share with us? we'd love to hear it! send me an e-mail, or go to our website, strangeinheritance.com. s always. have a great, great weekend. maria bartiromo's "wall street" is next. ♪ ♪ >> from cannes, france, this is a special edition of "wall street." maria: welcome to program that analyzes the week that was and helps position you for the week ahead. i'm maria bartiromo, this weekend coming to you from beautiful cannes, france. coming up in just a few moments, danny meyer, my special guest. later in the program, my one-on-one with the co-founder, ceo and chairman of blackstone, steve schwartzman is here, on the news of his historic donation to university of oxford. first, peter anderson of

anderson capital management. thanks so much for joining us, good to see you. >> you're welcome. maria: so are you surprised? it was a week of mario versus jay. the european central bank talking about more stimulus on the way, you had jay powell and all of the speculation that we're going to see lower rates now for some time hate arer on in the year as well. what's your take on the broad economic backdrop and whether or not we should actually see it erased? >> well, you know, maria, i am dead set against rate cuts. i think that the reasons that are being floated out there for rate cuts are kind of baffling to me, actually. it seems to be more focused on the tariff and trade war, which i think is way outside the fed's agenda in terms of keeping unemployment low and inflation low. we hardly have any inflation. so i think that is a terribly misdirected initiative in the

their -- narrative right now. maria: especially since you've got unemployment at a 51-year low, we're going to talk with steve schwartzman about that coming up because he's got his hand in so many different businesses, and the economy feels like it's doing well, so if they were to get on this program of significant and consistent rate cuts, is that telling us something that we don't know? >> well, i think we're telling them something they don't know, actually, which is just as you said, the unemployment rate is historically low, earnings look very, very strong, you know, companies are doing very well in the united states, and i think it's this dark shadow of this tariff war that is really getting people so distracted from the fundamentals. and let me just say a couple more things about this tariff situation. you know, i've looked into this in more detail, and i think there are two things people are getting confused about. the first thing is that, you know, the chinese culture is

different from the american culture, and so while we are thinking this thing is going to resolve in days to weeks, in reality i think we should be looking at months or years, frankly, because that's just how the two sides have lived their culture for years in terms of negotiations. and the other thing is that, you know, it just will take more time. and if it -- we need to realize that these players, we are not -- most economists say this, that they are idealistic players in this game, but this is not idealistic, you know? we have far more non-angelic behavior where we cut corners, there's cheaters, there's liars out there. so you have to model that into all these economic schemes in order to produce a reasonable expectation of when this thing is going to resolve. maria: yeah. particularly since the chinese have made it clear that they're not going to give up stealing intellectual property.

and it doesn't appear that president trump could do a deal unless they commit to stopping the theft of ip. so we'll see what happens next week at the g20. the president said he's going to meet with president xi next week. of course, a deal can't be done, i don't think, in a day, but maybe we'll get more clarity next week. the the president's going to g20. he said he spoke with president xi, and they will have a meeting. >> well, what i expect is, yes, we'll have these little bits of information as we always have had, right? where there's a tweet that comes out that says something positive, and you can see how the u.s. markets respond tremendously positively when that happens. so i expect that to go on. and as an investor, what you look for is when there is a negative piece of information out there, your favorite stocks usually dip. it's a classic behavior, and that's a time to actually buy some of your favorite stocks when maybe the incremental news isn't as positive as it has been. maria: peter, it's great to have you. thanks so much.

>> you're welcome. maria: peter and everybody accept. -- andersen. don't go anywhere, more coming up. >> danny meyer has been a leader in the restaurant game for two decades, so what's his recipe for success? maria goes one-on-one with the man behind shake shack when "wall street" returns. ♪ craftsmanship and technology that have made the rx the leading luxury suv of all time. lease the 2019 rx 350 for $399/month for 36 months. experience amazing at your lexus dealer.

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where food as an experience and bringing people together is really an antidote to a lot of the disconnection that, quite frankly, apps have caused. i think that we are fooled into thinking that because we have a community of followers on instagram and twitter and whatever else, whatever else you happen to be on, that you're actually connecting with people. the smartphone is almost rarely used these days as a phone. texting, e-mail. and i think people crave -- the more high-tech we get, the more touch people really, really crave. and so we're looking for businesses to invest in the -- that truly understand people want the experience of being with people. sometimes it's in a restaurant, sometimes it's a piece of technology that brings people together. so if you look at our investments, gather is a company based in atlanta that brings people together and creates a marketplace because most of us don't know which restaurants

have private rooms or not. if you look at a company like rezi, which was one of our early investments, and many years ago i invested in open table, those are businesses about bringing people together and also about creating the kind of intelligence for restaurants to know more about their guests so that they can better customize the experience. maria: you considered looking into alternative meat companies. you ultimately decided not to go that way. tell me why, because we just saw beyond meat have a huge quarter with the stock. the stock soared after reporting better than expected earnings, and there's this movement toward, obviously, vegan and vegetarianism but also alternatives to meat. >> yeah. i think that it's a fascinating thing to keep our eyes on, and we are. i've read about somebody in israel who is actually creating meat in a lab using a petri dish

to actually grow out meat cells which will actually become real meat, it's just that you will not have had to raise and slaughter an animal in order to do it. maria: oh, wow. >> i think people are looking at all kinds of ways of addressing two things; people want to be more healthy, they know that while meat protein is an incan credibly satisfying -- incredibly satisfying thing to eat, i do it quite a bit myself, that we're not going to have unlimited amounts of land, we're not going to have unlimited amounts of water. and i also think that people understand that over time we do want to eat more vegetables and vegetable protein even together with that. so we're watching that very, very carefully. we're not going to hit every investment with our fund. maria: you've taken some positions and taken some stakes in things that you believe are going to be winners. you opened your first restaurant the, union square café, in new york, 1985. nine years later you opened

gramercy tavern in 1994. tell me how in the empire started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. >> well, i think by rejecting the word "empire," because as far as i'm concerned it sounds like a big land grab, and it was never that. look, let's face it, manhattan -- which is where most of our full service restaurants are -- is a game of inches, and it can feel like an empire because every time someone gets it -- we've never taken that approach. we've basically looked at restaurants as place makers. how can you take a park that was dangerous like union square park and make it a place that people want to be? if how can you take a a place like madison square park where nobody wanted to go and make it a place that is beautiful where people want to be? how can you take a street, 20th street in where nobody was, and now it's a great restaurant row with gramercy tavern and others? so if you look at restaurants as people collectors and place makers, that's really the

approach we take. and every now and then you might just get one that captivates people so much that it makes their lives better. maria: you took shake shack public. what was behind that decision? it was a big deal when you first took it public, a lot of people wanted in on that deal. it did very well. why that company and you don't have any others that you decided to take public? >> well, the reason that we took shake shack public was that we needed growth capital at that very, very moment, and we looked at the various alternatives. at that point shake shack had had exactly one infusion of private equity, capital, and it was a $20 million -- i think it was about a $20 million investment. and the team running shake shack led by an exceptional ceo made that investment last right up til the point that we had the ipo. but that was not going to, that was not going to fund the type of growth that we wanted at shake shack. and by going public in 2015, it

also created a way to compensate our staff members and to -- maria: which is so important. >> it is so important. our banker said they had never seen a company that had asked for a directed share program for 100% of their employees. so we had hourly workers at shake shack, some of whom had never even had a job before this, who had an opportunity to buy $21 shares. and when that first trade happened at $46 -- [laughter] maria: wow. >> those guys -- we were all locked out, but those guys were in the money, and it felt really, really good. maria: i bet. you did away with tipping, which surprised some people. how's that going as you look in retrospect on this decision? >> we've now been doing this for about four years. our first experience was at the modern, and approximately every 4-6 months after that we would roll out another restaurant. the one that we thought i would never work is actually working incredibly well, porch light, our bar on the west side.

everyone knows you go to a bar and you put down a couple bucks as a tip, and it's amazing that consumers have really, really warmed to it. especially in a bar, especially in a restaurant. you have a bottle of wine, our math skills don't necessarily improve after after we've had a bottle or two of wine -- [laughter] and it's just such a pleasure for people to be able to sign the check and know that it's the restaurant's responsibility to fairly compensate their team. it's not your responsibility. maria: my thanks to danny meyer. don't go anywhere, my one-on-one with blackstone chief steven schwartzman is next. ♪ ♪ >> a record-breaking donation to oxford university. so what does steven schwartzman's pledge mean for the future of a.i.?

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♪ ♪ maria: welcome back. what a performer blackstone has been. the stock is up 60% in the last six months. ever since the company announced a change to its structure. this week also blackstone's ceo pledged $188 million to oxford university. this is the largest single donation in the school's history. the money will go in part to creation of a new institute devoted to ethics around artificial intelligence. i spoke with stephen schwartzman to talk about this historic pledge today. >> oxford is the number one ranked humanities faculty in the world, and it's also the number one ranked philosophy department in the world. and and as i was looking at a

project that the head of oxford brought to me in late 2017 which was to help them with a building to bring together the humanities faculty for the first time in a thousand years -- [laughter] that, which i thought was a good idea, but what was really compelling for me was looking at the way their expertise, their knowledge of humans and humanity and western culture basically fits in terms of what we're going to have to do to figure out with a.i. what you can introduce, how you can introduce it, what appropriate regulations are. and to know all these things by way of trade-offs, you have to understand what the human condition is, what humans want out of this trade. because a.i. can do remarkable things, and we want those good things, and what are we willing

to trade to get the good stuff but not have unemployment of a significant level, and you need to know what your core values are to make those differentiations. and so that's what appealed to me. not just the humanities part, which is great and unique, but employing that knowledge to marry it, if you will, with the scientific community which typically doesn't have as much of those soft skills. maria: yeah, let's talk more about that, because this donation is going to be funding a center for humanities where the ethics of artificial intelligence would be studied. and there are ethical issues around artificial intelligence. id had the former president of google china on recently who said at some point 40% of jobs will go away because of artificial intelligence. so talk to us about why the ethics of a.i. are so important to you. >> well, maria, you can't let

all of those jobs just go away because of the impact on society. it will be massive in terms of unemployment and tack revenues -- tax revenues and how governments work and what people's demands will be made of them in terms of what they want government to do. and so since we know from kai fu's discussion with you and other leaders in the field, we know this dislocation is coming. the western approach, i think -- and it will also impact china -- will be that you just can't let these things happen, and you're going to need a confederation of government of ethicists in universities, researching universities and companies to, in effect, referee what gets

introduced, when it gets introduced, how it gets introduced so we can minimize the downsides of this technology and if take advantage of the astonishing upsides. maria: what can you tell us about the broad economy today? if i know you're traveling in europe, so i'd love to get your take, your reaction to what you're seeing in europe, what you're seeing in the u.s. in terms of the economic backdrop, steve. given your investments across the board in various industries. >> yeah, sure. i think in the u.s. the manufacturing economy has been slowing, and, you know, it really feels a little soggy. the service economy is doing quite well. and so u.s. economic growth, i'm expecting somewhere to be in the 2s, probably 2-2.5 which is lower than last year.

china continues growing despite all the difficulties with trade whether that's 5-6 president, 6- 5-6%, 6-6.5, i don't know, and it's probably very difficult to measure in any case. there's a little bit of softness there, but they're using policy to try and stabilize that growth rate. and europe is, you saw with draghi on interest rates -- maria: yes. >> -- that they're having trouble. they're having trouble in europe really creating a lot of growth. and, you know, the brexit issues, you know, in effect the separation of the u.k. from the continent, you know, calls a lot of things into question, certain kinds of adjustments. and so i think that europe will probably stay as a relatively flat-ish economic area.

maria: you recently announced you're going to change the structure of the company, going from a publicly-traded partnership to a corporation. your stock is up, what, 60% in six months because that's going to lead to more people being able to buy blackstone stock. is that right? how's it going? >> welk, you know -- well, you know, up 60% doesn't sound bad to me, maria. [laughter] maria: that's good! [laughter] >> you know, it's not even been six months. so, you know, part of that is the conversion and part of it is because of the enormous strength of our business of blackstone and our ability to gather assets and put them to work at very high returns with historically very little downside. and so the strength of our business model, i think, is what's really doing that kind of appreciation with the dividend rate somewhere around 5%-ish and

lots of growth. it's really a very good place to be, and it's a good place to be particularly as a customer. maria: my thanks to steve schwartzman of blackstone. don't go anywhere, more "wall street" right after this. ♪ what do all these people have in common, limu?oug [ paper rustling ] exactly, nothing. they're completely different people, that's why they need customized car insurance from liberty mutual.

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maria: comeing up right here next weekd on the program, join me, we have a special program. the chief security officer of huawei, andy curry, is my special guest amidst lots of pushback about huawei being a national security risk. on sunday this weekend, join me on "sunday morning futures" on the fox news channel live at 10 a.m. eastern, we're talking with congressman if devon knew

yesterday and former congressman trey gowdy. miss if, start smart if every weekday right here on fox business, tune in from 6-9 a.m. eastern for "mornings with maria" right here on fox s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s.s. that'll do it for us for now. thanks so much for joining me. have a great rest to have weekend, everybody, and i'll see you again next time. ♪ ♪ gerry: hello and welcome to "wall street journal at large." this week we're at the cannes lyons festival of creativity, as they like to call it here on the french live area ya. it's an annual gathering of senior executives from advertising, television, media, digital companies around the world. they come here, a hardship journey, no doubt, to south of france to discuss trends in media, advertising and marketing. and, of course, they come to do