♪ >> welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: we are here at bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: in this week's special "money" issue, the museums hiding the world's greatest art. jason: and the potential $7 billion tax bill facing the heris of samsung's chairman. carol: and on the cover, the rich are richer than we all thought. jason: and one man is uncovering inequality in a whole new way.

editor joel weber joins us now. you know are talking a little bit, i asked what the cover was and you told me this is an amazing one and i love this story. >> there's really only one option. what we tried to do with this is -- issue is follow where the money is. one guy has been incredibly good at identifying where the richest in the world put their money. a lot of it has been hidden, so he has been a wealth detective who has been able to scour data and reveal how rich the richest are. carol: i love this. he said wealth data, because that is what he has done. made that distinction between income and wealth. >> that's right. and one of the things that was brought to the forefront is this wealth disparity, that income inequality that has become such a big part of the zeitgeist. his data has really been seized by democrat candidates. jason: let's look at this chart. what this shows is the u-shaped -- the rich were pretty rich, and they are getting richer again on a relative basis.

>> that's right. one of the things he says here, notice the straight, the 21st century might have ended up being something of a blip. what he is saying is that wealth needs new policies in order for us to actually address what could become a serious issue. carol: definitely an enlightening story. joel weber, thank you so much. jason: ben stephen brought us more on the story, it's a deep dive. >> he's only 32 years old. he's the former student of a guy named thomas piketty, who you may remember from his surprise bestseller on inequality a few years back. he came to the u.s. after working with him for years. the heart of his work is 300 years of history on income and wealth, and a lot of the numbercrunching was done by this guy. he comes to the u.s., and he starts to work on wealth in the united states and try to figure

out -- one of the biggest mystery is how rich are the people in the rich people. -- in the wealthiest country in the world. carol: talk about how he did that. it is wealth he is looking at, not income. these are different things. >> people talk a lot about income inequality, but the thing about wealth is that wealth can build over time. it is one of these things that can snowball. income is a little more equally distributed than wealth. the bottom half of the u.s. population has a negative net worth, because they are in debt, mortgages, credit card debt. what he did was he and another colleague at berkeley, another imminent economist, they went -- eminent economist, also french, they went into the irs and downloaded all this data on income. you don't tell the irs how much money you have, you tell the irs how much you are making each year. with they did was this very meticulous process of turning that into wealth.

if somebody has $100 in dividends from stocks, they use that to get a gauge on how much wealth they have. but it really required a lot of moving pieces. his specialty is taking not just one day, but a bunch of them, -- data source, but a bunch of them creating a constellation of , information. macroeconomic data, cross-border flows. some survey data and estate tax data, crunch that together and figure out how wealthy are the wealthiest? carol: and they are pretty wealthy. >> yes, yes. when the paper first came out, it really made an impression. he was one of the first reliable -- the first reliable estimates of the top .1%. we talk a lot about the top 1%, but that top .1% -- in 1980, they had about 7% of u.s. wealth.

by 2014, 2016 are the latest numbers, 20%. carol: big change. >> almost a tripling, whereas the bottom half has not budged. jason: there is a pivot point, sort of a catalytic point, and it seems to come during the reagan administration. at least that's what the data show. help us understand what happened in the mid-80's. >> he's saying look at the u.s. and look at the rest of the world, compare the u.s. to japan or france. the trends here are so much more extreme. what happened here in the 1980's our top marginal tax rate went 1980 to 20% in 1988. unions got a lot weaker, antitrust enforcement got a lot weaker. some of the things that have constrained wealth inequality from getting worse were basically loosened, and the

wealth of the rich got richer. jason: when you talk about gabriel zuckerman, one of the things we are seeing is a trend among economists and academics as they see a shift toward more advocacy and activism in some ways, really prescribing more politicians and more -- and for policymakers, where we should go. tell us what they are saying we should do with this data. >> you go back, they were giving advice to politicians back in the day but what's unique about zuckerman and his colleague is that some of their prescriptions are kind of radical. they're talking about a wealth tax, elizabeth ward is talking about it to, and a lot of other economists are really raising their eyebrows, like how would that work? they are out there advocating for this stuff and they have a book coming out next year which is designed to be helpful to

2020 candidates who want to solve inequality. jason: here's taylor riggs. she has another look at income inequality. >> exactly. this coefficient is a statistical measure that measures the distribution of income inequality -- all we need to know, zero is perfect equality, 100 is perfect inequality. as you can see, the line is just doing a straight line up, basically, income inequality is just getting worse. carol: we see it playing out in our political landscape big time. taylor, thank you so much. as a matter of fact, that income inequality is top of mind for many democratic politicians, but it didn't stop them for dropping by wall street for lunch and for money. jason: plus, how president trump's supposedly cozy relationship with kim jong-un could prevent further nuclear talks. carol: and later on, cisco ceo chuck robbins tells us how the trade war is impacting his

business. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪ carol: welcome back to

"bloomberg businessweek." jason: join carol and me for "bloomberg businessweek" every day on the radio from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m., and catch up on our daily show, listen and subscribe to our podcast. get that on itunes, soundcloud, or bloomberg.com. course, you can find us online at businessweek.com and on our mobile app. the u.s. may be running out of options with north korea. jason: those nuclear discussions have collapsed since that first summit between president trump and leader kim. carol: but the tensions don't jive with what both leaders say is a great personal relationship. our politics editor has our story. >> trump has really taken on the role of being the person that is going to fix this relationship, of being the person that is going to negotiate one-on-one

with kim, and as that has fallen apart -- you saw the nuclear negotiator, the north korea negotiator, was in south korea during one of the missile tests that prompted this latest bout of tensions. it is a pretty bold move for them to, for north korea, testing missiles while the u.s. negotiator is so close, within range of some of those missiles. jason: and with president trump, and we have seen this in a number of different cases, and this is a stylistic thing if nothing else, where he wants to go one-on-one with world leaders, whether it is vladimir putin in the case of the helsinki summit, whether it is kim jong-un, as you've described, or even other world leaders, some allies, some traditional foes. how much does this tell us about how this president rolls? >> a lot. he is famously that way in his businesses as well, but really

what we are seeing with this relationship is this is why we have diplomats who negotiate the details before the leaders get into the room, so everyone knows what will happen and you don't walk into a situation like we had in hanoi, where there are so many unknowns and so much work to do between the leaders that no one's really sure what's going to come out of it. carol: tell me a little bit about south korea and their role in all of this. they are at a very tricky position, an ally of the united states, but because they are within range of those nuclear weapons from north korea, they are in a tricky place. >> exactly. there's been a lot of progress made in the relationship between the north and the south. a lot of work that moon jae-in did. on the one hand he doesn't want , to alienate the u.s., but also doesn't want to risk the fragile peace he has built with kim.

south korea is providing food aid through the u.n., and is hoping that will loosen things up and lead to a third summit, but the u.s. hasn't budged. jason: what do we know about the next time these leaders may get together? >> i mean, kim gave trump an end of year deadline in his speech before parliament a few weeks ago, which was an interesting move on his part in that obviously the end of this year is the beginning of an election year for trump, so we think that the calculation is he is trying to add to the pressure on the trump administration to come to the table again, but so far there has been no indication that the summit is on the way. jason: over in the finance section, in the finance section, some democrats may be shunning corporate cash -- carol: but politicians are still cozying up to wall street. jason: i love the story. here's max abelson. >> if you happen to tune in to a minute of the primaries, they

haven't started yet, but the competition among democratic if you tune into a random minute, you will probably hear things like i'm giving back the money lobbyists gave me. you might hear joe biden say i'm rejecting super pac's. you might hear a bento or amy klobuchar or kamala harris say pac money isk -- not welcome here. carol: corporation money. yes -- >> yes, the goldman sachs political action committee will bundle checks from individual goldman sachs and give it over to a candidate. democrats are saying we will reject that. what this story is about is that, behind the scenes, wall street donors are being wooed just as much as ever by the democrats. jason: let's go back a little ways. you know this better than anyone. over the last 15 or 20 years, we have seen wall street become much more bipartisan in its giving.

they really fell in love with barack obama, bill clinton before that, and so you had wall street, which traditionally had been, generally speaking, a politicsf republican really starting to embrace more of the democratic party, and the names that you just said have been hands out to private equity hedge funds. what are the implications of that for the politics of wall street and the politics, ultimately, of regulation and oversight? >> going back in time is a really smart idea. basically, what connects clinton and obama and mitt romney and john mccain is a certain centrism, an idea that wall street people don't want to be taxed too much, they don't want to be regulated too much, they are probably a little sympathetic to things like gay-rights, and that leads them to a place that might be nerve-racking, because right now you have biden and other

centrists looking like they are not of a moment, which is much more progressive. elizabeth warren is proposing to literally jail bankers and executives. whose negligence causes harm. carol: she is not meeting with the folks on wall street. >> very important point. our donors told us that elizabeth warren and bernie sanders are the sole exception to the rule. that means, though, that the centrists, the wall street friendly candidates, have to do two things at once. on the one hand, they are echoing the en vogue progressivism of the democratic party, but all the other hand, what this story is about is how they are dropping by a bankers office for lunch, they are having fundraisers that raise $100,000, they are getting on the phone, making plans. both of these things are happening together. you have the details. some of these folks on wall street you have talked to, and how many democrats they have had lunch with, just go through it.

>> the answer is all of them. you have the former ever core vice-chairman, charles myers, interesting guy. he likes to have policy lunches. they come by, talk policy -- there's an antisocialist hinge, he is trying to pull the democrats to the center. you've got kamala harris shaking the hand of a puppy in the opening paragraph of our story at the home of the managing director from citigroup on fifth avenue. then you have amy klobuchar going to the home of the former canadian ambassador, bruce haymond, big, smart, goldman sachs guy, and he's planning a fundraiser for joe biden. and we could keep going down the list. the hedge fund billionaire mark lazaridis has met with at least 10 of them. bob wolfe says he will meet with 15. the answer, truly, is that except for bernie and elizabeth warren, wall street and the democrats are as friendly as ever. jason: up next, the anonymous

cash flooding into india's election. carol: who knew? and the software giant running -- one man's's got gut. this is bloomberg. ♪ jason: welcome back to

"bloomberg businessweek." "bloomberg business." "bloomberg businessweek." >> carol: you can listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119 and am 11 30, 106.1 in boston. carol: jason: am 960 in the bay area, in london on dab digital and through the bloomberg business app. jason: india's elections are among the world's most corrupt and most expensive. carol: in fact, a reported $7 billion has been spent on this year's national races so far. jason: that was more than what was spent in the 2016 presidential in the u.s. a plan to increase transparency into a river of anonymous donations may make things worse.

carol: we have those details from our reporter in mumbai. >> india's elections are one of the world's most expensive elections. they are estimated to spend about $7 billion usd in 2019. to put it into context, roughly $6.5 billion usd was estimated to be spent on donald trump back in 2016. by some estimates, india's election is the world's most expensive. much of this money comes from a new funding instrument called the electoral bond. critics of the bond say it legalizes what is called black money laundering. black money is illegal donations, money without tax unaccounted cash. , critics say that all they really do is help crony capitalists launder black money in the guise of political donations.

however, when prime minister narendra modi came to power in 2014, he promised to rid the country of corruption, and electoral bonds, or political funding from -- funding was , supposed to come within that orbit. critics say electoral bonds are a piece of paper which actually entrenches corruption within the system. jason: where is political will to change it, or is this how it is going to be? right now, the case is in the supreme court, and the supreme court has asked political parties to submit by may 30, the end of the month, details of all donations received via electoral bonds. that might not have much impact, given that on may 23, before the deadline, india is due to have bonds. election results. voters still continue to be left in the dark. it really depends on the supreme court to take that decision, because we need to remember that electoral bonds are the creation of the modi government. it has complete backing of the modi administration. it is unlikely that the modi administration would craft

legislation without an order. jason: in the technology section, salesforce ceo marc benioff has keeping the company growing thanks to a bunch of acquisitions. check out this chart. this chart shows you both the number and the size, what's underneath that is he is making these bets on a whim, it feels like. carol: exactly. that's what this story gets into, how he goes about that decision-making. keep in mind, benioff has made some costly errors. we got those details from our reporter. >> marc benioff is one of the most eccentric figures in silicon valley. he essentially decides, you know, sometimes on the spot, what his company is going to do next. there are these really interesting times, for instance, when he bought a company called steel brick. he asked the executives and ceo of that company to come over to his house in san francisco.

they were in this board room that benioff had built overlooking the water in the bay, and he asked questions for 20 minutes, then asked for a demo. he asked them if they were -- to skip the things he was not interested in, and at the end of he said i want to buy your company. carol: and sometimes it works out, he is spot on. sometimes, not so much. >> definitely large acquisitions he did like exact target, demand where, mulesoft, have been successful. they have grown salesforce's revenue, they have put salesforce in different parts of the i.t. market from where it had been. but there have also been many deals that didn't happen, and often times they are because of his very mercurial personality. there was one point in which he wanted salesforce to be a big player in social media a few

years ago. when linkedin had hired bankers and was basically quietly going around saying we are up for sale. in that experience, we have reporting that marc benioff told his friend and also his employee, the chairman of microsoft, that he was interested in linkedin. then microsoft ended up buying linkedin. in the end, he would have paid more for linkedin then microsoft ended up paying. now, microsoft says it was always interested in linkedin, and so it didn't do anything underhanded in this scenario, but the loss of linkedin meant that benioff wanted to buy twitter. just a few months later. that was really stepping away from the focus of what his company is all about. jason: the salesforce-microsoft

relationship is obligated, to say the least. certainly by virtue of that linkedin transaction, but also in a broader sense. >> early employees of benioff said to me that from the start, he was fascinated by companies like microsoft, and other companies that are quite large , oracle, where he used to work. in some sense, he wanted to be a microsoft in wanted his company to emerge in to be that strong in technology. in other ways, he had a certain level of resentment for the way those companies operated, and wanted also the respect of those executives. early on, there was an opportunity in which microsoft, when steve ballmer ran the company, was said to be interested in buying salesforce. that ended up not happening and they bought a different company instead. but more recently in 2015, this is after satya nadella emerged as the ceo in 2014, microsoft and salesforce were in negotiations about an acquisition.

salesforce wanted more money than microsoft was willing to pay, and benioff was interested in having a very big title at microsoft. he wanted the validation and respect from the company. it ended up falling apart, and then the next year, when the linkedin misadventure happened, his close relationship with that nadella, who he saw as this visionary, as this really fascinating and inspirational figure, really soured. there were some folks who said that benioff probably expected it because satya nadella is viewed as this softer, gentler personality, versus ballmer, who was very boisterous. he could be a pushover, and nadella was very doubt. dachshund deked -- deft. carol: how cisco views the ban

on huawei. jason: chuck robbins talks. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: still ahead in this week's issue, how the world's ultra rich use so-called free ports to avoid paying taxes. jason: and how jeff bezos' bank account would stack up against john d rockefeller. carol: and cisco ceo john -- chuck robbins joins us for an interview. jason: we talk about cybersecurity, the ban on huawei

and more. chuck: about eight months ago when this began, our teams proactively thought about it. we made the status that we have -- statement that we have parts of the strategy and would continue dialogue to influence the outcome. second, we would optimize our supply chain. we have the capacity to move things on a regular basis. our team does that as part of doing business. the third was that if we could not mitigate it, we would pass through pricing. our team has done an amazing job thatn the past few months the latest 25% really had a nominal affect, from a pricing perspective. they did such a good job of optimizing supply chain. carol: is it more difficult the longer this goes on? chuck: my bigger worry is, if we move to the next phase, the concern is not for the impact on us. my concern is on the macro and what it does to customers and

-- customers overall sentiment. jason: what are you hearing from customers at this point? i feel like now they are starting to think about it and talk about it in a more meaningful way. chuck: i hear the same things you are hearing. we have seen some of the retail discussions over the last couple of week. companiesy of inability to optimize supply chain for whatever reason -- company's inability to optimize is becoming the bigger issue. the impact on the company or the consumers will have a drag on the market. if we don't do something. jason: one of the implications is five g. what impact does that have now , in the short term how much do , you worry that 5g deployment could be derailed or slowed by these actions? chuck: i actually don't worry about that.

i think there are multiple suppliers around the world to -- who provide macro radio technology, that is what we're talking about. once you get off the macro theo, we provide most of technology in the core networks. there are plenty of alternatives and the bigger issue is the cost -- when you think about 5g and the deployment is the cost of capital to build up these networks, the regulatory environment, the reality of the business model they can build to get the roi on investments. i think those of the bigger things we need to be talking about working on. carol: one thing i want to ask you is that there has been a lot written about the ban on huawei that it creates an opportunity for you and others. do you see it as an opportunity

for cisco? chuck: it is hard to say. we focus on innovation and working with customers. our customers all tend to have multi vendor strategies to begin with. to ascertain when the increase business with one. they typically would not tell us anyway because they wouldn't want to give us negotiating power. carol: but thinking about 5g, you know this world so well. if huawei is locked out of the market, once you make these networks and you are locked out it is very hard to change and , bring in a different supplier. i do wonder about the longer this goes on, does it create an opportunity for you guys? chuck: whatever the reasons are a customer makes a franchise decision, because they do make

franchise decisions. the big carriers have always done this. they make architectural franchise decisions. if you don't get into those, and this happens to us as well, then you are basically waiting for the next architectural transition for you to have an entry point. i have talked publicly about how we missed early waves in the web scale providers and are having to work our way back in. that is just a fact of dealing in the space. whether it's a security issue or technology issue, if you miss a wave you will have to wait. carol: how long are those waves? chuck: usually, 5-10 years. carol: you could be locked out for a while. chuck: and we feel it when it happens to us. jason: when you think about 5g i , feel like when we talk to folks like you, we are talking about a massive leap forward in terms of the types of services and things that consumers and businesses will be able to do.

help us understand what 5g looks like in our everyday lives. chuck: think about where you are today and what you can do versus what you could do 15 years ago. we take it all for granted today, but the capabilities we have in our pockets are just monumentally different. and this is no different. you were going to see a step change and this one is probably exponentially better than what we felt the last decade. when you talk about speed 10 times, the earliest use cases -- early use cases will be my son on his phone on the table and eight of his friends playing games, that serving as a hotspot. we should be able to deliver real-time health care in rural areas in ways we have not been able to. getting speeds into these environments because we can do it over spectrum as opposed to having to pull fiber and run terrestrial circuits.

hopefully, it will change economics for carriers. deliver education into rural parts of emerging countries. those are the kinds of applications, in addition to iot, lots of use cases. carol: i like to know timelines. i am curious what some of the customers are telling you about 5g deployment. in terms of when we see it. i guess we're starting to see it. chuck: we are starting to see trials around the u.s. and around the world. there is a lot of issues related to spectrum availability. europe has spectrum auctions going on. once you have spectrum they start to build it up. what we see is a lot of the trials are implementing 5g radio technology and taking advantage of the existing networks. i think 2020 and beyond as we see these trials turn into more production and the number of devices at the edge of the network increasing, that will

lead to the need to build more core infrastructure to support capacity. carol: so we are still building out a lot. chuck: we are very early. this is multi year. jason: for more of our interview, check out our bloomberg businessweek extra podcast. we talked about a lot more than just 5g. carol: company culture. jason: and what he might be doing if he was not the ceo of cisco. grab that wherever you get podcasts or bloomberg.com/podcasts. carol: we want to get more on cisco with taylor riggs. tell us what you've got. >> one way we can look at cisco's exposure to china is in the global security vendor space. you can see cisco get about 16% of revenue from the asia-pacific region. if china were to crack down and blacklist our domestic vendors,

they don't want to technology, cisco could be hit, given they get about 60% of revenue within -- 16% of revenue within the global security market of the asia-pacific region. jason: the long-term impacts we -- implications we talked about of how -- of how different companies go for it. the wealthiest person in south korea may leave his descendents with a massive tax bill. carol: and why it is hard to sell a mega yacht in china. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: join us for bloomberg businessweek everyday on the radio from 2:00 5:00 p.m. and you can also catch up on our

daily show by listening to our podcast. jason: and find us online and through our mobile app. our finance editor shepherded this week's special money issue. carol: we talked to pat about two of our favorites. one is how chinese tycoons are different from counterparts in the rest of the world. jason: and a high-stakes succession battle in samsung. >> the family behind the samsung conglomerate has about $15 billion in assets but is located in a country with one of the biggest estate taxes in the world. of about 50%. so when the chairman passes away, there is a question about what is going to happen not to the money, but to control of this complex web of companies. jason: let's talk about that web. people think the samsung, tv's, cell phones but it is much

, bigger in a way that almost defies description. there is not a western analog. >> right, these conglomerates are very important in south korea. both important in business and politically. jason: society, even. >> but if you try to figure out how do you control this web, you will see that lee kun-hee, the patriarch of the family, he owns a little less than 5% of samsung electronics, the name that we know. but that combined with a lot of soft power, a dense web of cross holdings of different companies, has sort of allowed him to have control of this conglomerate. but will that still be the case when the family has to come -- has to first of all find the money to pay these taxes, and they will have to manage this

web. carol: talk about that a little bit. they are possibly facing a $7 billion tax bill. that is significant. so you have to deal with that. but go back to them as you said, the father's informal relationships he has with so many companies and executives. that has helped him have a lot of power here. and that power will not necessarily pass on to his son. and that's what they are worried about. son, he does not have the stature of his father and has had some pretty significant legal trouble. he spent a year in jail and a lot of this has to do with these efforts to solidify control. samsung -- two samsung affiliates wanted to merge and needed government approval, and lee found himself in a scandal,

spent some time in prison. he is appealing that, but it remains divisive. carol: where is his father? he is out of sight. it has been several years. >> that's right. and the state of his health is a source of tabloid rumor and much speculation in south korea. the family says he is in stable condition and dismiss rumors about the state of his health. they say the family will pay their taxes. carol: kind of interesting. we talk about this chairman being out of sight. speaking about something else out of sight, that is mega yachts in china. that brings us to another story. i worked on that, don't judge me. let's talk about another story in the issue. this is about the mega yacht industry in china. not happening, and yet people thought there were so many billionaires, they are buying lots of things -- >> jason: they will buy some boats.

-- >> they will buy some boats. out of sight is a good way to put it. it tells the world you have some money and you are buying toys. carol: a huge no-no. >> in the last few years it has not been a great time to be seen buying conspicuous toys. that has been a blow to this niche industry of building superlong luxury yachts. but there are always efforts afoot to find buyers. we spent some time with this veil -- salesman who wine and dine clients who tried to show people what it would be like if you had a 75 foot yacht, a 150 foot, 200 foot yet. -- yacht. carol: talk about the sales these guys did. it is pretty over-the-top. >> you throw a party, you hire a

harpist while guests dine. you bring aboard a french somel ier and this is the floating life. you can buy the super yacht, but having that kind of infrastructure to do that in china is a different thing than being able to do it in europe. carol: up next, a museum holding a painting valued at $25 million. jason: plus, if you think jeff bezos or warren buffett are wealthy, they are, but wait until we tell you about john d rockefeller. carol: all about perspective. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

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

channel 119, and on 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 on the bloomberg business app. in the money issue, free ports, or call them secret museums. jason: what they are, tax-free areas that can hold art out of sight for decades. so check this out, it tells you how big these facilities are. 559 thousand square feet. 559,000 square feet. that is a lot of football fields. carol: we are seeing more come into the united states, all of this away from tax collectors. reporter hugo miller has our story. >> free ports get a bad name. they are, in theory and in practice up to a a perfectly point, legal way for people to store art essentially free of tax. speaks to the duty-free

element, the port refers to massive, try land storage -- dryland storage facilities. carol: how does this work? >> let's say you, carol, have a couple of pieces of art worth 10 million each. you cannot decide whether you want to hang it in your aspen chalet, paris, or new york. carol: you know me so well. [laughter] >> exactly, so instead of taking that jackson pollock worth 10 million and moving it from the next to the next, in which case you incur import duties each time you move it, you just park it semi-permanently or for a period of time in a free port. it is secure and you don't have to worry about theft, and you are not incurring import duties. the bad thing is you don't get to see the art unless you go to visit.

jason: there are some transactional elements to this as well. this is a way for people to buy and sell. >> and there is even the record of the mother of all leonardo da vinci paintings that sold for 600 million. after changing answer 200 million years earlier. this is the problem. they are changing hands, but physically not moving, staying put in these free ports. being sold essentially by shell companies and being parked indefinitely in the free ports. essentially, you have very little accountability. and yes, the operators will say we closely document everything that enters or exits. the trouble is what happens in between which can be literally , decades. jason: it also has the cloak of anonymity. you mentioned the shell companies. somebody does not have to put a name on the transaction, they just have to create something

that may obscure who they are. >> sure. and i pressed this when i went to recap some of the basic fact. -- some of the basic facts. onsked have your rules and one saidnged they had changed their rules on the beneficial owner. otherwise you are looking at a situation in which almost all free ports only require you to disclose the name of an owner. the owner could be xyz corporation and nothing more. it is very hard to figure out who owns these and have they been sold. because until they exit, they might have changed hands once, twice, or three times. jason: on the back page of the money issue, i love this. how history's richest people measure up against each other. carol: perfect thing to talk about at your barbecue this weekend. let's get details.

>> jeff bezos is one of the richest people ever, but certainly not the richest. his greatest competition comes from another pair of americans. the robber barons. john d rockefeller and andrew carnegie. what we are trying to do is figure out what their network -- net worth would be like. not using inflation, which is often a method, but something called relative outlook. looking at how much of the economy john d rockefeller had, and to be honest, there is no comparison. rockefeller's net worth today would be about carol: talk to us $300 billion. about some of the comparisons. >> we try to go back as far as we could, and the further you go back, the harder it becomes. you have to get more and more inventive with your comparison. but right back to the beginning, we started with crassus. there was a famous proverb about being the richest man in rome, even before the emperors.

what we managed to do, we have got pliny the elder saying he was worth about 200 million roman coins back in the day. what does that mean in comparison to the roman economy? we try to bring that up to date. that would give him a net worth of about in medieval england, $200 billion. you have got eleanor, a queen who inherited lands. she is one of the u.k.'s richest people ever but in comparison, she had a pretty measly that is $25 billion. the fun thing about this. across the scope of history, 25 billion looks small. jason: what are the lessons. that jeff bezos can learn from some of his forebears? when it comes to extraordinary wealth. >> it is definitely temporary, so make sure you make the most of it. a lot of the names i was looking at to be honest i'd never heard

of before. alan the red, i doubt many know who he is, he is britain's richest person ever. unit 200 billion and he was a cousin of william the conqueror. in the scope of human history, if you are lucky enough to land in this position you build a legacy out of it. jason: it does feel like the y are -- don't want to be alan the red. >> whenever i speak to billionaires, they are almost entirely focused on succession and keeping wealth through generations, or at least putting it to good use. rockefeller is a great example. in new york, just down the road, there is the rockefeller center. people still go there every day and it dominates the city in so many ways. similarly, philanthropy. those foundations. perhaps the best lesson is from andrew carnegie who had this famous proverb.

a third of your life learning, i -- a third making money, which he did, and his last third, he endeavored to give it all away. he came pretty close, ending up with 30 million at the time of his death, which is still being spent today. carol: bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. jason: also online and on our mobile app? what is your must-read? carol: the cover story. first of all, i love to find out about this individual figuring out what the world wealth picture looks like, and it is much worse in terms of inequality than we all thought. but i also think it is reminding us to think differently. income versus wealth. jason: there is a lot of wealth on wall street and that led to my favorite story. max just sits there right at the nexus of money and power. coming up on a presidential election, and with all the talk about inequality and socialism, guess who is coming to wall street? a lot of democrats. carol: it is a fun read. you can find more stories on businessweek.com over the

weekend. jason: and check out our daily businessweek podcast. available on itunes, soundcloud and bloomberg.com. ♪

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scarlet: i am scarlet fu. this is "bloomberg etf iq," where we focus on the access, risks, and rewards of exchange traded funds. ♪ scarlet: a barrier for bitcoin, the fcc holds off again on approving a bitcoin etf after the cryptocurrency climbs above $8,000. in the line of fire, chinese internet companies become market proxies for the trade war even though the tariffs do not touch them. we drill down into kweb. and back in play india's economy ,