On this edition of Wall Street Week, Former US Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers says that the Fed has recovered after making an egregious mistake on inflation. Key Square Capital CEO Scott Bessent says that US markets now resemble emerging markets. Cato Institute Technology Policy Senior Fellow Jennifer Huddleston makes the case for Google's search dominance. Citi US Equity Strategist Scott Chronert outlines the tail risks facing US equities.
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This week Scott Bessen's of Key Square Capital on a precarious equilibrium for investors and the economic choice looming in November.
The US economy, in my mind, is starting to look like an emerging market economy.
And Jennifer Huddleson of the Cato Institute on the path forward for Google.
Is not just what it means for Google, but what it means for consumers.
We start with Chairman Powell's remarks in Jackson Hole and welcome back our very special contributor Larry Summers of Harvard. So, Larry, we heard this week from share Powell. What did you make of what he had to say?
Look, I think he's in the right broad place.
Inflation is coming down, the economy is slowing on current facts. Absolutely, the next move should be towards monetary policy easing. And that's what he said, and I'm glad he said that. I think there were a number of really important issues that are likely to be shaping of the policies for the FED and for the economy more broadly that he didn't address. He didn't say anything about epic budget deficit challenges in the years ahead. At the same time, we've got a huge investment demand for the green economy and a huge investment demand for data centers and the like. And so the question of what the neutral interest rate is was one he talked Pat He didn't really engage with the FED is saying that the neutral interest rate is somewhere in the twos. I think that's extremely unlikely. And if you don't have the right north star, you don't navigate very accurately. And so I think the FEDS making a serious mistake by believing that the neutral interest rate is so low, and therefore is misjudging how restrictive any given level of policy is. So I'd be surprised, quite surprised if it actually proves possible with sustainability to bring inflation down by nearly as much as the market is expecting, or bring interest rates down by nearly as much as the market is expecting over the next two years. The other thing that the FED must be aware of, and I understand why the chair didn't address it, but it seems to me it's something they have to be keeping in mind. Is we've got what people regard as a fifty to fifty presidential election coming, and one of the candidates says that the FED shouldn't be independent anymore. That same candidate, Donald Trump, says that we need a much weaker dollar. That same candidate says we need to push tariffs way up, meaning higher prices of consumer goods and more of an inflation threat. That same candidate talks about sending millions of workers home, which would create epically tight labor markets in our country and would surely go back to labor shortages and wage inflation.
Larry turning back for a minute to Jay Powell's remarks this week, he had sort of an initial explanation of what happened with inflation, where it came from what the FED did in response, and at least my take on it was we had really supply shocks that were really unprecedented. It took a longer sort of out, and we had this big demand push, particularly in goods, that spilled over into services. So it was sort of understandable why we sort of made a mistake on team trans what's your reaction.
Look, I guess it's under I guess it's understandable. I think I was reasonably clear in the spring of twenty and twenty one that it seemed to me that there were enormous inflation risks. I think looking back, it's kind of incredible that the Fed could have said in May of twenty twenty one that it expected to hold interest rates at zero until the summer of twenty twenty four, and so the misjudgment was a pretty egregious one. They're trying to leave the impression that it was all surprising supply shocks, and I think there are two problems with that view. One is there shouldn't have been anything very surprising about it. It's not like everybody didn't know that cod was affecting the supply capacity of the economy. So when the supply capacity is down, that means you have to adjust the demand. And the other is that if you look at nominal GDP growth, so that's dollar GDP, it's the money stock adjusted for the velocity, it averaged ten percent in twenty twenty one, in twenty twenty two, and above eight percent for the three years twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three. So how can you think with eight to ten percent nominal GDP growth that you're going to have anything like target inflation? And that nominal GDP is just a measure of demand, which is what monetary policy is supposed to.
Be all about.
So I think the FED got it wrong, and in all honesty, I don't think it was a low point in terms of monetary policy judgment. But you know, we all make lots of mistakes, and the important thing is when you make a mistake, to recognize it and fix it. And I've got to give the FED credit for the fact that while it wasn't always obvious that this would be the case. They moved strongly enough and vigorously enough to keep expectations anchored. And that's why it now looks more frankly than I would have expected, like we're going to get out of this very costly inflation episode without a major recession.
Larry, thank you so much. It's always a treat to have you with us.
That is our special contributor here on Wall Street Week. He's Larry Summers of Harvard. The stock market continued its upward climb this week, with one short detour on Thursday, as the S and P five hundred added another one point four five percent to end the week at fifty six thirty five. That's nicely above the median number per year end set by our Bloomberg Als at fifty six hundred. The Nasdaq was just behind the S and P up one point four percent for the week, while the yield in the tenure was down almost nine basis points and even week at three point eight percent. To take us through the markets, we welcome back now, Scott Croner City.
Scott. Great to have you back with us.
We think of you as our equity expert here. So tell me what's going on with these markets, they just seem to go one direction pretty much, and that's up.
Should we be getting.
Worked well, David, great to be here.
I'd say the risk reward from our perspective has gotten more balanced with this rally we've had. Essentially, we went into Q three with the view that S and P five hundred at fifty six hundred per year end made some sense. We argue that valuations around twenty two times we're sustainable. We're now at twenty three times. We've argued that earnings growth under the surface for the S and P five hundred is in good shape. That came through with Q two reporting bigger picture, you've got three forces at work in equities right now. One is the AI tailwind that's been supporting the megacap.
Growth part of the market.
The other is soft landing conviction yes or no, and it's been more yes of late, aided by Chairman Polace commentary at Jackson Hole today. And then the third element is the election impact, and that's I'm going to say a little bit more of a tail risk that's been pushed to side for now as we continue to kind of work our way through the aftermath of the dmc SO.
Let's go to the first one there, the AI momentum. If I can put it that way, We've got Nvidia.
Earnings coming up next week.
How important does that make something like in Vidia's earnings indicating whether we're keeping the momentum or losing some of it.
Well, the starting point is you look at where we ended the first half. The S and P was up about fifteen percent, and we'd attribute about five percentage points of that move to each of Nvidia, the rest of the MAG seven and the other four ninety three within the S and P. So Nvidia has been an important contributor to the S and P five hundred move. Obviously, it pulled back from mid July into early August and now has recovered. So I'd say absolutely yes. The way they report, the way they position themselves in terms of future growth expectations is going to have an important influence on its stock but also on the balance of the MAG seven and this AI play.
Well, it's interesting, as you said, sort of a third to third to third, but the third third was actually the rest of the pack. Are we starting to see some broadening out now? Because for a long time we were worried there was such a narrow driving of the SMP.
Well, it's fascinating when you look at the way Q two results have finished. Okay, and we're pretty close. We still have to get Nvidia and a few others to report. You actually had that meg seven component growing earnings in Q two by roughly thirty eight percent, which is pretty astonishing.
Okay.
We think there's some persistence of that in the second half. Interestingly, the other four ninety three grew earnings in aggregate five percent. Doesn't sound like much, but that's the first quarter of the last six where we've actually gotten a positive earnings growth dynamic out of the rest of the four ninety three.
How are we positioned going into the second half of the year. We're now starting the second half of the year. Go ahead, get that piece back in there. You've got it, okay, Scott. What I was asking was how are we position going in the second.
Half of the year.
So we think we're pretty well positioned. From the following perspective on the pullback, we were very comfortable re engaging in that megacap growth cohort on this mantra that growth is defensive as we navigate signs of economic weakness, which is ongoing, but more directly, we put our major sector focus on those areas most likely to benefit from the FED pivot, which apparently is getting closer and closer. Obviously September coming up. So we've been quite constructive on areas such as consumer discretionary financials via the banks and then interestingly also through the real estate part of the SMP.
Scott, that's why you're our equities expert. Always, thank you so much, as Scott Kroner of City. Coming up, Michael Milkine has said the drive to LBOs was made possible by VISITALC. What changes could be driven by the current crop of tech innovations. We've talked with William Deringer of MIT. That's coming up next on Wall Street Weeek on Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Wall Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston, Junk Bond King. Michael Milkine once said that it was the earlier spreadsheet program VISITALC that made pop sold the LBOs and takeovers of the nineteen eighties.
Technology has come a long way from then.
Professor William Deringer of MIT has studied what effects this ever increasing computing bar is having on which deals get done and how we asked him what led to his research.
So this sort of an interesting story.
I was actually at an event at MIT and I was speaking with someone who was one of the board members at MIT, and he mentioned, you know, I used to know some of the people who were involved with VisiCalc early on, and a series of conversations led me to this kind of interesting anecdote that apparently Michael Milcott at one point had said that if you really want to understand what happened in the eighties and the kind of.
The rise of.
Buyouts and the sort of Maggie deals of that period, the real key is visital So it was spreadsheet software. And so I spent some time trying.
To kind of track down this anect.
I found it mentioned a couple of a couple of other places, and it took me on this sort of interesting journey of trying to figure out, well, what what would that I have actually looked like? What so, how would spreadsheets software actually have changed things?
And what I found was that it's sort of more than just.
A matter of kind of making calculations easier, but that it really seemed to change the kind of limits of financial thinking and imagination, so things that were pretty hard to do. So modeling and modeling an LBO by hand kind of you know, on paper, was very arduous, very time consuming, and importantly it was not sort of dynamic. You couldn't kind of tweak one parameter, you know, tweak an interest rate, tweak a projection for revenue growth or something and then kind of get a new answer.
Uh. And so what seems to have been very quickly.
And there are you know, interesting quotations about this from people at the time, was deal makers realized that you could use spreadsheet software to not only kind of model potential deals, but also to sort of scan the realm of possible deals. So instead of having to just look at one possible deal, you could run similar sorts of scenarios across the kind of wide range of different potential target companies.
And I think that in some ways, really we could even say it sort of changed the way in which business.
Was understood from the sort of perspective of Wallstreet.
From your work.
Could Mike Milkine have done what he did without spreadsheets?
I don't think so. I mean I think that a lot. I think there would have been significant limitations. I mean, a one of the things that's interesting about the Milkan story, and this was actually a lot of what my research was interested in, was he was sort of simultaneously his work was simultaneously very technologically innovative and at the same time sort of.
Very personality drivet.
But there were certain aspects of the kind of milk and machine that was built built that was highly technical. I mean, much of it was even down to things like being able to track and sort of catalog the existence sort of where the market was in high yield bonds, who owned things, who were you know, who were potential buyers?
Uh.
But then also kind of valuation techniques. There were sort of long standing methods of course for valuing bonds, but with new sort of handheld calculators and the spreadsheets those the ability to kind of analyze and value fixed income instruments became kind of radically easier.
Where are we now, How is the current technology changing the nature of deal making and private aquay? And let me ask you a very specific question, do we just need as many private bankers anymore?
Yeah?
So, I mean, as as someone who spend most of my time in the in the past. I I know sort of about as much about the kind of really cutting edge stuff as certainly you know many of your of your viewers.
But from what I understand, you.
Know, one of the areas of development, as for example, trying to find sort of use the classy of AI to sort of simplify and automate things.
Like modeling LBOs.
Right, So, you know, when I was at DID training, you know, my first day as an investment banker. You not the first day, but maybe you know, week two or something, you learned how to kind of build LBO.
Models on spreadsheets.
And that's the sort of thing that required quite a lot of training, required a certain kind of technical artifice and expertise, And that's the sort of thing that may go towards that that may require less sort of direct kind of time and training. But one thing I think, you know, we know from the history of technology and certainly the history of the kind of calculation tools that I like to study, is that the kind of automation of some of those calculations and the automation of kind of lots of different things and the world don't necessarily lead to less work.
So if I had to guess.
And I mean, as a historian, we're always sort of cautious about making prognostications. I would not think that new tools would sort of lead to the need for fewer people, but rather, what I would expect to happen.
Was that they would kind of change the nature of the work.
That was Professor William Derringer of MIT at the end of a week focused on Kamala Harris's plans for the economy and how they differ from Donald Trump's. Welcome back now, macro investor Scott Besson, founder and CEO of Key Square Capital. So, Scott, welcome back. Good to have you here, David, always nice to be with you. Before we get to the rival economic theories here, let's talk about where we are in the economy.
Generally.
You have a note out right now talking about a precarious equilibrium in the economy. What makes that precarious?
Well, now, I've been doing this thirty thirty five years now, and the US economy, in my mind, is starting to look like an emerging market economy. That or every kind of emerging market below up that I've seen in my career, and that is you have rise in asset prices. So in the US stocks and housing that is fueling consumption by the top ten or twenty percent of households, top ten or twenty percent of households or count for more than fifty percent of US consumption. Then the below that the rise in asset price is being fueled by a seven percent to GDP budget deficit, the biggest we've ever had when it's not a war, not a reception. Then the third leg of that is jenet y and has moved the quarterly refunding to what shorter term debt, which has had the effect of suppressing interest rates. So you know you've got I call it the three body problem after the Chinese science fiction book and the famous math problem. So we don't know which one of those could go first, but it's one of these that if the stock market were to go down, then it could create a gap in consumer spending.
So that does sound pretty perilous for investors. And given the fact we don't know which one will break, although you think one of them is likely to break at some point, what does investor do? How do they position themselves for something breaking?
Well, I think investors should be ready for more volatility, which I also talked about in the note you know, I think gold's very interesting here. It's at an all time high, I think as we're speaking today, and you know, I think just in general, everyone should do a gut check make sure they're not too far out on the risk curve, because you know, it's been a pretty good run.
So let's turn to the question of rival economic plans from Donald Trump, somebody whom you know have known for a lot of years and talked to you from time to time, and then Kamala Harris, someone new out of the scene at least with inspector economic plans. How does investor really really address those two alternatives? How do you macro investor on these tools? Start with Kamala Harris.
Well, look, I think it's two competing visions. You know, Michael Boskin had a very good editorial in the Wall Street Journal yesterday and he said, you know, we're not getting a lot of meat out of Kamala Harris's programs yet, but we can go back and look, and there are three different sources there. What is she say in the twenty twenty campaign? What did Harris Biden do? And then what is she said so far so in the twenty twenty campaign, which you know, she's running from you know, single pair healthcare, you know, lots of restrictions, the big, big, big spending stopping fracking, which.
She has backed off of. She said she's thinking better now.
Well, you know, I always think with a politician, it's where's your heart and where's your head? And I think in her heart she still believes that. You know, with Joe Biden, he campaigned to Scranton Joe and then broke hard left, and you know, we ended up with a great inflation.
I think she is hard left. She's trying to.
Maybe constructive ambiguity, and you know, I think maybe that's why CNN in the Washington Post came out and chastise her. Chastised her over the policy she talked about in Raleigh on Friday, because she's supposed to keep the mask on the past November fifth.
However we read it. What about things like housing? She's trying to address that we do have a housing problem in this country. I think you'd agree we do not have enough housing. We're not building enough housing. She has a plan at least to try to stimulate that.
Well, there was no plan to say how she's going to stimulate it. What she's going to stimulate is buying. We don't need more house buyers, we need more houses, and there was nothing for how that's going to happen.
If don't the markets react to then say, if they're going to be house more house buyers, we better start building some houses.
No, it just means prices are going to go up, costs are going to go up. You know, why don't you know there's no solution to the root calls? Why don't we have more more housing now? Is that you know Blue City, the zoning problems. Is it that we need some kind of nationalized regulatory you know, in terms of building codes. Is there an affordability problem? Because you know, I will tell you that a lot of the policies from Harris Biden over the past three and a half years have added to the cost of housing.
So let's turn to the other side of the aisle. If you could to Donald Trump something you know a fair amount about a lot of criticism that his economic plans would actually be inflationary, particularly on the tariffs and curtailing employment from and curtailing immigration. What do you respond, Well, first, let's talk about contailing immigration. So for the first time in my career, first time in my career, the left is actually admitting that immigration suppresses wages. For thirty five years we heard immigration does not suppress wages. Now it seems like the only supply side solution that Harris Biden had in the past three and a half years is more low end workers. But it did keep inflation down below where it otherwise would have been.
Do you agree well in the Harris Biden world, sure, because they also constricted heavy regulation and they kept people out of the workplace, And then I actually don't think that they have a problem with low end workers doing better. So if low end wages go up, and you know, as you said, you know tariff's terriffs for a one time price adjustment, it's not inflationary. You don't set off an inflationary spiral. It's what in the UK they call it an administrative adjustment.
Provided you don't keep escalating them.
Providing you don't keep escalating them.
Scott, it's always a treat to have you with us. Thank you so much, the Scott Bessant of Key Square Capital. Coming up, Google has been judged a monopolist. What comes next for a leading hyperscaler, We ask Jennifer Huddleson of the Cato Institute.
I think there's always a question when it comes to tech companies of what would a breakup actually mean and what would that look like.
That's next on Wall Street Week on Bloomberg.
This is Bloomberg Walls Street Week with David Weston from Bloomberg Radio.
This is Wall Street Week. I'm David Weston.
A federal district court has ruled that Google is a monopolist when it the search and this fall will decide what to do about it. To explain what's at stake and what to look for next. Welcome back now, Jennifer Huddleson, Cato Institute's Senior Fellow and Technology Policy. Great to have you back, Jennifer. So let's start with what the court decided. It's a very long decision, but having looked through it, there's a lot of talk about the Biden administration really trying.
To create new and trust law.
Is this new law or established law being applied to Google?
It's a bit complicated.
So what we saw in this particular case was that the court ruled that Google had violated parts of the Sherman Act in two key regards.
When it comes to the exclusive distribution.
Requirement agreements that it had, as well as to a very specific type of search advertising.
We saw Judge Meta in.
This case apply the Microsoft case to this. Although there's a lot of questions around some of the decisions that were made, some of what the court decided to reject in terms of potential competitors, whether or not that the market that consumers actually experience, some of the conversation around what some of these alternative products look like, whether or not they're actually equal products or inferior products.
So while we didn't.
Necessarily see new law or a change from the consumer welfare standard, we did see some questions about perhaps how some of those standards were being applot.
What does this mean for Google? I mean, one thing, it means they've already said they're going to appeal, and we know from the Microsoft case that you'd referred to that took a good long time, several years going up and down and finally settling. But what does it mean for Google in the long run? Do you think it'll.
Certainly be interesting to see And I think the question is not just what it means for Google, but what it means for consumers and what it means for other businesses when it comes to businesses dealing with one another in businesses creating certain types of agreements. While this case specifically deals with some of Google's distribution agreements, it's likely to have some broader impact as well. It'll be interesting to see what the rim these phase actually looks like if and when we get to that point. As you mentioned, the case is like it's going to be appealed, and it's likely to take several more months, if not years, to come to a final decision.
We have that remedy sphase coming up in the fall now, and one of the things that Bloomberg's report is the Justice Parment is at least considering the possibility of asking to have Google broken up.
Is that likely?
I think there's always a question when it comes to tech companies of what would a breakup actually mean and what would that look like, and is that something that's even truly possible. In many cases, oftentimes consumers like the fact that their products are able to be integrated with one another. That's one of the things that consumers are looking for. We often see actually requests for more interoperability.
Not less.
Let's talk specifically about it. If they don't break up Google. What the possible behavioral remedies could be seeing you mentioned the restrictive agreements that at least the judge final restrictive with respect to Google paying Apple and others to have their search engine embedded as the default.
Is there any pro.
Competitive justification for doing that? Wasn't that something that was pretty nakedly a way of really deterring other competitors.
We've seen default agreements reached in multiple cases, and the judge did continue to uphold trinco and say there is no duty to deal. So it is important to recognize that there is a possibility to see these agreements continue in some way. The question is was Google acting as a monopolist and abusing its ability.
To get these agreements? And this really is.
Also going to come down to that question of are the alternative search engines inferior products?
If there's no price that Apple would pay to set being as its.
Default, is it fair to say that they can't have Google as their default?
What does that mean for consumers?
Are we expecting consumers to get the inferior product when what companies are trying to do is provide their consumers, whether it's a smartphone company, or a web browser.
Product that they actually want.
When we look to Europe where they change the way that defaults could be done, and when you get a new phone out of the box or go to a new web browser, there's not necessarily a default search engine. We see that consumers overwhelmingly still cuse Google because it's the search engine that they want right now, and it's the search engine that is bringing them the kind of results they expect.
Let me play devil's advocate here actually in reading this decision, because I hear what you're saying, and there are findings that if hact, Google is just a better search engine. But if that's true, why were they paying all that money? I mean, Google's a pretty smart company. They're not going to pay billions of dollars for nothing. And if they really are just a better search engine, they didn't have to pay any money. They would have been the default by default.
There continues to be a wide array of business dece engines that go into these kind of complicated agreements. What we really need to be looking at is is this a case where we see consumers being harmed? Is this a case where we see a company abusing its monopolist behavior?
And then we.
Should really focus on the fact that just because a company is large does it and just because a company is successful doesn't mean that it can't engage in standard business practices that we would allow other companies to do as well.
This Google case was brought under President Biden and his administration.
By the Justice Department.
We do have an election coming up, you may have noticed in November, and we may have we will have a different president. It will either be Kamala Harris on the one hand, or will we hit Donald Trump. At this point, do we have any sense what competition policy might look like under either of their regimes.
When we look at the previous Trump administration, they were highly critical of several.
Of America's leading tech companies.
In fact, many of the anti trust cases started during the Trump administration, or the investigations at least started during the Trump administration. Similarly, we've seen the Buiyen administration continue to be critical of big companies in general and really try and push this more European.
Style anti trust approach.
So I think, regardless of who wins in November, we're likely to see continued scrutiny of large companies, and the question should be is that good for consumers and is that good for innovation?
On the question of how much of consumer pays because there are problems with network effects and things. Is there an issue that we're not getting to see other competitors They just never make it into the game at all. That's one of the claims I believe that was made in the Google case that people just couldn't get into it. There may be a better, more innovative search product out there, we just never.
Get to see it.
One of the things that we often see in technology sector, particularly when we're talking about these kind of antitrust cases, are questions of market definition. In the Google case, the judge very much locked into this kind of general search in gen definition, things that allowed you to search and then go off site was what he really wanted to limit it to, to limit the number of competitors. But if we look at trends, particularly amongst younger users Gen Z and Gen Alpha that's starting to access the Internet, they're really looking at video forward. Often they're going to TikTok, or they're going to Google's YouTube to do their searches, or they're doing much more specialized searches where they're not necessarily using those general search engines. That's something that's kind of changed with all users, and the judge in this case kind of pushed that aside to really only focus on general search engines. He said that couldn't be considered competition because you couldn't go off site. But the question is is that really the consumer experience?
And this is also where AI comes up.
Is AI going to be so revolutionary that this completely changes the way that we view what it means to conduct search? Is this is looking at a general search engine in a few years going to be the same as talking about video rental stores as streaming is coming about.
Jennifer is always great to have you on these anastrust questions.
Thank you so much.
That's Jennifer Huddleson of the Cato Institute. Rule number one, never lose money, Rule number two. Never forget rule number one, so says Warren buff Unfortunately, too many of us appear to forget both of Buffett's rules too often.
Just this week, Ford lost.
One point nine billion dollars on its all electric three row SUV when it concluded there wasn't enough consumer interest to make it work.
I talked to Ford CEO Jim Farley, and he said the new mantra is that any new electric vehicle must be profitable within its first year on the market. If they can't do.
That, it won't be approved.
That's why they canceled this electric three row SUV.
Others are losing money for less auspicious reasons. Former Representative George Santos lost three hundred and seventy four thousand dollars this week when he agreed to pay restitution after pleading guilty to charges of wirefraud and identity theft.
And if that weren't enough, he'll.
Likely have to do some jail time as well.
It's turned me now that hile out ambission to Cobnie judgment.
We need to make decisions that were another day and guilty beating guilty a I never imagine.
I hate, but it is a necessary one because it is the right thing to do.
Carl Icon is losing two million dollars in fines he owes to the SEC for not disclosing enough about margin loans, But all that's a drop in the bucket of the nineteen billion dollars in net worth he's lost in the last fifteen months.
Both Icon and IEP have agreed to pay one point five million and five hundred thousand dollars in civil penalties to settle these charges without admitting or denying the findings. Very interestingly, these go through December of twenty eighteen to the present, and this was fifty one to eighty two percent of IEP's outstanding securities as collateral pledged to secure margin loans worth billions.
Many US find ways to lose money that don't involve getting crosswise of the law. Buying lottery tickets, for example, state lotteries took in over one hundred billion dollars last year, which is good for the States, but not necessarily for those buying the tickets. Over a third of that money staid with the States, which means the rest of US lost about thirty seven billion dollars on the deal. Betting on sporting events has yet to catch up with the state lotteries, but it's moving up fast, with the American Gaming Association saying about thirty seven billion dollars was wagered in the first quarter of this year alone, with over three billion of that going to those taking the bets for the leagues.
This is a revenue stream at a key time for them because we're seeing that media rights there's a lot of tunnel, a lot of disruption, especially at the team level. So I think bringing in the gambling money to supplement that has been something that they've really leaned on recently.
Sports has given us another way to separate us from our money. It's the purchase of name, image, and likeness of our favorite college football star. And as if betting on sports weren't enough, the football program at Oklahoma State University has found a way to make it easier for us to spend our money on those nils. They now put QR codes on their players' helmets, so you can use your smartphone when you're watching on TV and purchase the NIL for your favorite player without having to go find it. Of course, it's not only about losing money. There's always the enjoyment you get from just being in the game, even if most of the money ends up going to the house. I'm no gambler, but I did have one great evening in Las Vegas when I spent a couple of hours at the craps table and actually ended up a little bit ahead of the game. But then again, I had the smartest, funniest and best tutor there, ever, was Nora Ephron, who taught me how to calculate the odds of the dice coming up on any particular number, and then how to use the odds to place my pass versus don't pass, and come versus don't come bets, which actually worked at.
Least when she was with me.
That does it for this episode of Wall Street Week, I'm David Weston.
This is Bloomberg. See you next week.