Bloomberg Money: Bond Moves, Social Security and the US Open

13:06Rebecca Patterson:They get the envelope at home. I'm sorry. They get the envelope at home and$100 ,000 has become$97 ,438. And then for your wealth management, the next month it's$95 ,800. Wall Street rationalizes. In the Bloomberg money world, folks, you're looking to yield up, price down.

13:23Kevin Gordon:Right. So the rate of change is what you're saying you're focused on. Correct. But if we look at the volatility in the bond market, and you can see it certainly this week. Yes. Does it feel like the U.S. bond market is increasingly looking like a developing market as opposed to a developed market? A little bit, yes. If I wanted this kind of volatility, I'd go and invest in another country's bonds, not the U.S. Well, the irony today is that a number of emerging market financial markets have done better than the U.S. market in stocks and bonds this year. And some of that is fundamentals and some of it is just point in time and what those economies are doing.

13:57Kevin Gordon:If I'm Korea or Taiwan and I'm doing a lot of AI, that's obviously helped me. If I'm another country and I'm doing a lot of commodity exports, maybe that would have helped me. But I hear you. The point is that with our debt to GDP in the United States running around 100 percent and poised to go towards 120 over the next decade and questions around who's buying the bonds and what yield they need to buy them, it makes things a little more tenuous. You say we need to watch the U.S. dollar because it'll suffer if the U.S. Treasury under Scott Besson can bring down yields. If you're an American living abroad, you certainly feel the effects of the dollar's strength and weaknesses, all the swings.

14:35Kevin Gordon:And I feel affected if I'm traveling abroad. But not if I'm sitting here in New York for weeks on end. Right. No. Am I misunderstanding that? No, no, no. 100%. If you're an American, you live in dollars, you get paid in dollars, you spend dollars, the only way you're going to feel that exchange rate movement is what it does to inflation and what it does to financial conditions. And what I mean by that is when you have a weaker dollar, basically it tends to push up inflation in the U.S. And at the margin, that might make it more likely that the Federal Reserve thinks it needs to raise interest rates.

15:11Kevin Gordon:I'm more in kind of the range camp right now. So I don't think the dollar is about to fall off a cliff.

15:17Rebecca Patterson:We just brought up the Gura camp bill for this summer. Let's bring it up again. And I was a mistake. It's Bloomberg money correction there, folks. This is the U.S. debt clock popping out at$40 trillion. You and I were weaned on Paul Songus, Sam Nunn, Pete Peterson, and the rest. Every year, cry wolf, cry wolf, cry wolf. In my retirement, in my wealth management study, is it time to stop crying wolf?

15:41Kevin Gordon:I think there's two things that are different today. One is simply the size of the debt. And the fact that we, well, that's one thing. The second thing is that neither the public nor the politicians are willing to turn the corner on fiscal policy. Americans since 2008 have been conditioned to think the government's going to come to their rescue anytime there's a problem. And politicians trying to hold on to their seats. Fiscal austerity doesn't get you reelected. And so it's just been the self-fulfilling thing where every government, both parties, keep increasing that deficit, which pushes up that debt clock.

16:16Kevin Gordon:So something has to give. We need politicians to be honest with voters and say we need to have fiscal austerity. And we need voters to accept that to have a stronger financial market and economy, there is a price. So when you say something has to give, what does that look like and how will people feel it? Well, if it is fiscal austerity, more spending cuts, which are harder to do, or tax hikes. And we'll see who pays those tax hikes. That's a question mark. If it's not that, and politically that's not likely anytime soon, then we have to get something else happening. And my fear, and I'm not calling for a crisis, but my fear is this happens in an ugly way that forces the austerity.

16:58Kevin Gordon:And that could come from a few things. It could come here at home. Let's say there's a catalyst that pulls down sentiment towards artificial intelligence, AI stocks. It's not just an AI stock trade anymore. It's AI stocks, AI debt. Everything comes down. The entire stock market, the entire corporate bond market. And globally now, right? AI is in a lot of different markets. So that's one risk. I think a second risk is if inflation's sticky, the Fed has to raise rates higher than expected. That could be another catalyst. And don't forget overseas. You might be spending and living in dollars. But if France has a debt crisis, we will have contagion here in the U.S.

17:33Rebecca Patterson:I'm sorry, I didn't research this. The interns have all gone back to school. Are you on a task force? Are you on a Russian task force?

17:40Kevin Gordon:No, one of Warsh's five task forces.

17:43Rebecca Patterson:Lucky you, you're not on. What would you do on a retirement task force right now? What would be goal one?

17:47Kevin Gordon:A retirement task force.

17:48Rebecca Patterson:Social security task force, Rebecca Patterson.

17:51Kevin Gordon:Social security task force. We have to raise the age where you start getting benefits from social security. People live longer.

17:58Rebecca Patterson:100 % agree. Also, the rich people have to put in more.

18:01Kevin Gordon:And we could do some means testing. I don't mind contributing to social security. I shouldn't get any. I'll live fine without it. I would rather have my money going to help people who need it more, and therefore we don't have a financial crisis.

18:15Rebecca Patterson:I'm not sure that's a popular opinion.

18:16Kevin Gordon:I want to get a sense of your personal investment approach. How do you do things? Are you kind of a set it and forget it person, or are you constantly making changes based on conditions? I'm not a trader. And when I say that, I mean people who like to figure out what to buy and sell daily or even hourly. I'm an investor. So I'm saying, what are my retirement goals? What money do I need along the way for kids' weddings, down payments for homes, et cetera, and then figuring out my asset allocation. Partly because I've been living in this world for 30 years, I'm comfortable making some tactical tilts in my portfolio along the way, whether I'm leaning a little harder into equities or out or towards a certain country or a sector.

18:57Kevin Gordon:But I'd say those are at the margin because I think for most people, they get emotional. They think they need to time it. Oh my gosh, the market's frothy. there's a bubble I want to get out, it's really unusual that people can time getting out and then back in well. You have to time it twice. You're better off just figuring out what makes sense for you personally and then let it go. Is there anything that's off limits to you when you look at all the possible investments out there? I am agnostic about crypto. If other people want to trade it, God bless. It's not for me. I don't like that you can't determine a fair value.

19:31Kevin Gordon:I don't like that there are so many idiosyncratic drivers around it. However, I will fully admit if you bought it in 2012 and held it to today, you'd be extremely happy. All right, Rebecca, such a pleasure to have you here. Great to have you. Thank you so much. Thanks. Rebecca Patterson, Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, formerly with Bessemer Trust. Coming up on Bloomberg Money, we continue our conversation with Kevin Gordon, head of macro research and strategy at Charles Schwab, to discuss how rising oil prices and bond market swings are hitting your savings. This is Bloomberg Money.

20:08Kevin Gordon:Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

20:55Kevin Gordon:Bloomberg Money is your new destination for personal finance. It's a cross-platform effort that extends beyond your television screen, including our new digital hub at Bloomberg.com slash money. And Tom, this story really got my attention. You know about gap years. No. Yes. Well, you know, we both have firsthand experience with this. But for a certain cohort of families, there's a$95 ,000 gap year program.

21:17Rebecca Patterson:This is just the rich people.

21:18Kevin Gordon:It is a rich people story. It's the upper 1%. bungee jumping near Victoria Falls in Southern Africa, visiting a Brazilian bank, coding an app. Bloomberg's Sarah Foster wrote about this for the Money Team, and she joins us now. This is more than just getting some experience and maturing into your college experience, isn't it? It used to be this perception that gap years were kind of this laissez-faire, I'm going to follow around fish, maybe generation before that, the Grateful Dead. Maybe I'll work on a ranch. Now it seems like parents are really using these highly facilitated, tightly scheduled gap years to make sure they're exposing their children to people that they might be able to get help from when they start to graduate and look for a job.

22:01Kevin Gordon:I heard from some parents here who actually, they kind of attribute the value of someone found an internship through a connection that he made while meeting someone on one of these gap year programs. So it's like those qualitative kind of career-focused goals that a lot of people have. It's about beating up your resume before you even start college so that when you get to college, you can focus on the extracurricular activities that gets you the network to get the job. It's true. I was also speaking with another gap year student who did a semester-long program, and then he paired it with an internship that pushed back his graduation date.

22:36Kevin Gordon:He was saying that he was doing research for an MBA program with his mom and noticed that a lot of people who were in this MBA program that he wanted to apply for, they did the same kind of gap year program. So he was kind of also using it as a way to get into one of those schools.

22:51Rebecca Patterson:These people are such strivers. I mean, I know Kevin Gordon at Schwab. He was a lifeguard when he was at Pepperdine making like six bucks an hour.

22:59Kevin Gordon:Well, maybe in 2026, it's a different story. Of course, you have to be able to afford this. And it's also very competitive as well. Another story that you wrote about, which really got our attention, is about millennials and how they're feeling pretty good. There was a survey that found that their financial situation has improved from five years ago more than, say, for Gen X or the baby boomers. Nearly half of them feel like they've gotten better, which is a greater share of them than Gen Xers and baby boomers. I was speaking with a researcher, and we kind of came to this conclusion that millennials might actually just be late bloomers.

23:30Kevin Gordon:It's right around the time when they start to turn 30, which I turned 30 this year. The youngest millennials are hitting that new decade. I don't remember 30. Their incomes are finally hitting those peak years. Maybe they're in dual-income households soon. They're finally able to kind of catch up on those goals. And you see that their net worth is pulling away from baby boomers at a faster pace. But aren't their debt levels also rising faster than others? I mean, they just have more debt in general, too. That's the other side of the story here. So even though these younger generations might have more equity exposure, which is helping them pull away at a faster pace, they also have more consumer debt.

24:06Kevin Gordon:and we excluded mortgage rate debt when we were, mortgages debt when we were looking at this. So when we say consumer debt, we're including things like credit cards, student loans. That chart is frightening. I think student loans is a big, big one, especially given how much tuition has increased. Sarah, thank you so much. Sarah Foster with some incredible stories. She's on like weekly. She is.

24:25Rebecca Patterson:It's like too much. I insisted. She's that good. Sarah Foster, thank you so much. It's a perfect segway into Kevin Gordon. He's had a macro research and strategy at Charles Schwab. And, you know, I look at this, And as far as I can see with personal finance in distant retirement, the younger crew, which you're arguably the voice on Wall Street, the younger crew takes us a lot more seriously than I did when I was 30 at the Wobbly Barn way up in Vermont. Yes, it is a definitive shift. I thought that was fascinating because, you know, I sit at such an interesting next. You sort of talk about me being the younger voice on this.

25:00Rebecca Patterson:You know, all day I'm in the Wall Street world for work. But then I live in the Gen Z world. I'm cuspy, but I'm technically Gen Z still. I'm on the edge of it. It's a new way.

25:10Kevin Gordon:You're older Gen Z, younger millennials. I'm cuspy.

25:12Rebecca Patterson:I'm cuspy. But this whole idea around, and you see it survey after survey, anecdote after anecdote, but younger people today, especially in Gen Z, they just don't really believe in that classic American dream of a house being a wealth generator. So they have shifted a lot to the stock market, but that has really important implications for how they think about saving and how they think about building wealth over time. not better or worse than what it was before. It's just a different environment than what we've had.

25:38Kevin Gordon:They think about income generation through these fancy, fancy ETFs that cost a lot of money. But also, I guess when it works, it works. But it feels like there's a lot of risk-taking involved that they may not be aware of.

25:51Rebecca Patterson:Yes, there has been a blurring of this sort of investing versus gambling kind of mindset over the past several years. I would sort of date it back, I guess, to 2021 when a lot of people were treating that meme stock craze as this new way to wealth. But obviously that ended pretty poorly. I want to interrupt you. This is too important. Your colleague, Lizanne Saunders, is leading the way on this. Yes. She is the number one voice in the racket over this gambling and what it means for kids. In your milieu, when you're a hipster and you're out on the weekend and all that, how pervasive is the gambling?

26:23Rebecca Patterson:Oh, it's incredibly pervasive. I mean, because, you know, it's all in front of us all the time. We all see the stats on screen time and how much people are buried in their phones, and it gets larger and larger percentage-wise when you go down the generations. Do they understand they're losing money? Is anybody making money? I don't know if, well, the statistics on gambling versus investing are definitive in terms of how much money the average person loses for the former. So investing over the long term is statistically and empirically, it's the better way to sort of build wealth. But I think also what has sort of taken hold, and this was sort of embedded, I think, a little bit in the story that you were discussing earlier, is that we have, because of housing being so much at the center of how people view wealth building now, and the fact that housing is frozen for a huge chunk of younger people, out of reach, we have been living in what has been called this little treat economy, where people are treating themselves to smaller things, not necessarily thinking about saving for a big down payment or a big purchase, not painting that across the board for millennials, But that is increasingly becoming the norm and the feeling, and hence why you see also a lot more money being put into the stock market.

27:28Rebecca Patterson:So again, it's not necessarily an outright bad thing. It's just different in how people are treating their wealth.

27:33Kevin Gordon:I mean, this source of demand for equity kind of continues unabated. If people are treating gambling as investing when they really want to go to something safe, what is that safe thing?

27:43Rebecca Patterson:Well, I mean, I would argue that any sort of tried and true and tested asset class, whether it's the bond market, whether it's the stock market, you know, those traditional asset classes have sort of proven their worth over time.

27:54Kevin Gordon:Are millennials investing in bonds?

27:56Rebecca Patterson:I wouldn't say that the interest is there yet, especially when I speak to them. I think that that's still maybe more of a kind of enigma and a little bit of a black box in terms of the dynamics of the bond market. To us as well. Oh, yeah. I mean, to me, I'm a stock market person. So the bond market to me is still an enigma. But I think, you know, when you start to look into the mechanics and the maths of the bond market, especially this week, I mean, when I have people now texting me about bonds, that's when you know things are really getting out into the mainstream and getting very, very interesting.

28:25Rebecca Patterson:But I still think that from that sort of coupon perspective and that yield perspective, we've been in the camp that the bond backdrop is favorable. Maybe not necessarily out to the long end in the 10-year. But if you're focusing sort of right below duration, which is where our guidance is right now. I love this. This is brilliant, Kevin, this banner that we've got up now, young Americans living in the treat economy. That's absolutely brilliant. Let's bring this up to the writings of Kevin Gordon. He's been writing all summer because Lizanne took the summer off. The S &P 500 up marginally, yet breadth, improving, perhaps emphasized most by the fact, equal weighted S &P up 8.9%, MAG 7 down the tubes.

29:03Rebecca Patterson:So we're learning again about rotation and that. Bring it back to retirement if I'm in those ugly middle years where I'm thinking about retirement. I'm scared stiff. I won't have enough money. but I'm paralyzed. I can't do anything. 45, 50, 55 years old. What's the path given this new breadth? Well, the breadth of the market, I think, and what you've learned over the past several years, because we've been, and I would argue this multi-year rotation process, not necessarily outside of the Mag7 where those companies just aren't going to be good performers, but we often find that there's this conflating and you run into this where people think just because they're the largest companies, they're going to be the best performers in the market.

29:43Rebecca Patterson:That was the case several years ago, but that hasn't been the case in the past several years. So I think that notably 24-25, that's when you started to see more of a definitive shift. So the fact that they could still be up this year or up over the past year, that's true, but they're sort of ceding leadership to a lot of other parts of the market that have been asleep for a good chunk of this bull market. Small caps is sort of the poster child of that. So I think in a rotational market where you've got north of 70 % of companies in the S &P 500 that are trading above their 200-day moving average, That is much more consistent with rotational markets where leadership can change over time, and it's not necessarily portending some massive drop in the market.

30:22Rebecca Patterson:Very different backdrop than late 2021, which I think is an important analog, because that's when things started to get way too top-heavy. Breadth under the surface was deteriorating, and then you ultimately had the bear market in 22.

30:32Kevin Gordon:I want to go back to what you said about the treat economy and how people are feeling that they want to treat themselves a little bit because the big things are so out of reach. The flip side of that is that phenomenon of fire, right? Financial independence and retire early. Invest really aggressively. Deny yourself everything for now so that by, what, 30 or 40 or 50, you can retire and go live your best life. How much does that come up in your conversations with this generation of investors?

30:57Rebecca Patterson:It comes up a lot. I have a lot of discussions with individuals who, whether it's in a friend capacity and they're just letting me know their experience, or if it's at a client event and someone tells me about whether it's themselves or if it's their child or grandchild. Just the, you know, I think the concept around labor in the U.S. and how that has changed, how you can have a lot more sources of supplemental income these days. You know, again, survey after survey showing that younger people think that, you know, content creators sort of rising up the list of potential, you know, for a job and for a full-time job.

31:27Rebecca Patterson:Not that that's going to be the dominant job. It's not that I'm, you know, predicting that. But that's becoming more of a sort of a sentiment in the U.S. amongst the younger crowd is that, with the fire movement, but also having different streams of income, not necessarily relying only on one income stream from one job necessarily. $40 ,000 billion, folks. I speak like the English here. Instead of$40 trillion, it's$40 ,000 billion. Bring up the debt clock again. On Bloomberg Money Today, it's a debt clock hat trick. We brought it up. How many comments is that? It's like$40 billion and counting and all that.

32:01Rebecca Patterson:Do the young kids care about the debt or is that just, you know, Lizanne was wonderful on this. And I think the younger Bush administration, do we care about the debt? for young Turks? I would say in general, the younger generation, I don't hear about the debt maybe ever. I think that for some of these numbers, whether it's the debt, whether it is some of this issue that's in the bond market, whether it is everything related to AI and the investments that you're seeing, some of these numbers are just so large. I think that the mind can't really comprehend them. I was sitting in a strategy meeting this morning and someone was saying, and I'm going to fudge the numbers and not remember them.

32:38Rebecca Patterson:But it doesn't matter because of the numbers. But someone was saying, you know, a trillion seconds, if you think about it in timing, a trillion seconds is, you know, some decades ago in terms of years. So, you know, you compound that to 40 or you sort of multiply that to 40. And it kind of puts into context how big these numbers are and how we really can't sort of fathom them. So it's I don't blame people for maybe shying away from wanting to approach that topic. But at the same time, again, we've been living with such large debt piles and large deficits for so long. I think also part of this is it has become a bit of the new norm.

33:09Rebecca Patterson:Not that I'm endorsing it, but when you have both sides that really don't seemingly want to do anything about it and it becomes just this norm, that's what happens. 12 seconds. Yeah, is the glass half full or glass half empty right now as you write for the weekend? Glass half full. There you go. You can come back. Kevin Gordon, thank you, with Charles Schwab. You're listening to Bloomberg Money. Stay with us with more to come after this.

33:33Kevin Gordon:Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine. and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode.

34:13Kevin Gordon:Available on Plus and Pro plans.

34:21Kevin Gordon:Kevin Gordon was just telling us about the treat economy. There's data from PNC, credit card data, that show year-over-year growth in hobby spending in every month since April of 2025. And this increase in the past year is outpacing discretionary purchases overall. And guess what? It expands across all generations, from Tom Keen's baby boomers to the youngest Gen Zers. And what it suggests is that consumers are making more room for their pastimes in their budget. Bloomberg's Julia Fanzaras joins us now to discuss. I mean, sometimes they're not saving as much in order to spend on treats for themselves.

34:54Kevin Gordon:Absolutely. Personal savings are at a four-year low right now. And people are saying, you know, at a time where everything's very expensive and you want to be happy, we're going to spend a lot and splurge on these hobbies. What kind of hobbies are we talking about? I mean, there's like, you know, making music, playing sports. I mean, these are not big budget items, or are they? Well, the funny thing about hobbies is sometimes when you start it, it's a very low entryway. But when you get very into it, that's when it gets expensive. So we chatted with people who, you know, they started off buying sticker sheets.

35:23Kevin Gordon:Now they're spending$300 a month on stickers. Yes, to do junk journaling. On what? On stickers. Can you believe it? Stickers? Like stickers. Just what you put in a scrapbook.

35:32Rebecca Patterson:We used to go to what my mother called those green stamps, and she could buy cheap china with it. Well, she wasn't spending$300 a month on it. But in the old days, we had time for hobbies. Like somebody had a 48-foot Hinkley Bermuda, where you played golf three times a week. We're not doing that anymore, are we?

35:47Kevin Gordon:I feel like the pandemic has pushed people to get back into spending time with themselves. and going back to these hobbies, I actually spoke to someone who said they're back into golf because their co-workers were golfing and he's golfing with his friends and now he got his own personal $650 Callaway driver. Okay, so stickers, also crafting. You talk to companies that really cater to people's hobbies like Michael's and they confirm that this is a real thing. That's what was fascinating. Michael's CEO was saying, you know, the really amazing thing about this is it's generational. As you mentioned, people are spending more and more and it's just not just, You know, oh, I'm buying like$10 here and there.

36:23Kevin Gordon:They're making large purchases. You know, I was telling Tom earlier, I bought a$200 sewing machine because I wanted to get back into sewing. It has not been so lucrative because I did want to save on hemming and I've had to fix a lot of those. But it's still very fun.

36:36Rebecca Patterson:Is there like a modern AI tech sewing machine or is it just a standard Singer thing?

36:41Kevin Gordon:It's a standard Singer heavy duty. It is a standard Singer heavy duty. Very low tech. What color? Gray, unfortunately. They didn't have the pink.

36:48Rebecca Patterson:Industrial. Didn't have the pink. They did. Boosting the economy. We're going to go to books. Thank you so much for your comments on what Scarlett and Eric do. Books is also a way to spend on your hobby. Yeah, books is part of it as well. We're going to do Paris here because Julia darkened the door at Siennes Poe a few years ago. My book on Paris, and this is a required read, David McCullough, I just simply can't say enough about it. The Greater Journey. This book is so strong about the arc from the 1830-40s through regimes, commune, all the challenges of Paris. you're angry when the book ends.

37:21Rebecca Patterson:It's a required read for every expat brat going to Paris, particularly if they go to Seance Poe and hang out at the Moose Bar. Who are you referring to? I don't know who that would be.

37:34Kevin Gordon:Who could that possibly be? Julia, you spent time in Paris. I don't know if you read this book, but you certainly felt like an expat when you were there, and it's a very special experience. Absolutely. I was reading James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room, the book set in Paris, and then also Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald's work because to really feel like that American in Paris. You do feel like an expat, but it feels like New York. You know, they're very friendly, just a little brusque, and they all speak French.

37:59Rebecca Patterson:Yeah, it's really an important idea. And we were talking about the gap year earlier. You go to Seance Poe. It's not a gap year. This is like work, wasn't it?

38:08Kevin Gordon:That one, a lot of my friends had fun in their broads. I was studying. I was taking classes in French. It was grueling, but it was good. It was very, very good. Well, speaking of France, or at least French food and French heritage, someone who is deeply influenced by all of that is the late Anthony Bourdain. So my reread for this week is Kitchen Confidential, which, of course, was published back in 2000. It's a brutally honest memoir, takedown, really, of the restaurant industry from an insider. And because of him, we all learned that you don't order fish on a Monday, you don't eat the bread, you don't eat Sunday buffets.

38:38Kevin Gordon:The reason why I picked this book is also because it's the source material for a new movie that's coming out this weekend. Okay. It's called Tony. It's a biopic based on Bourdain's early years.

38:49Rebecca Patterson:It's getting a buzz.

38:50Kevin Gordon:It's getting a buzz. It's an A24 production. Dominic Sessa is the lead actor, and he actually sounds like Anthony Bourdain. I don't know what he did or what kind of training he did or what kind of research he did, but he sounds like Anthony Bourdain. There's a certain cadence that he achieves. You know, I've been seeing this book pop up all the time. I was at a bar, and I saw a guy reading the book, and I went up to him. At the bar. At the bar. At the bar. Performative reading, if you will, as we talked about earlier. It's very much a building, Zorman. I'm excited about it because it's like the source material for, you know, the early years of Anthony Bourdain.

39:21Rebecca Patterson:I mean, I look at this and within Bloomberg Money, it's loads and loads of parents sending kids abroad. It's an ancient thing with the David McCullough book. This goes back to the fabric of the nation. What was the biggest, to tie into Scarlett, the biggest food surprise for you? Don't tell me McDonald's in London or that. What was the biggest French food surprise for you in Paris?

39:44Kevin Gordon:What surprised me the most was that food from everywhere can taste good. I feel like sometimes in the U.S. you stop into any place and the food's not that great. You would go into every single little cafe. The coffee was amazing. The milk was amazing. It was just, that was the worst part. Transitioning back was saying, oh, not every place.

40:00Rebecca Patterson:Back to Starbucks in Ann Arbor. It just didn't work.

40:02Kevin Gordon:It didn't work for me anymore. Makes a lot of sense. Any baguette anywhere would be incredible, right? The croque monsieur.

40:10Rebecca Patterson:True story. I'm in Davos. Christine Lagarde. We're at some French thing. Lagarde turns to me dead serious. Lagarde, you don't know. Tom, never make jokes about baguettes and bread with the French. Welcome back to Bloomberg Money. Tom Keen with the Scarlet Foo. It's just been a great, great hour. And what we do is we look forward.

40:29Kevin Gordon:We look forward to how you're going to spend your money this weekend and in the coming week. And the U.S. Open Fan Week begins this weekend. It runs from Sunday to Saturday. It's Fan Week. But you also have access to what they call the qualifying matches, the practice sessions. So people like to wander around and check out the talent. The main tournament doesn't begin until next Sunday.

40:52Rebecca Patterson:But it's wonderful, particularly in midtown Manhattan. You're literally bumping into various people carrying 20 tennis rackets.

41:00Kevin Gordon:Right. And you're also paying up for the honey deuces, which are a big thing. It's a special drink. Have you heard of it?

41:06Rebecca Patterson:Yeah, I've heard of it. I tried one once. Okay, I tried one. I was shampoo-owned, but I tried it.

41:11Kevin Gordon:Ticket prices for Fan Week have really soared. This used to be relatively affordable, ground passes, but now they're up to as much as$363. So much so that Bill Ackman even complained about it.

41:23Rebecca Patterson:Yeah, there's a lot of complaints this time around. But again, the players are sort of like in a lot of other sports revolting. You know, talk about Bloomberg money. You know what? They're just saying, when do we get the TV pie? When do we get our piece of the action?

41:34Kevin Gordon:Yeah, here's what Bill Ackman said. Yeah, he said the idea that a day one ground pass is$363 is absurd. And by the way, he's referring to the secondary price of that ground pass. But, you know,$363 to walk around and check things out, that's kind of pricey.

41:49Rebecca Patterson:We've got to get Bill Backman on the show. He'd be great to have him on the show. I think he has a lot of opinions that he'd like to share. Mr. Backman, we'd like to get you on here. B and C Block, we'll get that done as well. I mean, to me, it's just really, really interesting. We're into the autumn. Yeah. And the U.S. Open. And the U.S.

42:04Kevin Gordon:Open. Also this weekend, Shakespeare in the Park. It's the last weekend. Those tickets are free, but very difficult to get.

42:10Rebecca Patterson:Very difficult to get, say the least. Oh, there I was in last year.

42:14Kevin Gordon:The Winter's Tale. That's what's playing this weekend.

42:17Rebecca Patterson:I am the worst quoter of Shakespeare east of the Mississippi. That's okay.

42:21Kevin Gordon:This is Bloomberg Money. We don't need to do Shakespeare.

42:24Rebecca Patterson:This is the Bloomberg Money Podcast, bringing you a smart look at the forces shaping your financial life. I'm Tom Keen with Scarlet Fu. You can watch the show live on Bloomberg TV every Friday at noon Wall Street time. Subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And as always, on the Bloomberg Terminal and the Bloomberg Business app.

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43:31Kevin Gordon:Policies provided by Hartford Fire Insurance Company and its property and casualty affiliates, Hartford, Connecticut.