carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i am jason kelly. carol: in this week's program why economists have such a hard time forecasting recessions. it is not easy. jason: plus japan schools the world on how a wealthy nation can maintain its superpower status. carol: the international cover story, the greatest delivery empire on earth. jason: we are talking about a

company in china. it has been cheaper to order in than to go out and reshape life in china's cities in the process. carol: we talked to the editor about the story. >> the 450-year-old founder of may twan tried to build social networks, a sort of facebook look alike and something that looked an awful lot like twitter with a handful of co-founders and after first blowing through the early stakes from friends and family and then suffering crackdowns from the chinese government decided to try to do something less potentially controversial. thanks to early investment by jack ma to sort of take the lead in what was known for some time war in undred groupon

china. carol: he gets investment from jack and starts spreading out his businesses where he wants to kind of do business extensions, right? and that costs more money. that's with alibaba says we are not so interested in doing another round, right? >> the terms that alibaba set, a certain point where meituan was the biggest player in the field was look, we will give you more money to stretch out around 2015 but you have to agree to basically merge with alibaba including customer data. jason: because this was coming at a point where the groupon model wasn't going to be sustainable. they were going to run into the same things they had run into in their previous startups, which was like it's just not going to grow. they really got into the delivery business and that's when it really accelerates. >> meituan alone delivers some

20 million or so delivery orders a day through about 600,000 delivery agents across about 3,000 cities in china. carol: 20 million a day. jason: put that in context for us versus grub hub. >> the biggest player in a comparable market in the u.s. delivering about 500,000 orders. jason: versus 20 million. amazing. >> their customer base is close to four million people. carol: they decided not to roll their business into alibaba. o alibaba goes one way and meituan goes another way, correct? >> merging with their rival. so after that, a lirksbaba said basic hi we will try to spend you into oblivion. carol: these two are head-to-head in competition.

so there is a price war going on, which is wonderful for consumers, which goes back to what you said at the beginning, jason, that it's cheaper to get something delivered than actually go to the checkout counter and pay for it. >> absolutely. often on the order of 40% to 80% cheaper. jason: is that sustainable? are these guys going to essentially drive themselves into oblivion by the price war? >> it's a real gamble. alibaba has cash to burn, but it's also a company entering its third decade with public market investors to appease. so that's sort of jing's gamble here, that he is betting that alibaba has another year to do this and the money to keep going for several years. carol: tell us about this guy. anybody going up against alibaba has got to have a lot of nerve. tell us a little about this character because i think he has a role model that's written about in the story and it's jeff

bezos. >> that's right. he has alluded he has really doubled down on bezos' reinvestment model, the idea that succeeding to some degree in a particular business means you have money to play with, to try and eggs panned into an adjacent business. so as they've gotten better at food delivery, he took over china's movie ticket online market. that sort of thing. jason: one thing i want to make sure people understand because i didn't fully comprehend it -- i am sure you did, carol -- is the market opportunity here because of chinese population. the u.s. has 10 cities with a million or more people. china has 156. carol: i know. jason: i stopped cold while i was reading that. can they get to a sizable chunk of this market? jeff: it seems reasonable to -- that's the other real reason that alibaba has to try and spend them into the ground here. depending on who you ask,

relatively conservative estimate is that there is a $35 billion market for delivery services of $800 ds, it will be billion by 2023. a lot of that growth will come at the expense of conventional services. carol: you know what is interesting, the company isn't profitable which isn't surprising. jeff: true. part of the problem is they're in this billion dollar a year war. this bezos model of trying to jump into new, very expensive business whenever they see an opening. carol: i feel like whenever i read a story about this, i feel like how much is being done on your phone. we do a the lo of delivering, but only if you are in large cities, right? jason: i thought you were talking about a side hustle i didn't know about. carol: it's fascinating how much further ahead that they are than like the united states, right?

jeff: this has been a huge -- certainly for people in cities there, and you might imagine, it's because of some relatively unique advantages that china has but also some disadvantages. it's more appealing to order in all the time when the traffic is horrible or outside your door. jason: one of india's best known doctors is creating a model for ultralow cost health care that can be applied everywhere. carol: why a breakthrough drug still faces high hurdles. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ alix: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: join carol and me every day on the radio from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. wall street time. also catch up by subscribing to our podcast at bloomberg.com.

carol: you can find us online and on our mobile app. son: india is pursuing the biggest health effort in industry. trying to get coverage to 500 million of india's poorest. carol: to make this possible, the founder of the world's hospital chain will have to cull costs further and keep on cutting. >> he is a remarkable individual. of course, born in india and trained as a cardiac surgeon in london, where he noticed that they could do a lot more heart surgeries in a day at the hospital in lon do than anywhere in india. he decided i will go back to india and see if i can replicate that. once he did that, he started pushing himself a little more, various cardiac departments he was hired in india until

eventually came up with this idea of what if we treat cardiac surgery like an assembly line, try to break it down into tasks and have only the most complicated tasks done by the most experienced and highly paid surgeon. everyone else, from junior surgeons to highly trained nurses, can handle all of the less complicated tasks. he found that once he did this, the cost of surgery went down a lot. so he founded his own hospital and has been replicating that model across all these different specialties ever since to produce what we call in the story the cheapest hospital in the world. carol: i love this. let me throw out some numbers for our viewers and listeners. surgery does cost a lot less money, endoscopy, $14. surgery for head and neck cancer starts at $700. a heart transplant, about $11,000. if you were doing that in the united states, we are talking

about $100,000 or more, right? it's a huge difference. >> absolutely. a heart transplant, full costs can be $1 million at a u.s. hospital. we you take in everything. carol: he makes a profit. so again the way he does this -- and you talk about descaling, upscaling or task shifting. talk to us about how this process works. give us an example. i am assuming you went to some of the hospitals. ary: i got to watch a few surgeries done in the hospital. basically what they do is they break up the tasks into more and less complex. and ensure that the most complex task, you know, for instance, in a heart transplant that might be moving the patient's heart out and taking -- putting the new one in. that's only done by the person who can only do that. so that's the most experienced senior surgeon. so the experienced surgeon comes in solely for that part of the operation, but every other part of the operation is done by

other less skilled, less expensive people, whether that be a junior surgeon, one of the surgeries i went to see was the doctor's son who was the junior surgeon. but it can also be highly trained nurses, who have a lot more training and more experience than a usual nurse, so they can handle more complex tasks, but still cost less than a surgeon. carol: what has been his mortality rate? ari: the numbers that have been released and looked at by the various academics that have come over to india to do case studies actually show that his mortality rates are at least the same if not better for select surgeries than u.s. counterparts or international benchmarks. particularly in these surgeries that -- they've developed a lot of proficiency in. the one where the assembly line model has been perfected as much

as it can be and where surgeons from the doctor himself to his various other employees has developed high levels of proficiency by doing literally hundreds of surgeries in the course of just a year. the survival rates can actually be better. carol: he is now under pressure to even reduce his costs even more. this has to do with modi care, the people's health plan in india, that is being put in place. can he do it? ari: dr. shedy thinks he can. he is trying his best to apply the same principles that got his costs this far, ones of scale, ones of increasing surgeon's proficiency, one of breaking down tasks in order to lower labor costs and increase utilization rates. he is trying to push that to its limit, but at the same time he is also looking at more high-tech solutions, namely data, and get all of that data and then analyze it and find on

procedure costing more than that procedure? why are complications more likely to come up in this ward than that ward? why is this doctor more likely to use a pacemaker than this other doctor? and investigate those and see where they can improve care, ake it more efficient. carol: first ever postpartum depression drug was just approved by the f.d.a. jason: but even though the drug has been hailed as a breakthrough and may help at least one in nine new mothers, the question remains will it sell? >> this is a very exciting development from the perspective that there hasn't been a drug specifically developed just to treat these women, and in the scientific community experts call this a huge breakthrough, is is a phenomenal drug in that it helps the women quickly.

they are positive but they have to -- the big challenge is the drug has to circumvept the u.s. medical system which is not set up to give it. that's primarily because it's a 2 1/2 day long infusion. so a woman who needs this drug needs to be able to enter a hospital or certified medical facility and step aside from her newborn for 2 1/2 days or small child, small infant, for 2 1/2 days to get the treatment. that's one of the primary obstacles in terms of the medical system being available and there being beds in the right wards and hospitals for women to be able to get this drug. carol: what is the current treatment for someone dealing with postpartum depression? cynthia: if you are to present with symptoms right now, you would get standard antidepressant therapy which takes week to work and for many people they don't work at all. this protracted process can take a while to find the exact right drug. that's currently what happens.

that's a very -- from the economic perspective, very -- it's not very expensive. these drugs are old, they're patent, cheap. this other drug is $34,000. that's another hurdle in terms of getting insurers to approve it as a first line therapy, which it has to be because the women who really need this need this right away. so that's the aspect that the company is playing off of, and their point is fair. these women can't try several therapies if they're in severe -- have a severe case of postpartum depression. but the medical system has to rise to the occasion. the insurers have to be willing to pay for it. carol: are insurance companies holding off? cynthia: typically what happens, your drug gets approved. you have been negotiating with insurers. we can't really see until several months into a drug's launch how well the uptake is going. we can basically tell as time goes on. i don't even know if insurance is going to be the big hurdle. i think the infrastructure is a

bigger problem, so units within hospitals to treat patients with this condition have been disappearing. whether or not a woman goes to a labor and delivery ward, to tie a bed up for 2 1/2 days isn't necessarily ideal from a hospital's perspective. what they need to do is roll out new septemberers and places where women can get this drug. they talk about things like maybe rehabilitation center might be outfitted to treat a patient and keep them this for two or three days. they need to consult with psychiatrists. there is a lot of things that have to fundamentally change in order for this to be feasible. carol: up next, how brexit is frustrating potential home buyers in amsterdam. jason: plus how wall street is masking the cost of climate change as long as there is an ocean front view. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. you can also listen to us on the in new channel 119 and york, and in bostond washington, d.c. jason: in london on digital and through the bloomberg business app. let's go to economics. amsterdam home buyers are complaining about brexit. carol: they are indeed. there is an influx of jobs from london but also wealthy newcomers who are driving up home prices. editor. ore from our >> they are one of the quote unquote lucky countries that's getting influx of jobs because of companies leaving the u.k. because of brexit. the thing is amsterdam is not very big, 860,000 people. it already has a housing deficit of about 40,000 units. now we have, you know, some

well-heeled new residents coming in and it's bidding up a housing market that's been up 80% over the last four years already. carol: that's what's great about this story. you talk about different individuals who go looking for some homes and it's a horserace. exactly right. >> some realtors are giving people time slots of 10 mips. if you want to look at this apartment, you have to show up at this time. if you don't, you lose out. we talked to one person who wanted to make an offer and was told she had 90 other people ahead of her who were going to bid. carol: from what i understand you have to raise the amount you want to spind and reduce the amount of space? >> she was told to expect to pay $240,000 more -- sorry, 20% more than the asking price. carol: so what is amsterdam doing to increase supply? you can't just flip a switch and all of a sudden there is a ton of new housing.

what are they doing to encourage builders, developers? >> the city is committed to approving about 7,500 permits for new units every year. but that's through 2025, but that doesn't really catch up to the 40,000 deficit, plus 1/3 of those units are reserved -- low-income housing, they call it social housing in the netherlands. so people -- some of these newcomers wouldn't even qualify. then they're thinking of other measures to try to sort of -- what they really want to do is tamp down speculation. carol: prices have gone up dramatically. >> 80% in four years. one of the things they've suggested is you would not be able to buy a newly built unit and turn around and rent it. you have to have somebody move in as an owner. the other thing is instituting a so-called panic button, we don't

know exactly how this would work, so that if rents are rising really fast, you could just cap them at a certain point in time. needless to say, they're loving this. carol: we love it. >> developers and pension funds that fund a lot of new construction in the flether lands are saying no, land prices are going up. carol: free market. >> construction costs are going up. you are going to basically start just shrinking our margin which is already getting smaller. that's something that's been brought up. carol: more and more coastal homes are becoming vulnerable to the extreme weather events that come along with climate change. jason: but the cost of living in these mostly luxury homes, insurance prices, has stayed relatively stable. >> extreme climate events are increasing in their frequency and severity across the united states and across the world. the issue is that in the united states at least insurance

premiums are staying stable, which doesn't seem correlated to the increased level of risk. jason: why? what accounts for this? james: there are a couple of reasons. on a federal level, it's about politics. no one wants to be the person who says we are raising premiums along both coasts. as a consequence, you have farmers in nebraska subsidizing people with beach houses in new jersey. jason: this is a really appealing investment. the insurance side of this, right? james: there is very little correlation between financial markets and extreme weather events, and so very large funds, hedge funds and others, have basically used the reinsurance industry for disaster risk as a hedge against financial markets globally. and that has just resulted in a, pardon the pun, flood of capital entering into the reinsurance market, which has made capital extremely cheap and has di

incentivized a lot of providers from accurately pricing risk because it's not their money. jason: people don't necessarily think about these as investments, almost think about them as a piece of jewelry or -- it's a luxury item at the highest level. james: absolutely right. i don't think anyone buys a luxury item except for a new car thinking that it's going to depreciate in value by 30% and i think that the much larger umbrella implications of this entire issue is that it could have a tremendous impact on homeownership and home values if insurance companies are gradually raising the price of their premiums to accurately re-elect that risk. there will be a ceiling where the cost of homeownership along the coast will become prohictive. when it becomes prohibitive, that will really ding and then oftentimes we have seen in smaller instances cause real

estate markets to collapse as a result. jason: so before we get to the collapse, we should also talk about this idea that it's a different story when you think about places like louisiana and other less affluent places in general. james: that's an excellent point. this is really where it becomes a federal issue. if an investment banker loses his beach house that's not good for anyone, but that's not devastating for him. if someone is in a lower income household loses their place of residence, they can't go somewhere else. they don't have the money to go somewhere else and oftentimes they don't have job prospects to go somewhere else. so you are really looking at the potential for once insurance risk becomes a little bit more accurate, you are looking at the potential for federally funded mass migration really, where someone has to pick up the pieces and it's not going to be the private sector. carol: up next why artists are

turning against a certain pipeline billionaire. jason: six ways to avoid being swallowed up by the internet while on the job. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i'm carol massar. still ahead in this week's issue, how willing are you to take risks? jason: and the challenge of predicting the next downturn. carol: not easy. we start in the features section. this pipeline billionaire may be missing the days of anonymous profit-making. jason: he is the ceo of a company called energy transfer, best known for its controversial dakota access pipeline.

carol: recently, he has been on the defensive, taken to court by unhappy investors. reporter devin leonard has the story. devon: kelsey warren, ceo and chairman of energy transfer. basically, energy transfer is part of this whole corporate empire. there is energy transfer partners, equity, a subsidiary. they combined a bunch of stuff and now they are just energy transfer as of october. basically, a lot of generically named companies, pipelines -- people don't see pipelines, they are underground. carol: what do they do exactly? he was happy that nobody necessarily -- right? devin: well, carol, yes, you can make a lot of money, and basically he became one of the world's richest men. at the height of the oil boom two or three years ago, he was worth more than $7 billion. carol: he built a lot of

pipelines, right? devin: the thing is that a lot of the business was in texas, oklahoma, places like that. hey, come on -- that's our industry, part of our local fabric. but then as the shale revolution took off and they were finding gas and oil in places like pennsylvania, ohio, and north dakota, he started building up there. of course, it makes sense, there are not enough pipelines. ton of oil, i got to get it out -- they have to get it out of there. carol: northeasterners are cranky. a push back. [laughter] devin: i guess you could say he ran into some cranky people in north dakota, and all of a sudden, the business was not so much fun. carol: why are you writing about this guy now? this company now? devin: one of his arguments has been that we are doing nothing wrong, our problems are being caused by environmentalists who

don't like us because they want to keep oil and gas in the ground, you know, for climate-change reasons. you know, they're just making up all the stuff, spreading misinformation. literally, energy transfer filed a federal racketeering suit against greenpeace and a bunch of environmentalists, saying just that. the problem is that as they move in other states, the people who are pushing back are not environmentalists. carol: landowners, homeowners, right? devin, yeah, and environmental officials in states like ohio, which is controlled by republicans, and in pennsylvania, where they have been very supportive. you know, the whole shale boom. and as you say, homeowners, and also right now, they're facing multiple criminal investigations from republican da's.

so to say this is all being cooked up by a bunch of greenies, that's just not true. jason: and now to the economics section. carol: editor peter coy looking at why professional economists have such a dismal record forecasting recession. peter: it is not easy, that is the first thing to say. it is easy to laugh at economists for missing recessions or forecasting ones that never occur, but if you think about weather forecasts, which have improved so much, much better data. you have a big advantage when you are forecasting the weather, which is that the molecules of air do not watch television to see what the meteorologist is saying about them, whereas investors and consumers do. carol: a lot of content being pushed out. peter: you get this feedback

between what people think is going to happen, what others think will happen, it is vastly complicates the job. it is not just like little atoms. carol: there is an interesting stat. fathom consulting, tell us what they found. peter: this consulting firm found this, and out of 468 recessions since 1988, they look at how the international monetary fund did in predicting them. the spring in the year before the recession hit, they found only four were predicted. carol: calling for the recession? peter: yeah. when you get to the spring of the year and the recession actually hits, they got 111, so still less than one quarter of them. not a great track record. carol: and it is not just imf. those imf forecasts will often

come out and it's like yeah, ok. peter: the imf is a fine forecasting organization, just like anyone else. they looked at private forecasters and they found the private forecasters did not do any better. carol: let's not forget the great recession. how many people missed it? peter: that's a black mark, right? there were people who saw a recession coming, but i would venture to say that even amongst those who saw it coming, if you had any idea how bad it would be, it was the worst since the great depression of 1930's. that was just really not in the cards for most forecasters. carol: you talk about info about the economy. there is a lag to it. peter: you can't tell what's happening, and when data comes in, it comes in with a lag. and then you have a phenomenon that a recession can be caused by something happening in the financial markets.

if there is a panic and stocks suddenly fall, that can affect the real economy and reducing confidence or making them feel less wealthy. i think we would all agree that panics are hard to forecast. if the panic is causing recession, the recession is hard to forecast. jason: forecasting recessions is the favorite parlor game of economists. our favorite, taylor riggs, is here with her own look on recession forecasting. taylor: is a difficult job, and if you come over here, i made a pie chart. we haven't done one of these in a while. the key number is 194 countries that sought recessions -- saw recessions, only 108 were not predicted in the imf world economic outlook. that is a really big number. people are saying that economists, unlike portfolio managers, don't have the money where their mouth is, so it is easier to go along with groupthink and there is not a lot of backlash if you get it wrong.

carol: up next, japan's economy found a way to age gracefully. jason: and a renaissance of cultures out of japan's former capital of kyoto. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: i am carol massar. join us for bloomberg businessweek every day on the radio from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our podcast. find it on itunes and of course, bloomberg.com. jason: and find us at businessweek.com and our mobile app. carol: japan is at a crossroads as the country gets ready for a royal succession. jason: while no longer a rising superpower, it is pioneering the way a wealthy nation ages. carol: i love this story. here is our executive editor.

brian: japan is this rare island of stability right now. they have some income inequality, but nothing on the scale of the u.s. they don't have these deep class resentments we have seen in recent years in the u.s. and this cultural divide between coastal america and the internal parts of the country. they don't have a brexit drama that goes to the very heart of what kind of country they are going to be. they don't have the yellow vest worker protests we're seeing in france. it is a pretty stable place. i think a big part of that, there are maybe two broad reasons. one is that a middle-class japanese family can do ok, even with all of the challenges that the country has -- carol: health care, education, they have access to this. brian: the other thing is that on a relative basis, japan has not opened up. it is a largely homogenous society. that is changing, and that is

one of the things we get into, how they have been quietly overhauling their visa program, and that the foreign worker population has gone up dramatically the last five years. carol: especially with the aging population. they have also embraced robotics and artificial intelligence. here and elsewhere around the globe, people are fearful that robots taking over the world. they are taking over my job. brian: japan is a highly robots-integrated economy. it started back in the 1970's with industrial robots and the automation of manufacturing. but it has gone way beyond that. you are starting to see service robots in health-care settings. you can go into a high-end department store in tokyo and be met, greeted by a robot. if you go to narita, you will look at the baggage handlers and

see exoskeleton contraptions that are allowing older workers to lift heavy loads and things like that. their embrace of automation and robotics is different than what we're seeing elsewhere in the industrialized world. carol: is there a lesson to be learned? they have dealt with problems the rest of the world is now facing. brian: i think their embrace of automation, ai, robotics, is going to be a very interesting thing to watch. can japan figure out a way to keep productivity levels from collapsing, to keep their economy growing in the face of such a demographic collapse? if you really look at the numbers last year, nearly 500,000 people -- the population decreased by that magnitude. it is extraordinary.

and there are projections that a society of 127 million people could be roughly 100 million by the middle of the century. if japan can crack the code on that through a mixture of high-speed automation, more enlightened immigration, that is going to be something the rest of the world is going to watch. jason: speaking of japan, let's get to pursuits. the section has a guide to its ancient capital kyoto. carol: the city is a hotbed of innovation when it comes to restaurants and art and hotels. we got the details. chris: everybody right now is thinking about cherry blossoms in japan, and kyoto is the place you go to see that, it can be quite a mob scene. we wanted to focus on when the cherry blossoms pass, what do you do in kyoto? for a lot of reasons, because there are a few new hotels opening up, a great creative community, a lot of

universities, and because it has a great history, there's actually ton going on. it may be the most exciting city in japan. carol: everybody is focusing on the upcoming olympics in tokyo, but where should i go, what should i do? chris: you should stay in a fancy hotel. the park hyatt, very famous in tokyo, for "lost in translation," is opening there. there is an ace hotel there. carol: $2000 a night in aman, right? chris: yeah. and there these crazy restaurants -- like a meal and a set order of dishes, very traditional. but there are these great restaurants that are experimenting with it. there is this one restaurant, which is hard to say, where it takes the whole meal and puts it on one bento platter. you're getting the whole thing on one plate. we got a great picture of it in the magazine.

carol: it is gorgeous. chris: there is one called monk , where it messes with tradition and puts like pizza in it. there is food. and then you should definitely check out some of the cultural stuff. there is a photo festival called kyotography. carol: say that five times fast. chris: there are distilleries, all sorts of exciting stuff. carol: talk about the distillery. i guess i didn't think about that, but yeah, there is beer. chris: it is spirits. whiskey, japanese whiskey is a huge thing, and there is sake. and then there is this premium gin. gin is kind of becoming a hot drink there, it is in a lot of new cocktail bars. carol: talk to us -- it's easy to get in and out. it's funny, because we take the cities for granted, but they do get a reboot, right? chris: yeah, and i think because

kyoto has such an amazing history and is so picturesque with the temples and historic districts, people really don't think about what is fresh. and that is in addition to the amazing history, really the reason to go right now. carol: up next, how to win over directors and shareholders from your first day at the office. jason: and the queen of food journalism is out with a new memoir and we give it a taste test. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am carol massar. jason: i am jason kelly. you can listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, also a.m. 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 f.m. in washington, d.c. carol: a.m. 960 in the bay area,

in london on dab digital, and of course, on the bloomberg business app. in the strategies section, helpful articles about how to take risks that grow your company. jason: and why it is important to prove yourself from your first day on the job. >> companies are complex these days. they are different, running them is different, how you hire people, groom people, they have a very short timeline to prove themselves. social media puts pressure, all kinds of media attention puts pressure. and then how we consume technology, like think about the tools people use. they can make your life efficient but they can make your life kind of crazy, right? from time to time we look at some of this stuff. we were taking a deeper dive into it indication in the section and trying to offer people really meaningful advice and information about how to go forward in their leadership roles, whether you are a ceo, senior-level manager, that is

what we're trying to do. carol: toolbook, that's great. i thought there was a fascinating stat. more than 1400 ceos, 25 percent more left than in 2017, highest since the financial crisis. dimitra: there is a lot of rotation, that door is revolving. that is the story that looks at you have a short timeline to prove yourself. what do you do? how do you go in there, establish priorities, establish your mode of communication, be open, manage expectations so people understand your goals, attach a timeline to it. shareholders really get the idea of three-month increments. that is one piece of advice. carol: don't overcommit. dimitra: don't overcommit. be aspirational but be

realistic, because the pressure is on. you have so many different populations of people looking to you to prove yourself. carol: there is another story talking that something between lunatic risk-taking and paralyzing risk aversion exists a sweet spot of prudent risk-taking. dimitra: people think that the thing with risk is if you are too much of a risk taker, but risk aversion can be a problem as well. we headlined it "don't play it too safe." what you need in this world, this complicated world of leading a company, is the ability to really balance things and measure. how much to push the envelope, how much you have to pull back. so many things factor into that. your personality, which ceos tend to have personality types where they are very certain of themselves, very sure, but not across the board is everybody quite that assertive. so how do you both assert

yourselves but measure it in a way that you are balanced? it is a tricky line to toe. we do tend to think that ceos will do what they will do, but that is not always the case. carol: and admire it, but it is not always a good thing. dimitra: that was a fun one. there is a lot of research from many different realms in science and health looking at that. our writer really dug deep into the various studies to put together a very interesting and useful look at, basically, how to be a better risk taker. carol: speaking of leaders, in "pursuits," a review of a new memoir from a leader in the food business. talking about famous magazine editor ruth reichl. >> she really ruled the roost, queen of food for such a long time. she was the restaurant critic at

she was the restaurant critic at "the new york times," and people were shipped her -- or her, she wore disguises, she blew things up. carol: did she really? there are probably generations of folks out there who do not know who she is or how she changed looking at food. give us that history. kate: ruth really was -- it was so fun to read her book. she really was julia child mixed with a little bit of chrissy teigen. carol: score. kate: she knew how to make food accessible and how to communicate in a real-life way. she came to "gourmet" in the late 1990's, when it really was a magazine that you had to have two houses and horses, at least two houses. was very dull, very conservative. the recipes would have like six parts, you would make a cake and feed it to your horses. carol: who is going to do that? kate: and even then, there was sort of an audience for it. she saw an opening to make it a

dynamic, of-the-moment magazine, and she did. carol: tells about this book. kate: it is called "save me the plums," a memoir about the going into the best food job in the country and that watching it going down the drain because of the financial crisis and things out of her control. carol: you read the book, tell me about it. kate: i love it, it was like walking around with my best friend. but it was an amazing insight into what is happening in journalism from especially at conde nast. that was a time when conde nast ruled the world. you think back of the september issue, bigger than the bible. "vogue" magazine was bigger than the bible. all of the brands, all of the magazine's work phenomenal. carol: "vanity fair." kate: exactly, "vogue" magazine, all the fashion, but "gourmet"

was arguably the food magazine. it was a time when everyone took a black car to lunch. even if they were going to the same place. they would take separate but cars so there would be a traffic jam -- carol: conspicuous consumption. anything you didn't like about the book? kate: personally, i wish there was more about the magazine. ruth talked about the struggle of being a working mom, going on book tour, a demanding job. really timely and good, but i wanted even more about what is going on in the magazine. she changed the "gourmet" font, and that was a huge deal. in the publishing world, that was a huge deal. a little bit more of that, wanted it to be longer. she is always right. [laughter] carol: ruth is always right. kate: and sometimes you're like, really? but it is like having an insider

view into, if you were in the food world, the equivalent of the financial crisis. carol: "bloomberg businessweek" is available on newsstands now. jason: and also on businessweek.com. what is your must-read? carol: the hospital chain in india, dramatically reduced costs. they are now under pressure to do more. this one doctor is rethinking an assembly line way of doing surgeries and that is why he has been able to bring costs down. everybody around the globe will be watching what he is doing. jason: and big challenges ahead with modicare, but you look at the numbers and think, why couldn't that happen everywhere? carol: yours? jason: i love the international cover story about meitaun because it reminds us that china especially, they are so much further ahead than the rest of the world and how they are using technology in their everyday lives. carol: you can find more stories on businessweek.com over the weekend. jason: and check out our daily

podcast, download, subscribe, available on itunes, soundcloud, and bloomberg.com. carol: more bloomberg television starts now. ♪

♪ david: the legend is you began trading convertible bonds out of your dorm room. ken: when you make a few thousand dollars as a freshman, you are rich. david: but the time you graduated, did you say, i am now going to do this full-time? ken: i became boy genius, but i knew i was lucky. david: how does somebody invest at citadel? ken: we have been closed for a long time. david: even from interviewers, you wouldn't take anything. [laughter] david: your parents must be proud of you. ken: i'm certain mom is proud of me. david: does she ever say, where do you think the markets are going, where should i invest? [laughter] ken: mom is all set.