Hosted by Amy Morris.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Opinion podcast. Catch us Saturdays at one and seven pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com, the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen on demand wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm Amy Morris. This week, we take a closer look at the political divisions around Donald Trump's legal complications. Plus we're going to take a deep dive into the debate over the abortion pill, and we're gonna look at who isn't returning to the workforce post pandemic. Let's get started. The Federal Reserve hiked rates for the ninth straight time. FED Chair J Powell signaled their work might not be done yet. We need to raise rates higher. We will, I think for now, though. We as I've mentioned, we see the likelihood of credit tightening, and FED Chair Powell says they don't expect to cut rates at all this year, despite turmoil within the banking industry. This says he assured the public that regulatory action demonstrated safety in the banking system and that all depositors savings are safe. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, however, struck a different tone on Capitol Hill during a Senate hearing, and it's not considered or discussed anything having to do with blanket insurance or guarantees with points. As Treasury Secretary Yellen says, the US is not considering those blanket deposit insurance without first working with Congress. Within all of this turmoil in the banking sector, the commercial real estate market has come into focus as another at risk sector. Let's get into this a little bit more. Bloomberg opinion columnists Connorsen, founder of Peachtree Creek Investments, joins me now and Connor. You argue in your column that the US could actually benefit from a real estate bust, but a very specific type tell us about that, right, So, if you live in a community that has seen very rapid increases in home prices over the past few years and has an above average meeting income, but you'd have a lot of tired, old, dated sort of shopping centers and office buildings from maybe thirty or forty years ago, this could be maybe not a good news for the owner of the property, but good news for your community as these properties can finally be redeveloped. So, but it takes money to redevelop and will and strength and time and effort. Is there enough of that leftover in space? Well, so the bottom that holding back the redevelopment a lot of these cases is that the market has said there's a lot of demand for these communities, but the owners of these buildings might have held on them for the variety of reasons. Maybe there were some kind of week tenants who were still taying the rent. Maybe the building was being financed at very low indust rates, and so even if it was sort of performing mediocre, they were like, well, the checks are still coming in, so it's fine. And this is really the catalyst for the market saying, Okay, it's time for you hand over the keys. It's time for somebody else to take a shot at this property, and with the community to do so well, as evidenced by incomes and home values, the markets saying that this is a sort of right for redevelopment. Okay, let me get into a couple of things here. First, for clarification for the audience, what is it you mean when you say commercial property? So the most obvious would be if sort of a dying or dead office park with a lot of surface parking, that's probably the most prime opportunity for redevelopment, but also shopping centers in stunt cases as well, where the shopping center could be several decades old, maybe it's half full, maybe the tenants aren't so great, but the surrounding community is really strong. Sort of these are the sort of areas between higher interest rates and then a client in the office market that are most interesting. And how would a commercial property owner know when it is time to let it go. Well, if the tenants go away and there's no money coming in, that's a good sign. Or if they have a loan coming do maybe the loan on the property. If there's leverage on it and it was financed during the low interest rate environment, now it's a much different interest environment, and if they can't afford it, or the lender says we're not interested in sort of offering you this opportunity. So there's sort of two forcing functions here, and I think both will happen in a lot of cases. But not every place is as prime for this. Not every place with a vacant office building is going to be in a position for redevelopment. What are some of the criteria, right, And so this is sort of a bit like the mall discussion ten years ago. We were talking about dying malls and dead malls, and that really wasn't the case, in that a lot of malls are building fine, sort of class A malls still doing well. It's really a function of the surrounding community. Does the community have a lot of people as a growing are the income strong? If so, then there's always an opportunity to turn that into something new or sort of a refreshed concept or redevelopment. If the surrounding community isn't doing well, then it's like anything else. If it's a mall goes away or an office building goes away, and you're less likely to see something happen on that piece of lands. Are there any communities you have in mind when you are thinking of this? You labeled a few in your column, right, So I'm in Atlanta, so I can see it here that there was a lot of population growth, in home price appreciation during the pandemic, and out in the northern suburbs a lot of very old, sort of uninteresting commercial real estate, and there's opportunities there. I think Orange County, California, Northern New Jersey, probably in northern Virginia, Dallas, just anywhere where there's been a lot of sort of economic growth, but maybe an old, aging commercial real estate footprint that was built thirty or forty years ago. I'm going to throw you a bit of a curveball here. You're in Atlanta, I'm in Washington, DC. DC is unique in that a lot of those empty buildings you refer to, they're owned by the federal government, so it's not really commercial property, it's not really private property. And there is a move afoot to encourage workers to return to the office at least a few days a week to get those buildings up and running and populated again. But is that something that the federal government could also consider, is just letting those buildings go absolutely and hopefully government probably works in the lag where you'll need to see that movement happening in the private sector first. But there's certainly a lot of interest in the sort of Washington metro with increasing housing affordability and just more having in general, and so hopefully that is a way to sort of tie two things together and convert some of that property into housing. You also talked about the home market, the housing sector, and that you're seeing some optimism in the housing sector. You mentioned this in one of your columns on the Bloomberg terminal. Let's get into that a little bit and how that's primed right now. It's a really interesting time because with mortgage rates being so high, a lot of homeowners who locked in mortgage rates during the pandemic at very low levels aren't interested in selling and just will sit on their home their low mortgage rate. And even though sort of buying demand is down because of affordability issues and hire mortgage rates because there's no resilementory, the resilmentory levels remains very low. It's sort of pushing people into the new home market and as results, creating a boom for homebuilders. And they're reporting pretty good earnings. The stocks are doing well even in this environment. And I think you're going to see eclished home production, even with mortgage rates to seven percent, just because there's so little reci elements were in the market right now. Does that have anything to do with what we saw last summer? Remember last summer, everybody was selling their home at the asking right plus ten thousand plus twenty thousand. They were getting ridiculous amounts for their homes. When they were putting them on the market and they were selling before they were even listed. It seemed like, is that sort of a hangover from that? Yeah. That what happened was we went from a really hot boom to a really cold bust very quickly last year when mortgage rates went up so much, and I think a lot of buyers sort of took nine months off where mortgage rates had five percent in the spring, they said, Okay, I'm done. I'll come back next year and see what things look like. And because you had nine months of the buyer demand that didn't happen. They came into the market January and said, well, for life reasons, I have to buy a house, and there may be desperation buyers, and so they're looking at what's available and they're saying, there's nothing in the resil market for me. I guess that means I have to go to a home builder and get something new. And they might not like the price, they might not like the selection, but when you need a house, you need a house. In a lot of cases. I like that you talked about new construction, but it seems like that's a different animal only because you're having to deal with labor shortages and material shortages and those are still an issue or is that starting to clear up now? It's starting to get better. And the home botherers have said that the early stage of construction, so framing a home, pouring the concrete, all that that's actually finally speeding up, but the later part of the cycle, putting in finishings and appliances and things like that, that's still backlogged. And think if it's sort of like a pig going through a python where because there was a slowdown and housing starts about nine months ago, that early stage part of the process has kind of cleared up, but the later stage is still backlogged. But we should expect later in the year that that late stage part of the process will speed up as well and just really sort of make things a lot easier for builders trying to build and buyers trying to buy a home. Now, Connor, you've been following this for quite some time, so when you are looking at the commercial real estate market or even the home sector, the home buying, the home building sector, has it ever been quite this volatile or has this sort of par for the course considering everything else the economy has been going through over the past couple of years, and we can all lay it at the doorstep of the pandemic. It's a very strange environment because you have the unemployment rate that's the lowest in fifty years, and yet maybe the worst environment for office buildings in decade. That's kind of weird. And then you have housing affordability that buy a lot of measures is the worst it's been in forty years. And yet home mothers are doing well in this environment because we didn't build home through a ten years. The sort of millennial generation isn't at those years. We're buiking to buy homes, there's nothing to resell, and it's pushing people into the building market. So when you explain it, it it makes sense, but it just kind of weird from a macro standpoint because things are all out stored. I want to circle back very briefly before I let you go about the real estate bust that we started with, and how rebuilding and refinishing those comm properties force use somewhere else, some way else could actually be better for the community. Who are some of the people who could benefit from that. I'm not sure if they're enough developers who have the skill set and ability and willingness and financing to do this. This might take some time because there might be a lot more properties turning over than there are developers willing to redevelop, and so this process could take a while, especially if bank credit is going to be tight for a bit. But I think if you moved to a community, and maybe you moved out there for family reasons or life reasons, and you say, I love my neighborhood, I love my house, but we've got to get rid of these old buildings that have are underutilized and haven't been used very well for decades. This is finally the opportunity for you to see your community turn into what you wanted to do. Connerson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and founder of Peachtree Creek Investments and coming up. The debate over the abortion pill has put at least one pharmacy in a no win situation. We'll look into that. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. You're listening to Bloomberg Opinion. I'm am Morris. Women's health advocates, so small victory in the FDA decision to allow pharmacies to dispense the abortion pill Mythopriss Stone. The day after that decision, Walgreen's Boots Alliance was the first of the big pharmacy owners to sign on CBS at Rite Aid quickly followed, and then came the pushback. Vice President Kamala Harris reacted to this. It is FDA approved and was approved twenty years of goal. This is not just an attack on women's fundamental freedoms. It is an attack on the very foundation of our public health system. All right, and for more on this, we bring in Bloomberg opinion columnist Bethcoed. Now, at first glance, and you made this point in your column. Walgreens, CBS and write Aid all women run companies. But this got complicated quick bring us up to speed, Yes, very quickly, got very complicated. In January, these companies applied to get certified through this program. But then in February they received a letter from a group of republic In state attorneys general that basically said it was a warning, do not distribute in our states. There will be letical ramifications if you do. Walgreens responds and says, you know, we don't have plans to distribute in your state, so you know, no problem. Basically that's when they started getting pushback from the left. So we've already got the pushback from the right, now we have the pushback from the left. Basically what Kamala Harris said, you know that these drugs should be districted. It is legal that should be distributed, and you know women need access to these pills. Is this simply a culture war or is that an oversimplification. Is it more complicated than that. I think the culture wars are definitely a piece at this, but there's a lot more going on here right We are as a country grappling with what a post row America looks like, and I think this is changing every day. There's lots of legal cases going through the system right now that we don't know how they're how they're going to resolve. This is an issue that demands a lot of nuance. It's very complicated, and this is all happening in a time when nuance and you know, has got out the window. So I do think that the culture wars are a part of it, but this is really just a moment of change in flux and it's super challenging to be a company trying to navigate that. What is the biggest challenge at this point for a company like Walgreens, because it seems on the surface that if they just follow the state and federal laws, they're covered. They're fine. Just follow the law, one would think, right, But there's a dispute about what does compliance mean. Right, So on some levels, you know, well, legally FDA regulates drugs, so that should trump everything. But however, you know, a company like Walgreens really risks putting its staff in a terrible you know, in a terrible position here right now. So if if it's staff very stay law in some cases, they could risk finds moving their license, jail time. So there's there's real ramifications here. So you know, I think I think that is the big question. What a state law, what a federal law? Right now? That's you know, that's at least state laws are changing, and you know what happens when those things don't align, which is what we're really seeing. Have you come across this yet, We're maybe staff at Walgreens or CVS would have a moral objection to dispensing such drugs. Is that an issue that comes up. We've definitely already seen this um and we've run into issues and I you know, I'm not sure if this is Walgreens specific. I think we have seen a couple examples here where you know, harmacists have said they feel uncomfortable distributing and it goes against their morals. You know, I think that's a different, slightly different issue because that's sort of their personal beliefs versus the law. So I do think this sort of takes it to another level here. Are there any other drugs out there that have created this type of conflict or is it's just specifically this? Are we in a whole new realm of how to distribute pharmaceutical medication. This has really become such a hot fun issue because fifty percent of abortions, more than fifty percent of abortions in this country, our medication abortions to require these puzzles a huge deal. Anti abortion activists have said that this is where they're going to push, This is going to be the next frontier. I think the Bidens administration has really thought and pushed to widen access here when when we did see the doc's decision overturned rows. So I think that this has really taken this debate to a whole new level, a granular level, definitely, and it puts Walgreens in a pretty tough spot. But are other pharmacies also dealing with this sort of no win situation. They get pushed back from Republicans or Democrats, or pro life or pro choice, depending on how you want to categorize the people who are pushing So this is really interesting that the reason that Walgreens has become central to this is because we know that their response to the Republican state ages became public. We don't actually know what CBS or writing said, if anything, and they have managed to stay Studiously why it obs You can't really blame them when you see what's happened to Walgreens. But what's interesting here is if you look at this, Walgreens has not changed its position. When it applied for the program back in January, it said you will follow state and federal law. I think where things have gotten messy is actually in some of the reporting, because that even that is a complicated issue, right, So some of the headlines sort of said, you know, Walgreens won't distribute abortion pills in states where they are legal, right, So technically that is correct, okay, but it might be legal in the state of worship pills may be legal in the state, but it might not be legal for wagerings to distribute them in the state because there's extra regulations that require a physician be present or that they're dispensed through a physician. So even that is a very that even requires nuance there. It's it's not so simple. So what might come of this. Is this a place where a company would stand up, take a stand, fight back or no. I think this is the eternal question, right, It's it's a really, that is a really. I think that's probably something they're debating internally. Um. You know, they are in the spotlight right now, people are watching what they do. Um. I do think it's worth noting that we have seen, you know, we've seen the drug store companies say they're going to apply for this program. So at least they are distributing in some plan. And also, to be clear, no one's distributing anything yet right like they've been proved, so this is all sort of if they are approved for this program. But the big retailers Walmart, Albertson's, Costco, they all have pharmacy divisions and they have not even applied for this program. So I do think there is a little bit of a double standard here where you know, why are critics so focused on Walgreens, which is at least, you know, doing something as opposed to some of these other companies that we haven't even seen apply yet to distribute anywhere. Well, what should those who support the program, whether it be Democrats, pro choices, however you want to categorize them, what should they be doing at this point. I do think that, and this is starting to happen, is to maybe put some pressure on some of those companies we've not heard from what is your plan? I think that makes it easier for a Walgreens to not have to stand alone on this. You know, they are really being targeted, but we don't really know where the other the other corporations where they are going to come out. And I do think um lawmakers, Democratic lawmakers really saying you know, what is what is your plans? These other companies sort of makes it seem a little bit less like Walgreens is just hanging out over here, you know, on one side, and everybody else is on on the other. Um. So I really think that that I think that that is sort of the next step before I let you go how far is this going to go? I don't mean just this particular issue, but we saw the overturner rov Wade. We see them now concerned about the pills being distributed through pharmacies. What what is it? What's next? What does this end? Oh? Gosh, um, I think this is this is the beginning. I think you're right. I think there's a long way to go. Right now, there's a there's a case in Texas that could actually this might all be moved. Right there's a case going on in Texas right now that threatens to basically overturn the distribution of MEFO pristone nationally. Um. So again, this is just a moving target. We just don't have a clear vision yet of what again, the post row America looks like. And I think that's really honestly scary for a lot of people. Okay, Bethel to thank you for your time and thank you for watching this issue for us. Bloomberg opinion columnist beethco It covers corporate America and don't forget We are available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. Now stay with us. Coming up the latest legal entanglements for former President Donald Trump and then look at the gen Z workforce or the lack of one. This is Bloomberg opinion. This is Bloomberg opinion. I'm Amy Morris. We continue to follow the legal entanglements of former President Donald Trumps some issues that had cropped up, some even well before he took the oath of office. And even though the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary are nearly a year away, we're already seeing members of the GOP start to who's their alliances. After President Trump encouraged his supporters to protest his potential arrest, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy says that's not exactly what he meant when someone says that they can protest, he would probably be referring to my tweet. Educate people about what's going on. He's not talking in a harmful way, and nobody should. All. Let's bring in Bloomberg Opinion columnist Jonathan Bernstein. He focuses on politics and policy. He joins me now, and Jonathan, I want to get into the divisions between the GOP over Trump's legal entanglements. I want to get into all of that, but first, it kind of almost sounds like Donald Trump would almost welcome an indictment. And what I mean is Senator Lindsey Graham had said that an indictment could actually help Trump win the White House. Does he have a point? Probably not. You know, the initial reaction to an indictment might be rallying around the party leader. But we are as to say, months away from Iowa, away from New Hampshire, and you know, the truth is that most people who are strong Trump supporters are going to be strong Trump supporters. They're not going to care about indictment, They're not going to care about anything. But there's a lot of people in the party who are not particularly strong Trump supporters. They like him, almost all Republicans, you know, there's a sliver who've always been never Trump, but most of them like him. They think that he did good things as president because he followed, you know, for the most part traditional Republicans. He did traditional Republican things and so but they're not one hundred percent sold that he should be their nominee again. And over time, if we are facing an indated or most likely right now I'm multiple indicted on different cases, Republican candidates, they may start to worry about the general election, and well, they should, because most Republicans are going to vote for the nominee no matter what. We know that, whether it's Trump, whether it's whoever. But Trump always underperformed. He he ran for president twice, and he probably underperformed in both cases what a generic Republican would have done. And it's hard to see exactly who the people are who said no to Trump the first two times, and they're going to say, oh, yeah, now that he's been indicted, now I'm going to vote for him. So we don't know how many people he'll lose, but if he doesn't have a whole lot of leeway to begin with, given that he lost last time, so it probably hurts his chances in the general election, and that in turn probably winds up hurting his chances for the nomination. Would it also hurt chances for folks who were on the same ballot, those down ballot races, who maybe align themselves with him. That's basically how the mechanism works, is that they start worrying, you know, he's going to be a weak candidate, and then they look for an alternative and perhaps endorsed one of the other candidates, and that starts to hurt is standing with voters. It's not what you know, it's not a full, you know, quick assembly line. You know, somebody endorses the Santas and voters say, oh, well, I think I'll go that way. But it tends to matter, and depending on the size of the of the impulse that people are hearing, it tends to hurt the candidate during the generalation because in the nomination because absolutely those candidates want to win and they're going to be concerned, well, you know what's going to come out in trials? How's it going to look. One indictment in New York might not mean that much. But what if there's also an indictment in Georgia. What if there's also an indictment on the Documents case by the federal government or on January sixth by the federal government, and we could have very easily all of those happening. Would that then be where these divisions within the GOP line more of a how does this affect Mike candidacy versus a concern about the behavior for which he is being scrutinized. Yeah, I mean I think that anybody who really cared only about the behavior would have been in the never Trump column long long ago. There's not anything really really new here, certainly not after January six, twenty twenty one. You know, one of the reasons that it's that he still has a chance is because unlike in the Democratic forty am the Republican Party twenty thirty, forty years ago, where messing up elections would have a huge cost, but the Republican aligned media is such an important part of the party right now, Fox News, the talk shows, etcetera, etcetera, and their centers are a little different. They don't really They probably do better with Joe Biden in the White House than with you know, Desantist or Mike Pence in the White House. They may not abandon Trump as long as he's good for rating. Still, would an indictment of Trump create a chilling effect on future officeholders? No, the real president here would be not to indict if assuming that the prosecutors have the goods on him. And you know, I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to have an opinion about that. But we don't have a former president indicted, not because there was some sort of doctrine not to in former presidents, but because former presidents generally haven't been crooked or if they if they were doing something illegal, it was subtle, it was you know, not coming to the attention of the authorities. That's just not the case with Trump. He has very much. You know, it's something like the documents case where he just refused to cooperate with the law and got himself in trouble in a way that was very difficult for the said to ignore and got himself raided and got you found out that he was lying to them. Well, that's the kind of stuff that typical citizens would get indicted for and has just never happened before in his United States. So no, I don't think that it changes the game at all if he's indicted. I think what would really change things if they look at this and say, you know what, a normal citizen would be indicted here, but we shouldn't do it for a former president. You know, that would let future presidents off the hook, and it might also let other politicians off the hook. You know, if governors are going to say, well, how come I own get that treatment. If you didn't indicte Trump for that, why shouldn't And we may sort of go in that direction of saying, well, candidates, former officials. Current officials should be treated differently and held to a you know, a different standard that they're allowed to do whatever they want. Historically we've said higher standard, but that would be a lower one. Yeah, and you know, foreign leaders have been indicted for former prime ministers, former presidents, and of course, you know, like you said, you know, at the lower level, plenty of former governors, current governors, former senators, current senators, Senate candidates have come under legal trouble. We never had the situation where a former president who is also a leading candidate for the nomination for the next cycles has you know, it's it's never come up before. You could say we're gonna have a president either way, but the real presidents are you prosecute people when there's when prosecutors have the goods on them. What would it take to actually cause more than a rift, more than a chasm? Well, I think you know, with Trump, there's always been this problem for Republicans that they don't believe that he is ultimately loyal to the party. You know, it's it's impossible to imagine Joe Biden or you know, before the Hillary Clinton saying you know what, you're not going to nominate me, I'm gonna go ahead and run a third party campaign, or I'm gonna tell my supporters to stay home, even though I know it'll cost our party the election. Because somebody like that, even somebody like Bernie Sanders, who's not properly even a member of the Democratic Party, he has a strong preference, and everybody knows he has a strong preference for Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton to beat Donald Trump. Nobody believes that about Trump. Everybody believes that he didn't really hear if it's not him, Does he care whether, let's say it's Ronda Santis, whether the Santis or Biden wins the presidential election. He may not care at all, and so he might try to run a third party campaign. He might just tellus supporters to stay home. We don't know, and that makes them the kind of wildcard that makes it very difficult for Republicans to deal with. Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg opinion columnist. Now the numbers show we are getting back to pre pandemic labor force participation rates well most of us. There is one group still missing. Bloomberg opinion columnists justin Fox Cover's business, and it joins us. Now, justin what is gen Z's role in the labor force? Where are they? If you just look by age groups and they slice them into some pretty narrow ones, what stands out is people over sixty five and people in their twenties are still well short of where they were in terms of both labor force participation and employment versus right before the pandemic. Most groups sort of between those are pretty similar to where they were. And then teenagers, especially younger teenagers, how much higher labor force participation for the pandemic. But it's still not that many of them worked because that they used to decades ago, but that their their participation in the labor of force has fallen a lot over the years. Well, what's the hang up? Demand for labor is high, so the jobs are there? Yeah, you figure with the sixty five and older it's sort of either fear continuing fear of COVID, or just this sense that you know, I'm the eight years old, maybe I just stopped working and for a while there a lot of people's portfolios were growing a lot other that than less the case lately for people in their twenties. I don't know, and this is something that's gotten relatively little attention. I think the best explanation to me is just that that's an age that's people who are just about to go into the labor force when the pandemic hit. They got laid off at higher rates than anybody else because it's a more junior workers. And also lots of them were working in service jobs in restaurants and retail and stuff, and so they got laid off. Recruiting out of college got kind of paused for a few months there, and I just get this sense, you know, it's it's it's basically down by about a percentage point their labor force participation. So it's not huge, huge numbers, but it's a few hundred thousand people who maybe got a little throne for a loop. O. Other things are a they got thrown out of their jobs, but they also got a bunch of money thrown at them early in the pandemic, which may have changed their equation, although they're you know, they don't have that money anymore. And another is a lot of people in their early twenties. They might have had to take care of younger siblings or older relatives when their parents had to go off to work. And schools were closed and such. What would it take to get these groups that you talked about back into the workforce. I mean, in general, it seemed the lesson of the past five or six years has just been a really tight labor market. You know, a lot of demand, higher wages pulls people back in, and so you figure, you know, a couple more years like the last couple of years, and it would probably be all better again. But obviously that's not exactly how things are looking right now this year. Beyond that, I'm not sure, like, how do you go find these people who really should be getting started on their careers and help them give them either that nudge or that little boost to get them working. It is a little worrisome, But I want to know from you how worrisome is this? I mean, can we get along just fine without this chunk of the workforce or has the pandemic completely changed how we look at the workforce, the face of the workforce, and how we look at work. I mean, I think in general, we are entering this new era where we're generally going to be short of workers after a couple of decades where we kind of felt like in a lot of jobs employers always had the upper hand and it was tough, tough being a worker. Sense that's great, and this is just because you look at demographics and there just aren't going to be all that many new people coming along. The baby Boomers are pretty much easing out of the workforce now, and there are a lot of millennials, but after them, the Gen Z is not quite as big a group of people, and so it looks like we're going to be generally short on workers and going to need workers. So it would be great if we could find a way to persuade or help these people in their twenties get back in the labor force or get into it for the first time. Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He covers business and that does it for this week's Bloomberg Opinion. We are produced by Eric Mullow. Don't forget We are available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.