Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Bloomberg BusinessWeek 20240714

Joel weber is here. What a fascinating read. It was not what we were expecting. This was a culmination of a yearlong project, with a writer who was going to travel around the world and wanted to come to us with something special. We wanted to come up with an amazing idea to hear from laborers, workingclass people who most of us would never hear from. Carol it is a global story that took a lot of time and a lot of reporters and translators. We basically im a as she went around the world, she would look for people that she thought would embody the spirit of the local community. Then the beauty of this work is that it captures their voice. We hear from them directly in their voice. It is not reporting in a traditional sense, it is more like being told to the mark and you get to hear from people working in amazon factories in europe as a syrian refugee, or in electronics in asia. There are cogs in the Global Economy we do not usually get to hear from. Now it is important because they are facing automation, migration, xenophobia come together. Jason it turns disruption on its head in a lot of ways. We talk about consumers and the benefits we get from these things happening around the world. This shows you the other side. That is why we wanted to go big with this. 10 people in their own words. People we would not otherwise here. It was such a global effort that is why we wanted to make it the cover. Carol these are folks who in many ways are struggling to take care of their families. They are also strappers. The burdens are immense. There are Health Care Issues and Climate Change issues. Everything we all face in the world. All of these people are eking by. That is why we wanted to bring you their stories. Carol markets of front and center this week hitting new highs amidst fed chair powell signaling a willingness to lower rates in his testimony at washington, d. C. Jason plus, we have come a long way since the 2008 financial crisis. Lehmans stock is maybe worth something after all. Go back to the g20 meeting, it is not like there was a trade deal wrap. The tensions did the escalate a little bit. Huawei is not a focal point that it was. Then you add onto that, basically the notion the Federal Reserve will blink and cut Interest Rates, which is the most important thing Stock Traders worry about. Do they have to worry about higher Interest Rate . It is clear that there will be the one cut in july at the end of the month. After that, it is anybodys guess. Those two things are a clear way to the big worries people had. While the trade war is not as off it is not escalating further. Then we will get this bonus cut this month, and it is off to the races. Carol valuations are off to the races as well. As we move into another earnings season, i wonder what we will hear from companies. I do not think it will be very good. Forecasts are for a drop in earnings for the Second Quarter and a Third Quarter is not looking better. The Fourth Quarter has expectations for a terrific rebound. The Second Quarter might throw cold water on that. It goes back to the notion of lower Interest Rates. I think people will be happy to look past a little softness in earnings if they think we do not have to worry about Interest Rates going up. Bond yields are not enticing at these levels to move money out of equities into bonds. We have seen these masses of inflows in bonds all year. With rates low, people will remain engaged in the stock market. You will see some volatility among certain companies, perhaps certain sectors, but more of a rotation into whatever sectors people think are less at risk to all these issues, rather than abandoning the market completely. Carol if you do not like the stock market, maybe you can invest in the graveyard. [laughter] tell us about this great story you have in the magazine. Kind of out of left field. There is a market for stock certificates and bond certificates, a niche market. Before computers, that way stocks were traded was with paper certificates. Carol it is not so long ago. We were talking about how you would give that as a gift to somebody. Disney was a very popular one. Disney continued to issue them after they were obsolete as a trade mechanism. What i focused on, and i have been mulling doing something about this hobby for a while, but what caught my attention, the other big hot area of collectors interest is anything president ial related. You have donald trump, who was the head of a Public Company with lots of stock and bond certificates. He meets the president ial collectors interest, so trump stock certificates are hot. The irony is that a company that went bankrupt is worthless, now those are among the hottest sellers relatively. There are some you can find, there is a trump certificate up for 800. Carol on ebay, right . Some are for sale on other sites for 6,000. It depends on who has signed them. One was signed by mark twain, a railroad stock. Jason closer to our time than mark twain, the financial crisis, companies that no longer exist, lehman, bear stearns, countrywide, people want these certificates. It is a funny part of this market. There are certain websites that have categories like fraud, failures, bankruptcies. They are hot and popular. Anything with a good story behind it. Obviously Lehman Brothers has an intriguing story behind it as disastrous as it was. It captivates peoples interests. Carol there was a federal bond Certificate Signed by jason George Washington, and it sold for 265,000. That is a fascinating story. They will not tell you who the bidders are at that price. Hedge fund guy or ceo, a lot of times are the bidders for the expensive ones. We are not sure who bought it, but the dealer said he would have gone to 1 million for a u. S. Bond from 1792 signed by George Washington himself. Carol Deutsche Bank waives the white flag and goes back to basics in its latest turnaround plan. Jason hong kong protesters who want democracy are testing beijing patience. Carol this is bloomberg. Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am carol massar. Jason i am jason kelly. Join us on radio, and catch up on podcast. Listen and subscribe at itunes and soundcloud. Carol you can find us online and on our mobile app. Deutsche bank had one predominant goal to compete with wall street. Fast forward to this week when germanys biggest bank is giving up on that ambition. Jason that turnaround plan, there have been many of them, investors not excited. That place through into the share price on a relative basis. Taylor riggs is with us, walk us through it. It does not good. In equity markets, price to earnings within the banking world, we use the ratio Deutsche Bank in yellow trading at a big discount as the price of their shares are below what the assets are on the balance sheet. That is not a good thing. The u. S. And white well above 1. 00, where markets are higherpriced. Deutsche bank and all the european banks. Carol such a big cap between the u. S. And european banks. Jason for more on Deutsche Banks latest turnaround, here is opinion columnist in london. She has this weeks remarks. Deutsche bank waves the white flag. After two decades trying to build up a business and compete to compete with wall street, they are making a significant uturn by exiting the Global Trading business. It is quite untested. We have not seen a firm of this size pullout of that business in quite this way before. They are shrinking trading business by 40 to and 20 of the workforce, cutting 18,000 jobs across the firm. Carol it is massive, a huge restructuring for any firm. We will get into details, but investors were not impressed, and they have not been impressed by Deutsche Bank for some time. Business has been difficult to keep the investor and gain investor enthusiasm. This is a bank that since the financial crisis has drifted. Tweaks around the edges, scale back there, but to keep optionality cost too many and was a drag on the overall growth. Not only didnt it lose confidence of investors, but regulators were not comfortable either. The bank has been involved in a host of scandals from rate rigging, and that added to a lack of credibility in the company to thrive. Carol we are talking 18 billion Deutsche Bank has paid for numerous things they have done wrong. What is interesting about the Deutsche Bank story is that it has been years in the making. Yes, absolutely. What happened is after the financial crisis there has been a spectacular shift in the fixed income trading business, which is by no means as large as it used to be. It had not adapted to that reality. Unlike u. S. Ipos driven by strong domestic economy, a region which is at record lows. You have a firm that is not as healthy at home. Jason keep talking about that. You talked about record low Interest Rates, and we may go into a period where europe may find itself cutting rates even further. The shortterm does not look so good, and that may be why investors are down on the plan. I think that is absolutely true. The economy is slowing, and ecb has signaled potential further rate cuts and quantitative easing. If you look at the earnings outlook for the banks, they are not getting any better. There is some concern that this plan, though most would agree it is suitably radical, may become too late particularly across the industry. Jason another top story, protesters in hong kong are bound to return to the streets after carrie lam declared her controversial extradition bill dead. Carol that bill would allow extraditions to mainland china. The turmoil has raised questions about hong kongs longterm viability. Is externally compelling, you have people in the streets demanding freedom from china, and there has been back and forth on this issue. The law that governs hong kong, or had since the handover from the u. K. In 1997 says hong kong gets to maintain its own separate capitalist system of government and way of life for 50 years. That runs out in 2047. China gets a degree of approval over the leadership of hong kong. The leader is selected by committee made up of beijing loyalists. There is no popular vote to determine who that is. They have gone back and forth, you saw it in 2014 with the umbrella protests. This is the latest turn. Jason hong kong and its place in the world, this is a political story at large, and that is why it is in this section. It is funny to think about, it could be in any section of the magazine in the sense that hong kong is an economic powerhouse. It is incredibly important to the Financial Services world. That is why people are paying close attention. Absolutely, it is a business story. Companies do not want people stationed in hong kong to be subject to chinese law. You do not want suddenly so many working in hong kong to run afoul of the government in beijing and sent there for trial under chinese law. It creates complications. Jason this week, to make a point of reference, we had carrie lam the chief executive hong kong say in cantonese and english this extradition law is dead. But that did not satisfy the protesters because what they want is for her to withdraw it. It seems like a small point, but it feels important for the people who are protesting. Absolutely, there is a lot of distrust tween the protesters and carrie lam. She did not withdraw the bill, so it could come back with little notice. Unless and until she does, the protesters have vowed to keep opposing it. The longer this goes, who knows what else will be required to really satisfy this latest unrest and put it to bed. Carol coming up, a very wrong turn. Jason businessweek sits down with 10 workingclass folks around the world struggling to make ends meet Innovative Automation and globalization. Carol this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. I am jason kelly. Carol i am carol massar. You can also listen to us on radio. Jason and through the Bloomberg Business app. How a rental cap lost its fleet in an entire day. Carol in an effort to expand, in chicago they were ready. 75 vehicles got jacked in one day. Jason it is quite a story. It started on a monday in april, normally a slow day for the car sharing business. There was snow on the ground and they were not expecting to see much of it. It was in chicago. They were monitoring the fleet from austin texas. They saw all the highend cars, the mercedes were headed out of the coverage area. They only operate in part of chicago. A lot of cars, way more than normal went to the same place. And they started to wonder what was going on. Carol what did they find out . It turned out they had changed the process for getting a new account. Just several days earlier. Carol they made it easier . They made it easier to get an account. It was every application was checked by a human, and they went to an automated service. People figured it out, set up fake accounts and started using them to check out the expensive cars in chicago, or half the expensive cars in chicago were taken on a joyride. Carol they were able to give them away, or in some cases rent them out to people. Some took them on joyride thomas some were stripped down. This was a disaster. Absolutely. The interesting thing, almost immediately ads started popping up on facebook saying, if you want to rent a mercedes in chicago, and if you have a hundred dollars, i will rent you the mercedes. That happened, and people started trading mercedes and driving around in them. The interesting thing also, this was an unusual event, but not completely unusual, not the first time these ads had shown up on facebook. There was a history of a secondary market for car sharing in chicago. Carol what is it about chicago . It seems like it has happened several times. Enterprise which operate a car sharing business pulled out of chicago in 2017. They cited high rates of fraud and vandalism. There were also problems in brooklyn with bmws, a car sharing service. It is always the highend vehicles for the most part. If you are going to joyride, you want to do it in style. Jason that is how carol is. Carol i own my car. The car to go people went to the site in chicago where the cars were meeting initially. They went to see what was going on. There is a practice of Car Sharing Companies if a car do something unusual, you send someone to go investigate. All the cars have gps trackers. There was no attempt to turn those off. They started sending people over to figure out what was going on. The company did not want to talk about it, but people who were familiar with the incident said it was a menacing scene. People realized it was out of their hands and retreated to figure out the next steps, and eventually Police Showed up. Jason talk about the car sharing business. While lyft and uber are ridehailing and have exploded in popularity, car sharing may be for reasons like this, how has it not been as successful as people thought . In part with car sharing, you are going after someone who wants to drive a car. They are more likely to own cars than someone who wants a ride like uber and lyft. That is more of a taxi service. A lot of times it is a different thing. People want to drive cars, there is a tendency to buy those cars. Carol i think you put this in the story about tension between convenience and security, is this happening with scooters or bikes or zip cars . Any Technology Company will be faced with the tradeoff. You can make things as convenient as possible, or as secure as possible. There is intention there. It becomes more acute when you put something expensive in a public space. Scooters have had problems with fraud and vandalism. And with car sharing, you find there will be some level where people want to take these cars to use them or strip them. Carol coming up, our global cover story, the new workers of the world. Jason businessweek features 10 brave souls around the world trying to make a living in an era of unprecedented change. This is Bloomberg Businessweek. . Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol still ahead, giving the pedal to the metal at ups. Jason a growing need for speed across the industry. We speak with the Hotel Tonight ceo. Carol normalizing nerd culture. How Stranger Things and the gig economy have created a world where you can profit off dungeons dragons. Jason we begin with our global cover story. New workers of the world. We often hear about the mathematics of globalization and automation on the workforce. Jobs replaced by robots. Communities left struggling biotech transformations. But what about how the change affects the individuals themselves . Carol a lot going on. Our freelance reporter spent six months traveling across five continents and wrote a series of stories on workingclass people trying to make a living, particularly people in jobs that did not exist a generation ago. She tells their stories through their own words. Last year, i was hired along with my husband to teach on the semester at sea study abroad program. That was going to take me all over the world. We were traveling to europe, asia, africa, and as a reporter, one of the first thoughts that i had when we were assigned this job was, what kind of reporting project as possible when im dropping into each city for one day, two days, five days . In the meantime, i have been reading a lot of oral histories. There is a writer who is a chinese writer, who wrote this book called the corpse walker, interviews with workers in china, which i thought was remarkable. I have been thinking a lot about that format, not something id tried before. It occurred to me, why not go to each of these places and Start Talking to workers about what their lives are like, how they came to do what they are doing, what is difficult about it, what is rewarding about it . Carol so lets talk about what you found. It was 10 workers that you end up profiling. There were multiple reporters also involved. There were translators. It was a global undertaking. Tell us about some of the people you met. Vauhini in some ways, it feels like it is not my story because these are stories told in workers own words. They are all remarkable. People should read the story. So, i met a man in ghana, who liked tinkering with computers and school, he went to equivalent community college, tinkered with computers, got a job as a taxi driver, which is a sort of lowpaying, backbreaking, unrewarding work. And then one day it occurred to him, what would happen if i just go into a store, by a computer, and bargain with them so i can buy a used computer for a little bit less, and then post it on facebook and whatsapp and tell people that im selling it for more than that . That is what he did. He bought a computer, bargained on the price, and then posted it online. And people came to him and said, we want to pay x amount, which was higher than he bought it for. Next thing he knew, he was building this business as a computer reseller and he has this quite successful Small Business selling used computers imported from the u. S. And europe after they are used their end result of people in ghana. You hear a lot about the kind of difficulties and heartache for people who have workingclass jobs in this new Global Economy and what i really kind of admired most about some of these people is just the ingenuity and the intelligence that they use to get to where they ended up. Jason up next, and installment of business week talks, with the ups ceo, talking about the growing need for speed. Carol Summer Travel is in full swing. We speak with the Hotel Tonight ceo. Jason this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol join us for Bloomberg Businessweek every day on the radio from 2 00 until 5 00 wall street time, or catch up on our podcast. Jason find us online at businessweek. Com and on her mobile app. Our exclusive interview with ups ceo david abney in this weeks issue. Carol in his more than four decades working at ups, he has seen it transform from a simple Delivery Service to a broader logistics managing the need for speed from customers. Jason we spoke with him in our studio in new york. It is the latest edition of businessweek talks. David time is certainly a big key now. This new generation has just really gotten used to wanting things right away. And we see that it is really driven good characteristics in our industry. The focus on next day air and having things delivered the next day versus the deferred method, that really is where our specialty is, our focus, so we are really encouraged by what we see in those areas. Jason and how much do you have to sort of revise the strategy or revise some of the roadmap in the near term to speeded up . At what point do you have to really change things in the supply chain . David you know, the key is to listen to our customers. If you listen, they will tell you what they are looking for. Right now, there are certain things, the reliability, the fact of the brand of ups come the trust people have in our brand, the fact that they can depend on us on a daytoday basis. Those are the things that we are focused on and as long as we keep aligned with our customer needs, we will be in great shape. Jason strategically, how much do you worry about amazon . Are they a friend me frenemy, a friend, an enemy . [laughter] david this world has gotten way more complicated than having somebody labeled as a competitor or customer. It is oftentimes a combination. You just have to accept that. The key is making sure we have a mutually beneficial relationship. As long as we do, that is the path that we are following. You would not say that we worry about amazon. We respect them. Just like we respect others that may be our competitors in certain parts of our business. But if we stay focused on doing our job in implementing our strategies, we feel very comfortable in our position. Carol talk to us about that transformation plan. It is pretty fascinating just logistically what you guys are doing and it is not just about getting packages from a to b, but you are working with the Health Care Sector and other sectors. Give us an idea of how much becomes more of the transformations versus what you are doing today . David we are 112 years old. We have probably been through five major transformations in the history of our country company. This is one of those. The message we are giving to our people as this is continuous transformation. There is not a beginning or an end. The way the Business World is changing, this is the way of life. And we really believe that our people have accepted that. We focused in three particular areas. First of which is high quality revenue growth. Second is increasing our efficiency, using a lot of technology. Third is broadening our Management Team and our culture. Cultures are like anything else. They have to change with the times. The sense of urgency is much more making decisions, much more important now. This is where we are focusing our leadership team. Carol i have to ask you about culture. So much of ups culture is someone who has grown up within the company and many past ceos have been that way. How much of that works today . How much of that doesnt and youve got to bring in outside views and outside individuals . David thats right. Im a big supporter of promotions from within because i have benefited and so have a lot of other upsers. A real strength of our company, the way we know our business. At the same time, with the way things are changing, we do need other expertise and other perspectives and points of view, and that is why of our 12 person management committee, i have three people in from the outside. Im also promoting upsers at the same time. That we need that makes, that hybrid view, that gives us the best of both worlds. Jason when you think about the Company Looking around the corner, it is part of your job as the chairman and ceo, what is the biggest existential threat to ups that you worry about the most . David the one that i would worry about the most is within our control is absolutely the pace of change. We are changing this company and we are changing and rapidly, especially compared to the past. The real hurdle is keeping the change ahead of our customers. That is the thing we talk about all the time and that we focus on. Carol ups is not the only company trying to stay ahead of changing needs. Hoteltonight last offers lastminute hotel deals through an app. Jason we spoke with ceo sam shank. Sam i saw this opportunity with mobile. I was looking at my iphone 2. What if you build something from scratch for the hotel and travel industry on mobile . It is now mobile first. It would do something you could not do with your laptop, which is doing ondemand, what is now called ondemand booking. I called it instant booking. Built a sketch on a whiteboard and that sketch is just a couple simple steps to book a hotel room. And i looked at that and i was like, that is a pretty good idea, i should do that product. That i was like, that is a separate company, that could change the way people travel. That whiteboard is now hanging in our lobby and we have accomplished that. Carol that is so cool. I was talking that you are coming in and people said, i love that site, it makes so much love that site, it makes so much sense. Talk to me about why you guys decided to ultimately lineup with airbnb. Was that an offer you cannot refuse . Sam it was a great opportunity for us to continue our mission with a much bigger platform and partner. Airbnb is in 190 countries and has a huge amount of offices around the world. This is going to allow us and hoteltonight to expand globally, as well as working bringing Hotel Inventory onto airbnb, which is going to be an amazing opportunity for our hotel partners. Jason talk to us about the modern traveler in a lot of ways. Talk about the traveler, but i also want to talk about the hotel business, because for this to work, it had to be appealing to them. Talk about the traveler. What is he or she sort of looking for that this serves . Immediacy . Convenience . Sam the number one thing that especially the modern traveler and the younger traveler that is bleeding into older travelers his experiences. They are looking to optimize their lives around having as many memorable and special experiences as possible. In doing so, a lot of those happen to be travel. There are also Music Festivals or nights out, but travel is a big part of that. With hoteltonight and airbnb, the unique inventory we have hoteltonight is focused on great boutique and hip and in the hotels and airbnb is focused on authentic, living like a local homes and apartments we give the opportunity for people to do that a week on a time or on hoteltonight every night at a time and we serve that market very well. Carol to get little deeper. Im serious about the demographics. It is folks like jason with families. Ive talked to a lot of folks with families. It is different types of individuals. Who is using hoteltonight . Is there one demographic you are really locking into . Carol the older sam the older millennials is the category for us. I just missed that, too. [laughter] sam the older millennials love the tech forward part of hoteltonight, were they can book in three taps and a swipe, the duration that we have, the deals that we have, but also than the use cases. There is an interesting trend where people are staying for longer weekends on sunday night. Sunday night is the best day of the week to book a hotel. It is 30 cheaper than any other day of the week. Carol is there a lot of inventory . Sam there is a lot of inventory. Leisure travel over the weekend. Business travel. Jason and check out more of both of those ceo interviews through our business week podcast. Carol coming up next, running wild for the Colorado Rockies on foot. Jason plus, the rise of the professional dnd master, that is dungeons dragons. That is a thing. Carol this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119 and in new york, boston, washington, dc. Jason in the bay area, london, and through the Bloomberg Business app. Carol in the pursuit section, a review of bud seligs new book for the good of the game. Jason i spoke about the one man who stands tall in the memoir. Bud selig has a very probud selig view as his years as Major League Baseball commissioner. He changed the game, but he does not seem to connect the dots between the problems baseball is having right now and decisions he made under his leadership. Jason those 22 years after be some of the most impactful and change resulted in the history of baseball in a lot of ways. Eben without question. He took over in the early 1990s and immediately led baseball through the strike in 1994, the first cancellation of a world series in dozens of years. Before that, baseball had a lot of trust to make up with a lot of the American Public and it did so over the course of two decades afterward. He led baseball through that. So much of the way baseball is structured right now, the with the divisions are laid out, the way the first wildcard and then the second wildcard, interleague play, the mets and yankees play so many games every year because bud selig put that together. The world baseball classic. The list is really endless of the decisions he made. Some of them that he forced on owners who did not want to do it to make the game healthier. Jason and he also oversaw the era of steroids, or at least maybe the discovery of steroids and drugs being taken by players, and you write in your review that he sort of tries to have it both ways. Eben it is interesting. It is clear from the first words of the book. The stories are a perfect example. Sammy sosa and mark mcgwire have this crazy home run hitting summer into fall in the late 1990s and a spot goes crazy over it. There were like lukens cutting away from sportscenter. Then barry bonds jason in many ways, you could argue that is what brought baseball back from the troubles. Eben i think that is right. Baseball, whether they knew at that moment or not, mark mcgwire was caught with andro in his locker. Baseball certainly benefited from and pushed the maguire, sosa years and the barry bonds home run chase a couple years later. And bud selig essentially takes the stance that as soon as he knew what was happening, he hated every minute of it, did not want to mention it, then was forced by the union to go through this song and dance for years before he could get testing in. Part of that is true. The union was very resistant to forcing players to be drug tested. It is also unequivocally true that baseball both promoted and benefited from the steroid home run era. And now bud selig is trying to vilify it. Jason could be the run of your life. Carol the perfect story for you. It is not fast, but it might be the most fantastic way to experience the Colorado Rockies. A whole section about getting out in the outdoors and doing outdoor sports. It is the middle of summer. We might want some inspiration to try something new. Last year, one of the copy editors that works on our section, brennan, was like, you know what i want to do . This crazy adventure from colorado where you start from aspen and run 100 miles between these huts through the rocky mountains. I was like, you want to do that . [laughter] chris he said, they do it two times a year and they call it hut run hut. You are kind of running free. Apparently, it is an incredible experience. He did it and wrote about it this year. If you want to do with this year, you can sign up. Carol he said like he loved it. Chris he said it was unbelievable. Obviously, it is an incredible it is a slow way to go through the rockies and really experience the wilderness. And the animals, you see stuff you would never see if you were in a car on a bike. Carol you are not running all the time, right . Chris yes, he said when they were running, they were going like 10 miles per hour, which is not fast, but if you are going 1020 miles today. Jason 10 minute miles, not 10 miles per hour. [laughter] chris sorry. Jason that would be six minute miles. Which would be quite fast. [laughter] chris they are going 1020 miles per day and the huts are in valleys after they go up over mountains. It is six days, nearly 100 miles, it is a lot of work, but it. Is also at times slow and beautiful jason and of running through the rockies is not quite your jam, how about a game of dungeons dragons with a professional dungeon master . Yes, i said it. It is a profession. Carol nerd culture, Stranger Things, and a gig economy have created a world where dungeons dragons enthusiasts can turn a profit. Dungeons dragons was part of a moral panic in the 1980s and 1990s. People thought it was satanic, evil. The religious right really went after this game. A dungeon master pastor uses it to teach kids their communion lessons and everything. We have come full circle. Ironically, rpgs and tabletop games have had these huge renaissance because people thought videogames are exploding, that is going to kill boardgames. What has actually happened is things like twitch have come in and if you want to play dungeons dragons, you had no idea 20 years ago, but no you can watch people online play and learn about what can happen on it. Ironically, things like kickstarter, twitch, they have given way more access to these boardgames. There are people i interviewed for the story who have whole separate income streams because people will subscribe to their channel. Carol i just wrote about two numbers. 40 Million People playing annually. Sales of the game are a 41 in 2017 from the year before. Mary it is a big boost and wizards of the coast, the subsidiary putting up the game for quite some time, they get some credit for that because i think the fifth edition of the game which cannot in 2014 made it a lot more acceptable. They do a lot of feedback and play testing. It made it accessible and now you can buy it at a big box retailer. You dont have to go to a game store to get access to these products. Made the game a lot more inviting, but also for the elite dungeon masters, a lot more bandwidth to create their own adventures. Jason talk about that. Technology and the internet have fueled the accessibility in a way and also created this commercial ecosystem, this new commercial ecosystem. Mary absolutely. I talked to a lot of people about how the quality of dungeon mastering has increased. Jason i dont know if i have ever heard anyone use the term dungeon mastering. Mary not all dungeon masters are created equal. You have people doing this and making a living at it. There are greater expectations of what the game can be. Carol tell us about this guy. Mary he lives in the bay area and i used him as the lead of the story. He has a twitch stream. He has been playing with his friends. They did it as an afterthought and now they have subscribers who are paying 4. 99 per month to watch them play on sundays. They have four sponsors, including a beer company that they toast onair. He will also be your dungeon master. He will do your bachelor party, your kids birthday, he will guide players through a campaign, and he does not do any advertising. He has a website and a lot of it has been wordofmouth from his twitch following. It is a great example of an amazing side hustle. He. Loves dungeons dragons and gets to do it all the time carol Bloomberg Businessweek is available on newsstands now. Jason also online on businessweek. Com and on our mobile app. Carol there was a surprising read from mike regan. Stock certificates, bonds certificates from companies that went through really bad times. We are talking about those to the financial crisis and how those certificates are now worth a lot of money. Jason you kind of think about these old dudes collecting these things. Millennials are doing it. Check out mike regans twitter feed. Carol your mustread. Jason i love to the cover story. Depending on how you read it, you either come away with this notion of, there are a lot of people struggling to make a living in different ways, but there is this undercurrent of striving and ambition that ultimately you can see it in something of a positive light. Carol it is a lot of jobs that did not exist a decade ago. You can find more stories over the weekend. Jason check out our daily podcast. Check out all of our big interviews from the week, some extra conversations like the ceo chats. Carol more Bloomberg Television starts now. On todays show, amazon admits that alexa is always listening. And what has four wheels and flies . Im not talking about a garbage truck. An Aerospace Company is introducing a new craft to take cover sports to all new heights. My dri lie security tip, i spy with my little eye a hidden camera in my diy security tip