Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - January 16th, 2026

25:45Absolutely. Today, the wealthiest people today, how much different are their lives versus the ultra-wealthy back then? And not with the technology, but I mean, what they were able to do versus what the normal person is able to do. I mean, you have billionaires going to space now. I think there is a distinction. But look, I think you go back and I think of J.P. Morgan's son. He was building the biggest yacht at the time. people would have thought that's like you know the gates or bezos yeah whatever yacht you're thinking of i think that there was a distinction but i remember having a an interesting conversation oddly enough to drop a name with president obama interesting maybe 2015 about the idea that and i think this is true in the in the 20s but but really true even uh just 25 years ago i think CEOs, people of means, were oftentimes living in the same neighborhoods with the people who worked on the factory floor of their companies.

26:46And as a result, their kids went to the same schools, and they went to the same temples and churches, and ran into each other at the same restaurants and markets. And I think that there's a cohesion there that's important for our culture. And I think that increasingly, that has come apart. We are talking with Andrew Ross Sork, and the book is 1929, Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation. You know, politics got in the way of regulating banks and markets back then. And I think it was kind of fascinating to see some of that. Is there a parallel to that today?

27:21When you look at the activities, Andrew coming out of the White House on things like cryptocurrencies, regulatory oversight, like I just wonder how you see that. I'll give you actually a parallel that may seem like not not like a parallel but to me is which is we're all talking about right now the the politicization potentially and independence of the federal reserve i actually remember as i was working on this book looking at the diaries of a lot of the people who worked at the on the federal reserve on the board and it was still such a new institution born in 1913 that they were concerned about the political implications of either raising or lowering interest rates at any given moment They actually cared about the politics.

28:01Now, it wasn't that Hoover was telling them exactly what to do, but they were so scared, not that they were just going to get hauled up in front of Congress for making the wrong choice, but that the entire thing, which people still called back then the experiment at that point, that Congress could effectively disband this very idea. And so I raise that only because it's clear to me that actually the independence of the Fed matters. In fact, one of the reasons I think that they didn't act more forcefully in 1929 and in 1930 and after that was in part because there was their own concern about the politics, putting aside whether the White House was telling them one thing to do or the other.

28:37Do we have that today? I think less so, or at least up until recently, less so. I think that maybe in the same way that clearly those governors of the Fed back then were cognizant and nervous about the politics. I mean, I don't think this Fed thinks they're going to be disbanded. But I think that they're cognizant. They are very aware, very aware of what the president's saying, what their reputations are going to be like as a result, what people are saying about them, whether they have to do certain things to demonstrate their independence. I mean, that's the thing. The idea of demonstrating your independence effectively means you might even make a decision that might not be the decision you'd otherwise make, but you're doing it for your own reputation.

29:22So, yes, I think that all of that is not healthy. Does the Fed keep that in a few months when Jay Powell is no longer Fed chair? And look, we can't see the future. We don't know who will be nominated. I have a view that is maybe contrarian in this space, which is there's a board. And there's a number of people on that board. I've never believed that the entire Fed is controlled by one human being. It just isn't. And so I think it's very important who is running it. I'm not telling you it isn't. But I do think there will be people on that board, those who care also about their own independence, who will...

30:03By the way, another reason I think Jay Powell may ultimately stay on that board for that reason. I love that you went there because I keep wondering... We're hearing that a lot now, right? Because we keep waiting. We expect to hear an announcement. It just keeps getting pushed off. And I just think there's... Oh, no, no. By the way, it's not that I think that Jay Powell is going to be in this role forever. They're going to let him stay. No, but just that he can stay for another two years after this. Yeah, on the board. On the board. And I think it is more likely that he will stay. And in fact, to the extent that the president would somehow like to use that spot for somebody that he'd like to nominate, I would argue this whole thing has backfired.

30:38In fact, I was talking to Harvey Schwartz at the New York Economic Club yesterday from Carlisle, And he made the point, most people, most taxi drivers, people in the street, didn't care about the idea of Fed independence at all a week ago. They didn't even, I mean, this has been an academic conversation for the most part. Now it's like a thing. Yeah. And people, constituents across the country, all of a sudden care about this issue. They may start to call their Congress. I mean, it's very interesting what's happening. Yeah, I was actually, I've shared this story before, but I was with a friend Sunday night who, he follows the news, but he's not in financial news or anything.

31:12and he picks up his phone. He's like, have you seen this video from Jay Powell? I was like, why do you care about Jay Powell? And that's how big of a deal it was over the weekend. And so to me, that's why in some ways, I think Harvey Schwartz is probably right. The idea of Fed independence may have actually become more important and potentially even stronger, at least in the short term. Hey, I want to ask you about the process. I remember reading Too Big to Fail, loved it, and reported through it and was able to, I think like you talked to some of the people who were in the room when it all happened I remember talking to John Mack on a panel of course formerly of Morgan Stanley and getting that actual physical check right from Mitsubishi it felt like I felt like excuse me you were in the room like the way I read it thank you tell me how you did that so what was it what was the box of things that you got you're like oh my god so unfortunately all of these people were not alive no I spent about I had eight years really just combing through boxes and boxes of materials, some at libraries, some from families that were involved in this, universities.

32:21I was able to convince, after a lot of knocking on doors, the Federal Reserve in New York to give me access to the board minutes. That was something that they hadn't given out over the past 100 years. By the way, interesting, on their website today, you can get last month's board minutes. You still can't get the 1929 board minutes. But that sort of became a treasure map for me. But when you see two people talking to each other in a room, what's oftentimes happening is I'm finding a series of depositions, for example, where Charlie Mitchell, who's the main character of the book, ran National City, which becomes Citigroup.

32:56He would be interviewed in the deposition or in a civil case. There were also criminal cases where they would ask him, where were you when X happened? He'd say, well, I was walking down the street and I got to 65th Street. and what did you say to so and so and i said such and such and then they would interview uh his colleague and they'd say well you were standing on the corner what did you say to and he would say this is what i said and then they'd interview his wife and so when you though all of those quotes are real and then oftentimes i would go and try to find the architecture plans or a photograph of the room so i could really try to put you in it and i'd try to understand what the weather was that day and what you know whether it was light out or not all of these sort of little things so that again if you're trying to as a narrator narrator you can sort of feel like you're there right was there a time when you were you know in some sort of archive over the last 10 years doing this uh where you got this sort of treasure trove of correspondence between two people and you were like okay this is this is what i needed this is the ticket this is going to illuminate you know what it was one of it was like uh or is it just so peace no it was like it It would either be raining like you're in the rainforest and it was fabulous or just like the desert for months.

34:06And you know because you'd go to these places looking for stuff and then you'd go through all these boxes and there'd be nothing. And then you'd be so depressed and then magically something would happen. I mean I will say there was one moment for me still that I think was just like a true aha which is one of the main characters of the book is Carter Glass. Of course Glass-Steagall. He was a senator in Virginia. And I think I had an impression going in, you know, today that bill is often held up by Elizabeth Warren, other people, as this sort of pure effort to really break up the banks for all the right reasons.

34:40and I found a trove of correspondence that showed, I think maybe for the first time, that in fact parts of that bill were actually written by another banker trying, frankly, to screw over J.P. Morgan. And you think to yourself about money in Washington and lobbying, and I thought, oh, the good old days, they didn't do things like that. And it's no different. Yeah, exactly. I want to talk about Evangeline Adams. Oh, I love Evangeline. I love Evangeline. Is that your favorite character individual? Well, we should explain who she is for people. Evangeline Adams is an astrologer. She had an office up at Carnegie Hall on 57th Street, and every banker in town would go visit with her.

35:26That's nuts. She had a newsletter. I mean, I like to think Dealbook is successful. She had a newsletter with 100 ,000 subscribers back then. People would go visit with her. They'd pay$50 an hour to sit with her, and they would ask her what's going on in the stock market and she would tell them and they would go off and make their trades. And she's just an unbelievable character. You can believe that something like that existed and that serious people were really engaged with what she was saying and doing. It was almost like she was a confidant for some of these people, which was pretty surprising to me.

35:58I almost think of her as a psychiatrist. Like a therapist. A therapist for people back then. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, just the similarities. I think about kind of the Wall Street South. that existed, right? The folks in Florida, and we have that today. Whole Palm Springs. I mean, when I learned that Mar-a-Lago happened to be owned by who? E.F. Hutton. Of course. Which was just such an indication of what was going on in America at that time. And by the way, E.F. Hutton had also moved in, I don't know if you saw, to the Plaza Hotel, the famous Oak Room, which is a bar. Right. During Prohibition. During Prohibition had become a brokerage house.

36:34So do you feel like you have a better understanding of what would cause, like Jamie Dimon said, we may not get another great financial crisis, but there will be a problem. Like, do you feel like, you know, I think because everybody keeps saying, could we get this again? Yeah. Like, is it likely or do you get a better indication of like what we should be watching out for in terms of what marks, is it leveraging? Is it credit? I think it's always leverage. It's just, it's just, it's like one, it's like a one word answer. It's probably boring. Leverage is the match that lights the fire every single time.

37:06you could have all the bad actors you want on stage doing all the bad, greedy things you could possibly imagine. But there isn't the leverage piece. It's very hard to have a true systemic problem. You know, I was shocked to know that at the end of 1929, the stock market was only down 17%. And I actually think that was a head fake for a lot of politicians who were looking at the market and saying, oh, looks like things are better. But most people didn't appreciate that during the 50 % downdraft that had happened prior to that, it wasn't just that equities had fallen 50%, it's that people had taken out loans, oftentimes 10 to 1.

37:42So they didn't just owe what the equity was that had fallen. They were getting margin calls saying, you've got to sell your house. And so it's that. And I think we saw that again in 2008 with the subprime crisis. I mean, it repeats. Well, it's funny, you know, the Joe Kennedy thing about, like, when is it your shoeshine guy, right? And I always think about before the GFC being on a yoga retreat in Mexico, and everyone was talking about buying real estate. And I thought, this is just weird. Like those little snippets of things as an indicator that things are just exuberant, irrationally perhaps.

38:19Is that fair? I think it's fair. Look, I think all of these are… With all the data that we have, right? To look at the market. I think all of these are red flags being thrown on the field. Yeah. But just because, maybe I should say yellow flags being thrown on the field. And the question is, when do they turn red? And I think that's the hard part to know. Famously, here we are, started this segment coming out of Jamie Dimon's interview. In 2008, his daughter had come to him, as this was all happening, and said, Dad, what's a financial crisis? And he said, it's something that happens every seven or eight years.

38:51And so I think the truth is, well, check your calendar. We might be due. We're speaking with Andrew Ross Zorkin, author of 1929, Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation. Does Herbert Hoover get a bad rap? So I have maybe more empathy for Herbert Hoover than others. It's not that I think he made the right decisions. In fact, he made a series of very poor decisions. It's just that I think, at least historically, the narrative that's been described about him is that he didn't even understand what was happening. I think he understood very well what was happening.

39:31I think he had some of the wrong people in his ear, including Andrew Mellon, who was his treasurer's secretary, who he had a terrible, unfortunately, relationship with early on. I think his decision on tariffs was completely misplaced. Why did he do that? He did that, by the way, for political reasons, because in 1928, as he's running around the country, desperate to get farmers to vote for him, he's pledging to them, vote for me, I'll help you. Wait, wait, wait. Are you talking about 2020? And so, but when he hits, you know, and by the way, 1930 rolls around, every economist in America, all the bankers are saying, please don't do this, Mr.

40:04President. And he says, well, I have to do it because I pledged to these folks that I would. So you see these sort of repeat things. And it's not that he didn't know what he was doing. I think he just didn't understand. He was also, unfortunately for him, a terrible, terrible communicator. Right. And I will say, maybe this is true of all presidents. He had this view that he could somehow jawbone people into believing that things were better than they really were. And I think we're seeing that now, by the way, with the last administration. That is a bipartisan tactic by the White House. What's your biggest takeaway from doing this?

40:38My understanding is you wanted to do this because people used to ask you, you know, 1929 versus 2008. But tell me, what did you get out of doing this? I mean, selfishly, I felt like I now understood what actually happened just as a student of history. I actually just genuinely wanted to really get it. I wanted to know who the people were. I wanted to understand their incentives, what their motives were, why they were doing what they did. And I think ultimately the truth is that we are all human beings, Maybe it's FOMO. Maybe it's envy. Maybe we all want more. And that's, for better or worse, what seems to drive people.

41:16And then the question is, when people get a little too confident, can you have the humility, effectively, to step back and realize that maybe that confidence could be misplaced? You write that the antidote to irrational exuberance is not regulation by itself, nor skepticism, but humility. the humility to know that no system is foolproof, no market fully rational, and no generation exempt. Do you see that humility out there today? I said it better in the book than I just said it now. And we have the full screen for it, too. Do I see the humility today? I see that humility among some. Look, I think, you know, we also talked about Warren Buffett, Jamie Dimon and David Rubinson.

41:54We're talking about Warren Buffett. I think Warren Buffett has a remarkable humility. and when it comes to sort of even his own confidence, he has humility about that. I think there are a number of business leaders and investors who absolutely do and then there's a number of business leaders and operators and investors who clearly don't and I think anybody who walks in the door and sits down at this table and can tell you exactly what, or thinks they can tell you exactly what's going to happen, probably does. I think we have to leave it there. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me.

42:23I appreciate it. This was a lot of fun. This was a ball. Yeah, we really appreciate it. Andrew Ross Sorkin, the book is 1929, inside the greatest crash in Wall Street history and how it shattered a nation. I learned a lot. Yeah, Andrew, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

42:38Hello, 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, 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 smart talks

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45:55You've done both, haven't you? I have, yeah. I've been to Big Snow at the American Dream Mall once. Did you actually ski down the slope? I did, yeah, but it's a great place to bring kids. Yeah. Not super steep and very short, of course, but guess what? It's open in the summer. And it was fun. It was fun. It's never not fun. Plus, from Japanese prime beef, star chefs working the counter, and large format martinis, we've got the most exciting U.S. restaurants to check out this year. Also, why some top chefs are turning your leftovers into tasting menu gold. First up this hour, prediction markets.

46:26They are being fueled by platforms such as Kelshi and Polymarket, where users make predictions tied to real-world outcomes. But you can kind of bet on just about everything. The idea is simple. Prices move based on collective relief, turning crowd sentiment in a real-time forecast, and sometimes big money on the line. A recent Bloomberg Big Take highlighted how prediction platforms are pitching themselves as tools for insight. But eye-catching bets on real-world events are raising questions about access, integrity, and regulation. Bloomberg spoke with economists, U.S. politicians, and heads of trading firms and hedge funds to understand really what's at stake in the prediction market's boom.

47:01Danitza Sokova and Lydia Bayoud are part of the team behind the story. Danitza is Bloomberg News cross-asset reporter. Lydia is Bloomberg News financial regulations reporter. Danitza here in our Bloomberg Interactive Broker Studio. Lydia joins us from Bloomberg's Washington, D.C. Bureau. So Lydia, I want to start with you in Washington because you cover financial regulations. Prediction markets. Is it fair to call it gambling?

47:28I think these days people increasingly are seeing a blurred line there. To your point about marketing speak, the companies are very keen to describe themselves one way, but certainly within Washington, I don't think a lot of people are seeing much of a difference. And for sure, in the sports gaming world, they see them as direct competitors. Yeah, it's interesting. Gaming, gambling, what exactly is this? Denisa, come on in. For those who maybe have been living under a rock, which is kind of fine. I like to kind of hibernate every once in a while. Remind us what these prediction markets are all about and who are the big players.

48:02Yeah, 2025 was the year of prediction markets. We had two big firms kind of dominate the space. Of course, Cauchy and Polymarket. Their valuation went through the roof. They started from like$1 billion,$2 billion. And both ended the year in the double digits of billions. So really, really rapid growth. And we're seeing not only those tech Silicon Valley names, we're seeing a lot of traditional finance names. We're seeing CME. We're seeing a lot of those traditional finance players getting involved in the space. So clearly, this is an interest more beyond Silicon Valley. The volumes are crazy. So, but tell us how it works.

48:38Like, can Tim or I, can we go out and place a bet? Like, who determines who can do what on the platform? Super simple, super easy. So, obviously, sports betting have to be 21. For this, 18 is enough. It's very accessible. You go. The bet is, like, as cheap as, like, a few cents or a door. And you can just go and create it on anything. It's very simple. You can create the bet. No, you cannot create the bet. You can place a bet. That's what I'm asking. Yeah, there is a way to claim a market. But, of course, it's up to the platform to create. But as we have seen in recent months, there is a lot of variety of bets on things that, you know, anywhere else you cannot bet from the bet on Nicolas Maduro being outed to any type of pop culture thing.

49:21Top artist on Spotify this year is on call here right now. Yeah, of course. That's very popular. Any type of mention market. People are watching like politicians talk on TV and betting on every word they say, every twist. Like people are even making fun of this. We famously had the Coinbase CEO knowing that people are watching what he says on the earning code. So he was he was crashing the market. So that's where I want to bring in Lydia, because when you're in a world, Lydia Bayoud, where there is one person in control, like a CEO of a company like Elon Musk, if the number of tweets that he sends between a certain period of time, that's a bet on poly market right now or a prediction on poly market that one can make.

49:58What is the slippery slope that opens when one person is in control of the outcome here? So that's something that I think regulators and policymakers are really grappling with, particularly I think the Maduro example that we highlight in the story has really made that so salient for everyone. Right now, generally, federal rules prohibit federal employees from trading on non-public information for their own financial game. I think Representative Richie Torres is planning to introduce legislation, if he hasn't already this week, that would very clearly prohibit that type of trading on prediction markets.

50:39But really, we're kind of facing a different regime compared to how I think a lot of people think about insider trading that is regulated in equities markets or markets overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Because if you're in the derivative space and you are an energy producer, an agriculture producer, So you're expected to trade on knowing, you know, my crop's really great this year or we're pumping so much oil and gas out of out of the ground. You know, I'm able to hedge my position and sort of let my knowledge that I have inform both me and the market. You know, there's kind of a market utility argument that is made in those traditional markets.

51:17And we're seeing that, again, sort of these blurred lines shift into prediction markets and people sort of grappling like, OK, well, what's OK insider information? Like what benefits everyone to have insiders trading and kind of, you know, as they like to say, drawing on the wisdom of the crowd and doing price improvement. So not exactly truth machines, right? Well, that is the big debate about how are you going to draw that line about, you know, if you are Elon Musk and there are mention markets and what you might say during your, you know, not to pick on Elon, anyone, any executive. Right. You're going to, you know, there are mentioned markets on what you might say in your quarterly call.

51:57Do you swing a market just for funsies? Do you swing it knowing that, you know, your buddy's buddy's buddy might have some money riding on the line? And then how does anyone catch that? Should they be catching it? There's so many open policy questions that are being asked, I think, around Washington right now because of these markets. Yeah, there's an interesting, you know, I'm just going through call sheet. You could spend, I know, no, both of you did this. like you can spend hours going through this, but like, does it really serve the market to needs to ask if Will Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey be married before January 1st, 2027?

52:29That's important stuff, too. It is important stuff. We had a lot of Bloomberg headlines on this as well. Did we? We did. Okay. But it is important. So what a lot of those prediction microbelievers say is we're going to bring a lot of people through sports. So for example, Kaoshi has 90 % of their volumes very often coming from sports. So it's pretty hard to make the argument that this is a truth machine at the moment. But what some people hope and believe is that eventually some of those casino elements, some of those betting elements, will bring people who want to bet on things like economic data.

53:02Things like maybe people want to hedge. Like the hedging scenario is something that has come up a lot. Talking to people, it seems like it's not coming anytime soon. But people are saying, oh, maybe I want to hedge the weather in Florida. Maybe I have a house and I can buy insurance. Well, I don't understand that. I keep going on topic and I'm trying to take them off topic. Like here's another one, for example. What will Rachel Maddow say during Jimmy Kimmel Live? Right. Okay. That's a classic mention market. Oil, Epstein, corrupt slash corruption, ICE, Russia, Ukraine, affordable, affordability, healthcare.

53:32All right. But there's serious stuff like the Fed decision in January. Yes. 89 % say the Fed will make... I find that actually helpful for what we do. And we talked about this during elections and different things. For sure. Elections have proven to be one pretty good market. Help me understand, though. And well, you know, Lydia, come on back in here. One of the things I'm curious about is, like, who is checking who is making these trades? Is Kalshi or is Polymarket? Are they actually checking, especially when it could be potentially insider trading? Do they know exactly who's making these trades?

54:04Are they doing due diligence? So these exchanges are structured as self-regulatory organizations. So they're supposed to kind of self-monitor, monitor trades and root out any potential for market manipulation. Again, the sort of where you draw the line between what's okay and what's not okay on insider trading, that's a judgment call, I think, except in all but the most clear-cut instances. But, you know, exchanges can self-report information to the CFTC. The CFTC can look into it. Again, it operates differently than the Securities Exchange Commission. but what's the bandwidth for regulators to want to take this on the cftc is chronically underfunded they have i think roughly 500 staff the sec has four four or five times uh maybe 10 times that number not quite but they they they are understaffed for the task at hand and there are more applicants i mean we i think we mentioned in the story that there are there's a lot of interest driven heavily by sports trading, but also in the economics, also in other spaces.

55:10And so they're kind of underwater in terms of all that there is to do for market demand for this space. So I think a lot of people are wondering what the CFTC will do. But if we look at the new chairman, Michael Selig, when he was an attorney in private practice, he wrote a comment letter that was pushing back during the Biden administration on any effort to rein in sports prediction markets, for example, or really most prediction markets. So I think you've got someone who's very, you know, he said he's going to defer to the courts on how the courts might eventually rule on this topic. But at least when he was an attorney representing clients, he was very much in favor of them.

55:52Before we let you guys go, Danitza, if we think about the universe of prediction markets. Robinhood's getting into it. Kalshi and Polymarket are the big ones. And they count, I think, a Trump as advisors to both of those. Yeah. Are they, are these all regulated the same way? Or is one regulated differently than the others? So also, obviously, they have the Trump as advisor and Trump media is looking into launching a prediction market. And a lot of the sports betting companies are looking to also get into prediction market. The way, so Kaoshi so far is obviously under the CFTC. Polymarket is just entering the US.

56:28They have this beta test, so they're only onboarding some users. So currently, most of the beds on Polymarket are actually in this weird regulatory space where a lot of them are coming from abroad and isn't necessarily regulated. Under the CFTC, we've seen very different decisions. For example, there was a market connected with the United Care CEO killing, and CFTC asked Kaoshi to remove that market. But Polymarket, who is not under that jurisdiction, actually kept the market. So you can see there are very different outcomes depending on the regulation. Will a human land on Mars before California starts a high-speed rail?

57:0519 % chance. Costs 20 cents for yes, 85 cents for no. Well, what counts as the high-speed rail? I'm just reading here. 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. Yes, ski season is underway. This winter's snow story, though, has been all over the map. And as you keep reminding me, Tim, not so great. Yeah, the Rockies, they've been off to a slow dry start. snowpacks near historic lows before recent storms helped open a little more terrain.

57:49The Northeast has seen more mixed conditions. Parts of Canada and Vermont are reporting solid powder days. But for those folks who went out west over the holidays, they were so disappointed. That's a bummer. That's a big bummer. But I feel like we've been repeatedly or often, more often in the last few years hearing that story. All right, that's where Snow Partners comes in with an indoor ski resort. The company is keeping the slopes open year-round no matter what the weather does outside. Joe Hessian is founder and CEO of Snow Partners. He joined us from the company's indoor ski slope, the big snow American dream in New Jersey.

58:22Yeah, we're having an amazing start to the season. The whole Northeast really is really having one of the best seasons in a few years. We have a La Nina type of weather pattern, which typically, you know, means cold early. So the whole East Coast is good. Mountain Creek is doing fantastic. We're going to have full connection of all of four of our peaks by holiday week, which that's how we measure a great season. So it's early, but it's looking really good. And we're really excited about it. How many people are showing up? I'm just curious about the kind of demand. You know, we are watching the consumer so closely and I'm just curious, what are you seeing?

58:55Yeah, that's a great question. You know, we're seeing great visits because of the great snow and the great conditions. And I'll be honest, we talk a lot about what's the economic impact of skiing. You know, many people, you know, sometimes it's a higher expensive sport. And I'll tell you, in my experience in industry in 25, 30 years, weather is the biggest indicator. If you have good weather, you have great visits. If you have bad weather, I've lived through with the pandemic, I've lived through the Great Recession. And when you have great weather, you have great visits. And we're seeing that on the East Coast overall right now.

59:27That's good. I mean, that's good to hear. So your bottom line is saying it's weather related. It has nothing to do with the economy. me. Yeah, I spend more time in the fall thinking about, you know, how are the squirrels acting and the farmers all the neck and things like that. And I'm more worried about that than the economic situation in the country. Okay. So Joe, you've got an interesting business because you operate these two resorts, one of them outdoor, one of them indoor. I mean, the one that you're in right now, I've been to this one and it's a great place with little kids to like introduce them to skiing and to teach them.

59:58Talk a little bit about what's going on at the American Dream Mall and just the stability there because there are a lot of questions about the mall and the financial health of the mall. But are you guys okay, even if the mall as a whole is having a challenge? Yeah, that's also a great question. We've been here since December 5th, 2019. We were one of the first tenants to work with Triple Five, the people who operate the mall. And we've been successful every year since 2019. We've had constant growth from a revenue side. Our first year of opening, obviously, within six months was COVID and the pandemic.

1:00:33So we were a little slow on getting groups up, but now we have great group visitation. I'm very happy with the performance of Big Snow. And this is going to our busiest time of year where we're going to see really great visits. The mall overall, it's funny, back in 2019, I got asked that question all the time. And you might have been the first person to ask me that question in the last two years, because as you go through the mall, especially this time of year, it's really, there's a lot going on here, A lot of entertainment, a lot of new tenants have opened up. We're really happy here and we're really happy about the business we have here as well.

1:01:05Okay, cool. So where are the people? And that's 365. You're there. You guys are open every day. Every day. Well, we 364. We close on Thanksgiving Day. Okay, that's the one day you're not open. How's demand there looking? Because it doesn't matter in terms of snow because it's all man-made. It's indoor. What does demand look like in terms of is it cyclical? Is it stronger now than it was? Because that could give us a good barometer of the economy. The most interesting thing about operating a snow dome that's open year round is everyone thinks that it's going to be busy in the summertime because that's when other resorts are closed.

1:01:40But we're busier in the winter when they could go to other places. So when winter is on people's mind, when snow is in the market, you know, right now we've had snow in Central Park already this year. So that drives tons of visitation because when it's cold outside, people just think winter. They think skiing. and that's where most of it comes. Springtime is our slowest time of year. Summer, slightly busier than spring and then fall starts to ramp up with people from all over the country coming to get their first turns on snow. Hey Joe, I'm curious, you know, what your cost equation is. You know, we're in an environment where people still talk about everything costing a lot.

1:02:14We were talking with folks, representative of the restaurant industry, how they're dealing with labor and food and lack of immigration and that is certainly impacting them. What's your cost structure look like right now? Yeah, I think for us, definitely things when utilities get more expensive here at Big Snow, that's definitely a consideration for us. As far as labor, you know, we've always, since we opened, we strive to be one of the top workplaces. So we've always paid a very competitive hourly wage to our team here. And then as far as guests and what it costs, at Big Snow specifically, we've tried really hard to take the barriers of why people don't try skiing in the first place.

1:02:56And we tried to take those barriers out of the equation. And those barriers are distance, so we're really close to the population here at Big Snow. But it's also the price of entry. So you can come and have a package for well under$100, and that gets you a lesson, gets you rentals, all the equipment, outerwear, jacket, and your access on snow. But cost has definitely increased over the years, and that's something that we're always tracking to figure out how to become more efficient, for sure. There's been so much consolidation in the ski industry. You have Altera Mountain Company with the Icon Pass.

1:03:28You have Vail Resorts with the Epic Pass, which kind of invented that in the early 2000s. Rob Katz and Vail doing that. You guys are independent, though. How tough is it to be an independent operator in 2025, 2026? I think it depends on the geography and where you're located. We're very lucky that both of our businesses are directly related to population. We do a lot of new visits. We have a lot of core local customers. In Mountain Creek up here in New Jersey, this is our 60th year of operation. So we have really good communities. People that learned to ski there in the 60s are now taking their grandkids to learn to ski.

1:04:05So for us, it hasn't impacted us, but people aren't deciding which way to go. And that actually brings up a really interesting point of, you know, Vail, a huge fan of what Vail has done, a huge fan of what Altera has done. We've also seen a lot of independence resorts come together with things like the Indie Pass. We actually released a new product this year with a bunch of partners called the Snow Triple Play, because what we found out that we are really introducing a lot of people to the sport, and we can kind of give those people a warm handoff to other resorts all across the Northeast. So we've seen a lot of success in that.

1:04:36It's really fascinating kind of going through all your business. You've got, I guess it looks like an app, Manager Resort from an iPhone. I mean, talk to us about like what the business strategy is and where's the real growth? Is it, you know, creating more of what's behind you in other places around the country or even around the world? I mean, where's the growth? Or how do you create either organic growth or acquisition growth for your business? Yeah, that's, so when you look at Big Snow, we certainly want to expand and build more Big Snows. And I think the reason that is such a great opportunity is because you can design them to a spec, you can roll them out, and you can operate them really efficiently.

1:05:15Kind of like the Jack Welch, Variation is Evil situation. Without the variation, we can really figure out how to operate at efficiency. So Big Snow is really important in our future plan, but we are most excited about SnowCloud, which you mentioned the technology. and you also mentioned earlier things like the Epic Pass and Icon Pass. Over the last decade, we've seen massive innovations with those past products. But I think the next 10 years, the disruption in the ski space is going to be driven by technology. How so? I think it's going to be the way resorts operate their business, the platforms they use to relate with customers.

1:05:49And I think the biggest change that's about to happen, which we've been excited about, is the AI piece, which I know a lot of people talk about AI and they don't see what that's going to look like and how that's going to feel. And the way we see it and what we've been building our platform to do is you should be dealing with your own family's agent, booking anything. I think that's the way this is going is everyone will have their own agent. And if you want to go skiing, you're going to say to your agent, I want to go skiing, where should I go? That agent will then broker with agents at different resorts.

1:06:17And I think it's going to completely change the way people plan trips, the way they buy passes. So I think in many ways what we've seen with the Epic Pass and icon pass and other passes, we're going to see a complete change in the relationship of how people buy products, plan experiences, and it's all going to be hyper-personalized. Like, I have this thing I would say is like, have my people call your people. That's like the joke that they've always said on cartoons. And that's the way I think people are going to plan their trips. You're talking about agentic AI, right? Absolutely, yeah. Agentic AI where everyone has their agent, each business has their own agent, different, like I see a world in the next few years where it's not just Epic and Icon as the leaders.

1:06:56I think there's probably 20, 30, 40 flavors. The technology we're building allows any resorts to team up together, have different segmentations. It's really exciting. I totally get it. Hey, Jess, one thing I want to ask you, climate change, is that creating opportunities for you, especially when it comes to inside kind of ski experiences? You know, I think it's definitely easier to operate a business when you don't have to worry about the weather. We have our outdoor resort and our indoor resort, and it's really easy to, you know, what's interesting about operating Big Snow is it's kind of like retail, where I can literally predict what we're going to do almost every day because of it's so consistent.

1:07:35When you have, you know, the changes in the climate and you have different variables, you need to be ready for what if we have a slow start like we're seeing out in the West right now. And I always remind people that you have to have a good pre-sold strategy. So Vale's done great with the Epic Pass. They've sold them. Same thing with Altera with the Icon Pass. Resorts know how to make sure they protect themselves early. And I always tell the skiers who have a bunch of trips planned out west this year, don't judge the early start for the whole season. This could still be an amazing season out west.

1:08:03I was at Jackson Hole on Monday. They're getting a massive storm this weekend. So, you know, I wouldn't give up on the season in the west. I think we have good ski days ahead of us. Hey, Joe, to Carol's point about other parts of the business, if we think about Snow Partners and the Umbrella organization, how much revenue comes from actual operations of a big snow in mountain creek versus soundcloud snow operating business and then snow go the the bikes that you manufacture and sell yeah um so revenue wise uh we're probably um so high level think of like 100 million in revenue we're doing 60 in operations at this point um the rest of it is primarily focused in snow cloud or software technology.

1:08:44As far as where the growth opportunity we think we have, we think SnowCloud is going to be the Shopify of experiences. We work with Stripe on our platform. We're really lucky to be one of their category leaders in the space that we're in. And I think we can see growth with SnowCloud that's not just in the ski business, but water parks, amusement parks. I feel a way that Shopify has opened up the doors for people who want to be in retail at all sizes and levels, I think that's what we're truly trying to build with SnowCloud. So that right now is not our largest business, but I always tell people it is by far our largest opportunity.

1:09:23Just going to say, I love the Mountain Creek water park. Did that with my daughter. It's pretty wild. It's pretty wild. I actually had the wind kicked out of me out of one of the rides, but it was a lot of fun. There's no water park like that in the world. One of a kind. It's crazy. Joe, appreciate you joining us. Joe Heshin, founder and CEO of Snow Partners. I'm going to see him on the slopes. Yeah, you should try the water park. It's wild. It's an eight-time. Love to take some terms. Take care. Cool. Take care. All right, we'll see you later. Joe Heshin, founder and CEO at Snow Partners.

1:09:58Hello, 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.

1:10:45Yeah. 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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1:12:48Learn more at adobe.com slash do that with Acrobat. You'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. A new year and get ready to step up to the counter for some of the year's most anticipated cooking. We're diving into the U.S. dining scene and things are getting deliciously creative. From some of the most exciting new restaurants opening this year to turning waste into tasting menu experiences with more as Bloomberg Pursuits food editor, Kate Crater.

1:13:24Kate, when I was reading the story about the counters, I brought myself back to this fall, late summer. Sebastian, who's in the control room right now. Carol, who's right across from me, next to you. We were in Southern California. We were in Orange County. And my sister found out we were there. She said, you have to go to this one restaurant. So I was so excited because whenever we travel together, we try to do like one really nice meal together. It's like a highlight. We go to the restaurant. We walk in. it's counter service. And we all look at each other and we say, this is not the experience we want tonight.

1:13:56Did we make a horrible mistake? So that was 2025. And maybe your reaction will be a little bit different if that scene is recreated in 2026, because it is going to be a big trend. There's so many fun restaurants coming opening around the country this year. One of the big trends that we're seeing is counter service, where you do have to do some the work yourself. You walk up, you order. You should be sitting at a table. If they had you standing up, then that's not ideal. Oh, we just walked in and walked out. We just felt like it was not going to be as nice. Well, it's not. There's definitely something missing from it.

1:14:33But the reality is, I mean, you guys go out to eat. You know what a good restaurant is. Eating out has gotten so expensive. It's crazy. I mean, it's been coming and coming for a while, but especially here in New York, you know what? you can't like walk into a restaurant and order a burger and a drink and not get a check that's like a hundred dollars you know and so it's crazy it's crazy i mean it's based on reality because as you know food prices are going up labor prices are going up real estate isn't free in new york city so there's a lot of factors going into it but nonetheless i think people i think the sticker shock of it is starting to set in and certainly you know at the margins for restaurateurs are slimmer than ever.

1:15:13So they're like, huh, how do we make this? How can we cut costs? And so what they are doing now is they're increasingly looking at counter options, because it also fits like the comfort food mentality. So it allows you to cut back on labor a little bit. It can streamline a restaurant design because you don't need like a lot of places to set up to have like servers putting things down. So yes, I predict that in 2026, you'll walk up to a counter because they're also going to be really cool in Chicago. This guy who's like a barbecue champion is opening Fatback in New Orleans. Alon Shaya, who's a really celebrated Israeli chef, is opening Safta's table and he's going to serve food all day long.

1:15:59And then it's also happening in DC, a place called Rye Bunny. It used to be a restaurant called Tail Up Goat that was fantastic. It opened a decade ago and these are some very talented restaurateurs and now they're saying you know what let's go to a different model that's sort of like modern American cooking seasonal menus and um and it's going to allow us to keep our prices a little bit stable instead of ramping up I love feeding the decor of this one rag rugs patchwork tile floors and string lights like it's just like it just sounds charming to me Carol you're going to walk in there and not walk out I predict I that's my prediction for 2026.

1:16:36The one thing I also thought was kind of interesting is it Mays in Denver, it's 18 course menu and you move through a series of spaces. I thought that was also kind of interesting. Isn't that cool? Yeah. I mean, that is don't don't think like tasting menus are dead and gone and that nobody's you're only going to be able to eat at a counter. There will be there will be opportunities for you to sit down and have some really elite kind of food. And And that's happening in Denver. This couple, Johnny Curell, I think, and his wife have really spotlighted Mexican food and authentic ingredients. And so they're obsessed with maize and corn.

1:17:12And so they have, it's sort of an experiential dining experience. And I think that's really fun. That makes me want to go to Denver to eat. I want to talk about everything omakase. I feel like you're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. I think it does. Yeah, there's definitely a lot. There's still a sort of faucet of high-end Japanese sushi masters and Wagyu chefs who see a lot of opportunity in New York and Miami, too, and who are opening restaurants here. So you will continue to see omakase. I will say I'm really eyes on. I think people are just cutting back on going out and or will cut back on going out.

1:18:01And so whereas like a year or two ago, we would see some of these omakases priced at like$4.95 or$5.95. And that means you're spending like$800, right? Oh, my God. Tim, if you take me and Carol out, you like get ready. No, I have to tell you guys, I was in San Francisco last year for a week. And one of the things I wanted to do was just go to some good restaurants. So I texted a friend in San Francisco. I said, I just want really good sushi. Where do I go tonight? And he texted me a list of like five places. I looked up every single one of them. They were all omakase only. And let's just say my managers would not have been happy had I expensed a meal at those places.

1:18:35No, I think, so I think now, I mean, it's still, obviously you're going to spend three figures on these menus, but I'm seeing more, a little bit more like 295 and low 300s, which is still so much money, but it's like at least, it's like two thirds of what it will is. I think you're going to be taking us there, Kate. Let's go. Well, you know, gosh, I feel like, Kate, we've talked to you. I just want to just go big broad, if I can, for a moment. Because I feel like we've talked with you through so many different cycles. And we've had good cycles. And then we had the pandemic. And everybody had a shift.

1:19:08Like, what was last year like? And where is the restaurant industry in some of these major cities? It's such a good question, Carol. I think if I look especially at New York City, because that's my home and it's the most exciting food scene in the world, I will say that. I think everything was on the front burner. There was so much happening with, like, go here, do this, go to the corner store, go to Teresi. You know, it seemed like a constant highlight reel. And there's still, like, so much of that YOLO mentality where you really feel like, I'm going to do this. Like, I've got to have, like, a corn experience tasting menu.

1:19:42And I think this year is the year that we step back a little bit and things dial down a little bit. New York City feels a little bit more lived in. and you go like you keep supporting something that happened right after the pandemic is that people really supported their neighborhood restaurants and then there was all this pent up energy though and so it went from maybe supporting your local restaurants but really going big to the places that you saw over social media and I think that calms down now I think the places the um the biggest restaurant opening and it's not on our list because it opened at the end of last year but it's called stars it's a little wine bar it's on east 12th street it's like a horseshoe counter it was apparently inspired by grand central oyster bar except that it only seats like 20 like you only like 20 people can fit in it yeah but it's a wine bar with a fantastic array of snacks they have um these deviled eggs that have been getting a lot of attention with these little pastry stars on them they have a shrimp sandwich that's bananas with like a really good crusty, you know, crusty buttered griddled bread on it surrounding these like plump shrimp.

1:20:48I love this. And you can walk out of there for like maybe$100, like maybe you'll spend$100 if you're drinking some really good glasses of wine, but you can also go out of there for like 60 bucks and then go have dinner somewhere else or go home and cook your dinner. And I think we've written about that before, but wine bars are like here to meet your economic moment and New York City hasn't done wine bars so well and now it starts now. Can we talk some trash? Bye. Yes. Love this story. Love talking trash. Love this story. I was reading this, this story by Emma Court. Kate Crater edited it. And I was reading it and I was thinking, this is so up Carol's alley because Carol's not somebody to waste anything.

1:21:24We try not. But we talk a lot about just personally how much food goes to waste. Like, you know, spoiled salad in the fridge. We end up throwing it away. This is a huge issue for larger establishments like hotels and large restaurants too. Food waste is, I'm so with you, Carol. It makes me nuts and it gets wasted on every level. It gets wasted in your home, but it especially gets wasted in kitchens and commercial operations. And it happens at every stage. It happens when you're preparing food and you throw out trimmings. There's plate waste that also has a lot to do with it. I'm interested to see how that evolves as more and more people are on GLP-1 drugs because portions, I think, are becoming a little bit more reasonable, at least here in the U.S.

1:22:12And so hopefully that plate waste is going to decrease a bit. But there's a restaurant in the East Village called Hag's that you can pay up to$160 for your food, but the chef specializes in maximizing her trimmings. She grows mushrooms. She uses the compost in her kitchen to grow mushrooms that feature in like a beautiful like risotto. And she's using like squash trimmings to make like the soup. And every single thing that you can think about that you and I might throw in the garbage, she's like, nope, like I see other opportunities. I think it's really, it's brilliant. Because if you think about, right, sometimes to create something, especially at a really nice restaurant, like how much food either they're cutting away or so on.

1:22:57But it's also like this whole area of companies that have come up, if you will, to help these restaurants like monitor their food and so forth. So there's this whole other industry, cottage industry or whatever you want to call it that has popped up. Well, it's so smart. Yeah, there's a company called Winnow that analyzes, it uses some proprietary technology to analyze the trash and see what you might be able to use. And I think they've been working with some big hotel groups like the Four Seasons and now the Four Seasons Houston, I think was making like a quesadilla or something that ended up being 70 % waste that isn't that fantastic?

1:23:32Like it saves them money. It's better for the environment. All of it. It's not just customer plates, though, where the waste comes from. That's about a third of the waste, according to this story. This is the Waste and Resources Action Program data. But 45 % of it comes from food prep. 21 % comes from spoilage. And the food prep side of things, it kind of makes sense in fine dining because it's like they want to present the most ideal part of whatever they're cutting, whether that's a piece of meat, whether it's a filet, or whether it's a fruit or vegetable. Right. No, exactly. But I think that the onus of that, that certainly was the case like a decade ago.

1:24:05And now, especially at fine dining, because the margins are so thin, they really have to figure out something else to do with like that with a less attractive piece of duck that's not going on the customer's plate. Well, are we going to start accepting that as customers? Like, what do you do with that piece of duck if the person who walks into that fine dining establishment doesn't want that? I mean, it depends. There's different categories of diners. And, you know, there's some people who are like, oh, no, like, how could you? But I think now there's so much, you know, people love something imperfect because it generally tells a story.

1:24:37And I think chefs and restaurants. Yeah, me and you, Carol. But I think people, most diners, especially if they're like Gen Z, are not necessarily looking for the exact perfect slice of Wagyu. Love, love, love this story. Actually, there's a bunch of people in this story I want to get on our air to talk about. Will they bring some food? I don't need the mushroom. That's part of the deal. You know Tim eats. I don't need the mushroom powder. I don't need the mushroom powder, but anything else in there. You can let them know that. It can be part of your rider. Yes. Counter table, Tim's always eating.

1:25:10Yummy, yummy. Kate, thank you so much. Great to have you in town, too. That's Kate Crater, Bloomberg Pursuits food editor. And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Tim Stenebeck. And he's hungry. And I'm Carol Master. I might be hungry, too. Have a great and safe weekend, everyone. This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app.

1:25:44You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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