Megan, love this issue, love the people that you write about. What is the bloomberg 50 . Megan we are so thrilled and pleased with this. This is the first time we have ever done this. When bloomberg thought about it, we thought, who were the 50 people who really defined the Global Business landscape in 2017 . When you look at this list, it is always the same people on this list. When we did it, we thought, what if we did this differently and looked to find the people you have heard of . Some of them, you are not going to have heard of a lot of them, but in an identifiable way, really changed the way you think, what you do, how you conduct your life or business and will also be your trendsetters in the future. We are really excited about the names on this list and how it has come out. Julia two women who defined something in 2017 and unleashed a wave, rose mcgowan and ashley judd. Of course we are talking about Harvey Weinstein. A third woman, too, that changed the landscape in media, and politics, in 2017 in particular. Megan we were looking at this particular issue and the wave of Sexual Harassment that has spread across industries, hollywood, the tech, it remains ongoing. We are grappling with it. To try and single out anyone was hard, but the reason we took rose mcgowan and ashley judd was they were really the ones that leant that credibility, they were the ones who first came forward and that seminal New York Times piece that uncovered the extent of the Harvey Weinstein allegations. When you think about it, we had the revelations in the tech industry, but it was that article and subsequent reporting we should say by ronan farrow at the new yorker that was the tsunami that has swept across so Many Industries and unleashed metoo, and has so many women coming forward. We have not seen the end of these revelations, but we feel that was the Tipping Point with bravery and courage to bring voices forward. Carol and a story that will continue, no doubt about it. Another story practical have a lot of legs in 2017 will be robert mueller, the special counsel looking into the trump campaign, connections with russias, russia, and the election. Megan politics is the hardest to do because to pick out the people that have a measurable impact in terms of getting stuff done, the list is pretty short in washington. But in terms of who has really upended washington and continues to potentially define the landscape not only in 2017 but also 2018 is bob mueller, who is conducting this investigation. I would say far more wideranging than people expected and will continue to uncover things we dont know, even as well think we know at this point. He is the defining player in 2017 in washington and for this list. Carol very thoughtful in a world where everything is quick and short. Megan and very few leaks. People think this is one of the leakless investigations in washington. So we will see what he turns out. Julia it goes right to the top, as well. This is a cloud hanging not over just the president s business dealings but also the president himself. Megan we used to say that this and we should not joke about this, but this was watergate without the tapes in terms of the coverup may be the thing that does the administration in. When we look at the figures it is picking off and is picking off very systematically, it looks like Michael Flynn might be next in line and these things are flowing upwards, not downwards. He didnt start with the biggest fish, he started the smaller fish. If you know about mueller, you know what he has done in the past. Julia you were searching for Political Action men. What about a Political Action woman in the form of nikki haley, u. S. Ambassador to the united nations. She has got punch. Megan she has got punch. And she may be our next secretary of state. Rumors continue to swirl about Rex Tillerson and his tenure in that job. Nikki haley one reason we wanted to capture nikki haley is because she is so different than people expected her to be. Our photographer said she was so funny in person. She has such a spirited character. She has really embraced this u. N. Role. She is the voice of Foreign Policy for america, the most coherent voice we have. Julia not being afraid to push back on comments trump has made, particularly with regards to russia with their actions in ukraine and syria. Megan nikki haley is an ambitious figure and has her sights potentially not only on a different cabinet role, but a different role in washington altogether. Carol we will be watching her i guess again in 2018. We talked to the editor who put this edition together. The bloomberg 50, and here is more from him. Bret the process was long and involved and took most of the year. And what we did was really survey all of the bloomberg reporters and editors, not just in the u. S. , but throughout the world. We took submissions, and we sort of sifted through all of those. That is a lot of submissions. Brett we wound up with 50. Carol what was the criteria . Bret the criteria and the thing that separates this list from other lists is that the person had to have a major accomplishment in 2017. So a lot of times on these lists, you will find people who kind of could be on the list in 2016, 2017, and probably 2018, and our guiding principle was there has to have been a very strong data point, some piece of quantitative analysis that said this person belongs on this list this year. Carol what i like about the list, and im assuming you felt this way before, we read through some of the names and we are like, of course, and some are on this before like economists and scientists. I had no idea. Fascinating. I love that part of it. Bret the fun part about putting this together is that we wanted that sense of serendipity. That is all good magazine making. When you are looking through the magazine, there are some you are familiar with and others you are thinking, i have never heard of this person. How could they be one of the most impactful people in Global Business . You read about them and they have either discovered something fascinating that maybe did not make the front page of newspapers but was really huge. Julia lets move and talk about one man individually. We could give one million reasons, and that would be jeff bezos. Clearly after the big Holiday Shopping weekend, this is the perfect time. Bret now he is now worth 100 billion. Not bad. Jeff bezos big moment came in june when he purchased whole foods for 13. 7 billion. Carol i think it shocked all of us because it is such a traditional it is a grocery chain. Bret within a couple of hours of that announcement, the krogers of the world, the walmarts, costcos, all the others lost a combined 30 billion in value. And really what this is is a sign that wall street thinks there is no stopping his ambition to basically not just be the Biggest Online retailer, but the biggest retailer in the world. Carol that ambition includes going up into space. It also includes a journalist with the washington post. He is in many different sectors. Bret when you have 100 billion, you can buy a newspaper, space tourism, blue origin, if you want and he has done these things. It was a huge year for him. He could have been on it last year, and he probably will be on next year, but the purchase of whole foods was huge. Carol we will have to see who gets the second headquarters, because everybody wants to have it. Another big name of course is elon musk. We spent a lot of time talking about him. He has his fingers in a lot of different pots too. Bret a lot of different pots, but the biggest one came in when he released the sedan. Tesla is a competitor to detroit and it gave tesla a market cap around 50 billion which is roughly in line with gm. So that was his huge moment. He also wants to go to space through spacex, and by 2022 aims to have a colony on mars. Julia although even he has admitted it may be on the ambitious side. [laughter] carol both of these companies are people who are revered individuals and everyone is rooting for them in terms of what they are doing and then you have what kind of the Financial Community saying, they are spending a lot of money and maybe they are not as profitable as we would like to see. And it is just fascinating. Bret if you look at what they have done in the course of a year, it is pretty amazing. Carol turning the bloomberg 50 into a cover image was the job of the creative director rob vargas. Julia special issue, the bloomberg 50. Talk about how you pulled this cover together this week. Rob so its obviously a very simple cover. 50. Very large. Julia it is important though. Rob one of the things that sort of i think makes this different from others is that it is not ranked from one to 50. We wanted to make that very clear, that all 50 are special in their own way. We have great photography inside but we didnt want to use any on the cover to make it seem like these are the most prominent on the list. So we went with the simple number. Julia 50 or nothing in this case. Carol you could have been democratic and put all 50 in little squares. [laughter] rob true, but the inside would have been plain. Julia what about the color choices, as well. You have gone for something very bold. They made a splash. Rob they issue is celebratory in a lot of ways. Obviously there are people who made more positive differences than others, but it is a celebratory issue, and especially given the news cycle, when there are really tough stories, like we wanted to be more bright and colorful with this. Julia up next, the Goldman Sachs executive revolutionizing the way banks keep shareholding happy. Carol the bitcoin rival gains traction. Our conversation with the Digital Currency ether. Julia this is the bloomberg 50. Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek, the bloomberg 50. I am carol massar. Julia i am julia chatterley. You can also find us online at businessweek. Com. Carol and our mobile app. Mr. Chavez is one of the people featured in the bloomberg 50. Julia he has increase revenue through 2020 5 billion. Dakin marty chavez is the cfo of Goldman Sachs. He became the cfo in may. He was the acting or the deputy cfo beginning in january. Before that, he was the chief Information Officer at Goldman Sachs. He was the guy that sort of lead their technology efforts, their engineering efforts. Carol interesting career switch. Dakin yes, it is. I think if you look at the cfos across wall street, none of them have a background like marty does. None of them have, through that cio Technology Part of the company and that makes him unique. Carol talk to us about his background. He has been with goldman for some time. Dakin he has. He joined goldman and their j in their j aaron commodities business, as many of the leaders surprise, surprise. And he has always been he came up through their strats business, which is their engineers. Goldman was first on wall street for sitting the engineers next to the traders and having engineers design algorithms or run models through spreadsheets. Goldman was doing that years before much of wall street, and that was largely led by marty. Julia you talk about the interactions that he had with the chief accounting officer and the importance of data and analysis to him and the ease of which he wanted to read that. He did not want to have to ask questions. Talk about that. Dakin it is interesting. If you talk to cfos across wall street, they will say, i dont know that answer, or i just sat through three days of briefing to get ready for our 10q and our heads of latin america told me this and our head of asia told me this. Marty doesnt want to do that anymore. He wants an ipad basically that has got a dashboard on it so he knows instantaneously, realtime, what the latin America Business is doing or the fixed income trading business is doing. And so that means you are not wasting time. He would tell you, talking to heads of businesses or the accounting officers, and that if you drill down, you can have more substantial conversations. Carol i think what is interesting, he is that primary voice when it comes to investors in the analyst community, and here you have a company struggling in terms of their trading revenue and he is tasked with that message of what, increasing goldmans revenues by 5 billion by 2020. So he has got to make sure the message is clear and they are getting to that target. Dakin thats right. The first Earnings Call he did, he would tell you, he is very tight, he did not disclose much. He kept very on message. In the subsequent Earnings Calls he has done, he has come into his own a little more. Julia bitcoin may have made some huge headlines this year. Carol by the Digital Currency has a rival called ether. Julia here is our reporter. Matt he got his start in cryptocurrencies as a bitcoin developer but quickly realized there was a lot he could not do with bitcoin. It is great for sending value around the world, but he wanted to do more. And he really was interested in trying to create a block chain that could hold and host computer code. So instead of sending coins around like a bitcoin, you can program computer language onto this block chain and have it do a lot more complicated things. And so before he was 20 years old, he had created this amazing sort of new breakthrough in Block Chain Technology called ethereum. And in the years since, it has grown quite exponentially, and they are now sort of getting ready to take it mainstream. Carol but it is not worth as much as bitcoin. We have spent, as you know, matt, so much time talking about the value of bitcoin. Why is it not maybe valued as much . Matt we are early stages for ethereum, and a lot of it is still theoretical. There are not many ways you or i can touch the ethereum block chain. One example to help you understand it, i was able to buy a record on the Ethereum Blockchain a couple weeks ago. I spent some ether, like 10. My money was processed by the code in the block chain, and it sent, you know, lets say four dollars to the lead singer and three dollars to the guitarist, and they programmed this ahead of time. There is no Music Company in the middle. There is no music publisher in the middle. So what it does is it really cuts out the middleman and the backers feel it is a new version of the internet that will be much more peer to peer. So you can see the potential of it, but a lot of it is still theoretical, and is still potential. But it has a lot of developers who are very engaged and committed to it. So we felt that it was a good addition and something people should be on the lookout for. Julia right. So you clearly pointed out this had a few teasing issues. There is also a problem with hackers. I mean we saw hackers steal 55 million worth. They had 171 million lost when funds were frozen. Just in terms of relative stability and ease of use, if we are simply talking about the currencies now, bitcoin versus ether, how do they actually compare . Matt i think when you see hacks and lost coins in ether or in bitcoin, there is a whole ecosystem that is being developed around these technologies. You have got wallets, you have got exchanges, you have got all these new they are like the New York Stock Exchange except it is digital. They are being created on the fly as we speak. And this stuff is moving around the world, and there is a huge valuation to it. So it is a huge target for hackers. I think what you are seeing is they are being tested. The exchanges are being tested, their security is being tested. So a lot of hackers have been successful at breaching the walls and stealing a lot of the currency. In the digital world, but i dont think it is really any different than when banks were less secure and bank robbers were kind of a thing. I think it is just that we are watching this in real time and it seems like the wild west and it certainly is. Julia it certainly feels that way. [laughter] matt yeah. At the same time, the Underlying Technology of the block chain itself is what is really important, and nobody has breached the block chain. If that was to happen, that would be huge, and it would be a very bad sign. You have got the block chain in one area, and all this other stuff not on the block chain and has to have good security and has to have really good programming behind it. Some of it doesnt, and thats where the breaches are coming. If you can change the history of the block chain, that is what records where every bitcoin gets transferred from, and that is what is important about it. If nobody has done that, and if someone was able to do that, that would send huge shocks through this whole community, and that has not happened. Carol up next, the economist that says trade deficits harm marriage. Julia the first black and openly gay head of the Federal Reserve bank. This is the bloomberg 50. Julia welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek, im julia chatterley. Carol and im carol massar. You can also listen to us on radio on sirius xm 100119 and in new york, 99 fm in washington dc and a. M. 960 in the bay area. Julia and in london on dab 90 and in asia on the Bloomberg Radio plus app. Carol the economy plays a big role in the bloomberg 50. Julia businessweeks peter coy opens up the issue this week, discussing the theory of trickledown economics. Peter essentially, the republican tax plan that is working its way through the house and senate is a version of trickledown economics. It is a phrase you dont hear a lot because, certainly on the republican side, because it is considered a term of disparagement. But funnily enough, recently, i went to an event at the Economic Club in new york, and they were introducing Steve Mnuchin the treasury secretary. Carol wellknown business journalist. Peter on stage, i