A Stock Market of Amazonian Proportions

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "A Stock Market of Amazonian Proportions"

Podcast: Everybody's Business by Bloomberg and iHeartPodcasts
Date: May 15, 2026
Hosts: Max Chafkin & Stacey Vanek Smith
Guests: Brad Stone (Bloomberg Businessweek editor and Amazon biographer), Kyla Scanlon (economics writer, author), Sean Nguyen (Bloomberg reporter)

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Overview

This episode explores the evolving behemoth that is Amazon: its market dominance in retail and cloud computing, recent strategic pivots toward AI, and its immense influence on markets and society. The discussion moves from Amazon's everyday touchpoints (Prime, shopping, AI, cloud), to its high-stakes bet on artificial intelligence, and finally, to the puzzling exuberance of the U.S. stock market—even as macroeconomic risks and social anxieties mount.

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Amazon in Our Lives: Mixed Reliance and Reluctance

[01:01–03:23]

• Street Interview Montage: The episode opens with producer Miles J. Herzenhorn polling New Yorkers on their Amazon Prime habits:

  • “Do you have Amazon Prime?”
    “Yes. How often would you say you use Amazon? Maybe like once every few weeks? Yes. Quite often.”
    [01:21]
  • Most use Amazon for everyday essentials—soap, cables, sneakers.
  • Respondents highlight convenience but complain about Amazon’s scale, implications for small business, and management practices.
  • “I like the convenience... But a little troubled about the management, to be honest.” [02:45]

• Hosts reflect:

  • Stacey: “I think it’s become normalized. I feel like there’s an expectation... of things getting shipped, of not paying for shipping, and then things arriving in two days.” [05:36]
  • Max: “Once we spend so much time with a company like Amazon, it’s hard to quit it.” [05:56]

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What Is Amazon? From Turducken to AI Powerhouse

[03:32–09:55]

Amazon’s New Identity

• Brad Stone’s “corporate turducken” metaphor:
  • “It’s an ad business, a logistics company stuffed inside an e-commerce marketplace, trussed to a cloud computing powerhouse, garnished with Alexa, Whole Foods, and Prime Video.” [06:23/04:07]
• Amazon is more than retail: its ad, logistics, and AWS cloud arms are now central.

The AI Pivot: Playing Catch-Up

• Major story: Amazon was “caught flat-footed” when the new wave of generative AI took off.
  • Google and Microsoft invested early in leading AI companies (Anthropic, OpenAI), while Amazon lagged.
  • “They’ve turned it around by running the Amazon playbook.” (Brad Stone) [08:52]
    • Investing in homegrown AI chips to challenge Nvidia.
    • AWS’s "Bedrock" service offers a "diner’s menu" of AI model options to retain customers on its platform.
  • AI is both business-to-business (B2B) (in AWS) and consumer-facing (Alexa, Rufus AI shopping assistant, Prime Video recommendations).
  • “The answer is always yes.” (on whether Amazon’s AI is B2B or consumer) [10:00]

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AI’s Economic Promise—and Its (Still) Elusive Payoff

[10:01–12:38]

Productivity and Disruption

• Broad AI theme: Despite the hype, economics often lag behind technological revolution.
• Stacey: “There’s always a gap with new technology between when it’s introduced and when the economy actually grows.” [10:37]
• Brad:
  • The tech giants are best equipped to weather the high capital expenditures (Amazon spending $200 billion on datacenters), but risk displacement if new AI-empowered shopping agents (e.g., within ChatGPT or Claude) disrupt the e-commerce “funnel.”
  • “Almost no way for these large tech companies to lose. Right? They are the beneficiaries of so much.” [11:29]

Political and Social Risk

• Max: “I do think there’s a risk to Amazon... you even hear it in the tape we played: people have ambivalent feelings.” [13:35]
• Brad: Despite ambivalence and nascent backlash, numbers show surging “revealed preference” for AI: “A billion people are using ChatGPT every week. AWS just hit its fastest growth rate in like several years.” [14:12]

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Stock Market Surges Despite Storm Clouds: The Kyla Scanlon Segment

[18:05–30:39]

Why Are Markets So Hot?

[18:51 Kyla joins, through 30:39]

• Central Paradox: Stocks soar despite war in Iran, doubled oil prices, inflation, and stagnant consumer sentiment.
• Kyla: “The companies are making a lot of money. The AI trade is really working out... There’s this implicit assumption that AI will continue to carry the economy forward, that the data center buildout will continue, that the grid can support all the data centers...” [19:00]

Markets Expect a "Rescue"

• Kyla’s NYT op-ed thesis:
  • Markets act as if the Fed will always rescue them in tough times—a pattern set for 40 years.
  • “The stock market now expects that rescue mechanism to take place. It’s been saved for, you know... is that like 40 years? It seems like that is part of the reason it refuses to go down.” [22:54]
• Political influences: “Trump cares a lot about the stock market...” [22:54]—implying the government's implicit market support.

Is This Sustainable?

• Risk of Detachment:
  • “You don’t want a market that is so detached from fundamentals when it comes time for like fundamentals to really matter.” (Kyla) [24:06]
  • The market may be underpricing risks (geopolitics, tariffs, demographics).
• Retirement Worries:
  • One in five Americans will be over 65 by 2030, and 401ks (tied to market performance) are critical:
    “We socialize retirement... via the stock market... and we have an aging population. ...My concern is that we're going to have an aging population that is not going to be able to retire because the stock market is not properly understanding the risk.” [24:54]
• AI Bailout?
  • Possible government interventions: splitting data centers/AI labs, tighter regulation, public data centers—akin to “Glass-Steagall for AI.” [27:10]
  • Caution against social media’s hands-off “let it ride” oversight being repeated for AI.

Little Treat Economy & Young People’s Outlook

• Spending Patterns:
  • With homeownership out of reach, people chase “little treats” or experiences (see concert spending stories), choosing YOLO over long-term saving. [30:16]
  • “The economy is astoundingly resilient ... If people feel like they can’t afford a home, they’re more likely to take riskier investments... and more likely to indulge in... little treats.” (Kyla) [30:16]

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Underrated Story of the Week: AI Backlash at UCF Commencement

[34:30–42:36]

Sean Nguyen Segment

• Underrated Story:
  • University of Central Florida graduates booed commencement speaker Gloria Caulfield when she called the rise of AI “the next industrial revolution.” [38:21]
  • Audio:
    • "Change is exciting…The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. …May I finish? Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives. Okay, we've got a bipolar topic here." [38:34]
• Symptom of Broader Generational Shift:
  • Gen Z is entering a workforce where AI is undercutting their prospects (especially "learn to code" jobs), fueling deep skepticism and, at times, anger at “top-down” AI triumphalism.
• Stacey: “A lot of the advice [from boomers] was irrelevant as we were coming of age... For this generation…one of the first changes that we see from AI is the decimation of entry level computer programming jobs...” [41:20]
• Hosts marvel at how business “conventional wisdom” (AI is a new industrial revolution) is now met with protest and resentment by those most affected.

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Other Notable Moments & Quotes

• Amazon’s numbers:
  • “A third-party survey... put [Prime subscribers] at around 200 million.” (Max) [05:18]
• “AI-washing”: Companies blaming layoffs on AI for PR or boardroom reasons, regardless of the full truth. [12:38]
• Max on political risk: “Amazon has a risk of going through something similar to what Tesla went through, where... there’s a backlash due to their outsize impact.” [13:35]
• Brad Stone’s optimism: “Despite the political sentiment and the nervousness, people are embracing these tools.” [14:38]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Amazon in Everyday Life: Street interviews and reflections [01:01–03:23]
• What is Amazon Now? Corporate “turducken,” AI pivot: [03:32–09:55]
• AI, Productivity, Big Tech Risk: [09:55–14:50]
• Stock Market Paradox (with Kyla Scanlon): [18:05–30:39]
• The “Little Treat” Economy: [30:16–30:39]
• Underrated Story—AI Backlash at UCF Commencement (with Sean Nguyen): [34:30–42:36]
• Rising cost of experiences (concert tickets/Kyle’s Taylor Swift journey): [31:49–34:16]

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Conclusion

The episode weaves together the threads of Amazon’s relentless expansion and transformation, the economy’s faith (and risks) in AI, and the growing disconnect between business optimism and social/political anxieties. Whether it’s skepticism over AI’s benefits, worries about market detachment, or a generational protest against automation’s impact, the show underscores the complexities of living—and investing—in an era “of Amazonian proportions.”

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Memorable Quotes:

• Brad Stone: “It’s a corporate turducken. Turduckens are always funny. It’s an ad business, a logistics company stuffed inside an e-commerce marketplace trussed to a cloud computing powerhouse garnished with Alexa, Whole Foods and Prime Video.” [04:07/06:23]
• Kyla Scanlon: “You don’t want a market that is so detached from fundamentals when it comes time for, like, fundamentals to really matter.” [24:06]
• Sean Nguyen: “You have a whole generation that was sold on the idea that learning to code would be their golden ticket. And one of the first changes that we see from AI is the decimation of entry level computer programming jobs.” [41:20]
• Stacey Vanek Smith: “The economy is astoundingly resilient. ...If people feel like they can’t afford a home, they’re more likely to take riskier investments, and more likely to indulge in... little treats.” [30:16]

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For further reading/listening:

• Brad Stone’s story on Amazon’s AI pivot, Kyla Scanlon’s NYT op-ed on markets' “rescue” expectations, the podcast "Foundering: The Killing of Bob Lee" (featured in-show).

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Transcript

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[Max Chaffan]

Stacy, this is kind of a personal question, but what is your relationship with Amazon Prime?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

My relationship?

[Max Chaffan]

Yeah, your relationship.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It's complicated.

[Max Chaffan]

See, it's funny, I am on the outs with Amazon prime mostly because my wife canceled it and I am trying to make do with Walmart plus or whatever it's called.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Okay.

[Max Chaffan]

Very similar service. And these services are everywhere. They have become a defining part of of pretty much many people's lives, at least in the developed world. And we sent our producer Miles J. Herzenhorn, out into New York where there are a lot of Amazon prime shoppers just to understand what their prime habits were. This service has been around for something like 20 years. How do they see it? Do you have Amazon Prime? Yes. How often would you say you use Amazon? Maybe like once every few weeks? Yes. Quite often. Yeah, it's a couple years. And what is the last thing you purchased off of Amazon?

[Dish Network Announcer]

Literally, we buy so many things every day. I mean, every single day.

[Max Chaffan]

I think just household essentials like soap, small things. Like I had a cable that I had to buy. I think a phone case. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. A phone case. Yeah. Maybe a dish rack, probably a pair of sneakers.

[Dish Network Announcer]

I bought my watch off Amazon.

[Max Chaffan]

I think that's the last thing I bought. Yeah. What's your relationship to Amazon? I would say it's a convenience, not dependent on it. Pretty good. Yeah. They get my packages on time, pretty fast shipping and they have everything I need on there.

[Dish Network Announcer]

I mean, I like the convenience of

[Max Chaffan]

the company itself and I've had Prime

[Dish Network Announcer]

for a while and I used the video. But a little troubled about the management, to be honest.

[Producer or Additional Commentator]

They provide a good service, but they're

[Comcast Business Announcer]

also a massive corporation, so there's trade Offs.

[Max Chaffan]

I'm unsure because since COVID people been

[Producer or Additional Commentator]

using it way too much, I think,

[Max Chaffan]

and it's making local business fail.

[Dish Network Announcer]

I think it saves time. Time is the scarcest resource. You can buy it with more money and it saves time. So we use it more and more as we move forward.

[Max Chaffan]

So a lot of usage of Amazon, Stacey, but mixed feelings?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, but most people seem to be using it for all kinds of things.

[Max Chaffan]

What they're not talking about, but they are using it for is AI and cloud computing. It's a huge part of Amazon's business. And Brad Stone, who'll be joining us later, wrote a whole story for Bloomberg Businessweek about this kind of new version of Amazon and where it's going to.

[Brad Stone]

How do you frame Amazon today? It's so many disparate things and we write it's a corporate turducken. Turduckens are always funny. It's an ad business, a logistics company stuffed inside an E commerce marketplace trust to a cloud computing powerhouse garnished with Alexa, Whole Foods and Prime Video.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Amazon, of course, one of the big magnificent seven stocks has been having a pretty great year, had a great last year. And in spite of all the things that have happened, the markets have been going up, Amazon right along with them. And we have Kyla Scanlon to talk about why the markets keep relentlessly marching skyward even though the economy has taken some major blows.

[Kyla Scanlon]

It's not a good or bad thing. It's just like the worry that the market's not properly understanding what's happening. And then that puts 401ks at risk, that puts retirees at risk, that puts the stability of the entire like American experiment at risk. So that's, that's the concern.

[Max Chaffan]

This is everybody's business. I'm Max Chaffan.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And I'm Stacey.

[Max Chaffan]

Vanek Smith, the behemoth that is Amazon. Coming up after the break. Stacey, I was giving you a hard time earlier about your Amazon prime habits.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Were you giving me a hard time about my Amazon Prime? Yeah.

[Max Chaffan]

But the truth is you are really in the majority.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I'm not in a niche minority.

[Max Chaffan]

No. Amazon prime is very popular. In fact, third party survey published in December by the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, sort of trying to estimate the number of prime subscribers, put it at around 200 million. So lots of us, lots of us enjoy the glories.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Well, I think it's become normalized. I feel like there's an expectation that's developed of things getting shipped, of not paying for shipping and then things arriving in two days. And when I do order things off of other websites, even though on one level I feel better about myself sometimes on another level it is hard to pay a 20 or 10 or $20

[Max Chaffan]

shipping fee and hard, once we spend so much time with a company like Amazon, to quit it. And we have someone right here, right now in the studio who has been thinking about this and other big questions. BusinessWeek editor Brad Stone. He's also the author of two books on Amazon, the Everything Store and Amazon Unbound. What even is Amazon at this point? I mean, I think most people think of it as a store, an everything store, if you will.

[Brad Stone]

Max, there's one line from the story I wrote with Matt Day that I'm particularly proud of because we thought about this. How do you frame Amazon today? It's so many disparate things. And we write it's a corporate turducken. Turduckens are always funny. It's an ad business, a logistics company stuffed inside an E commerce marketplace trust to a cloud computing powerhouse garnished with Alexa, Whole Foods and Prime Video. So in a way, it's not as easily described as an everything store.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

You talk about in your article that they're making this big move into AI, that they've made just this huge bet, and that their goal with AI is not just AI. I feel like a lot of companies are, everybody's, even shoe companies are getting into AI. But you make the point that they want to be the Amazon of AI. What does that mean?

[Brad Stone]

Well, first of all, Amazon has a lot to lose, right? AWB is the market leader in cloud computing. It's got something like what, 35 or 40% market share.

[Max Chaffan]

Explain what that is. I think people sort of know what cloud computing is. But when you say awb, Amazon Web Services, what are you talking about?

[Brad Stone]

This is companies, organizations, governments renting their computing capacity, running their applications on the servers of what we call in the industry, like the big hyperscalers. That's Amazon primarily with the majority of market share, but also Google and Microsoft in this new wave of AI where the potential is to kind of supercharge your operations with AI. Microsoft and Google have started to make up a lot of ground. They have booked a lot more future business. They each early on invested in the leading AI companies. Microsoft in OpenAI, Google very early on in Anthropic. And there was the perception internally and externally that Amazon was caught flat footed. And here on the fifth anniversary of Andy Jassy's tenure as CEO, taking over for from Jeff Bezos we are looking at his playbook and how he's been trying to catch up and he has, he has largely caught up in a lot of ways.

[Max Chaffan]

Amazon was behind on AI. Like this trend caught them by surprise in a sense because they do not have one of the leading large language models. On the other hand, they were very early in a bunch of things that are kind of AI adjacent data centers being one of them, Alexa this kind of a proto chatbot being another, and even like the Amazon Go store that, that has now been shut down. Like they, they had some sense that this was gonna be a thing, but they didn't quite play it right. How have they turned it around?

[Brad Stone]

Yeah, no, I think it's true. I mean, Jeff was pushing machine learning tools inside the company for more than a decade. I think that there was an opportunity for them to invest earlier than they did in anthropic, maybe even OpenAI. But they've turned it around by running the Amazon playbook. So they produce chips to compete with Nvidia's AI processors. And the selling point for those is that they're a little bit more cost effective. Come to Amazon, run the model, save a little bit of money, or do it more efficiently. The other thing is you go to Amazon's bedrock service, which is how you'd run your AI applications if you're an AWS customer. And I kind of compare it to a sort of a diner's menu of options. People want to run their AI where their data is and where their applications are. So depending on their customers and their market share and the hassle or the inconvenience of moving off that, that to. To basically solidify their position.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So is Amazon's AI basically just a business to business? Is it like a B2B AI or will customers like prime members experience it too?

[Brad Stone]

I mean, this is Amazon, right? So it's always everything. So they've done a couple of things.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

The answer is yes.

[Brad Stone]

The answer is always yes.

[Max Chaffan]

This may be a good time to broaden the conversation to AI in general. This is the kind of COVID story of a series of stories that are in the same issue, all, all about AI and kind of what it's going to take to, to take AI to the next level. Stacy has a story and I've got a story in it. And I think, Stacy, I thought of your story, which is about AI and productivity and the question of what it means for productivity, and it made me wonder. And I think there is a big question hanging over this whole AI revolution, which is like when are the productivity gains going to come? And are they going to come? Are we sure they're going to come?

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I mean to me that's a really interesting question about AI is that there's all this promise, all this excitement. Our economy in a lot of ways is kind of counting on it. But there is always a gap with new technology between when the technology is introduced and adopted and when it actually causes the economy to grow. And there's also a gap with jobs which I think is scaring everybody where it's a lot of jobs get lost sometimes because of new technology and then eventually economists will always say but new jobs come. But there's a gap there too. But one interesting thing about Amazon is a lot of companies are grappling with this like they have to make a huge investment. A is not cheap so they have to make a big investment and the payoff might not come for a while. But I'm wondering if that matters to Amazon or if Amazon can just weather the storm. Whereas as a lot of smaller companies might be a little more locked out.

[Brad Stone]

There's almost no way for these large tech companies to lose. Right? They are the beneficiaries of so much.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So chilling.

[Brad Stone]

Yeah there's so much experimentation that's happening. Such a industry wide, business wide commitment to trying out these AI tools. Amazon's also building these data centers. That's $200 billion investment in capex this year. That momentarily alarmed investors and then they kind of came back and they fund most of that with their own balance sheet. So they're not doing the kind of risky lending that maybe some of the smaller competitors are. The big risk for Amazon is that for the original part of its business, for still the largest part of its business, the E commerce company that start shopping within ChatGPT or Claude that top of the funnel changes and these chatbots seem to customers to be like a far superior experience than the currently ad riddled search results you would get in searching on Amazon. And so in some ways Rufus maybe you know, doesn't have to solve all of our problems as shoppers, but it does have to be kind of part of the Amazon moat and a reason if these shopping agents do take off that people are compelled to stick with Amazon.

[Max Chaffan]

So much of this just feels very slippery to me. I mean we, we don't the business wise or politically everything the productivity gains have not come. The question of job losses is very much open. I mean you have companies saying they're laying people off with AI because of AI, but it's not Totally clear. That's the reason, you know, the concept we've talked about AI washing or whatever. And you also have, including some of these technologists saying now being aware that it's maybe a bad look to talk about laying people off with because of technology, are now saying, oh no, no, AI is actually going to create lots of jobs. So, like, there's all this. The messaging is kind of confused. I do think there's a risk to Amazon. The story that I wrote in this issue is about Ro Khanna, who's a congressman from Silicon Valley. I thought of him as basically the most pro tech member of Congress there was. He was out there talking about how great crypto was when crypto was controversial.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

A lot of his campaign money has got to be coming from tech.

[Max Chaffan]

His constituents are technologists. And he is. And what my story is about is how he's basically turned against the industry. And I think he's doing it because he's trying to run for president and also because many people in the United States are turning against this stuff, these data centers. And I think this is going to be a risk for Amazon. I think Amazon has a risk of going through something similar to what Tesla went through, where maybe in a less pronounced way, just because Jeff Bezos and the company is not seen as polarizing as Elon Musk is. But I don't know, like you even hear it in the, in the tape we played, people have ambivalent feelings.

[Brad Stone]

I agree with that. But I also think we should note that a billion people are using ChatGPT every week. AWS just hit its fastest growth rate in like several years. People are understandably nervous and maybe ambivalent about AI at the same time as another set of numbers show that they're doing everything they can to their revealed preferences. Yeah, to experiment with it, to integrate it into their own lives. And I'm sure Andy Jassy is looking at the numbers. He told us that Alexa use has doubled since they rolled out Alexa. Plus they seem very optimistic about Rufus, that, yeah, maybe despite the political sentiment and the nervousness, people are embracing these tools.

[Max Chaffan]

It'll be interesting watching this play out over the next couple years. We get an election in 2028 and there's going to be opportunities for customers to make their voices.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I mean, it's a huge issue. There are tons of protests, like in the West Utah. There are, you know, there's a 40,000 acre data center going in and like, just protests have erupted. People in places with lots of space and not a lot of political power are really upset, but there may be some victories. I just, I guess I'm skeptical because of the juggernaut that is AI that it will stop.

[Max Chaffan]

We will continue covering this. We will continue watching this. Brad will be back to update us on the next turn of the yes, please, the screw in tech and in all the quarters of power. Brad Stone, thanks for being here.

[Brad Stone]

Thank you guys.

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[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Max we live in a world that is really good at telling us what just happened, but not always so great at explaining why it matters.

[Max Chaffan]

That's what we do every Friday on everybody's business each week. Stacey we take the biggest stories in business markets and the global economy and slow them down, adding the context you need to actually understand what's going on.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And if you want even more of that reporting and insight, a Bloomberg subscription gives you unlimited access to the journalism behind those stories.

[Max Chaffan]

Subscribe [e-mail] podcastoffer of course, Max, companies

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

like Amazon have been a major part of the economic boom that we have been seeing a lot of that economic boom being fueled by AI, or at least hope about AI. And the stock market for the last couple years has just been on a tear going gangbusters.

[Max Chaffan]

Yeah, and it's kind of strange because we've been talking on this show all along about the kind of difficult news that the economy is confronting. Obviously there's potential questions about AI. There's also the war in Iran, oil, the price of oil has doubled consumer sentiment. It's not great, Stacey. And the Fed, even the Fed, the interest rates are not getting cut.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yeah, we got some not awesome inflation numbers out this week and the price of everything has been going up pretty fast and doesn't look to be slowing down anytime soon. And there was a really interesting article that we came across from our friend of the show, Kyla Scanlon, about why this might be and what we should think about it. Kyla is the bestselling author of in this Economy. She joins us now. Welcome, Kyla.

[Kyla Scanlon]

Yeah, thanks for having me.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Okay, so very basic question. There are a lot of reasons why it seems like the market should not be on the tear they're on. What is going on? Why are they so exuberant?

[Kyla Scanlon]

I mean, it's a, it's a good question. Like, part of it is earnings. So like a lot of what's happening with the stock market right now is the companies are making a lot of money. Like the AI trade is really working out. But like what you said about energy prices also really matters because that puts a lot of pressure on companies historically. I mean, sometimes it doesn't, but the companies in the stocks are kind of shrugging everything off, it seems. And there's this implicit assumption that AI will continue to carry the economy forward, that the data center build out will continue to happen, that the grid can support all of the data centers that are being built. The companies are going to adopt all of the AI and that will carry the stock market because the AI companies are such a big component of the S&P 500 that. Yeah, it just seems like nothing can slow it down.

[Max Chaffan]

The challenges that you're referring to, like we should just spell them out. So I guess the big one is that Trump started a war with Iran and this trade of Hormuz has been closed as we're recording this for six weeks. I guess something like that.

[Kyla Scanlon]

More than two months.

[Max Chaffan]

Yeah. And probably like more importantly shows no sign of reopening and that is causing fuel crises in countries around the world. There's like, and on top of that, it creates inflation challenges. There's that that's happening. I mean, what are the other big economic challenges that that in your mind should be the stock market should be responding to besides fuel prices?

[Kyla Scanlon]

I mean, I think it's just the uncertainty of it all. Like, I, for businesses right now, like we don't even talk about tariffs anymore. But like that's still a thing that companies are having to deal with. The higher health insurance costs have led a lot of companies to pull back on, hiring, spend. So I think it's just kind of like the general environment you would think would put a lot of pressure on companies. You would think that what's happening with the Federal Reserve, sort of the questions around independ dependence would cause the stock market to sell off a little bit, but it doesn't seem to care at all. You would think that the political path that we're on, where we're, you know, sort of objectively kind of fighting with our allies, would upset the stock market a little bit, but it doesn't seem to care. Like, it doesn't seem to worry about the fact that a lot of what our trade relationships are are, you know, requiring our friends to continue to exist, to have those friendships continue to be fruitful, not putting tariffs on other countries. So, I mean, it's just, it's kind of everything you would expect the stock to go down, but maybe it's because everything is so crazy that it just goes up.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Well, also, interest rates, that's normally something the market really responds to. If interest rates aren't cut, you know, that can really slow the economy down. It makes borrowing more expensive, which can mean businesses and people borrow less and spend less. But that even that hasn't dampened the markets.

[Kyla Scanlon]

Nothing. Nothing has.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So what, what do you think is going on?

[Kyla Scanlon]

So in this New York Times opinion piece that I wrote, I theorized that the markets expect to get rescued. So, like, every time something goes bad, you know, the stock market gets rescued by the Federal Reserve, and this is something the Fed has to do. I think it makes a lot of sense. It's very rational. But Greenspan did it, Bernanke did it, Powell did it during the pandemic. Because when you raise interest rates, as you were saying, like, people spend less money, you know, money's more expensive, people slow the economy down. So then ultimately, hopefully, inflation goes down as sort of like the mechanism that interest rates move throughout the economy. And so if the stock market or the economy rather needs more support, the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates, money gets more free, everything's a little easier. But the stock market now expects that rescue mechanism to take place. Like it's been saved for, you know, I guess. Is that like 40 years? Right. It seems like that is part of the reason that it refuses to go down is because they know that it, it doesn't have to.

[Max Chaffan]

Well, and we have a new kind of mechanism, which is taco or, or just this sense that Donald Trump cares a lot about the stock market, but

[Kyla Scanlon]

yeah, the market just, the taco stuff only works to a certain extent. Like, you can only move things forward by narrative so much. And like, with the tariffs, it was kind of fine because you could pretend that you were taking them on and taking them off and you could push it out. But when you enter a war, you can't really be like, never mind. And so I think that's the issue that markets are wrapping their head around. So with this expectation of rescue. But, yeah, it doesn't seem like the strait's going to open anytime soon. It seems like it opens potentially right before futures open on Sunday nights. I think we get, like, a little hint that it could open and then it closes again Monday morning.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So let's say, you know, the markets think, okay, well, Trump is watching the markets. He's going to respond to this. He's not going to let things get really bad. And even if they do, will get bailed out. What is bad about that? Because, as Max said, like, having the markets be high is a good thing. It companies make more money, they tend to expand higher. Like, this seems not so bad.

[Kyla Scanlon]

I mean, I guess it just depends on your thoughts around if it's real. Like, a lot of the companies, earnings are up, profitability is up, but you don't want a market that is so detached from fundamentals when it comes time for, like, fundamentals to really matter. So I think the worry is that the market is not pricing risk properly. Like, it doesn't seem very aware that there's this, like, very big thing happening that it should have more of a concept around, rather than betting that this AI trade, which is reliant on the Strait of Hormuz being open, that that'll just carry us all through. So I think it's like, it's not a good or bad thing. It's just like, the worry that the market's not properly understanding what's happening. And then that puts 401ks at risk. That puts retirees at risk, puts the stability of the entire, like, American experiment at risk. So that's. That's the concern. Yeah, that's very dramatic. But, like, we socialize retirement in the United States through the stock market, and we have an aging population. One in five Americans are going to be over the age of 65 by 2030. And we don't really have a plan for, like, what is going to happen. And so that's my concern, is that we're going to have an aging population that is not going to be able to retire because the stock market is not properly understanding the risk that it is before it.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

What about a bailout? I mean, let's say the stock market does not understand the risk properly. Like, why can't a bailout happen?

[Kyla Scanlon]

That's like the rescue mechanism, right? Yeah, so it could happen, but then that puts the US Government even more extreme in the debt situation. I think debt to GDP just passed like 100%. There's a chart from the Wall Street Journal. You don't want a situation where you're always having to finance a way out of a crisis because that puts more pressure on the US Government. That puts more pressure on Social Security and Medicare. Like the government can only spend money, many things. So if all of a sudden it has to, you know, both the Federal Reserve and the US Government, if fiscal policy came in and saved the stock market, a lot of pressure on the government, if monetary policy has to come in and save the stock market a lot of pressure on interest rates.

[Max Chaffan]

This, this idea that AI is the, the last hope for this economy. I, I, I find this very concerning. As somebody who's followed the AI, very serious AI skeptic. Well, I mean, I do hope, hope that the AI can save us all and will continue. But, but you know, we have yet to see big productivity gains from any of this stuff. The, the history of productivity gains from other technologies suggests it could take a really long time for it to show up. So it feels like there is going to be at some point a, a sort of a reckoning around AI and just because asset prices are so high and, and because we have yet to see a lot of, like a lot to show for all this investment and because there's a big political backlash that it appears to be brewing that, yeah, that would also put, and so what would an AI bailout look like to your mind? I mean, you brought up some of the things in this Times op ed some of the things that the Trump administration sort of already doing. Yeah. What, what, what would that look like? An AI bailout?

[Kyla Scanlon]

Yeah. So my, my colleague at the Vanderbilt Policy accelerator, he wrote this incredible paper called after the AI Crash where he goes into this in great detail. It's an excellent paper, highly recommend people read it. But he has all of these policy ideas prepared for like what it could have, what, what could we do to respond to an AI crash happening? And a lot of it is sort of separating things. So like separating the AI labs and the data centers, Glass Steagall for AI having maybe a public data center so

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

the public can, especially regulation, government regulation.

[Kyla Scanlon]

So much regulation because we're doing the same thing that we did with social media where we're like, let it ride and like, let's see what happens. And it's a crazy, crazy experiment.

[Max Chaffan]

I have one other question. Maybe the market is just right like a lot of smart people and you know, corporate profits are high. Like hey, like you know, this is, you guys are just doom saying, what's your kind of response to like maybe the market's right?

[Kyla Scanlon]

It might be, I mean, yeah, sure. But I think that if you just sort of look at the reality of what is happening in terms of the underpricing of, of the risk, like a lot of it doesn' make sense. And so I think if you look at the metrics and you look at the numbers, you can certainly point to the companies making a bunch of money and like the AI companies spending a ton of money and like that's obviously going to bring some money in. But I think if you like dive just a little bit deeper into the other companies in the S&P 500 that are not in the air trade, you started to see where some of the cracks are forming.

[Max Chaffan]

Is Trump going to be like, it's your patriotic duty to use ChatGPT for like 8 hours a day. Like just trying to imagine he'll have

[Kyla Scanlon]

his own AI model. I do think there will be a Trump branded AI model.

[Max Chaffan]

It is honestly the more we talk about this, the more shocked I am that there isn't right. Because Trump companies and family business very good at like, at sniffing out where the hot trend is.

[Kyla Scanlon]

It's a big deal.

[Max Chaffan]

You would think. Donald Jr. Write us, let us know. We could probably send you some other ideas. Everybody'[e-mail] that's right.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yes indeed. So Kyla, like what are you watching right now? What are the tells that you're watching? Kyle?

[Kyla Scanlon]

I don't even know anymore. I mean like there are no canaries. No, it's a really, it's good. Like I'm happy that I don't want the economy to fail.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Yes.

[Kyla Scanlon]

Like I. Right. Like I just think it's important to be like, hey, there's a huge risk thing that like maybe the stock market isn't pricing in. And considering our demographic issue in terms of an aging population, we should really be paying attention to like how the stock market is pricing risk to make sure that people can retire properly because that's the way we retire people. So like that's why I keep harping on this, this, this problem. But I like the economy is astoundingly Resilient. It is, Yeah. I mean that's interesting though because like the little treat economy is fascinating. Where there was a really interesting research paper that came out in November 2025 talking about the perception of housing affordability. And if people feel like they can't afford a home, they're more likely to take riskier investment decisions. So more likely to gamble in prediction markets or sports betting. And then they're more likely to indulge in kind of like these little one off things like spend a bit more money on the little treats because they're

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

not saving for anything.

[Kyla Scanlon]

Yeah. Because they're like, I'm never gonna afford a house. And that's kind of where I'm at. Like I, I don't really know how I like. It just feels so out of reach and I think a lot of people are in that boat and you're just like, okay, sure, I'll get the $9.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Like the YOLO economy, right?

[Kyla Scanlon]

Totally, totally.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Well, Kyla, you will have to come back as this thing shakes out and help us navigate through these crazy times. But thank you for joining us.

[Kyla Scanlon]

Thanks for having me.

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[PJ Vogt]

Hi, I'm PJ Vogt. My podcast Search Engine has a new two part series for you. Of all the new technologies coming out of AI, the most transformative one might be driverless cars. They're already on the road in 10American cities and they're quickly coming to more. We tell the story of how we got here. The secret team at Google that spent 15 years building what might be the safest vehicle on the road. And we cover the fights brewing in blue cities where unions and politicians are working to keep those cars off the streets. Listen to search engine wherever you get your podcasts.

[Max Chaffan]

All right, Stacey, we have a special guest for today's underrated story. But first I need to share this email that we got in the Everybody's business mailbox. Everybody's out from Kyle about tickets. Remember we had asked. This was a couple of weeks ago and we've been sitting on this because things got busy or whatever. Sorry Kyle, but the email is so funny because we had asked what's the most you've ever spent on tickets? You know we talked about. I forget what I said. A few hundred bucks. And Kyle took us on a journey from the most he had ever spent had been $25 to go to the Vans Warp tour in the early 2000s to. Then he went and he bought tickets on the early side to an Eras tour show in Arizona. 200.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

That would be Taylor Swift.

[Max Chaffan]

Yeah. So that was the.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Seems like a pretty good deal.

[Max Chaffan]

High point.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Good point.

[Max Chaffan]

Kyle would agree with you cuz you will hear happens next. Then he was so into it that they went to another show, $1,000 each in Southern California. Then a Taylor Swift show, also a Taylor Swift show. Then at the end of the US leg they went again, thirteen hundred dollars a ticket. Then how big is on the family European leg? This is mostly him and his wife, although there's some friends and family thrown in there as well. Then there, then they went on the European leg of the tour, $2,400 per ticket.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And finally still Taylor Swift, they were like, they were like Deadheads.

[Max Chaffan]

But $3,600, that's the most he has spent on a concert ticket. Now that was the Vancouver Eras tour. That was the, that was the end of the Eras tour. He wanted to see the ending. Kyle, I first of all, I thank you for this email. It is an awesome email. It really shows you how concert tickets have gotten more expensive certainly. But also the way that that fandom can just draw you in.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

It does show. I mean one of the biggest big things that is very important to millennials, especially post pandemic. One of the things that's been the big shift in spending has been people buying fewer goods and buying more services. People want experiences. Younger people don't want stuff, they want experiences. And I do feel like this speaks to the fact that the experience of seeing Taylor Swift in concert, apparently so powerful, you travel the country and the world and shell out thousands to see the same songs and outfit changes because there is something so powerful in the experience.

[Max Chaffan]

All right, Kyle, thank you for the email listeners. Please write to us. Everybody's bloomberg.net Shake it off, Stacey. Normally the underrated portion of the show, when we get here, it's just you and me.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

This is true.

[Max Chaffan]

But we have a special guest with us right here, Sean Wen, Bloomberg reporter, joining us to help with the underrated segment.

[Sean Nguyen]

Hey Sean, thank you. Pleasure to be here.

[Max Chaffan]

Now Sean has a new show. She is the host, the reporter of foundering the Killing of Bob Lee, which is an excellent, excellent show. About this murder in San Francisco. It gets to all these issues. Shawn, what kind of drew you to this story?

[Sean Nguyen]

I think I was drawn to it because I like that there were a lot of different things going on. It was a story where every time you thought it was about one thing, it ended up being about something else.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

And describe. I feel like everybody saw the headlines, but there have been a lot of headlines. So briefly sum up the story. Cause I think most people will remember it.

[Sean Nguyen]

Sure. So three years ago in San Francisco, which is where I live, a tech executive was found stabbed to death on the street. And this was during a super sensitive time for the city. San Francisco was slow to recover from the pandemic. Downtown was hollowed out, and there was widespread fear of crime, which led to the recall of our progressive district attorney. And so then you had this very grisly, very mysterious seeming death, and it set off a wave of online fury. There were rumors, there was speculation, and some big names in the tech industry weighed in. You had David Sacks, who was saying that he bet dollars to die, that Bob Lee was stabbed by a psychotic homeless person. And then you had Elon Musk disparaging the new da.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

So, Sean, we have a clip of your show to play and set us up a little bit. What are we about to hear?

[Sean Nguyen]

So the irony of all of the rumors and speculation was that, A, Bob Lee's actual killer was someone he knew, and B, that the police had their suspect almost immediately. They waited nine days to arrest Nima Momeni because they wanted to build a stronger case. But in those nine days, they were actually following him around, and they got this incredible piece of footage. The prosecution wanted the jury to pay attention to Nima's behavior after the stabbing. And for this, they introduced new evidence. A video of Nima made six days after Bob was killed, but before Nima was arrested. Omid Talai, the lead prosecutor, was at the police station when he saw it for the first time.

[Producer or Additional Commentator]

I remember Sergeant Goff calling, saying, hey, I'm headed back from South Bay. You gotta see this.

[Sean Nguyen]

Sergeant David Goff is an undercover cop who had been following Nima since the day after Bob was killed. Goff had recorded something he wanted to

[Producer or Additional Commentator]

show the prosecutor, and he wouldn't even really explain it to us. He just wanted us to see it. The homicide inspectors do not have these fancy offices. They're all kind of in cubes, cubicles next to each other. So we were standing, and Sergeant Goff put in the video, and we just pressed play, and I think a couple times he said, just wait. Just wait. Like, just, just wait for it. Wait for it.

[Max Chaffan]

Also, Stacey, there's a little Easter egg. People should check this out. Foundering the Killing of Bob Lee. Subscribe. Listen to it.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Is the Easter egg that you're in

[Max Chaffan]

one of the episodes. I am in episode five.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Unbelievable.

[Max Chaffan]

Yeah, so, you know. But anyway, it's really worth your time and you should check it out and let us know what you think. Sean, you have an underrated story. That podcast, I'd say is fairly rated, rated highly, especially.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

One of the episodes you hear is quite excellent.

[Max Chaffan]

But we have an underrated story as well. Sean, grace us with the underrated story.

[Sean Nguyen]

Okay. My underrated story of the week is the University of Central Florida students who are graduating 2026 booing their commencement speaker, a woman named Gloria Caulfield.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Change is exciting, very exciting. And let's face it, change. Change can be daunting. The rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution. What happened? Okay, I struck a chord. May I finish? Only a few years ago, AI was not a factor in our lives. Okay, we. We've got a bipolar topic here. I see.

[Max Chaffan]

Okay, Sean, such a good choice. We were just talking about on the segment before you joined us with Brad Stone about the backlash to AI and. Wow, you really hear it in that audio. I mean, to me, the thing that's most surprising about this is it's not Berkeley, it's not the new school or something. It's the University of Central Florida. It's a big state college in the middle of Florida.

[Sean Nguyen]

Yes. And also just the very idea of a commencement address. Right, that you're graduating school, you've been schooled your whole life, and you're about to go into the world. Your university has invited someone who's older, wiser, and successful to give you life advice. But the thing is, there are some big generational changes that have really upset the natural order of. So I'm a millennial. I'm a geriatric millennial. And one of the defining things about our generation is that a lot of the advice that we've received from our parents generation, baby boomers were. A lot of advice was irrelevant as we were coming of age. They grew up during a time without crushing student loans, when owning a house was more achievable, when upward social mobility was assumed. For this generation of kids, you have a whole generation that was sold on the idea that learning to code would be their golden ticket. And one of the first changes that we see from AI is the decimation of entry level computer programming jobs. And so graduating students are contending already with the effects of AI in a very real way and in a very negative way.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

I would say that I saw that a little differently because she calls it an industrial revolution. And I don't think of the industrial revolution as this totally positive thing. Like it was pretty brutal.

[Max Chaffan]

But that's what's so crazy about the clip. She's saying what basically what every business person in the world thinks is conventional wisdom and then is being booed and then is surprised she didn't realize that these kids might not like AI. And I feel like she has not

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

looked at the unemployment numbers for people under 25.

[Max Chaffan]

Totally. And I read these and I read like the story that Brad just wrote about Andy Chassis and read lines from executives basically saying very similar things. And it does feel like there's a whole big part of the world that they may not be listening to.

[Sean Nguyen]

And I also think that what's satisfying about the clip is that the way the AI is presented to us is so top down. Right. Big tech companies are talking about AGI, a superhuman super powerful intelligence that's gonna transform our society and like steal our banking passwords. Exactly, exactly. And to see young people, a groundswell of young people booing, that's something that AI can't replace. We can still boo.

[Max Chaffan]

As a Mets fan, booing is very satisfying. Let me tell you. There is nothing like a good boo to get your feelings out in a public place. So I really relate to those University of Central Florida students. Although I've never booed AI, I've only booed underperforming members, only in other than New York Mets.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Wait, you boo your people?

[Sean Nguyen]

Sometimes I assume you would boo the other team.

[Max Chaffan]

Yeah, you boo the other team as well. But sometimes you have no choice but to boo your own team. The show is called the Killing of Bob Lee. It is available on Bloomberg.com, we'll put it on link in the show notes and wherever you get podcasts. Sean Nguyen, thanks for being here.

[Sean Nguyen]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Stacey Vanek Smith]

Thanks, Sean.

[Max Chaffan]

This show is produced by Jasmine JT Green, Stacy Wong and Miles J. Herzenhorn. Magnus Henriksen is our supervising producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin and Maria Lynn. If you have a minute, please rate and review the show. It means a lot to us. And if you have a story that should be our business, if you want to confess to some out of control spending, email [e-mail] that's everybody with an sloomberg.net thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.