♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: and i'm jason kelly. we are here at bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: in this week's issue, the secret museums hiding the world's greatest art. jason: and the potential $7 billion tax bill facing the heirs of samsung's chairman. carol: the haves are richer than we all thought. jason: but there is one man uncovering inequality in a whole new way. joel weber joins us now.

you and i were talking -- you told me this is an amazing one. i love this story. joel: there's really only one option. what we tried to do with this is follow where the money is. there is one guy who has been incredibly good at identifying where the richest in the world put their money. a lot of it has been hidden, so he's basically been a wealth detective who has been able to scour data and reveal how rich the richest people in the world really are. carol: i love you said wealth data because that is what he has done, made that distinction between income and wealth. joel: 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,

the 1%, and they are getting richer again on a relative basis. joel: one of the things he says here -- you notice this u-shape -- this 20th 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. jason: ben steverman brought us more on this story -- it's a deep dive. ben: gabriel zucman is 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. zucman came to the u.s. after working with piketty for years. the heart of piketty's work is 300 years of history on income and wealth, and a lot of the numbercrunching was done by this guy, zucman. he comes to the u.s., and he starts to work on wealth in the united states and try to figure out what is one of the biggest mysteries, how rich are 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. ben: people talk a lot about income inequality, but the thing about wealth is that wealth can sometimes build over time. it is one of these things that can snowball. income is actually a little more equally distributed than wealth. the bottom half of the u.s. population basically has a negative net worth, because they are in debt. they have mortgages, credit card debt. what he did was he and another colleague at berkeley -- who is also a very imminent economist, a little bit older, also french -- emmanuel saez, 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. what they did was this very

meticulous process of turning that into wealth. if somebody has $100 in dividends from stocks, they use that to guesstimate how much wealth they have in stocks. but it really required a lot of moving pieces. zucman's specialty is taking not just one 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 people? carol: and they are pretty wealthy. ben: yes, yes. when the paper first came out, it really made an impression. he was one of the first reliable estimates of the top 0.1%. we talked a lot about the top 1%, but that top 0.1% -- in 1980, they had about 7% of u.s. wealth. by 2014, 2016 are the latest

numbers, 20%. carol: big change. ben: almost a tripling, whereas the bottom half has not budged. jason: there is 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. ben: zucman's saying look at the u.s. and then 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 -- the top marginal tax rate went from 70% in 1980 to 28% 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 zucman, 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 for politicians and for policymakers where we should go. tell us what they are saying we should do with this data. ben: you go back, john maynard keynes, milton friedman, they were giving advice to politicians back in the day, but what's unique about zucman and his colleague emmanuel saez is that some of these -- their prescriptions are kind of radical. they're talking about a wealth tax. elizabeth warren is talking about it, too. a lot of other economists are really raising their eyebrows -- 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. taylor: exactly. this is the gini coefficient 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 basically doing a straight line up to 48, showing income inequality is just getting worse. carol: we see it playing out in our political landscape big time. thank you so much. as a matter of fact, that income inequality is top of mind for many democratic politicians, but it has not stopped them from dropping by wall street for lunch and for money. jason: plus how president trump's supposedly cozy relationship with kim jong-un may 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." i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. 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 at itunes, soundcloud, or bloomberg.com. carol: and of 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 face collapse 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 jillian goodman has our story. jillian: trump has really taken on the role of being the person that is going to fix this relationship, of being the

person who 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 to be testing missiles while the u.s. negotiator is so close, within range of some of those missiles. jason: and with president trump -- 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? jillian: a lot. he is famously that way in his

businesses as well, but really what we are seeing with this relationship with north korea is this is why we have diplomats who negotiate the details before the two 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 two 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. 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. jillian: 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 before we even got to the singapore summit last year. 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? jillian: 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 there 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 a third summit is on the way. jason: in the finance section, some democrats may be shunning corporate cash -- carol: but politicians are still cozying up to wall street. jason: here's max abelson.

max: if you happen to tune in to a minute of the primaries -- they haven't started yet, but the competition among democratic rivals -- if you tune into a random minute, you will probably hear things like pete buttigieg i'm giving back the money lobbyists gave me. you might hear joe biden say i'm rejecting super pac's. you might hear beto or amy klobuchar or kamala harris say corporate pack money is not welcome here. carol: corporation money. max: the goldman sachs political action committee will bundle checks from individual goldman sachs full and give it over to a candidate. democrat candidates 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 democratic nominees. 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 bastion of republican politics -- really start 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 smart idea. 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. >> she is not meeting with the folks on wall street. >> very important point. the donors we spoke to 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 on the other hand, what this story is about is how they are dropping by a banker's 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. >> some of these folks on wall street you have talked to, and how many democrats they have had

lunch with -- >> the answer is all of them. you have the former ever core vice-chairman, charles myers, interesting guy. he likes to have these things he calls policy lunches. so pete buttigieg comes, talks policy -- there's an antisocialist hinge, he is trying to pull the democrats to the center. 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 is that except for bernie and elizabeth warren, wall street and the democrats are as friendly as ever. >> up next, the anonymous cash flooding into india's election.

>> and the software giant running on one man's gut. ♪

♪ >> welcome back to "bloomberg business." >> you can listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119 and am 11 30, 106.1 in boston. >> am 960 in the bay area, in london on dab digital and through the bloomberg business app. in this special money issue, india's elections are among the world's most corrupt and most expensive. >> in fact, a reported $7 billion has been spent on this year's national races so far. >> 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. >> 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 the donations, money stashed away, unaccounted cash. critics say that all they really do is help crony capitalists launder black money in the guise of political donations. however, when narendra modi came to power in 2014, he promised to rid the country of corruption, and political funding was supposed to come within that

ambit. critics say electoral bonds are a piece of paper which actually entrenches corruption within the system. >> 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 may not actually happen, given that on may 23, before the deadline, india is due to have 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 will craft the instrument without the supreme court giving an order.

>> t the salesforce eu, marc benioff, keeping the company growing thanks to a bunch of acquisitions. check out this chart. this shows you both the number and the size, what's underneath that is he is making these bets on a whim, it feels like. >> exactly. that's what this story gets into, how he goes about that decision-making. keep in mind that benioff has also 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 to skip the things he was not interested in. at the end of it he said i want to buy your company. >> and sometimes it works out, his gut is spot on. sometimes, not so much. >> definitely large acquisitions he did like exact target, demand where, mulesoft, have been successful. 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 an employee at a rival, 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 than microsoft ended up paying. 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. >> the salesforce-microsoft relationship is complicated 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 companies and 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 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 nadella is viewed as this softer, gentler personality, versus ballmer, who was very boisterous. he could be a pushover, and nadella was very deft. >> how cisco views the ban on huawei. >> and our guest for businessweek talks. this is "bloomberg

businessweek." ♪

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♪ 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's bank account would stack up against john d. rockefeller's. carol: and cisco ceo chuck robbins joins us for an interview. jason: we talk about cybersecurity and so much more.

chuck: about eight months ago when this began, our teams proactively thought about it. we made the 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 a globally distributed supply chain and the capacity to move things on a regular basis. our team does that as part of doing business. it is just what we do. the third was that if we could not mitigate it, we would pass it through pricing. our teams did an amazing job over the last eight months and put us in a position where the latest 25% really had a nominal affect, from a pricing perspective. they did such a good job of optimizing our 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 overall sentiment. that is the bigger concern for me. 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 heard some of the retail discussions over the last couple of weeks. the reality of companies' inability to optimize is becoming the bigger issue. the impact on the company or the consumers will have a drag on the market. jason: one of the implications that everybody is wondering about is 5g.

what impact does that have now and 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 that there are multiple suppliers around the world to provide macro radio technology, that is what we're talking about. once you get off macro radio, we provide the core technology. i think there are plenty of alternatives and the bigger issue when you think about 5g, is the cost of capital to build at these networks, the cost to buy our customers are having to face, the regulatory environment, and the reality of the business model they can build to get the roi on investments. those are the bigger things we need to be talking about and 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. i have seen a number of about $5 billion. 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 in large carriers around the world all tend to have multi-vendor strategies to begin with. it is difficult to say with a increase volume with one versus the others. they typically would not tell us anyway. carol: but thinking about 5g, you know this world so well. if huawei is locked out of the market, once you start to create these networks and you are locked out, it is very hard to change and bring in a different supplier. i wonder, the longer this goes on, does this 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 working in this space. whether it is a security issue where technology issue, if you miss a wave, you're going to have to wait for the next one. 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: 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, the types of things that we as 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're going to see a step change, and this one is exponentially better than what we felt the last decade. we talk about speeds of 4, 5, 6, 8, 10 times, the earliest use cases will be my son on his phone on the table and eight of his friends playing games, that serving as a hotspot. the reality is 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. chuck: we are starting to see trials around the u.s. and around the world. there are a lot of issues related to spectrum availability. europe has spectrum auctions going on. once you spectrum they start to build out. what we see is a lot of the trials are implementing technology and taking advantage of the existing networks. i think 2020 and beyond, as you see the number of devices at the

edge of the network increasing, that will lead to the need to build more core infrastructure to support the capacity that is going to be needed. >> so still building out in 2020. >> for more of our interview, check out our bloomberg businessweek extra podcast. we talk about more than just 5g. and what he might be doing if he was not the ceo of cisco. graph that wherever you get podcasts or bloomberg.com/podcasts. carol: we want to get more on cisco with taylor riggs. tell us what you have for us. taylor: one way we can look at cisco's exposure to china is in the security vendor space. within that, you can see cisco gets about 16% of revenue from the asia-pacific region. that does include china. if china were to crack down and blacklist our domestic vendors, cisco could be hit, given they

get about 16% of revenue within the global security market of the asia-pacific region. jason: the long-term impacts we talked about as different countries go for it. taylor riggs, thanks so much. staying in asia, 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 to 5:00 p.m. you can also catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast. find that itunes.

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 about 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. 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,

and 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. important in business and politically. jason: society, even. >> right, but if you try to figure out how do you control this web, you will see that lee kun-hee, the patriarch of the samsung 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, 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, as you said, the formal relationships he has with so many companies and executives within that network. that has helped him have a lot of power here. and that power will not necessarily pass on to his son. >> correct. his 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. two samsung affiliates wanted to merge and needed government approval, and lee found himself in a scandal, spend 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 being minted in china. they are buying lots of things -- jason: they will buy some boats. >> out of sight is a good way to put it. it is hard to keep a super yacht out of sight. it tells the world you have some money and you are buying toys. carol: a huge no-no. >> the last few years, is not 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. and we spent time with salesman who tried to show people what would it be like if you had a 75 foot yacht, a 150 foot, 200 foot 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 sommelier, and this is the floating life. like people have in monaco.

you can buy the super yacht, but having that kind of infrastructure to do that kind of thing in your yacht in china is actually a different thing from 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 through the bloomberg business app. in the money issue, free ports, or call them secret museums. text: they are tax-free facilities that can hold art out of sight for decades. so check this out, it tells you how big these facilities are. 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, a perfectly legal way for people to store art essentially free of tax. the free refers to the duty-free element.

the port refers to massive, dry land storage facilities. anything that is essentially valuable. carol: how does this work? >> let's say you, carol, have a couple of pieces of art worth 10 million each. you count 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 in a freeport. it is secure 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 to buy and sell. >> and there's even the record of the mother of all leonardo da vinci paintings that sold for $600 million. this is the problem. they are changing hands, but physically not moving, staying put in these free ports. being sold by essentially 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. someone does not have to put a name on a transaction. they just have to create something that may obscure who they are. >> sure. and i pressed on this when i went to recap some of the basic facts about the free ports. i did ask each of them how have your rules of ownership changed? there is one in luxembourg that does insist on disclosure of the so-called beneficial owner, which is drug and for is it jason kelly or carol massar who owns that. 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 with this piece is figure out what their network 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, in comparison to bezos, and to be honest, there is no comparison. rockefeller's net worth today would be 300 billion, nearly triple bezos. carol: talk to us 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 comparisons. 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. 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 200 billion. we go to medieval england. 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 measly 25 billion. that is the fun thing about this. when you go across the scope of history, 25 billion looks small. jason: what is the lesson that jeff bezos can learn from some of his forebears? >> it is definitely temporary, so make sure you make the most of it. a lot of the names i was looking

at about to be honest, i had never heard of before. alan the red, i doubt many know who he is, he is britain's richest person ever. he had to under billion dollars. he was a cousin of william the conqueror. in the scope of human history, if you are lucky enough to land in this position, really build a legacy out of it. jason: it does feel like the buffets, gates, bezos of the world are thinking about legacy. maybe they do not 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 has this famous proverb. a third of your life learning, i 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 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 it is reminding us to think differently. he also had thoughts about solutions. jason: there is a lot of wealth on wall street would lead 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 at itunes and bloomberg.com. carol: more bloomberg television starts now. ♪

♪ emily: i am emily chang and this is the "best of bloomberg technology," where we bring you all of our top interviews from the week in tech. coming up, trade showdown. the simmering trade dispute between the world's two largest economies is taking a toll on markets and the global supply chain. has a tech cold war already begun? plus, a fork in the road. tesla continues to get pummeled by the bears. one calling it code red.