping of boeing's business at the same time. julie: yes, that is absolutely true. this started in 2012. so under jim mcnerney, the previous ceo. and i think at that time, boeing was going through tremendous soul-searching after the 787 dreamliner. that was enormously draining on the company. their early issues with that plane, the manufacturing problems that led to it being three years late. and so i think boeing took a look around them and said, why, like other large industrials, why are we plodding along with single-digit operating margins when our suppliers are earning double or triple that? i think there was a sense that, you know, we have to put our

needs and profitability first. carol: the design director put boeing on the cover of "bloomberg businessweek." >> we had this excellent shoot with the boeing ceo, and he has a beaming smile. we kind of coupled that with this chunky typeface to give you a feeling that they are just kind of -- julia: the sky is the limit. carol: it's great. it's a wonderful picture of him. he looks like he is happy. he is glowing. how many pictures do you take of a ceo when you do something like this? >> i mean, it is a lot of photos, as much time as the ceo will give us. we will take as many as we can. carol: do you change the backgrounds? >> yes.

we also shot throughout the factory. you will see inside of the future, we have all of these photos of them making planes. it's really beautiful. julia: that is the big story. the cost initiative, the cost of partnering for success and the pushback on suppliers. you have been cute with that and the plane in the background. this is the fundamental part of the story. >> it really places us in the environment he is pushing for. julia: and shaking things up. >> yeah. julia: up next, why moscow is not talking about the hundreds of russian mercenaries killed in syria this month. julia: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. julia: i'm julia chatterley. and you can find us online at businessweek.com and on our mobile app. carol: in the politics section, u.s. forces killed hundreds of russian mercenaries in syria. julia: and the incident is raising the possibility of greater conflict between washington and moscow. carol: here's editor matthew philips. matthew: it has been an active start to the month of february. we have seen an escalation in tensions. we have seen some actual, real shooting going on.

we have seen aircraft being downed from iran and turkey and russia and israel. they have all seen aircraft shot down over the first part of february. the most interesting event, the most seismic event, happened on the night of february 7 when it seems that a battalion of -- what by all accounts seems to be russian mercenaries, numbering in the realm of 200-300 -- were killed by a u.s.-backed force led by u.s. forces and the kurds in a failed attempt to take oil fields the kurds have been holding for the past few months. carol: who was behind the russian mercenaries? do we know? matthew: it is pretty murky. the kremlin, a putin spokesperson would not address this. they are not official russian troops. but as we know, given some of the incursions russia had in ukraine, they often are not

wearing official russian military gear. it seems that these few hundred mercenaries were under the control of a firm known as wagner. which, to put it in blunt terms, is kind of the russian equivalent to the u.s. based blackwater. these are private mercenaries. not unlike the folks we sent into the ground in iraq. they were not part of the official u.s. military, but they were there to fight. and wagner is an organization that is controlled by a man who is known in russia as putin's cook. he owns a catering company that does business with the kremlin. he also seems to have control over these military units that are controlled by wagner and have been operating in syria and helping assad shore up his game.

-- shore up his gains. julia: i think you said it best. what is so surprising, puzzling, to use a word that you used in here as well in this, this is for all intents and purposes it it seems to be some kind of u.s. based rogue attack. but if you look at the response from the russians, not surprising given that they deny knowledge or involvement. but the united states response also seems pretty weak, despite action on the ground. what is going on here? matthew: defense secretary mattis, all he would say on the record was that this is perplexing. in an after action report. and i think that is an accurate assessment. they were very confused by what happened. we have -- by we, i mean we have the united states forces on the ground and embedded with the kurds, and we are in communication with the official

channels with the russian forces that are there. this is like a jigsaw puzzle of a battlefield where proxies of big powers, the u.s., turkey, russia, iran, israel are all waging wars. and there are lots of interlocking alliances and things like that, and especially when it comes to this part of the country where the euphrates cuts between here, the u.s. is with the kurds, and on the other side, you have russian forces that are with assad. and our people are in communication with the russians, and it seems like communication broke down. and this is by the way, fantastic reporting from our moscow-based reporters, it seems to indicate this was a rogue operation. we are not sure who gave the go ahead on this. but there was communication throughout, during, before, and after about, why are you moving? stop moving. we are going to attack. and that is what happened. there is a lot of mystery about the incentives and impetus and

who called this in. but you are seeing hospitals in st. petersburg and moscow filled with hundreds of wounded these past few days. julia: up next, the problem children of exchange traded funds. carol: plus, how one entrepreneur leapfrogged his payment company into the mobile era. julia: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ julia: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm julia chatterley. carol: and i'm carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio, on sirius xm and on a.m. 1130 in new york, and a.m. 960 in the bay area. julia: and in london and in asia on the bloomberg radio app. in the finance section, investors are finding reasons to worry about certain exchange traded products, or etp's. carol: over 400 of these use derivatives to raise outside returns.

julia: and that is raising red flags for market watchers. here is our reporter, rachel evans. rachel: last week, we had the blowup in xiv. it bet against volatility. so it was betting on car markets. what that brought into focus is how some exchange traded products have a complexity at their hearts. they are not as risky as vix betting etn, but there are some products that include derivatives at their heart. i have people questioning a little bit of what do they own in their portfolios? julia: there are a lot of technical terms in there. just explain exactly what investors were doing when getting involved in these products? rachel: sure. first up, let's talk about volatility. volatility is a way we can measure exactly how active the markets are in terms of price swings. julia: the up. rachel: exactly.

when markets are calm, volatility is low. when markets start moving, volatility moves up. carol: markets have been, in terms of volatility, low for a long time. a lot of complacency in the market. rachel: very much so. we saw that suddenly change. that creates problems for products that bet on an against volatility. julia: they were betting volatility will remain low. it has been for a long time. rachel: exactly. the short trade was popular indeed. and we really saw that start to get washed out on monday afternoon. one place we saw that was in the exchange traded fund, or product world. we saw exchange traded notes. carol: etn versus etf. rachel: versus ecp, exchange traded products. an etn, which is a debt obligation from its issuer, it started to run into trouble because the index it was tracking really moves so much over a short period of time. credit suisse, on tuesday decided it would wind up the product to so anybody who had --

carol: by winding up the product, you can say it can go down to zero. rachel: right. this is what we saw. anybody who had come into the note over the previous weeks or months, in fact those who had come into the week before this happened, over $500 million flowed into this note. all of those people were faced with credit suisse saying we are accelerating this note we are terminating. julia: does that mean they lost money? rachel: absolutely. this product went down 90% in a space of a day. that will now be liquidated later this month. and people will get back whatever the price was at that point. julia: who was actually invested in this product? was it sophisticated investors or was it mom-and-pop? as we talk about, the retail investors invested in is to. rachel: it is difficult to know who owns these things. if you look at the holders on the bloomberg terminal, you'd be left with the impression it was very sophisticated investors.

that is who it is aimed for. however, talking to a number of retail investors, it seems like that was not necessarily the case. there were chatting forums about this online, talking about how xiv was making people a huge percentage every year. people were piling into this, putting all their savings. i have spoken to several people who lost thousands of dollars. carol: that is what is really tremendous. because while the markets were complacent, you have done great reporting on all this, that while the markets were complacent, people were making crazy amounts of money. that inverse volatility index was making so much money. rachel: i think, in fact, on monday, when volatility started to spike, that was something that people thought, markets have been calm for a while. we will see that spike disappear. now is a great to go short. time -- no is a great time to go short. instead, they got washed out. carol: in the pursuit section, this week's game changer is steve street. julia: first he invented prepaid debit cards, now he has reinvented his company to help facilitate mobile payments.

carol: we got more from our reporter. denny: steve is the founder and ceo of a company called green dot, a company that probably not a lot of folks have heard of, they provide prepaid cards. but they are a bank, and they have been making a lot of interesting deals in silicon valley. they have worked at apple and uber, trying to build out their platform. julia: take a step back. because he is kind of a visionary, i think. he foresaw the shift to mobile banking. but it was in a situation where he was like, i will not be quick enough to take advantage of it, so he made some pretty bold moves. jenny: correct. yes, back in 2012, he could see that the banking experience was moving to mobile phones, and he felt that his company was not going to get there in time with the technology they had. so he went out and he did an acquisition of a company that was called looped, it was a pretty weird one at the time. they were a dating app that had failed. but it had a lot of geolocation services and interesting

technology. but the bank basically said, i don't care what technology you have, i want your talent and the people who can develop for mobile. so he brought that team in and shook things up in his company. and now they are inking all of these important partnerships. julia: they power apple pay cash, as you said not many people have heard of them, but they are actually fundamental to some pretty huge businesses out there. jenny: exactly. they power apple pay cash. that is apple's version of venmo. and so it is an interesting business. you don't see green dot anywhere in the app or in the card. but they are the ones powering it. they are the bank behind it, so it is interesting, a lot of people are using them in have no -- and have no idea. julia: they are working with uber now and intuit. so they have fingers in many pies. jenny: yes. the looped acquisition gave them

the kind of mobile development team they need to work with big companies that have lofty dreams for how they can use financial services in their business. so green dot says they are a platform, not just a prepaid card. and so you can use this banking platform they have to really plug in to some of these interesting technology companies. and do some pretty cool things. julia: it is one of the most distributed banks in the country. the growth we have seen is pretty phenomenal. jenny: yes, indeed. you know, not to knock the prepaid business, but yes, the partnerships that they have gotten into, like uber for instance, they are the ones who pay all the uber drivers at the end of the week. or help pay them, i guess. so yes, they are facilitating these payments for silicon valley. and when i spoke to steve, he said the reason we are able to do this is, yes we have this great, incredible platform and a team that can do it all, but we are able to speak tech to these companies. especially as more and more of these tech giants want to make

their way into banking, it is kind of interesting to see them partner with the longer-term players. julia: are they a bank that speaks tech or a tech firm that speaks banking? i would say they are both. jenny: that is a good question. they are definitely a bank, first and foremost. prepaid was steve's brain child. back in the 1990's, when he saw that more people would buy things online, especially teenagers, and they did not have a bank account to do it. and so that is why he created the prepaid card. but flash forward 20 years, and now it is a company where prepaid is the biggest part of the business, obviously, but they can see the platform being used in different and unique ways. carol: up next, exxon targets the lawyers it claims are conspiring against the company. julia: and what is behind the republican's parent change of heart regarding spending. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ julia: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek," i'm julia chatterley. carol: and i'm carol massar. ♪ toll ahead, how the wwe came dominate streaming. "bloombergon businessweek." ♪ julia: we are back with the editor in chief joel webber, and in the must-read section, we are honing in on exxon mobil, sick to death of the climate change lawsuits. it is fighting fire with fire.

joel: it is an interesting take. i would call this one a need to know read. what exxon has really done here is change the narrative by going after lawyers. the very lawyers that are suing them, they have turned the narrative and they are going after them. we are talking environmental activists and attorney generals. carol: they talk about the la jolla playbook. joel: the la jolla playbook, that is a term. so what happened is six years ago, the rockefellers, which have a fund, the irony here is the rockefellers were standard oil. standard oil is basically exxon today. so the rockefellers invited a group of people to la jolla, and exxon has pointed a finger at that and said they were conspiring against us. that is the whole essence of this story. carol: so they were plotting against exxon?

joel: so some of the legal experts we consulted on this say it is a moonshot, but a bold one. it is designed to almost be a fear tactic. julia: so they are trying to spread fear amongst the attorney generals of new york, massachusetts? joel: to get them to back down. it is an amazing legal maneuver that a lot of people have their eyes on this to see if they can pull it off. carol: it is amazing, a fear tactic against the rockefellers. i'm curious in this environment -- joel: and it is bigger than that, because the rockefellers, it is the rockefeller brothers' fund. who are -- this is all about exxon knowing something about climate change and doing nothing about it. so there are multiple people who would be interested in being on that side of the conversation. and the rockefeller brothers fund was inviting people to have

that conversation. attorney generals among them, environmental activists among them. and that is where exxon is trying to seize on it and say it is a conspiracy. julia: i mean, this is a whole industry that has come under fierce criticism. so surely, if a precedent were able to be set here, it would have far larger implications. joel: that is why it is such a need to know. carol: exxon saying they have a right to free speech, this plays into that as well. joel: so -- so much stuff plays into this, because at the same time, while you could call that a strategic meeting, isn't exxon having strategic meetings on the other side of this? so it is really such an interesting dynamic, and we will have to see what happens. right now it is just so many depositions. even that is being contested. julia: time is being bought. carol: exactly, right? we will see how this one works out. talk about the interesting dynamics between republicans right now. this is in the remarks section this week. and anybody who has been covering politics or business

news for a while, in government, especially here in the united states it has been about reducing the deficit, not adding to spending. peter cory writes about it this week. joel: this narrative around the deficit has been a republican priority since about 2010. the deficit hawks, that was a thing in congress. and the artwork we came up with for this story is amazing, because that deficit hawk is an extinct species. it lasted from about 2010 to 2018, and you are not hearing about it anymore. and the change is they realized voters don't care. julia: the deficit hawk is going the way of the dodo. we all watched this, the last man standing, senator rand paul saying, you can't be against obama's deficit and now be voting -- joel: such irony here. julia: he said it it is the definition of hypocrisy. and that is where we picked it up with economics editor peter cory. peter: he got up there and

delivered a jeremiad for the generations, condemning republicans for being hypocritical for opposing deficits when obama was in the white house, but now embraces them now a republican is in the white house. julia: to be clear, he is a republican himself. he was condemning his own party, saying it is fiscally irresponsible. peter: and he was just shrugged off by his own party. which, after he set down, went ahead and voted for a $300 billion increase on spending over two years, on the heels of a $1.5 trillion tax cut. julia: put some flesh on that, what are some of his colleagues saying? the senator from south dakota -- peter: it was called the colossal waste of time. julia: a colossal waste of time. peter: right. so the thinking of the republicans is, we want to cut taxes because we want to help the supply side of the economy. julia: right. peter: encourage companies to

invest and so on, which will create a greater gdp. so all the deficits might go up, but they will fall as a share of gdp. that, of course, is the laffer curve resurrected. the laffer curve is the idea that the u.s. economy is so overtaxed, reducing taxation will stimulate growth so much it will actually cut the deficit problem. julia: or at least be deficit neutral. because that was the initial promise as far as the tax overhaul was concerned. peter: of course, the institute for global markets at the university of chicago's booth school of business, as recently as last may, interviewed 42 prominent economists from the left and right, and asked them, will trump's tax cut -- this was before it passed, of course -- pay for itself? and one of the 42 said yes, only one. and then it turned out that person had made a mistake and meant to say no. so basically no one supports that idea, which is unfortunately the last thing that people like mick mulvaney,

who had been a deficit hawk as a south carolina republican congressman, now the head of office of management of the budget, that is the thin reed that mick mulvaney is clinging to. julia: what intrigues me is, do voters care? peter: and that is kind of the heart of my story and why i brought it up, because you would think after rand paul got up there and delivered his speech, republicans would be kind of cowed. they would be a little embarrassed and worried about going back to their voters and having to admit to them that after having cared about deficits for years they were now supporting massive deficits. the answer is they can afford to shrug off rand paul because they have come to the very logical conclusion that they can get away with it. in fact, it will be good for them to do this, to cut taxes and raise spending, because that is ultimately what voters want. julia: up next, why china's baby bump fizzled. carol: and betting on a stem cell breakthrough to treat ms and chron's.

julia: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ julia: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm julia chatterley. carol: i'm carol massar. you can also find us online at businessweek.com. julia: and on our mobile app. in the economic section, the baby boom -- or bump -- china experienced following the relaxation of its one child policy seems to have been short-lived. carol: and it is proving to be challenging to convince couples to have more children. julia: here is editor cristina lindblad. cristina: there was a mini baby bump, not quite a baby boom. births went up 8% in 2016, which was the first full year, but then they went back down last year. carol: wait, wait, wait. i'll take a step back. for decades, it was a one child policy to control population

growth. they wanted to put the brakes on it. that was in place for a long time. when they made this change, it was kind of startling. we were surprised. but they were doing it to help the population and economic demographics. cristina: yes, this was a concern that china would start graying too fast and it would have economic implications. carol: like japan. cristina: right. yes, everybody was looking not too far and is saying, oh no. with the workforce shrinking really fast, the dependency ratio, the number of young people it takes to support every aging person is going to start tipping into a point where it is unsustainable. julia: it is really bad. you put figures on it. population is expected to peak in 2030, and then decline. cristina: which is not that far from now. the workforce has already started shrinking. so, i think about 5 million last year.

so yes, this was supposed to be a baby boom and launch a different trajectory. but we see the rate going back down. carol: why is it difficult to have more than one child in china? cristina: basically the short answer is that life in the city is so expensive. at one of the government -- a government official came out this year and said they did a survey and 4/5 of couples cited financial worries about not having a second child. in places like shanghai, the cost of a 1000 square foot apartment is something like 90 times the median salary. julia: compare that to new york. cristina: in new york it is about 25%. carol: big difference. cristina: yeah. and also education costs are quite high in the cities. julia: you have people focusing on the couple, and they were excited at the possibility of having a second child, and then they looked at it and said, we would have to move, we are

struggling even now with education costs, it is not feasible. cristina: that's right. they ran the numbers and they said no. it is not going to work for us. julia: what is china doing about it? can they change this? we all know that the welfare state there, while there is one, is not great. cristina: that is the big issue. they have been trying to bolster, make it easier for mothers, adding and expanding maternity wards, adding seats to kindergarten. because that is a big issue, there is not a universal public kindergartens. and maternity leaves average five months, paid, nationwide. carol: wow. supportive of families. cristina: but the people we talked to said china is too far along its development trajectory for these policies to make a real difference. julia: what do you mean by that? cristina: it means it is on its way to becoming a first world country, and what we see in countries at that point in development is that opportunity costs of having children is factored in.

but you know, the woman has a career. so financially it does not become as attractive. carol: in the technology section, a stem cell pioneer hopes his next breakthrough comes from placentas. julia: here is editor jeff moscas with the story. jeff: he is a jet certified pilot and stem cell pioneer who suggests we will live longer if we treat our bodies like we treat planes, with a more regular maintenance schedule. the primary factor, most people will tell you that planes are more long-lived than a few decades ago. julia: don't wait for things to go wrong. make sure you are tinkering with the body and that it is working on a continual basis? jeff: that is right. he is a cofounder of human longevity. julia: which we have heard about before, yes.

jeff: until recently, chief scientific officer of biotech giant cellgenes, a cell therapy subsidiary. he has just stepped down to become ceo of another company, cellularity, a $100 million spinoff with funding from its former parent. that starts february 15. julia: he is a specialist in stem cell therapy, but what cellularity is going to do is quite specific. explain what they are focused on. jeff: they are focused largely on therapies derived from stem cells from discarded placentas. placentas discarded after pregnancies. the theory goes that these cells, which are similar in some degree to those stem cells that a lot of scientists have been pitching as regenerative medicine for years from discarded umbilical cords are a better way to apply therapies to a much wider swath of the population. julia: so the placenta, the organ women grow in the first trimester of pregnancy, how does he think that differs from what you say, and what we have seen talked about for many years,

which is taking cells and blood from the umbilical cord and using that as a medical tool? jeff: as you say, scientists and doctors even, at the retail level, have been telling parents for 20 years, if you freeze your umbilical cord blood it will help your baby live longer later in life as more therapies are derived. so far, the umbilical cord cells have only proven useful in a few rare conditions, like some rare forms of leukemia. and what cellularity aims to do in the next four years is develop therapies that can treat all kinds of immune disorders, from crohn's disease to ms, and eventually the hope is it will be more generalized longevity for everybody. not just the millions of americans suffering from those diseases, but for everybody.

julia: it is not just about the family members, or those who are connected to the people that the cells have been taken from, this is actually a broader cure they are talking about for multiple sclerosis or diseases like this. this would be so groundbreaking if successful. and as you say, they are talking about doing it in a few years. jeff: yes, by the end of 2022, supposedly. julia: how does it help the regenerative function of the body? jeff: in this case, the idea that because stem cells in placentas are so purpose built for regenerative functions, they are then better suited then stem cells from other places in the body to then mimic regenerative cells that are at risk, or the death of which is a primary symptom of these kinds of immune diseases. carol: up next, we go inside the very lucrative halls of world wrestling entertainment. julia: and how careful planning and perfect timing may land "black panther" at the top of

the box office. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. julia: i'm julia chatterley. you can find us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, also in new york, boston, washington, d.c., and a.m. 960 in the bay area. carol: and in london, and in asia on the bloomberg radio plus app. in the feature section, world wrestling entertainment, or wwe, is on a roll. julia: shares are trading at an all-time high. they are making more profits than at any other time in their history and they are taking some pretty big risks. carol: they have indeed. our reporter took a trip to the company to hear about its plans about world domination. >> right now a lot of entertainment companies are

struggling and wwe is doing really well. and that was interesting to us. we looked into why that was. a lot of it has to do with a decision the company made in 2014. which was, at the time they were looking into what they want to do in the future with digital products, and noticed their fans were subscribing to netflix and hulu. they thought maybe we should try launching our own video streaming app product. julia: risky, cannibalizing their own viewership. >> yes, at the time everyone watched it, if you are a big wwe fan, you would turn on cable and watch these weekly shows, and a couple times a year you would subscribe to a pay-per-view event like wrestlemania and pay your cable or satellite tv provider $40 or $50 to watch the big matches. and wwe said, we will take those big matches and make those available on this video streaming app. and you just pay a monthly fee, and we will give you the big events and we will also give you some interview shows, documentaries, additional

archival wrestling matches. and they put this together at a time when all those video streaming apps were like netflix, they were aggregators. they were not individual brands. and there was a lot of skepticism about the company, because people thought, is that really a good idea? not too surprisingly, it really irritated their partners in cable tv, who got a cut every time you signed up for wrestlemania. so they were not too thrilled. carol: but as you, julia, have said, this was a risky move but it paid off. >> it did. they have 1.5 million monthly subscribers for the service. carol: is that good? give us a comparison to the other streamers. >> it is the 11th most popular video streaming app in the country, of about 220 of these

that exist. and it is the second most in sports related categories. so only major league baseball has a more popular streaming. julia: costs on a monthly basis? this is critically important to signing up to another ordinary way of viewership. >> you pay $9.99 a month for it, and there is a huge amount of material on there. they have their cruiserweight division. they have a weekly show. the developmental league has a weekly show that is exclusively on this app. it has proven to them, one thing that made the company exciting to investors, it has proven they can move their audience from place to place. the audience will follow them, and they are willing to pay. julia: the numbers are quite interesting in terms of what percentage of their viewership is coming from international versus the amount of money they draw from these places? there is a disconnect there. >> a lot of the viewership takes place overseas, and yet most of

the revenue still comes from the united states. so they think oh, what we need to do is a better job monetizing that. and i think having the wwe network helps. right now, most wwe networks, the streaming video product is -- the content is in english. but part of what they are thinking is, ok, now we have all of the big events like wrestlemania that broadcasts in eight different languages. i think part of what they are doing is figuring out, we can sell one product around the world, we just need to tweak it. we need to make sure matches are available in different languages. that we have wrestlers from all these different regions, some good guys and some bad guys. and they are really in the midst of figuring that out. julia: in the pursuit section, marvel's new superhero movie "black panther." carol: it sold more advanced tickets than any superhero movie ever. julia: it basically is having a

perfect moment. >> it the movie of the year. maybe one of the movies of the decade. it is really a big deal and they have done a great job with it. julia: we talk about it being unapologetically afrocentric. the timing couldn't be more pertinent. >> yeah, it is really interesting. what we write about in our piece is, it feels of the moment with black lives matter, and africa and what donald trump has said about africa. so it takes its african heritage and really wraps itself in it. the designs are afrocentric, the clothes and architecture, and it is just a really powerful statement at this moment. but they have been planning this movie for years. several years ago, d.c. comics said, we need to diversify with -- the amount of superheroes we have and what they look like. they have been planning this a long time, and have been smart about having women characters, characters of color.

characters that people have not necessarily heard of. black panther is not a huge d.c. superhero. and going down this path was a great decision. julia: it wasn't one of the big superheroes. watch this space. it is set in wakanda, which is a secret technologically advanced nation, and there is speculation, and we make it here as well, that he could be a contender for a future black james bond. idris elba, step aside. >> it is one of those -- it is a parlor game that people like to play, who will be the next james bond? people are wondering when are we going to get a bond of color. idris elba has been mentioned, maybe even approached, but chadwick bozeman is so good. and he is so amazing at the action sequences, you can't believe it. people are like, if there is going to be -- he is going to be the new action hero. julia: you mentioned women as well. his bodyguards are all women, and they kick bottom better than anything we saw in "wonder woman."

>> yeah, there are incredible women in this film. they are very powerful. angela bassett, lupita nyong'o, it is a great cast. everybody in it is good. it is empowering on a lot of levels. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands right now. julia: carol, what is your favorite story? carol: the one child policy. the rollback, you would have thought that would create an incredible baby boom in china. not exactly. julia: so much excitement in 2016. carol: there was, and they got a bit of a baby bump. now they are worried about population growth and maintaining that, aging population, having a future workforce. they talk about a demographic time bomb. love this story. julia: the problem is having more children is expensive. implications for housing. education. families are realizing they cannot afford to do it. now china needs to have a rethink, how do you adapt this policy? carol: right. some of the policies have not created the effects they wanted.

julia: one of my favorite stories, "black panther," so exciting. beating all records at the box of this for a marvel movie, a superhero movie. are we going? carol: i will think about it. julia: bloomberg television is up next. ♪

stimulus, abe's decision means tapering down the road. >> trump says that russia has created chaos in the united states after the indictment on election meddling. growth boosting tax revenue. >> we speak to the