Josh green takes a look at what has been going on at the white house. Josh, who is one of the writers for businessweek, peeled back beyond the administration before it was the administration. We saw during the campaign in terms of who is in and who is out has only continued. We can laugh about it with Anthony Scaramucci being ousted this week as communications director. He was the fourth official to depart in 10 days. But the gravity and seriousness of this is something we need to start thinking about in terms of, if they are unable to get a hold on their own white house if it will be a revolving door if we will not be able to see stability in terms of how it is run, the leaks, how the press is dealt with, how they are operating as a white house . Is there any hope they will be able to progress with a legislative agenda. The collapse of health care, moving into a phase where they need to get something done. And they want to get tax reform done. I was thinking about coverage, we continue to seek chaos but how do you continue to cover the score at the story. Especially when there is no communications director. It is tough to cover any news that is constantly rolling. Right, what we need to take a step back and get beyond the noise and comedy. There has been an element of levity in all of this. This is the leader of the free world. We see venezuela and north korea and the middle east with the battle against isis. People who need health care in the u. S. And you want to see manufacturing and whose life is not based on out 22,000 but based on everyday ordinary choices. We try to connect the chaos with the everyday impact in foreignpolicy initiatives and domestic policy. That disruption we see is very unusual and will really doom this white house to failure unless they can get a handle on it. Another story is the hna story. Tell us about it. We were talking about a conglomerate they used to own many things to shares of deutsche bank, airlines, apartment buildings in new york it spans a broad array of businesses. We do not see these conglomerates that much more in the u. S. Tyco is the last one i can think of, but they are really very popular in germany. This is a huge company in china that has been on a massive acquisition spree. It is starting to look like it is teetering a bit because it has more regulatory scrutiny in terms of Systemic Risk to the economy and its lenders are circling. This is a bigger problem in china in terms of the debt pile up. This is a highly leveraged company. We call that chinas debt pile up. We have talked about it before. How dangerous it could be. Hna is at the heart of it. It is a complex story. Hna is an incredibly acquisitive very dynamic Chinese Company that has emerged from total of security over the last few years to be probably the most prolific dealmaker internationally among chinese corporations. It owns just under 10 of deutsche bank, it owns a quarter of hilton and other assets over the world. One of the funny things about hna is the Ownership Structure has been somewhat impenetrable for a while and the subject of lurid speculation within china, all of it denied by the company it is not in the sense of a western firm easy to understand. Why do we need to understand what is going on with hna . This is a company that will own a large number of assets all over the world or are ready does in many cases. It is a systemically Important Organization that by its own goals wants to be one of the 50 Largest Companies in the world of buying strategic assets in airport space for example, air travel and transportation generally. Knowing who is behind it is a fairly understandable thing for regulators and investors and journalists to want to understand. A pretty big customer of theirs and a deal that is pending right now, is the acquisition of sky bridge capital, the funds previously run by former White House Communications director briefly Anthony Scaramucci. This is the first time i heard of it. Now there is this investigation. How important has that acquisition bid to thrusting hna into the public spotlight . It brings a lot of attention. This was a deal announced in january. Anthony scaramucci was divesting in the expectation of a white house role which did not arrive until the summer and was quickly taken away. It was very much from the beginning something that was seen in the context of the trump presidency. Youve seen in the brief time when mr. Scaramucci was in the white house, suggestions that it would be better to know precisely who is behind hna and what are its connections to government officials in china because if they are in fact, paying a large amount of money for a Company Owned by a close adviser to president trump, that is the kind of thing you would want to know. Whether that fades from the scene, whether this debate become something that no one pays attention to with mr. Scaramucci leaving, that remains to be seen. You are tasked with finding out, what is hna how easy was that to do . You run into interesting walls. For example, for a long time hna has said that a chinese businessman has owned a large chunk of its shares. An Unlisted Company with a book value of 18 billion. The thing about him is no one has ever seen him. No one has been to an event where this person has appeared. He has never run a public company. On paper, he should be enormously wealthy, he is very obscure. Bloomberg and other organizations have sent reporters to various addresses around beijing associated with him from corporate filings and they are invariably not the places you would expect. A nondescript office or small apartment or a beauty spa in one case. He is nowhere to be found. Hna was turned into a cover story for asia. This is well known in asia and you make it look ominous. We did not know much about the company until we did the story. It is worth a lot of money but its finances are suspect. So we wanted to get at the fact that there are dubious things happening with this company there was no shoot, the ceo is very hard to get a hold of. We took the letters hna and applied this scary graphic. How do you portray this unknown corporate situation the story is really about who is behind this. What are there their motives . How do you portray that visually . In this case, very red and bold. Very challenging in cases like this. We have the headline which help explains putting letters on the cover is not much. Part of it is applying the dark treatment and the scary letters even if you do not know what it is, it makes you want to know. Up next is a Goldman Sachs veteran who could end up leading the worlds most expensive and influential central bank. More decline for the dollar. This is bloomberg. Welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Im carol massar. And im oliver rennick. You can find us online as well. In the politics section, gary cohn went from president of Goldman Sachs to top Economic Advisor of president trump. There has been a lot of speculation in washington over the past couple months that he wants this job even though publicly he said he loves his job right now, as the top economic adviser privately he has been telling people that he does want this job. Trump has signaled recently that he is giving gary cohn close consideration and he has rocketed to the top as the lead contender for the nomination. The market expects him to get it. It is not surprising that any president especially this president would want to put his man, in this case, in a position. When you think about powers invested in the presidency to establish a legacy beyond their term, you have two things. The ability to appoint a Supreme Court justice and the ability to appoint the chairman of the fed. On the campaign trail, trump had not nice things to say about current chair yellen, and it is understandable he would want his own person. It sounds like the president ial bucket list. Let me ask you, we all want to be out to the party, im sure gary cohn, it is a feather in his cap to be considered. Does he really want this job . A thoughtful job, lots of research, lots of meeting, it is not the high profile thing he had a Goldman Sachs or at the white house. Lets think about who he is. What his career has been and how he would fit in. Gary cohn is a guy who was at Goldman Sachs for 25 years. He spent the last decade as the firms number two. He came out of the trading floor. The skills that make a successful trader aggressive and risktaking and relying on gut instinct and hypercompetitive. How does that translate to being a fed chair where everything is done by consensus . Speak softly. When we think about janet yellen over the past three years and going up to the hill and the market watching every word that she says. The difference between the word moderate and modest to describe their expectations for economic growth. There is a lot. You wonder whether this kind of hyper aggressive trader is going to be a good fit to an institution that is more of an academic almost University Setting than an Investment Bank . President trump loves to talk about the u. S. Stock market i at record high. But he is not so vocal about the u. S. Dollar. He is wrong on the currency markets. The currency market has been off the dollar very hard this year. We are down about 9 on an index basis. The currency market is very skeptical of Donald Trumps ability to push through his agenda. We saw after the election that there was a lot of euphoria in markets about this progress stimulus agenda infrastructure, tax reform that has not materialized. Traders are skeptical. Oliver lets start with the equity market. There are unknowns. The dollar and the currency market, you might be able to argue is more of ap or, relative is more of a pure or relative market. Is that what is important . What drives the dollar that can be a readthrough for trumps performance . You got it right. The currency is the play against country versus country. The dollar versus the euro for instance. We know the economy is ok and the labor market and the fed will inch toward higher rates. We did not know the european economy would do so well. The euro has risen against the dollar. The highest since 2015 yesterday because of the upside surprise on the european economy. You are right, it is a pure play. The u. S. Economy is going along as people expected while other places are doing better. Carol the currency market is a huge market and it is an indicator about how investors feel about a country and the Economic Outlook . It is the biggest Financial Market in the world. 5 trillion a day changes hands. People looking at currency they are looking at the u. S. Economy and its stability while global peers are heading toward the exit door of qe. The bank of canada, the ecb. So this kind of boosts the outlook of other currencies relative to the u. S. Carol why is the story important . We have had a fouryear rally in the dollar and investors have seen these easy trades the fed will hike rates and the dollar will rally that has eroded and collapsed this year. It is important for investors to look at portfolios and think about what that means out of this rotation of long dollar trades and into short dollar trades. Oliver up next, why some investors are starting to wonder if the stock market is to calm for its own good. Carol plus, why 3g and Warren Buffett are obsessed over hot dogs. This is bloomberg. Oliver welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Im oliver rennick. Carol and im carol massar. You can also listen to us on the radio. Oliver and in london and asia. In the finance section, investors who have made bets have done well recently. Carol that does not necessarily mean smooth seas ahead. Heres economics editor peter coy. Peter volatility index is a measure of the ups and downs in a market based on the s p 500. Chicago board maintains it and when the vix goes up it means that people are uncertain and it is usually when the stock market is going down. Sometimes people say it is a good hedge you buy a product connected to the vix, protection against losses and your stock portfolio. Carol but it is a fear sentiment . Exactly. Lately it has been low. I just did a calculation there have been only 26 days since 1990 when the vix was below 10. 17 have been since this may. Carol wow. Oliver ill give you another one. 10 Straight Days below 10, first time ever. They keep racking up the superlatives on how low the vix is. Usually when we think about the vix, it moves inversely to the stock market. People Pay Attention when it is high. We are now paying attention because it is very low. There are a lot of theories about what that could mean for the market. What did you determine in what did you set out to clarify with this article . Peter what i found out is the natural thing to do if you fear the stock market is high is to buy protection by getting into the mix. Futures, options, Exchange Rate notes. People do that. Then they found out that they were losing money doing that. For one thing, the feared stock Market Correction never happened so it was like spending insurance. It was extremely expensive form of insurance because of the way the notes tend to be based on vix futures contracts. The way one rolls into another can cause you to lose a lot of money even in an ordinary market. Some people said, i have an idea. Lets go the other way. Lets bet on the vix going down. Which seems kind of perverse when it is super low. Yet that has been a huge winning bet. Carol in the features sections, 3g capital has gained a reputation. Oliver it is looking to change that reputation. They were selling less hot dogs and losing market share and overall hot dogs have an image problem. That all added up to a big problem for the company that owns the oscar meyer brand. You know, it is one thing to be losing sales of the categories growing. Our marketing is off but you add up the fact that people are buying more of other peoples hotdogs in the category was declining which makes it a market share fight this was a problem for craftheinz. Oliver the thing about the hot dog situation is it is also about the ability of a company who is renowned for going in and buying 3g here, buying companies and taking private equity and stereotypically going in creating opportunities and removing excesses. The hotdog initiative was a challenge for them. Taking a brand and investing and rebuilding it. That is right. What we tried to do with the story was use the hotdogs to show what kraftheinz is trying to do. Theyre owned by 3g capital which is this notorious private equity firm for they are famous in the u. S. Now. They bought burger king, they did the heinz deal, they got together with Warren Buffett and merged heinz and kraft. They tried to buy unilever earlier this year and they got rejected did the model with them is they got rejected. You buy a company and you get the margins up in the stock price goes up and then you buy Something Else and start doing it again. Oliver what happened with unilever . Was that a result of their style being known on the street and unilever saying they did not want that . Pretty much yes. They said the price wasnt right publicly. We know that privately, unilever freaked out. The ceo of unilever, his thing was profit with the purpose. They thought they could serve the bottom line and do right socially. There was skepticism. They said no way are we going to let 3g come in and destroy everything we built. Investors are not buying stock because they think these guys are selling cheese and mustard and are great at it. It is about doing deals. When unilever said that, it is a real problem. Carol so go back to the hotdog problem. They cant buy a company, now they have to look at the business and figure out how to perform better at selling hotdogs. Craig there is still a lot of speculation that they will do a deal this year but we do not know what it will be. The company does insist, we were going to do this hotdog thing regardless of whether the unilever deal happened. It started last summer. It depends on what you think about where they were and their imaginations about unilever at that time. What this company does best is buy other companies. The packaged food business is not great out there. The sales are down quarter after quarter. People are not buying as much of this stuff as they once did. The hotdog is a great example. The who says dont eat hotdogs. Their carcinogenic and toxic. People are trying to avoid processed meat. Oscar meyer is an older brand with heyday behind it. Here are these guys from kraft heinz saying we have to sell more food. Carol revamping how Online Business is being done. Oliver and a contraceptive pill for men. Carol this is Bloomberg Businessweek. How one Company Wants to make it possible for anybody anywhere to compete online. And a spanish architect is building beautiful and affordable homes. All ahead on Bloomberg Businessweek. Oliver we are back with Bloomberg Businessweek editorinchief megan murphy to talk about more mustreads in the magazine this week. Tesla, what about the price point . Megan the thing that is interesting about this is what market is tesla chasing here . People who are looking at porsche and mercedes and audi or trying to compete away from prius, the chevy bullet, sort of the energyconscious middle class price point . The car has had great reviews so far people are excited. The challenge will be can they make enough to tap into that demand and what is the lifespan of tesla . Will it be consistent . Is that sustainable as a Business Model given the valuation that tesla has . Carol the stock is been up tremendously and everyone is expecting it to be a massmarket carmaker. Megan it has not shown yet that it is a massmarket carmaker.