♪ carol: welcome to bloomberg businessweek. i'm carol massar. we inside the magazine's headquarters in new york. what feels like facebook's never-ending crisis, one year since the cambridge analytical scandal. on elon musk really fixated destroying a whistleblower at tesla's gigafactory? we will tell you about the allegations. global cover story

for bloomberg businessweek subscribers. boeing 737 max 8 nightmare. two catastrophic crashes. 346 people killed and flyers across the globe taking to social media to express their fears about the plane's safety. jim ellis is with us. boeing, the big company story this week, the big stock story this week and the ending still yet to be determined. big story. jim: this is a company that was doing everything right. they had a new ceo for years ago. he had managed to basically write up the value of boeing to unseen levels. revenues were clicking away. $100 billion a year. this is a company that not only were they doing everything right, but one of their main competitors, airbus, was in all sorts of trouble. a bribery scandal in a lot of management changes. and the a-380 which had to be

shut down. everyone said boeing is doing great. they had this wonderful plane called the which is an update of the 737 which started back in the 1960's. carol: it has been around for a while. jim: they have been able to continually upgrade it. the latest upgrade was the kind of plane people want nowadays. 14% more fuel efficient than previous generations. that is the hopping for new carriers, low-cost carriers, and established carriers that want to compete. everybody wanted one. but ended up doing was had an order book of 5000 of these. carol: $600 billion on orders now at risk. jim: because as people say if this plane is not guaranteed to be safe, and a lot of purchases are saying they want to rethink. some are saying i want to

cancel my order. carol: a controversial part -- so many countries led by china around the world, the european region and canada were grounding the plane until the faa finally in the u.s. said we had to ground this plane. jim: much different situation than we normally have. most times, people wait on the faa and eu. in this case, the day after the crash, china jumped up and said no, we're not going to have our airlines fly the anymore. -- 737 max anymore. they account for your third of all the max's that have been delivered. carol: we do so many company stories here. i think about companies that have been in trouble before. bp, exxon with the oil spill. i think about the corporate reputation for boeing and the future of the company and they did not get ahead of this before other countries did.

jim: they lost control of the narrative here. instead of talking about the software fix that they supposedly have for what people think might be -- carol: defensive. jim: hey, there is nothing wrong with this. as one country after another not only said the airlines could not fly the plane, but they closed their airspace to the plane. is wasn see where ther headed but boeing was last to see it. after the president giving mixed signals, finally on wednesday, the president said enough, we're going to ground the plane. carol: we reported on how they president had a conversation with the ceo of boeing and it took some time. jim: that is one of the issues for some of these international carriers, they are wondering whether the company was so close to the government and the u.s. that that might be a reason they were slow to ground the plane.

carol: it may be a reason why we have not gotten the black box back to the u.s. and that was a little bit of a hot potato. it ended up in france. jim: normally what happens is people are very happy to send the black box back to the u.s. which has a lot of experience handling the forensic looking at a crash. in this case, the ethiopians were saying we don't know. we think it ought to go to europe. that was sort of a slap because that sort of suggests they worried there would not be, let's say, as truthful -- too close. carol: this is how the magazine was really smart and covering it. social media really played a role. consumers saying i want to know what plane i am flying. jim: a lot more than we typically get. part of it is because this plane is such a workhorse. it is on order by so many carriers around the world. what happened is the social media posts are out there ended

fed on itself. we ended up with newspapers outside the u.s. that were jumping. a couple of british tabloids called this the death plane. carol: we heard from jim ellis. jason kelly joining us now. we talked about boeing so much this week. jason: we wanted to get inside what happened the market reaction,. here's a snapshot of the days incident andt 737 what happened after country after country, regulator after regulator grouted those planes. carol: we are talking about approximately in the first three days, $40 billion erased from boeing's market cap. investors did not hesitate. jason: let's point out that the stock had been trending up very nicely. doing a very good job. you can see why investors got very worried and that steep decline over just several days. carol: a big deal. jason: next, an outbreak of

banking scandals raises a big question on why the eu is not policing itself so well. carol: why venezuela needs its oil workers back. jason: also ahead, march madness. betting makes its legal debut this year. we will talk about one company at the center of the action. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. join us every week on the radio. catch up on our daily show by listening. subscribe to our podcast on itunes and bloomberg.com. carol: you can find us on businessweek.com and our mobile app. jason: dirty money scandals seem to be pouring out of europe. carol: including some nordic

banks that appeared to be cut handling suspicious russian money. jason: potentially funny russian money in the eu's financial system operated something like an open secret, almost tolerated until recent reports. carol: we have the story from paris. >> two things really. one of them surprisingly was the russian attack on sergei s kripal, a former russian agent living in the u.k. the difference was that for the first time in a long time, europeans thought that russian actions might actually be harmful to them. this has nothing to do with money laundering. agent with a chemical that made him and his daughter violently ill and sent to the hospital. killed a woman whose boyfriend accidentally found a perforated ume bottle with his agent. -- this agent. it made people in europe where

russia.ier of americans tend to think more naturally that maybe russians have bad intentions towards americans. europeans do not really feel the same way. the attack made the difference. the other thing that changed was the dons the bank money laundering, particularly in 2019 when they reported the full scope of that. $230 billion that they moved through this tiny unit they had in estonia, itself a tiny country that used to be a soviet state. the size of that shocked a lot of europeans, particularly around scandinavia who viewed for their region as very clean, very not corrupt. and the rest of the world views scandinavia the same way. i think that much money move through a danish bank was really surprising to a lot of people. jason: because then it goes to nordia -- you sort of have this

domino effect of sorts and people really looking much more deeply at the activities of some very well-known, and as you say, well regarded european banks. alan: that is exactly right. to step back for a minute, the russian money was going through the baltics -- lithuania, estonia. former soviet states. most of them have big russian speaking populations. a lot of cultural connections with them. the scandinavian banks, the ones from finland, sweden and denmark, but a lot of these baltic banks. they bought their weight in to these former soviet states. when they bought them, they got the same issues the banks had and did not appear to do much about it. danske but a bank -- bought a ba yearsk in 2007 and for and let russian money rolled through in an ever greater amount. yes, they bought into this

issue, but they had plenty of time to do something about it and chose not to. it really was a cascade effect. danske appears to be the biggest hub of this. alsoa and others will might have been involved with it, because all the money slushed through the baltic units of these scandinavian banks were linking to each other. carol: what is interesting -- you look at the history of the last 20 years, it seemed like everyone was ok with so much russian money in particular, whether it was flowing through the u.k., switzerland, cyprus. what is interesting is we talk about how it fuels real estate in new york, london. it bought the chelsea football club. everybody seemed to be ok, but with the skriipal incident and the poisoning, it became a security issue. this is a different type of threat and concern. alan: you're absolutely right

about that. it really personalized it for a lot of people. the first point when russians and russian money became less wanted was after russia invaded crimea in 2014. the u.s. and the european union imposed sanctions on a series of russian individuals and companies, and to a lesser extent, on russian banks and companies. that was the first point when russian money, from a legal and political perspective, became more suspect. until then, everyone was happy to have russian money. it seemed more of an advantage for the west. starting in 2014, it started to be a problem. more in the u.s. than europe. in europe, it suddenly became, well, it is not just russian money. russia might be acting in a way we don't really like. jason: to the economic section. a troubling side drama to the ongoing crisis in venezuela. carol: the country's opposition leader has assembled a shadow team to revive the state owned

oil company should he be able to oust the maduro regime. jason: recruiting workers may be impossible, or at least incredibly difficult. carol: more on this story from christina's and let. christina: we are talking about a company that was at 1.1 of the best in its oil monopolies in the world. in 2003, many thousands of its staff participated in a work stoppage to force new elections to defeat hugo chavez. as punishment, 18,000 people were fired. there was a huge brain drain essentially and a scattered all over the world. they went to saudi arabia, canada which have similar types of heavy crude that venezuela has. that know-how is very valuable. now, they are being -- people

are reaching out to these folks saying would you come back? would you be read back if there was a change in power? jason: before we get to that, i want to go back to that initial launching them into the world because what they found is they were in heavy demand, right? other places really wanted them and they went. cristina: we don't have statistics and how many state in the industry, but we know their skills were in demand. also, immediately, about a year after these mass layoffs, there peopleroup called oil that started this database to keep track of all of these folks. that is this list they are managing. that is how they are reaching out. carol: they went to some coveted places like the middle east, saudi aramco. cristina: right. companya chinese owned that has operations in canada. we found -- not everybody landed

on their feet. because that was the first wave of the exodus. it has been trickling on through the years so it started with this kind of white-collar and it is now, it's blue-collar. everyone who is -- rig operators, truck drivers, oil hands. people salaries cannot keep them alive. carol: you know better than most there are so many different battle fronts when it comes to venezuela, but if you go around the country, you have a turnaround this company and you need the employees. they've got to figure out a way to bring back people. cristina: it is going to take

money but money alone would not do it. we talked to somebody who said if you manage to bring back a third of the staff -- as long as there were people that were able to teach new people, that you could do it. there is still a big question mark. jason: next, facebook celebrates an anniversary of sorts. the cambridge analytica scandal. carol: plus, how wework is expanding efforts to trace movement and its offices. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

jason: welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. carol: you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm and am 1130 in new york, 99.1 fm in washington, d.c. the bay area in and the bloomberg business app. carol: is facebook doing enough to protect your data? we are talking about your personal information. jason: does the company actually care about fallout from last year's cambridge analytica scandal like the company says? sarah frier took these questions to facebook.

>> i want to bring us back to one year ago when the news about cambridge analytica broke. the company for years had known about that problem too, but until the media wrote about it and until senators and congressmen started calling facebook to do something, that is what they had to formulate a plan. we have seen that pattern over and over in sri lanka with cambridge analytica. the opioid crisis on instagram. this is a company that really starts to step it up and respond once there is public pressure to do so. and then, in that case, they will say -- one of zuckerberg's lines is we now have a broader view of our responsibility. the story is really about what that broader view entails. it is still a very reactionary posture that facebook is taking. carol: talk to us about the folks you talk to my facebook specifically. the head of global policy

management. what does she say about facebook's ability to police its platform and about its willingness to police its platform? sarah: i found monica very earnest and try to solve this problem. there is only so much you can do with the resources she is given 2.7eal with the content of billion users across all of these platforms who are posting billions of things a day. carol: let me jump in for a second. do they have a point? we are so critical of what goes on in china in terms of -- jason: censorship. carol: of that going on there, what is the line that something like a facebook or any social media platform has to follow in terms of letting people do their own thing without policing it too much? freedom of speech. sarah: that is the same debate they are having right now at

facebook. how much can we really decide that we want our platform to not have this kind of content and how much is overreach? if we say that this information is likely to spark violence, should it be facebook that is saying that or should it be some outside groups who really have the expertise? in that case they decide it should not be facebook, that they should bring outside groups. that makes responding to the contents lower, but the trade-off is you have facing the company making all of these decisions. mark zuckerberg has said he thinks it is not sustainable from his point of view, that in the future he wants facebook to just not be in charge of this in the end game. he's going to appoint this outside board of people from diverse disciplines. we don't know much about the board. we know there will be 40 people on it who make the final call on these decisions about content on

facebook who are not affiliated with the company. carol: speaking of using big data, that is the focus of the solution section. jason: a new wave of investment in undersea cables. carol: here's our editor. >> is it a surprise that a company like wework which is controlling, managing so much office space in the world, in the country mostly today that it is going to find a way to capture some data from that and sell it? no, it is not surprising. but how are they doing and what direction are they moving with that? because it is not just they are leasing space and releasing it to people. carol: they are getting more proactive. dimitra: they are investing a lot. in the last year, they acquired two companies that are companies that provide them with a lot of data. one is a conference room booking software company. it makes software to book those rooms. in the process of you using that

software to book those rooms -- it is called team -- you are providing them with a lot of data. the times when most people are looking for conference room. how many people are they looking to fill that conference room with? how long are they spending? maybe that will provide you with information you could use if wework analyzes it for you that lets you better manage and be much more efficient with your conference room. both the size of your space, how many of those rooms you have. what kind of days you make available. jason: you mentioned the idea of collecting data and selling it back to the user, which takes us to the farm. dimitra: a couple of generations ago, one of the farmers we interviewed, his grandfather used to have on the property a stack of spiral notebooks and that is how he tracks. how much was good and how much was bad? he would use that information to try to perfect the next round of crops. today, companies like bayer and

so many other big, they're in all these businesses. they are in health care, seeds. they're developing software and programs in tools. and, farmers of all sizes -- this is what is important. it is super useful both to the very large scale farmers but especially to small farmers. a farm that is just several acres. the data is enabling them to do all kinds of things. to are just based on weather patterns. to detected very early on using certain technology that are scanning. almost like facial recognition software. is software that allows them to identify it and very early stages and whether there is a possibility of disease in a crop. you are better controlling and estimating your yields. jason: i did a story about undersea cabling. here you have what feels a

little bit old-school, transmitting, the fastest way to get things from london to new york, it is under the atlantic ocean. dimitra: the companies that are making the biggest investments and really building these cables are the big tech companies. google, especially, are making these investments. there are ways to more easily connect very remote places. really, there is such a need for this right now because the amount of data that is flying over the internet, when you think about streaming and voice and all kinds of things, it is just tremendous. i don't think they can do this quickly enough. jason: later in the program, i will tell you about the company using data to perfect running shoes. i'm obsessed with getting faster. carol: plus, if you have dreams of becoming a pop star, in china, we will tell you about one guy who made it all happen. jason: from a twitter meltdown to a fake mass shooter and back again. we peel back allegations

against elon musk and recent drama at tesla's gigafactor. carol: it is an unbelievable story. this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

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jason: welcome back to "bloomberg: businessweek." carol: still ahead, we have got the pop star who sings love songs like this on the 14 and topping the charts in china. jason: and maybe you are listening to the music in the most luxurious backseat on the road. carol: rather cushy. and speaking of cars, let's get to "bloomberg: businessweek."

we've got a new report on elon musk. remember --ay may you may remember his false claim about taking it private, resulting in a lawsuit. carol: you can read about his alleged plot to take down a whistleblower. jason: and why the sec forced tesla to a point in a "twitt er-sitter." >> the giga factory is there a giant tests -- battery factory. it is a middle of nowhere and is one of the biggest buildings in the world. we spoke to some whistleblowers to work there and had crazy stories about what went on. carol: such as? >> it all started last june 4. the story appeared in business insider and said there are huge amounts of waste, that there are wasted parts piled high around the factory. that tesla was perhaps using damaged batteries.

from reading the story, it was clear there was some sort of whistleblower who had gone to business insider. there are some many crazy things going on with tesla, people moved on right away. carol: another day, another crazy story in tesla. >> writes, but what -- right, but what we found out was that elon musk was not ready to move on. he was angry anybody would leak and hired a team of operatives to track down this leaker. jason: i want to talk about the operatives. as i was reading the story, it takes a left turn and he start to talk about over -- you start to talk about uber. had an intelligence team and one of the members blew the whistle on uber. saying that his colleagues were spying on people, on other executives.

he later took this path, but there was enough there that the ceo apologized and the head lawyer said that uber employees stop following people around. of this team, several sued the whistleblower for defending them. -- defaming them, saying it would be hard to get a job. but it didn't. most people read this and thought it was bad behavior, but elon musk thought "those are my guys." >> they have identified the leaker, he is basically a low line assembly engineer. they interrogate him for hours. he admits to it, he gets fired, tesla susan -- sues him. here is where it gets weird. just a few hours later, a local sheriff gets a call.

it is one of the security guys, and he seems worried. he says we have just had a threat called it -- in. we heard this whistleblower is coming to shoot us up. the sheriff goes to investigate. he finds that the threat is a bogus -- is bogus. after the tip is discredited and the sheriff says it is not true, tesla calls reporters and says "hey, guys, did you hear there was a shooting threat? it was that whistleblower guy. he sure seems crazy." that he wouldre publicize a shooting threat that nobody would have known about if you have not. -- had not. muskon the day when elon -- when the sheriff was trying to find the whistleblower, elon

musk was emailing reporters. jason: as you point out, you essentially have whistleblowers on both sides of this issue. where does this go from here? >> this brings us to sean got thew -- guthrow, one of managers at the giga factory. he is one of the guys to call the sheriff. he has been fired, and he has turned whistleblower himself. he is saying that he and his colleagues on the security team went to far in their pursuit of trip. had been misled by investigators, they misled the police. they were somehow able to monitor his communications. because elon musk have this theory that the whistleblower is working with hedge funds, short-sellers, oil companies, but there was some sort of big conspiracy going on.

him wanted his security team to find evidence. next, march madness time and one gambling startup is ready for the big tournament. carol: and big competition in online hotel bookings. we have an interview with the owner of priceline. jason: this is "bloomberg: businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg: businessweek." carol: join us for "bloomberg: businessweek." every day on the radio. you can also catch us on our radio show, check out our podcast. jason: and find us online at businessweek.com and our mobile app. in businessweek talks, we were joined by the ceo of bookings holdings. jason: we talked to him about

consolidation in the online hotel reservation industry, competition, and the market for listing holmdel's. -- home rentals. >> i don't think anybody cannot be concerned about what facebook or google or amazon would do next. and that is just in the u.s., you've got alibaba, tencent, baidu. a lot of technology oriented people who perhaps could do something. the fact is, it's a lot harder than you think. we have thousands of people calling to make sure they're getting the best prices and working relationships. that is not just technology, that is boots on the ground, that's an advantage. jason: we were talking before eric, you have been on this company for almost two decades. how has the travel business changed during that time? >> i was thinking about how much things have changed. i remember starting off on aol dial-up, trying to connect and buy something. carol: i ever travel agents, not

to date myself, or anything. >> well, there are travel agents. but now, when you can use your phone, what a difference, it makes things so easy. but not as easy as it should be. think of all the troubles you have had traveling, the problems with booking something. the fact that you have to enter your credit card several times. we are building a frictionless solution, that is what we want at the end of the day, that you just have to do it once and it's done, and if anything has gone wrong, some he can fix it. when you use ai, it is figuring out where the problem is before it happens and suggesting corrections before it happens. carol: spending on technology, obviously, but all you are also -- but you are also spending on marketing. what specifically are you spending on? talkedof the things we

about is that parts of the world are a little softer economically than perhaps they thought they would be, western europe, in particular. advertising, we know how important it is to make sure that we are well known. when you go to the u.s. and you ask somebody where can i get a home or an apartment, they may not think of booking.com first. we need to correct that. if you go to europe and the think i need an apartment, they think booking.com. soneed brand advertisers that people understand we have a great product, a better product, i think. when you use our home product, it is instantly confirmable. you are not going back and forth decided he can or cannot get. with us, right away, you get. on top of that, we don't hit you with a traveler's fee. to me, that is absurd, we don't charge them that. we have 24/7 customer service. go, how iseconds to

the traveler feeling right now globally? nervous, confident? >> depends on what part of the world. issues not only in the economy, but let's face it, brexit causes uncertainty. when you are thinking about going somewhere in europe, your english, thinking what might happen to me, they may wait to book until they see what happens next week and week after that. in france, political uncertainty, who knows. in the long run, people like to travel. you might remember that last year the supreme court overturned a federal law confining legal sports betting to nevada. jason: that means march madness betting is legal this year. carol: our reporter tells us what this means for this gambling startup. thate supreme court ruling made it possible for states to legalize sports betting came down last may, and you can see

it coming when the court agreed to hear the case. so around that time, a private rolledinvestment group together some smaller companies that were serving daily fantasy players and people already betting in the gray and black markets and started the action network. the idea was not to be a betting operator, but as they put it, the bloomberg of betting where they are giving you all the tools you need. carol: thank you very much for the government -- comment. we see a lot of analytics used for players and strategies, tell us about their strategies. >> it starts with a media company with a are writing the stories. here is the line for the game, here's where the smart money is going. here is a smart thing that happened and a better one a huge payout that is to get you in and app,iar to download the

and that they have a series of paid services that get sophisticated. dataan get just basic about where the money is in a given bets and some expert picks for $80 a month. month.llars a for $50 a month, you can look and youdecades of data can actually test your theories out see if they do in fact to bear out historically, and then he can find ways to bet that system. that's $50 a month. month, you can look at really granular data about how betting markets are moving all over the world. they are trying to be the one stop shop for anybody from the casual to really serious better who wants to read about it or maybe that for a living -- bet for a living. jason: there are a couple of well-known names recruited into this, not least of this is a

familiar name to lots of folks. he covers the business of sports, 2 million twitter followers. what is his role in all of this? basically, they are trying to gain awareness of the brand and bring people in and he is the top of that funnel. they hire people with big followings, he is probably the biggest among them in the world tosports and sports betting grab those 2 million followers and say here is a thing, here are stories we're doing, and hey you might want to buy this a dollars service. there to report every little thing he sees and keep the name in the news. and then they will just keep building out. right now, there are about eight states with legal betting, but --y're hoping that there is that these dozens looking at it will come on board. jason: we are putting together a special march madness contest.

big names, hedge fund titans and former ceos and many more, they pick a charity and pledge a donation. carol: the winners charity is the real winner. jason: that is where the money ends up. we will keep you up-to-date with ketology."ding "brac carol: topping the charts in the world's hottest music market. jason: and some are betting that runners like me cannot resist more data. carol: and the only way to backseat drive if let's just call it uber-wealthy. jason: this is "bloomberg: businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg: businessweek." jason: you can listen to us on boston,o in new york, washington, dc. area, in the bay

london, and of course, on the bloomberg business at -- app. how to become a check -- a pop-star in china. jason: we profile this danish star. writing about how he has conquered china. >> he is a popstar from denmark, grew up in a suburb of copenhagen and had this rapid ascent in his home country. was 17, hewhen he walked into a record label and started performing. i liked them so much they gave onea deal his second album pop album of the year at the danish music awards. these number one songs, and at that moment, he was convinced he was on his way to becoming one of the biggest pop stars in the world, or he hoped that would happen. test the waters outside of denmark, he went to germany, norway, he did not have much success.

but around the same time, he found out that one of his songs had started to really make it big in china. he went there in 2014, and since he4, though to your point, is pretty much unknown in the u.s., u.k., germany, he has had eight number one songs in china. carol: what is it about the chinese market that makes him so appealing that he is not necessarily translating to other parts of the world? >> part of it is that china still loves really traditional pop music in a way that most of the markets in the west have moved away from. a lot of pop that is successful now, you fold in some hip-hop, some dance music. you combine other genres that have taken over the culture of the past 10 years. a lot of the biggest musicians, not just in china, but across asia, are men don't pop stars, k-pop,o-pop stars,

j-pop, traditional pop. and china is just such an unproven market. you are starting from square one, and he just chose to put in the effort in a way few artists do because it's hard to make money out of the gate. carol: in general, the music industry in china is very restricted. foreign artists have to get a visa to perform their. -- there. jason: and many have been banned. >> there is a love list of top acts not allowed to perform their. , justin bieber. reasons, some have voiced support for taiwan, independence into that, if you wish to the dalai lama happy birthday, you will probably not be able to perform in china. justin bieber was ambiguous bad behavior, but talking to some of

the big music promoters and of the restrictions on what you need to do to play their is pretty severe. it comes down to not just submitting everything he will say, because there is no spontaneity in musical performance in china, which is weird when you think about the whole point of live music is to apple and and maybe play a guitar solo or saying something a cappella. but you have to submit a video of everybody who will be on stage. promoters tell me they have to submit a video of the security guard standing there is regulators want to know every facet of a performance because they see the potential power of music. get ave seen restrictions lot worse over the last 5-8 years. carol: time for the pursuit section. you have got a story about this shoemaker. jason: many people have not heard of it. what is so interesting is that they have a partnership fleet feet.

many people have heard of fleet feet of it has been around since 1976. hundreds of locations around the country. what they do is have machines inside the sores that measure your feet. they put all the data together, hundreds of thousands of scans they have started with. carol: a shoe with all of that data. what data is doing for farms and other industries, it is doing it for this industry. jason: let me tell you, runners are assessed with tracking everything. it seems so simple, but it is so much more complicated area and data can only make it better. pursuits, what it is like to be driven around in a rolls-royce santa. got to brave the back seats of the most luxurious cars on the planet. -- imagine aheck private jet travel on four wheels.

that is what they are looking for and what you find. carol: let's go through the. the rolls-royce phantom. extended wheelbase. inches over the regular phantom, which is already a massive car. ,his adds another nine inches which, of course, makes room for ,hings like champagne coolers massagers, foot rest covered in lambswool. you can put in cases to store your watches, cigar humidors, things like that. carol: you said it is to threatens -- two thrones? that recline fully come up, leather, 10 inch touchscreens for each one. bluetooth headsets, the whole thing. car.: this is a $525,000 >> base price.

and when i asked rolls-royce, they said over 90% of the phantoms they sell are heavily the spoked, which means this $525,000 number is a suggestion. most cost more. carol: what is extra on something like this? >> extra is like getting the trim to match her favorite pair of shoes or your favorite color of lipstick. or to get a special safe you can keep your diamonds in that fits exactly your diamonds jewelry. jason: let's go a little bit downmarket to the lexus. [laughter] it does not have all of the bells and whistles, but you point out that the appointments and leather are amazing. it is probably the least expensive car on the list, but for the price, you get a lot. i wanted to call that out, there are a wide variety of prices.

why does not have the champagne coolers and the lambswool, it is very well thought out. a good use of space. the seats also tilt back to a 48 degrees angle, which is great. everything is just really well thought out and it is big. for the money, a great backseat. carol: you call it a 70 mile per hour hotel room. >> yeah! and the thing is you can use them to work or sleep, it is an extension of your day. jason: here, we are very familiar with the fleet of black cars. the lincoln continental, well known to many of our listeners and viewers. they have upgraded that as well. this is ave, continental reserve, the car keeping lincoln in business. it is kind of an institution.

it is just like rolling through town in a big black safe. the doors are heavy, it is silent on the inside. you have a nice tactile finishes, the woods of the interior, everything is an electronic. thatcontrols in the back control every motion, the massaging. bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. jason: and online and our mobile app. what is your must read? carol: what we just heard, writing in the backseat of those cool cars. i love the details. jason: i also love the details, she really took us there. i got a say, elon musk. the reporting on that story. every time,got me and the team up with matt robinson to understand the fec, the enforcement mechanisms in place, fascinated. arol: this is a guy and company with always hear unusual stories, but this is on a whole other level.

you can find more stories on businessweek.com over the weekend. and check out our podcasts, download subscribe at itunes, soundcloud, and bloomberg.com. carol: more bloomberg television starts now. ♪

emily: will emily chang and this is "the best: technology." a criminal probe into facebook now includes a grand jury into its investigation into data sharing. we cover the growing list of controversies surrounding the social network. and both sides of the aisle are taking up the issue of breaking up big tech, the breaking up is hard to do. we talk about