carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. jason: i am jason kelly at bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: coming up in this week's issue, we have the imposters that are hijacking twitter. jason: we have a catch 22 with kim jong-un. carol: and on the cover story, we have an unlikely turnaround in the auto industry. jason: this was unexpected from volvo. carol: i love this story. we got more from our reporter. >> ford has bought a lot of luxury brands. tried to make them work, and it

did not, they did not play well together. they were stuck in their buckets. when alan came in and had to clean house and keep the company from going bankrupt, one of the first things he did was selloff the vanity brands. the great european luxury brands that they could not afford to keep. a little-known maker of the worst cars in china, when china made the worst cars in the world, they made the worst cars in china. they bought volvo, and thought this would be a disaster. they thought they would take this great brand and destroy it. like fake rolexes. only they would be crappy volvos coming out of china. instead, this incredible thing

happened. they left the europeans in charge and told them to go. made them be swedish, but very aggressive. they got the best of the european, really overthink everything but plan it well, and then the chinese very aggressive, shoot first ask questions later approach. they hit hard as the market was growing, and they have blossomed well. they got a lot of great technology. really high quality vehicles. they are hitting the market where people want to be. more crossovers and utilities. you think of the old traditional volvo wagon, but pumped up to a crossover utility style. they are hitting a sweet spot. jason: put volvo incontext for us. we see them around, but you provide important numbers comparing them to other automakers in terms of production and number of vehicles, and in terms of the portfolio. tell us about that.

>> for 100 years, since the earliest days of gm and henry ford, the auto industry has been about scale. there are always advantages to size. first, it is enough to run a factory efficiently, which takes 200,000 vehicles worth of sales. volvo has arranged from 300,000 to 500,000, maybe enough for it a couple decent plants, but not one on each continent or major market. you compare that with the giants. gm, volkswagen, toyota, they sell 10 million cars and trucks a year. they are like 20 times as big. for brands that are in between like that, if you are smaller, if you are lamborghini, porsche, you can survive. of course, those are now part of volkswagen. you can be an independent,

ferrari is a better example. you can be a standalone. if you are super high-end and high-margin, but when you are a premium luxury brand, it is a challenge. they have been playing catch-up for 90 years. they are never as big as mercedes and bmw. they cannot get the pricing out of it. they tried to save money, and you do not have a nice enough be a goal to compete on that. geely has given them the courage to push hard, and aim high. the first time i drove one of them, i thought can i spend $70,000 on a chinese suv? maybe. carol: in reading your story, is this a story about the revival of volvo, or what geely wants to do globally? in terms of dominating the world when it comes to vehicles.

>> you are right. the idea, to be that big, whatever the next ford or gm of the 21st century is going to be, it is in that sense more about geely. volvo gives us the insight into where they want to go. in what is the most advanced part of this still forming geely empire and effort. in 2010, little tiny geely bought volvo and made it work. now, they are starting two new brands. they are trying to take on test -- tesla with super high-end electric cars. they will slowly work their way down, but not as far as tesla. they have lincolnco which is a chinese brand but based on volvos' technologies. it is a partnership between volvo and geely.

it does not matter right now, but if volvo does an ipo, that will get interesting. carol: speaking of interesting -- >> daimler and mercedes-benz, fiat chrysler, there is a lot going on. mr. lee does not tell us what his grand plan is. carol: when that headline crossed about them buying into daimler, i thought this is an iconic german brand. he is taking a substantial position. i was shocked at it. jamie: yes, and it is still opaque what is going to happen, and where it comes from. if you think about daimler's history, they have had outside shareholders before. oil money from the middle east. carol: but another carmaker? jamie: not necessarily. they have also been involved -- you know daimler and toyota were early investors in tesla. they bought equity in tesla. they supplied components, and did work with them. and they got back out of that. you are talking about a very

stable and mature company, they will do what they want to do. it is interesting. jason: that was writer jamie butters taking us into the story of volvo. now we turn to the man who put pictures around this on the cover. our design director, how do you do this? >> we were fortunate enough to shoot at the south carolina factory. we got shots of them making the cars and a cool shot of the new s60 model, which they have not shown anyone. jason: and they still have not. >> they still have not. it has a mystery. carol: pretty amazing that they let you take that shot. they are careful about keeping it under wraps. which they still day, but nonetheless. jason: they were particular about is not showing any part of the car. it has a nice mystery to it, and it pulls you in. it gets you into the story of the revitalization of the brand. jason: you point out that one of the largest car companies is behind this. it does capture this idea that is a completion of auto players coming together in the u.s. and

china, and sweetened with volvo. jason: it is a success story and image that people did not see coming. carol: i love that you say this. it is about the revitalization of volvo. also who is this chinese company, and what are they doing? chris: they have an interesting approach to this, and a car that people are excited about. jason: thank you, chris. up next, what kim jong-un risks if he opens north korea to the rest of the world. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i am jason kelly. you can also find us online at businessweek.com. carol: and on our mobile app.

we stayed on the north korea story, we had to. we write about the historical crossroads that the north korean leader is facing. jason: this is about pyongyang, and the economic impact. carol: here is mark. mark: the extraordinary thing about if you take a wider view of what is going on now with china joining the sanctions, if you look back at when communism was intact and about to collapse, north koreans were twice as wealthy as chinese citizens. you fast-forward to today, and the chinese, the same people are now eight times as rich as north koreans. you have to ask why so consistently? first, kim's grandfather and his father, and now himself have all resolutely refused, and

denigrated the chinese model. which is arguably the most successful formula for transitioning from poverty to prosperity in recorded history. it has all been done while maintaining communist party rules. you have to ask yourself, what is not to like? jason: how does that influence or change the korean leader's seat at the table. marc: as you try and answer this puzzle, why have they resisted so hard something that seems so obvious? there is one crude answer, it is quite brutal really. if they had, a lot of long-term analysts of north korea who know the regime fairly well, their response is if they had done this and had the opening to the outside, to the global economy that china had, if they tried to

conduct the same kinds of reforms, they would even now be dead or in jail. kim and his father, his grandfather. the reasons around that are the peculiar way in which the regime grew up. going right back to the korean war, when kim il-sung was put in charge after the second world war by stalin. then you had this brutal war in which about a quarter of the population of north korea were killed in the war with the u.s. you never had a peace treaty. you came out of that and then maintained the war style command economy that he had run during

the war to survive, and maintained that afterwards as the way that the state works. it turned north korea into a stalinist state. carol: what is interesting, china is a willing teacher at this point and in the past few years and have shown that balance between communism and capitalism, why did north korea not see the brilliance to that? marc: one issue you have to remember, not only is north korea a dynasty, so if you want to say like the chinese did that mao tse tung did something, kim cannot do that with his grandfather or his father.

there is a true cult of personality. the kind that stalin had. that is one problem. the second is that this is a divided nation, there are two halves. the south is twice as popular as the north. they were one nation before the second world war. if the north koreans, who are in this isolated state with information closed off, if they were to truly understand what is available in the south, where the gdp per capita is 20 times as high, they would be extremely unhappy about this regime that they have had, and which has been telling them that the south is a terrible place. that the people are exploited. and that they live in this socialist paradise. jason: how much risk is there then for kim as he embarks on these negotiations, potential negotiations with united states and counterparts to the south

that that information and lifestyle will become more apparent to his people? marc: it is a substantial risk, discussion of trading, the nuclear program for an economic opening and investment, and so on. you could be sure that what everybody agrees on is what kim needs is to get the sanctions lifted. the exports have cratered, particularly to china where it is a dominant trading partner. that has created a deficit, and they have to fund that with hard currency reserves which will run out. when they do, they will be in a bad way. they are not yet, but they will be. kim knows that, and we know what

he needs to do is end the sanctions. the bigger question is if the things he said to the south koreans, and he said recently to his own people about wanting to focus on the economy now, and have a change of strategy that sounds more like a form and the -- like reform and the opening in reform that he was denigrating a couple of years ago, you know, that is the question. carol: we heard the editor in chief of "bloomberg businessweek." we heard marc champion talking about the remark about north korea front and center. also friend and center are the remarks in europe with brexit. a story that does not go away. >> we cannot seem to stop talking about it. we are two years after the vote. that was in june, the referendum, so we are trying to talk about this as we are leading into that. because europe cannot talking

about it and wrestling with it. jason: it is not going to way people predicted. >> that is the story. the continent has tried to move on. the epicenter of this is u.k. and london, and they are still wrestling with it. we have seen a lot of numbers illustrate how badly it is going for them. for the continent, they are like, get it out of here. we are done with this. carol: the european union has so many other issues going on, whether it is trade talks with the u.s. >> italy is starting to rear its head. they have other things to talk about. it is like, we thought we were done with this, why is this divorce taking so long? jason: thanks. carol: up next, wells fargo's ceo tim sloan on what he wishes the bank had done differently. jason: the curious debate over the consumer financial protection bureau.

carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. you can also listen to us on radio on sirius xm 119 and a and 11 30 in new york, 1061 in boston, 91 fm in washington, d.c., and am 960 in the bay area. jason: and in asia on the bloomberg radio plus app. a big exclusive interview this week. erik schatzker sat down with the wells fargo ceo. carol: he talked about the

bank's campaign to rebuild trust after a series of scandals. >> there are a lot of things i wish we would have done differently over the last few years, but over the last couple of years, the changes we are making in the company to make sure customers are taken care of, that we are fixing anything that was broken, and we are building a better company by making good long-term decisions, that we are going in the right direction. when i think about the culture of this company, our vision and values, it is fine. the issue is how we are operating, the policies and procedures that accomplish our goals. that is where we need to make improvements. when i mention about fixing things that are broken, those are things we are fixing and we are making a lot of progress in terms of addressing those issues. carol: and the politics section this week, our reporters take us inside the consumer protection

bureau. jason: it is a strange place. he wanted to dismantle it, and now he is in charge of it and the budget director of the trump administration. carol: here is more from our reporter. >> he is a colorful and entertaining guy. you are used to these bureaucrats who are measured and careful what they say -- jason: he is neither measured nor careful. >> no, he is very sure of himself, and on a mission. some would say an unusual person to have running this bureau at this moment in time. carol: that is exactly it, how ironic to some extent. this is someone who in congress was pushing to end this, and he is now running it. jason: part-time. devin: right. he has two hats. he is also trump's budget

director. this is a guy who was elected from south carolina in 2010, he is a member of the tea party. he is a founding member of the freedom caucus in the house. they were devoted to roll back much of the things that president obama did, the former president obama, obamacare and things like that. also the cfpb was an athema to their growth, and mulvaney voted multiple times to abolish it. he has been asked under both -- under oath many times before congress, he cannot remember, -- he can't remember how many times. jason: also, he has become a punching bag which is an understatement, it has such political weight. elizabeth warren has been associated with it in a lot of ways, and has become an antihero, and the nemesis for others. mulvaney has waded into that in a big way. devin: that is interesting.

the bureau was basically conceived by elizabeth warren when she was a harvard professor, and she ran it early on. obama ended up appointing her director enforcement to take over the bureau instead, but it has been associated with her. she is beloved by the left, hated by the right. now you have mulvaney who has taken over, and he is beloved by the right and hated by the left. it was a political punching bag. the democrats, now the republicans, and mulvaney is saying i want to elevate the bureau and make it the gold standard regulator of the fdic. carol: that caused the financial crisis. devin: right? carol: the cfpb was put in place to protect consumers. it is funded by the federal

reserve and that could make it to the goal, and now mulvaney wants to reduce that independence. he wants funding done by congress. he seems like he wants to make it a more political group. jason: re-politicized it. devin: when he speaks of him employees as being members of the executive branch, which drives people crazy within, but again, his position is that, i voted multiple times to abolish it, but now that i am in command, i am following the law, i am following dodd-frank, and it says i cannot abolish the cfpb. he is trying to do everything, and he believes it is way too powerful. he thinks he is too powerful as the director. he is trying to rein it in. by having the budget overseen by congress, appointing a five person board to make it less independent and more accountable.

carol: what i think about is what this was set up to protect consumers. what happens to them? or what is happening to them already, are they being rolled back? devin: some of them are, or suspended. there was a rule on the payday loan industry, and he suspended that. there is a case involving, the bureau had sued for payday lenders who are charging exorbitant interest, literally 950%, that case was dropped. he is reviewing everything, but again, things are under review and some rules have been suspended. jason: just ahead, speaking of consumer protections, we will tell you who is making millions off of loans to people with poor credit.

carol: and a bleak story of what happens when a community loses its economic lifeline. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. still ahead in this week's issue, fighting twitter impostors. jason: a shock to the crisis. carol: and we take you to a troubled town in ohio. jason: this is adam county in ohio. alex spent a lot of time there the last couple of years. this is an unnerving story. carol: the population is facing

tough decisions. here is more. >> i have spent some time in ohio the last couple of years. this situation came to my attention more than a year ago. i visited the county four times now. it struck me as a classic example of this dilemma that is facing the country, where you have certain parts of the country, mostly on the coast, that are doing incredibly well, and other areas that are falling behind. the gaps between those places are growing bigger and bigger. this question arises, what do you do about the places that are falling behind, that are losing their original economic rationale for existing? do you try to invest in them and prop them up, and restore them in some way? or do you help people leave them? that is what brought me to adams county. jason: tell us what the original economic rationale was for this place.

alec: adams county sits along the ohio river. right across from maysville, kentucky, about 70 miles south of cincinnati. it was basically farmland. it had good farmland in the northern part of the county. there was a strong amish presence. back in the late 1960's and early 1970's, the county became more industrial because it was discovered as an ideal place to put coal power plants. the big utility in ohio built coal plants on the river, it was ideal for bringing coal up on the barges. one of the plants was one of the largest in the country at that time. suddenly, you have these two plants that employ hundreds of people. a lot of people moved into the county for these well-paying jobs. it changed the character of this place. now, you have this question of what is going to happen to these people? carol: it created jobs and tax

base, revenues, and it created a community for the people who live there, and it meant a lot. what happens is the company gets sold, and these plants are designated to be shut down. this changes things dramatically for those folks who worked at the plants and lived in the communities. alec: exactly, and there was this revenue coming in from the plants. the schools were well-funded. despite the general poverty, the schools were well-funded. now, they are facing a drop in revenue for the schools, the sheriff's office, the jails are incredibly crowded. they are looking at were cuts. the county is at a loss at how it will make do without the revenue and prosperity that came from these plants. carol: what is interesting is you go to date, and you say, do we invest in the community and

help fix it to find another industry for the people, or another big theme of your story, americans migrate. when things did not work out, we went to another part of the country, but we are not seeing that. alec: it is striking how much less migration there is than they used to be. we think of great migrations in american history, the dust bowl, the great migration, the hillbilly highway. workers going to work in midwestern factories from the appalachian. that is not happening as much anymore. it is a puzzle because the gaps have gotten so big between the left behind places and thriving ones. you think more people would be moving to the driving once, but when i talk to these workers, it is more complicated than just saying, why don't you just moved to the bay area or somewhere where you can find work? there are always ties that bind,

family ties, ties to the landscape. one family i spoke with did find a job in washington state, a very well-paying job, but they went out there and felt isolated. they felt removed from their family, and at a loss. they decided to move back to adams county to a less well-paying job just because they did not feel at home where they had gone. jason: one of the characters who makes a cameo is the energy secretary, rick perry. how did the federal government play a role in the recent history here in adams county? alec: it basically played very little role. i was struck by how little responsiveness there was at the state government level and the national government level to the client to these workers in this county. there is an academic debate about whether we help people

move out or invest in them, which is better to do. at a policy level, we are not having that debate at all. this is not being reckoned with. the attempts by the workers and county officials to get a response or relief from washington and columbus fell on deaf ears. there have been some half efforts by the trump administration to stop the closure of coal plants in an emergency moratorium way, but that has not come to anything. what struck me is that the most powerful moment for these workers was when one went to a state senator who represents their district, and they said, we need help for our schools. the state senator said the best thing for you to do is just to move. jason: up next, why it is so hard to defeat scammers on twitter. carol: plus, is another mortgage bubble forming? jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. you can find us online at businessweek.com. jason: and on our mobile app. in the text section this week, a different story. some crooks targeted the twitter account of our reporters. carol: and then they try to separate our reporters' followers. jason: i hope you follow us. >> my twitter has been impersonated along with my colleague and other reporters here. carol: what does that mean,

impersonated? >> people have been creating accounts with my photo and a handle similar to mine, and offering deals that are too good to be true to my followers. essentially how it works, i will start at day one, in early may, i was getting ready to leave work, and i checked my notifications. someone commented on my tweet. what was picture of it was they had my name and photo and replied to my tweet with an offer to my followers, trying to look like me. they said, if you send me .5 or 10 ethereum, and i will send you five to 100, which is a scam that is too good to be true. it is an age-old scam. this is not anything new. people call it an advanced the -- fee scam, where you ask someone to send a small upfront payment and promise them a chunk

of money. jason: what was your initial reaction? lily: i was surprised it was happening to me. it was not completely surprising because i had seen this all over twitter. it is rampant on twitter. i had seen it targeting cryptocurrency exchanges. elon musk has been targeted, all these higher profile people. it seems to have moved down a little bit to a lowly reporter. i do not have that many followers. carol: do we know who is behind it? lily: we do not know who is behind it. some people say it is bots. jason: something programmed to do it. lily: the second time it happened, it happened last week again. the second scammer seemed smarter. they blocked me on twitter so i could not see what was happening.

it was essentially the same scam where they responded to my own tweet. the only reason i saw it is because some other reporters screenshoted it and tweeted it at me. it is ironic because i had tweeted about u.s. regulators cracking down on these scammers. the scammer responded. jason: there is a weird circularity of this tale to some extent. you write in-depth, you are an expert on a lot of crypto areas, and we have sent you into the field to do all of this, so what have you found along the way about how this is being handled, and how rampant it is? lily: what i will say, this has been a ripe world for scams because you have -- jason: the crypto world. lily: the crypto world. you have new people to this space. they are trying to figure out

how to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, which is complex. you have a regulatory landscape that has not developed yet. jason: it is uncertain. lily: it is uncertain, and there are not a lot of protections. it is not like the credit card world where you can call amex and say, i did not make this charge, do not charge me for it. there is no central authority to protect investors. carol: where is twitter in this? lily: twitter said it is working on it. it is still a problem. the second account is still a problem. the first one i took down, but only after i sent twitter my passport. it seems kind of invasive, they do not want to send a personal document like that to twitter, so they said they are working on it. that is where we last left it with twitter. carol: in the finance section, we have a story that covers the real estate market. it looks at a spike in home loans for people who cannot afford them. jason: a lot of it goes back to the financial crisis.

>> angelo is a character. it is just the way he looks. he wears these tight shirts. he was wearing this red silk shirts, button-down, opened to the chest. he wears these jackets, cufflinks, and always a handkerchief in the pocket. his hair with joe. he is a real character. he grew up homeless, and now he is making his way up. he is focusing on government loans, mainly fha. he works with a lot of people who remind him of his past, people with low incomes and bad credit. jason: reading the story, it is hard not to think back to the financial crisis, and a lot of the behavior that was at the

core of really triggering the great recession. what is going on here, and how is it different? prashant: it is different in certain ways. one important way is that back then, a lot of these loans were not government loans. these were private-label securities. this time, it is the government that is ensuring the loans directly. they are still being packaged, but into jenny may securities, to get technical. the main difference, people have to have incomes and jobs, and it has to be documented, but then there are other ways it might remind you of the past. a lot of these people are putting down very little, sometimes nothing. fha loans are supposed to have 3.5% down, but a lot of people are getting assistance so they

are paying nothing. their credit scores are quite low. they are devoting huge amounts of their income to debt payment. carol: let's take a step back. we brought up angelo because he is quite a character, we all agree on. he works for a non-bank lender, and he is making a lot of loans to people who probably could not go to jp morgan or citibank to get a mortgage. prashant: he told me that. he said he was talking about the -- talking to a borrower, a man whose car was repossessed, and he was telling him we are not going to worry about that repossession. we are pretty lenient. what he means is -- what he told me is, right next door is a bank of america, and this guy went in there, and he demonstrated, he showed basically what they would do. they would kick him out.

he says that is how they are different. they are not going to kick him out, they will try to work with borrowers like him. jason: this nonbanking world is bigger than it was in the financial crisis. so much has been done theoretically to check the behavior of some of the biggest banks, all of the names that we know. what is being done to regulate the nonbanking world? put some size and scope around this. prashant: nonbanks now have 80% of these fha loans. and they have 50% of new loans overall. back then in 2007, it was about 20%. jason: i just want to make sure we understand. so 50% of loans being made are

for home purchases and made by nonbanks at this point? prashant: almost 50, yes. a big share. it is way bigger than it was during the heyday of the subprime crisis. carol: up next, combating the him and opioid crisis when shock at the time. jason: plus, how to plan a vacation on your own private island. carol: sign me up. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. jason: i am jason kelly. you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, 106.1 in boston and a.m. 960 in the bay area. carol: and in london and in asia on the radio app.

in the technology section this week, the medical industry has a new alternative to opioids. jason: this involves electric shock treatment implanted in the spine. carol: it is a fascinating story. >> is a technique called neuro modulation. its origins date back 50 years ago. recently, it has become a treatment we can use to treat pain. it is a device that is implanted at the base of the spine, and it delivers shocks to help reset the nervous system. jason: it feels like it is getting a lot of attention because of concerns about opioids. it is still expensive. julie: it is about $30,000 for the device. an analyst is estimating in the market it is at $20 billion. there is a lot of opportunity there.

one of the issues is going to be insurance, can you get your insurance to pay for this? the people we talked to, they were lucky and able to pay for this with insurance. obviously, over the long-term you would think this would be a good value proposition because you would otherwise be spending tons of money on opioids and other drugs. jason: how does it work? what does it actually do? julie: it is delivering regular shocks to the spine. you can moderate it by flicking a switch. you can turn it off if you want to, if you are not feeling it. and for people in the original study, using the never device, which is what one of our guys had, i think it decreased his pain levels by 50%, which is a big deal. carol: there is a line in the story, because one of the labs is a bigger player and a look at

what happens with nero modulation but there is a quote from one of their directives or executives, we are learning to adapt to the language of the nervous system for the first time. i feel that this is a bigger and broader trend in health care that we are starting to understand how the body works, whether it is immunotherapy and using the body's own immune system to go after cancer, and here we are understanding how the nervous system works, and using a device that works with it. julie: one of the cool things about the drg, it is setting the -- it is basically resetting the interpretation to the nervous system with the electrical pulses. it is basically telling your nervous system, stop, calm down, everything is fine. a lot of this is tied to nerve damage. carol: right. jason: it is interesting to think about the cooperation in

the more positive way between the tech world and the pharmaceutical world. there have been existential questions about how tech plays, you think about the entrepreneurism that moves into this. you have to imagine a little skepticism. julie: definitely. for example, the cost is going to be prohibitive for a lot of people. $30,000 for the average person, to come up with that will be costly. it is much easier to buy a prescription of pills and take that, and go about your business. ultimately, there are specialists who see this as a real avenue to keep people away from drugs. it is more of a focus there. jason: let's end on a lighter note this week. apparently, according to pursue, luxury getaways have gotten exclusive. carol: so exclusive you can book your own private island. jason: sounds great. let's you and chris rouse us. chris: a lot of times when people want to get away, they

want to go where they do not see people. you can go to a resort where you are on your own and look out at the water. some are looking at getting your own island. in a little hotel with only one suite. this is a trend that is expensive but it is growing around the world and people are responding to it. carol: let's talk about cost and the locations you can go. chris: the focus of our story this week is a private island that costs almost $3000 a night, and it is you and your spouse, or up to four people. there are two bedrooms in the suite. the staff of the hotel are on a different island. they are on an island behind your island, so you do not see them really. they will come to your room and give you massages, cook your food. it is totally decadent. we talked to a couple who went on their honeymoon and they want to go every year because it is so relaxing. jason: what is driving this trend?

chris: it is privacy. carol: everybody lives in new york and once a vacation. [laughter] chris: it is very quiet. it feels like you are on another planet. we found a big trend in hospitality is experience. people value time more than anything else. for millennials and often people, time is their most precious commodity. nothing makes you focus on your time and how luxurious it isn't -- it is being in a quiet place alone. carol: it is like you make time stop which is precious. who is behind it? chris: it is a guy who does island hunters on hgtv. he has seen a million private islands and resorts, and he said, what is the next level of this? the funny thing about him, he has done this and now he wants to do a hotel that is for one person. you just go on your own. i don't know what the market is for that.

it is a crazy idea. jason: it is interesting to think about experiences, and sometimes the best experience is a complete lack of experience. chris: totally. what a strange and interesting luxury. carol: and there are places you mentioned around the world? chris: there are a couple of places in belize and in the maldives, and in fiji. places you want to look at turquoise waters and get away from it all. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands now. jason: and on businessweek.com and their mobile app. what is your must-read? carol: the story on adams county, this is an area that is where people are struggling. jason: i have to tell you, i do not have another must read, that one is the one to read. it gutted me. the depth of reporting the , characters he is able to draw out. it does not end on an optimistic note. it says a lot about the macroeconomic and microeconomic issues in the country. carol: a reminder that there are

some cities that are thriving but there are several -- many -- that are not. jason: more bloomberg starts right now. ♪

nejra: rules rollback. congress approves a sweeping overhaul of the dodd-frank act. the latest from washington and what this means for banks. the u.s. opens a criminal probe into whether traders are manipulating the price of digital currency. and, head in the cloud. how technology is reshaping regulatory compliance. welcome to "bloomberg markets: rules and returns," i'm nejra cehic.