♪ carol: welcome the bloomberg businessweek. i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. carol: a conspiracy to put a president on trial. >> life without angela merkel. carol: this issue is all about height. >> we go digital. cash getting stolen using the internet.' carol: probably still going on.

>> at robinson has more. >> this is a big break in a case that has been legendary inns at least 2013. a whole network of banks in russia, other eastern european countries, germany, the u.k., and taiwan, has been spitting at cash from atm's. and these mysterious characters have an collecting the cash and making off with it. the authorities have been chasing these mysterious cyber thieves for a long time when i got a really big break in 2016 in taipei. one of the thieves dropped a bankcard, just dropped it. for the first time, the cops could get their hands on something physical that was a lead to the gang that had been running what had been known as the carbon act's ever theft. >> i want to take you back to something you mentioned right there, which is it feels almost

cinematic, like the opening of a movie when you are reading this because unsuspecting people are walking up to get money out of an atm on a saturday night and in front of them, they see people go up to a machine and as you say, it's literally spitting money out. and they are collecting it and taking off with it. how were they able to do that in the first place? >> well, there was some real as some oflmost art, the police officers who tracked this down put it, in infiltrating bank networks. gang did thatnak was different, was they use the tools of cyber espionage to penetrate banks. they sent emails, classic spearfishing, and then it's on most like a ghost in the machine. the cyber thieves would take control of pcs and a bank.

it would take control of the cameras on the pcs, they would take control of screenshots, and they would also log all the keystrokes. so they really became the ghost in the machine and by doing that, they were able to eventually monitor and then control the flow of money. through a bank network. so at some point, it became a relatively simple matter of sending a command that said ok, at 2:00 a.m. at these atm's in 2016,, taiwan, on july these atm's will all spin out 40 banknotes all at once. and it would actually text the code to the money meals, the guys who collect the money at the atm's. they would say here it comes. and the money would spit out. the mules wouldn't have to touch the machine. you would imagine the shock of everybody standing around the machine and saw that. it was like being in a casino at a slot machine. carol: or when my daughter said

those machines spit out money. happened.lly what carol: we are talking $1.2 billion. what's interesting about the story, you got exclusive interviews. tell me about who you talked to. , we talked toues all of the various police agencies that were involved in pursuing this case. and the thing that busted this open was, sever these and hackers, they all network -- cyber thieves and hackers, they all network and talk to each other. they have this confederacy on the dark web. the cops have been separate for a long time. they finally said we've got to act like the hackers and we got to start networking and sharing data. so into full set up a data

clearinghouse in the netherlands and they became an air traffic control system for law enforcement around the world. so we talked to police detectives in spain, who eventually arrested the mastermind of this in ellicott day, spain. and we also talked to the taiwanese police, as well, and kind of stitched together have a networked to fight the hacker network. jason: you use a term of art, it seems, in this piece called advanced persistent threat, which i found intriguing and as you say, the good guys seemed to use a little bit of espionage jiu-jitsu here and turned it on the bad guys a little bit. how did they infiltrate, as you say? there's you refer to, loads of jargon and cybersecurity. that comes out of cyber espionage.

that's a kind of cyber attack in which the goal is not to steal something or money i should say, but rather to monitor, do digital reconnaissance to perhaps take some data. what's different about this case is it was turned to steal money. on the flipside, what law enforcement did was through this clearing site, they set up a malware lab and all of the malware cops around the world were finding and thought maybe linked, to this case they would send it to the lab, and you have these tech guys and this office filled with computers, and they would dissect the code in the malware and look for commonalities with other pieces of code found around the world, and they could distribute their findings to police officers. they sent some of the malware to these guys in spain, the lead detectives in spain on this. that gave them the lead that eventually led to the arrest of the alleged mastermind.

jason: you just heard about a big digital heist, a centerpiece of the heist issue. we heard about the brexit short. this week, the cover different. asia, wemestic and decided to do something about the heist special. there's a lot of great stories, but none of them worked for the cover so we went more general. carol: you had some fun. that's exactly what you see. the european cover off to the side. chris: you can see the two of them split off. jason: how did you come up with it? chris: we came up with the stolen cover first. it was jewels idea. once we hit -- joe's idea. it worked really nicely. carol: it's really bold and brave because there's not a lot on that cover. chris: i think that's what made it work.

we kept tweaking and adding things. you kind of like, the more you leave this undisturbed space, the better it got. jason: the little burglars is cute. chris: it's a nice easter egg. you see that again and again. jason: goldman sachs is into subprime lending. carol: wall street billionaires out of harvard. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

carol: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. you can also find us online. carol: and on our mobile app. we take a look at goldman sachs new online banking. it's called markets. jason: it's surprising because of the loans they are making. goldman is a famous name on wall street, not so familiar to consumers. but markets is providing lots of

loans to people with not so great credit. carol: talking about subprime. we've got more. >> goldman has been getting into getting into direct to consumer banking. they named it marcus after their founder to give it a little more of a softer image. they have savings accounts, which are paying 1.8% right now, a lot more than others even though it's not that much. then the product i wrote about our unsecured loans. and goldman has been sending out tons and tons, millions of pieces of direct mail to regular people saying, hey, do you have a lot of credit card debt? we can help you refinance it with loans from marcus at a lower rate. the business has gotten to a pretty decent scale. they've lent out a couple of billion dollars and i thought it would be interesting to take a look at what kind of people are taking these loans. jason: and this is a business

that people would not necessarily associate goldman sachs. especially for people who live in new york and no people on wall street, they associate goldman with sort of white shoe, very austere, high-end wealth. not this sort of business. zeke: if you have a couple million dollars, they probably won't manager money for you. if you are a small hedge fund, they won't be your prime broker. you think of them doing deals with warren buffett, advising the biggest investors in the world. this was a big departure. carol: is this after the financial crisis, trying to the time of the mass-market women wall street for what happened -- mass-market blaming wall street for what happened? zeke: that was probably a challenge on their mind.

if you look at harris polls, what the public thinks about big companies, last few years goldman has scored very low, just above bp or volkswagen. so they might have thought we face challenges going direct to consumer, but it was an opportunity because in the wake of the financial crisis, they had become a bank and started taking deposits. they built up a lot of deposits. they saw that a lot of other companies were starting to lend money out to consumers through all these new startups, like lending club is doing it. they thought maybe this would be a way to put these deposits to work. carol: let's get into that. you talk about some of the people goldman through marcus is lending to. talk about this because it sounds sketchy. zeke: i was a little surprised. the only way to look at who their customers are i could think of was to look at who has filed for bankruptcy and owes

the money. obviously, those are not the customers with alone worked out -- where the loan worked out. i found people more indebted than i expected, people working regular jobs like at a cell phone store construction or a teacher, and they would have five or even 10 credit cards, sometimes loans from other startups like lending club, and a loan from marcus. now goldman has presented the product as being for prime customers, people with high credit scores. i was able to talk to people who i wouldn't have thought of as being particularly good credit risks. jason: and they were demonstrably subprime. zeke: goldman has disclosed that about 10 or 20% of the portfolio is people with subprime credit scores. what i thought was interesting was that, to some of these

people, i spoke with some of them and they said, i had a lot of loans. i was surprised i was able to get this extra one. it did help me cut my payments but in the end, something that happened or i couldn't handle my bills and i had to file for bankruptcy. jason: staying in the finance section, one of the biggest stories in the world of big money has been harvard's endowment and its poor performance. carol: that's not stopping wall street elite from making it a fundraising powerhouse. jason: billionaires showing up with lots of money. here's janet lauren. janet: a couple of numbers to keep in mind. $9 billion is what harvard raised. carol: a multiyear campaign. janet: absolutely. also keep in mind the long-term returns. compare that with the average of what the other ivy league schools did, which was 5.9%.

not really up to snuff. jason: by one account, you said they essentially left lanes of dollars on the table -- and billions of dollars on the table. janet: they left about $6 billion on the table had they performed to the average. have they performed at the best, which was columbia at 7.3%, they would have had even more. the good news is they hired colombia's endowment manager to run the show. carol: harvard is the be all, and all, the largest wand out there. janet: $37.1 billion. that's a lot of money. carol: even though it's been underperforming its peers over the years, it's still attracting really big gifts. janet: no question. keep in mind, for people who went to harvard, it was a chance formative experience and it catapulted them into the stratosphere they occupy now.

people are devoted and they realized harvard give them that chance and they want to return it. carol: talk to us about these people. they had hedge funds. who is giving the big gifts? janet: the big gift was $400 million from john paulson of hedge fund bank. $150 million -- ken griffin, $150 million and is helped financial bank. it certainly helped with underperforming returns. jason: and this is all largely owing to drew faust, who is about to step down as the president of harvard. what was her gift in terms of raising so much money? janet: well, she had a lot of people to ask, and a lot of people who done well went to harvard. even if you are looking for low hanging fruit, not everyone is a billionaire, but there were a lot of people over the years and

people who have multigenerational affiliations with harvard, they want to get back. isol: what's interesting that it goes to a few good men and women who gave some really large gifts. seeing, isat we're less alumni are giving to the universities. harvard has the edge. statistic that of all the gifts that came in last year, one dozen gifts made up a third of all the gifts. jason: wow. jason: put that into perspective. jason: why are people giving less to their alma mater? janet: good question. maybe they think they don't need it. they say other organizations that need their help more than a wealthy university. that jason: that was the criticism leveled by none other than malcolm gladwell at john paulson's gift, specifically.

essentially, you can help the poor and feed the poor, yet you are giving to a superrich university. janet: absolutely. and he had the same criticism when stanford got to make a gift. carol: you do cite one person who used to give big amounts of money and kind of became disenchanted by the amount of money being paid to the folks to manage. that was a huge issue more than a decade ago. harvard has to disclose how much it pays the highly compensated, the people making the most money, and i think people found that distasteful that they were giving quite large bonuses to people. then again, they had made spectacular returns. if you go to the marketplace and work in the private sector, that's how it works. say you contrast that with a yellow model, yale -- yale model, yale has managers that

pay a percentage of gains and those don't come up on public records. 230ard used to have employees who worked for the management company. a popular wage hits the nanny state, sweden. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

jason: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. you can also listen to us on the radio. d.c. andn washington, a m naik 60 in the bay area. jason: and in asia on the bloomberg radio plus app. we go economics section, to sweden where highs taxation led to surpluses. carol: but they are under pressure because of welfare

needs. jason: more from us. >> they are facing a lot of challenges because they have taken in so many refugees relative to their population, over 600,000 for a population of 10 million people. at the same time, there are other factors. people are living longer and the birth rate is very high. thato, this social network we all know about, right? everybody thinks about sweden and these amazing services. it's really being strained. weird anding a lot of interesting and troubling problems like what we write about. carol: i think that's a really good point. this is a pace where you play an incredible amount of taxes. you get all of these services. jason: everything we all talk about. yourort of put your, rest

chin on your hands and say, to live in sweden and be taken care of. that's come at a cost and is being questioned. that's the fabric of society. >> indeed. it's percolating a little bit and now there's some concerns as we move forward politically, you're going to see populism rising up because people are saying, hold on a second, we were paying these crazy right of taxes -- jason: up to 60%. >> that's the high point that it applies to some people. we were guaranteed these benefits. now we are in a more remote, rural region of the country, and so one of the anecdotes we start the story off is, the mentor eddie ward and hospital -- maternity ward in the hospital, they had to close it down. then they said to expectant mothers, anybody planning a family in the area, they have

two options. there are two other maternity wards but they are over 130 kilometers each, which is a 2 hour drive. think about that if you are in labor. and they have trained midwives to start doing courses and how to deal with giving birth and a car if you have to pull over to the side of the road and the babies going to be delivered in your car. jason: my college roommate delivered his baby in his car in world vermont. >> there you go. not a lot of hospitals. there's been a lot of protests over this one. there's been a contingent of people in this small city who actually have taken over the maternity ward because this happened in january, 2017. in terms of the work being close. over the past year and a half, various ways this has played out with respect to the citizen at sit-in at the-

hospital. it's been challenging. jason: it's a stark example. it's the perfect anecdote. you describe swedish life to everything being taken care of, and there's nothing that says not being taking care of like delivering your own baby in the car. >> exactly. that's why we see the high birth rate because of the services and the support that we've talked about. the maternity leave you get, the support that you get from various other sort of -- carol: within a year of paid parental leave. >> and i just think it's really fascinating. a lot of people are focused on the refugee piece of this. what's important to note is while that is a big part of it, it's all these other factors, as well. it's gotten to a point. but youhat's going on,

do have more immigrants who need to be taken care of. that's a cost to society and the government. there's also another anecdote that talks about rising crime, and is not enough law enforcement to oversee that. >> indeed. they do back that up. i don't think we are seeing crime. and i don't think it's extremely violent crime, as i recall. carol: but it's what the country has known for a long time. >> exactly, it is different. that trickles out and that's what's changing the sentiment of some portions of the populations. and they are looking around and saying, we have this safety net. you are taking services away. maybe some are more focused on the refugee piece than the domestic pieces already in place. and so, we'll be keeping a close eye on what's happening and how things will develop. what's at stake

for germany and angela merkel as nationalism sweeps across europe? carol: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

jason: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. i'm just and kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. the value of missing art. jason: the case of the stolen bourbon. carol: we start in germany and the threats facing angela merkel. jason: populism and nationalism sweeping across the continental. what are the implications for angela merkel? carol: what are the implications

for the european union? >> merkel is on the back foot at the moment and essentially over her liberal policy. but specifically on migration. now, merkel has a coalition government and one of the three parties in the coalition, her bavarian sister party, is kicking up against her policy. line ofis on the front the migrants who traveled north from the mediterranean sea up through europe and into the richer countries, mainly germany and sweden. and they say she's essentially opening the border to too many people, and they want to send these people back. carol: this is fascinating because we are seeing this nativism,this wave of people pushing back and not allow immigrants in. you talk about the important role of germany, especially when

it comes to the european unification. this is a bigger deal. we've been worried about italy. maybe the black swan is germany. alan: germany is the biggest economy in europe, the most populous country. under chancellor merkel, it's been politically the driver of europe for the past decade or more. takingif germany starts unilateral action rejecting migrants at its borders, first of all it would push people back into other european countries, but secondly, it would threaten to unravel the whole system of asylum that exists in europe at the moment. that system is broken, yes, and leaders are trying to forge some kind of compromise. but if the biggest country starts pushing people back when it's been taking asylum-seekers, it could cause absolute chaos in

europe. jason: one of the things you point out is, aside from migration issue that has been so associated with merkel, her role economically and politically within europe over the past 12 or so years, has been critical of, not just in germany, but the entire union. what is her importance and what his/her legacy economically at this point? well, merkel gets a very mixed press across the continental. she will argue glee be forever remembered in the southern european countries, notably greece, but italy and parts of spain, as the champion of austerity policies during the debt crisis that spread from throughout009 all for years, essentially, until

about 2016, 2015 rather. germany was at the forefront of demanding budget consolidation rather than just agreeing to give these countries money. and that's primarily because germany is the biggest economy, as i said, and the biggest donor to these countries. that make people extremely angry and arguably, rightfully so. but at the same time, the rural area, certainly if you agree with her policies, you see it's starting to recover and that could be part of merkel's legacy. wasat the same time, she also pushing for alliances with france throughout this whole time to try to make a european solution that would drive the

whole continent forward. carol: let me jump in. i mentioned in europe early, -- italy earlier. they may help germany in the immigrant crisis. we have a lot of immigrants coming into italy. maybe germany and italy work together in pushing back on immigration. if germany moves away from the european union and anyway, italy is left to fight the battle on its own. true that's undoubtedly and a lot of people in germany would like to leave italy to fight the battle on its own. but again, merkel is pushing for european solution. rather for countries taking national solutions, essentially short-term solutions because you can't keep pushing people back in smaller countries on a continental europe, you can't keep doing that long-term. and so, there are big

differences with the new populist government in italy, but you're right saying we do share a desire to find a common european solution to this problem. carol: we're here with joel webber and we just heard about this story of the risk facing angela merkel, with some saying she could be the black swan of the european union. joel: it's one we are fixated on because, can she maintain this delicate grasp of power? with that grasp of power, all of europe is in the balance. which way will it swing? jason: merkel has been in the headlines around the world. you think of that iconic image of her standing over donald trump at the g7 meeting. a lot of global implications for what happens in germany. joel: massively global. i think this is the most politically global story we are all watching right now.

the delicate balance merkel is playing between russia, china, the rest of europe, the u.k., everything is on a string right now watching to find out if she can preserve this balance of power she has or if something gives away. what happens with germany after that? we know the history of germany and the delicate balance it plays, not only with europe, but with itself. carol: very important story for europe but really important globally. joel: you think about the fabric how it was constructed, it seems to be receding. here's one of the last people with the hands on that we'll. -- wheel. jason: a lot more to come in the next weeks with the nato meeting and the meeting with putin. great curtain raiser for what is going to transpire in the next weeks and months of europe. jason: a failed coup in venezuela and the biggest threat to nicholas madura in his weeks

in office. carol: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

jason: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. i'm jason kelly. carol: and carol massar. you can also find us online. jason: and on the mobile app. carol: this is a story that hasn't been told until now. a military coup in venezuela.

jason: this was an attempt to get nicolas maduro captured and on trial. carol: we have more. >> this happened last month in may. the goal of a group of military officers in venezuela was to stop the election, the reelection of president nicolas maduro, which occurred on the 20th of may. they believed he was a legitimate ruler that the election was going to be fraudulent, and they had been planning it for more than a year. the idea was to get him, put him on trial, and start over with new democratic system. this was a group of, it's a little unclear how many, there might have been several hundred, but the number of people who were arrested was just over 30. jason: and arrested before they could execute the plan. ethan: that's right. the plan was it or they arrested a participant who spilled the beans, or the second theory of

the participants we spoke with was that one of the people was a cuban infiltrator, effectively, because cuba has a lot of influence in the military. a double agent. that's the idea. carol: how many countries outside maybe new about it? do we have any idea? ethan: i don't know how many new about it but both colombian and american u.s. officials were aware of it. i think the people who were carrying out the coup were hoping they would get money and support from those two countries. they kind of got a nod and a wink and no money or real support. jason: you've been following this story in many ways for a long time. put this in context for us. where is venezuela right now, especially given where it was not too long ago? ethan: venezuela was, in the

1970's, probably the 20th richest country in the world. it has more oil than saudi arabia, the largest known reserves in the world. it has never been a deeply democratic society, but it was relatively so. and then in 1999, hugo chavez was selected on a very -- elected on a very populist platform and became more authoritarian. that kind of past because oil was skyrocketing and price and he kept people happy. but then he got sick and died and he designated nicolas maduro to be his successor. he was reelected, maduro, in 2013, and has been president for five years. the country has descended into a horror show of broken institutions and actual hunger, not just things not going well. hunger and people are pouring out of the country by the

millions, actually. it's in deep disrepair. carol: it relies on honduran security to hold onto its power? ethan: that's right. because chavez came to power with the military, and he was the successor, the military has been an important backer of the chevy's to movement and maduro. the idea is there is growing disillusionment in the military. carol: it sounds like military is backing them and military that's not. ethan: that's correct. our assessment is that more are backing him that not. carol: especially now. ethan: he's carrying out purges internally, but this thing does tell us he was more in jeopardy then we had known. one of the things people involved take pride in is that it involved all four branches of the military, army, navy, air

force, and national guard. jason: this was not the first operation you discovered. ethan: that's true. there were smaller ones. there was an attempt with a record to stop an earlier political process called the constituent assembly, which was going to take power away from the elected congress. and they pulled the plug because they realized there was an independent smaller rebellion going on that caused them to pull back. carol: tell us about the people you got to. ethan: most of that i can't say much about. one of the key interviews for us was a participant, someone who was a coordinator of this plot and who escaped arrest and is on the lam now, and we were in touch with both by secure phone and by text messaging. carol: out of venezuela? ethan: yes, he's not in venezuela. jason: the corner of everything

we do is on the bloomberg terminal. great scoop by our colleagues. underneath it are a lot of economic data points, oil being one of them. taylor: no better way to show that than through a chart. the economy has been tied to oil so much. 95% of foreign currency earnings they get through oil sales. in the yellow line, i've charted the guns 11 crude exports -- a venezuelan crude exports. in blue i charted crude reduction also coming down. andproduction has fallen the economy fell with it. weon: this is ultimately why care so much about the venezuela story. it's the largest exporter of crude oil and that ripples through the entire global economy. carol: up next, we find the sticky fingers that sold bourbon. jason: the missing masterpieces

and missing family mementos. carol: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

carol: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. you can also listen to us on the radio. boston and a m naik 60 in the bay area. carol: and in london and asia on the bloomberg radio plus app. we have a big question to ask. what happened to all that bourbon? jason: apparently 200 bottles went missing. there were arrests made, but they taste is still unsolved. >> you may have seen the headlines, there was the great

pet even legal heist, or so we thought in 2013. jason: and let's get that on the table, it's a now legendary and pretty famous bourbon. >> it is definitely considered very high and bourbon. it's very well-known. most places can't even get pappy van winkle, it's so hard to find. that's why the theft of 200 bottles made headlines. it was valued at $26,000. if you were to go into a bar that carried it, there are 23-year-old vintage was getting $100 her poor. not per bottle. it was considered a very premium bourbon and thus, might be the target for theft. jason: news of this alleged theft rocked the world of bourbon drinkers everywhere across the united states from bars in brooklyn to front

porches down south. bret: that's exactly what happens. what's amazing, this happened in 2013, a year and a half goes by. no news, no movement. in 2015, local authorities in frankfort, kentucky, they get an anonymous tech. this authorities look into and they trace it to a guy named toby hunsinger, who starts poking around at his premises and see huge barrels of bourbon in his backyard. immediately the you think you found the guy. and they looked on the phone and he's got pictures of wattles of -- bottles of pappy van winkle on his truck seat. carol: he got arrested? bret: he's arrested and facing 15 years in jail. jason: for the stolen pappy?

bret: that's where it gets complicated. he said it's wild turkey, not pappy. jason: button while turkey is nothing along the lines of that in terms of value. bret: he said a friend dropped it off. he worked at a distillery warehouse, where they kept bourbon they couldn't sell. this was stuff that didn't meet standards. unless you had a refined palate, you wouldn't know it hadn't met standards. he does admit he was able to sell the stuff off. he told his superior this stuff is clogging up the warehouse. if you want me to get rid of it, i will. the superior says go ahead, take it. what winds up happening is, they are unable to really ever pinned these 200 bottles on the sky,

but they get him for bootlegging and theft and organized crime ring. he's facing 15 years. carol: is he the mastermind of an organized crime ring? bret: he says no. he says i'm not innocent of everything. he was taking bourbon and sailing it off. they were bringing him pappy and he was acting as a minimum -- middleman. but to say he's a mastermind of a criminal enterprise is a stretch. jason: heists put me in the mindset of big museum thefts. carol: most of the art not worth so much. >> we looked at the over 7000 registered stolen artwork and the fbi databases, which is pretty copper and sieve for the united states, and has international entries, as well. we narrowed it down to the 3000 artworks and cultural objects

that have dimensions and dates. andto see what was stolen what it was made out of and where it was from the kind of determine various patterns. nothing isnswer is, like the thomas crown affair, unfortunately. carol: not like monet and picasso. james: there are few spectacular examples of people learning from movies about how to steal art. canisterswho smokes to show their face. a couple of years before that, someone cut through a hole in a los angeles gallery to get into the space to roll up a bunch of murals. exactly. but we can literally named those on one hand. a familyg else is,

portrait goes missing during a move. or someone breaks in and steals some things and takes a painting off the wall in the process because they're hoping it actually might be worth something. one of the most prominent examples is someone taking a renoir off-the-wall and not knowing that's what it was when they broke into this houston area home and took a bunch of jewels and as an afterthought. jason: they just sort of grafted and tucked it under their arm -- grabbed it and tucked it under their arm. bret: the other thing, it's incredibly easy to steal art. you can take them off the wall of most museums. it's difficult to sell this art. people think there is this vast criminal underworld. the fact is, it's not that easy.

if it were, everyone who was an art dealer would be rich. there's a lot of people who would love to sell you a painting for a million dollars. jason: why is it so hard? is it because art dealers know that this happens? what prevents that from happening? bret: the short answer is that there is a small market of people who are willing to spend a million dollars for a painting. . there's a much smaller market, basically doesn't exist, of people willing to spend millions of dollars on a painting they will never be able to resell again. there are some instances of paintings and art being used as collateral within the italian mafia, actually. but those are really from the 1960's, sort of half a century ago, and we don't have many other examples of it. carol: bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. jason: and on the mobile app. they: the story on sweden,

pay a lot of taxes and get a lot of services. you thought the wave of populism not hitting them. it is because of immigration. jason: such a nice story. carol: your must read? jason: bourbon. $100 a pour. big scandal around it being lifted, but maybe it wasn't lifted. morbid television starts right now. ♪ -- more bloomberg television starts right now. ♪ retail.

under pressure like never before. and it's connected technology that's moving companies forward fast. e-commerce. real time inventory. virtual changing rooms. that's why retailers rely on comcast business to deliver consistent network speed across multiple locations. every corporate office, warehouse and store near or far covered. leaving every competitor, threat and challenge outmaneuvered. comcast business outmaneuver. >> this is "best of bloomberg

technology." oure we bring you all of top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, we just became a real car company. those are the words of tesla's ceo after reaching his goal of building my thousand