♪ >> welcome the bloomberg business. >> we are here bloomberg headquarters in new york. >> this week, businessweek turns 90. a look at how the magazine has covered business through the decade. >> including women on wall street. and why many too, firms still don't get it. >> uprising sending

millions into the streets of chile. >> all that, for step here is joel weber. >> we put together a holiday cover for you. >> quite a cover there. what a year. >> we think this is one of the biggest stories of the year. it started with -- the magazine covered it very early on when there was going to be an ipo. as that coverage developed and went on, there was another story we started to think about which was one of the biggest investors. >> i do love the cover. seasons greetings. we did talk about it so much this year, what i love about this is i feel that you guys go into the layers of division funds. obviously, there are other players. ismoffett being the guy who really the visionary at softbank. whocially the vision fund is now in silicon valley a

hundred million dollar vc fund that can do a lot of things. one of the ways it can do that weworknto something like , and bankroll wework. that is a business model that not -- might not have been rife for the long haul. >> they were very aggressive. >> that is the strategy. let's flood the zone with money, go big or go home basically is the strategy. sometimes that works, to be fair. they have had some wins. the other thing this story reveals is the culture within specifically the vision fund, where there is a lot of tension. >> it is a big story. another big story is businessweek turns 90. >> we are old. >> you look great. [laughter] >> the magazine has now been around for 90 years. we honor that with an essay about how we have covered

business through the decade peers sometimes we mark moments in ways that history is not able to look back on so kindly. there is a 1970 nine cover about the death of equities. for a couple years afterwards it looked pretty good, but in hindsight it does not look good. it is an amazing accomplishment that this magazine has been around this long, always being the authoritative voice on business. >> it was interesting talking to some of the people who put together that essay. their combined tenure at the magazine is almost 90 years. --we don't go while the back we do not go all the way back to right before the crash, but collectively, the people who worked on this essay can trace their lineage back to people they worked with who did work back then. ,n the course of three people we can spend the generation. >> wanted -- one of the things that they point out are these are some of the moments, and how

mitigates and tracks the zeitgeist of economics in the boardroom, so many things. >> women. that is still an issue. >> black business. so many tomes in this story when you look at how we covered it, it shows not only the evolution of the magazine but the evolution of the country end of the world. >> my point too come of this conversation is reminding us of some of the issues we have talked about over the decades, we are still talking about today. >> it is amazing how much of this stuff in the essay that actually feels contemporary from economics to women in business. these stories have been with us for years. >> joel weber, thanks a lot. >> let's get back to the cover story, the tensions of softbank. work as a small part of their total investment

portfolio. we make the point in the article that must say she's advisors were more cautious about wework then he was. the vision fund only committed $4.4 billion. of softbankthe rest which overall invested 10 billion -- more than $10 billion , the vision works commitment was relatively small. smallere got some much companies that have gone wrong, but because they unfolded around the same time as wework, people are paying a lot of attention to them. listsample wag and brand come into consumer companies, they only invested a few hundred million dollars in but because they are high-profile, people are paying a lot of attention to

those. funds, when companies fail they often feel pretty early on. interestingis inflection point where they also have a number of very promising companies that are not quite at the point in their lives where we can point to them and say wow, these are spectacular companies. kupang has a lot of promise. is also very promising. the promise has not delivered yet, the disasters have. it is about time for them. >> it is a bad time for them. one of the things we set at the topless i feel like you get into how'd -- how investment decisions are made. you also got into massad, as it is universally known. so, masa can be extremely

charming and very interested in engaging, or he can kind of get in a bad mood and pepper people with questions. in the league, we tell the story of one time on a call where he bow rated an investor at softbank for not being optimistic about a company called full stock alliance, a company based in china that is making good and steady progress, masa apparently thought it could grow faster and was telling the investor, you have to figure out a way to make it grow even faster than it is now. other people on the call work cringing, that one investor got the brunt of masa's ire. see epeople, particularly

-- ceos who go to pitch masa, if he likes her company you can walk out feeling like you are walking on air. startups he tells young founders, you are the next jack ma, and they leave feeling so good especially if that is a company where they had been rejected before. >> what is interesting too is how you say what -- venture capitalist, when masa decides to go all in, they invest big time and they really do push the founders, the entrepreneurs, to be more aggressive in their business. >> right. they give them the kind of money where they can expand much quicker than they would have been able to otherwise. sometimes, a company that might have been looking for $50 million or $60 million sense of

getting several hundred million dollars from softbank. softbank is a lot of money, but then they want you to deliver. let's say you have been planning to roll out in one state, now they want you to do a national rollout and think about what is your overseas expansion plan. they set it up for a company to grow very fast, but not every ceo can deliver on that. >> coming up, me too has yet to have its moment on wall street. >> why summit finance don't get it. >> this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ >> welcome back. >> join us for bloomberg businessweek every day on the radio starting at 2 p.m. -- 2:00 p.m. listen and subscribe to our podcast, or bloomberg.com.

dr. you can find us online at businessweek.com. a story on the meat -- #metoo movement. >> it is written by max abelson. they have been following this closely throughout the course of the year. this piece is a sobering article on how the finance industry still does not quite get it. >> sometimes in the newsroom we look at each other and we are me too in the financial industry? we know from the years of equity and asset management that wall street, just like lots of other industries including journalism has profound imbalances. women quietly say that they are harassed and discriminated against and assaulted. they fear retribution. we have not seen that brought moment of change. what this piece is about is this system, this machine of silence

that explains why. >> i think after me too in the entertainment world, we thought wall street was next, and it did not happen. i have a word for you, arbitration. >> arbitration is one of those things -- we have known each other years, if you brought that word up to me 2.5 years ago, i would more or less draw a blank. i was on the phone with a wall street veteran who said if you really want to understand why you are not seeing me too on wall street, more than a year ago, she was like you have to cloak. the visibility the system of opera tray -- arbitration paired that is the system that is parallel to the courts. it is behind closed doors. it is a private justice system that used be relatively obscure for fights an industry. itl street itself helped expand short covers two out of three workers at big u.s. companies. wall street, unlike other industries, runs its own arbitration hearings.

wall street is definitely a master of arbitration and it helps explain a lot. >> i love this sentence, the finance industry's mastery of this system has prevented the revolution of the past two years from touching it, meaning me too. >> if a wall street executive for here with us, i talk to them about this all the time -- >> women? well, the human resources executives are sometimes women. i have dealt with wall street whoers like sabrina walmer contributed to this piece. theysay look, arbitration will say is quicker, cheaper, quieter, but it is just as fair. that is their defense of arbitration. women will say it stops us from banding together and learning about each other and instituting major change. a lot of class-action lawsuits we have written about can't have those without arbitration -- with arbitration. >> let's talk about systemic and

cultural aspects as well. you dig into this too in this piece, the cultures of a lot of these firms are set up in a way both structurally and east coast-wise, that it does not feel like us a place to bring these sorts of complaints. even the would-be advocates within the firm, hr, are not really on the side of the employees. they are on the side of keeping things quiet and keeping it under wraps. >> ourst moments. ,ne was cater fitzgerald another one was ken fisher who had the famous comments, and the third was -- i mentioned gavin fitch who did a majoring work out of london. jealousy inducing. it, is upsetting about coffee and i talked about this with rebecca greenfield our editor, our editor.

the thing with the lloyd story is not just painting a picture of guys behaving extremely badly, what is profoundly upsetting about the lloyd story and another one in london, also written by gavin, is it gives you a sense that these women went to hr and talked about being assaulted, or accosted. hr was basically like, it will be bad for your career if you say anything. don't smile around him. i think that was a literal response from human resources at a vague institution that gavin finch found. dress differently? change your behavior in order to avoid the situations. changeng up, how climate caused a chilean uprising. ♪

>> welcome back. carol: you can listen to bloomberg businessweek on the boston.06.1 in >> 960 in the bay area. after the bloomberg business app. carol: a controversial weapon against climate change. jason: i have to say, the concept is pretty cool. to capture carbon from the air. here's peter coy with his story in this issue. >> climate change is an economic issue. there are some obvious things you do, you build more windmills, and solar plants and so on. but, the people who believe that you can capture carbon directly from the air -- that has to be

part of the solution as well. >> how does this work? acid, in dioxide is an the chemical terms. it binds with basis. if you have a chemical into run airstrip, big fans, then it binds with this chemical, forms a salt, and then you put -- you have a loop of the equation of the plant, and then you get a different salt, and then you can run that through a heater, and that splits off the carbon dioxide into a pure stream of carbon dioxide, you send back lye which gets hydrated and put back in the process. >> this is a periodic table in the works. it makes much sense. very logical. why aren't we doing it? anwe are doing it on

experiment basis. i focus on three companies, carbon engineering of british columbia, global thermostat works in manhattan, clim- carbon engineering is finishing up the design work on a plant that will pull up one million tons a year of carbon dioxide from the air. >> that sounds like a lot. >> that is a huge amount compared to what has been done before, but is a pittance in terms of the size of the problem. >> why not do this? >> it is expensive. it is more expensive than other solutions, but the cost has come down a lot. it is no longer crazy expensive just on the high-end. it is cheaper than other options like battery powered airplanes that we have talked about.

furthermore, there will come a point where we run out our strength on some of the solutions like reducing the carbon dioxide put into the air. tothat point, you will have supplemented with taking some out of the air. that could be carbon dioxide produced by your grandparents and has been sitting out there all this time. point isk an important that it is meant to complement or supplement what is already being done in terms of combating climate change. the carbon imprint. >> i sort of went into this thinking that maybe someone will read this and be like, pollute all you wanted we will vacuum it up. when we talklly -- about controversy -- that is what people say. it is a wrong message, don't tell people they have a free ticket to pollute. no, definitely not. you want to be doing everything. the low hanging fruit and >> a high hanging fruit. i like -- not >> i like how you refer to this

as the high hanging fruit. how likely is it that this gets adopted? >> i think it is very likely. it has to happen. nothing else is going to do the the job. it will be expensive but we have seen the curve on solar and wind come way down. i think the boss curve on this will come down as well. >> there is another story in this issue on how a decade-long drought sparked a popular revolt in chile. jason: here is editor christina lynn blatt. most of these protests are focused on the satisfaction over the economic model and how it relates to meager pensions and people feeling like education is producing inequality. >> the usual suspects. >> we look at the backdrop of this which is a 10 year mega drought. been central to where

the population is. the north is already very arid. looked at these water fights, literally, that have been playing out in these protests -- you can't say they literally jumped from rural areas to the city, but there have been echoes of unequal access to water, education, opportunity. >> tell us about the impact it has had on -- take about farmers. how has it played out? >> we talked to people who have lost more than half of their livestock in the last couple of years. there's also an area and particular of this valley where avocado farming has spread to feed this global demand for avocado. becauseinstance, it is

the avocado farmers are being accused of exploiting their water rights, and also tapping rivers illegally. so, all of these small farmers in the area have -- rainfall has been lacking so they do not have anything to water the crops. >> the avocado farmers are fine. >> if you look at the photos, it is stark. you will see the hills that are brown. avocado is a water intensive crop, it really should not be grown in some of these places. >> what are the issues that this think hismind -- i income inequality, but also this notion of political and economic choices that favor business over to get downr people to it. businesses even over what -- what i think most would argue is a basic human right. >> i think people were initially surprised about the violence of

these demonstrations. in chile, of all places. it has so often been cited as a model for the rest of south america and how it enshrined neoliberal ideas in its constitution. so does a test on >> -- >> a water law that basically gives people water rights in perpetuity. companies have them forever, they can trade them. was upon a time the thought , free markets will help people be careful in the management and use of finite resources. that has not been the case as we have seen. and expert oriented -- theture have really government has prioritized those kinds of uses for water. we now have communities in chile who depend on water getting trucked in, when they open the faucet nothing comes out. >> it is amazing.

i do wonder -- what is the political backdrop here? a lot of this unrest, as you said at the beginning, has been tied to the political system. is there any sense that that may change soon? what is the latest? >> the outcome may be quite radical and that legislators have agreed to two possible means of rewriting the constitution. that the is consensus constitution needs to be rewritten because it enshrines this model that is no longer -- that has caused distortion. >> it is essentially not valid. >> right. we might see part of that. we've already talked about how waters going to play into that, but we could see changes as well. it is a complete rethinking of what do you want to be as a country. jason: coming up on businessweek , tracing our origins to 1929.

what are your to be born. carol: not a easy year to make your debut, but there was so much going on. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek."

>> welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek. take --till ahead, it >> just north of new york city. the target, millennials. >> you know what his motto millennial? >> this magazine. >> it is turning 90.

covering business through the decade. who knows a lot about it. a different magazine, a different place on a different owner. some things were surprisingly the same. it has been a thought that we do more than -- report the news. just -- ader cannot chronicle of what happened this week but also, why it is important, why it matters, and what might become of it in the future. >> what is fun is the section that covers 90 years of bloomberg businessweek identifies three people who expand the entire lifetime, 90 years of businessweek. passinge idea editors down the history.

>> that is a nice thing about our magazine. there is a lot of continuity. i work with people who i have literally known for 30 years. weice thing about that is have seen a lot of things happen in business. there is a lot of context that we already know. not rushing around saying, oh my god, what is it. i was there at the opening of disney world. i have been the editorial page editor. i have been a lot of things. easily shift between stories and at a lot when work with younger stories. we have seen a lot of these stories before. were the chief correspondent, dealing with outlying bureaus. different context at bloomberg, that feeds the

magazine in a lot of ways and gives it a feel far beyond a bunch of people in new york putting it together. tell us about that. >> that is one of the strengths. having a system of reporters who are closeld to companies but also picking up information that it is difficult to get if you are seven time zones away. before thele in asia handover of hong kong, before china was completely open, allowed us to be early on stories like that and to understand a lot of why things either happen very fast or they do not happen as fast as a lot of people in new york think. we have benefited from having those bureaus back in the day but especially now, because bloomberg has a huge staff we are able to draw on.

>> tell us about bringing limited to the magazine and the consumer, how hit it -- how it has evolved. segmentation became a big deal and new businesses were because technology was suddenly inventing new things that were more consumer focused and what happened is we had to figure out ways to cover that an management had to figure out ways to manage it. a professional manager came up. we were early on covering women. initially, we covered a handful of entrepreneurs. hazel bishop, a woman who invented not smear a bowl -- n on-smear lipstick. the marketing chief of tupperware. do not get serious about what happens within corporations for women and those challenges until 1975. we did a large project of a

bunch of stories that i think are still great. project them for this and i was surprised that a lot of the things people say today, that a manse is one thing and a woman says another thing and it is considered to be shrill or how can you be so pushy or whatever. though could have -- those could have been said by someone in silicon valley this year. we are still talking about that. doing muchout not coverage of minority business. a lot of that business that we had was pretty bad. i had a chance to read some early stuff to the 50's. changes incause of society, all of a sudden everybody decided jade lewis think about that. we started thinking about black empowerment in business. we got more sophisticated, and by the time the 1970's came along, we were doing a lot more coverage instead of wondering

about not just the positives, but what about the economic changes that seem to be stalling out. we have been good about saying this is how society goes. >> for more on business week's 90th anniversary, we turn to -- >> it was a book that was largely covering industrial america. he brought in women and gave us bylines. -- a journalist named steve shepard brought in women and gave us bylines.

he did a lot of things to liven it up. it became the forerunner of the bloomberg businessweek that we see today. >> we were talking about the 90th anniversary. i think he used to think it was separate. politics and business and technology, now it is all interconnected. >> the washington bureau, they did not have their own washington bureau. an organization which serviced all of the publications, everything from modern plastics to engineering news. a very trade mentality instead of a narrative mentality or investigative mentality or talking about how politics enters into a lot of business stories. the bureau changed the look and feel of businessweek. >> it does feel like the late 1980's into the early 1990's was

this seminal moment when washington seemed to wake up and say, there is business going on that maybe we need to keep an eye on. i think about the air that got kicked off. era that got kicked off. henry kravitz showed up on the cover. >> mike milken and henan kravitz crashed onto the scene. but they were doing things that probably corporate america called for. a lot of ceo's had imperialistic fleets of airplanes. imperialistic view of themselves. fleets of airplanes. there were takeover battles. they were emblematic of the era. you have these people like mike milken who used the junk bonds and henry kravis who landed on

the cover in 1988 as king henry. who upset all of that and shook up the ceo world. it went a little too far. henry kravitz is still going strong. mike ended up in jail. some of these people involved were shady characters. >> big business got its start, -- it's time in the magazine during that era, but so did consumer advocacy. >> it was not just decades of greed. i think a lot of big ideas developed in that period. you had consumer advocacy that came off of ralph nader's 1960's book. he burst a whole generation of people who would then go to run advocacy organizations or agencies in washington like the environmental protection agency. it was the era when corporate

governance came into being. when shareholders got a voice and could vote on resolutions and could turn out ceo's and approve mergers. it was the era when consumerism rose up. it was the era when the retail investor came to be because people had to manage their retirement money through 401(k). you finally had an investor democratization thing going on. >> from floating tax havens to putting mini city states on land. the later from -- the latest from peter thiel's institute. >> plus, courting millennials with luxury developments. >> this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

>> welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. >> joined bloomberg businessweek every week on the radio. you can listen to our podcast at apple podcast and bloomberg.com. >> we turn out to technology. a former google engineer and international waters expert is negotiating with officials to put as many city states in their countries. this is a real thing. >> it is a real thing. >> have you heard of the sea studying, this case in silicon valley libertarian circles that you would build these little floating fortresses just far enough offshore that they would

not be subject to u.s. law. >> tax havens. is that what this is about? >> that is one part of it, but to hear them tell it, that is not the biggest part of what they are after. he is the guy who cofounded the sea studying institute more than a decade ago with money from peter thiel. >> silicon valley guy who is also president with president trump. -- friendly with president trump. >> this was a while before he torched that relationship. the idea behind this institute was that they would build the economic and legal framework to set up these islands fortresses off the coast of wherever and let 1000 libertarian tax havens bloom. that did not go well for the

obvious reasons that it attracted charges of neocolonialism and tax avoidance from local authorities. people were not cite to have these places pop up outside their home, the most notable was the case where the private company organized and withheld the sea studying institute off the coast of tahiti. the tahitian government objected on the grounds that this would be disruptive to canoeing and surfing and towards him and business. >> let's make the pro and con case. what is good about do this? >> this is related to his new venture, whereas peter thiel has not talked about it in interviews, as our reporter talks about in this piece. the organization that peter friedman has just started is very much on the peter thiel donor list. he will put up more than half of

the $9 million to get started. >> what is the case -- who wants this? is there demand? >> for friedman and some of the people who are working with him on the ground, they say there is interest from organizations, little economic development groups who are just interested millionaires to set up these kinds of city states. the idea, the sales pitch is that they are not working directly with any of the local governments. they are leaving that to secondary agencies. you would set up these semiautonomous regions and under british common law as adjudicated by retired judges, they would hire to run things. they would then be immune to local law. >> that is what is interesting, the justice system is more important than the tax breaks. friedman talks about some resources of functional loss being a leading indicator for economic success. there will be some law or something, but there are a lot of freedoms as well, and it is going to be economically successful. >>'s argument is that the rule of law is the most important thing and also that the british common law system as adjudicated by retired british judges is the ideal model over any other why that as opposed to any other code of law or ethics? he did not have the best answer. >> he got as far as saying we could solve poverty. that is a pretty big claim.

>> that is one of the loftiest of the sales pitches. >> you mentioned peter thiel is invested, so is marc andreesen and other well-known folks. >> serious bitcoin advocates, the guy known as bitcoin jesus, and folks that are into the idea of building their own system. >> a couple of new york city talking about juncker is an new rochelle. they have their eyes on young professionals. > >> this is bloomberg businessweek. ♪

>> welcome back to bloomberg businessweek. >> you can listen to us on the radio on sirius channel xm 119, 99.1 fm in washington. >> in london on dv digital and always on the lumber business app. >> a real estate arms race is heating up for suburbs north of new york city. >> the two biggest towns in westchester county are betting on affluent urbanites who are sick and tired of feeling poor in the big apple. >> they are not very cool places to live, but these cities are in an arms race trying to compete with new millennials and younger professionals who are finding they cannot afford to live in manhattan and brooklyn and jersey city anymore. they are spearheading a number of new developments.

they are building thousands of new units and luxury sky rise apartment buildings, and they are hoping people will start to move into these new units and start building a family. >> what is fun about this story is the amenities that are being involved. there is asked throwing. they are trying to do things that appeal to a younger generation. >> exactly. both cities would like to open ax throwing bars. that is something they think will be attractive to younger professional people who are moving from manhattan. >> it is such an interesting evolution to me. i live in the suburbs. a little north of where we are talking about. there has long been not everyone can be as hip as carol and live

close to the city. it has only been very binary. you either live in the city or go to the burbs. this is trying to find that middle ground and expanding the footprint of new york city. >> it is and the drawing point for both of them. they would say this. they are 25 or 30 minutes from manhattan. you can hop on the train and be at work just as fast or faster than living in brooklyn. >> that is an important distinction. i have thought about this a lot when i talk to colleagues here who live in far brooklyn, and my commute is shorter and a little more civilized on the commuter train then many of those because those bureaus have pushed further out. >> that is what they are betting on. they are hoping there will be this mass migration of people moving in. this is the place where the tax base was all about in the 1970's -- hollowed out in the 1970's and 1980's.

>> i have spent a fair amount of time in new rochelle. what is interesting is you go around those cities, and they are huge. you can see the streets that are troubled and the retail that is having a hard time. you can see the results from those decades in the 1970's when things were doing well and then came undone. they are trying to r one is that they are going to have so many new units that there is going to be this huge amount of inventory they might not be able to fill. walking around the streets and talking to people who currently live in new rochelle, they are afraid that their landlords will look around and say maybe i can do some minor renovations in the buildings that i currently own and hike up rents. a lot of those residents are fearful their cost of living will have to go up over the next months or years, and they will be driven out of those areas. >> from luxury housing to luxury

watches. >> just in time for the holidays. here is the ceo of luxury watchmaker dennis. >> if we want to keep young generations interested in mechanical watches and not have them not wearing a watch or only a smart watch, we have to build the future. that is what we are doing. >> watches are having a moment. people are rediscovering the artisan nature and craftsmanship carol was alluding to. why are people pivoting back? >> we live in such a fast world between internet and social media, don't forget a mechanical watch is one of the few objects that will last forever. in 1000 years, if you have a watch and a watchmaker able to

put in oil, it will still work. when you buy a cell phone or smart watch, you know the minute you buy it, it is already obsolete. sometimes people need to attach themselves to something that will last forever. >> i wonder about the conversations we have, that kind of disposable society we have become where we used to hold something. i wonder if we are channeling back to that. what do you see in terms of your consumer? you talk about you have to invent to bring in a younger generation. >> i think they buy history. today we are bombarded by the marketing communication everywhere. they want to buy something with substance. they often ask us questions about how it is made, basically what is behind the brand and what is behind the price.

we have to show them how many hours a watchmaker is working on the watch. that is important. we need to show them creativity. >> bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands. >> also line -- online. >> it is the -- businessweek 90th anniversary. i love talking to those guys. 90 years, not a millennial to say the least. it has had a huge amount of influence on issues of the day, still the issues of the day. >> that is remarkable, whether it is about racial issues, women on wall street, those issues. it is important that you talk about influence. that is key in terms of pushing government policy. this is the word of record. >> and continues to be. that is why we love it. check out our daily business week podcast. it is available at bloomberg.com. >> more bloomberg television starts now.

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