Trump Threatens ‘A Lot’ of Firings in Looming US Shutdown

21:02Carol Massar:Which makes me wonder if that's even right. But go ahead. I mean, I think there are so many differences in the economy, so many differences in the market that you have to pay attention to, which are not, you know, they don't provide the evidence or the support for that direct comparison. I will say, though, I think the one lesson to be learned from that period or any period where you go through some kind of craze, if you were to single out, you know, the beginning of 2000 as an example, if you looked at the largest companies in the market at that time, you know, at that time was sort of the big five that were in focus.

21:29It's not that their earnings just reversed and went negative. It's just that they couldn't keep up with that rapid pace of expectations and the expectations that kept getting ratcheted higher. So earnings in these kinds of parts of these parts of the cycle, it becomes more of a game of expectations and where you set the bar versus actual results just coming in positive. I think there's a really important distinction because you can get a lot of hype associated with that in terms of market performance.

21:54Carol Massar:So is that you saying then, Kevin, that the AI thing is real, it's happening, but folks may be, you know, reigning your expectations a little bit? Yeah, because I think there are enough divergences. And I feel that the post-pandemic economy has really just been case-shaped the entire way. It really feels that way, especially when we go out and talk to clients. And great if you're on the upper leg, but not if you're on the lower leg. If you're generating income from assets, if you have a significant part of your wealth tied into markets, of course, you've benefited a lot. But there are a lot of people that have struggled considerably.

22:22And I mention that because you can look at that split. And there's so many ways to do it and slice and dice it. But you can look at what's been done on the AI capex spend side of the equation for something like GDP. And then you can look at the slowdown in the hiring rate, non-farm payroll growth, the uptick in unemployment that you've seen for certain segments of the economy, particularly youth unemployment. Yeah, you were saying posts about

22:43Carol Massar:this just a couple of weeks ago. This is something you've been focusing on a lot. It's a huge focus for me. Of course, I'm biased because, you know, a lot of my peers and friends have been impacted by it. But if you just look at the increase that you've seen in the unemployment rate for the 16 to 24-year-old cohort, that has risen at a pace that is only consistent with recessions in prior instances. And I do think that there is certainly a unique nature to the cycle this time where there are so many indicators that have told us recession, recession for years now, and it just hasn't happened. So I do think it is in keeping with this rolling recession nature that we've talked about a lot and written about a lot over the past few years.

23:21But there are definitely cohorts of the economy that have been struggling. So I think that if that continues and you get more labor weakness from here, it's going to be harder to, I think, just say and point to AI being the only thing that holds up the economy. I do think it's been a significant driver statistically, mathematically, that has been the case. But if labor continues to soften from here, then you do, you know, you run into more, more issues.

23:44Carol Massar:So then you agree with the Fed recent rate cut and that should the Fed do more? Well, I mean, there's often a big difference for between what we think they should do and what they will do. What I think that they will do, I think there's probably a cut or two left, But at the same time, I mean, you read all of the commentary and the comments this week, just in the past couple of days from Fed officials, the ones who are voting, who are actually, you know, making the policy, they've pointed out almost ad nauseum all of the upside inflation risks that still exist. In addition to, you know, downside labor market risk, of course.

24:14But I also think that, you know, in terms of inflation expectations, which I will say, in fairness for now, look relatively stable. They don't you know, they're not setting any alarm bells.

24:24Carol Massar:But not at the Fed's target. Right. So if you're the Fed looking at this where, you know, potentially by the end of next year, they could be 70 consecutive months above their two percent inflation target. And if the labor market doesn't completely collapse and go into a recession, that would necessitate, you know, cuts, which if that did happen, presumably would bring inflation back down to their targets. Not the best way to do so. But if you're looking at that dynamic, I don't really see how this Fed cuts aggressively, especially heading into next year. We got to leave it there. Come back to you guys.

24:53Carol Massar:So great to see you in studio. and I know we'll continue this conversation. Thanks for having me. Be well, be well. Kevin Gordon, he's senior investment strategist at Charles Schwab, joining us right here in studio. We're probably gonna see Kevin before November, but we're gonna see him out of Denver because we're having that to Schwab impact in the early part of November. So we'll definitely be talking to Kevin out there. Looking forward to it. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

25:20Support for the show comes from public.com. If you're actively involved in your portfolio, you probably catch yourself repeating the same actions. Buying the dip, manually sweeping idle cash, putting on a hedge. On public, you can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English. Like, if the VIX hits 25, buy a put option on the S &P 500. Or, if my cash balance goes above$20 ,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve of the workflow and your agent handles the rest. Monitoring the market, watching for your conditions, and executing your strategies exactly as defined.

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27:00Carol Massar:Let's talk about healthcare for a second. It doesn't always work the way people expect it to. If you've ever waited on a prescription refill or had a hard time getting the care you needed, you know the feeling. The system should just work better for everyone. That's exactly what the people at Optum are trying to do every day. They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system so care is connected, not complicated. for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support and even in-home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together.

27:38Carol Massar:Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optum is working to bring costs down, save patients money, and make it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business.optum.com to see how. These days, it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function, but without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agents' identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust.

28:19Carol Massar:So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise with Okta, you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent. Secure any agent. Okta secures AI. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App, or watch us live on YouTube. Carol, you said a lot was happening on this Tuesday. So we're watching everything out of Washington, which includes everything with major pharmaceutical companies. They're higher today. Eli Lilly shooting higher.

28:56Carol Massar:Pfizer up around, what, 6%, 5.6 % earlier in the session. Top gainers in the S &P 500. Yeah, all of this after Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company secured a three-year grace period from President Trump's promised tariffs on pharmaceuticals in a deal that would lower some of its U.S. drug prices. We talk drugs, we talk biotech, we talk innovation happening in the space, and we got to talk to Jenny Rook. She's the founder and managing director of Genoa Ventures. It's a VC firm. It invests in, as she says, the quote, next gen of companies at the convergence of technology and biology. BrightSpec, Caribou, Topaz, and more are among the companies she's invested.

29:32Carol Massar:And she joins us here once again in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Well, every time you're on with us, there's always some news event out of Washington that we're talking to about. I kidded her. Every time you come in, it's crazy. It wasn't last time. It was the time before that you were here when we were talking about the government cutting all the funding to universities and the ripple effects that that might see in your industry when it comes to biotech. But when it comes to the way that the American pharmaceutical companies have, it's kind of whiplash, I guess you could say. Last week, tariffs.

30:03Carol Massar:This week, Albert Bourla up there with HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which I think a lot of people would be surprised about. How do you look at this relationship in your world? It's so much uncertainty, right? And very difficult to make any predictions. In my world, as you know, I spend a lot of time with people who are thinking about how to change the world on the order of decades, right? And so we've talked about regardless of what someone does today or the next few hours or by midnight tonight, do we need new drugs that really help us understand how our bodies are working and really address the cause of disease and molecular level?

30:42Yes. Will we need that in a decade? Yes. Will we need to figure out how to appropriately price that and make it available to the American people? Yes. So generally, we just try to look through all of the noise and think about how to keep using innovation to solve problems.

30:55Carol Massar:A pharmaceutical company might say, we need to charge high prices because the R &D that goes into this is massive. I mean, we see it, Carol, the startups. They're made or broken on a single clinical trial. The flip side of that is if that money does not come in, that money does not get invested. Is there a concern here that the administration will stifle innovation if they require companies to lower prices? It is true that the most recent historical model for funding innovation, in therapeutics at least, depends on that kind of IP protection and first to market, which is also supported by the regulatory environment, that rewards all of that risk taking and expense to do the clinical trials.

31:42But a question I think a lot of companies are asking themselves is how much of the value proposition of our innovation should be borne by the free market versus government support, right, versus philanthropy, right? And we talk about capital formation. How do you bring all the different flavors of capital together to support the full innovation journey? And often that includes a lot of government support for the R &D early on. And then as it's clearer and clearer how you're solving a market problem, whether it's a drug or an R &D tool or medical device or even a new crop or new food product, that's when markets can step in and say, yes, there's product market fit and the opportunity to grow that in the marketplace.

32:23Carol Massar:Well, in terms of what's coming out of the White House, and then I want to move on to kind of some of, you know, in terms of where you guys are investing or where you're seeing opportunity. But do you feel like things are starting to settle down or you have some clarity? I know. Have I seen the headlines today? But in terms of funding and rules and regulations, do you feel like things are settling so people, investors like yourself, can figure out what to do going forward? And I love what you said about these 10-year or longer horizons that are you still kind of doing the things you were before this White House?

33:00Yeah. So two things there. There are some of the uncertainties that we've talked about in prior conversations being addressed. Yeah, the question about what will the NIH funding levels be for the next year addressed. That looks like that's going to be flat or maybe a little even up. Again, assuming we have a functioning government. So you have to put it in the context of other uncertainties. So the hysteria, was it settled down and it settled out okay? I think it's been working through the changes and the changing priorities. Just like if we, it's pretty normal, for example, when a new CEO comes into a corporation to set new priorities.

33:37And it takes time for that to ripple through the organization, people to figure out, get in line with those priorities and learn how to implement their work in that new setting. So I think we're seeing that up and down the stack in government, thinking about how to fund research in ways that are in line with this administration's priorities. For example, like the health of the warfighter. Right. Warfighters are humans as well, and they need better sleep and better medicine. And so if the administration wants to drive that behind defense priorities, that's still the same kind of biotech innovation we're excited about.

34:11Carol Massar:And just a tease for our next hour, we're going to be speaking with our defense analyst, Wayne Sanders, about everything happening in Washington with the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, addressing and along with President Trump, aggressing this rare meeting of generals and admirals. Jenny, I want to talk a little bit about your portfolio companies and your investors. You brought them together last week. We did. For this annual meeting. Right. This one, I imagine, was a lot different because of the environment that you've described to us. What were the topics that were brought up in the context of what's happening in this world?

34:43That's right. Yeah. So we had the Genoa Ventures annual meeting last week in San Francisco. We brought together our portfolio companies, our investors, and also what we call the Genoa ecosystem. So pioneers, thought leaders, operators in this bioconvergence theme that we talk about, biology, technology, coming together, solving problems. And what's really emerging for us and that we hope we're helping become true for the venture space is the establishment of patterns and sectors by which innovation capital or risk capital can help drive these change. change whether it's a drug which we don't invest in or the tools that make them which we do right or medical technology or a new food product or a new crop or a new way to make chemicals from biology it turns out it's a similar journey you have to take the science show that it works make a solution and get it into the marketplace and many of the same challenges and principles are true so it's great to get all of those people together to talk about those and share learning

35:42Carol Massar:where so that leads to like the creation of what kind of companies or the kind of companies you're investing in. So our most recent investment, I'm happy to talk about, this is a company called New Culture. They're a Bay Area food tech company, and they make casein, which is the protein in cheese and dairy products through precision fermentation so that you can make animal-free or dairy-free cheese. Does it taste good? It does taste good. This is a great question. So we know the market is there. We know that for various reasons, people would like to eat and make cheese that does not depend on dairy.

36:18And it has not gone so well so far. One of the main reasons is this, they call it the hero ingredient. Casein has been missing. If you've ever melted cheese and it has that nice stretchy mouthfeel, you put it on pizza, dairy-free cheese tends not to have that. That is a property conveyed by casein. So new culture has figured out how to make that protein.

36:39Carol Massar:What drew you to this investment? Because I feel like if we were speaking five years ago, right now, we'd be speaking about impossible and beyond. And we've seen the challenges that those companies have faced in the public markets. And there was this idea that in recent years that all this processing hasn't been so good for us. And we've had this sort of return to like real food and whole milk and eating meat. Why did you make this investment right now? I so appreciate you asking that question because we did meet new culture back in 2019. So we've been looking at that whole space of how do we use these new technologies to make nutritious, sustainable food for humans that there's going to be 10 billion of us pretty soon.

37:17How do we feed everybody? some of what had to get worked through in that time is how do you do it without compromising on any of the things you just described while making things sustainable at scale so i can make case in in the lab you i can show you how right we could do that in a test tube but you have to make kilotons to be able to supply in a commercially reasonable way cheese and that's what companies have been figuring out on that journey.

37:46Carol Massar:Can I just 30 seconds and forgive me, it's a bigger topic, but this idea of better living through chemistry, which you go back decades and we've shown that that maybe isn't always so true. Is this a 2.0 version of this or no? Just quickly. I think, I think what the GLPs have shown us is that you can have better living through, through chemistry, but you have to have it in balance and you have to understand what it is that you're affecting with that chemistry. It also goes the other way. So getting to chemistry through biology may help us do that in a more sensible and more harmonious way with both our bodies and the environment.

38:20Always learn something.

38:21Carol Massar:Jenny Rook, founder and managing director of Genoa Ventures joining us. Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Businessweek Daily coming up after this.

38:43On public, you can now create AI agents that handle all these tasks on your behalf. Just describe what you want to do in plain English. Like, if the VIX hits 25, buy a put option on the S &P 500. Or, if my cash balance goes above$20 ,000, move the excess into my direct index. You approve of the workflow and your agent handles the rest. Monitoring the market, watching for your conditions, and executing your strategies exactly as defined. An investing platform driven by your intent, not just your clicks. You can also get full read and write access to your account via the public API. Go to public.com slash market and fund your account in five minutes or less.

39:25That's public.com slash market. Paid for by Public Investing. Brokered services by Open to the Public Investing, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services by Public Advisors, LLC, SEC Registered Advisor. Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300 ,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 % of common questions. Not noise. Proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off.

40:06deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business, IBM.

40:11Carol Massar:Let's talk about healthcare for a second. It doesn't always work the way people expect it to. If you've ever waited on a prescription refill or had a hard time getting the care you needed, you know the feeling. The system should just work better for everyone. That's exactly what the people at Optum are trying to do every day. They're a healthcare company linking patient care and pharmacy services and using data and technology to drive the whole system So care is connected, not complicated, for patients and providers. Things like making it easier to get care that looks at the whole person, from primary care doctors to mental health support and even in-home care, and then using technology to make sure they all work together.

40:50Carol Massar:Technology designed to help doctors spend less time on busy work and more time with their patients. And those prescriptions? Optum is working to bring costs down, save patients money, and make it easier to get refills. Little by little, Optum is helping make healthcare work as one for everyone. Head to business.optum.com to see how. These days, it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agent's identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust.

41:30Carol Massar:So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta, you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent. Secure any agent. Okta secures AI. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. Or watch us live on YouTube. I'm driving in my car. How about you let me drive? Oh, no, no, no, no. This is not a toy. Who's going to drive you home? Honey, please, I'll do the driving. Drive home. Excuse me, I want to drive. You drive, stay in prison.

42:11Carol Massar:It's the question that drives us. You drive me crazy. This is the drive to the close. The punk to music will drive us till the dawn. On Bloomberg Radio. All right, everybody, TikTok, just about 18, 19 minutes to go until we wrap up the trade on the September 30th. It's the last trading day of September, the last trading day of the third quarter, and a lot coming out of investors. Delighted to have with us in studio a really well-known name, certainly to the Bloomberg audience. Jan Van Eck is here. He's CEO of Van Eck. The firm has$133 billion under management as of a few months ago. He joins us here in the Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio.

42:50Carol Massar:Welcome, welcome. How are you? Thank you, Tim. So do we care about a shutdown? Do you care about a shutdown? No, not really. Why not? Look, we look at the big forces and the shutdown and tariffs come within the category of fiscal spending as far as I'm concerned. Right. What do we care about big picture at VanEck for the big trends, fiscal policy, monetary policy and technology? Those are the big outside forces we think that affect the markets. And, you know, government shutdown is not going to affect fiscal spending that much. I mean, assuming it's only for a couple of weeks. Right. which is probably what it is.

43:25If the Republicans were going to capitulate and suddenly spend$100 billion more on health care, which I doubt they will, then I think the trend is actually the opposite way. I'm the more optimistic person on the budget deficit being between 5.5 % and 4.5 % this upcoming fiscal year.

43:44Carol Massar:What I want to talk about is you guys have a house of ETFs, right? A bunch of different options for investors. Where's money flowing in? Where's money flowing out right now? Or money's flowing kind of into everything. And is money flowing in? I'll tell you, the most interesting thing to me is one of the best performers of the markets is gold. Gold bullion is up 46 percent. It's up again today. The shares, GDX, our ETF is up 123 percent. But investor interest in the U.S. is really quiet. We've actually had 4.7 billion out of GDX and GDXJ this year. So take a lens out. I think what's happened there, that was in the first quarter, people were actually covering their shorts.

44:30So they've been short gold mining shares probably for a decade. Right. But the money's not really coming in yet. So that's that's very bullish to me overall. And it only started coming into bullion ETFs in the last month or so. So American investors, because of the S &P, they're spoiled. Right. Gold. Who needs gold? Right. NVIDIA is up again today. That's basically their attitude.

44:52Carol Massar:Why is gold up so much when you've got a market that, you know, certainly here in the United States continues to take out record after record? You look at Chinese stocks, man, they have taken off in a big way this year. What is the nervousness? Gold to me usually says, I need somewhere, a safe haven to park my stuff. Gold is the second global currency, right? So you have the dollar. Obviously, we know about its dominance as a reserve currency. But because of policy uncertainty, war in Europe, Ukraine, Russian reserves being seized after the Ukraine invasion. There's so many things happening. I think that people are nervous and they say, OK, what else can I buy?

45:30And they can buy gold. They're not going to buy the renminbi, the yen, the euro. So it's become big developed market countries sold it about a decade ago and further. They're like, who needs it? It's an ancient relic. It doesn't give me income. But now the developed market countries, their balance sheets are much better, right? China's, India, they're growing their savings, and they want some gold. And they don't want to be overly reliant on the US either, right? And Trump doesn't make anyone super comfortable on trade policy or anything else. So they're just steadily buying gold. And so I think this is a multi-year trend.

46:05Carol Massar:Other trends that you mentioned, fiscal policy, monetary policy, and technology. I want to focus on that third one and talk technology. the promise of AI. In your view, what is it? What does it do to productivity? And how do you trade it? I mean, I think we've seen these mag seven stocks being 37 % or so of the S &P. And I like to do a thought experiment. I think it could be 50%. These companies like Microsoft has actually been laying people off this year. The revenue is going up. Their costs are going down. They're just profit engines. And again, the AI search engines are scale benefited by scale, right?

46:42The more searches they have, the smarter their engines are, the better answers they give on your healthcare diagnosis or the market. We're all helping them, right? We are. And it's just the same. It's like social media companies before or Google search before it, like they're winning again. It's but just that's it. Their scale advantages and their profits are going up like like companies we've never seen in history.

47:06Carol Massar:So how do you... It makes you uncomfortable, right? Well, you know, it's interesting because I think, you know, we've spent so much time talking today about the spend, certainly, with AI. And I think, you know, we're worried about this kind of, what is it, circular finance, you know, in terms of, you know, the NVIDIA, was it NVIDIA and OpenAI deal? And so I get... A hundred billion dollars last week. That's a lot. It's over multiple years, right? But, you know, the investment in OpenAI and OpenAI buys NVIDIA chips, it does make you kind of scratch your head and say, wait a minute. So what is the value creation here really?

47:43Carol Massar:And are we masking kind of the exuberance that we're seeing in this spend and build out? And maybe it's not, I don't know. I mean, the one is just the quantity of demand that NVIDIA has. And when Jensen Wong is talking about visibility to 2027, I don't even say 2026 anymore because he's already two years ahead. That's number one. Number two, he's sort of rebuilding his whole tech stack every year. So he's moving so quickly because he's using AI to redesign the whole like hyperscale and compute system. And how can anyone catch up? So he has a competitive moat. He's got like market leader, right?

48:24And so, and he's got unit demand and the number of tokens being consumed is exponential. That's what I think people don't get. It's not like I'm buying one computer, then another computer. It's going up in a huge curve. So I'm not saying things aren't expensive. They are. But I'm saying we're in the middle of this kind of technology revolution that we haven't really seen before. And these big companies are really well positioned.

48:50Carol Massar:We got to ask some ETF questions because you're known as the guy who brought ETFs to VanEck. Carol and I were talking earlier, once known for mutual funds, now known for both mutual funds and ETFs. As Alex Suminova reminds us, there are more ETFs out there now than there are individual stocks. How do you differentiate yourself? Well, we try to be careful in the ETFs we launch. We don't do leverage. We don't do inverse. And we try to identify industries where we can give a pure play solution. So I'll give you an example. Earlier this year, we put together an ETF that invests in general partnerships of private credit and private equity funds.

49:28and you'd be like, how come that ETF didn't exist, right? Just buying Apollo, Aries, Blue Owl. It's because those companies weren't all public 10 years ago. And so we just waited until there were enough to assemble an ETF. And it's a pure play and that's what we like to offer to the market.

49:45Carol Massar:How much further do you want that private market thing to go in terms of ETFs? Like, do you envision then the next step of actually being, it's not just buying the companies, but buying the deals or the portfolios? Yeah, I mean, not in an ETF format, but definitely I look at the local, sorry, the unicorns of their private companies, and there's 7 trillion of them or so. And I can see putting those into a fund that people want access to, the open AIs, the SpaceX's, you know, Stripes. I think that financial engineering will happen. All right. Interesting stuff. Come back soon. Okay. Really enjoyed it.

50:22Carol Massar:Thank you. Jan VanEck, he is, of course, CEO of VanEck, joining us right here in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers studio. They have$133 billion roughly in assets under management, at least as of the end of June. 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, tune in 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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51:45Carol Massar:These days, it seems like AI agents are just about everywhere you turn, every field and every function. But without identity, you can't trust they'll serve your business instead of jeopardizing it. Fortunately, Okta helps you get identity right by securing your AI agent's identities, giving you a single layer of control, a single standard of trust. So whether an AI agent supports a single user or your entire enterprise, with Okta, you'll turn risk into opportunity. Secure every agent. Secure any agent. Okta Secures AI Wise is the smart way to manage the currencies you need around the globe. When you send money abroad using your bank, you could get hit with hidden fees and exchange rate markups.

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53:14Carol Massar:Learn more at business.optum.com.