Trump Says He’d ‘Feel Very Comfortable’ Living in Mamdani’s NYC

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2:26Radio. We do want to take you, though, back to what we just heard, that meeting between President Trump and the mayor-elect of New York City, Zoran Mondani. Obviously, they talked a lot about the relationship between the federal government and New York. The president did also answer some questions on some of the geopolitical issues that are out there. But the net takeaway, a range of questions and answers, but it does seem like these two individuals, I think some thought they might not get along. They definitely look like they got along. Let's bring in Michelle Jamrisco. She's White House and national security editor down at our bureau in Washington, D.C.

3:00I got to tell you, my phone is blowing up with text messages about how surprised people are listening to that press conference, watching that press conference. Michelle, it seems like these two got along really well. What are your takeaways? Yeah, well, we knew it was going to be, you know, as Trump says, the best show on earth. We had hordes of media waiting for the arrival there, and we were waiting to hear it confirmed and then waiting to get in to see exactly what the show would be about. But I think, yeah, in the end, we were joking on the earlier show, what could possibly happen where they both come out of this happy?

3:33But it looks like, to your point, they did agree on a number of things. And I think they both appreciated the opportunity to kind of pump their message and show the American public some sort of agreement across a vast political divide and also minimize those political labels, which I thought was funny. came to humorous points at times with Trump saying, Mom, Daddy could just answer yes to the question of whether he still believed Trump was a fascist and not have to explain himself. So they were having a little fun with the media there, too. There were some funny moments in there. There were a lot of funny moments.

4:05I think we were all just kind of shocked. You know, a show, yes, maybe the president promised. No one expected the bromance, though, I think it's safe to say. And that's what it feels like. I mean, you could tell, right? You can read the room, read the chemistry. You know, I guess what's interesting is, and I kind of think, obviously, you can't kind of make me think about this, but if I went before the election or a couple of months ago, I can't even imagine this kind of warmth between these two officials. But I don't know. Is it the individual? Is it the charisma of the mayor-elect? Is it that, you know, President Trump has been not winning everything as of late.

4:46Well, I think it's a combination of a lot of those things, Carol. I mean, we think about, too, Trump's style of personal diplomacy, his idea that he could get along with anybody. And, you know, he often talks about being able to cut a deal with even who you might think is the most controversial figure, never mind someone who he sat in the Oval Office today, who is, you know, a very different political figure than he is. But I think one thing that he really respects, really respects strength, confidence. He really likes the job that Mamdani has. He joked about loving, you know, the idea of being New York mayor.

5:17Maybe we'll see a run for the president in the future on that. But, you know, he and he also respected someone who is very much, you know, vis-a-vis Trump, very much like Mamdani in terms of Bernie Sanders taking the same kind of voters, cost of living, populist draw. So he sees some similarities there. And I think that was part of the show today was like, let's show you where we can agree and like to the benefit of both of us politically. And then, you know, we'll talk about some substantive things and where we can come together on vast disagreements. The president and I think there was concern going into this from from New Yorkers who thought, OK, well, if the president chooses not to give federal funds to New York City, the New York City could be in trouble.

6:01The president said that if he, quote, didn't agree with New York City mayor like Zoran Mamdani, he wouldn't give the city as much federal funding. He said, quote, we had a meeting today that actually surprised me. He wants to see no crime. He wants to see housing being built. He wants to see rents coming down. All things that I agree with. Is it fair to say that Momdani walks away and says this meeting was a huge success? Well, I don't know if you can say huge success. And of course, I think Momdani is smart enough to think, you know, all these things can also be tentative. You know, You could be friends and pals seemingly with the president one day, and the next day you do something and he's upset and takes revenge in some way.

6:40And that's part of his unpredictability that he likes to play off of to get leverage is the whole art of the deal, right? So but we did see, I mean, to your point, the housing and affordability conversation seemed to be kind of coalescing around the idea that they both know it needs to go in a certain direction. And mom, daddy is in some ways being trusted to take care of that without the threat of withholding federal funding, it seems. But, you know, we live to fight another day. And then on the crime side, which was, you know, a big sticking point, of course, for Trump, he seemed to kind of relent on that issue.

7:12He was asked if he would feel comfortable living in a Mamdani in New York City. He said, absolutely. And he said, especially after today. So, you know, he's kind of playing up this, you know, I've met with this guy now that I know him. Things are just going to be fine. So I think this is kind of a down payment on a future relationship that could get rocky. Of course, you know, you think of the likes of Elon Musk. We saw, you know, a great bromance, a lot of respect. And, you know, we've been on a roller coaster ride since then. So I can only imagine that that could be the same for this relationship.

7:41Although Elon back in the White House, or at least back at a beginning this past week. Hey, Michelle, before you go, just two things I want to ask you. First of all, in terms of whenever any of this happens in the Oval Office, I think about policy and things that might impact the investment environment, the business environment, the Bloomberg audience, if you will. And Mamdani, the mayor-elect, talked about very much interested in property tax reform. They both talked about housing affordability. They also talked about power rates, electricity rates. We saw Con Edison, which was cited specifically, I think them both calling on, and I think the president looking, calling on Con Ed to cut rates.

8:18And Con Ed dipped as much as 1.4 % on that news. How much of it should we think about is the potential for, yeah, this is going to be future discussions that could ultimately result in some kind of policy or changes that impact the business environment here in New York City? Well, certainly an open question, Carol, and I haven't checked all the market metrics that you're mentioning, but I can imagine that the businesses that were nervous about certain things coming into today weren't maybe reassured just by the messaging that Mamdani proposed. you know, maybe the spirit of it. Yes. But I don't think he changed a whole lot from what he's been talking about.

8:54So I think the concern might remain in terms of how he might go about this. And we didn't get much detail on that front. But the motive and the ideas behind it, I think, were consistent with what he said on the campaign trail. One last question, because the geopolitics certainly came up. The president did say that he thinks the Russia-Ukraine peace is getting close. I'm just curious. They also talked about that they both want peace in the Middle East. But Russia, Ukraine has certainly been front and center today. Some back and forth of things going on. You do cover national security here. I'm just curious, anything that we need to know as we head into the weekend?

9:28Yeah, you know, it's really important. And the bar is low today. We were trying to hear, you know, get some sense of how some conversations had gone today. We understand the mayor had spoken with Trump, with J.D. Vance had spoken with Zelensky. And a lot of things have unfolded today that we still need to get follow up on. I think, you know, a few of his lines were pretty striking today that kind of pointed in one direction of putting the pressure and keeping the pressure on President Zelensky rather than Putin at the moment. You know, he said it takes two to tango and they both lost. He said 25 ,000 folks have been lost on either side in the recent period of time.

10:02So not very exact, but he's saying this is a pretty striking war. It remains one that needs to be resolved, but really kind of putting it in Zelensky's lap and saying he has to agree to something at some point. Okay, lots going on. Hey, listen, so much. Thank you. Thank you. You covered it all. Michelle Jamrisco. They're in our Washington, D.C. Bureau for Bloomberg News. She is White House and National Security Editor. Michelle, have a great weekend. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming up after this.

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13:55Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Or watch us live on YouTube. Well, of all a little day of trading here in New York, where we saw the S &P 500 down as much as a quarter of 8%, then up as much as 1.9 % to close higher by 1%. For the week, though, down 2%. The Nasdaq down 2.7 % this week. for more on the markets and the outlook. We bring in Eric Weiner, Bloomberg News Senior Editor, Equities America. Is also joining us, Sarah Levy, CEO of Betterment. Sarah joins us from New York. Eric is here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. I want to thank both of you for just being so patient.

14:29Sarah, we were supposed to talk to you over a half hour ago and you've been standing by, but you have been able to actually see this press conference between the president and the New York City mayor-elect. You live in New York. You run a company in New York. You have employees in New York. I imagine you are looking closely at the future of New York City. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, Sarah, your takeaways from this press conference. Well, it's interesting because I think affordability is obviously on everybody's mind. And I think that it was great to see sort of places of commonality, because I think if the if the city is going to thrive, which I obviously have a vested interest in.

15:05I've been a New York City resident my entire life. If the city is going to thrive, we're going to need federal support. So I think it's really great the way they're reaching across the aisle to find areas of commonality. And I think, look, you know, keeping crime low is important. I think affordability is on everyone's mind. And even as I think about my business, not just running a business in New York, but we're we're here to help people invest and, you know, build nest eggs and build wealth over time. If life isn't affordable, that's a really hard thing to do. Eric, I want to bring you in here because you have to catch some of this press conference as well.

15:37And certainly Wall Street and New York City are inextricably bound. And what happens in the markets, a lot of that happens here in the city. You're a longtime person who's worked and lived in New York. Your views? Well, from a Wall Street perspective, they've got to be happy. Because if we're fighting, if the city is fighting with D.C., that is just not good for business here and in particular financial business here. So really what you want is sort of a friendly engagement with the White House. You want funding to be available. And you really want, as we were just talking about, the affordability issues, the issues that they're talking about development, getting more housing, getting more getting affordability down.

16:25All of that is extremely important to the markets. And today was probably a pretty good development for Wall Street. But I mean, getting housing prices down is important to the markets or you just mean that they're cooperating? Well, I don't know how much. I don't know how much. Yes. I don't know how much a politician can get housing prices down. Right. What you can do, though, is spur building. And so if you reduce regulations and open up building in places where there hasn't been building, then suddenly you can get more units involved and you can get more people. Rents come down. It's just there hasn't been a ton of building.

17:02There hasn't been a lot of development going on in New York. And if if mom, Donnie can do it with the support of the president, that much better. So, Sarah, I mean, you know, let's talk a little bit about kind of how we wrapped up. I mean, there's so much coming out. We spend so much time focusing on news, obviously, out of D.C. And, you know, anytime that there is some event from the Oval Office, like I mentioned, Con Ed, because he the president and the mayor like talking about getting power prices, electricity prices rates down. and Con Ed, we saw a dip on that. The environment in general, there's questions about the AI trade, what the Fed's going to do.

17:41Kind of what do you think is most impactful and will matter to markets as we are almost ready to wrap up this year? I mean, look, there's a lot packed into that. I think probably interest rates and the AI trade are probably the two biggest factors. And the question on the AI, both of those questions, I think are open, which is you can see a lot of similarity to the dotcom bubble right now in the AI trade. And, you know, we're seeing that volatility sort of pre and post the Nvidia earnings, you know, one day up, one day down. So, you know, I think there are really two sides of that debate right now about, you know, is it inflated?

18:16Is there too much CapEx going in there? And is there going to be an ROI or is there room to run and we're going to transform, you know, productivity across business? And I think there's really something to both of those to both of those narratives. So we're seeing people somewhat confused and sitting a lot of money on the sidelines in cash because of that. So then enters the Fed conversation, right, where recently we've started to see more of a rotation out of cash into investing. But I think now we sit in this place where it's pretty split 50 50 on whether or not the Fed's going to drop rates again because the economic signs are a little, you know, crosswise, a little confusing.

18:55Sarah, sit tight because I want to get back to what exactly is happening on the Betterment platform in just a second, as you have increasingly focused, you know, people know it as a robo-advisor, but increasingly now it's become this, a different type of platform. And you're going to tell us about that and what people are doing on the platform. But Eric, I want you to weigh in on one of Sarah's points that she just made, which is this idea of whether or not we're in a bubble when it comes to AI. And if there are parallels indeed to the dot-com bubble. Well, there absolutely are parallels. The question is where we are in that stage.

19:27Bubbles can run for a long time. We actually have a story running on Sunday, which addresses this, which is sort of a dichotomy right now. There's the glass half full, glass half empty argument where there are people who are looking at all the spending and saying, oh my God, they're not going to be able to pay this. And then you have other people saying, oh my God, look at all this money that's coming in. We're going to make a fortune. so the really the that is actually playing out in real time uh and that was really what caused the turnaround um just yesterday where you know nvidia came out strong we knew they were going to come in strong um but when they came out strong and it looked like okay we're going to rip higher and then all of a sudden there's this pullback because people start getting concerned the undercover issue to me is the consumer we're not talking about that and if you look at the companies that are doing worse this year, it's the consumer discretionary index.

20:21And like we heard from Walmart, which did great, that they're concerned. We heard from Target, they're concerned. Home Depot, Lowe's, they're concerned. If we're heading into Christmas and the consumer is not healthy, that isn't great for stocks. Like that isn't great for earnings. That isn't great for a whole bunch of things that we count as really the, you know, the tip of the missile when it comes to getting gains. Well, Sarah, I saw you nodding there when Eric was talking about the consumer. Remind everybody who's on the Betterment platform. My understanding would be these are people who have money to invest.

20:55So that puts them in a different income spectrum than a lot of Americans, we should point out. But what can you tell us about what the consumer is doing on the Betterment platform that would indicate to you how the health of the consumer is right now? Well, your point is really important about who we serve. So we do serve a millennial professional or a more professional Gen Z-er sort of earlier in their wealth building journey, but important to say wealth building journey, right? So typically our customers have lower debt, have six figures of income. So I'm not sure necessarily it's the pulse of sort of the common consumer who's struggling with, what's my Thanksgiving dinner cost going to look like?

21:38That being said, a big part of our business is the retirement business. And when people are struggling today, it's really hard to convince them to put money away for the future, even though it's very much in their best interest. And the 401k business is a huge part. And we haven't really seen changes there. I mean, we largely and granted, we have, you know, folks who are employed. So that probably sets a different tone. But we do really see very, very consistent savings continuing in the retirement space. So that's good. In other words, if you a sign of stress would be if people pulled back on saving for retirement, because they needed that money now to live because of some sort of job loss or something.

22:18And you're not seeing that right now. It's not that we're not seeing any of it, but we're not seeing it at elevated levels for that to be alarming with our customer. But this goes back to our earlier guests that we had on. And Eric, I want to bring you back. Greg Dacco, he is chief economist at EY. And he's got this whole concept of three A's, artificial intelligence, the spend that has driven asset price gains. And that has been great for folks who are in the stock market. And that's where mostly affluent customers or consumers, they're feeling wealthy overall, and they're out there spending.

22:52But if any of that, they're so interconnected that if that starts to come undone, then we might have a problem. That's absolutely it. So yes, money is coming into the stock market. And we've talked about this K-shaped recovery. And so yeah, wealthier people are doing just fine. But if companies that need spending to grow are not getting that spending, even if it's at the margin, so it's 10 % down, it's 15 % down, that's enormous when it comes to investing. It also involves, as we were just talking about, it involves how much people are willing to put into the market. If you are concerned about maybe a bubble bursting and you're looking at your savings and you're saying, you know, I really don't want to put this at risk, people pull back.

23:42And what tends to happen is it happens very slowly and then there's a rush. So the concern is that people get scared and then all of a sudden, wham, we all pull back at the same time. I want to ask both of you. Oh, go ahead, Sarah. Come on back. No, I was just going to say, Eric, just one thing to add to that, because I agree with everything you're saying, which is I think where AI is going to take the take jobs is just another kind of piece of that that we can't ignore, which is you're already starting to see cracks and you're starting to see, you know, a lot of the biggest companies pull back on employment because of AI.

24:14And so I think we have to keep our eye on that as well while we're getting excited about the AI trade in terms of the efficiency it delivers. Well, you know, what I want to ask both of you and Sarah, you know, remind me in terms of activity when it comes to crypto or Bitcoin on your platform, because what's interesting is we've seen such a drop in crypto. We're now, you know, looking for the next key level for it to go down to is 80 ,000, finishing just below 85 or at least trading below 85 right now. But we have seen so much value, value, I put parentheses around it, wiped off of Bitcoin this year.

24:49And I'm just curious, is there a connection? I'm trying to understand because people sometimes want to make connections between crypto and the stock market. And are you seeing anything? So crypto is not a huge part of our business. We do have crypto portfolios on our platform, but we don't have the ability other than buying crypto ETFs really to directly buy crypto. And we also, as sort of part of who we attract, it's kind of a long-term globally diversified investor. So I would say crypto remains, I'll call it five-ish percent of what we see. So I'm not sure we're really indicative of what's happening there.