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Investors Have Sky-High Hopes for AI. Can the Tech Deliver? Feb 05, 2024

Show notes

The seemingly vast profit potential of artificial intelligence has helped buoy the stock prices of tech behemoths like Alphabet, Apple and the rest of the Magnificent Seven. But last week’s earnings showed that for many of these companies going all-in on AI, lofty investor expectations are hard to meet. As advanced as AI applications like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot may seem, it’s an open question as to whether tech companies can monetize them.

In today’s episode of The Big Take podcast, Bloomberg Businessweek technology reporter Max Chafkin explains the gap between investors' AI expectations and reality, and what it would take for these technologies to live up to their promise.

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America’s ‘Debt Spiral’ Is Nearing a Critical Threshold Feb 02, 2024

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When the US borrows money, just like any borrower, it needs to pay its loans back with interest.
The national debt right now is $34 trillion and rising. Soon, America will need to spend more each year paying interest on the debt than it spends on national defense.
Today on Bloomberg’s Big Take DC, host Saleha Mosin talks to Bloomberg reporter Liz McCormick and Phillip Swagel, director of the Congressional Budget Office, on what it would take to rein in the US's government's debt spiral.
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The Brutal Crime Crackdown Taking Hold Across Latin America Feb 02, 2024

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Nayib Bukele has brought violent criminal gangs to a heel in El Salvador, transforming the country into one of the safest in Latin America. That’s made him extremely popular, even as human rights groups have condemned mass arrests and what they say are other abuses of civil liberties.

Marcelo Rochabrun, one of Bloomberg's bureau chiefs in Latin America, tells us how Bukele’s success in fighting crime has come at the expense of civil rights. And now, other leaders in the region are starting to follow suit.

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Why Wind Farms Are Paid Millions to Turn Off Jan 31, 2024

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The UK is in the midst of a green energy transformation, with more than 40% of its electricity coming from wind power as of December. But wind can be unpredictable and the grid can’t always handle the power wind turbines generate on blustery days — and so to protect the grid, operators sometimes pay wind farms to power off.

After Bloomberg’s investigations team received a tip about troubling inaccuracies in the data used to calculate these payments, our reporters went looking for answers. And they found a big problem lurking in the UK’s renewable energy market: some wind farm operators were routinely overestimating their production forecasts, and traders and market experts say that, in effect, they’re getting paid to stop producing power that they wouldn’t have produced anyway.

According to Gavin Finch and Todd Gillespie, the reporters who led this investigation, the price tag for consumers is in the millions of pounds. And with the UK aiming to triple the number of wind turbines in the country by the end of the decade, those costs could increase.

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A New Era for Microsoft, Activision — And for Gaming Jan 30, 2024

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Microsoft recently cut 1,900 jobs from its gaming division and among the layoffs were many at the recently acquired video game developer Activision Blizzard. Blizzard Entertainment’s President Mike Ybarra and co-founder Allen Adham are both departing. The tech giant also announced the cancellation of a Blizzard game, called “Odyssey,” that was already six years in development. Today, Microsoft reported its quarterly earnings. Revenue is up.

Jason Schreier, the creator of Bloomberg’s Game On newsletter, joins the Big Take to give us the latest on Microsoft’s moves and makes some predictions about larger trends for the gaming industry to watch for in 2024.

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Shawn Fain Takes On the EV Industry and the Election Jan 29, 2024

Show notes

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain has been in the news almost nonstop for successfully negotiating a new contract for union members and, most recently, endorsing President Joe Biden for re-election.
But that endorsement is at odds with many rank-and-file union members who support Donald Trump. And Fain's next industry battle could be much harder.
In setting his sights on electric vehicle makers like Tesla and rallying his union members (many in swing states) around Biden, Fain is trying to propel the UAW back to its former industry might and political sway.

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Economists May Be Using Bad Data to Make Big Decisions Jan 26, 2024

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Bloomberg’s Big Take DC podcast looks into how the US managed to avoid a recession — and whether the Federal Reserve’s decisions were based on reliable data.
Bloomberg’s Saleha Mohsin talked with Claudia Sahm, an ex-Fed economist, and with Odd Lots podcast hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway.
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The Pharmaceutical Rivalry Behind the Weight-Loss Drug Boom Jan 25, 2024

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The multi-billion dollar weight-loss drug market has ballooned in the past few years. And the two pharmaceutical companies currently duking it out for market dominance, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, have a century-long rivalry.

Bloomberg News health reporter Madison Muller breaks down how Eli Lilly developed Zepbound, a new drug that can help patients cut more than 20% of their body weight — and why some investors and analysts think it will turn Eli Lilly into the first ever trillion-dollar drug company.
(Corrects characterization of the current size of the weight-loss drug market)

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The Stock Market’s Historic Rally, Explained Jan 24, 2024

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The S&P 500 closed at a record high on Jan. 19, for the first time in two years. It was the start of a winning streak. In today’s Big Take episode, Bloomberg markets editor Chris Nagi joins the show to discuss why Wall Street’s somewhat pessimistic expectations for this year’s stock market were blown out of the water.

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Houthi Attacks in the Red Sea Hit the Global Supply Chain Jan 23, 2024

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For two months, Houthi militants have been launching surprise attacks on civilian ships in the Red Sea. Repeated rounds of retaliatory strikes by the US and its allies haven't stopped the assaults. Now, these tensions are threatening not only trade routes, but the broader global supply chain.
The Big Take spoke with Bloomberg News reporters Enda Curran in Washington, DC and Mohammed Hatem, who reports on economics and politics in Yemen, about what brought us to this point and how companies are trying to strengthen their supply chains in the face of uncertainty.

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