Ellen yes, we are saying he is less like mussolini than the berlusconi. David former Prime Minister of italy. Ellen yes. Over the last 10 years, democracy has waned all over the world after it being on the upswing. If you look at freedoms, freedom is on the downswing as well. More and more, you see leaders describe him as having a blow torch manner. But leaders like trump who are a little bit more in that mold coming to the fore. David using the media in the way that berlusconi did. Ellen right. Right. And we talk about thailand and turkey, where you have leaders that maybe have been elected but then really act like david like autocratic, yeah. Carol people say, democracy has not made the situation that much better, so maybe they will try something different. Ellen exactly. It is sort about economic growth. The connection between democracy and economic growth, it feels like it is breaking down, even if you look longterm at the numbers. You find that the economy in the long term do better in democracies than totalitarian states. But in the short term, people are not necessarily making that connection. So they are saying to elected officials, you promised us a better life. Well, where is it . Carol speaking of a better life, you take a look at a test that could determine a better life for kids in china. Talk to us about that. Ellen they have the high test, a more important sat. Four people in the u. S. It really determines where youre going to university or college. And students in rural areas are not as ready for these tests as in urban areas, where moore is spent on education, so they are talking about equalizing it, making it easier for rural kids to go to universities elsewhere. And the middle class is not always so happy about that. Because they do not want their chances for their children to be diluted. David an unbelievable amount of pressure before those tests. The amount of school work that goes into prepping for them. Ellen one kid is studying more than my child has ever studied in her life. She gets up at 6 00, studies, and she is in class until like 10 00 at night, and then she studies for another two hours. I wish my child was tuning in right now. David in become companies and industries section, you look at sears, the big box retailer who has fallen on some tough times. What is it doing . Ellen it is not doing much, and it is actually talking about selling off its better known brands, like kenmore. Appliances. Iconic brands that are known. David glide path. Ellen right. Definitely. It has slid. Pretty much ever since eddie lambert, who owns sears, merged it with kmart, which he also owned, and they have not spent as much on advertising and marketing. And plus, it happened at a time when consumers change their habits. They are more interested in going to a walmart been going to an old sears. Carol which is sad, because sears is the old walmart, amazon of years past. Ellen right, they practically invented catalog shopping. They were amazon before there was amazon. It is where everybody went to the store and looked at the catalog and figured out what they want to buy. Carol ellen, i think that everybody is talking about the cover story, the cover story on the takata airbag recall. This is the big story, a sad story, a tragic story. Ellen in the u. S. Alone, 60 million cars have been recalled. And the number rises to 100 million if you look at the whole world. And we sort of take you back and look at the story about what happened inside the company. David take us back in this incredibly long history. Ellen it went on for a long time. David we talked to one of the reporters on a story. The airbag and most of these cars is in the steering wheel. And what scientists have realized, the explosives inside the airbag that allows it to deploy, over time, this particular explosive has some problems. It can degrade over time. So the airbag deploys very forcefully. The metal container that has the explosive can shred, and it sends what is basically shrapnel into the car and mostly, it has hit drivers in the neck and face andse chest. Carol i hear Something Like this and i say, wait a minute. Where was the testing. Take a step back. Propellants have been a tricky thing in coming up with airbags. Take a step back and how did we get to this point . Susan yeah. Takata started out with a different propellant, which had some problems. They went to another one, which was good, but too expensive. And then, they came up with this third one, which was cheaper, very available it is Ammonium Nitrate. It is very powerful. Almost as powerful as dynamite. Carol you need to have something powerful. To get that airbag out. Susan yes, you do have to get that airbag out, and it has to happen very deeply, but it has to be controlled. And this explosive is hard to keep stable over time. Takata says it recognizes problems, but it felt it had solved them with engineering. But it felt that it had solved engineering. Th they solved a problem that no other automaker could solve. A lot of them considered using Ammonium Nitrate for the same reasons and decided not to. Carol you talk about the cost of the propellants. It made them look for something a little bit less expensive. What role did finances play in this in looking at the cost equation . Susan yes that depends on who , you talk to. Takata denies cost had anything to do with the switch to Ammonium Nitrate. I think what is definitely fair to say is that the chemical that they were using before that was very limited, and to find it in kind of a high enough quality that takata could use was difficult. So there were issues with it. And Ammonium Nitrate, you know is widely available. ,and from a supply perspective, that makes sense. David why did it take so long for regulators to take notice or for the company to take this seriously and for there to be recalls . Susan yeah. The first accident was in 2004. And it was in alabama. And at the time, takata told honda it was a honda car told honda it was an anomaly. Dont worry about it. Honda settled the case. Then, you know, what we now know over time, there were concerns , that employees were raising within takata and takata seemed to ignore them. And at the same time, they felt confident engineers had solved the problem and could improve the stability of the chemical. The airbags degrade over time. So most of these exploding airbags were made in the early 2000s. They began really exploding in bigger numbers, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014. If you look, the recalls expanded every year. And it took a while to figure out, because it was pretty unexpected, obviously, that the device that is in your car to save your life and save lives also can do this, so initially, Police Investigators would come on to accident scenes and they would see metal fragments. I mean, one woman, her neck was so severely gashed, police thought she had been stabbed before the accident. So it just took a long time to figure out. And then the u. S. Regulators, talking to takata and other experts, realized the problem is worse in states where there is a lot of heat and humidity. Those are two of the factors that really helped degrade the chemical more quickly. So they concentrated the recalls in those states. Carol creative director Robert Vargas had to turn the recall into a cover story. Here is how he did it. Robert you know, when we actually got the draft of the story we found a quote from an , engineer who tried to warn the company about what could happen. The quote was simply if we go forward with this, somebody will be killed. And as soon as we saw that, we knew it needed to be on the cover. There is a fine line of wanting to be impactful, but not wanting to be exploitative. You know, we did see a few images that were shown in court that were very, very powerful but did not feel appropriate for a newsstand cover. And you know, the general feeling was this quote gives you that sort of appropriate sense of dread without going overboard. David at the center of the piece is the airbag inflator device. I know you settled upon using a photograph of that. Robert yeah. Because it is really none of us are automotive engineers. And so, it is kind of mysterious how this thing actually works and what is exactly in the airbag that is so dangerous. Because you think of it as an inflatable thing that is supposed to save your life. That is why it was interesting to show this device that looks in many ways like an exploded bomb. Carol the cover is red. And we know from this airbag, as a result, people lost their lives. Is it because you are trying to indicate blood . Robert that was not our really our explicit intention. We wanted a color that was very strong. We even experimented with other colors like black and white. There was another story about gm that also had a problem. That was simple typography on a black background. We did not quite want to repeat that, but we knew the execution needed to be similar. And so, the red felt appropriate and also different from what we have done before. David up next, how an unknown group of actors pulled off the biggest cyber heist of all time. Hershey ishow getting sweet on beef jerky. David how to throw a 1 million Bachelor Party. All of that ahead. Carol welcome back. Im carol massar. David i am david gura. You can find us on siriusxm radio, channel 119. David some hackers are targeting financial institutions. Carol the safety of the global system is in question. We talked to a reporter. Back in february, hackers got into the central bank of bangladesh, and they managed to get the credentials to access the swiss network. This is the Network People in banks used to send messages to take moneyto say from there. They said messages to the new york fed to send money to the sri lanka and the philippines. Now, they did not get away with all of it. Of the billion dollars, they gathered about 81 million before the alarms started tripping, but still, 81 million is the biggest cyber heist in banking history. 60 million has disappeared in cash somewhere. It may be in china or elsewhere, so it is quite a dramatic heist, and it exposed how there are some problems with what had been previously considered to be a secure network. Which was this messaging network called swift, which banks use to tell each other what to do with the funding. David what is the significance when you look at these scandals. Vietnam, ecuador. What does that say about who is being targeted . Swift t says is that swift has 11,000 customers, mostly banks. Those banks vary from jpmorgan and hsbc and the megabanks to very small banks in developing countries that have many fewer resources and much less money to devote to security, and so what hackers have realized is they could go to these much Smaller Banks, which have much weaker defenses, and they can get in there and start ordering these banks to send money to accounts that they control via the switch system, so it uncovered a weak point in what had been considered a strong network. Carol you talk about emerging banks and how it poses a huge liability for larger financial institutions. Why . A small bankinto in ecuador or bangladesh, you can only have that money. It is only so far as the bank has that money to send it. But what the issue is, and this comes up particularly in a case with an Ecuadorian Bank that had about 12 billion with accounts in hong kong, there was a lawsuit filed against wells fargo in the united states, and the reason it filed a lawsuit against wells fargo is that it is a corresponding bank. In other words, this bank did not have any connections, and it used the big bank to get there, in this case, wells fargo. They are saying the bank should have known more. No money ever wired before to this Ecuadorian Bank. It should have known. Andld have been red flags, did not, and therefore, this Ecuadorian Bank says wells fargo is to blame for it. This is in a u. S. Court. The problem is that banks do not ofe that much money off helping the Smaller Banks to connect, so if it decides it will be more trouble than it is worth or costs them more than ,hey make, that will slow trade and it puts sand in the gears of Global Commerce and global finance, and that is what people are starting to get worried about. Carol up next, move over kisses. Hershey betting on beef jerky. David can tim and eric the go mainstream . Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Im carol massar. David i am david gura. Carol in the industry section, why hershey is targeting the beef jerky market. There is this iconic Chocolate Company that makes almost all of their money selling chocolate in the u. S. , and they are betting big on beef jerky. They see the data, declining chocolate consumption as people try to avoid sugar. And hershey acquired a Jerky Company in sonoma, california, in early 2015, a company that suggests wine pairings for their beef jerky. Its a very premium customer. This is an attempt by hershey to be part of a broader push to sell stuff besides chocolate. David it sounds like a fad. Could it be a fad . The beef jerky fad has been going for a couple of years. The sales have really exploded. It checks a bunch of health boxes for people. It is low sugar, low carbohydrate, high in protein. So beef jerky has really been reimagined as a health food. Away from the gas station slim jim being sold to 18yearolds on a college road trip david been there. [laughter] right. We all have, right . But that marketing is still out there with jerky, but it has been completely reimagined, and now hershey is trying to get in , on that. Carol how do you change a company who relies on chocolate. I mean, the bulk of their revenue, right . Most of it comes from chocolate. So how do you change it . They say snacks can be a 2 billion business. Some of it is chocolate reimagined, chocolate as part of snack mixes and things like that, but they are saying that the core chocolate business is more than 80 of the revenue for hersheys. That is still their business. Carol and they are not turning away from it. And they are very, very quick and passionate about the conversation, but quick to remind you that we love our chocolate business and we are still a Chocolate Company. So not getting away from it. They say they can still grow and sell hersheys kisses, things like that. Reeses, almond joys. So they are not turning away from that, but they think the snack portfolio will fuel their growth. That includes snack bars, trail mixes, and of course, beef jerky. Beef jerky is a big part of where they think growth will come from. David how much of this is about attracting a new kind of consumer . I read your piece, i was at whole foods this weekend. I saw krave beef jerky before, realized how much i have seen it before. I think that is a big part of it. They point out people at hershey, our products are in 90 of households. As you can imagine. Someone at some time has a hershey bar or a kiss, halloween, but people at whole foods, shopping at whole foods, they are not buying a ton of hersheys bars. E follow that model. Krave gives them access to this customer. They talk about the mass premium market. They are things that can sell at target and walmart but are a little more expensive. They have a brand called brookside. That is a Canadian Company which they bought in 2011. If you look at the chocolate numbers, consumption is flat or down. Sales are up a little bit. Fromf that growth comes people buy more expensive stuff, dark chocolate. Reese is, hershey, those are the things that are struggling. In addition, hershey is trying to sell more expensive chocolate as well because americans are saying, i am not going to eat a hershey bar, but i will allow myself a couple of pieces of dark chocolate. That is the situation and what hershey is trying to deal with. David up next, a firstperson account of the fire raging in alberta, canada and what it may do for global oil prices. Carol how miami may not be doing its part to help prevent the spread of the zika virus. David welcome to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am david gura. Carol and i am carol massar. We are inside the magazines headquarters. David still ahead, a grounds eye view of the fires raging in alberta, canada. Carol and the benefits of turning turbines upside down. Vonnie and tim and eric and the growing areas of niche comics. Carol all of that ahead on Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol we are here with Bloomberg Businessweek editor ellen pollock. I want to focus on transportation, i talk about gondolas, but not the ones in the swiss alps. Ellen no, we are not. Were talking about companies that did make gondolas for the swiss alps and other ski regions, but the business is not so good, and they are trying to sell gondolas to cities that have traffic problems. One thing that is even being looked at is new york city, which would be a great thing. And basically, they are making the point that if you are flying through the sky you will have a , shorter commute. You will not get stuck in traffic. David one city mentioned la paz. I studied abroad there for a while. A cool city shaped like a bowl. Downtown, you could take these gondolas. They worked efficiently. They are huge but they work well. Ellen carol but they do not carry a lot of people. It is not like having the amount of people you can carry on the subway. Ellen no, subways carry more people and they are faster, but it gives you an alternate route. And for some people, it makes sense. It kind of depends where you live and whether you are willing to take a different path that could create problems if it breaks down. Because one of the issues is when they break down and things , do break down, theyre pretty hard to fix because they are floating in the sky. David Israeli Companies have been reacting to pushes to boycott them for whatever involvement they might have with what is going on in the palestinian conflict. Ellen and there are some funds sovereign wealth funds, pension , funds in the u. S. That are withdrawing their money from various Israeli Companies or israel itself because they do not want to support israels role david mostly symbolic. It seems like. Ellen it is mostly symbolic because the truth is the amount of Foreign Investment in israel is going up. And the amount of Foreig