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Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Box Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. Hello.
Oh, so nice to do little. Oh, good God. Come on, Karen. Unwind that boat.
Let me get to know you. That's God, my friend. Yeah, that's my bad job. Tell me, how is life in, I guess, Victorian England?
How is life there? What's going on? Well, I'm really settling into the UK lifestyle yesterday. I went to Starbucks, sent to Zuma, an American take on sushi, and then watched Netflix last night.
So, yeah, it's great to be in Jolly Old England. Yeah, but really, what are the differences? I feel as if London is New York and someone just, a giant stepped on New York and spread it out over 80 miles instead of 8. I feel it just, I think it's the geography that makes things different here.
There's more green. Right. When it's sunny, you feel the sun more. I feel as if it's a little bit more cosmopolitan.
You get people from a lot of different regions. We rolled into a party last night. Someone came up to me and was like, oh, my God, he's got Galloway. And my wife just literally turned around and walked out.
She was like, that's it. We're moving to Bucharest. She can't handle it if you recognize me. We have a lot of fans of Bucharest, in case you're interested.
No, she's angry. She'll like, before I even say yes, I am, she'll be like, he's not that interesting. But, yeah, it's lovely here. You'll live into the Galloway marriage.
Well, go ahead. Keep going. There we go. There we go.
It's taken me some time to adapt to driving on the other side of the road. I was in the backseat of a maneuver with my son, and I like to spit out the window and accidentally spit on him. I just can't figure this shit out. You know, I drove all through England on the wrong side of the road with a manual this summer, as I noted to you.
I did rather well. A manual? Oh, my God. That is literally, that's the most masculine thing I've heard anyone say in a while.
Yeah, well. That's definitely a flex. I drove to London on a manual. Can you drive a manual?
My mom taught me how to drive a manual. Yeah, I love London. I'm so excited to come and stay with you for an extended period of time with the entire Swisher clan. I think we'll bring them all.
I think we'll bring them all. You'll like it. Yeah, yeah. I'm in San Francisco.
I have no idea what's going on. I just want to lie to you in a bad mood. Everyone's angry at me because I'm being such an asshole. Oh, we'll try to be livening up a little bit.
Livening up. You're a jolly old London. Do you know me? Have you met me?
Jolly. It's a jolly place. Go see the Crown Jewels. That's what you need to do.
Go take yourself down to the castle and see the Crown Jewels. You'll feel good instantly. I don't know what else to do. I can't imagine anything.
Go on the eye. Go on the London Eye. It would make me even angrier than having to go see the Crown Jewels. All right.
The London Eye? That's not going to know. I went to some of these Tony members clubs last night. I'm doing that with my kids this weekend because I have a lot of catching up to do on the whole thing.
It appears that they seem to be tracking that, how much time I have to spend with them. So I made a mistake. We can do anything this weekend. I said, man, I'm going to stick a gun, which does not exist here in my mouth.
Yeah. Yeah. We'll do that. You know, one person just noted to me about London and England is James Bond is no longer on Her Majesty's Secret Service.
So, just a point. Oh, he is on His Majesty's Secret Service. He's dead. He died.
But okay. Oops. Plot twist. Plot spoiler.
It was well known. I am in San Francisco, which is lovely. I went to Dreamforce. He's out there for Dreamforce.
I went to Dreamforce. They're one of our sponsors. They'd like me to visit their Dreamforce. Actually, it's cool.
I hung out with Stuart Butterfield. He started Slack. I hung out with my bro, my mom. We all went to dinner.
Dee Swish? Yeah. Yeah, Jay Swish. And we had a great time.
Dee Swish is in Pennsylvania. Never leaves there. Anyway, so, yeah. I love to hear from this.
I'm going to Austin tomorrow to interview Hillary Clinton. Give me a question for her. Gosh, Hillary. I'm just curious how does she continue to have an impact?
What are her plans that she just want to – she's not a young woman, but she's still pretty robust. What's her plan to have to continue to serve, or does she want to continue to serve? That's a good question. I've interviewed her many times.
It's for the Texas Tribune Festival. We're going to use some of it in my new podcast coming out on Monday, too. We're not going to put it out on Monday, but if someone else is really good to interview, I can't say. How's inflation over there?
The Fed raised interest rates by 0.75% for the third time this year. That's the fifth raise. I'm just curious what they're talking about there. What's going on now that we have an international flair to our show.
Jerome Powell seems to be willing to risk a near-term recession. It stops long-term inflation. Many people don't agree with him. What thinks you about the situation?
Well, an observation I made, I went to this party for some film festival thing last night, and I met several Americans who had, I thought we were being so original. Word is out, and I met a lot of Americans who moved here. And this guy I met who, for example, Morgan said, well, if you want to experience something international, you have the opportunity to experience something international, you want a great city, and you want English-speaking, and you want good schools. It's like you kind of have Singapore, Hong Kong, and London, and Hong Kong's off the table now.
Singapore's too far. In addition, if you want to talk about inflation, this is related, the pound, when I got a mortgage, pre-approved a mortgage to buy a home here in seven months, it was $1.38. When I actually got the mortgage and converted, it was $1.26, and I thought it was wealthy people migrate to Florida from New York, you're going to see a lot of very wealthy people migrate from New York to London, because everything here is 20% less expensive than it was 12 months ago. Oh, except the energy prices are about to go through the roof, I understand.
Yeah, but if you're wealthy, it's, I mean, energy prices really hit the lower and middle income classes. But, frankly, if you're a banker at Goldman, or you're an entrepreneur, and you're making millions of dollars, your energy, even if your price is triple or quintuple, it's still a small part of your total income. Right. So it's good to go if you're rich to London, in other words.
Well, the bottom line is, and I don't think this is going to be secret to anyone, New York and London are the greatest cities in the world, as long as you can lubricate them with millions of dollars, full stop. You even need to be very young and be able to dance in between the raindrops and get a lot of psychic income from the incredible things the city offers, and it's worth living in a 300-square-foot department in Gowanus and commuting in. Or, I mean, the ultimate luxury item is to have three kids in London or New York, because you have to be making a million dollars a year. Yeah, it is expensive.
But, relatively speaking, five years ago, London was more expensive than New York. Three years ago, it was the same. Now, it is distinctly less expensive. So, it ties into the inflation discussion.
With the dollar surge, with Jerome Powell raising interest rates, with the U.S.'s relative strength, geopolitically, food-independent, energy-independent, you're going to see every item in the store that's imported, 48% of the global GDP is international trade. You're about to see, and I'm skipping my prediction, I have a bunch of them, so I'll say it right now, because it's isolated. You're about to see inflation come down as fast as it went up. I mean, the dollar surge is, we are an import economy.
The Chinese, get this, have actually lowered interest rates. So, we're raising interest rates, they're lowering them, which makes dollars massively attractive, which means in order to buy those dollars, the dollar's going to be able to command even more strength, which means every item, or 88% of the toys on the Christmas tree, which all have to come from China, are about to be 20% less expensive. So, and then, just to roll in some geopolitical nuance or wrinkle here, I believe that the Ukrainian people and their military just striking courage, success, getting off their heels onto their toes there now, and often, so I know, I think that global markets are going to correctly or incorrectly perceive a possible end of the conflict. Energy prices are going to plummet, the dollar's strength, it's just, it's the perfect start to see inflation.
I don't know, it's not in a positive mood, it's London, it's Jim speaking. All right, Jim, I thought you did, of course you did. Anyway, today, we'll talk about the Biden administration's full-court press on crypto, also the FDC wants dirt on Amazon's Roomba deal, haha. We'll hear from a listener who has to choose between his career and his clients.
But first, Elon Musk is not in the running for best boss ever in the month since Elon spoke to Twitter employees in June, hundreds of employees have fled. He's not running the place, let's be fair. The company reportedly has lost 700 employees as of this month, workers have left side stress from the Muskiel and the loss of respect for leadership. So they're not thrilled with their CEO either, that's been well known.
According to documents, Twitter's adjusted the way categorizes attrition to track Twitter employees, quote, leading due to acquisition by Elon Musk. Huh, that's easy to blame him. I think they've got other issues there for many years, I gotta say, I find this unfair. So it'll be interesting if they discuss it in the court case.
Obviously, we have a lot of big coverage coming up for that. It's going to be like our Super Bowl, I think, in many ways. Any thoughts on this? We talked about people leaving because of this.
Yeah, he leaves, Twitter comes out of this deeply damaged, and the person who's managed to escape scrutiny, who, in my view, is arguably the second worst tech CEO of the last decade, everyone talks about Musk and Perug's been talking about it, the person who bears a lot of blame here is Jack Dorsey. He was basically an absentee CEO. All his reporting's coming out, but in meetings and on calls, he wouldn't say a word, he was totally disengaged. And you have a company that didn't innovate, said it made itself really ripe for this kind of BS volatility, brought in a CEO, and then said that he thought that, he made these crazy statements that he thought that Elon was the singular best solution, and then went quiet on it.
Didn't defend his employees. I know that was irritating to many people, we didn't defend the chief legal officer, the woman of color, who was getting attacked. I mean, the reality is, when you decided, when you have this unbelievable, you know, king-size big gulf serving of arrogance, that you can run this company, this important company, whether it's a big company or not, it's an important company, while running another one where 93% of your wealth isn't skyrocketing in value, and what do you know, this company has gone absolutely sideways during this 10 year, and has opened itself up to this type of volatile, exogenous bullshit, which is on short supply with Mr. Musk.
And the chancery court, there's no way, this is the chancellor, if you will, the head judge, if you will, who's presiding over this case, there's no way she's going to be able to ignore the fact that, in addition to him signing her medically sealed agreement to buy these shares for $54,20 a share, that he's also damaged this thing, that this process that he initiated has brought tremendous economic harm to the company and these employees. Yeah, I'm going to push, I mean, I think this company has not been run well, is something that Elon's correct about, right? And I think a lot of people feel, I don't think this is a new, fresh idea, I think the people are using it as an excuse for a long time pain of being there and why I didn't bother, because they can see what's coming, you know, that it's not going to be sold, if it is sold, that's problematic, if it's not sold, it's problematic, and they're sort of facing nothing, and they, even though we're sort of staring at, you know, layoffs and things like that, most of these people can get better jobs somewhere else and more stable jobs without the headache of this, I think it just calls into question what they're doing, and after a while you're like, that's enough, you know, the kombucha's not that good, kind of thing. But just the one more wrinkle here is, I think a lot of them, look at the company, look at the current environment, look at the fact that the stock's at $44, and it's probably worth less than $20, and there's a lot of moving parts here, and this deal may or may not go through, I think a lot of them have exercised their options and said, I'm out, peace out, I'm out, I'm not going to be doing better.
Meanwhile, speaking of woes, Trump's legal woes are piling up, as I noticed, New York Attorney General James announced a lawsuit against the former president as well as the Trump Organization and three of his children. Let's not call them children, let's call them adult children for fraud and false financial statements, but the children, James said Trump had, quote, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars. The AGC's damages of $250 million, she really came to play, and a range of restraints of a bar Trump in the Trump Organization requiring real estate or applying for loans in New York for five years. An appeals court ruled that Mar-a-Lago investigation could continue.
That was in another ruling of this appeals court that had two Trump people of the three without waiting for a special master. The special master, meanwhile, is smacking around Trump lawyers and the lawyer and the judge who had allowed the special master to be existing. He spoke about the investigation, nonetheless, to a Sean Hannity this week. Here's what he said.
Is there a process? What was your process to declassify? It doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it. You know, there's different people saying different things, but as I understand, it doesn't have to be.
If you're the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, I'm just declassified, even by thinking about it. By thinking about it. He's the Yoda of declassification. He's just literally just, I was worried during this interview, because of course, Sean Hannity's usual was the major suck-up of all time.
Just literally, even informational stuff he couldn't get right. They could also get information out of him, but he didn't even do that. Molly Jungfass wrote the Atlantic this week, Trump is never ever playing three-dimensional chess. He's always just sticking pieces up his nose to see how it'll taste.
I just, I don't know what to say here. This day, legal day, was astonishing. He sucked up oxygen from the Republicans who were trying to win an election, a bunch of elections. He got himself into deep legal trouble, and these people are just, you know, everyone's like, nothing's going to happen.
I'm like, oh, besides going crazy, I'm not sure. I don't know. What do you think? Well, what everyone's missing is, for the first time in 25 years, it's awesome to be Tiffany Trump.
It's awesome to be Tiffany Trump. I just imagined her getting together for family dinner last night, and on the other side, the four favorite siblings be like, how do you like me now, bitches? How do you like me now? Yeah.
Yeah, it's good to be Tiffany Trump. This is our community for this. I really want to talk to her now. Go ahead.
Just to stir up our Twitter feed, there's something about this AG Letitia James suit I don't like, and I'm uncomfortable with. Okay. I think that it feels very political to me, and that is wealthy people exaggerating the value of their assets to try and secure loans. If she's going to go after Trump, there's probably 100 other billionaires in New York she needs to go after.
All right. Let me address that. Most people do it 15, 20%. This is 500%.
This is very different. Over, over, this is exactly the kind of case these prosecutors do. It's an egregious abuse of this, and she actually addressed that very clearly. I also worry that it distracts from, I believe, the mishandling of classified documents that may unmask agents of our security, apparatus overseas, information on nuclear codes.
I think that stuff is essentially, is so reckless that it falls into the notion of espionage, or I don't know, there's like second degree espionage, I don't know how the law works, and also inciting violence at the Capitol. I worry this case is going to give the other side ammunition to say these cases are political. I don't know. I don't know.
I think, you know, I'm using my mother's a barometer, but she said, what a crook. Like, she got this right away. Right away. This one.
Yeah. What a crook. And so they're going after those kids? Oh, kids.
Stop it. They're adult children who are officers of a company. I'm sorry. That's just crap.
Anyway, we'll see what happens. And speaking of people getting some criticism, Chamath Pali Hopatia, he's the king of the SPAC, he started the SPAC race, announced on Tuesday that his firm social capital will wind down two of the SPACs, it's created a lot of return value to investors, even as conservative socialite rumble is still in the game, the companies on public app and begin trading after the SPAC deal. Nothing's going well for the Trump-backed true social. Another area of weakness for Donald Trump.
So many across his weak, looser landscape, digital world acquisition, the SPAC company, the company made a deal with, has seen a stop drop as much as 30% over the last six days is true social threatens to sue the SEC for political bias after delaying a plan of merger. I mean, it's what he does, of course. But in the broad scheme, the SPAC is completely over, correct or not? Well, the SPAC's been around for a while, and I guess at some point, people have investors have a short memory.
I mean, this kind of reflects a few things. The first is the market has an unbelievable ability to produce products just on the spot when people have money. And when the investment committees and the operating committees and investment banks would say, this company is so far from profitability, the financials are so scary, we're not comfortable taking it public and trying to look at institutions that we work with. I mean, think about it.
We work out through their filters, but these companies wouldn't, these SPACs. And so this vehicle... Or they're not ready. I think that's the same thing.
So anyways, you take a company that has pre-revenue, is churning cash, but it's cool and it's different and kind of flies into or has the wind in its sails of a lot of retail investors and think, I want to participate in a new economy in these big upgrades. That's the first thing. That's the cloud covers, the demand of retail investors who want to participate in this new information economy and investment banks aren't comfortable taking these companies public. So enter the SPAC.
And then you lay on top of that really charismatic, thoughtful people who have an open invitation to CNBC. So you put Richard Branson in an astronaut's uniform and you put your moth on CNBC every 48 hours. It felt like he was on every 48 hours. He's very articulate.
He's very compelling. And you have the perfect storm of a vehicle that is essentially at the end of the day, Cara, been a vehicle for the transfer of wealth from retail investors to the promoters. specifically Chamath and Richard Branson. And if you look at Chamath's SPACs, Clover, Opendoor, Virgin Galactic, and SoFi, they're down between 45% and 80%.
I mean, across the board. So this isn't an individual company thing. This is a structure. This is an asset class.
Baking too early. Baking too early, really. Or, quite frankly, taking retail money without a lack of disclosure in companies that are just shitty companies. Do you remember six months ago, you pressed me for a company that would be a victim of the SPAC thing?
It was six months ago. You remember the company like Sidebus? I don't remember. I just said it.
Virgin Galactic. I think Virgin Galactic is going to zero. I've never seen a business more demand-constrained or supply-constrained. This space is incredibly...
This stuff is so hard and so expensive. In addition, the market for people who want to spend $400,000 to go twice as high as they were in the special 777 just two weeks ago on their way to London is pretty limited. And so this is the worst business in the world. Yeah, that is.
Although I would push my eyes. Opendoor and SoFi are very interesting companies. It may not be worth being public yet, but certainly acquisition targets, both of those. So some of them, you know what I mean?
It's just where they are. I mean, Virgin Galactic is one that's obvious. It's a stunt company in a lot of ways. But it's definitely changed.
Let's talk about Open. I mean, Open, I think, I'm looking it up right now. It's now at, I'm sorry, it's 52,25. It's trading right now $3.19.
And it's great in an upmarket, but they have inventory. They will use an algorithm. It's a really great idea. They'll use an algorithm that looks at all sorts of comparables and then says, all right, we think your house is worth X.
We'll pay 0.9 or 0.92 X and you'll get a check in seven days. And a lot of people say, oh my gosh, for that efficiency, I'll take a small discount. And what we've seen over and over again is that real estate is a local business and of course, certain nuance from a buyer and seller. And when real estate prices were skyrocketing and well papered over, in my opinion, the inefficiency of an algorithm to assess price.
When inventory built at this company and you have prices decline, I think this thing could be And the mortgage issues. The mortgage issues. Could be wildly underwater. So the market perceives the same thing.
The stock's off 90%. And again, if you heard the promoters on CNBC, what this brings up, I think it's an interesting issue. And that is if you have over, call it $10 million over a certain amount of stock and you're on CNBC pumping it, should you be able to get off, like wipe off your makeup and call your broker and say sell? I just did a really good job pumping this thing and now I'm going to sell.
Because if you look at the sales of Virgin Galactic, is it cool that the guy who's on CNBC talking about the brave new world of space tourism has basically sold his entire stake? Yeah, yeah. That all is, this is a get the money and run kind of thing. With some interesting ideas.
You're right, it's taking advantage of lots of money around why don't I invest in this? Treasuries aren't giving me what I want and why don't I use gambling. It was always gambling in a lot of ways for most of these companies. Very innovative financial instrument in order to deal with unusual companies.
But I remember, I was talking to someone I can't remember who it was. Remember when Paul Ryan piled in? That was a while back. I was like, oh, like once all of them.
Were you in a SPAC or not in a SPAC? No, so I partnered with two friends who were the founders of HeadFunds and we decided we were going to do a SPAC and put together an operating committee of very credible operators. Goldman and Jeffries were going to take us out and then we did one quick meeting with three principles before we pressed go. It was going to cost us a couple million bucks for underwriter fees and legal fees.
And one of my colleagues said, how many calls have you guys received from SPACs? Because we're all on boards in private companies. I had received seven calls in the last month. Each of them had received between 12 and 15.
And I'm like, do we really want to be on the other side of this? Right now, there are 700 SPACs that have a de-SPAC that are looking for a target. So what happens is they overpay. Most shareholders in the SPAC are saying, there's no way I'm going along for this ride.
I've been watching what's happening. Getting the pipes, et cetera, the extra money. But I just want to go back because the pump and dump is a serious accusation. If you promote a stock, which CEOs do and investors do whether it's long and then you sell it at a high, you're entitled to do that.
But when every company you've taken through a structure called a SPAC is off 40 to 80% and you are out there, I mean, really pumping these things hard. At some point, should you be subject to the same type of lockup that a board of director is? In other words, if you're on CNBC and you own more than 10% of this thing, if you're really out there trying to tell retail investors this is a good company and you should buy stock, should you maybe be limited to not be able to sell yours for $900 in this? You have to own your book.
No, it's true. We'll see what happens here. I think there's going to be a lot of pain with a lot of these companies for lots of reasons. Many of them are experimental companies in a weird way.
But we're going to be watching especially the true social one which looks like a center for disaster unless some rich person just decides to bail them out to get in Trump's good graces. But I'm not sure that's worth as much speaking of things that aren't worth as much anymore. Let's get to our first big story. It's been a fateful few weeks in the world of crypto.
Another area, Scott, that we've talked a lot about first. The Ethereum network completed its long-awaited system upgrade to proof-of-stake model. That should have had fans cheering but instead the price of Ether fell by about 15%. The move could have regulatory implications.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler hinted that proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies could be considered securities and not commodities. There's a push-pull over how they should be considered. Also, the Biden administration put out a framework for regulating crypto. Besides clamping down on fraud, the framework also encouraged the creation of a digital dollar backed by the Fed.
Not going anywhere, just ideas kind of thing. They put out a lot of papers that are not very full of real information. But obviously, a well-regulated crypto space is valuable but it's a whole lot less exciting. What do you think about what's happening?
The numbers are pretty problematic. There's a lot of failures like Mattis, Lieber, Deem, Reddit's NFT project isn't booming. It's called NFTs. Apple and Google Payment Apps are focused on credit cards still, not crypto.
What has happened in this? Because people declare the end of crypto and it never seems to come. It's an interesting technology. Obviously, blockchain is incredibly promising.
But how do you look right now where it is in its young? I'm walking through the fire. Well, people who are along crypto will say this is 2000 where there's a shakeout that was overdue and some giants will emerge. Some of the Amazons and Yahoo's or whoever will emerge from the fire.
And it looks as if Bitcoin has hit sort of a floor. I don't know if it's $19,000 or $20,000. It bothers me that Bitcoin consumes the energy of Argentina and it's an artificially made construct. It's genius to try and limit the supply to create sort of scarcity credibility.
But at the end of the day, it's like we've decided to have marginal, in my opinion, unneeded energy consumption of a small country. We just don't need that right now. That's why they change it. One of the reasons they change it.
It's a better system for it. And I wouldn't be surprised if it flips in terms of valuation that Ether becomes more valuable than Bitcoin because the utility there on NFTs, the majority of them are minted on Ether. But it looks as if there's Bitcoin and Ether and almost everything else is going away. And also, I come back to my same boomer question.
How has the blockchain changed your life other than a vehicle for speculation? That you know about, yes. Even in 98 and 99, we were getting stock quotes on Yahoo, we were getting email and hotmail, we were buying CDs on Amazon. I mean, it was touching our lives.
Well, if you want to make that comparison, the internet is blockchain and all the applications and uses on top of it are these cryptocurrencies, right? And so the way the blockchain is being used could be very, you know, there's all kinds of things in time. But I think the fact that it's so speculative for so long and not useful is a problem. Or you have utility in some fashion except for speculation for rich people or young people who just are gambling again.
Yeah, by the way, I just look at Clover Health when it's not specks. In 12 months, it's off 74%. Yeah, look, the bloom is off the rose on crypto. I'm willing to acknowledge and there's so many smart people.
There's so much human and financial capital that we've got into this space. It would be impossible for there not to be enduring innovation. But outside of the two major assets in the asset class of Bitcoin and ETH, you're just, I mean, it really is pure at this point, pure speculation. And I keep waiting for some sort of consumer service on the blockchain.
What about the digital dollar? What about the official digital dollar? We spoke with at US at the point last February he talked about interoperability and open standards versus the walled gardens of fake power. I mean, who are the winners and losers if there's a digital dollar?
Obviously, credit card companies or who? It's a really interesting point. And anyone, so for example, when I bought a house here, I had to transfer dollars into pounds. And it's very inefficient.
And a wire, I always thought you press a button and it happens that moment. No, it's like a day, two days. You know, there's all sorts of review and administrative complexity. So just in terms of remittance or transferring assets across border or getting a middleman out of the way, whether it's, I don't know if Venmo or PayPal, they might actually benefit from a digital dollar.
But I think it makes all sorts of sense. The dollar has been such an extraordinary weapon and force for the United States. I think it's still two-thirds of the reserve currencies or USD despite that we're only, what, a third of the economy. So the USD over-indexes from a power standpoint.
And whenever we decide to have sanctions, they have more teeth. Whenever we decide we're in trouble, we need to print more money, we can, there's always people who want our dollars. So the USD has been the most powerful aircraft squadron or carrier force in history that's invisible. It's like kind of this invisible army.
So to signal innovation and say we're going to make it digital and you'll have more efficiency, you'll be able to send it overseas to your friends, whatever, and also create a mechanism such that American regulatory enforcement apparatus still have insight into flows. It's a great idea. It's super cool. I think more regulation is needed, obviously, and deciding what it is and whether it's securities.
Less sketchy people in the industry want this and talk about it. And it's not in the, oh, please regulate me. This is going to get out of hand until you actually put some rules in the road because it creates so much uncertainty. And with money, there has to be regulation and very quickly.
So it'll be interesting. And obviously cracking down on fraud, that's another big thing. If it feels like it's the Wild West, nobody's going to move there. People who are thrill-seekers do.
But it's certainly a problem. I still haven't found my Bitcoin now that it's found again. It's somewhere here in San Francisco. I love that.
I love that you're a billionaires. It'll be literally $50 when I find it again. All right, Scott, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, the FTC wants Amazon to come clean about its room, but you'll, oh my God, I haven't stopped with the jokes, the cleaning jokes.
We'll take a lesson or question about putting clients first or not. I'm Maria Sharapova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey.
Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts. So we are 250 years into this American experiment and I say it's going okay. I give it like a C plus. There is no perfect past, but there is also no exclusively negative past because humans are going to human.
That's what we do. I think the story of America is the struggle of people who have not been included in the promise of America to expand those principles to include more people. What's going to determine the next 250 years of America and how do we write a new social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve? Okay, so I'm just going to be a jerk here because I'm a historian, so we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people.
You know, I just can't remember from Schoolhouse Rock. We the people, anointed them before and I establish this. What is it? Ensure domestic tranquility?
So you're talking about a foundational document, so I'm building a document that will protect American democracy. That's this week on America Actually. Stop, we're back with our second big story. The FTC could jam the Amazon Roomba deal like a sock left on the floor.
I'm just going to read them out loud. This week the regulator requested more information from both Amazon and Roomba's parent company iRobot about their proposed $1.7 billion acquisition. Several advocacy groups have written the FCC opposing the deal. They're worried that if Amazon Hoover's iRobot, it could sell Roomba's own laws and hurt the vacuum industry.
The vacuum people are upset. The FTC also wants more information about Amazon's deal with One Medical. Just to review, Amazon is not backing down. Many of the other tech companies are not buying big companies like this, but Amazon has bought MGM, Part 19, Podcasting, Wicker, Messaging, Stryo AI, Autonomous, Farming, and One Medical and iRobot.
They've been rumored in electronic cards. They're being very aggressive and I think Andy Jassy in our recent interview didn't back off of that. The FTC has not done anything in this area. One Medical obviously has some HIPAA baggage, but it didn't seem like Jassy was going to back off that at all in terms of that deal.
He seemed very happy with that deal. So what do you think? Well, in a lot of the spaces, and you've said this, I don't even know what that space is. Is it home appliances?
What is it? It's vacuuming. It vacuums. But that's a fairly competitive space.
So generally speaking, antitrust is supposed to ensure that people don't merge and create a lack of competition. I don't know if you want that room up, by the way. I don't want it. I'd rather have a regular vaccine.
Go ahead. Well, you want to avoid, at the end of the day, but they're trying to just protect consumers from market power that results in unearned margin. And it's hard. I'm not sure that the home appliance market, my sense is it's fairly fragmented and fairly competitive.
So I don't know. Now, could Amazon, does Amazon show a pattern of coming in and using predatory pricing to clean up the market? But I don't know if you can speculate on that. I think that most of these will go through.
And also, I just think the FTC is outgunned. The problem is, I was thinking about our conversation from Friday about Adobe's acquisition of Figma. I spoke to someone, including my partner at Profit Media who works in there, who's a professor of the arts in the Tisch School of Creative Arts at NYU. And she said Figma is just incredibly powerful.
You know, Figma is what kind of new up-and-coming designers are using it. It's more user-friendly. You're just sort of up and running right away. And if Adobe acquires it, kind of it's not game over, but Adobe really controls the creative space.
And the hard part is, it's hard to go after Adobe when the big guys are doing all this stuff and getting away with it. That's the problem with antitrust when you don't go after the biggest, most powerful players. I think it's kind of hard to be heavy-handed with the medium. It's like, how do you go after...
As I said, it's a legal case. All of these are losers. MGM, Hollywood is very competitive. Podcasts are very competitive.
Messaging, very competitive. Autonomous farming, very small. You know, One Medical, very competitive. Vacuums, lots of vacuum companies.
I mean, not everybody wants that's what iRobot is selling, by the way. So I think that's the problem. And also, Amazon is just being aggressive with the FTC. It's a top example.
Amazon is actually including Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy were subpoenaed earlier this year as part of an investigation into allegedly deceptive practice and on prime membership. Now, that's a fertile area to look at, obviously. And also the marketplace. Amazon appealed the subpoena, calling it, quote, needlessly burdensome.
And the FTC rejected that appeal and said, instead, let's say, let's bring your lawyer. They just, they're being very aggressive in picking areas that are quite competitive. Well, I think there was going to be a case that would say that you've used AWS to subsidize unrelated industries. And as a result, it's created predatory pricing across your e-commerce platform, which has made it very difficult for anyone else in e-commerce to compete.
And when you don't have growth in e-commerce, you get hammered in the market, which creates an inability to compete in terms of capital. That would be where I would focus. But buying a robotic vacuum cleaner, I don't know much about that. God, Amazon is so canny here.
Speaking of me, Conn and her DOD counterpart, Jonathan Cantor, testified for Congress this week. Pretty rough going. Conn in particular was thrilled by Senate Republicans who asked about partisanship and the low morale of the FTC. Conn pushed back, requested more resources from Congress.
She's absolutely right about this. Conn was like, Let me just ask you, still on this topic, what concerns we should be looking at involving data privacy that might come about from either this acquisition or more broadly about mass consolidation, particularly when you have technology companies that are purchasing healthcare companies. Yeah, I think especially when you have firms that are integrated across multiple lines of business, there are a whole set of conflicts of interest that can emerge. Oftentimes, there aren't any limitations on how data being collected in one line of business is being used in other lines of business.
And so we've heard concerns both from consumers but also from market participants about just the deep conflicts and asymmetries that that can create. No, they're kind of, because Carly is so smart. He's zeroed in on exactly the problem. I mean, privacy.
She's not doing so. You can list her accomplishments on zero hands right now. She's got to really move forward and do something more aggressive. The Republicans were very aggressive on the Musk thing last week.
They won an FTC for sure many records related to the Musk Twitter bid and constantly was disturbed by Mudge's claims that Twitter misled the FTC. But how did she get out of this? She's got to have a win, some win somewhere, anywhere. She's either got to break something up or block something.
She has such an incredible, beautiful mind around this stuff. She's able to articulate the problems. Her and Tim Wu, in my opinion, are the two clearest blue flame thinkers around competitiveness and predatory pricing, and they've been given the job. It's like, well, okay, now what?
And so far, it's been a big thud. Everything continues to go through. You could argue there's been a chill, and probably Google and Meta are not being as aggressive, but Amazon appears to be like, well, no, they're kind of poking a bear. They're like, no, we're not worried about FTC or DOJ review.
So she's... Well, you're not seeing a Pinterest buy. What would really be poking too hard? I'm trying to think, what could they buy?
I don't know. I've always said Apple or Amazon's going to make a bit for HBO. Yeah, FedEx might be a problem. Yeah, well, there's a lot of stuff.
I mean, Google acquiring Pinterest would absolutely get a review on the channel. Although, do you remember when I asked Sundar about that? Very quiet. He didn't say a word.
It's obviously in their area. So far, the only thing that's come out of Lena's administration in the FTC, and I'm a fan of hers, is that the morale is low. So, I mean, Tim and Lena are these incredible thought leaders, and the question is, all right, is that all? Are they thought leaders, or are they actual administrators and leaders that can rally an organization and navigate what I'm sure is a massively complex political environment to get things done?
She's got to make a point, and I think it may be too late. It should have been made a year ago. You know, just waiting and waiting and figuring is not really the thing to do. I agree, you shouldn't just litigate unnecessarily, but there's plenty of fodder for her in discovery and getting the case going and showing who's boss.
I think she's really blown an opportunity here. We'll see how it goes. Again, Holly very much articulated the problem right there in health care, information, how much information these companies will have in the way. If they get into health care in a big way, watch out, I think.
Anyway, Scott, let's pivot to a listener question. You've got, you've got to leave. I'll have you mail me. You've got mail.
This question came in via email. I'll read it. Hi, Karen Scott. I'm a 52-year-old founder and CEO of a company here in London.
Oh, you do have a friend. My company hasn't done well as I would have liked. We're facing some unfun months ahead, and I'm considering a change. However, many of my clients are friends of mine, and they wouldn't be able to find out if they provide the services we offer.
My question for both of you as serial entrepreneurs is, I don't know where you live, actually. So what do you think about this? I say get out. I always get out.
I always leave. I don't know. I just feel like if I'm not happy, I'm not doing this unfun. If something's unfun, I undo it, and I go.
You can't be working because clients are friends of yours, and they depend on you. They can always find someone else. By the way, one thing, get out when it's unfun, too. You're not, as my grandmother used to say, the graveyards are full of indispensable people.
So you're not indispensable. So what do you think? Yeah, you're exactly right. They say there's a reason why pilots tell you if there's a loss of oxygen or pressurization to fix your own oxygen masters.
You have to take care of yourself and your family. And you're not going to be able to take care of your clients if you're unhappy. This is an easy one. You figure out a transition strategy.
You say to your clients who are your friends, and you can be honest with your friends, I'm not happy. I don't like this. It's not going as well as I'd hoped. This is how I'm going to transition my services to another firm.
You might even be able to sell that client base. And you're responsible. It's like leaving a company. When you leave a company, you make sure that you exit gracefully.
You don't give them two weeks' notice and bail and leave them hanging. You transition your clients. You transition your responsibilities. You upscale people.
You identify people who could potentially take over your role. And you leave the place and your role, hopefully as good as it was when you were there. You can absolutely do the same thing here. But his obligation is to the well-being, his own mental health, and the economic security of his family.
And his friends love. Yeah. We tap out a lot, don't we? I mean, over our careers, we've changed for various reasons.
But I think we do it because we don't like what we're doing. It's the other opportunities, mostly. Yeah, I've done it because I've been being in the fucking face. And I have to have something else to do.
Yours has been a function of opportunity. Mine's been a function of the world literally smacking me and saying, no, you should try something else. Who's living in London? Not Tara Swisher.
No, not Tara Swisher. I couldn't lay on Gangster in a region today. It's so amazing. It's off-leash here.
It's off-leash. They terrorize everybody. It's all there is. Oh, great.
Fantastic. That sounds wonderful. Watch for the whole leaves wandering around with that giant dog ears. Oh, my God.
Your dog off-leash? That sounds very terrifying. Just let me know when that's happening. No, they're actually pretty nice.
People are. So anyway, a listener who does Who's Withholding Your Name but is the list in London, we say, don't worry about it. Don't worry so much. People are so...
You know, I have to say, let me just add one more thing here. Young people say this to me all the time. What's that? I can't do it because of my career or because of this.
Get off the hamster wheel if you don't like what you're doing. I say this to everybody. Get off the hamster wheel. Absolutely.
No question. Yeah. With young people, it's different. I don't know.
I mean, the first thing is... Stay in your lane? You're telling me. Go ahead.
No, no, no. Stay in your lane is totally different. Stay in your lane is not... Don't do things or don't talk about stuff you shouldn't.
I was miserable in Morgan Stanley, like within three weeks. But someone said to me, it's an amazing platform. You're young. You have no credibility.
Stay the full two years. Oh, okay. With young people, it's different. You're looking to build credibility.
And also, young people think, oh, wait, this isn't as fun as college football. And my fraternity, I must not love it. No, it's called work. It takes some time.
And also, there's a certain amount of shitty work just involved in getting started. And so, my advice to a lot of people, I just want to make sure a bunch of young people will run out to their jobs. You do not want to have a resume that looks like a tapestry coming out of your 20s until you have the credibility of a Kara Swisher who can leave and has five other entities that want you to work for them. No, I still leave when I was young.
I'm going to push. Go ahead. You keep going. Well, I'm going to disagree and compliment you.
I think you're more talented than most people, Kara. Most people have a more difficult time getting a job when people show up and have had three jobs in five years. I don't hire people who have had three jobs in five years. I go, what happened?
What went wrong? And so, as a young person, you want to find a place where you're learning, hopefully a good brand, a good platform that builds credibility and currency. Because very few people, other than Kara Swisher, know what they want to do in their early 20s. I thought I wanted to be an investment banker.
That was ridiculous. I was terrible at it and I hated it. That's a fair point about not knowing what you want. I'm a life-to-sit-sit short person.
And when I was very young, I left things constantly. You know, I wasn't incredibly Kara Swisher at 20. I kind of was. I wasn't incredible.
Actually, I kind of was. I kind of was. As I reflect on it, I kind of was incredible. It was almost a moment of humility and you checked yourself.
Humility almost creeped in. I say go and you say stay. For young people, I say get here. You need credibility.
Call work for a reason. Don't call daddy first before you make any big moves and leave a good firm, especially if it's a good platform. I say this to my kids. I'm like, quit school?
Right. Good decision. I'm always. A kid who used to work for me broke my heart and left one to go.
I was like, I hate it here. I'm just managing keywords for Chili's. I'm like, Eric, Google, stay there. Just stay there.
This is a good question, London man. Definitely could have been Prince Charles, right? What do you think? That's right.
Hello. That probably is Prince Charles. I bet it was. He has fun, fun months.
He's considering a change. He has many clients. Anyway, stick with the king thing. In that regard, you're the king.
Stay with the king. All right. All right. They don't like it.
They don't like it. In a minute. If you've got a question of your own, you'd like to answer. Send it our way.
Go to nyman.com. Slash pivot to submit a question for the show or call 8551-Pivot. All right, Scott, one more quick break and then you can make your prediction. This week on Network and Shell, I'm joined by Tank Sinatra, the meme king, with over 15 million followers across Tank's big news, influencers in the wild, and his personal account.
Tank is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsored post pays, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes, and how meme culture, think preparation age, starter packs, and a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value. Get ready for a conversation that'll change the way you scroll, make a rethink what going viral is really worth, and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on youtube.com slash yourrichbff. Okay, Scott, let's hear your predictions, although I'm going to go first.