♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly and we are here in bloomberg headquarters in new york. carol: this week, stocks up, but u.s. business is having a crisis of confidence and the result could be a recession. jason: the fourth democratic presidential debate but the first since the impeachment

inquiry into donald trump. we will break it down. carol: the online trading commissions are now a thing of the past, but big brokers have a plan to make up that money. jason: here is editor joel weber on what to look for in this double issue. joel: the cover story is all about tesla's autopilot which maybe you have heard about it because it is a really advanced cruise control that might put tesla on a path towards having self driving vehicles. carol: big ethical questions about how to get there, because you will probably lose lives along the way. joel: that's right. tesla has a rough draft of something it thinks will become the future. it's on the road right now. when you are driving next to a tesla, the driver could be an autopilot already. because of that, there has been death. the deaths don't look like normal deaths. but there is a bigger ethical

question which may be it is all worth it. jason: moving to china, in the headlines, who is selling what to whom, and you have a resurgent or emergent may be name competing with nike. joel: that's right. you maybe haven't heard of it in the west. one person who has heard of it is klay thompson with the golden state warriors, who signed two years ago a huge deal with this company. it is so interesting. we can talk about trade war and the nba being the most recent one. one of the things we were talking about is what is a different way we can talk about china and the trade war and the nba? this company came up because here is a company that is uniquely chinese, only been around since 1991. can that business scale internally within china and see it grow internationally now? carol: now china really wants to present brands to the world. joel: that's right. this is a homespun brand and doesn't have the same history nike or adidas has. how can you create something from the ground up right now? carol: what about austin car?

you keep sending him to cold places. what is up with that? joel: he is our arctic correspondent. [laughter] joel: he found this amazing story about high-speed internet in alaska. via the northwest passage. not everything is as it seems. it turns out the real entrepreneur and driving force behind the project was good at forging signatures to the tune of $1 billion in contracts. carol: a lot of signatures forged. jason: and yet, this is something that is moving ahead, a going concern even though the founder is in jail. joel: she is doing time, but turns out the idea was good and now people are able to get high-speed internet in a place they would not have had it. carol: let's get to d.c. for a breakdown of this week's presidential debate in ohio. jason: ryan teague is back with us to help us understand everything that is going on. great to have you back. a big week for the democrats and notably the first of the democratic presidential debates

where the 'i' word took center stage. what did we hear? ryan: the first part of the debate amounted to an in-kind contribution to the impeachment effort. everyone onstage agreed donald trump should be impeached. it was interesting that they had slightly different takes. some of them talk ukraine. bernie sanders brought up emolument. they all have strong feelings. tom steyer and elizabeth warren, people pushing for it the longest, should have benefited more but did not appear to. carol: they spent a lot of time talking about impeachment. we understand that. i also feel it is a big shift from september. everybody going after elizabeth warren this time around. ryan: if you did not think she was the front runner, according to the polls where she was still within the margin of error, you

definitely thought she was in terms of how many people threw haymakers at her. they came out swinging against her proposals, questioned her directly. she got into a back and forth with buttigieg, biden, and coolish others. there were people attacking biden and even defending biden. cory booker saying his son had done nothing wrong. in ukraine. jason: so, ryan, what do we think happens next in terms of the winnowing of the field or at least clarity about what the front pack looks like? ryan: you know, this race will essentially be frozen for a little while, while the impeachment thing plays out. it is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room. it is hard for the candidates to unveil anything new or get new policy or whatever. i think in some ways, that might benefit those of them who like going door to door and doing the grassroots stuff in states like

iowa where that helps, but the national conversation now is completely distracted. jason: coming up, it could be the worst thing the u.s. economy have to fear is fear itself. something we have heard quite a bit about from the likes of the biggest bank ceo's. carol: we will look at the risks of a recession that is like no other. and if you thought the bank of japan pulled out all of the stops on stimulus, it is taking a stab at pushing up on business bond yields. that's right. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: and i am carol massar. join us every day on the radio at 2:00 wall street time. you can catch up on our daily show by checking out our podcast and you can find us on bloomberg.com. jason: you can find us online at businessweek.com and the mobile

app. total ubiquity. carol: to the economics section, the question of recession. when will it arrive and how bad will it be? jason: there are signs this long expansion may be starting to lose steam. but economists are not seeing the fundamental indicators that typically predict a downturn. carol: instead, it seems to be all about sentiment. we spoke to our editor about what makes this slowdown different. >> usually, from history, we know they are triggered by a spike in inflation, followed by a spike in interest rates as the fed intervenes, and that causes an unwinding of either economic excesses or financial excesses. but this time, inflation is low, the fed is cutting, and we don't see any bubbles. stock prices don't seem to be out of sync considering rates are still low. so what is going on?

why is there so much talk about recession? basically as we joked around this week, we said it is geopolitics, stupid. it is sort of an external shock that is self-induced because we started this trade war, but it is causing so much uncertainty that businesses are not investing, not spending on new capacity because they are afraid supply chains will start unwinding. carol: and lower interest rates by the federal reserve. they are already low, but lowering them will not necessarily give businesses confidence. to go out and spend, right? christina: it doesn't change the outlook. it may weaken the dollar but it doesn't materially change what we call the fog of the trade war. jason: we talk so much about the strength of the consumer amid all of this. there is this notion that, at

some point, if businesses curtail spending, they curtail hiring. people start to get more worried about their jobs or promotions or bonuses or raises. but we don't see any signs of that yet. how is the consumer looking? christina: the consumer is feeling pretty good because they were late to harvest the fruits of this 10-year expansion. companies and investors felt it first. wage growth has been picking up in the recent year. hiring, even though there has been a little bit of wobble, it has still been a high, sustained pace. we don't see yet the consumer has lost their nerve. but that is going to be one of the things people are looking at the next year. they will look at hiring and how companies -- because the feeling is that, at some point, the trade war may cause companies to start dialing back on hiring.

carol: we have more on sizing up the recession risk. what are we seeing? >> the chart that shows us where we stand, looking at the bloomberg economics recession indicator. it shows the probability of a downturn in the next 12 months. relative to last year, we are slightly elevated, but if we take it back and look at a historical basis, specifically the great recession of 2007, the odds are lower. what this tells us, risks may be higher on recession. but at the end of the day, it is not time to fully panic. jason: it is stark when you look back at the previous recessions, the spike was much more pronounced leading into it. thank you so much. when you are worried about an unconventional concession, you wonder if conventional monetary policy can do anything to stop it. carol: the bank of japan has tried everything to get their ,conomy moving in recent years

and they are not done tinkering. we hear from cristina lindblad. christina: it is desperate innovation, because it is like by necessity, they are leading the world into this new area and trying to basically nudge up growth. this is a country that brought us negative interest rates and qe, quantitative easing. and now, they are doing may beng which impossible. carol: don't tell us that yet. tell us how long japan has been and why they are the negative rate poster child. they have been doing this a long time. christina: they tried sending rates negative. when they did not succeed, they did qe in 2001. way ahead of everybody else. jason: remind us, also, because it is important, the economic backdrop for japan, because when we think back, you go back to

the early 1990's, late 1980's, this was an economic behemoth that americans were terrified of in many ways. the intervening couple decades have been ugly economically. cristina: there was a big property bubble, asset bubble, that burst and then deflation set in. they have been fighting deflation. not just deflation, but the country is aging rapidly. growth has downshifted in a permanent way. they have been trying to kind of sort of juice the economy by any means possible and they have succeeded. they used to be this pattern of falling into recession every other year. this latest attempt, basically, is designed to attack a problem that is basically twofold. one, it is confidence,

confidence of consumer and business. the issue is yields, on long-term bonds, have fallen to a level where it basically -- the message that it gives to the markets, to consumers, is that, out of the long-term, we still don't see any inflation, we don't see much growth, so bank of japan wants to nudge up long-term yields also for another reason. there are 40 million pensioners in japan. that number is only going to keep growing. those people are being utilized -- penalized in their savings by the low yields. the question is, how can you nudge up yields on long-term maturities while, at the same time, telling the markets that you are in a stimulus position and want to keep short-term rates low? so, it is -- carol: it is an experiment. cristina: it is, but some people believe it cannot be done,

because -- the thing is, the boj has said they are willing to even stop buying certain kinds of bonds with maturity of 20 years and over. but the feeling is though, when they do that, other actors may step into the market to buy. then, basically, they will be foiling their attempts to have prices go down and yields go up. carol: the concern is that by keeping long-term rates so low, the signal it sends to the world at large and the folks in their economy is that the outlook is not great, so they tend to be savers rather than spenders, which you can't jumpstart the economy then. cristina: if it is flat on its back for that long, you got to think, is my retirement safe? i shouldn't be spending. carol: everybody is watching. we talk about this low rate or negative rate world in places

we never thought would happen. u.s. has quite not gotten there yet. but we wonder how we come out of this time of negative or low rates and what is the outcome? we are all watching japan. cristina: we all used to be afraid of japan as a competitor. i think now, we are afraid we will become japan. jason: coming up, trading commissions are dead, but e-traders will live on. how the industry is adjusting to a no-fee future. carol: diversity and investment banking, there is an algorithm for that. jason: this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i am jason kelly. carol: and i'm carol massar. you can listen to us on the radio, sirius xm channel 119 and

a.m. 1130 in new york, 1061 in boston, washington, d.c. jason: and in london, on dab digital, and the bloomberg business app. let's turn to the finance section. a big shakeup in the world of online stock trading. commissions at the lo largest brokerage houses are going to zero. carol: that is a big hit to revenue, but these companies have other ways to make money. here's mike regan. mike: it has been trending towards zero. when you think back to the 70's , it cost $200 to trade a stock. it is mind-boggling today. schwab came in -- there was regulation change in the 1970's which ended this fixed price commissions and allowed brokerages to set their own commissions. schwab said i am going to cut mine. he said i will cut mine to $70,

and the discount brokerage era was born. when computers took over in the 90's, it chiseled away at the fees. it was like $13 to trade on schwab in 2005. less than $5 recently. new startups were coming in. robin hood app allowed investors to trade for free. some brokerages started allowing certain etf's to trade for free, so it was clear this pressure was building. to me, the interesting thing, if you are a customer of one of these firms, the important thing to ask is, how are they making money if they are not charging me a commission? that is what we get in to in the story. carol: i think that is the question everybody asked when it first hit. we definitely saw stock prices go down, so we thought, how are they making money? they have other ways. mike: don't worry about them. the sort of line we use in the store is, if you don't know how

a company is making money, chances are you are the product. it is what is true of facebook and google, free services but it is you, your eyeballs, and your personal data that is valuable to the companies. for schwab, for one of the most -- and for all of the discount brokerages -- one of the most important ways they make money is on the cash you currently do not have invested. jason: they make money with your money. mike: they make money with your spare money, the dry powder as they call it on wall street. schwab has something like $3.7 trillion in client assets on its platform. as of august, that is. about $265 billion is cash. it is not invested in the markets. a small chunk of a huge pie that allows schwab to invest it out and make money off of that idle cash. and they do pay clients interest on that cash, but it is relatively low. as much as half of 1% -- .5% on

big balances and as low as 0.1%. yields are low. you can make better return on your cash elsewhere in money market funds, traditional bank deposit accounts, but it is not convenient for a trader. people will keep some amount of cash in there in case they see a stock all of a sudden they want to buy. schwab is happy to take it and reinvest it. and there is other ways they make money. carol: they make loans to folks the want to do trades, too? is that part of -- mike: marginal lending. if you want to lever up, there is services like that. you want to short a stock, they will loan you the securities and charge you a percentage on that. one of the interesting ways these companies make money and it has been controversial in the industry, it is called payment for order flow. if you or i place orders to buy and sell certain stocks, there are companies like citadel, virtue financial, electronic

wholesalers aor few years ago, they would be referred to as high-frequency traders. they will buy up to order flow from these companies and match it internally. they don't even take it to the stock market. say, jason, you want to buy a stock for $10, and carol is selling it for $9.99, they will internalize that and make a cent per share. if you do it enough, the pennies add up. jason: that is just one more example of the evolving relationship between technology and finance. carol: jason, there is another fascinating tech story this week. as banks try to do better on dni, they are turning to ai. -- erikatzker joins schatzker joins us from london

to explain. erik: it is about time someone brought artificial intelligence to the recruiting process, because this industry, for all of its efforts to become more diverse and inclusive, is still dominated by white men who are typically elite college educated. and that is going to need to change. it needs to not just because of changing times, but because these firms, like so many other companies, recognize the bigger your talent pool, the better the quality of your recruiting, and, ultimately, the better your employees. we are talking about investment bankers, mergers and acquisitions, restructuring. the same logic, as i say, it applies to companies worldwide applies to wall street. the challenge is volume. it is very difficult to fan out across hundreds of universities in the united states and open up the recruiting process to the degree that it can capture everybody, unless you put technology to work. and that's what this tool is

designed to do. it is a screening process that surfaces candidates, regardless of skin color, background, or any other trait that might sway a campus recruiter. carol: tell us about the algorithm. you said it takes out any kind of color, ethnic background, sex. but what criteria? erik: unconscious bias is the word used in the recruiting industry, because, if you sit down with someone, you might find that person appealing for reasons other than qualifications. that person may sound like you. that person may enjoy some of the things you enjoy. that person may have played lacrosse. and if you played lacrosse, you might be more inclined to want to hire that person, work with that person, but that person may not have all of the right attributes to become a top-performing banker. he or she might be appealing to you as a human being.

and that is not a good way to recruit. so, you bring artificial intelligence into the process by designing a model. and the model is built using the characteristics of the top-performing employees at each firm, having candidates fill out comprehensive profiles, and then running the profiles against the models. that is the algorithm in action and it spits out a score. the higher the score, the better the fit the candidate is for that individual firm. the models vary by firm. not every firm is looking for the same things or values the same things. and not all bankers, at one firm, do the same things as bankers at another firm. you need to customize it to make it effective. jason: tesla is on the cover and it is all about whether regulators should be steering their effort to test autonomous cars. carol: plus, bringing high-speed

♪ carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: still ahead, while china battles the nba, a chinese sportswear company is getting set to take on nike. carol: for those who like to ski, who doesn't? pursuits looked at the hottest hotels in the coldest places. jason: tesla wants to be the first company to put an

autonomous car on the market. they have been putting their self driving software in cars since back in 2015. carol: that means experimental technology is getting a test on a real road with fatal results. our reporter says there is no easy way to quantify the risks it poses. >> you would think it would be relatively easy to tell because there are so many miles they have got under their belt. tesla has such good data about what these cars are doing. but it is actually a mystery to outsiders exactly how dangerous this technology is. regulators have basically, up until now, not taken any action. they opened a defect investigation that closed without ordering a recall or forcing tesla to make any changes. but it is actually quite hard to figure out how safe these cars

are. the kind of positive case is that tesla says, look, humans are always supervising these cars. you have all the safety of a human driver, it's just that the car is doing things to help you. almost like anti-lock breaks or something. it is just an additive safety feature. but the skeptical case is when you take so much responsibility from the driver, they get lulled into a sense of complacency and get distracted. it is actually very difficult to pay attention when he supervising system appears to be working perfectly well. this is a problem airlines have had for a long time. autopilot on airplanes is so good that they sometimes just get distracted. the pilots zone out.

jason: you mentioned regulators. what is the issue? have they just not caught up to where the technology is? can they not fully comprehend where to go? what happens with them? >> this is a very different issue than the ones federal car regulars are used to. a more straightforward problem for them is, you know, a company makes tires the tires fail, people get in accidents. something you could identify on a test track. the brakes don't work, steering, something like that. that is the straightforward problem regulators are equipped to handle. this is a limit more like an experimental pharmaceutical. there are potential life-saving opportunities, but it also might have deadly side effects. it is very hard to know that on

a test track. you really have to put it out in the real world to find out how it will react. carol: i love the parallel you make. we do have a model for this industry. that is the drug industry. they do go through various phases of testing these on people to see if it works. sometimes, it does and sometimes it doesn't. >> right. and so there are people following the industry who are saying we needed to equip regulators to essentially act like the fda does and have a series of the phase tests overseen by somebody outside of the company who can say if this is safe enough to test on the road and if it is safe enough to move it outside of this one jurisdiction or in different circumstances. and every step of the way, make sure safety is not being compromised and that you are getting good data.

right now, it is not clear that regulators know any better than we do precisely how safe autopilot is. carol: more from the features section, a story that might send a shiver down your spine. jason: a project to bring high-speed internet to alaska by way of cables underneath the arctic sea. it would have turned an entrepreneurial fantasy into reality except for one catch, it was gigantic fraud. carol: our reporter takes up the tale. >> the vast majority of what you are streaming those underwater from servers around the planet. all the massive companies like google, facebook, and amazon has spent aliens building undersea fiber-optic cables that connect asia to america to europe. that's how data gets around the planet.

they all go a long similar paths, places that are easy to construct. this company came up with the idea to build through the arctic. that is actually 4300 miles closer than other routes and would speed up way faster. jason: quite an audacious goal. you usually need an entrepreneur with a big goal. tell us about elizabeth pierce. >> she was an unlikely founder with a background in telecom companies. she was working in hr, not necessarily a lot of executive experience. but she saw this opportunity and went after it. i talked to about three dozen people who know her, they say she is incredibly tenacious and works around the clock to the

point she would get frequently sick. at the same time it does not just take a tenacious entrepreneur, but about a billion dollars to build this network. that is the one thing she did not have going into this. she had to raise upfront about $270 billion just to build the alaska segment. i think that's really where the story begins. carol: how did she get the money? >> [laughter] she got the money through forged contracts, you could say. for a couple of years, she was taking her career on this. she wanted to build the network but could not find funding. they partner with larger companies and soft funding from smaller telecoms. but never enough to reach a major capital level. at the same time, a new york investor comes along, cooper

investor partners backed by a ukrainian oligarch. it is run a stephen cooper, the ceo of warner music group. suddenly, they are taken by elizabeth. that's because she starts showing them contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars in aggregate, a billion plus of guaranteed revenue. jason: it feels like kind of a good old-fashioned scam. she was literally forging signatures. >> this went on for several years where nobody had any idea. even the other employees at quintilian did not know anything was going on. she was the only one talking to investors. she kept all of her documents in a private filing company which one employee was scolded for opening. she is her personal google drive

to share all of these contracts and nobody else had the password. carol: thinking about the wider telecom industry, i'm wondering if there was a lot of scrutiny about what she was doing. >> that's the most insane part. if you look at the different communities they were serving the place i went to, it was a tiny place. they have two or three restaurants. one is called arctic pizza. it's very expensive for the quality of pizza. but they convince investors that there were tens of millions of dollars from these communities that would be poured back into the network. jason: this is still a company that exists. it has a new ceo, a guy with a military background. pretty serious. >> absolutely. once the fbi got involved, they arrested elizabeth pierce. court documents show that google

a drive account she shared she dragged all of the contract files to the trash overnight. when they log on to see where the contracts were, it just said elizabeth pierce has deleted 78 files. that was a bad paper trail. but they did bring aboard a new ceo. i was super impressed. as many difficulties as they had to deal with, he came aboard just days after she resigned and was later arrested. essentially had to complete the fiber arctic network in alaska, which took a ton of ships and all of that laying of cable. and then get all the customers back. go out and say, look and i know this is complicated and terrible. but please believe in this network, it actually works. for what it's worth, it does work. say what you will, but elizabeth pierce built this thing.

despite all of her fraud, this is starting to service about 10,000 customers in alaska who previously could not stream things. september 30, she surrendered, pleading guilty to eight counts of aggravated identity theft and one count of wire fraud. she went to jail but she is really at it. she argued in court, i am not an evil manipulator. the fdny has made me out to be some sort of greedy person and she just argues she is not. she got caught up in something and was really advocating this network in alaska and it just did not go the way she wanted it to. carol: the apparel company aiming to become china's first global consumer mega brand. jason: and the places where you can lodge in luxury. this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: join us every day on the radio starting at 2:00 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast. jason: and find us online at businessweek.com or through our mobile app. carol: the ongoing trade war has put a spotlight on competition. recently, beijing skirmished with the nba and caused a cold war in sports. jason: one chinese brand that dropped its sponsorship deal was this sports company. the ceo will be the first global -- the ceo predicts they will be the first global consumer mega company. here is a look at the nike of china. carol: the biggest brand you never heard of them and they

have a 14% market share of the billion-dollar sports apparel market. it is not that far behind nike and adidas. its goal is to be number one by 2025. it is raising its profile outside of china. they gave klay thompson millions and his latest brand comes out this month. they are combining growth in china with acquisitions overseas. it spent millions to buy a well-known sports brand. they also have a licensing deal to sell sneakers and sportswear from fila. anta's revenue has soared 80% over the last year. they are hoping to get another boost when the winter olympics come to beijing. and the trade war may actually help. patriotic mainland shoppers ditched their nikes for a company being called the nike of china. carol: staying with sports can -- sports, we turn to bicycles.

a dad and partner started their own brand of bikes. jason: we caught up with the son of one of the founders, now the president of trek. we talked to him about his business and the importance of equality. >> equality is important. we are involved in a sport also running a business and we want to provide opportunities for everyone. we want to put the best team on the field. we are very serious about that. when you take a look at sport, we are sponsoring a women's cycling team. we are taking the portion that we control and saying hey, we will make sure they are on an equal level and we will be an example. we host a world cup in waterloo and it is equal prize money. first cycling event ever to have equal prize money. we make a big deal out of it.

and other races are changing. people are seeing what we are doing and making changes. jason: i have to think this has got to be at least partially an element of enlightened self-interest. carol: i wanted to say, it's great you're doing it, but you've got to be thinking about demographics. >> it's a lot of men, but there's a huge potential market with women. women in the sport love being in the sport. there are more and more women who should ride bikes and trek, there's definitely some self-interest here. guilty. carol: that's ok. jason: when you start to synthesize this, again, going back to the trends about fitness. you think about boutique fitness, the success of like lululemon, this is women driven in a lot of ways.

and this is not a criticism, it is just smart business. it is -- >> it is in one of my favorite charts is the running business. if you go back to 1980, something like 95% men and 5% women. all of a sudden you look and the running business has just exploded over the last 25 years. it's all women. today, more women finish marathons than men. it went from 5% to 55%. could happen in cycling. there is a moral issue and also a business opportunity. carol: in keeping with that, where is your biggest growth market? >> we sell around the world. i have worked at trek for over 35 years and i have never seen the amount of opportunities we have today. carol: everywhere? >> almost. we have things going on.

-- we have so many things going on. if you go to europe, the european business is almost three times bigger than the u.s. our market share in the u.s. for premium bikes is in the high 20's. in europe, it's around six. our business in europe is growing like a weed. we have a leopard -- we have a lot of opportunities. if you go to asia, massive opportunities in asia. you take a look at electric bikes, it is booming all over the world. carol: what about the trade war as you are seeing? you manufacture around the world. is that impacting you? >> yeah. we manufacture high-end bikes in the u.s. we have a large manufacturing facility in germany which supplies the european market. but we produce a bunch of bikes in china, both for all over the world and the u.s. we are a global company with a will will global supply chain. yeah, the tariffs have had a huge impact. jason: up next, we show you the

best ski goggles money can buy. carol: and the the swankiest place to stay after you hit the slopes. jason: it's all about skiing. winter is coming. 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 of course, through the bloomberg business app. we turn now to the pursuits section with information that will set you up for ski season. jason: we heard about some icy hot resort hotels. >> we went through probably about 100 different openings around the world. a lot of times, you think about a fashionable resort.

a hotel can often make the mountain. so we found four destinations that were constantly in the conversation. this one in japan was constantly coming up, consistently ranked the best snow in asia. there are a lot of new developments around the area. it's really a newly developed area. that is one of the places we have focused on. carol: it has great views. >> the mountains there, it most -- almost looks like mount fuji. very minimalist kind of what you think of when you think of japan. but there is also a 5000 square foot ski valet. carol: you guys ski regularly, right? ski in, ski out, that's a huge plus right? jason: it's a huge plus.

you talk about this place in aspen, one of the most famous ski hotels. in aspen, i believe it is one of the only hotels that allows that . they have done a total remake. >> yeah, 30th anniversary. they renovated rooms. they have done the restaurant, very famous for its wine list. aspen is almost as famous for its social scene as much as it is for the skiing. the big thing this year is the w, the only all season public whether rooftop. if you've ever been, you know what to expect. it has views of the aspen mountain off the distance.

carol: heated pool, hot tubs. >> a dj booth and a dance floor. jason: i have to say, there's a little part of me that reacts to the idea of a w in aspen. it will be interesting to see. going a little more -- carol: commercial? jason: it's like a techno. but that's not the vibe of aspen, necessarily. and yet, as you say, it's very social. >> we talked to some people in aspen. the w opened in august. the people who live in aspen say it has already been adopted. carol: whatever resort you pick, you need goggles. >> you know, this is called the one. ski goggles are so objective. it's very personal. do you prefer certain lenses, a cylindrical shape?

some of it comes back to very basic things. do you wear glasses? how big is your head? [laughter] carol: we are not going to comment. >> not pointing fingers. jason: he looked directly at me when he said that. both of you did. carol: [laughter] >> [laughter] but what we found is zero contact goggles. a cool company, they started as a cyclist manufacturer. carol: it looks amazing. >> one of the cool things is that the lenses are interchangeable. fogging is such a big issue on stop -- slopes. some people like to swap them out depending on the weather. what we liked is there is a little button to push and they pop out easily. but they also have magnets

inside so they pop right back in. they come with two different lenses. one is a mirrored infrared the other is a dual all-purpose lens. jason: bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. carol: and online and our mobile app. jason: your must read? carol: austin carr. taking a look at the northwest passage taking a cable to connect the world, not so easy, little fraud, and an interesting story. jason: it was a scam that turned out to be sort of successful, obviously under different management because that entrepreneur is in jail. carol: yours? jason: i love the story about anta in china, so timely. the kerfuffle between the nba and the chinese government, the players, the coaches, adam silver. here you have this company coming along that may be set to

take advantage. carol: one of those global brands trying to stake out its position. jason: check out our daily business week podcast available wherever you get your podcasts. carol: more bloomberg television starts now. ♪ here, it all starts with a simple...

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