Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg Technology 20171218

Blamed on the hurricane. Dayal news 24 hours a powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts. Im Alisa Parenti. This is bloomberg. Day powered by more than 2700 Bloomberg Technology is next. Im emily chang and this is Bloomberg Technology. Coming up, bitcoin hits another gear on a bigger stage. Why sundays debut could play a defining role in the cryptocurrencies march to the mainstream. Plus, the blackout at americas busiest airport. How tech can help keep the power running when the lights go out. Stepping up security. With just a week to go for lastminute shoppers, an ebays executives tips on shopping online. The worlds Biggest Exchange just joined the bitcoin revolution. Futures started trading on the ame after there were similar derivatives on the volatile cryptocurrency. Cme is a much bigger player. The exchange got up to a faster start with more efficient pricing. Its most active contract change d hands 270 times. It is a huge win because cme contracts are five times more valuable, tied to five bitcoin compared to only one. Joining us now is olaf. Polly chain is a hedge fund that invests in currencies. Also with us is bloomberg editor at large cory johnson. Olaf, i will start with you. What is your take with the first week . Olaf it is very important that these advanced Financial Products and hedging mechanisms are introduced for the investors. For a lot of them, it is the first time they have been able to go along or short on bitcoin. Emily we have a chart here showing out futures got off at cbo. The sea boat to what is your significance on this week versus last week . Cory this is a product of an exchange where a lot of big money trade. A lot of big money funds are unable to trade this, the actual currency itself. It is the only product they can legally get involved in, or depending on where they are trading. A lot more money can be attracted to the cyber currencies. The lastaf, how does two weeks change what you are doing daytoday at your hedge fund . Olaf the main thing we wish there could have been more long. There has been a huge amount of media, interest in this area. A huge number of consumer retailers coming a line, purchasing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. I think we are seeing more institutional wall street players coming onto the scene and wanting to go along in this area. I think it is great for the whole industry. Emily you also have Td Ameritrade on friday saying they are now getting into this. Cory rioght, but with significant requirements. It is not as simple as trading. A lot of it is going to volatility and a mania around this. Emily you and i were talking before the show, the price has soared. I feel like every time you have come on, i say are we in a bubble and the price you going higher and higher. Pricehe rapid rise of the make you question the legitimacy of the value . Olaf what we are seeing is it is not that dissimilar from the rapid rise you would see from other technology. When you look at a a breakout startup like uber, we are seeing a similar rapid rise there. Here, you are seeing Retail Investors with the ability to actually gain exposure through this break through technology and see that rise daytoday. From not that dissimilar the types of growth you would see from other breakout industries. I do think this is much bigger than any individual company. It is not surprising to me we are seeing this type of growth. I think it feels somewhat inevitable to many of us. Emily do you agree with that comparison . Cory it is not just the coins. Ripple. T just a bitcoin there is a lot of junk out there. A lot of stocks flying, i was looking today at a company that was a Chinese Energy company and now a block chain internet of Things Company and has a 300 billion valuation. That is a mania. That is mania not based on what is going on or even the potential for this technology. It is just the mania olaf pushing a lot of behavior is a lot of the inability of these Institutional Investors to get exposure. Because a lot of them dont have the ability to buy the underlying assets cory whenever you see a mania, whether it is the dotcom boom, while there were legitimate investments in real companies, there was a lot of junk and a lot of people try to take the money of people interested in the idea. We saw it in real estate 10 years ago. People selling fake properties, people borrowing money. A lot of fraud. I think we were seeing that in this general notion of cyber currency. Once in a while, we can grab onto some real things like bitcoin. Thingsd look at fake like vstoxx running with no fundamentals and recognizing these are happening in concert. Emily are you seeing anything that makes you uneasy and if so what . Olaf i think this area is so emergent and experimental. I think it is really good that money is flowing into things that are less sure. That said emily not for the people who lose money. Olaf of course. I think my number one concern is people basically investing in things they dont understand. This is very complicated and esoteric technology. I think there momandpop investors should be careful, particularly investing in more experimental technologies outside of the bluechip cryptocurrencies like bitcoin. Emily how long do you think it will be before we see other crypto futures being offered . Olaf over this year, we will see dozens of others. Cory we will see some stocks blowup and some real frauds. This long thin corporation traded 15 million shares at 20 valuations two days ago, the stock is flying off the roof. An ipo that has 13 centers against it. Has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines. I dont think the people have any idea what they are buying this from or the firms history. They just want to get something that is block chaining and going up. Emily if there is a correction or lets all come back to earth event, how far off is Something Like that . Olaf if you zoom out, cryptocurrency has been filled with massive corrections throughout history. I think this is just a natural part of where there is a disparity of the number of people what sees what is a somewhat inevitable future and where the technology is today. Cory the trading of this future contracts makes it less likely we will see downsized or any volatility because on the downside, you will have shortsellers looking to cover those positions and buying positions as prices come off. First half of 2018, olaf, what will you be watching . Olaf i spent most of my time watching the more Emergent Technologies here. The various things being built top on it. The things i would advise others to take risks unless they fully understand what they are doing. Emily olaf, great to have you here on the town. As well as cory johnson. Stocks are wrapping up the last few trading days of the year by hitting new records. Investors are Optimistic Congress will pass tax cuts this led the tech stocks game with nasdaq rising 7000 in the session. Coming up, one of the biggest airports in the world came to a halt this weekend. We will discuss how tech and should improve travel in the busy Holiday Season. Bloomberg technology is Live Streaming on twitter. Check us out weekdays 5 p. M. In new york and 2 p. M. In san francisco. This is bloomberg. Whatsapp was given a month to comply with french privacy law and stop transferring data from facebook users without consent. Whatsapp was given a frances Data Protection authority says it wants to ensure the highest level of transparency on the massive data , according to a statement monday. This comes after 28 eu privacy watchdogs published a letter published in october tofrancesn whatapps world. Whatapps cofounder. Meantime, power is back on and one of the busiest airports in Jackson International airport in atlanta experienced a massive power outage, laughing 11 hours on sunday, causing thousands of light cancellations. Whatve to ask, technologies being used to improve air travel right now . Justin covers of Airline Industry for Bloomberg News and joins us now from new york. What happened in atlanta . Justin it appears there was a fire with a key component in the Electrical Supply system. It with is not really in Airline Problem but an airport problem. Emily is there a risk of this happening again, at more airports . Justin i think there is a risk in terms of what is the infrastructure like and what are those system set up to do. You really have to separate what airport andwith the what the airlines themselves are doing. They have huge i. T. Corporations themselves. Emily talk about airport and what the airlines themselves are doing. The infrastructure at the airports and how Something Like this could happen . But a not so simple, simple issue of the electricity goes out and nobody can operate and move planes. What we have seen in the past with delta in atlanta last year, they had a multiday problem with their data center went out and they were forced to build a new one. A huge amount of money and put that in northern suburbs. Last week, the ceo said that cannot happen again with us the way we set up our i. T. Operation. Atlantan april hit which caused a three day problem. We have seen a recurring series where Airline Technology has been a fault. In response, there has been a huge amount of investment in that area so we have places like delta and southwest, they have both spend hundreds of millions of dollars to really get the reliability in that system. When they go down, you are talking about more people than they have had in the past, more planes moreg, crowded with historic loads. An airline cannot just get back up and running as quickly as it used to because of all the people. For them, that means they need to make sure this technology is robust. Emily how many people were impacted by this . Justin quite a few people because we are talking about more than 1200 flights yesterday, 400 today. Southwest had a number as well. When you were talking about delta, atlanta is really the key o ihub in that airline. Busiest delta hub and they put a lot of airplane through there every single day. We are talking about a massive impact to busiest delta an airlr carriers may not be quite as severe. Emily it may not be hard to jump to the worstcase scenario, or is this a kind of weakness that somebody could exploit to perpetrate an attack . Justin probably in the sense if you take out the electric supply, the power grid, you are talking about all kinds of systems that can potentially be affected by that. What works at an airline because they have their own backup power system would not tie to the infrastructure. I think that is a complicated question. When you were talking about the ability to shut down all the power, you will have a lot of problems no matter where you are. Emily we are in the middle of the busiest travel time of the year. How might this new technology be helping to ease some of these travel pains that anyone who travels right now might experience over the next couple of weeks . Justin i think with all the money that has been spent, you can say that Airline Infrastructure is probably more robust than it was 18 months ago. At the same time, this wasnt right where the crazy Holiday Travel starts, on wednesday or so. It could have been a lot worse. You could have been a lot more people in terms of what happens later this week. But, airlines, this money is spent very carefully. They know what it is supposed to do. Delta ort really had a southwest since a lot of this Infrastructure Investment was made. Over time, we will see how well it will get tested when it is their own i. T. Problem and not just the electricity going out. Emily justin bachman, thank you so much for that update. Need ofp, espn is in new leadership after a shocking announcement. Who will take the reins of the selfproclaimed worldwide leader in sports, next . This is bloomberg. Emily while star wars the last jedi may be dividing the minds of fans across the globe, it is not doing so in the box office. The latest installment raising 220 million during the opening weekend. That makes it the second highest domestic debut ever behind what wars the015s star force awakens. It has yet to open in china. It has pushed over the 200 million mark this year to become the top grossing movie studio in 2017. Sticking with disney, a surprise resignation has shaken up the Sports Entertainment world. John skipper has stepped down as the president of espn. In a statement on the company website, skipper said he struggled with a substance addiction for years but did not provide specific. Formerforce awakens. It has yet to open in china. Chairman George Bodenheimer will take over as acting chairman on an interim basis. Disney bowwill most likely have two candidates to replace skipper. Joining us now is lucas who brought us the news. Before we go there, i want to talk about what has happened to john skipper here. He released a statement saying today, i have resigned as my duties as president of espn. I have struggled for many years with the substance addiction. I decided the most important thing i can do right now is take care of my problem. What more do we know about the problem here . Lucas not a whole lot. I have spoken with a number of people at espn, people who do a lot of work with espn. Lucas not a wholeeverybody was. Moreskipper is one of the intelligent executives out there. Not the kind of person you would expect to have a Substance Abuse problem. And there are people who have worked very closely with him who had no idea this was an issue. There have been some rumors about his job security related to the performance at espn but nothing on a personal basis. You side throughout the day a number of senior staffers, tv hosts talking about how supportive he has been. This has come as a complete surprise. Emily the timing is interested given what espn is grappling with. Who do you think might take over here . Lucas i would guess that the is Justin Connolly, who is the head of distribution, oversees the relationship with operators. Aytv is justin they put George Bodenheimer, who has actually run espn, back in charge for now. My guest this is temporary. Bodenheimer left at kind of the operators. Theypeak and does not want the stresses of trying to fix some of espns problems. He is like a comfortable placeholder that everyone knows and knows the business very well and everybody respects. That gives them time to figure out who they want to hire someone internally like Justin Connolly . I think they are people that may have gotten the job in two or three years when skipper was ready to retire. This move really forces their hand. Emily lets talk about the challenges facing espn. I sat down with bob iger a couple of months ago and asked this very question, what his plans were for espn. Take a listen to what he had to say. Bob espn is still a very healthy, very profitable business. One of our most profitable businesses. It has a stable of live sports that is licensed for a long period of time that will serve it extremely well. It is serving it well today on the traditional platform. It is starting to serve it well on new platforms and it will serve it well for the perceivable future. It is a product that is in demand. Emily that is actually from an interview in may. How do you think that impacts strategy Going Forward given this new twist . Lucas the scary thing about this timing for espn is they are in the middle of trying to build its online service, that is probably the biggest new initiative in the company in a long time. Espn is the most profitable cable network. Espn and fox news can probably fight for that ground. It has been the crown jeewl at disney for a long time and just started to feel the effects of being able to watch a live sports on amazon, twitter. They are trying to figure out how to reimagine that tv network, while keeping the boat afloat. Ok, lucas shaw in l. A. Thank you so much for joining us. Coming up, we are a away from the Christmas Holiday and an ebay exec joins us next on what ok,the company is doing to come with amazon. This is bloomberg. Alisa im Alisa Parenti and you are watching Bloomberg Technology. Lets start with a check on your first word news. At least six people are dead today after an amtrak train to rail between seattle and portland. Some of the trains cars landed onto interstate 5. The section of track where it derailed had just been upgraded as part of a 181 million project. Another former holdout is on board to support the final republican tax bill. Madam president , i rise to express my support for the conference agreement on the tax cuts and jobs act. The first Major Overhaul of our tax code since 1986. Alisa all but one gop senator are reportedly on board. Jeff flake remains undecided. The u. S. Veto the resolution supported by 40 other Un Security Council members that would have required President Trump to rescind his declaration of jerusalem as the capital of israel. U. S. Ambassador nikki haley accused some members of trying to serve their own agenda. What we witnessed here today in the Security Council is an installed. It wont be forgotten. It is one more example of the United Nations doing more harm than good in addressing the israelipalestinian conflict. Alisa Vice President mike pence will postpone his planned trip to the middle east until next year as a Critical Senate vote looms on they tax overhaul. He planned to meet with the egyptian president and israeli president. Palestinian president canceled a meeting with Vice President pence. Global news 24 hours a day powered by more than 2700 journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. This is bloomberg. It is after 5 30 p. M. Here in washington, 6 30 Tuesday Morning in hong kong. We are bor joined by david. Another fresh round of records across the board. David we might just get it in the asiapacific. Good morning from hong kong. We are about 1 short, less than 1 short of the record. We are looking at these gains at the open when you look at the futures contracts. One fourth of 1 of the nikkei 225. We are also watching for the south african rally. Seeing a little bit of gains on top of the two days of sharp gains on the u. S. Dollar as we get more clarity on the political front. That is a wrap of market so far early on tuesday. More Bloomberg Technology coming up next. Emily this is Bloomberg Technology. Giftgivingh time for and with the convenience of Online Shopping comes the threat of Cyber Security and fears package is not getting delivered ontime. Here ebay north america. It is the holidays and also time for the big rivalry package is not getting delivered ontime. Here to talk about Holiday Shopping efforts and trends is senior Vice President of between amazon and walmart. What are you doing to stave them off . Guest today is the biggest shopping day of the season. What we have seen is a lot of consumers showing up early for the Holiday Season. Tremendously disruptive for technology because you have seen Retail Stores decline over the course of the year. And more people favoring online purchasing. Consumers showing up early for the holidaymost of those purchae going into mobile. It has been a great opportunity for ebay and we had a record Holiday Season so far. Emily are you making any strategy changes compared to last season given the dominance of amazon . Scott amazon is one of the largest retailers in the world. Ebay is larger than most of the traditional big box retailers. We are the number two ecommerce player in the United States. Tens of millions of sellers, 170 million buyers across the world. We are showing up on the holidays differently this year. We have been out early this year with tremendous deals. The best deals Available Online anywhere. We have been telling consumers you can come to ebay and find great deals and get those packages under three days, most of the time for free, and you dont have to pay a subscription fee. That is the big difference for ebay. Emily what about cybersecurity . a huge issue right now and especially right now during the holidays. What are you doing to protect your customers . Thet we have been one of first for online retail, which is we guarantee the things our customers buy are real. We stand behind everything that is purchased on the site. Cybersecurity and protecting both the identity of the purchaser, but most importantly the Shopping Experience that what you see is what you get, is what ebay is all about. 2018, we know at you guys have seen increased engagement but Revenue Growth has not kept up. You think that will happen in 2018 . Scott the last quarter results, it was the best quarter in a number of years. We have been showing steady acceleration of growth. We are having a record Holiday Season, because i think what we are standing for for ebay, which is you could come to the site, see over a billion things that are available. Most of those things are new, never used. They ship under three days. You have a great Value Proposition and finding tremendous personalized gifts at they ship under three days. Ebay. That has been a very strong Value Proposition that has been growing. Emily amazon is launching in australia were ebay is a leader. What are you doing to stave off the new competition . Scott ebay is a global business. Over half of our revenue and transactions are outside the United States. Andave 170 million buyers participate in 190 markets around the world. Many of the markets we operate we are the number one or number two ecommerce player. We face competition from retailers in local markets, as well as the large Global Players of which amazon is one. But we are really proud of our global position in some of these big markets. Emily what about australia specifically . Scott we are the leader. We intend to maintain our leadership position and grow our position. That Value Proposition for the consumer in australia is very similar to hear in the United States where you have the world inventory available to you on ebay. Emily the are looming questions about stubhub, continuing speculation on whether you intend to sell the stubhub business. What do you think . Scott iran stubhub the last couple of years. It is one of the great assets and the a big portfolio. We have no intentions of selling stubhub. It has been one of the Great Stories of the last couple of years as peoples experiences are maybe more than good. Stubhub has been on a tremendous growth trajectory. Hottest holiday products on ebay now . Scott our deals team is back in the shop tried to make sure we have great deals available. This week, we will see a shift from those things that what you get closer to the weekend, you will see a shift into digital goods. A very active gift card season at the tail end. We are excited with a Branded Products that are available right now, some great recognizable brands. Idas. Soft xbox, dyson, add all of these things are available on ebay now. Emily scott cutler, ebay senior Vice President of the americas. Happy holidays. Sticking with shopping, if you have not already purchased apple air pod, you may be out of luck. They seem to be in short supply everywhere. Apples website says a pair can be delivered by january 5 at the earliest date. However, if you find yourself in desperate need of the wireless headphones, some sellers are offering the product for prices of 200 or more. Coming up, hong kong is revamping its ipo rules in order to lure a new group of companies to its exchange. Can it prevent another situation listings . Ba on u. S. This is bloomberg. Emily three years ago, alibaba famously chose to list its ipo in the u. S. On the new york stock exchange, abandoning its plans to list in hong kong. Now Hong Kong Stock Exchange is targeting the next alibaba by revamping its ipo rules. Charles lee sat down with bloomberg in exquisite interview and explained who they are hoping to attract. Charles it is three key elements. One, we are opening a new chapter for Biotech Companies. Their drugs, products not yet being approved so of course they dont have any revenue yet. This is the thing that some people were pointing to, that you are selling out because you are ending this property requirement. Charles nothing hurts about having to have a profit. We have a mining company. There is no dispute there is value in there. Unless you have a railroad, you cannot sell your minerals. We do have preprofit concent today. List without a profit as long as you are big enough. This new reform, Biotech Companies it is huge volume that has not been created in that space. I think we want to make sure that we opened for business for companies that are in the middle of clinical trials, but not get receiving approval. That was one of the three you were talking about. Charles second is due class shares. The there is for secondary listings for companies that are related in the u. S. Or u. K. Lets move to how they should improve your ipo pipeline. Time nextthis year that you have doubled people coming to the board . Charles we are looking much broader than what is the ipo market. Next year is going to be fundamentally different from what we have seen before. That is great. But in the end, we are trying to connect the market. We are trying to connect our market, the Global Market with chinas market. We are also connecting chinese investors the global parroduct. It we are able to introduce a new Economy Company then our market will be a fundamentally different. Coupled with the money coming from the north and the south connect. And with the new economy, i think hong kong willit we are an explosive growth story as far as a financial market. If people want to list, they have to be part of the new economy. Im sure it is a very complicated process but in a nutshell . Charles you have to be at least new economy, meaning the technology, intellectual properties and whatever else. That itself is not enough. Publishing guidance letter, essentially trying to figure out why you particularly have to have this kind of governance structure. I think our new economy as a definition is a necessary condition, but there are a lot of other factors we will be looking at. Emily that was charles li, hk exchanges and clearing chief executive. Asia, despite a slowing economy, chinas travel industry embraces growth in the last couple of years. James leong expects the company also to carry on its robust growth. James as chinas currency becomes stabilized and china continues to run a large surplus, i think travel will continue to grow robustly in the near future. China, the current statistics, is only less than 5 of people have a passport compared to the u. S. Where 20 people have it. How do you characterize the competition you are seeing them ethically . Whether that is alibaba. How do you characterize that as they are starting to carve out more market share now . James still a very big market. All parts of the market are growing very rapidly. Andsing on food delivery the lowend travel market has been doing well. Our highend businesses are growing very nicely too. We actually think it is higher market. Longterm wise, this has more potential. We think we are in a good position. Tom alibaba seems to be carving out space across a number of sectors. How does that affect how you navigate the business . James i think there are some very big players. A number of transactions they generate is many times bigger than ctrip. In terms of value generated, ctrip is one of the biggest up there. Travel will continue to be growing faster than the rest of the economy. We will represent a higher share of the overall market. Ctrip also has a very Good Opportunity to succeed with nonchinese markets. I think we will be one of the big players. We dont see the travel market close to have the scale of what ctrip has now. Tom would you consider further acquisitions in 2018 . James we are always actively looking for good fit for technology and market focus. Anything that is complement to Retort Technology offerings and also market presence in different parts of the world, yeah, we are always very interested in. Tom what kind of technology are you looking for and what regions are you expected to present opportunities . James last year we invested in ticketingr, air technology, and the consumer brand. In the u. K. , we invested in troubl travel fusion. Those are the kinds of things we are looking for air travel Technology Partners and Consumer Brands in markets where we still dont have a lot of a presence yet. Emily that was ctrip founder and chairman james liang with tom mackenzie. Coming up, twitter shares soar. Wall street gives the company its fifth stock up great in the last two months. We take a look at the latest vote of confidence. This is bloomberg. Emily a stock we are watching twitter shares surged 11 , hitting its highest intraday price since 2016. Analyst raised the stock to overweight and a high 27. This is the fifth upgrade for twitter since late october. Citi have and recently upgraded the stock. Twitter has began enforcing stricter policies on abusive content. The new guidelines were first announced one month ago but now put into place. Twitter is riveting users from abusing or threatening others through their profiles or usernames. That includes keeping the president s retweet of a video that contains violent antimuslim sentiment. The group that sent out the original tweet is now banned from twitter. Earlier this year, we sat down with anthony noto and asked him about President Trumps impact on the platform. We cannot causally say on whether the increase focus on politics is driving the the growth because we dont have measures. We cannot causally say on whether thethere was an incrw resurrected users and the percentage of accounts they followed for news and polit ics. Emily is there any way to give us a little more color on president e using the platform itself or the followers . The product onk the market has been the consistent trend for a solution. Twitter benefits when influential people in the world use our platform to tell what is happening. We encourage that. We love the discussion. With love the conversation that is happening. The more it happens, the more we are better at showing you what is happening in the world and what is being talked about. It at every world leader used it as a mechanism to talk to their constituents. Emily you are kind of like the soul of twitter right now. Twitter is navigating some rough patches. How would you describe how you are approaching your job as coo and cfo . And sort of explain this idea of being the soul of the company. Anthony it at every world leader used i love working with jack and the rest of the leadership team. We approach running the company is focused on specific priorities and we divide and conquer. At the end of the day, we divide up the priorities among 13. Our team. I would not want to work with anyone else than this team, including jack. Hies an no rehearsals, no script. He just delivered the heart and soul of what twitter is. I us could ever make. It is a powerful relationship to have is a company, i think it has made us better in the last two years he has been at the helm. We talk a lot about the potential drawbacks of running to companies. Are there any benefits . Anthony the media wants to ask us about having dual roles. I dont ever think about it until the media asks me. If i have something to talk to jack about, we talk about it. If we have something to talk about is a team, we talk about it as a team. Emily twitter hiredif i have so jack banks last fall. What is the latest . Anthony the latest is we have not commented on that situation. The board supports the strategy we have and the plan we have in place and the great progress we are delivering with four consecutive quarters of daily active user growth. I have been around the internet sector since 1998 and i have seen a lot of Companies Come and go. I can count on one hand the amount of acceleration that twitter did in 2015 and reaccelerate in 2016 is an accomplishment and i cannot be prouder of our team and the rest of the employees that make it happen every day at twitter. We have a lot to do. We are still at the beginning of the beginning. We have not come close to accomplishing the longterm goals we have. We are committed to that. We will recognize the missteps we make and dont make it a second time. Emily do you see twitter as an independent company . Anthony i see twitter as a company to have the largest impact in the world both economically and otherwise. Emily a year from now, where is twitter . You pounding the pavement and all of these deals, what do we see . Anthony we will see consistent execution. Twitter is the best at what is showing what is happening in the world and what is being talked about. We keep investing in being faster in breaking news, more comprehensive selection, more showing what is happening in the world and what is being talked about. Conversation, and personalize in a bigger way. Four invest in those things consistently, we will continue to have the strongest ability to deliver what is happening in the world. Four thingsemily if facebook and goe have the biggest part of the pie now, how much will twitter have . Anthony twitter does not have as big of a pie that we will have some day but the onus is on us and that will bring the value and revenue to the shareholders. Emily that was anthony noto back in may. Bloomberg lp operates a global breaking news network on twitter. That does it for this edition of Bloomberg Technology. That is all for now. This is bloomberg. Stocks areific excited to gain on wall street amongst increasing optimism on u. S. Tax cuts. Will those cuts moved a step closer as Senate Republicans said they have the numbers with a former critic on board. The cme. N enjoying the cryptocurrency has been testing the move above 19,000. And dealing with debt. A former official says china should stop its obsession with the growth target and tackle a mu