♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." coming up, a story on apple and whether or not it really is a champion of privacy. jason: we also go to the big news of the week, elon musk taking his company private. carol: we look at the relationship between steve

mnuchin and president trump. jason: mnuchin is of wall street, he is is still trying to make sense and help the world makes make sense of the economic agenda. devin: he is a fascinating character, almost the lone moderate, the last guy standing in the way of a trade war. he has been able to remain in trump's good graces. anthony scaramucci lasted 10 days and said, he has been trying to juggle the america first agenda and the centrists of wall street. gary cohn tried and he has gone. mnuchin is still there. jason: let's go back to who steve mnuchin is. this is a guy who was largely unknown, not out of central casting based on previous administrations.

where did he come from? devin: there are a lot of people who wound up in these three -- these very important sets of positions in government who would not be there if it had not been for donald trump. a lot of people thought, we are staying away from steve mnuchin. in a lot of ways he is a guy from wall street who was in the hedge fund business, and opportunistic, with a philosophy about jumping into things. he jumped into this and landed as treasury secretary, a really important job. when you look back at the people who have had that job, tim geithner, to follow in those footsteps is really something.

carol: it is about controlling economic policy. being treasury secretary is different from what we have seen in the past. devin: that is the thing. the treasury secretary's people consider great, they were people who were able to dictate economic policy. steve mnuchin said, i think the president listens to me. sometimes he agrees. that is a lot different from ruben. people think he was largely responsible for the economic prosperity during the clinton years.

hank paulson, bush let him handle the response to the financial crisis. if he went to congress and ask for things, they would have said, beat it. tim geithner had a lot of mileage with obama. you can ride into washington with trump, wind up as secretary of the treasury, but then you have to deal with the president. even mnuchin says he does not always listen. carol: you were cast with putting treasury secretary mnuchin on the cover. what did you pull together to do that? >> we were thinking a lot about how to show him on the cover. he has a job that involves all the chaos at the white house. he has to deal with personality

and keeping his job. we wanted something that drew attention to that. jason: how did the cover evolved in terms of the words and pictures? chris: we had this line, "everything is fine -- how to be trump's treasury secretary." line, and it's cool to repeated, it becomes kind of a mantra. everything is not fine. you have this photo with him looking stressed out. jason: it is a powerful image of someone who has become a familiar face. but interesting you take this shot of his head down rather than straight on. chris: we felt like this captured his internal struggle and really got what is going on with the story. jason: and the way he must be feeling.

carroll: and must be keeping him down. chris: everything comes together. jason: thank you. up next, what elon musk might learn from michael bell about -- michael dell about taking a company private. carol: and how antimonopoly laws can only type amazon's hands. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: you can also find us online at business week.com. carol: and on the mobile app. huge news this week. elon musk tweeting he is prepared to take the company private. jason: getting out of the

spotlight may not solve all his problems. max: elon musk is a master of the product launch. we have been used to him coming out with these crazy new ideas and impressing everyone. the latest is an unprecedented buyout of tesla, the biggest buyout in history if it happens. jason: take us back to what led to this decision, elon and his idiosyncrasies as a ceo. chris: elon logged on to twitter and said, i am considering buying the company, funding secured.

in the immediate aftermath, there was a lot of questions, even from relatively serious wall street analysts, whether it was a joke. some think maybe he was even hacked. maybe it was his juvenile sense of seat -- sense of humor. information trickled out via twitter and finally from tesla to make it clear, this is serious. the board said they had the first discussion last week. even last week, that's much less time than would normally take to do one of these deals, one -- when dell bought out his company, it was a month-long process, with law firms and bankers, all sorts of different people working in this carefully choreographed ballet of

corporate subcommittees. carol: can musk do tesla better by being a private company? max: that is his point of view. when you read the statement he released, it was the idea this will be a way to operate action-free. carol: it works for space-x, right? max: very well. tesla is polarizing. maybe this would be a way to do an end around. there are a few problems with that. if you announce the biggest buyout in history and saying that will reduce distraction, now you have created this huge distraction.

it will be a huge media story. carol: but we are not talking about the debt on the bounce sheet. jason: or the rate at which they are making cars. chris: one of the benefits of being a public company is that it is very easy to raise additional funding. if tesla is having a hard time raising capital before elon musk decided someone would need to spend up to $82 billion to buy this company, how are you going to come up with that kind of cash? carol: does this change the conversation to, we are not worried about the production levels. this is another way he could move this company going forward. max: absolutely, even for the short-sellers. if nothing happens here, anyone who wants to short the stock now has to do with the fact there is this possibility, a real possibility the company will be

sold for $420 per share. it creates an additional risk for short-sellers. that could push short-sellers to want to cover their positions and get out. carol: we have more on tesla with taylor riggs. elon musk likes to use twitter. taylor: there is a terminal function that can track all things twitter on the bloomberg. we are tracking twitter sentiment. in the top line, the share price. in blue, the number of tweets that mention tesla. i have positive and negative sentiment. you can see here tuesday around noon, 1:00 p.m., elon musk started tweeting about the company, that he perhaps secured

funding. you saw a big rise in the share price. then, a few days later, it started to turn negative -- negative in sentiment, whether funding was really happening and if there could be an sec inquiry. there was a correlation between the share price and twitter. carol: it shows people love to use twitter to talk about musk. jason: from musk to bezos. we looked at the amazon market share. carol: last year amazon captured about 5% of american retail spending. jason: is that a lot? it depends on how you look at it. >> 5% is roughly the share of total u.s. retail sales that amazon is responsible for, the products that it sells to

americans and that its merchant partners sell to americans. 5% of total retail sales excluding restaurant and bar transactions -- that seems like a lot for one company, but walmart is double that number. it is how you choose to interpret it. jason: i did not know what to think. carol: why is it important to have this discussion? >> there are people on the left and right of the political spectrum, including the president of the united states, who are openly asking if amazon is too powerful and should antitrust rules be used to crack down on this company.

we are not antitrust attorneys. it all depends on how you look at the market. amazon has an incentive for that number to be seen as low, for these antitrust critics on the left and right, and also to investors. if investors say, amazon has only 5% of u.s. retail shares -- sales, and a significantly smaller share of global retail sales, look at how much amazon can go lower. jason: from an online perspective, their market share is massive. 49%. carol: huge. >> they are talking about half of everything people buy online. carol: directly or through third-party. >> amazon sells its self out of its own coffers.

jason: it is also about the growth rate as well. it is 5% now, but 25-30% topline growth every year. >> that is where they have been trending recently. if you look at how americans buy things, 90% of all purchases people make, from lumber to aspirin, 90% of those sales still happen in a physical store. amazon does not really touch that 90% spending for now, apart from its whole foods grocery chain and a handful of bookstores it owns. we can see where things are heading. people are buying more things online. in that place to amazon's strengths. jason: the sanctions-hit economy of iran. carol: and beijing moves to

eradicate poverty. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can listen to us on radio in new york, boston, washington, d.c., and in the bay area. jason: and in london. president trump's position to reimpose sanctions on iran are threatening an already fragile economy. carol: what will it mean for the iranian president? >> this week we got the wii imposition of u.s. sanctions on iran after months of discussions

and preparations about this. this stems from president trump's decision in may to pull out of the 2015 nuclear deal. we got the reimposition of financial sanctions that ban i ran from dealing in dollars and hertz their ability to issue foreign debt and affects the gold trade, mental trade, and autos. what we have seen is a severe decline in their currency, 70% decline relative to the dollar. this is just the beginning. the real ones that are going to severely hit are coming in november, when we get the oil sanctions. carol: this comes at a difficult time for the iranian economy. matthew: absolutely. we are only two years of them in

joining the fruits of the accord they signed almost three years ago to the date. it went into effect in january 2016. we did see an influx of foreign investment. this was an economy that had been weakened by years of isolation. the iranian president state the first term of his administration on the successful negotiation of this deal with the obama administration. this was supposed to be a time to enjoy the fruits of this accord. instead, he has to go back to his people and explain what went wrong. carol: can we lay out some of the things that are going on? there has been power shortages and 50% increases in the price of some food. matthew: we have seen protests starting to erupt outside of tell ron, -- tehran, some

deaths. there are power outages and water shortages. prices for basic food staples have risen 50% in the past few weeks. there is a lot of outrage on the streets. the iranian president is sitting in this tough middle ground. he has been traditionally a moderate. he dresses in the traditional clerical garb, but by historical accounts, he is a moderate, especially compared to the regime that preceded him. he is getting pressure from the conservative clerics who did not like this deal, and getting a lot of heat from pro-western moderates on the left who think he wasted the window they had by not being more aggressive and pushing through economic

reforms. carol: $175 billion will be spent to lift citizens out of poverty in china. jason: some of the would-be beneficiaries of this program are questioning be strategy. carol: we got more from our editor. christina: this year alone, the government will spend $170 billion on poverty reduction. jason: this story takes us to a specific place where there has been a transfer of people from rural settings to gleaming, urban settings. that has come with a lot of complications. christina: this little village of about three hours from beijing, residents who are living in these little huts

perched on these lovely mountains -- but there were mudslides and flooding and they would be cut off from the infrastructure around there for weeks. the government deems this place uninhabitable. in 2013, it began building this new complex. they moved about 160 families. the apartments have modern amenities, heating, cooling, a medical clinic on the premises and a day care, but there are no jobs. to move into these new places, people had to sign over the deeds to their farm houses and often their land. they were compensated, but we talked to one farmer who got less than $3000, and he says, now i have no means to earn an income. jason: there is skepticism on

the part of the people who have been given these apartments that the money is being used in the right way, that corruption tends to rear its ugly head in these situations. why is there so much skepticism? cristina: in the news there have been stories of other programs like this, in which there was corruption. it was reported in another city, millions of dollars ended up in the pockets of the local functionaries in charge of implementing these programs. in a related development, there was a scandal over childhood vaccines that turned out to be ineffective. people feel like the government is not acting in their best interests. i think it is an issue, that the chinese communist party is going

to have to deal with. carol: it is interesting that you talk about one individual. i think he was 67 years old. he said there was arbitrary decision-making about who the government deems is poor enough to get one of these places to move. cristina: the gentleman lives in the same village. he was not eligible. there are two ways in which you could move into the complex. you could pay a modest fee for the new apartments. he is saying, i live in a house with brain pouring through the roof -- rain pouring through the roof. i am poor, but it is all about who you know, he was saying. carol: up next, how apple's app

developers can pry into your privacy. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ phones have made our lives effortless.

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jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: still ahead, we talk about "crazy rich asians." we take you to singapore, the home of the mega-wealthy, but it is not that crazy. jason: we look at a $250 hack that could revolutionize the treatment of diabetes.

carol: tim cook has put himself out there as a real champion of data privacy. jason: apple may have a different sort of privacy problem. sarah: everybody loves apple. that is one of the reasons why it has reached $1 trillion in value. we really have to start to take these companies were what they are, powerful entities with so much control over our lives and think about the areas that might be blind spots for them. we have to rethink what they oh us as consumers -- owe us as consumers. are they really as privacy safe as they claim? apple has made such a big deal about being safer for our privacy than other companies who

harvest our data for advertising. apple does not have the advertising scale of a facebook or google, but they have data relationships with other entities on their app store. we give a lot of data to those app developers and there are not a lot of rules about how developers can use that data. jason: you mentioned the public perception, the positioning by the ceos of facebook versus apple. mark zuckerberg testified for 10 hours on capitol hill. almost simultaneously, tim cook is viewed as a hero by some of those same lawmakers. what is the discrepancy in the

public perception? sarah: apple has told everyone, we believe privacy is a human right and we will do everything to make sure that you have privacy when we are using our products. we don't make money off your data, but the company does make money off your data through developer relationships. when tim cook is talking about how he is not in the same situation as zuckerberg, zuckerberg is testifying about data problems. those data problems are with developers. this saw that came out of a developer -- saga came out of a developer sharing information with cambridge analytica, which then used to target people for the trump campaign during the 2016 election.

apple has the same lack of visibility with how developers are using the information from users, even though users give that information with their consent. there is a lot to it we have not dug into as a society. around the same time as its developer conference, they quietly updated their roles in the terms of service to say they would no longer allow developers to keep databases of your personal information or sell that to third parties. there was 10 years of not having this role. facebook made this rule back in 2014. this is another issue of a lack of data security, with a platform that has told us to trust them with our privacy. they have made money off of the fact they are better stewards of our privacy.

carol: we want to more perspective on apple. taylor: apple is the first company to hit that $1 trillion valuation. we have a cool way of doing this in the bloomberg, i want to go back to 2012 ahead of a $500 billion market cap. that is when the ipad mini was released. here we go to 2015, $700 billion market valuation, the release of the iwatch, and tim cook's first product launch since taking over the company. in 2018, a trillion dollar market cap, $200 per share. if you bought the stock when it was 20 years ago, you would have gotten a 40% return. carol: good stuff. jason: joel webber, what were the themes that emerged for you this week?

joel: one has to be the cover story on steve mnuchin. he has outlasted a lot of people in the trump administration. a lot of skeptics thought he would not last as long. one of the things he has perfected is the silent strategy. knowing when to be quiet and not voicing his grievances in a public setting and taking them to trump personally. jason: and tesla was a story that captivated everyone. joel: you can't get enough elon musk on twitter. talking about where the money is coming from is the big question. is there money and can they do something noteworthy?

this is a story we will continue to watch. jason: i love the ability to tell that story holistically. there has been a lot of tesla and elon musk over the past few months. joel: there is always the question of another elon musk story. part of that was to recognize, within the world of business, he is this overwhelming personality. but there is this larger story about the privatization of everything. carol: i think about the space issue. spacex is his private company. joel: then he says that is the model for what tesla might be able to do. we always pick up the currency of conversation. carol: up next, the do-it-yourself diabetes specs that may disrupt the industry. jason: can't the future on renewable energy. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: you can find us online at businessweek.com. jason: and our mobile app. diabetes is a disease that requires constant monitoring. a group of do it yourselfers are looking at ways to revolutionize treatment. carol: they are creating an artificial pancreas using a smart phone. >> i was interviewing one of the people in the story for a different story. it was a story about diabetes apps, dana told me about this system that she had designed herself. she was using an artificial pancreas that she had helped

build, that she had not bought from a company. we thought that was a fascinating story. jason: from the start, you talk about this idea of a $250 smart phone-based way to manage insulin. this is a widespread disease globally. this is for real? naomi: yeah, this is for real. there is this diy-version you can build for yourself. there are three different types, depending on whether you want to use an iphone, or an android, or a third version with different hardware. there is a version you can buy commercially and another company makes it.

it is not as customizable as the diy-version. the majority of patients would buy off the shelf. where diy comes into play -- if you are a real do-it-yourselfer, some people are using this version for small children. or four people for whom the the official version is not approved. in europe, the electronic system is not on the market. quite a few europeans have been turning to the diy version. carol: so many people have diabetes, and you talk about children. you write in your story about a mother who does it for her

eight-year-old. if you do not track this right, someone could die. tell me about the science and the people involved, creating these systems people rely on for their children. naomi: it is interesting. diabetes is a serious disease. you could definitely die. i asked this question to so many people. the way they explained it, if you have diabetes, you have to make many decisions yourself on a day-to-day basis about how much insulin you should take. if you are doing that -- one dad said to me, i would rather have an algorithm making a decision at 3 a.m., which i helped design, then to have myself at the same time being totally

exhausted and trying to make a decision on the fly. it is a personal thing, whether they want to trust their lives to something they built themselves. carol: also in the future section, helping to turn a country into a renewable powerhouse. jason: this can only be told with amazing photographs. >> jaime stillings has been working on the rise of renewable energy around the world for a decade. i first encountered his work on this project close to 10 years ago. he was photographing the huge solar array in the american southwest. he spent much of the last year traveling to chile, featuring this boom in the renewable

energy market, largely because changes in land law mandating a greater degree of renewable energy for the country. the mining industry, which is copper, iron, lithium, and other things, counts for a third of their electricity usage. they don't have any local fossil fuels. they have been largely dependent on importing coal and oil. you can see online, these refineries on parts of the coast where they bring coal onto ships and refine it and send it to the desert for the mining industry to use.

these companies are now buying power purchase agreements in some cases. in other cases, solar arrays are being fed right into the northern grid of the electrical system. they are able to take clean power from these sources, or more aggregate clean power overall. jason: tell us how he shot these pictures? they are stunning, a lot of aerial shots from different angles and using different lighting and everything. clinton: jamie worked really hard. this is a lot of physical ground we are talking about. carol: in a helicopter? clinton: a lot in a helicopter, occasionally with drones, kind of making a point of getting that morning light, or finding a

place he thought was interesting and coming back to get it when he thought shadows would be more dramatic. he thinks big about abstract composition of images. there is a picture of ore being carried out of one of the mines. it makes this beautiful mosaic from the sky. he sees these beautiful things, but he is super passionate about the subject matter. carol: how the insanely affluent truly live in singapore. jason: and can cooler temperatures give you a better workout? carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm and in

new york, boston, washington, dc, and in the bay area. carol: and in london. a look at what it is like to live as portrayed in the book and movie "crazy rich asians." >> the old money people do not want to flaunt their wealth. in a place like singapore, a tiny country, it is hard to be behind the scenes. the young people want to put themselves on instagram and the wearing the cool stuff. carol: you look at what is really happening in signapore. >> the film is a satirical look at that culture. carol: called "crazy rich asians."

>> not just rich, crazy rich. because it is grounded in reality, there is a rich culture in singapore. there are private jets, and fancy cars. all of that. jason: singapore has only become more important, how has it evolved? you track some of that in this story. >> it began as a shipping hub for southeast asia and was colonized by the british. since gaining independence in the 60's, it has been built up as a city state and recently has become a banking center, and that is where the newest wealth is coming from. carol: we talk about wealth creation throughout asia, what

is different about the wealth in singapore? >> it comes from different places, which makes it interesting. there is the real estate wealth from building a whole country out of the swamp on an island in asia. and the wealth brought over from mainland china and other places in asia back in the 60's. jason: let's talk about the movie itself. the trailer has really caught on. why has it captured the imagination? kim: it is a rom-com, easily accessible, the first hollywood film to feature asian-americans as the main part of the cast in 20 years. jason: wow. kim: people have noticed. jason: why is that? what accounts for that lag and why is it hitting so well now? kim: "black panther" was finally a superhero movie that acknowledged other cultures. we are just seeing a moment now.

thanks to this movie, it was reported that netflix had thought about bidding for it. the director and the author wanted it to be a hollywood film to prove that this is possible. carol: also, the latest fitness trend, and jason was our guinea pig. jason: it is called brrn, burning calories and cold. i don't know which was more fun, doing the workouts or talking to the founders. they are the most enthusiastic entrepreneurs. here's what they had to say. >> in 2013, i was training with a harvard professor in the middle of summer. it was hotter in the studio that it was outside.

she was remarking how she exercised better and felt better when she was teaching in boston during the fall and winter months. that got me thinking, why are we not turning the thermostat down? jason: there is science here, right? how did you go about figuring out what the data said about how this worked? >> this idea originated in a coffee shop. >> our teeth were so stained. >> stress testing. my background is in public health. jimmy had this idea and said i have to talk to you about this. i was up all night drinking coffee looking at the literature, and i thought there was a lot of sign of cold temperature exposure. you burn more calories, more fact, acclimatize to cold, all this physiology even regular exercise does not help you release. it also helps to improve the workout experience.

jason: it is a crowded market, even in your neighborhood in downtown manhattan. you can throw a rock and hit a number of boutiques. how do you stand out? >> the way to stand out as not to focus on just modality but also the workout environment. when we were talking to people about wanting to start this cold temperature exercise, they thought we were crazy. we look at the cycling and marathon times, and how we saw everything encouraging temperatures encouraging movement and not discouraging movement. >> it was not even the cold science, but that there are 36 thousand fitness concepts in the united states and a $32 billion business. zero operate below 60 degrees. we were calling gyms for about

two weeks making sure we were dotting our i's and crossing our t's. >> we are terrible secret shoppers. jason: i was a little skeptical. how much skepticism do people walk in with? >> 100%. people walk in dressed like winter, it's almost an audition for magic mike, we start taking off their clothes, and they walk out requesting it be colder. it's fascinating that we guessed right, and people are warming up to it. jason: and so many puns. >> puns will get you business but you will lose all your friends. jason: are you getting return business? you are three months in.

what is this uptick in terms of people returning? >> business is going great. every week we are getting more customers. we are doing something that is crazy. we are questioning the status quo that a hot workout is good for you. it is a grassroots movement that we are leading. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands now. jason: and our mobile app. carol: i loved the photo essay that took us to chile to look at mines and how they are becoming a renewable energy powerhouse. it's a reminder to me that so many emerging markets are coming up with important solutions. jason: and a story where the pictures gives you a sense of the scope of the problem and the opportunity. i was completely captivated by elon musk this week and his tweet that launched a thousand speculations about how to take the company private. banker salivating at the prospect, investors on either

side, trying to figure out what happens. carol: great perspective, and that story, not over. jason: more bloomberg television starts right now. ♪ two, down and back up.

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♪ emily: i'm emily chang, and this is "the best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you the top interviews from this week in tech. coming up next, elon musk's plan to take tesla private. andy controversial delivery of the surprising announcement. your wall street and washington not have the same question for elon -- where is the money? and snap reporting its first-ever drop in daily active users. what is the company doing to stay on the radar? and google wants back in. in china, the search engine left the mainland in 2010 over