Megan this is a story about an economist who ran into trouble with the authorities and 2012 because he did a study on inequality and found that was higher than economists had forecast and was visited by several members of the administration at the time. What he is trying to do is do this complicated survey of chinas wealth, and particularly chinas peoples wealth. Whether they have real estate, what their farms are like, what the agricultural productivity is like in order to generate wealth. In china, a huge swath of the country is agrarian and has not caught up with that development. Someone who has faced opposition in his past is looking at what we need to pare back and give the truth about. Oliver lets talk about the opening remarks section, President Trump has criticized or talked about dismantling geopolitical institutions. The United Nations is one he has criticized and whether or not it needs improvement. Megan this is a former reporter in liberia and it talks about an institution that is right for reform. There is concern about donald trump and his efforts to pair back foreign aid, and we should point out this is not a topic unique to the u. S. Is there an issue with the fact that people who work for the United Nations and are in these wartorn countries are frequently traveling in pristine 4 x 4s, living an expensive apartments, dining in expensive restaurants. They are there to help people, but she says this is an institution that has tried to stop reform, cutting excess, and maybe there is some excess there. Carol i was surprised to find out that the United Nations does not measure the effect of its work. Look at the darker side of the strike of aware not talking about detroit but we are talking about manufacturing. Megan it is an incredibly powerful story because it goes into this darker underside when we talk about bringing manufacturing back to america, which is a team of donald trump and the current administration. It has not come without costs. This story focuses on the emergence of auto manufacturers have moved their plans. Some of the safety concerns have run a much higher safety risk and have had greater incidence of injuries and fatalities than rivals and union shops. Oliver it is an illuminating look at the industry and an incredible human element. Lets talk about the autoparts industry. That is where my story focuses. It is the area where we have the most egregious workers safety and health issues. After the plants the automaker set up, there ecosystem of suppliers follow them from places like korea, japan, germany, other parts of europe, and this alto part Manufacturing Industry really flourished in alabama. Today, there are more than 170 different autoparts suppliers for these carmakers, and they employ around 26,000 people, so there has been an auto part boom in autoparts manufacturing. These companies, the assemblers, kia, hyundai, japanese companies, they squeezed their parts suppliers. They demand high rates of productivity, manufacturing on steroids, essentially providing the Assembly Lines of the carmakers with parts that come directly over from the suppliers with no warehousing in between. That puts tremendous pressure on the autoparts suppliers. Carol lets talk about that pressure. It puts incredible pressure on workers in those factories and an environment with there is no union to protect them. We do know unions work with rules. They work with management to set work hour limitations. They are active in safety and health. The United Auto Workers has shop stewards who focus on nothing but safety and enforce safety rules. That is a key point, and indeed where our story focuses, which is the safety and health of workers in these autoparts plants. There is a long litany of sad cases. In the article, i said it reads like an Upton Sinclair work or charles dickens. We had one individual, nathaniel walker, in his mid20s working at a german company. Nathaniel was working the back line, cleaning these tanks of acid where they would anodized metal parts to toughen them up with a coating, and they needed to be cleaned out every saturday night. He was given in the beginning about 12 hours or even 24 hours to clean 2530 of these tanks and change out the and do whatever servicing was necessary. As productivity was increased, they were given less and less time. Nathaniel would jump around on top of the ventilation duct which were on the edges of these tanks and was servicing one of them a few years ago and it was empty, but the one in back of him where he was perched in between these two tanks was filled with acid and his hand slipped on the repair and he fell backwards into four feet of acid and was literally wallowing in this stuff, swallowing it until he righted himself and a colleague washed him down, but apparently they did peel his cotton tshirt off of him like tissue paper. It is not an untypical story. Oliver turning that story into a cover image was the job of rob vargas. Rob we interviewed some of the victims and these terrible accidents. One of the characters in the story lost his arm in one of these accidents, so we basically went out and took a couple of shots and ended up with this one, which we thought was pretty carful. Carol when i first saw it, it stopped me. How much discussion went into how you are going to tell the story. It is a brutal story and one that stays with you. Rob if we did not have cooperation, it would have been impossible to do the story in the first place. Obviously the way in which we shot them was documentary style. We were not trying to over editorialize it. When you can put these people up as plainly as you want, but it is still striking because of what they lost. Carol it shows where he lost a good portion of one of his arms. How comfortable were they with doing that . Rob he was very comfortable and cooperative. We had a lot of shots of them on the inside feature, but you want to tell the story. Carol a new Coalition Fighting the white house. Oliver the Political Consulting firm that helped President Trump get elected is now trying to capitalize on its success. Carol this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek i am carol massar. Oliver i am oliver renick. Cambridge analytica data models helped form the backbone of Trumps Campaign strategy. Carol now the firm is trying to leverage its ties to the white house. Cambridge was a late entry to the Trump Campaign. Their analysts helped to identify pockets in the rust belt where there were persuadable voters. That is where they won the electoral college. Their role was small but important. They had a great sales pitch. That they have this Data Analysis where they use people social feeds. It is called psychographics. They can tell whether people are persuadable taste on the things they tweet. They say they have done it elsewhere and have had access. The company has a mixed experience. Oliver those rust belt areas, people were wondering what is he doing, what is going on here . It turns out he was right. Tell us about where else they have taken part. They have worked in campaigns all over the world, and some tactics they brag about are questionable and would raise eyebrows in american politics. They talked about how they incited tensions in latvia, blaming russians for the economic problems. In trinidad, they said they used a graffiti campaign. Their candidate said i am a man of the people, and it was all a set up. There is a lot of talk about fake news and misinformation. That is the interesting thing about this company. It has been successful in using psyops. They measure what is motivating people and what might help persuade people from being radicalized. Some of those have been effective, but some are the dirty tricks that are the lure of campaign bios and are questionable in u. S. Politics. Oliver it seems like their role in the u. S. Election was to work with the Trump Campaign and figure out where they needed to place their energies. That seems to some degree a passive role, but as you point out, they have an active role in these other elections and have gone beyond that where they have begun assessing potential terrorists. Talk to us about their clients and who pays them for their services. They have had a lot of success in working for the u. S. State department. They just gave them a contract to measure potentially radicalized youth in Different Countries where they are afraid of isis getting a hold of people. They are doing interviews, assessing social media feeds and seeing what issues could make someone go towards isis or find a less destructive way to act out their political beliefs. They in other places have used fake information campaigns, and that is the concern. A lot of times intelligence agencies use fake news and propaganda, so the question is do we want our tax dollars paying for company which has used questionable tactics elsewhere. Cambridge is a company that has done a lot of the questionable tactics. Carol a group of states attorney general have joined forces to resist trumps conservative agenda. Oliver we talked to matt phillips. With democrats outnumbered in congress, your real resistance is becoming this coalition of aggressive blue state attorney generals that are unified against the trump agenda. They are on the offensive, suing, notching two victories on the travel ban attempts by the president , and they are feeling like they have some momentum and are looking forward to fighting on fronts from environmental regulation to repealing obamacare. Oliver take us back to the 101 level. The pushback, we been following the pushback to those executive orders, judges, attorney generals, lawyers, talk us through what matters here. In february, a threejudge panel in the ninth circuit ruled in favor of a suit that was put by Washington State attorney general bob ferguson that basically knocked down his first attempt at the travel ban. It was discriminatory plain and simple. Rather than pushing and fighting towards the supreme court, they revised the travel ban and put it forth again. It was met immediately with another suit this time by the hawaii state attorney general who basically suit on the same front, calling it discriminatory. They won again a few hours before it was set to go into effect on march 16. Those are two for four and have two for two stymied the president. The president certainly has some selfinflicted wounds in the first two months in office. The victories the democrats have been able to notch against him have come from these unified state attorney generals who are democrats. Carol lets talk about that coordination among the democratic ags. There is coordination at play. Thats right. This was the annual meeting of all state attorneys generals in washington at the ritz carlton. The agenda is warring and did not mention trump, but 10 or so democratic ags took that as an opportunity to meet privately on the sidelines out of earshot and eyesight of their republican colleagues to strategize and talk tactics and how they could coordinate, join each others lawsuits, how new york and california could Work Together and find common ground, and in a way they are taking a page out of the republican playbook and have used it effectively against president obama. Carol up next, why it is important to save cash rather than paying down debt or putting money into an ira. This is Bloomberg Businessweek. Oliver welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am oliver renick. Carol i am carol massar. You can also listen to us on the radio on series radio channel 119. 99. 1 fm in washington dc and a. M. 960 in the bay area. In the focus on retirement section, why you may want to think twice before putting extra cash into your ira or 401 k . Last year i paid off my student debt and was celebrating and reading a book by a guy called the value of debt. He is somebody i have talked to before for other stories. I was surprised by the advice he was giving me in the book, so i asked him about it. The takeaway i had was that i was doing it wrong. I was putting a lot of money into my retirement accounts instead of putting more of my money in cash. His whole idea is that we need liquidity as we move through our careers. His main argument and what i read about in businessweek is that so many people end up locking up their money, pay down their mortgage, put their money in an ira or 401 k and instead of having that cash available when there is an emergency, when there is an emergency, they panic and have to do into equity in their home or stock. Oliver im all about that liquidity, right, but only to a certain extent. He does throw off the accepted knowledge of little bit. What is the Common Knowledge people had been using and where does he inject a new strain of thought . One of the issues with his advice is the counter argument is that a mortgage or 401k is like a forced savings device. A lot of people if they have money in the bank will spend it. We think we will always find a use for that. I think anderson is basically, his argument is we have to force ourselves to act rationally and find a way to segregate that money and put it somewhere where it will be available to us, but we will not be tempted to spend it. Oliver he basically says have a savings account, and no matter how much you are putting into it, put something in, even if it is five dollars, to get in the practice early on that it will not be locked up. It is about having something secure and not readily access, but not completely out of touch. He is all about a balanced path. He says if you are making a certain amount of money, there is a certain amount of debt you can have, savings you should have, and maybe there is a certain amount there is 401 k and ira money you should have set aside as well. You dont want to overdo any one of those buckets. Carol i knew blockchain or Computer Program to build any kind of business. Oliver a former day trader turned into an enthusiastic fbi informant. Carol this is Bloomberg Businessweek. The biggest week in tv is back. Wow, watchathon has netflix . Hey, drop a beat. [ beatboxing throughout ] show me orange is the new black. Wait, no bloodline. How about bojack . Luke cage. Oh, dj tanner. Maybe show me lilyhammer. Mmm, show me last chance u. On second thought, maybe pompidou. Narcos, fearless, cooked, the crown. Marco polo, lost found. Grace and frankie, hemlock grove. Season one of. Show me house of cards. Xfinity watchathon week starts april 3. Get unlimited access to all of netflix and more, free with xfinity on demand. The dinosaurs extinction. Got you outnumbered. Dont listen to them. Not appropriate. Now im mashing these potatoes with my stick of butter. Why dont you sit over here. Something for everyone is awesome. Find your awesome with the Xfinity Stream app. More to stream to every screen. Oliver welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek i am oliver renick. Carol i am carol massar. Still ahead, americas top diplomat has a pension for going off the grid. Oliver a day trader with the side hustle with the fbi. Carol the creator of dilbert. Oliver that is still ahead on Bloomberg Businessweek. Oliver we are back with editor in chief megan murphy to talk about mustreads in the magazine. Lets talk about blockchain. It is getting very important. Tell us about why blockchain is in markets. Megan blockchain is one of those things you have heard about so much. This story focuses on this part of blockchain Everybody Knows bitcoin and how blockchain has created a more secure bitcoin, every transaction can be identified by a different set of numbers. The others to follow the way so that the currency is the motivator. You can exchange contracts, Computer Programs, and it is built into the blockchain. So why is it so important . Instead of just being used as a crypto currency, it could be a way to Program Large parts of this is operations by exchanging these contracts between their own systems and other people systems, and how much can simply automate. Carol you can tell it is important by the companies that are involved, Big Companies looking at it. Megan they are looking at it as the next manifestation of blockchain. The story talks how they were hacked and 16 million was stolen, whether it is secure enough, whether they should be changing the back code, so it is still controversial. If we are looking at blockchain becoming the real thing, this is in focus. Carol you take a look at this product that is to suppress sugar cravings. Megan this is one of my favorite quirky stories. This is a former Big Hedge Fund guy who worked for gotham capital, and tells the story of how he said, there is a market. He thought if there was a way to reset my appetite before i had done that and not crave that sugar, what would it have been like. It tracks his journey to make the taste for sugar unpalatable would lead to not eating. What they do is make sugar tastes unpalatable. Whether that will help is interesting. It is fascinating, the amount of research he went into, the Science Behind this product. Oliver it is interesting the way he implied some principles of his investing background. Lets talk about the story in the futures section, an incredible story about this fbi cooperation. It seems like its going to be a movie. What was your favorite part of the story . Megan at the beginning where this fbi informant, they want him to crack down on pump and dump schemes. At the beginning, they took them off an airplane, got him a cheeseburger at a diner and said you have two options, help us do this or go to jail. We will hand the case to a prosecutor with a 98 success rate. Oliver he says no, lets roll. Carol thats what is fascinating, he gets addicted to the informing. Oliver he gets addicted to developing his method. They talk about how at first he is obvious about the fact he is an informant. Then he learns to hug his mark. Carol we got more on him. A t