Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg BusinessWeek 20180106

Murphy and lets start with politics. I cant wait to see how the magazine handles the world of politics in this year. You start here in our home front. Mike pompeo has had a good year. Megan mike pompeo is the director of the cia and those names have been mentioned as a potential successor to rex tillerson. Our secretary of state has not had a good year and we will talk about his departure has cooled, there is a widespread feeling that his relationship with the president is not longterm. So mike pompeo has emerged as a personal favorite from the president. This means a lot to the president , who you get access to. His circle is very small and mike pompeo has become one of them. Julia how has he managed to cultivate that relationship with the president . One story that comes out is the daily briefings. How normal is it for the cia director to meet the president on a daily basis . Megan its more than that. How do they break down the information . A lot of pictures, a lot of graphics. There are two things about pompeo. One is that hes ideological. Hes been forthright in defending the president about collusion with russia. This is a guy who is a west point graduate, harvard law graduate, someone who wears that coat of arms, that the president likes those people, able with a people with a military background. Julia the domestic cover story, it is a shocking subject of which we dont know about or talk about enough, and thats whats going on in the latenight shifts in meet Meat Processing factories. Megan we have fought hard to expose the horrors that our underexposed labor force, sometimes illegal immigrants, sometimes white workingclass marginalized people working to support their lives on eight dollars an hour and this cover story goes into this third shift and it shows the life and death on the lines of this third shift when people are risking everything for an average of 12 an hour and standing in thats in vats of chicken fat and what their going through as sanitation workers. Carol we have more from Peter Waldman and what he says points to a dark place in human history. The third shift is so named because its the graveyard shift. It begins around midnight and its the folks that come in and clean these plants and these people use highpowered hoses and all kinds of chemical cleansers, usually chlorinated. They generally clean meat packing machines while they are operating, so there are lots of blades and blunders spinning. Steam is lofting everywhere. These are the folks that come in and clean. Very often, they are immigrants. This is not a desirable job. Its sort of the bottom of the labor ladder in the United States and even more often, they are undocumented immigrants. Julia talk to us about martha and her experience because you begin her story in graphic detail. Sure, i call her martha because torres was only one of the surnames given to her by several people in the documents we reviewed. The reason is that she was or is an undocumented person. We dont know if she is in the United States or not because we couldnt track her down, which is part of the story. Its why we begin with the stories running her surname. She was working at a tyson plant in kansas and she was cleaning a Conveyor Belt at one point and her glove got caught and the Conveyor Belt essentially reeled her in like a fish and it cracked her forearm in two places, the bones literally sticking out of her skin. She was taken to the hospital and given emergency surgery and so forth and where the story gets interesting, there are lots of factory accidents, but her employer was a Sanitation Company called packard sanitation out of wisconsin and they were in charge of helping her. They did cover her medical expenses, but when it came time for her to apply for workers comp. To account for the months and months of lost wages and some perhaps cushion for future disability, because she was permanently impaired in the nerves in her hand, they refused. Not only did they refuse, they fired her. It turns out thats not an untypical response to workers in this industry and perhaps others when the employer in this case could prove to a workers comp. Judge that the accident was marthas fault. In kansas, there is a faultbased workers comp. System and packard and their insurer convinced the judge she shouldnt have put her arm where it was and that cracking it in two places was her fault, cleaning the machine, and they gave her nothing and fired her. Carol in this third shift, there is often a lot of undocumented workers so that if they are injured, it is like they have no recourse, no voice to speak for them and say here is the compensation for damages or so forth and these individuals are afraid to come forward. Julia they are afraid to whistle blow. We have very little picture of what they do. There is anecdotal evidence here and there, such as martha. There is another case where an employee, and undocumented employee of packard sanitation made a claim for injuries in arkansas. Made a workers comp. Claim. Packard fought them under the sole reasoning that they were not legitimate, authorized worker. And in that case, the state Appeals Court of arkansas overturned packards decision and told packard you have to pay for that persons workers comp. Whether or not they are a document worker. But this is just a tiny anecdotal things here and there. In general, these people kind of melt away into our society. If they are able to work, they go to another place and work. If not, they perhaps had backs head back south over the border. Julia up next, why the latest uprising in iran is different from the last. Carol what is most at stake for the middle east and the United States . Julia this is bloomberg businessweek. Him and carol welcome back to bloomberg businessweek, im carol massar. Julia and im julia chatterley. Carol in the politics section, the wave of antigovernment protests in iran. Julia and the men and women are largely from rural areas. Carol and their grievances stem from the cost of common items. The 2009 Green Movement came from the disputed reelection of the then president. Millions take to the streets and it was concentrated in the capital city of tehran and it was by and large being led by the upper class, who were reform minded. They wanted political reforms. What we are seeing right now, while you are seeing fewer people in the streets, it is more dispersed and it is concentrated in the outskirts of iran, not necessarily in tehran. You are seeing it in the smaller, midsized towns and it is really about the economy and how after the nuclear deal was tied, a lot was promised in terms of economic success and it has not necessarily been delivered and people are feeling it in their pockets and they are taking it to the streets. Julia we have all seen the headlines of spiking agricultural prices. You point out a 50 rise in price of eggs. That is crippling for ordinary iranians. What is going on against you what is going on and what is driving this . What would you expect to see some kind of reaction at some point and now we see it. The economy is not doing very well. Unemployment is double digits, 12 . Inflation is down 10 . You are seeing a big spike in basic food prices for things like eggs and agricultural goods. Those concerns have broadened to a much wider demonstration about the very essence of irans political establishment, which is the theocracy and the iranian republic led by the ayatollah that have ultimate control over the country. Carol this is the second term for president or tommy for the president. He has brought inflation down to 10 . One thing slow to come back to the country is foreign investment. Some of many see necessary to helping the economy. That is part of the deal he sold to the iranian people through the 2015 nuclear deal that it was going to remove sanctions from world powers and lead to a Huge Investment from Foreign Companies and multinationals and governments. It hasnt played out like that. And the degree that it has hasnt really impacted your average iranian. On top of that, there is a banking crisis and oil prices are still ready cheap, still pretty cheap, below 60. He has faced concern and strife from his supporters and hardline conservatives, many among them, the clerics. Julia it bought him time to enact the reforms he was talking about as a moderate and he was consistently fighting the hardline in the country. Step forward to today and we have donald trump pushing back on the nuclear deal and creating uncertainty surrounding the situation. To what extent has that also pontificated some of the fears we have seen with ordinary people . Donald trump does pose a threat to rouhani because he is able to do certain things with his rhetoric to kind of make Foreign Investors even more nervous to put their money into iran. He has increased sanctions, he has talked about tearing up the Nuclear Accord and he has raised the idea of putting it to the u. S. Congress about whether this thing should be completely rewritten and if sanctions should be reimposed. That has a direct impact on the confidence that Foreign Investors have of investing in iran and that in turn slows Economic Growth and that is a problem for rouhani. He also does have, i should say, an opportunity to play this to his advantage, rouhani does. It is clear that there is structural change that needs to happen and time is not on the side of the clerics. If he can navigate this delicate political balance and convince the hardline clerics that we need to do this, you need to let me push more reforms through, whether thats cultural, letting women, for example, go to soccer stadiums, or economic reforms, that could help in a big way navigate and survive this, which is the biggest challenge hes had since being in office. Julia we have already started to see him react like this. Who are the people blaming . On the blaming rouhani . Because they are also calling for the death of the supreme leader, so where is the blame being placed here . Its very hard to find the political lines as they cut across iranian society. Its easy, maybe too easy to put them into two caps. Two camps. On the one hand, you have moderates who support rouhani and his election, and on the other hand you have hartline hardline conservatives who aligned with the clerics and the line. Whats interesting is that was much more of a rural populist and he was much more liked in those parts of the country than rouhani is. Rouhani has had to do a lot of things that had a bad impact for your average workingclass person in the rural parts of iran. Hes cut subsidies way back that was simply not sustainable, the system he took over. He had to make a lot of reforms that cause a lot of pain in the lives of people. Julia up next, what unicorn frappuccinos and trending hashtags might tell us about Economic Growth in 2018. Carol plus, to raise rates or not to raise rates are good that raise rates. That is the question. The tale of two curves. Julia this is bloomberg businessweek. Julia welcome back to bloomberg businessweek, im julia chatterley. Carol im carol massar. You can listen to us on radio on channel 119 and a. M. In new york and one of 6. 1 in boston and a m naik 60 in the bay area. And a. M. 960 in the bay area. Julia and in london and asia on the Bloomberg Radio plus app. In the economic section, several social trends in 2017 that may help us predict what will happen in the economy in 2018. It told us something about the American Consumer and that struck me as i was talking to will some friends at the party, the things that talk to us our economic at heart so i called the economists and chatted about what happened in 2017 and it struck them similarly. Julia ive never heard of a unicorn frappuccino. Carol thats what they came up with . These economists . I came up with the unicorn frappuccino. Julia its interesting. I had to look it up. Its a lot of pink and purple and blue. People bought it at five dollars or something . Its five dollars a pop, really expensive drink and people were buying them like crazy. It was a treat yourself phenomenon. Him and it was the strong extravagances small extravagances weve seen among young consumers, whether avocado toast or unicorn frappuccinos or five dollar bottles of kombuchas. We have an able to see people splurge on these kind of luxuries. It could be worrying if people dont move on to bigger purchases. Julia do they end up spending more on bigger luxuries . Exactly. Are you spending consistently enough . And not saving up to buy that house. Carol the other story is vacation. Julia they are all splurging. Absolutely. One thing i really like about travel spending is that it moves up recovery and falls when you hit a recession and sometimes its even a leading indicator. What are seeing is travel spending is going gangbusters. They are really leaving. We saw a Record Number of outbound trips in 2016 and a really high travel imports, which means americans spending on travel abroad. Really surged in the first months of 2017, so it looks like the trend has continued and that struck me as something important about consumers. Julia interesting, we are not seeing the wage gains we were expecting. Is that pointing to a growing confidence rather than a financial reward response . Absolutely. We have seen wages trending along 2. 5 , which is keeping up slightly over inflation, and we havent seen the pickup we would expect to be driving consumer confidence. Some people hope it will happen in 2018, poll we saw in 2017 was a lot of nonwage benefits. We saw a collection of anecdotal reports around the country speaking to employers offering perks at work. You know, think about snacks in your pantry here at bloomberg, fitness programs, benefits, that kind of thing. These nonwage compensation to get around wage gains. It will be interesting to see whether that holds in 2018 or whether employers have to spend more. Carol both of the u. S. Treasury yield curve and phillips curve are flattening. Julia that makes it a top job for economists to decide when and how to raise rates. Carol we let economics editor peter coy explain. Peter the yield curve and the phillips curve are different and the only thing that unifies them in my story is that some people looking at these two are saying the fed reserve and other central banks, as well, can afford to not worry so much about inflation and still keep the focus on getting growth going. In my article, i am saying not really sure, maybe we still need to think about the fact that inflation could start accelerating in 2018. Julia okay, so take a step back and explain what we are talking about here because it comes down to interpretation. What is the phillips curve and what is it saying to us at this moment, the relationship to the factors . Relationship between the factors . Peter its named after a new zealand economist and he simply, it is a simple idea, which is that there is a tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. When you have high inflation, its associated with low unemployment and vice versa. Now, Milton Friedman and some others in the 1960s poked holes in the phillips curve by saying that in the long run, there is no free lunch. Central banks cant buy stronger growth on lower unemployment on a permanent basis by tolerating high inflation, but on a shortterm, there remains in theory, what you think of as a slope. If you imagine inflation on one axis, high unemployment. The problem is, it hasnt proven out in the real world. The curve is flat. Julia because u. S. Economies have been creating jobs hand over fist and we havent seen inflation pick up. Now we are confused. Where is inflation and why arent we getting wage growth . Peter inflation remains below the feds target of 2 . Even as the Unemployment Rate was down to 4. 1 , and so there are people saying the phillips curve is broken and we can ignore it. And all im saying in this article is no, the underlying logic remains sensible. Right . You would think the economy heats up, workers are in great demand, can demand higher wages, wages go up and that transit into higher pay overall. Carol whether globalization or workers not having enough power, technology having a factor, maybe workers are satisfied. Peter there are always reasons, but i just think there comes a point where for all the excuses and explanations, at some point you would think it would bite. Carol are we just inpatient . And maybe it will start . Peter maybe in the coming year, it hasnt happened yet, but that doesnt mean it never will. I dont want to leave the yield curve out of that. Julia if you look at the shape of the yield curve, its the flattest it has been in a decade and a people are expending stronger inflation, the back end should be higher. Peter thats the other conundrum. The yield curve, just to back it up a little bit here, is the idea that if you look at the maturities of say, treasury bonds, the short ones, have the lowest Interest Rates and the curve goes up like this so that the longterm 10year note, 30 year bond have higher yields because people want to be rewarded for tying up their money longer. Thats the normal shape of the yield curve and every time the yield curve tips so that the 10year note is less than, pick your points, its a strong precursor of a recession. So there are people who are warning now that because the yield curve is flattening, we need to worry about a recession. All im saying is if we were indeed inverted, if the yield curve had tipped, i would be worried. We are not inverted. We have a positively sloping yield curve and there is no guarantee we will ever invert. We might stay like this for a long time. Carol what will it take to undo the damage in zimbabwe . Julia where would you go if you want to know what its like to camp on the moon . Its all in the pursuit 2018 travel guide. Carol this is bloomberg businessweek. Is this a phone . Or a little internet machine . It makes you wonder shouldnt we get our phones and internet from the same company . Thats why Xfinity Mobile comes with your internet. You get up to 5 lines of talk and text at no extra cost. So all you pay for is data. See how much you can save. Choose by the gig or unlimited. Xfinity mobile. A new kind of network designed to save you money. Call, visit, or go to xfinitymobile. Com. Julia im julia chatterley. Carol im carol massar. Zimbabwe looks for a way to rescue itself in the post moved on the era. Julia and back by warren buffett. A billiondollar upgrade. All that still ahead on bloomberg businessweek. Julia we are back with megan murphy and megan, in the must read section, the political turmoil in zimbabwe. Does this mean a future of change . You focus on the companys that struggled in the economic challenges. Megan this is a great hes by great piece by Matt Campbell and with all the other turmoil engulfing the world, zimbabwe and rubbermaid gabis downfall robert gabis downfall has drifted off into the sideshows again. Why this stands out is that it traces the economic devastation, not only through the companies that have really struggled as the company tries to get back it s economic bearings, but the reasons why it exists. Its not as simple as people think with exportation and poor use of national resources. A lot of lithium, abundant natural resources, that government corruption. Its also specific inflation and currency issues that are crippling these companies who can no longer pay for muchneeded, whether to move their goods abroad, whether to pay for the equipment they need to harvest their crops to make a sort of 21st century go of things. Its really a systematic go of all the problems that combined together to make this economic devastation so real. Carol a real liquidity crunch for those companies that are financially viable, they are having problems accessing money to run their businesses. Megan Everybody Knows about the 100 trillion zimbabwe notes which existed and issues like inflation running at 98 per day at points. But what people know less about is the creation of the zollar, that is sort of the parallel currency. Much of our audience know zimbabwe runs its economies on economy on u. S. Dollars because frankly, they lost the ability to print money during the hyperinflation in the mid 2000s, late 2000s. But they do that to a Virtual Currency and exchanging those in making those viable for companies that need access to liquidity, need access to cash, whether its to buy supplies, farming to keep them over season to season has become impossible for them. Carol no easy segue except that this is another feature. A Sneaker Company owned by warren buffett. Like i said, no easy segue. Megan i love this story, another gem. I dont know if you are a runner, you probably dont wear these shoes. This is a company in the world. Its owned by warren buffett. Its a brand that is a great tale of how a company reinvents itself continually and is now looking to people who hate what shoes do. Its a great story. Carol are you a runner . Megan do i look like a runner . No. Julia we all claim to be that. One of the things i found interesting when working on this story is that there are sports and Athletic Industries that track this stuff. Since 2001, 13 Million People have taken up running, the equivalent of the state of illinois. Carol lets talk about why you were writing about this company , because i told you i had never heard of them and my husband had a foot injury and he bought one of these a year ago. Who are these people . This is a company that has had, it has been around for a long time, give us a history. It had troubles but its really come back strong. Its been around since 1914, but its been owned by many different people throughout the years. Carol private equity, right . Yeah, so they started making baseball cleats and Victorian Era bathing slippers when you use to wear shoes and they got into the running market in this 1970s when jogging took off and they had a shoe that took off and was bouncy and was made with springy foam and all these people started buying it and they were manufactured in puerto rico. The manufacturer didnt know how to handle that sort of size of orders so they ended up shipping a lot of defective shoes. There were other issues with the company and it went bankrupt in 1981, passed through a number of different owners. Meanwhile, a lot of other sneaker companies, nike is growing, adidas is growin. Then it turned around in 2001. Julia if youve ever been to a Berkshire Hathaway agm, you you probably know brooks. Its tied to the ownership. Jim webber, the ceo, came on board and said we are not going to make any of this other stuff. We are just doing serious running shoes. In 2006, Berkshire Hathaway, actually fruit of the loom, bought brooks. Warren buffett has a number of Investment Managers that are triathletes and marathoners. They say they have these Shoe Companies that are doing well. He met with webber and webber explained his all running, only running, no cross trainers, no cheap shoes at walmart. These sort of 150 180 highend shoes. Carol the company is doubling in size every three years. Megan not currently. It was at the time. I think it was 500 million now and their goal is to double it. Carol how . Thats what i asked. Carol especially with nike out there, adidas out there. There is a lot of competition. There are two ways to do this. One, you get more people into running. Or you can make other products aside from running. They decided to stick with running and they are trying to get people who are more casual runners who probably currently run and all those other brands youve heard of to switch to them. Carol up next, boston landlords try to win over millennials. Julia the hawkish thing on social media. Can hq trivia keep up with its own success . Carol this is bloomberg businessweek. Julia welcome back to bloomberg businessweek, im julia chatterley. Carol and im carol massar. You can also find us at businessweek. Com. Julia and our mobile app. In the finance section, how boston landlords are trying to woo startups and their armies of millennial workers. Carol paul experienced it firsthand. The idea is, in the financial district, a lot of tenants are ,eaving and going to areas burgeoning areas where new towers are going up. They are losing a lot of tenants. They are trying to get startups to fill in the gaps. They have opened up secondfloor amenities room, kind of a bar, game room, coffee house, where everything is free. Free video games, pool tables, beer, wine, lattes made by baristas. Its pretty amazing. Carol it like a club. Sounds like a lot of fun. Hey, blackstone is a huge landlord. This is their Equity Office division. And they are not the only company doing this. All the landlords are scrambling to appeal to this millennial generation and the younger gen x people, who sort of, their expectations are different. When they are choosing a job, they may even consider what kind of office they are moving into. This helps with recruiting. It helps with retaining, it helps the landlords fill vacancies, at least thats the hope. Julia its not just boston, though. Its happening all over the country. New york, chicago. Landlords around the country are going if we want the best talent, they have to make the workplace speak to them. Thats right. I guess the idea is that if you are hiring really talented people and you are expecting them to work long hours, maybe they dont have as much time outside of the office, so lets try to make the office more fun. So even while, if you are working 10 hours, maybe you stop for an hour and have a beer down in the second floor and you come back up and continue working. Carol whats interesting, you have Companies Like we were, where you can go and rent out some space and its open space with couches and so and so forth and amenities. Traditional landlords and office owners, they are having to compete with Companies Like that. Not only are they competing with each other, they are competing with new construction. A lot of these New Buildings have open floor plans, industrial looks, and high ceilings. Collaborative spaces, lots of fun stuff. They have that, they are competing with those New Buildings, but they are also competing with wework and other places there are temporary spaces. But a lot of these startups started in we work and they look for something more permanent as they grow. The landlords want to be there to provide that. Carol speaking of startups, in the technology section, hq has a hit on its hands. Julia but it has one or two hurdles on its path to growth. Intermediate labs looks like a tech company. They make an app. They are software engineers. I noticed when i came there and to my annoyance, i was trying to record audio, its rather noisy. There is a fan whirring, its an old new york city building, which is strange because it also houses a studio for this show called trivia hq. Carol what is trivia hq . Its a game show. Jeopardyesque, but you play it on your smart phone. And its a bit lower rent. Theres a single host, single camera, what amounts to a closet. The thing that makes it cool is that it is participatory. Unlike jeopardy, when you have three contestants competing to win cash, the viewers are competing. So you at home are answering questions. Julia there are two shows a day, how many people are trying to get involved in this . Hundreds of thousands. There is a 3 00 eastern show and a 9 00 eastern show, a primetime show. Carol arent they all at work . There are entire offices shutting down. In fact, people tell me that even at bloomberg, people are pausing their workday to play this game show. The midday show is attracting between 400,000500,000 people. The primetime show, we are talking over 600,000 on new years day, 750,000 playing and a Million People tried to play. So these are big numbers for live videos. Julia and you compare it to nfl on amazon, this is important. Its easy to say over 400,000, that isnt much because we see 10 million views on youtube. Those are cumulative views. Viewsrent live the use rely on advertising. The numbers are a lot lower on the internet. The thursday night nfl game on amazon, the first one in september attracted 372,000 as an average audience. Its not totally comparable because the nfl game is three hours long, the trivia game is 15 minutes. But it gives you the sense, if you can attract a half a Million People at the same time and same place, thats valuable. That can be monetized. Carol are they . They are not monetizing. This is Silicon Valley. They are a smart Silicon Valley startup run by a couple of veterans, run by the ceo. He was one of the founders of vine. And they have decided, probably wisely, although it could turn out not to be wisely, to not monetize it yet. That said, it does seem pretty obvious that there will be ways to bring advertisers into this because you have a twominute window before the show starts and right now there is just a countdown clock. You can also imagine sponsored questions, this question brought to you by proctor and gamble or something. To be clear, im just speculating on the sponsored question thing, but its pretty easy to sort of anticipate how they might try to make money. Carol up next, the Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas Matters again. Julia a holiday as if you are in the greek isles, but at a fraction of the price. Carol this is bloomberg businessweek. Carol welcome back to bloomberg businessweek, im carol massar. Julia and im julia chatterley and you can listen to us on the radio at sirius xm channel 119 and also on amd 11 30 in new york. 106. 1 in boston, am 91 in washington, d. C. And in the bay area. Carol and in london and asia on the Bloomberg Radio plus app. In the technology section, the Consumer Electronics show kicks off in Las Vegas Next week. Julia thats where you will find the latest in hardware, software, ai, and Virtual Reality. Carol we talked about why it is in vogue again. Cefs used to be the hottest tech show in the early 1990s, early 2000s. The original xbox was announced with the rock and bill gates in 2001, the palm pre of iphone competitor was announced in 2009. But since then, it has slowed down where microsoft, apple, samsung, and google set up their own private events they hold with media and special people that they invite towards the holiday season. Carol ive been here a couple of times years ago and it was chaotic. It was crazy. Everybody was there, microsoft had their own huge venue. It really was a huge event. So it has really come down off a lot from that high level. Julia peak. Carol yeah, its peak. Absolutely. All the Major Companies are what drove people toward cefs in the earliers, and now that they have their own events that will slow down traction and visitor numbers, but thats starting to change in the last couple of years, especially this year. Julia in a world where social media and mobile apps are king, everyone can scoff at ces. Fastforward to today and these same Internet Companies are focusing more and more on hardware and never have to take now they have to take it seriously. What are we expecting this time around . This time around, the companies are not going to be presenting. Apple is not going to have a booth. Google actually will for the first time. All the big players will be behind the scenes trying to strike deals in order to get the components they need to unlock the next wave of major technologies. All the Big Tech Companies are working on selfdriving cars, augmented reality glasses, voice assistants, and speakers. What they need other component what they need are the smaller component makers out of europe and asia to provide them with the tools to build these devices and sell them on their own in the coming years. Carol and thats the point. You are not going to see Virtual Reality glasses and things like that because these people are hunting for those components that they can make their own devices, whether apple, facebook, pick your name. Thats right, you will see these technologies from Smaller Companies that you and i have not really heard of, but you are going to see the apples of the world, google, samsung, hunting down these component makers to strike deals with them to buy the lenses, the chips, the software they need to make the next range of ai devices. Ar glasses and a vr glasses. Julia you described this as a make or break year for Virtual Reality because it has struggled to get down to size and keep it mainstream. How are they going to achieve that and what do you think they learned from getting everybody together this year this time around . It is a make it or break it year because what we have seen so far from htc, oculus, google, is that the art is a niche type is a niche vr type of platform in terms of the next wave of technology. Ar is where its at. Oculus came out with oculus go, a 200 the are headset that doesnt require anything. You dont need a phone, you dont need to connect it to a 1000 computer. So, we are going to be baking on that standalone vr headset. To see if it has potential. Obviously apple is on the back burner. Thats the big shadow. They sell tons of phones. They really dictate the technology industry. So if apple says we are not going to do a vr headset, we are going to do an ar headset, that that is really going to mess up the plans to the other companies. Julia if you are not able to get to las vegas, we have you covered. Carol we talked to editor nikki eckstein about when and where to travel in 2018. Nikki we always look at the year ahead, hotels we are excited about, culture events we cant wait to get to, museums, institutions about to open and change the landscapes of the destinations. We are looking for places that are in an evolution, places right here, right now perfect timing. Julia but i love the fact you make a calendar and say this is the best time to go to these places. Thats one of the critical choices, where to go where. Nikki 100 , so we know everybody has limited Vacation Days and we want to optimize all your time at home and we want to help you do that. The story in print is online. We have pulled data from travel specialists who are experts in each of the destinations we have chosen. They have given us a sense of when is the peak season, the shoulder season is what we call it in our industry. Times that are not as crowded and when the value is good, the right time to be here and prices from google. Julia talk mexico. Nikki so cabo san lucas, everybody thinks of it as a party spring break destination. If youve been, you know it is also the lap of luxury. Its one of my Favorite Places on earth. Why 2018 . 1 billion of new hotel rooms. Carol theres that much demand . Nikki theres that much demand. People are worried about zika and latin america, so, is so it is benefiting by not being in the eye of those storms. But it really has the Perfect World scenario where these beautiful new properties, there is a ritzcarlton resort is opening later this year. Any brands you can imagine, four seasons, no blue, they are all going to be there in 2018. Julia a little differently to the high end luxury. Something on the moon. Nikki incredible, right . There are these bubble duns in the middle of the desert in jordan. Maybe you have never heard of that place. It literally looks like the moon and these bubbles have formed ecocamps. The ecocamps are made up of bubbles, where there are clear ceilings. You can look up at the sky after hiking and see stars from your bed, wake up in the morning, get on a camel, explore the desert. Its really quite magical. Julia its quite the destination. Nikki this is absolutely correct. There is a 400 mile trail. Think of it as the appalachian trail of the middle east. You can break it apart by sections or do the whole thing if you want to. Julia if you are thinking of going to europe, perhaps not georgia would be the top of your list and yet youve chosen this. Nikki the republic of georgia, its definitely not on everybodys list, but this year it should be. If you think of berlin, germany, maybe mid2000s, people were just starting to catch on to the edgy nightlife lines. Thats whats happening in georgia it now and there is really young upandcoming hotels that are doing really cool things. Carol great list, so much information. Nikki, thank you so much. Bloomberg businessweek is available on newsstands now. Julia and online at businessweek. Com and our mobile app. I know what story you are going to pick. Carol the cover story about peter wallman. Peter continues to investigate the dark places in the United States. In this case, he is looking at the meatpacking industry and the cleanups that work the third shift. Julia a lot of them are undocumented immigrants. They are getting injured and they dont have the incentive to whistle blow and talk about the conditions they are working in. There are risk shifting in the Big Companies and the sanitation companies. A lot of aspects to this, never more critical given we have congress deciding how to tackle Immigration Reform going forward. Carol right, a very important part of our workforce. Julia more Bloomberg Television is up next. The following is a paid program. 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