Megan this is a story about an economist who ran into trouble with the authorities in 2012 because he did a study on inequality and found that was much 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. How much holdings do people have in real estate, agriculture, 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 a lot of different 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 pare back foreign aid, and we should point out this is not a topic unique to the u. S. We have seen calls for reduction to this foreign aid in the u. K. And other countries, too. 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 effects of its work. Megan the United Nations would say this work is vital. There is no organization as big as the United Nations that does not have some areas where people are going to look at. Carol lets look at the cover, kind of the darker side of detroit. Auto 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 theme of donald trump and the current administration. It has not come without costs. This story focuses on the emergence of auto manufacturers who have moved their plans. But also the auto parts supply. And, 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 auto 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, really 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 where 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 thats 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 do whatever servicing was necessary. As productivity was increased, they were given less and less time. Nathaniel would jump around on top of the ducts 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 his skin like tissue paper. He ended up spending four days in intensive care and recovering. 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 of 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 powerful. 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. So the fact that we did have cooperation made it an easy decision. Obviously the way in which we shot them was documentary style. We were not trying to over editorialize it. You can present these people 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 peoples social feeds. It is called psychographics. They can tell whether people are persuadable based on the things they tweet. Things they like on facebook. They say they have done it elsewhere and have had access. The company has a mixed history. Things they have worked on for different governments around the world. Oliver those rust belt areas, people were wondering what is he doing, what is going on here . It turns out he was right. They have been involved in other campaigns with varying degrees of success. 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. I managed to get a look at some internal documents. They talked about how they incited racial tensions in latvia, blaming russians for the economic problems. In trinidad, they said they used a fake graffiti campaign. They had their operatives spray graffiti and 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 dissuade 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 have been in other places and have used fake information campaigns, and that is the concern. A military psyops. 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 the u. S. Branch of the 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 progressive 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. As we have been following the president s executive orders, and that is where its at. The pushback, we been following the pushback to those executive orders, judges, attorney generals, lawyers, talk us through what matters here. And what the attorney generals have been put there to do. 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 sued on the same front, calling it discriminatory. They won again a few hours before was set to go into effect on march 16. Those are two for two and have 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 unification among the democratic ags. There is a coordinated effort underway. You could see that coordination at play. Thats right. This was the annual meeting of all state attorneys generals in washington at the ritz carlton. Republican and democrat. The agenda is really boring 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. In new york, boston, washington, d. C. , and 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. Hes a Financial Adviser in chicago. 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 dip into equity in their home or are stuck. 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 are always going to find a use for it. 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 accessed, 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 a new 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. But they trainer who has a side hustle with the fbi. The creator of dilbert. All that ahead on bloomberg businessweek. Oliver were back with megan murphy to talk about more mustreads and the magazine. Lets talk about blockchains. And isetting important in the market section. Tell us why blockchain is in markets. The things inf the back of your mind like, is this for real . [laughter] this story focuses on syria cap this part of blockchain. Everybody knows how bitcoin and blockchain has created this wave for more secure by doing this numbers, every transaction can be identified by specific set of numbers. Basically they have developed a way that is more than just a changing of currency. The currency is a motivator. You can actually exchange contracts, Computer Programs, it works if a then see than dna. Why is this so important and transformational . Instead of just being his for a crypto currency, it could be that businesses are looking at this as a way to Program Large parts of their operations by basically exchanging these contracts between their own systems, other peoples systems, and how much of it they can automate and simplify to make it efficient. Tell it is important by companies involved, jpmorgan, airbus. But are looking us this is the next manifestation of blockchain. The story talks about how this ether was hacked, they sold 60 million, and there has been an upper online on whether it is secure enough, whether they should be changing the back code. But if we are looking at blockchain and of becoming the real deal, this is exactly what it is being used for. Crash, you guys take a look at this product that is to suppress sugar cravings. Favoritene of my unusual quirky stories, in that this is a former big Fund Hedge Fund guy, rob goldstein. About hestory thought he would eat one bite of a nestle crunch and eight more. [laughter] we have all been there. [laughter] if there was a way to reset my appetite before i got met and not be hungry, not crave that sugar, what would it have been like . Suppresshis journey to your taste for sugar. It is making the taste for sugar what great crush does is make sugar taste bitter and unpalatable. Whether that will be successful is interesting, but we have the product downstairs. [laughter] i have not tried it yet but several people have. It is fascinating the amount of research he went into. He talked about the Science Behind this product, when it goes back to him getting several more bytes of the nestle crunch than he wanted to. Its interesting how he applied investing background principles to this. Lets talk about a story in the future section, this is an incredible story about guide genteel and this fbi cooperation. It seems a get would be a movie. What was your favorite part of the story . At the beginning work guide genteel, said fbi informant, they want him to crack down on what we call pump and dump schemes. They took him off his airplane, got them at cheeseburger and said, you have two options. Help us do this or go to jail and will hand the case to a prosecutor with a 98 . They were using some deliberation but he says no, lets roll. That is what is so fascinating is why guide genteel is no ordinary informant. He gets addicted to the informing, to developing his method. They talk about how at first he is obvious about the fact that h