Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - February 6th, 2026

22:06Carol Massar:Can we assume that this is not just a Trump administration thing? Can we assume that this emphasis on whatever is set up today is going to continue into whoever is in the White House following Donald Trump? Carol, I mean, you're asking a question that goes beyond a question that should be asked of just this strategic stockpile, right? It should go to the equity investments and the grants and the loans being given out to companies and everything else that the United States federal government's gotten its hand into. And this is a conversation I have every week with people asking, well, what does all of this mean when Donald Trump leaves office?

22:43I mean, I don't have an answer. And I don't think even the smartest people who are on the inside of all these things truly can give a firm response on what that means. That was Bloomberg News Economic Statecraft reporter Joe Doe.

22:56Carol Massar:All right, from rare minerals to precious metals. Gold and silver both saw dramatic drops to start the week, down from an all-time high at the end of January. Now, this week's volatility extended to cryptocurrency as well. People were making some connections between both. Got to point that out, Tim. In a Substack post this week, Michael Burry of Big Short fame argued that the original cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, which has fallen 40 % since peaking in October, has been exposed as a purely speculative asset, failing to take off as a debasement hedge similar to precious metals. Further losses, he argued, could rapidly strain the balance sheets of major holders, force selling across the crypto ecosystem and trigger widespread value destruction.

23:37Carol Massar:Hey, Axel Merck, he is president and chief investment officer of Merck Investments. He weighed in on the relationship between cryptocurrency and precious metals. This is something Michael Burry wrote about in his Substack post. And Axel also talked about whether he sees that as a potential risk as Bitcoin continues its downward plunge. Just for the record, we also caution about the financial crisis. It wasn't just Michael. Well, then you are the perfect person on many levels. But first, I want to ask you about AUM, because as we were prepping early this morning on our show call, your AUM has soared.

24:13Carol Massar:Is that just because of the rise in gold prices or is that about new investment money coming in? Because that's quite a jump in one year. It's both. We have one product that's an open-end product. We've had inflows, and the price of gold has appreciated substantially. The other one is a closed-end product, and it's all internal performance. So both. It's just a sign of the environment that we're in, right? We've been talking about this, and views that have been on the fringes are moving more towards mainstream. And this market isn't so huge. And so you have some outsized returns. How much, though, are the flows increasing?

24:47Carol Massar:I'm curious, how much of it is flows? How much is it a price appreciation? Much of it is appreciation. Very notable. We had some significant inflows at the end of last week when we had this downdraft. And this was one of the signs that the long-term investor considered this a buying opportunity. I'm not going to predict what the price of gold is going to do tomorrow. But we clearly had some outstanding returns on the upside. But there seemed to be cooler hits in some places. And we tend to attract a more long-term investor. Let's keep that in mind as well. The speculators tend to go to other products.

25:22So let's get to your warning and also to Michael Burry's warning. The interesting part that we're pointing out from the Michael Burry piece on the Bloomberg Terminal, he's warning that Bitcoin's plunge could deepen into a self-reinforcing, quote, death spiral, inflicting lasting damage on companies that have spent the past year stockpiling the token. He argues that Bitcoin has been exposed as a purely speculative asset, failing to take off as a debasement hedge similar to precious metals. He cited the fall in the crypto as particularly to blame for the recent collapse in gold and silver as corporate treasurers and speculators needed to de-risk by selling profitable positions in tokenized gold and silver futures.

26:00Do you agree with that assessment and that connection between silver and gold and Bitcoin? Well, some of it. Clearly, when, quote unquote, everything is levered and you have a deleveraging going on, quote unquote, everything is coming down. And one thing I know, I framed Bitcoin as something that still wants to decide what it wants to be when it grows up. And part of the reason why I've said that is that unlike gold, crypto has consistently been highly correlated with risk asset, with the S &P 500. So when risk is off, when the S &P goes down, crypto goes down. Obviously not any every day, but quite a bit consistently, whereas precious metals have a long-term correlation of zero towards risk assets, correlation phases in and out.

26:46And so sure, in a downdraft, when there are speculators in gold or silver, it can be taken down. But I think gold has shown that it has a different dynamic. But at the other end of the spectrum, sure, if Bitcoin continues to plunge, those who have levered up on crypto, including those special purpose companies, they can suffer disproportionately, to put it kindly.

27:12Carol Massar:But the impact on these tokenized gold and silver futures, I mean, a small role in the pullback? Or is it just a case of gold and silver axle running up so much? And so a pullback of some sorts was to be expected? Well, when a product is based on derivatives, and a lot of attention has been focused on this Chinese silver ETF, the Chinese don't have many investment options and so they tend to pile into a product and when that product is based on derivatives it's a recipe for disaster and in the U.S. we have margin requirements, they tend to increase when volatility goes up, that's a healthy mechanism for correction.

27:51Remember the purpose of these rules, be that from the regulator, from exchange, is not to prevent you from making a stupid decision but that your stupid decision doesn't wreck the system as a whole And so I mentioned that because the fallout is limited if the system is well designed. Now, clearly on the crypto side, a lot of unregulated products, but we've seen a natural selection there. And so, yes, there may be some spillover because the speculator might be active in one more than one area. And last year, speculators have kind of gotten back to precious metals where they used to be before there were meme stocks.

28:29But overall, I think we see it unfold here, right? There's increased volatility, but gold bounced back. We're just around 5 ,000. And so that's much healthier than in the crypto side where the animal spirits are the beginning and the end of everything. You said that Bitcoin is still trying to figure out what it wants to be when it grows up. Is this proof that it is not digital gold? Well, it's different. It's clearly different. I think there's amazing value in the underlying technology, but Bitcoin themselves remains to be seen. Now, clearly, I know all the arguments that are in favor of it. And at the end of the day, though, it is about mass psychology.

29:12And the track record of Bitcoin is just very short. And I'm not saying that the dynamics cannot change over time once it gets more mature. But for the time being, the jury is very clear that it is a risk asset, whereas gold is a defensive asset. And defensive has to be taken with a grain of salt, of course, because it's also very volatile. But the dynamics are very, very distinct. And as such, I think they attract different investors. But clearly there is this tension between the two groups. And it's good that there's a choice for investors ultimately, right? That was Axel Merck, President and Chief Investment Officer of Merck Investments.

29:51Carol Massar:Still ahead on Bloomberg Businessweek, ConnectOne Bancorp's CEO on why investors are paying attention to the banking sector. This is Bloomberg.

30:06Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, How can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. if anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today with the goal of being 70 % more productive.

30:54Yeah, wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

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32:17Be smart. Get Wyze. Download the Wyze app today or visit Wyze.com. Terms and conditions apply. Adobe Acrobat Studio, your team's home base. Collaborate within a shared PDF space. You've got your docs, your plans, your specs. And then invite the crew to build what's next. They talk off the team words. Using a DD render. They think that this design could be a contender. But when somebody wonders, what's the next step? AI helps you finish the rest. Bolts are tight, now your plans are fine. Run a smoother business when you're all aligned. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat.

32:55This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say, Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130.

33:14Carol Massar:Investors have been rotating out of the bigger national banks and into the smaller and medium regional lenders this year. The KBW regional index rose more than 7 % in January, outpacing about a 2 % bump in the KBW bank index of big banks. We spoke with the head of one regional bank, the CEO of the New Jersey-based ConnectOne Bank, Frank Sorrentino. The bank has a$1.4 billion market cap. It's up about 7 % so far this year. And we really want to talk to him about today's environment. Doing great. 26 is a great year ahead of us, I really believe. A lot of people said, you know, survive till 25. Well, here we are.

33:51It's 2026 and things are looking really, really up. So very confident about what's happening. Well, as Carol mentioned, it's not just that you guys betting on the U.S. Spain's largest bank betting big on the U.S. We already have foreign banks here. What's your view on the deal? What's the competitive landscape for the U.S. and like for business? Look, you know, there's a lot of consolidation going on in the U.S. markets for financial institutions. You know, the United States is sort of a rare breed across the globe where we have some 4 ,300 banks today, which you don't find in most countries. And so there's a natural consolidation going on.

34:26We have a very, very accommodative administration and regulatory agencies that are allowing for some of those M &A activities to take place. And, you know, notwithstanding what everyone would like to say about the U.S. and all the headlines and whatnot, there's a lot of foreign capital that wants to find its way into the United States. And so when you see a deal like this that you just announced, clearly that's foreign capital moving to make an investment here in the United States. You know, for banks like ConnectOne that are in the market in the region that Webster was in or is in, you know, we see that as a boon for us.

35:05Why? Well, any time there's consolidation like that or a merger, clients get impacted. You know, the ability to do certain types of loans may go away. Certain products get phased out or whatnot. There's a lot of turmoil in that wake. And so generally, smaller banks are there to pick up the pieces. And so we're excited to see this transaction take place. We've asked you in the past about M &A, mostly from the perspective of you going out and buying other banks. What about bigger banks coming knocking on your door? Does that happen? Listen, it's always, yeah, it's always, you know, I've said to our investors, you know, or everyone where, you know, our job is to continue to make ourselves unavailable to be sold.

35:51But certainly that's always a possibility for every institution and it should be for every company, right? A, it forces you to run your company in the best way possible. But, you know, certainly there's always that opportunity out there.

36:05Carol Massar:Did you say availability to be sold? Always. Every company should look at their business plan and their model, looking at what value. If you want to talk about a value of a company, the value is what someone's willing to pay you for it, right? Right. So how do you set the company up to be the most profitable, the best company in your market, in the products that you provide? And if that's true, they'll always be someone interested in an acquisition. But sometimes you have to spend money, right, to do a strategy that pays off longer term. When I say profitable, it may not be financial profitability.

36:43Okay, okay. You know, I mean, are we creating value? And so, you know, one of the things I'm the most proud of, we've been at Connect One 21 years with pretty much the same management team. And we've created an enormous amount of value over those 21 years. And no one's been able to buy us. Not yet. That's right. But you're open to it. But as I said, I think everyone should be open to that. We were talking with our team here. By the way, you just saw it in the transaction with Webster, right? Yeah. That was a fantastic company, well-run, well-managed, great markets. And someone offered them a price they just could not refuse.

37:23Carol Massar:I mean, what's fascinating, I think around us, we used to have a bunch of retail. And then they left. And two banks have opened up. Citibank across from us is a Capital One. It's like a cafe and so on and so forth. It's not retail that's coming in. I just feel like banks are popping up. I mean, banking has been a pretty good business for a while, especially the last couple of years, it feels like. Yeah, and I think it will continue to be. And is it because of the consolidation or is it? Well, that's part of it. What is it that's really juicing it? Look, part of it, certainly if you have less banks, first off, you're going to have bigger banks that have bigger balance sheets and the ability to provide better products and services, and that's more desirable.

38:06We're also seeing at the ground floor, all of our clients are getting bigger and smarter and more sophisticated, and so they have needs for more financial products. So not to dismiss the small community bank that doesn't have a lot of that product and service set, but what we see here, certainly in the New York metro market, our clients are getting larger. They're getting bigger. they're entertaining M &A, and so they're leapfrogging in size. And so they need a bank that can continue to service their needs. And so part of our growth strategy, yeah, it's, you know, we want to create value and we want to grow our earnings and all that other stuff.

38:44But I also recognize if we're not growing ConnectOne, we're not going to be able to satisfy our clients' needs as they're growing. And to me, that's an incredibly important part of our organization. One of the reasons we like to talk to you is because you have a great view on small business, specifically on construction, on builders. That's sort of the DNA of your bank. You've been really consistently, quarter after quarter, at least with us, optimistic about that demographic that you serve. Does that optimism remain today? Yeah, nothing's really changed in my view and through the clientele that we have relative to when we talk specifically about construction and probably in multifamily and industrial warehouse and manufacturing and those areas.

39:27there's just not enough product on the market. And when it comes to, you know, apartments and homes and condos, we are so woefully short, specifically here in the New York metro market, that I don't think you could build enough to satisfy that in any short period of time. So to say I'm optimistic would be an understatement.

39:47Carol Massar:Well, what do you make of the story? I mean, we were watching Home Builders on the move this week, and this is, was it Lenar, and I forget who else, that has apparently approached the administration about building affordable homes. They call them Trump homes, including private investors. It sounds like there's a lot of details to be worked out. I don't know. How are you viewing something like that? Does this kind of make sense as maybe a first step to figuring out a strategy, or does it, I don't know. Yeah, so the answer is yes. It's a great idea to think about affordability first, relative to new homes, home ownership.

40:20Again, it's rent to buy, I think, is the strategy. I think home ownership is great, all these other things. But, you know, the real impediment and the reason why we don't have enough homes today is not because of capital and it's not because of bank lending. It's there's there's political change that has sort of crept into the system. You just can't build. You have to, you know, between environmental issues and, you know, the parochial town issue, town by town issues, zoning issues, insurance needs, whatever it is, creating this environment where it's just difficult to build. So unleash, you know, unleash the ability for builders to build and you'll have affordable housing.

41:03You know, as you're talking about housing and you've got me thinking about infrastructure and maybe it's because we're seeing this right now in the midst of sort of unprecedented or historic freezing weather here in New York and challenges that are associated with that. But you've got a lot of big players betting big on infrastructure right now. Are you able to play in infrastructure at all? Most of it's bigger than what we can manage, but I would agree that there is so much need for infrastructure build. You drive on any road, go across any bridge. It's really good. I use the subway often here in New York.

41:39I mean, there's clearly a need for infrastructure spending just about everywhere. But right now, that's a little too big of a swing to take. Generally, those things are beyond our balance sheet capabilities.

41:51Carol Massar:We've been talking kind of macro and big. But hold on. But however, all of that infrastructure, I'm excited. That's part of my speech, too. All that infrastructure capital that's coming in, you know, when they repave the turnpike or they build a new section to the subway or, you know, build any of these products, think about it. They all need shovels. The workers all have to go to the deli. They all need their clothes cleaned. They all need to buy shoes. And those are all the businesses that Connect One supports. Economic velocity, right? Yeah, infrastructure spending is great for the economy.

42:22Carol Massar:All right. What about President Trump's new choice of a Fed chair? Will he be potentially great for the U.S. economy? Look, you know, he's an interesting choice based on what everyone expected. I think he's the exact opposite of what everyone expected would actually happen. And if you look at his history and what he's focused on, the thing that I like the most is that he is data-driven. And I've said those words on this show often. You know, I think the Fed needs to look at the data and make decisions about what they're going to do with our money supply. You've heard me speak many times on this show about that interest rates maybe aren't the most important thing we need to be focused on, but the Fed balance sheet is.

43:07And very few people want to talk about that. He wants to talk about that. And he is saying that Fed balance sheet is too big. It needs to be reined in. It is causing market distortions. And really, interest rates can afford to be lower if we get the Fed balance sheet under control. And I happen to absolutely agree with that position. That's Frank Sorrentino, founder, chairman, and CEO of the New Jersey-based ConnectOne Bank.

43:32Carol Massar:I have to say, this is a voice we love to lean on for a lot of different reasons. Yes, the lending environment when it comes to individuals and certainly to businesses, but he just kind of gives us a very real perspective on things. I feel like never afraid to say things. And he even admitted, as we heard in the conversation, that last year, He was very optimistic, and that was a bit of a contrarian view considering all of the volatility. But his optimism feels even more confident this year. Yeah, and it comes from a place of really understanding what these small businesses and what these construction companies and these contractors that he lends to are doing and seeing in the environment.

44:07It's one of the reasons we like talking to him because he does have exposure to that group of clientele that really is putting shovels in the ground and spending money on building.

44:17Carol Massar:Yeah, I also love like whether it's affordability in terms of housing, whether it's artificial intelligence, you know, talking about, you know, kind of his real view about kind of watching how this stuff is evolving and what needs to be done to either protect us in a world of AI and also how do we really get to affordable housing? And that wraps up the first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Coming up in the next 60 minutes with the Winter Olympic Games underway, we take note of host Italy firing up snow cannons for alpine skiers and really what Olympic cities in the future and really some closer to home already are doing to keep the snow coming.

44:54Plus, the CEO of Brooks Running on the business and the consumer. It's a Berkshire Hathaway company. and a check of small business, the head of Hoboken Farms, on going from farm to your table. This is Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Carol Masser. And I'm Tim Stenebeck. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.

45:17Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. if anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today with the goal of being 70 % more productive.

46:04Carol Massar:Yeah, wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

46:53without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond? Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio? The Wise Travel Card gives you the mid-market rate on every purchase. No costly markups on your bill. Getting paid in dollars for your side gig? Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time. With 24-7 access to live support, your international transactions with Wise are quick, transparent, and safe. Plus, Wyze runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. 15 million people already trust Wyze to manage their money internationally.

47:28Be smart. Get Wyze. Download the Wyze app today or visit Wyze.com. Terms and conditions apply. Adobe Acrobat Studio, your team's home base. Collaborate within a shared PDF space. You've got your docs, your plans, your specs. And then invite the crew to build what's next. They talk off the team words. Here's an update render. They think that this design could be a contender. But when somebody wonders, what's the next step? AI helps you finish the rest. Bolts are tight, now your plans are fine. Run a smoother business when you're all aligned. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat.

48:05You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. or watch us live on YouTube.

48:18Carol Massar:Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week. Well, the Olympics, yep, they are underway in Italy. And for the Winter Games generally, we are seeing warmer temperatures, and that is posing issues for host countries. They are making multi-million dollar investments in sophisticated snowmaking systems to create and maintain optimal surfaces in hopes of avoiding even costlier cancellations or relocations of races. We'll hear about some systems that are being used to make snow here at home in the U.S., plus how a family-owned business that started as a farmer's market grew into a national company that sells pasta and tomato sauce all across the country.

48:58Carol Massar:First up this hour, a look at the consumer and the ever-popular world of athleisure and workout clothing and sneakers, to be quite honest. We do that with the CEO of Brooks, Dan Sheridan. Hi, Carol. Thanks for having me back. Happy to be here. It's great to have you here with Tim and me. Lots to get to. We're going to get to it. I got to say, with the backdrop of markets, though, and some nervousness out there, and Bitcoin's continued slide, I got to ask you about the macro. And I got to ask you, does anyone buy your sneakers with Bitcoin or crypto? I think if they do, it's a very small percentage.

49:32I think for us, we just finished our 2025 year, and we grew 16%. So our consumer is very, very healthy right now. And it's rooted in the participation, which we've talked about in the past. More people around the world are running and walking and Brooks is winning the runner at the cash register. And so our consumer is holding up. We just we talked with you back in October. It was just ahead of the marathon here in New York City. Curious how your world has changed since then. What can you tell us about changes in consumer demand since then? Supply chain improvements or supply chain changes? The business outlook?

50:08What has changed in a few months? Yeah, well, I think you always start with the consumer and our consumer is very resilient. You know, we compete in maybe the most competitive category in sporting goods. We're the number one brand there. And what we're seeing at the consumer level is because running is so important in their life, they trade off on other discretionary items. But the shoe and apparel always wins because it's so important in their life. And we're seeing it around the world, Tim. The consumer's very, very strong in our category. Our EMEA business was up over 20%. Our Asia business growing really, really nicely for us.

50:49And so it's not just a U.S. story here. It truly is a global story for us, and we're winning. You know, in terms of supply chain, we've seen it somewhat normalized over the last, call it four or five months. We had a lot of tension in the trade discussions, and we've got our arms around that. But I would tell you it's stabilized for us in our category.

51:12Carol Massar:Well, you know, and I do wonder, so in terms of tariff concerns, global supply chains, things have settled down and you feel like where they are, they will stay that way for the next couple of years? Yeah, we're hopeful. I mean, based on the signals that we track, we think we're in a solid spot right now. Now, what we know is that things are changing rapidly in terms of the discussion with the administration. But for our category, we have high tariffs. I think last time we were on, we talked about it. Our tariffs are extremely high for this category. And so we went to work on that through the whole value chain to get our arms around it.

51:57We're going to see some compression in terms of profitability. but in terms of the long-term vision, we think we've got our arms around it and we'll continue to monitor. Hey, I wanna talk a little bit about China because in the fall, you told our Bloomberg News team that you were going to make a big investment in the next few years, 30 stores in China by 2027. China sales in 2025 for your company up 245%. At the same time, Nike, Adidas, Lululemon, they've been struggling in China. What are you doing differently? Yeah, again, it starts with the consumer. And what we know about the Chinese consumer is as the middle class is growing, this is the perfect time for a brand like Brooks to enter.

52:43We deliver fantastic performance product consistently over time. We have a brand energy that resonates with the Chinese runner. And we're engaging in the communities that are, you know, part of the run community over there. And so the store is central to that in China. And so our rollout of stores is a big part of this. But we're having a lot of success online with those running communities. And we're new entry into China. So the growth we're experiencing is incredible. And it's just a testament to how we enter markets and how we execute. Our team is executing really, really well over there.

53:24Carol Massar:It does sound really good. And I am curious about longer term future plans. You are obviously part of the Berkshire universe and have been for a while. Would you guys ever consider maybe an acquisition to expand into some of the adjacent categories? Talk to us about kind of expansion and strategy plans. And we're also always curious, like, could you guys go public at some point? Or do you think that you're going to stay within the Berkshire homestead for a while? More? Boy, Carol, I hope we stay forever with Berkshire. And I believe we will. You know, the biggest advantage we have at an ownership structure is Berkshire Hathaway.

53:59I talked to you about this last time. We're so fortunate to be owned by Berkshire. And more importantly, you know, I as a CEO have a very long time horizon that I focus on because of our ownership. And that's a benefit to us in every decision we make. And so ownership matters in business. we're lucky and fortunate to have the ownership of Berkshire Hathaway. And we continue to take a long-term approach to this strategy. When we enter markets like China, like in Europe, and the exposure that we have there and the growth that we have there, the fact that we can focus on 10 and 20 year horizons here is very different than our competition.

54:41And I don't take that for granted.

54:43Carol Massar:That's actually very Chinese, if you think about it, in terms of strategy. You know, last time we spoke with you, Warren Buffett was still at the helm of Berkshire Hathaway. Now it's Greg Abel. How is that going so far? How does his leadership compare to Buffett's? What's he like? What are his priorities? What has your contact with him been? Yeah, I would tell you the word that comes to mind is consistent. It's consistent with the culture of deserved trust and empowerment. Greg has always led with that. It's consistent with in terms of how they think of the subsidiaries. And so Greg is a very consistent manager and will remain that for us.

55:25I believe that. I had a unique opportunity in December to travel to Omaha and spend some time with both Greg and Warren and now Adam Johnson, who's now leading our division. And I could tell you that the same things are true throughout the leadership at Berkshire. And what an advantage for Brooks.

55:46Carol Massar:Hey, one of the things and we're talking with Dan Sheridan, CEO of Brooks Running, joining us from Seattle, Washington. Dan, we talked about the Chinese consumer and sounds like things are going really well. I would love to know what is the breakdown between Europe, China, the U.S.? And I want to just, if we can kind of drill down a little bit more into how the U.S. consumer is doing. Yeah. So for our business, Carol, the U.S. is our largest region. About 80 percent of our global revenue comes out of the U.S. And that's why it's so exciting for us in terms of the growth that we see ahead. We are very meaningful in the European market.

56:26We're the number one brand in Germany now in performance run. It's been a 10-year vision of ours to achieve that. And as I said, we're just getting started in China. So when we look at the total addressable market, it's a$48 billion market in terms of run. And where we invest is in the top countries where running is exploding. And so the markets that we're set up in are the ones that we're investing in. And Western Europe's a big investment. China's a big investment. And as I said, the consumer is super healthy there. It's rooted in participation. You know, what we track are participation metrics.

57:08In the U.S., there's about 50 million runners that run twice a week. We think globally that's close to 200 million people that are choosing this activity and Brooks is winning with that consumer. So the consumer is super healthy. So on the consumer and the consumer choosing Brooks, why are they choosing Brooks from a technological perspective rather than a competitor such as Hoka or Nike? What is the differentiator with Brooks Runnings technology? I love the question, Tim. This is why we exist. We're a product company first and foremost. And so innovation for the runner is why we win every single day.

57:50We spend hours, months, years researching the biomechanics of human motion. We are in the business of keeping people healthy, running farther, faster, longer. And we've been able to do that consistently. We're in our 25th year of 14 % compounded annual growth because of the position we have in products. So we win first and foremost in product. The second thing is we execute really well as a business. As you can imagine, global supply chains, we sell in over 55 countries around the world. We have developed a supply chain and an operation excellence that we think wins in every market. And that's not easy to do.

58:34That's the really hard part. And then this brand speaks to runners. We're an authentic, relevant brand that understands the journey of runners around the world. So when they're looking for a brand, they find authenticity in our brand. And that combination works in every market we've gone into. And so we often say we study our competition, but we really obsess on the consumer. And we've been able to stay ahead of the consumer in product, in execution, and with our brand ethos of let's run there. And it's working in every market we're competing in. That's Dan Sheridan, CEO of Brooks Running.

59:12Carol Massar:You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek. Coming up, the farmer's market stand that grew into a pasta and tomato sauce business selling food all across the United States. The head of Hoboken Farms with a great read on the backbone of the U.S. economy. Small business. This is Bloomberg.

59:32Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna. and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. if anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today with the goal of being 70 % more productive.

1:00:20Yeah, wow. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say, you can leverage what we did. We are happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

1:00:50This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates. With the WISE account, you can send, spend and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond? Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio? The Wise Travel Card gives you the mid-market rate on every purchase. No costly markups on your bill.

1:01:22Getting paid in dollars for your side gig? Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time. With 24-7 access to live support, your international transactions with Wise are quick, transparent, and safe. Plus, Wise runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. 15 million people already trust Wise to manage their money internationally. Be smart. Get Wise. Download the Wyze app today or visit Wyze.com. Terms and conditions apply.

1:02:16Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at 2 p.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station. Just say, Alexa, play Bloomberg 1130.

1:02:39Carol Massar:So when we can, we really like to step away from the barrage of headlines that are important and yet sometimes distract from understanding the U.S. economy at its core. And at that core, we mean the individuals who run small businesses, the backbone of the U.S. economy. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, the U.S. has more than 36 million small businesses, and those businesses provide close to 46 % of employment in the private sector. And our conversation with Brad Finkel covers exactly that. He's CEO of Hoboken Farms. It's a family-owned company. It started out as a local farmer's market.

1:03:13It's grown into a business that sells pasta and sauces all over the country.

1:03:17Carol Massar:I have known you a long time, and I want to get into how you've gone from farmer's markets to so much more. But I want to also ask you, because you guys, I've been to your, you know, bought from your different stands and so on. Hamilton Park, Jersey City. I have. I have, I have. And so you guys have people out in front talking with consumers all the time. How would you say the consumer's doing right now? I think the consumer is scared. I think the consumer is confused. I think the consumer is trying to grab onto some form of an idea of what they can plan for, and they can't find it. So being more discretionary in spending, do you see that?

1:03:55Well, in my exact world, I find consumers are not going out to eat to restaurants as much. They are cooking at home, so they're coming to us, but they certainly want unbelievably high quality, and they also want value for their money. You know, I see that too. People aren't ordering food as much here in New York City. They're not getting delivery as much.

1:04:18Carol Massar:We're definitely not doing that. I've talked to some folks about this for a couple of reasons. One, the prices have, with all the fees added on, have become incredibly high. So yeah, I think people are cooking more at home. Is this a different, how is this moment different from other moments that you've sort of experienced being in this space? I know that your business has grown a lot in recent years, but you've had a good eye on the consumer for quite a long time. I started my business in 1992. We participate in up to 800 farm markets a year. That's outdoors, underneath tents, on the street, face-to-face with our consumers.

1:04:53In 2001, we were there during 9-11. Then during the recession, we went through that. This feels kind of like a combination of both. Not just confusion, but fear. This is such a different message than we're getting from the executives of big companies.

1:05:12Carol Massar:Yeah, who seem to be still upbeat about a lot of things. Well, I mean, if you're an investor, that's great. But if you're trying to feed your family and you're not going to restaurants anymore and you're going to supermarkets, and if not supermarkets, farm markets. This is why I've loved talking to you over the years. You've also been a real estate investor. You've sold businesses. But it's what really matters when it comes to small businesses. Is it changes in the administration? Is it any of that stuff? So far be it for me to be able to say what matters, but what matters to me is stability. If I'm going to plan for next month, next year, I have to be able to have an understanding of what it is I'm planning for.

1:05:53I mean, for instance, our pasta sauce is, you know, popping up on shelves across the supermarkets of America. Tariffs hit. Our ingredients, our cogs go up. What do you do about that? So as a small business, it is something that hits our pocketbook. Last night, I just read a posting from a really well-known restaurant that is closing its doors. And it was really like, I cannot do this anymore. It is just a horrendous place in the country to be able to do something.

1:06:30Carol Massar:We saw that during COVID. we were shocked by how many even like very well-known chefs and restaurateurs who were struggling and we thought they would be good. We want to get to your story because Farmer's Market is where you began. You have tons of Farmer's Markets and you're doing it in crazy weather and even this weekend in the cold. How do you get to where you've got multiple brand, not brands, but jars of sauces, different things, and you've become a much bigger business. You're in a ton of stores around the country. Tell me if I'm wrong because my daughter said, I think I bought them in London.

1:07:03We do have a couple of places in London that you can buy it at. Smaller independent. In fact, we just got an order from Ireland today. And the tariffs affected. Now all of a sudden there's a lot more hoops that we have to jump through. So I was a teenager living in Hoboken, New Jersey, playing bass in a band in a van, touring from Hoboken to Maine, down to Virginia, to Memphis, to Nashville, into Austin, Texas. And as you could imagine, that is not a great plan for financial stability. So I was going to Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey, up Route 17. And I would meet these nice kids who aren't from Hoboken.

1:07:49And they would say, would you like to come over from my house? And I said, yes. And then I would get a phone call. Hey, my mother wants to know, could you bring some mozzarella? Sure. My father wants to know, could you bring a baguette, some baguettes from Dom's Bakery at Sixth and Grand? Absolutely. And this kept on happening. And I said to my grandmother, do they not have bread and cheese where they live? But what it was in my sociology class that I heard about was the gentrification in Hoboken had started. These were ex-Hobokenites who had moved to the suburbs. And I started a home delivery service.

1:08:21Literally, if you called me and left a message on my old cassette answering machine on Monday, I delivered to you on Tuesday. If you called on Thursday, I delivered to you on Friday. And I ended up with a couple of hundred customers. One of those customers was a gentleman named Peter Baronio. Peter Baronio became the economic development director for Englewood, New Jersey. Called me up and said, we're having a farm market. Would you like to come? I said, what's a farm market? And he said, I don't know, but we're having one. Isn't that crazy? Because they're everywhere now. Well, now they are, but it kind of started as a side hustle.

1:08:54I made a marinara sauce, and that marinara sauce really took off. Now, that's kind of the short story. People would stand online and buy it by the case. A very important buyer from Whole Foods saw that line of people, tried our sauce, and called me up on a cell phone and said, we'd love to have you in our stores. And I said, which one? They said, all of them across the Northeast. So that started my journey from farm market to supermarkets across America. We're speaking to Brad Finkel, founder and CEO of Hoboken Farms. Here in the studio, you brought a selection of what you do offer, includes pasta and sauces.

1:09:34How have you been able to keep the taste and the ingredients consistent as you've scaled and gotten bigger? Oh, wow. Were you able to do that? Well, yes. We go to every run. We are there. So we're tasting tests. We're tasting color. We're tasting viscosity. We have sugar content. So if it does not meet those expectations, it gets donated to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey.

1:10:03Carol Massar:But I want to go back because I know this. You had mentioned to me that one of the reasons you got into sauce is your customers started asking for it. Because I bought your ravioli. And people were like, can I get some sauce? So all day, every day, we sell now hundreds of thousands of loads of bread. and tons of mozzarella and burrata, countless coolers of ravioli, and people would come to us and say, do you have any sauce to go with that ravioli? Nope. Do you have any sauce to go with the pasta? I do not. Finally, a guy, a very Jersey guy, came over and said, hey, dummy, who are you standing next to?

1:10:35And I looked to my right, and it was Kurt Alstead from Alstead Farms, there was Dale from Stony Hill Farms, there was Matt from Sherry Grove Farms, there was Doug from Race Farms. Fellas got to get some tomatoes and some basil, and we started making some sauce. But you also mentioned that you have to get some ingredients from outside of the U.S. Well, olive oil. Yeah, I mean. Okay. So is that it? Is that everything else is from Jersey? Are you able to? We do our very best. You know, our original ingredients came directly from the farm markets. We are, we have to make sure that we have the best tomatoes, the best basil, the best onions.

1:11:11Carol Massar:What I think is. We sell a lot of sauce now. What is so cool is, though, it's like you listen to the community or the community says, do this. And then when you go to make sauce, you look around you and you embrace the community to do it. Well, a farm market is both an ecosystem and an incubator, right? So as an ecosystem, you know, I need tomatoes and basil and there's tomatoes and basil. Okay. Now I want to go to the community because there's a point where you're growing the business and you've got to think about financing and capital and raising capital. And again, I feel like the community kind of came to you.

1:11:44Yeah. So we kind of have a one in a million raise story. It became obvious that the opportunities that were coming our way meant that I needed a bigger boat. So I was ready to kind of start going to institutional investors and the banks of America and telling my story, when word got out to our customers, kind of through the grapevine that we were contemplating this, some very savvy investors said, wait, we want to be part of this. They've invested in CPG products before. And I didn't have to do any of that.

1:12:25Carol Massar:We've only got about a minute left here, unfortunately. And you raised$4 million in Series A funding. We have. Okay. So where do you go with this? IPO? Sell it? What do you want to do? No, no, no, no. We are building our business straight down 95, down south to the Midwest. We have Pavilions and Lassen's in California. We have Jewel and Tony's and Pete's in Midwest, Central Market in Texas. We are growing our distribution, certainly also online as well, you know, direct to consumer. Do you plan to expand the products? Yeah, we have pizza sauce coming. We have a couple of other things, but we are a small but mighty group of experts.

1:13:10So I was able to get those economics to bring on expertise and better execution. And that's allowing us to scale across America.

1:13:18Carol Massar:That's why we like talking. It is the backbone of the U.S. economy. Brad Finkel, thank you so much. Just a few days after we spoke with Brad, we got some new data from Challenger Gray in Christmas. This is the outplacement firm. And it noted that U.S. companies announced the largest number of job cuts for any January, going back to the depths of the Great Recession in 2009. And it's relevant to this conversation because he talked about consumers being more cautious. Yeah. And it's interesting. Contract loss, economic conditions and restructuring were the top three reasons for announced job cuts last month.

1:13:49Carol Massar:That's according to that report. Almost half of the job cuts announced in January were tied to three companies, Amazon.com, United Parcel Service, and Dow. Amazon announcing plans to cut 16 ,000 corporate positions in a restructuring, while UPS said it would shed as many as 30 ,000. And Dow looking to eliminate about 4 ,500 positions, while Peloton Interactive and Nike also announced workforce reductions. Those are some of the big companies. But we know, as we always say, backbone of the U.S. economy, those small businesses. And as we heard from Brad, he's seeing from his consumer base that they've got to be really careful.

1:14:27Carol Massar:So that kind of plays its way all the way into those running small businesses. They've got to be also careful, too, about the economy and what that means maybe for their future hiring. Yeah, those figures add to signs of a fragile labor market characterized by limited numbers of overall dismissals and lackluster hiring. As you mentioned, Carol, these are some of the bigger companies. Curious how it hits smaller firms that are out there. Yeah, something that we know the Fed is going to be watching. They just did their first meeting of 2026 last month. But that job mandate and whether or not we're at full employment and can kind of keep it there or whether or not we're seeing some weakness.

1:15:02Carol Massar:All right, still to come on Bloomberg Businessweek, there's no snow. Why that could mean trouble for the Olympics of the future. This is Bloomberg.

1:15:16Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Smart Talks with IBM. I recently sat down with IBM's chairman and CEO, Arvind Krishna, and I asked him, how can companies use AI to its fullest potential to create smarter business? My one advice to them, pick areas you can scale. Don't pick the shiny little toys on the side. For example? If anybody has more than 10 % of what they had for customer service 10 years ago, they're already five years behind. If anybody is not using AI to make their developers who write software 30 % more productive today with the goal of being 70 % more productive.

1:16:04Carol Massar:Yeah. So we are not asking our clients to be the first experiment on it. We say you can leverage what we did. We're happy to bring out all our learnings, including what needs to change in the process, because the biggest change is not technology. It's getting people to accept that there's a different way to do things. To listen to the full conversation, visit ibm.com slash smarttalks.

1:16:33This podcast is brought to you by WISE, the app for international people using money around the globe. When it comes to sending money abroad, many providers claim to offer free fees and competitive rates. But don't be fooled. This can be code for inflated exchange rates. With the Wise account, you can send, spend, and receive money in over 40 currencies without ever having to worry about hidden fees. Sending pounds across the pond? Most transfers arrive in 20 seconds or less. Spending reals in Rio? The Wise Travel Card gives you the mid-market rate on every purchase. No costly markups on your bill.

1:17:05Getting paid in dollars for your side gig? Avoid hidden fees and get the real exchange rate every time. With 24-7 access to live support, your international transactions with WISE are quick, transparent, and safe. Plus, WISE runs over 7 million daily checks to catch and prevent fraud. 15 million people already trust WISE to manage their money internationally. Be smart. Get WISE. Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. Terms and conditions apply. Adobe Acrobat Studio, your new foundation. Use PDF spaces to generate a presentation. Grab your docs, your permits, your moves. AI levels up your pitch, gets it in a groove.

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1:18:19Carol Massar:Thousands of athletes have descended upon northern Italy for the 2026 Olympic Games. Organizers of the Games breathed a sigh of relief when snow blanketed the Italian Alps throughout January. Unusually warm weather around the holidays had them worried the slopes wouldn't be ready in time. Alpine areas are heating up faster than the rest of the planet, with shorter winters that tend to bring less snowfall and more rain, plus bouts of extreme cold and poor visibility. The vast range of possible conditions and their increasing unpredictability makes planning for the quadrennial winter sporting event harder than ever before.

1:18:54It's not just the Olympics. In the western U.S., resorts are increasingly seeking solutions to freshen up some brown slopes. Winter Park, operated by Vail rival Altera Mountain Company, is one of a growing number of groups in the American West, doubling down on something called cloud seeding, from state governments and ski hills to utilities and watershed management agencies.

1:19:16Carol Massar:Bloomberg senior correspondent Kyle Stock joins us now from Denver to talk about how ski towns are bringing in the snow. and I feel like I shouldn't be the one bringing you in. I really think Tim should because he's the skier here. So Tim, take it away. Okay, so Kyle, traditionally and historically, in order to get snow on slopes when it doesn't come from the sky, from natural sources, ski resorts have turned to snowmaking. As you write in a recent piece for Bloomberg News, that actually uses a lot of water. Nowadays, some resorts, including Winter Park, are doing something called cloud seeding.

1:19:50What exactly is it? It's not that new of a practice. It's been around for decades. They take something called silver iodide, which is this tiny molecule. They blow it up into the sky or fly it in planes and drop it into clouds. And these are clouds that are wet enough and cold enough to make snow, but they just need a little nudge. So it acts as a catalyst. Basically, this little chemical acts as a tiny piece of ice, which, you know, the water droplets attached to like iron filings to a magnet makes a snowflake and you have fresh powder. That's the theory, at least. It's been around since the 60s, but it's something that people all over the West, ski resorts, watershed management groups, utilities are turning to increasingly.

1:20:39It's been around since the 60s, as you mentioned, but one of the reasons why not everybody does it in your piece, you point out, they'll stop doing it a few years ago, is because it's not necessarily proven that it actually works in the wild. What did you find? The main scientist on this is this woman, Katja Friedrich, who works at University of Colorado here. And I went to meet with her and it was funny because she is like a rock star among cloud seeding heads. She's like the champ. She did this beautiful study in 2018 where she flew a plane through a cloud. She didn't fly the plane, but had the plane fly zigzag through a cloud, seeded the cloud.

1:21:19And there wasn't any snow except what fell in this zigzag pattern. So everyone points to that study like, hey, this is proof, this works. But I went and met with her and she said, yes, it works. It works in a lab. She's still not convinced it works to any appreciable degree. She says the environment is way too volatile. There's too many factors at play to prove yet that it creates a substantial amount of snow beyond a dusting. So the science is still very much in question here. That's one of the things that is happening in the western U.S. this year, this desperate push to validate this stuff, to get results, to get data, to show that it works in an appreciable way that makes a difference to someplace like a ski resort.

1:22:04Carol Massar:You also talk about state governments, watershed management agencies, utilities. I mean, people are thinking about, you know, the need for water and water creation. I mean, people used to laugh years ago that, you know, water was going to be the next commodity that we were going to be thinking about as an investment play because we just assume it's always going to be there. But here we are because of climate change going back to this cloud seeding. I guess is part of the problem when they do this, they don't know how much of that would have snowed anyway. Like what's the problem in kind of feeling, figuring out how effective this process is?

1:22:41Yeah, just getting the results in an apples-to-apples basis. So when you think of a cloud or a storm, this is a huge meteorological event. There's lots of variables. There's winds. They send these particles up from the ground. They don't know if they even get in the cloud. They can be blown miles away. They get in the cloud. Does it snow there? Does it snow the next state over? It's a really turbulent environment. But if you talk to people like the folks at Winter Park, they're convinced it works. They try to do radar tests where they see where they're seeding and they do the radar very close by and compare and contrast the results.

1:23:21They'll seed one branch of a river and not the other and look at the water levels in the spring. They're very convinced. But in terms of scientific rigor, it's a really hard problem to square. So enter private companies that are trying to do this.

1:23:38Carol Massar:It's a cool dude. Yeah. Augustus. Is it Augustus Dorico? So this is a company called Rainmaker. What are they doing? Pretty novel. They thought, let's seed from a drone because it's cheap to seed from the ground. It's expensive to seed from an airplane. But that gets these chemicals right where they need to be in a cloud, right where they want them to be. They built these drones. They built these radar systems. They built a little weather site on each drone so they can fly these up into the cloud and theoretically get them right where the conditions are perfect, the temperature, the humidity, etc.

1:24:16Drop the chemicals there and have a more targeted approach and still a relatively inexpensive way to do it. So they have about 100 drones around the American West this winter, which is really their first winter of doing this at scale. Most of them are in Utah. Policymakers have been super alarmed about water levels for years now. The state legislature really kicked up their spend on cloud seeding three, four years ago when the Great Salt Lake was at historic low levels. Everyone was really alarmed. Everyone's really aligned on this there. They're really on board. But the skeptics will say, like, people are desperate.

1:24:57They're going to try anything. Really interesting to see what kind of results Rainmaker publishes in the spring versus what we might have seen anyways.

1:25:06Carol Massar:Yeah, it sounds like kind of a guy we need to have on and talk to him. I'm curious about, and you too, because you like know this world. What's the cost of doing this, using the drones, throwing them up in the air? And I'm curious about that. And also, is there any ecological impact? I feel like there's never ever any free lunch, I feel like, when it comes to our environment right now. Seeding from the ground is really cheap. It's basically, you know, these units, they're kind of like large barbecues. It's just a propane fire and these chemicals. So in terms of ROI or bang for your buck, it's way cheaper than snowmaking.

1:25:43A lot of the policymakers I talked to said there's really no downside to doing this. The drones are a little more expensive. Utah is paying Rainmaker about$7.5 million this year. they have said you know if this stuff works that's a drop in the bucket it's it's the smartest money we can spend ecologically there's been some alarm about this in state governments in congress the silver iodide is inorganic it's naturally occurring you could eat this stuff and it won't dissolve in your body it's in the soil it falls down in the snow snow melts the stuff goes in the soil from a chemical perspective it doesn't seem to be that dangerous there's some debate about whether the consequences are further downstream like if you're taking water out of a cloud in colorado are they seeing less precipitation in kansas and nebraska most of the science is pointing that that that's not the case that there's so much precipitation there's so much humidity in these clouds and it regenerates over time so ecologically the science seems to point to it being pretty zero consequence right now.

1:26:53Most people say it's a win-win-win, but again, the science is evolving. So we'll see. So Kyle gets us to a point where cloud seeding, if it works, it only addresses one part of the problem, and that's getting snow on ski mountains in cold environments, but it doesn't address the temperature problem. And there's a story on the Bloomberg terminal about what happens when the Winter Olympics can't rely on winter. And we're seeing warmer temperatures affect ski slopes, not just in the United States, but across the world. There's not really a fix for that. It's like these ski companies are investing more in what to do on the mountain when there's no snow, but the winter season is more volatile pretty much everywhere.

1:27:34Yeah, that was a great piece. And honestly, it jogged my memory, and I don't know if you guys echo this, but I can't recall a recent Winter Olympics where there was an alarm about the amount of snow and the temperatures. It looks like we're going to be okay this time around. But yeah, again, this is a tough problem to solve. The ski industry has tried to climate proof their operations through basically geographical hedging. So this is why Vail owns resorts in Europe, in Australia, in the Rocky Mountains, in Vermont. And they group them all under the season pass on the on the pretense that if there's not snow in Mammoth, California, you might fly up to Whistler or you might fly over to Bale.

1:28:20But this seems like a very complicated fix and one that might not work so well for the Olympics. But I think you will see more more far flung Olympics, maybe places where ski events could be hosted in a number of places. I know the last Summer Olympics, you know, the surfing events were halfway around the world. We could get to a world where that happens with the Winter Olympics as well.

1:28:45Carol Massar:Or God forbid, like there's indoor like skiing places, you know, which we see for recreation. But I mean, there's a stat in that story about the Olympics or future Olympics. And it says, in fact, all the cities that staged the Winter Games since 1950 have heated up in the years since by an average of 4.9 degrees Fahrenheit. That's according to scientists at Climate Central, and that's well above the 1.4 degrees that's Celsius. So 2.7 degrees they have heated Celsius, and that's well above 1.4 degrees Celsius, which is the warming average for the entire planet. And basically it says if they keep rising and we see these greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current pace, 13 % of global ski areas will have lost natural snow cover entirely by 2071 to 2100, according to a study that cited.

1:29:35So like, wow. Yeah, not pretty. Well, a big thank you to Bloomberg senior correspondent, Kyle Stock. He's based out there in Denver in the American West, and he's still gotten to do a little skiing this year. Yeah, you too, right? Yeah. You've talked about this a lot this year. A little bit of Poconos and Connecticut, New York.

1:29:52Carol Massar:It's kind of crazy, though, what's going on. Hey, that wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Daily, Monday through Friday, starting at 2 p.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio, and on Sirius XM channel 121. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News. We're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals, available at Bloomberg.com slash originals, and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, and more. Find our Bloomberg Business Week podcast at Bloomberg.com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:30:26and the latest edition of the magazine is available on newsstands now at Bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

1:30:32Carol Massar:Any skiing this weekend? Not this weekend. We're going to go President's Weekend, though. All right. If we can dig our car out in New York, truly, if the car gets dug out. I know. We haven't even touched ours. I use the passive voice if I dig the car. It tends to be a we project. And I'm Carol Masser. Have a good and safe weekend, everyone. Do stay warm if it's cold where you are. Stay with us, though. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

1:31:05Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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