no no no i personally don't use it they will go on to pay pensions and cryptocurrency but i don't know whether that's haven't worked out the people do have access but they can't afford it all they make goes towards buying food. optimists a group to curran says can help those who fled the broad some estimate the number is already into the millions to transfer money to their families still here in venezuela but until fundamental changes come into effect the so called a creep to revolution won't ease the months of hardship cryptocurrency oh i could work i think and of course people would be interested in using it if one were just more or less certain that the price of oil were going to go up but when it's going down government people going to be interested in investing in it so obviously that's been a bit of a problem for the government because recently the price of oil has been going down it's going to be very difficult under these circumstances for any kind of crypto

currency actually i think to have to really take hold in venezuela because it needs economic stability i think in order to work. while you watch march international be back with another look to news in twenty minutes. join me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics or business i'm show business i'll see that.

this is cool and bust broadcasting around the world and covering the world of business and finance and the impact on all of us i am part children of washington d.c. we're so glad you're with us that on board thank you for joining is coming up today we talk about venture capital funding now and going forward with the c.e.o. and co-founder of carbon shane vera malley plus we take a look at trends in food but the author of bet the farm how food stopped being food hoffman all that coming up but first we had some headlines with our own. let's go. an international airing the grievances at the world trade organization sportif by a new review of united states trade policy leads our global report today china the u.s. the european union and other nations exchanged rhetorical fire in geneva this week the chinese ambassador to the w. cio made his point with a knowing reference to u.s.

cultural exports declaring himself a fan of late comic book creator stanley and then lecturing the united states with a motto from the spider-man myth those with great power comes great responsibility . u.s. ambassador jenice dennis she tried to respond in kind saying china apparently believes its power comes with little or no responsibility the e.u. ambassador raised systemic concerns warning the multilateral trading system is in a deep crisis and the united states is at its epicenter. meanwhile the united states is pressing their case against alleged cyber chinese cyber spying and economic espionage earlier today the u.s. in over a dozen allies issued separate but clearly coordinated denunciations of alleged chinese practices in the united states deputy attorney general rod rosenstein announced the indictment of two chinese nationals who are accused of links to the chinese government and an activity the prosecutors say violates

a twenty fifteen us china agreement to limit cyber spying here's what he said earlier today in washington today this part of a just announced criminal indictment of two hackers associated with the chinese government. the charges include conspiracy to commit computer intrusions against dozens of companies in the united states and around the world. and india is set to pull ahead of the united kingdom and a listing of the world's largest economies analysts p w c formerly pricewaterhouse coopers say they expect any a once claimed as the proverbial jewel in the crown of the british empire to switch places with the u.k. and the international monetary fund's twenty nineteen rankings extrapolating from an estimated twenty eighteen u.k. growth rate of one point six percent versus seven point six percent for india peeta abusee protects predicts india will take the fifth slot in the i.m.f.

rankings while the u.k. falls to seven p. to b.c. economist mike jakeman told reporters india is the fastest growing large economy in the world with an enormous population favorable demographic. and high catch a potential due to low initial job go initial g.d.p. per head it is all but certain to continue to rise in the global g.d.p. league table in the coming decades. we now move to talk about trends in food and some of them are pretty terrific and some of them may surprise you to do so we're joined by fred kaufman author of bet the farm how food stop being food fred glad to have you here push it you've been there thanks bart ok so let's go first to some of these trends are really terrific and i'll tell you about a couple of mine but tell me what we're looking at going forward i think in twenty

nineteen the name of the game is going to be drugs i think. we are seeing ever more abundance of nutraceuticals pharmaceuticals kanab annoyed in every water could have annoyed z.e.r. i want to make sure you talk to people you're above me so water can have a noise can ave oids is the non tricky part of marijuana it's the legal part it's the part of hemp that's been used in all sorts of lotions and it has some some sort of healing properties supposedly and we're going to be seeing it in coffees we're going to be seeing it in drunk drinks we're missing it across restaurant foods too we're also going to see in terms of drug health we're going to be seeing a lot more emphasis on got health in the kinds of drugs that you can take for that and of course also we're going to be seeing a lot of lab meat we're going to be seeing in in fall you know we talked about that one time before and i'm glad we're hit it again because there's a new investors

a lot of start ups it's really i mean what we talked about a couple of months ago it seems like fred is this has gained a lot of steam bart we have richard branson who's the who's behind it we have bill gates we have cargill we have tyson foods. and in fact k.f.c. international is now going to start using some lab grown chicken k. shoe in their in their chicken in k.f.c. international this is there's actually such great news it's the idea is clean meat in other words meat that has will have no antibiotics which will be made in a in a pure environment and of course the environmental impact to be so much lower i mean the that what the what the waste from the lifestar not only the waste but to get one pound of meat you need like thirteen hundred gallons of water and you need i think more than eighteen times the amount of grain to get one pound of meat so that you know when we're looking forward to two thousand and fifty we're looking towards a harsher system in terms of global warming and carbon we need to focus on meat

we're looking at nine million people on earth by two thousand and fifteen and we can't really say you can't eat meat we're going to figure out alternative meat and that's why the big money is behind it it's going to happen i'm not one hundred percent sure that i'm going to be cool with meat from a dish but you know there are a lot of people out there who say i don't want my california cows that are grow to be giants pumped with hormones and steroids and same with the birds of the pole the poultry so this may be our illegitimate alternative for those folks the key is is price point in other words that first meet that first you know motherless beef that was born in two thousand and thirteen cost about three hundred thousand dollars the price now for a hamburger is down to about eleven bucks but the way to do it is to get in at the high end so they're thinking flom gras if la gras is already costing fifty bucks for a serving hate they can be competitive i saw that i don't know if that's what the bill gates was of all but i saw that they were doing they were doing duck boy what

i have to ask you about is so to me compared to that frankenstein stuff we've been eating a lot of zucchini and there's even other vegetable. that are made like spaghetti and it tastes fantastic and it's not pasta nothing against the pasta folks and the same goes for call flour that is made very small cut up like rice which tastes bad tast also and again not not all that heavy carbs are good for you is that a trend that is going to continue absolutely and in fact that trend going to really flower with middle eastern cuisine middle eastern because he is going to trend we're seeing a lot more to heaney products we're seeing lot more alternative flavors from the middle east which are going to be hitting us very soon it's trending and all sorts of vegetables are trending and we've seen a lot already i guess in the end when you talk about milk for example the all men milk and coconut milk and everything and hopefully you know for people that are

lactose intolerant a lot of these things will allow them to to enjoy these things they're becoming what's becoming more acceptable you go to a starbucks you'll find these sorts of things for use will have all currency and now we have all the milk and what we're seeing down that aisle are literally dozens upon dozens of alternatives to milk's not just the nuts but the coconut everything and i think that the that the milk producers are in trouble they've lost a lot of market share they are no longer the go to morning cereal they're not in among the millennial is in the hipsters it's going to be a problem for them going forward no you are the food and i want to ask you about some nutty names i remember several years ago when the actress going to. name her daughter apple and i thought well that's a little bizarre but more and more parents are naming their children after food products what's the deal yet we have seen an amazing jump bart kale is now

a illegitimate baby name as is maple and rosemary and of course we have saffron these names and sage these names are going right up the list i don't know if we're going to see cauliflower or a rule. anytime soon but this is a thing it certainly seems ridiculous to me. fred kaufman thank you so much fred appreciate you being here you got a part. stay here because when we return we talk about the future of venture capital with chamber mally of carbon group and as we go to break here are the numbers of the closing bell.

is the principal emotions. is this a. medical doctor i want him to do. with. the person feedings maybe something. objections i would have but in politics history is a judge and history will judge who's presidency. and . which was not.

yet this is how the group. not long ago the political left to the guardians of free speech along with big tech the left today has gone from protecting speech to enforcing speech even to the point of penalizing you if you say the wrong thing in public you could lose your

job and libeling welcome to the era of simply shut up. antitrust regulators at the european commission are accusing four banks of colluding to manipulate the price of certain bonds while the competition commission did not name the four suspects deutsche bank and credit suisse chose to declare that they are cooperating with investigators while french bank credit agricole acknowledge receipt of a quote statement of objections from regulators investigators are looking into suspected price fixing and the market for s.s.a. bonds in the period from two thousand and nine to two thousand and fifteen the european commission is empowered to sanction offenders found guilty with fines up to ten percent of their global revenue. a legacy name and cigarettes has taken

a major stake in the infamous maker of the newest nicotine delivery technology u.s. tobacco giant altria the renamed philip morris companies incorporated announced they have spent twelve point eight billion dollars to claim a thirty five percent stake in jewel the maker of nicotine vaporizers jewels patented formulation of nicotine salts is reputed among users to pack a stronger punch and has been key to jewel success u.s. public health officials say the potent portable devices made by jewel in their rivals have led to an epidemic of nicotine use abuse dependency and. diction among teenagers the u.s. food and drug administration has found that one in five high school students used nicotine vaporizers in twenty eighteen a seventy eight percent increase from just the year before. and in merger and acquisition news the global consumer health market is about to shift significantly u.s. drug maker pfizer and british multinational glaxo smith kline or g s k say they will

merge their over the counter product units into a new corporate entity taking stakes of thirty two percent up lng will yield six hundred thirty three million dollars or about five hundred million pounds of savings between the two companies g s k says the new unit and the remainder of their company will separate and stock listings within three years of the deals completion in late two thousand and nineteen stock prices for g.s. k. and pfizer were up sharply in london and u.s. exchanges by more than seven and fourteen percent respectively on that. and the latest figures from the u.s. department of housing and urban development or hud indicate that homelessness has increased for the second year in a row hud's latest report estimates the u.s. homeless population at five hundred thirty three thousand in january twenty eighth seen with two thirds of those people lacking any form of shelter while the increase was small the trend seems to belie you low u.s.

unemployment statistics new york city and los angeles account for twenty five percent of the u.s. homeless population but seattle's notably rose to twelve thousand reflecting the trend of rapidly rising weapons and booming west coast cities in global perspective hong kong officially showed a twenty two percent home increase in homelessness for twenty seventeen to twenty eighteen in the u.k. the office of national statistics says the number of human beings without housing who died on the streets has increased by twenty four percent over the past five years to five hundred ninety seven in two thousand and seventeen on wednesday a forty three year old me. and without housing died hours after he was found unresponsive it westminster station near the parliament building. we could talk about the state of venture capital it's been quite a few years to do so we're joined by

a venture expert and former colleague of mine shane bauer mally who is the co-founder and managing partner of carbon shane well go thank you so much good to be here so it has been a couple of crazy years as you were telling me about give all the boom busters sort of the one hundred thousand foot view of venture capital there's tons of money out there right i mean it's on both ends of the spectrum both in the hands of investors also in the hands of the companies it's actually been at a decade high this year about eighty seven billion has already been put to work very founder friendly rounds being done a lot of power in the hands of the entrepreneur at the same time you're seeing huge valuation increases i think for later stage deals it's up fifty percent year over year early stage about twenty eight and seed twelve twelve percent or so so you're seeing this continued cycle of rapid capital deployment and also at a very very large scale the number of deals actually hasn't changed much at all it's actually kind of holding somewhat flat a number of deals a senator a valuation the amount of money going into these things better and in favor of the

entrepreneurs those who are doing it and or is it the same sort of folks who've been investing it is the bain capital's not big ones and also smaller ones from silicon valley at such a hundred percent so you've got the usual players and let's be honest the guys at the top of the bracket are the ones that usually carry the entire asset class in terms of returns but you've got a lot of first time funds got a lot of you know kind of carve out funds etc you know doing different strategies there's been a boost in female founder investments as well i think it's now almost one hundred million over you know versus like thirty million just relatively about six years ago how much we're seeing a huge incur. certain categories and a lot of traps in the main you talked about returns there and that makes be a wonder about the exit strategy for a lot of these folks you know they're in it for money i know the things that you did that you do in general trying to do socially responsible thing but for just the typical v.c. person they want to make dough they're in they're in it for it to make money how

are they actually doing in are they happy about what the current circumstances are yeah it's a great question so now on a venture scale you need to justify seven to ten x. return typically for any i want to ten times whatever you put it that's right and that's your goal and over the older guys i'm period are they anywhere from five to ten years is usually a time horizon as eventual you have to do the invest phase and then you have to do the harvest and then the return of capital but you're seeing these massive massive scale deals to the point where you know it only gives you a few options right you either got to go public or you've got to stay private but you see the onslaught of many activity both from corporate buyers but also from p. e. buyers as well you know if you look at some of the credit terms of the last ten years or so it's been very favorable for the p. e. environment just given kind of the last monetary policy globally you know as we kind of went through the recession and that's fueled a fire in roll ups and other types of add on's especially in healthcare in i.t. but in the just the venture space alone you're seeing

a lot of corporate acquisitions and you know kind of the tech driven i.p.o.'s have somewhat performed ok i see how this looks a year out because you know there's a lot of provision says cooley as you go public as an insider holder you know but if you look at the thirty day return yes the way the year before could go public right and if you just look at the way it's trended you know in the thirty days is typically seeing about a thirty percent bump at sixty it goes down about twenty percent and at ninety about ten percent so some of these companies actually have been hit very hard you know that raises a bit of concern for me quite honestly you know just where are these things really going what do the returns really look like. and you really justify putting that much capital work knowing that you have to have a very robust business at a very big large agency able to justify those investments well let me ask you i mean with all this money going going out there are there have been some big losses i mean they're not all times they've been a mess yeah so look the venture model still is holding very strong and that typically means you have one or two investments that carry the entire portfolio at

the end of the day you're lucky to get your money back some of them will will basically generate one or two x. returns and then you have that one that kind of your goal is the seven to ten times your goal yeah and every investment happen all that's right because in every investment memo that's kind of the thesis that you're going and then you're trying to paint the picture of what needs to happen in order to make that possible the reality is this is a very very tough business right it's literally predicting the future to some aspects but also growing the right business helping manage the scale and a lot of these business often require scale for their model to work on the flip side of that it's number one cause of failures usually management and a lot of first time managers that have these great ideas you know they're getting investments based on a snapshot of growth right what have they done recently but can they can you know keep up that momentum was that need to do and how can even manage a business at that scale you know a lot of times you'll see a management transition because you just have to like people are good at getting

from zero to five million five to ten beyond that it's a whole different beast and then you get into the realm of hundred plus million dollar businesses it requires an entirely different skill set to run that type of operations so there has been a ton of blowups there's been a lot of let's just call them bad ideas at the end of day like you know there's been a lot of good first time or second repeat entrepreneurs that have come to the table say hey i have this skill set either i've i have a proven track record you've invested me before i'm not the ballpark i want to do it again here's my new idea and you get checks written and that's a lot of things that you know the spirit. i typically have to deal with don't get to see they don't realize that this man or woman that at the table just basically got a ten million dollar check because they just return one hundred million to that fun right and they want to do the next best thing and look at the end of day repeat entrepreneurs usually are your best bet but sometimes it's just bad ideas or they're not scalable they're not sustainable or there's just so much other competitive factors that you don't cross that opportunity from are happening and

shane when you talk about the different sectors of looking forward into twenty nineteen which ones seem like the most opportunity and ready to kick start and go into gear yeah so it's interesting we're entering this era of the rise of automation right it's no secret and when you look at the core building blocks of that it's a machine learning you know basically every business has that in place it's one of those things i think was more of a fad a couple years ago and people trying to get behind the ones that are actually creating the next best ai but now it's becoming just a core commonplace as a as a needed component to even have that type of growth or have a real business going forward but robotics e.-v. you'll get probably electric vehicles electric you look at food tech health blah chain impact which i'm involved with that's my bias that's more than one number one passion social. investment and i you know i think there's going to continue to see

innovations in fin tech but i also think the opportunity is not just here in the u.s. i think you've seen of almost the point of you know technology we develop for technology's sake i feel like we're at the point where we're starting to lose our human capabilities here domestically just because there's so much tech and it's taken away our lifestyle it's a lot of things and it's mostly focused on productivity and employees are just overwhelmed but the flip side of that you look at like financial institutions some of these large corporates that are brought in by legacy data you know some the companies you and i have worked on in the past it's. interesting because right now it's manned and machine then the next phase is going to be man versus machine and then it's going to be machine machine to machine to machine and what's interesting about one of our favorite companies as you know that addresses financial data it's something that is leveraging ai to the hilt and is actually making a huge enough impact that it's actually scaring the people implementing it because

it's going to cost them their jobs eventually or an awful shines a light on all the errors that the data currently has in their systems you know if we embrace that with a different mindset and using it for fixing our problems we can actually look to grow what will be inches in the sea is like these companies that are burdened like that if they flip a i can they kind of jump through this analog transition phase and move straight to this kind of machine driven world where if they can figure out how to clean up that data they can make leaps and bounds and level with everyone else that's more in the startup landscape absolutely and keep our boom busters to get you out of suspense the company to change talking about its pen dos systems with pam pack citroen and she's been on the program numerous times we call her the data wrangler and she's involved in some pretty interesting and innovative things she let me ask you before we go where do you see v.c.

going you know next five ten years are going to continue gangbusters like it has for the last few years well you know it's hard to say but you know as every cycle happens like you can't continue like that forever there are going to be downturns you already seeing the market turn a bit based on geo political climate other things going on but at the end of day you know things go in cyclicality this is no different i am a bit concerned about you know what the world is going to look like you know just knowing what i know about automation and where that could go it's kind of us to up to us as humans whether we choose to embrace that because it will have its effect and there is no. aeration that can say to any young kid in grade school or middle school you really should be this that or the other because that the end of the day if there is a finite data set that your job depends on it can be automated and you can be replaced that's that's where we're entering into for me personally you know i'm a bit of a motor head and i'm very passionate about doing adventures and things and i mean we have to witness one of my number one passions of cars and motorcycles start to

get stripped away as we start to go to autonomy vehicles and things like that you know words we're trying to create new innovation around transportation i think you'll see a massive onslaught of technology there it's going to be for the better for a lot of people but for enthusiasm like me that like that feel of the engine and like to slam gears i may not have that option never again i cannot imagine a time where you won't be on your triumph is that b.m.w. of b.m.w. on the barbecue route going to the right now i think you saw a lot of thanks so much. that's it for this time thanks for being on board we sure appreciate it you can get it boom bust on direct t.v. channel three twenty one dish network channel two eighty we're streaming twenty four seventh's at pluto t.v. that's a free t.v. channel one thirty two or as always hit us up at youtube dot com so i will bust our t.v. so long for now. what

is the pin that's going to pop the global bubble back in two thousand and eight it was a two thousand and eight subprime crisis. today i think we can safely say that the bubble will be popped but the collapse of deutsche bank. he. was.

the u.s. defense secretary james mattis will step down from his post at the end of february the announcement comes shortly after president. to withdraw u.s. troops from syria plus. bring up the presidential question and answer session on the two thousand eight hundred biggest event and gives moscow's stance on the threat of nuclear war the ukraine crisis and brags that among much more. politicians and even ordinary people. even if you want to rule the world. international journalists even russian leader about potential plans for a global takeover thankfully everyone sees.