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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Hello, and welcome to the Taylor Swift Is a Volatile Asset edition of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. I am coming to you from Oxfordshire where I have flown through a conference and I'm joined by the amazing Janine Gibson. Hi, Janine.
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B
Hi.
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A
You are. You have some a grand job.
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B
Assistant editor at the Financial Times.
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A
You just have a new boss. Congratulations.
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B
It's the old one hasn't left yet, so I think he would be slightly offended. January is the handover.
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A
In January, the FT2 will be taken over by a woman, just like institutions should be. Janine is the best person in the world. So you are going to be here to talk to us about Hong Kong and other things. But before we get there, we also need to mention, as ever, that we are joined by Emily Peck of HuffPost in New York.
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C
Hello.
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A
And also Anna Shymanski of Breaking Views.
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D
Hello.
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A
And what's on the menu for this week? I feel like we have to talk about Taylor Swift, obviously, and we also need to talk about TikTok, because I have become addicted to TikTok and I need to understand what is going on with its Chinese ownership. But since we're thinking about China, I think we should start by talking about Hong Kong, because that seems to be going from bad to worse. So I think that's the menu for today. It's going to be Hong Kong and Taylor Swift and Kylie Jenner, because obviously. And TikTok and a slate plus segment all about hummus wars. You're going to want to listen to that one. All coming up on Slate Money. Anna? Yes, as the expert on all things international, Shay. Slate Money. What has happened in Hong Kong? Has it got even worse?
- [02:03]
D
It does appear to have gotten worse. So there have been pretty severe protests at the Polytechnic University. And the protests, which had been kind of concentrated in certain areas and at certain times have really spread out and are kind of affecting the lives of now a lot of people in Hong Kong. And as. As well, you're now actually seeing the US government start to weigh in.
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A
What's the US Government doing?
- [02:28]
D
So the US government has basically is saying that they are putting their support on the side of the protesters and they're saying that they want the special status of Hong Kong to potentially be looked at every single year to make sure that Hong Kong is actually separate from the mainland and thus receives certain special privileges related to trade and other things.
- [02:54]
A
This is not just Congress, this is the White House. This is the American executive. Is really coming out in favor of basically the protesters, demands.
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C
Yeah.
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D
And. But you really, this is something that you are seeing as a bipartisan move on Congress, which is interesting because obviously there aren't many bipartisan issues on Congress right now. But the support for Hong Kong and this kind of anti mainland China feeling is also clearly pretty popular on both sides of the aisle.
- [03:20]
C
It's actually remarkable in the House, this legislation passed by a vote of 4:17 to 1 and then united with the 1, I don't know right off the top of my head and then unanimously approved in the Senate Tuesday. So I mean, this is this rare moment where we have this cross party support for something and. But it's coming at a tricky time, I think. Yeah, the President who's sort of trying to fix the mess he created with the China trade war. So I think this is going to make it a little more difficult to end that.
- [03:50]
D
Exactly.
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A
Yeah. We just had a big move in the markets when the markets finally woke up and realized that they were not going to resolve the trade war anytime soon. Right?
- [04:00]
D
Well, yeah, I mean, I think that this has been this ongoing kind of issue where it's like Donald Trump, you know, says something in front of an airplane or he tweets something and all of a sudden people like, oh, there's going to be a phase one trade deal and then two days later it's not. And then it's kind of silly at this point.
- [04:14]
C
But to go back to Hong Kong, I mean, this is five months now of disruption. The local economy is kind of in a sham. They keep having to close schools, people aren't shopping. I mean, long term, what does this say about the city as a place where businesses, you know, like to do business? What, what is it going to mean long term? What are people saying?
- [04:34]
D
Yeah, you're actually getting the economy in Hong Kong in recession and you have this in kind of a micro and then a larger level. Because if you're thinking about, you know, businesses, restaurants that potentially for a few months aren't having a lot of traffic, I mean, that's a huge deal, you know, and then when you start to expand and think outwards from that, you know, Hong Kong has been this hu of kind of the way that you get capital into kind of China, the way you get capital out of China and it's, it's served this purpose. You have a lot of businesses there. And there is a lot of discussion now about are people going to be looking at Hong Kong the same way moving forward?
- [05:06]
A
Janine, everyone has always thought of Hong Kong as being the foremost Asian financial center. Is that now over?
- [05:15]
B
I was just listening to the conversation, thinking, every conversation I have with businesses in the UK about Hong Kong ends with someone saying, I mean, it's over. That obviously lots of business have a lot of connections between the UK and Hong Kong and somebody immediately wishes to. What is your alternative Asian headquarters going to be? There's a lot of talk about Tokyo, talk about Singapore, but people really feel that Hong Kong is, is done. But they say the same about London, obviously because of Brexit. So I don't, I don't know that you should immediately make plans. But, but that is the sort of sentiment around it.
- [05:48]
A
And do you think that is important? Like what, what are the bigger consequences beyond like a few banks moving from Hong Kong to Singapore?
- [05:57]
B
I don't, I don't think it's a few banks. I think, I think a lot of people's business in that area of the world is, is, is anchored in Hong Kong. Ours is, and we're owned by a Japanese company and our business is anchored in Hong Kong. There are huge.
- [06:09]
A
Is Nikkei moving its business from Hong Kong?
- [06:13]
B
No, but I think all media bureau are thinking about what they do and looking about where they put their resources. China's so tricky anyway, so it's a real, it's a real issue for everyone. Think about what you're going to do. And covering the protests is exhausting and difficult and your younger staff are very conflicted about whether they want to be part of the protest or covering the protest. So that, that must be a read across to all other businesses, I think. And it is going to be very difficult for people to plan long term in Hong Kong.
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D
And I think that that's really important too. Right. Because if you're thinking about this kind of acute issue right now with these protests, but then there's also the.
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A
Of.
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D
Okay, but like, what actually happens if the protests resolve? Like, what does that mean? Does that mean you're going to get a very, very. It almost certainly means you're going to get a very, very different Hong Kong. But in which direction? Right, because.
- [07:01]
B
Right. I mean, I think that this is exactly everyone's thinking, which is this ends somehow. It's only going to lead to further crackdown and more authoritarian regime in Hong Kong that isn't. Authoritarian regimes don't go. This has gone badly. Let's light up a bit.
- [07:16]
D
Right.
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C
I mean, they've picked up China's interest to lighten up a little bit. I mean, if, if the whole status of the, of the city is basically in jeopardy. I mean, isn't in China's interest to kind of back off and, and let Hong Kong be Hong Kong, or am I just being idealistic?
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A
One country, two systems?
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D
Yeah.
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A
Yeah.
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D
I. I don't know. I mean, I think there are two things. I mean, you know, they. They don't want to give anyone else any ideas. Right. So I think that, that, that is a big issue here. You know, when you say anyone else.
- [07:49]
A
You mean other, like Chinese provinces.
- [07:51]
D
Exactly. Or, in fact, people in mainland China as well. I mean, like, you. You don't want, you know, when you're this kind of authoritarian government, you don't want to show that you have weakness. So I think that that puts Hong Kong in a very kind of dangerous position.
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A
And where does that leave the Hong Kong population? Because I feel that they have made it abundantly clear millions and millions of Hong Kongers have come out on the streets. Maybe they haven't all, you know, hold themselves up in universities with Molotov cocktails, but they've made it very clear that they have no interest in being part of a communist dictatorship, that they really value their freedoms and that they have been guaranteed their freedoms at least until 2047. And they're going to fight very hard for those. They're not going to stop fighting anytime soon if they see those freedoms being eroded. Right.
- [08:40]
D
I mean, I think you're right. And I think this leads to these larger questions of as China is becoming more and more dominant and it's going to be harder and harder for countries to exist in this kind of liminal space between, you know, what we perceive of as kind of the American sphere and what is increasingly becoming, you know, the. The Chinese sphere. And there aren't any good answers of what's going to happen to the people in Hong Kong, because, you know, and this is obviously very much about the desire for democracy and freedom and also does have economic realities that caused it, too. Right. You know, you have issues with significant income inequality, with massive housing issues, and, you know, these issues certainly aren't going away. Granted, the price of housing is probably going to come down, but, you know, if you're having a contracting economy, that's just going to make it even harder for a lot of the young population. So it's not easy to see this ending well anytime soon.
- [09:32]
C
Yeah. I don't, I don't see how it can neatly resolve, but I would say again that it really would be in China's interest to. To cave. I don't think it shows weakness, I think it shows strength. And I guess my other thought was what Janine was saying a little bit ago about people are saying sort of a similar thing about London as they are now. Like London's over, Hong Kong's over. Is there something bigger picture to think about that's going on right now? Some kind of reordering that we need.
- [10:02]
A
To radar sort of unilateral rise of unilateralism and decline internationalism and everyone sort of retreating into their shells, including the United States.
- [10:14]
C
That's what it feels like. Yes, it really feels like a retreat from, from globalism.
- [10:19]
D
And this, this is something you hear a lot of people talking about, this idea of like globalization and what that looks like because the systems are really just our economic systems. Nothing is. You could potentially deal with slower globalization, but the idea of actually countries breaking apart, like traditionally when you've seen that happen, it's been at really scary places, like right before leading up to World War II, you know, it, it tends to not augur anything good because it does show countries, you know, kind of looking in. And I think we have two different trends here that are related, which is you do have this significant pushback on globalization, which I do think will kind of give more strength to authoritarians. And you have this pushback against income inequality, which is getting a lot of young people in countries throughout the world essentially kind of pushing back and protesting.
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A
All of the world's major global cities have extreme income inequality, at least the ones that I can think of. It's not just Hong Kong and London, but it's also Dubai.
- [11:14]
B
But the more interesting thing, I think layering on top of those questions, these are incredibly complex things. We've had so much of this in the UK around Brexit, incredibly complex, detailed questions about how to unpick a 20, 30 year relationship with a European wide community and business and infrastructure on every single level. And that responds incredibly well to a really simplistic message like take back control. So you get these three word slogans to combat insanely complex global economic knitted together that needs to be unpicked. And you just get some guy that comes along, goes to take back control and people respond, they flock to the simplicity of one message against the complexity of the other. And I think that's why it keeps happening again and again. We spent a lot of this morning talking about protests and why they're being mirrored around the world. And I think the response to complexity of a very simple authoritarian message is not going to slow down.
- [12:10]
D
No, I agree. And I do think this is, you know, could potentially be this sign of, you know, people talk about like that Thucydides trap, right? This idea of when you have one global power and another global power and usually you end up having some type of conflict. And we don't know what that type of conflict is going to look like. But this could be kind of, you know, a sign of this kind of battle between these different, this kind of Chinese and more us and kind of Western model.
- [12:36]
A
Talk about something later. I feel like after all of that bleakness about the end of democracy, we should talk about Taylor Swift. Janine, are you a fan?
- [12:45]
B
I'm a huge fan of Taylor Swift. We still.
- [12:47]
A
Me too.
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B
Yeah. I met some people the other day who claimed that they were the ones who first approached her with a big vault of money and said, let's buy up your back catalog. And she knocked them back and they.
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A
But she didn't own her back catalog. This is the big problem here is that her first six albums are not, not owned by Taylor Swift. Her first six albums were owned by a record label called Big Machine. She did not own Big Machine. Her dad owned a small chunk of it and the guy who did own it wound up selling it to Scooter Braun, who's her arch enemy because he represents Kanye west. And now they're in a massive fight.
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B
Yes. So I'm telling you, I met the financiers who said, we approached her first and said, do you want to buy your archive? And she said no.
- [13:36]
A
Wait, so what you're saying, what you're saying is that she had. Right. A few first refusal on her own masters. And she said no, this is like original reporting. Must credit slate money.
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B
Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not going on the record. It was backstage at a gig I was in corporate hospitality.
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A
I mean that would be a big development in this case because there's a lot of he sheds she said going on.
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B
I think it's quite consistent. I think it's quite consistent with her. Her position, which is an artist should automatically, through natural right, own the right to perform and play their work. They create their work and it should be theirs. So if she didn't want to do a massively over financed engineered deal in order to buy her catalog and is appealing to the natural rights of artists to own their material, that's. That seems consistent.
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A
And so then the people who did buy it were financed by Carlyle, the great private equity giant. And now she's fighting with Carlyle and now Elizabeth Warren is siding with Taylor Swift against Carlyle. Because Carlyle is private equity. Anna, can any of this end well?
- [14:48]
D
I mean, I'm pretty sure that at the end of the day, both Carlyle and Taylor Swift will be just okay. I. Yeah, like, I mean, the going after Carlyle is kind of odd because, like, they have a. It's a minority stake. Like, they don't really have any control about. You don't really have a significant control over what happens here. Right?
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A
No, but they couldn't. But Scooter Braun couldn't have done this deal without them.
- [15:09]
D
Correct. But it's done. So it's not like they can do that much now that. That's what I'm saying. I mean, I understand the. Especially now that PE funds are kind of like the new kind of goblins of finance that I understand, you know, putting that name out there. And then I'm also not surprised that you had Elizabeth Warren and AOC coming out and, you know, against them. But at the end of the day, I do think this goes back to this idea that you're saying earlier that artists, almost all artists, do not own their masters. And while now you have some artists that have a lot of power, people like Taylor Swift, that can negotiate new contracts with and potentially have control over their new masters, like, it's a sad situation because on the one hand, you want to say, like, oh, artists should have control over this, but they also sign contracts, and that's also how some of these smaller labels continued to produce their music and employ people. Right.
- [16:02]
A
I guess the question is, if you're Carlyle and you are interested in buying Taylor Swift's masters or buying a minority stake in Taylor Swift's masters, do you ever stop and think to yourself, wait, I'm doing this not only without her consent, but against her wishes. And that is a bad.
- [16:23]
B
Look how this kind of come as a surprise to them because, you know, Prince changed his name to a squiggle in a very similar thing. Back in my era and before that, I think Queen had a row with somebody. There were certainly two rival versions of Queen's greatest hits in the 70s. It was a very big deal.
- [16:41]
A
And Paul McCartney had a huge fight with Michael Jackson when Michael Jackson bought the Beatles back catalog.
- [16:47]
B
Right. And yet everybody, as Anna quite rightly points out, seems to have done just fine out of every single one of these battles. There's a whole bunch of artists, clearly, who do not have Taylor's clout, who are being squeezed by streaming services in these tiny, tiny, tiny returns and don't own their Rights and don't have the ability to say, well, I simply won't do a medley at the next Grammys because of bad scooter brawn and they're properly struggling. So Taylor stands up and says, this is really bad and artists should own the intellectual copyright to their work. It is a bit like, I see it as her suing that DJ that grabbed her ass. I see it in the same way. It's not really for her. She's doing it for other people. I stand Taylor. I stand.
- [17:32]
A
We stand with. Over here in Oxfordshire. We stand with Taylor. Emily, are you with us? Are you with Anna?
- [17:39]
C
I mean, I'm with no one here. I mean, I think first of all, this was not a great Carlisle. And backing Scooter Braun on this, I mean, that was dumb. Taylor Swift does not like, as you pointed out earlier, she despises this guy because. Because he's, you know, Kanye's manager. And they did that, that video, the famous video where there was like a Taylor Swift clone who was naked, so she hates him. So buying a label that basically only exists because they have her master recordings, I think 80% or something like 80% of big machines revenues through Taylor Swift, like that was a bad idea. And as soon as that happened, Taylor Swift said, well, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to rerecord all my music as soon as my. As soon as I'm allowed to and then you won't have to go to big machine anymore. So she basically said, after this deal happened, she's like, I'm gonna put these guys out of business. So of course they tried to prevent her from singing back catalog at the American Music Awards because they needed to do something to have kind of some kind of leverage over her. It just seems like I don't, I don't stand with Taylor Swift. Like I don't care. She's really rich.
- [18:46]
A
Do you think she's recording her first six albums or do you think she's just threatening to re record them in order to get some kind of a leverage?
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C
I think, I think it's a threat. I don't think she's going to spend her time re recording all those albums. I think, yeah, I agree. I think it's a threat and it's just posturing.
- [19:01]
A
She going to do it.
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B
I think she will. I think there'll be rainbows and unicorns and ex boyfriends and sneakers and T shirts and high heels and she will do it.
- [19:11]
D
I mean, I respect her coming out.
- [19:13]
A
I will buy all of those pre recorded albums. Because I. Stan Taylor.
- [19:16]
D
What I, what I think is interesting here is that you're getting these very, very different views of like Taylor Swift's art, right? Like you have the kind of view of Taylor Swift and her many, many fans on Twitter and this idea of like, you know, this is, this is the thing I've created. And honestly, those are cash flows to Carlisle. Those are cash flows, right. And Emily, you're not wrong that you do think that if you are buying cash flows. No, you're not. If you're, if you're buying a stake in something and its primary way of generating cash is this incredibly volatile asset that in theory could significantly dilute the value of that asset.
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A
You saying that Taylor Swift is an incredibly volat volatile asset?
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D
She is an incredibly.
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C
I mean, I'm sorry, Anna.
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D
She's like never. I respect.
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A
I mean just read the lyrics to Blank space. It's all in there.
- [20:09]
C
Oh, I forget that Felix has that whole like pop music thing.
- [20:12]
A
But I want to stick on this whole idea of incredibly volatile assets, Anna, because without changing the subject too much, there's this French cosmetics company called Coty that just spent $600 million buying asset which if there's any asset more volatile than 29 year old Taylor Swift, it's surely 21 year old Kylie Jenner. Right? I think that they have just bought 50% of Kylie Jenner for $600 million.
- [20:38]
D
I think this was a move of genius on Kylie Jenner's part because I think that they are over, they are significantly overpaying for this asset. I think that you've already, I believe started to see some sales at Kylie Cosmetics decline. I think as you, as you are now rightly pointing out, I think the idea that she's going to be able to maintain her current popularity and that she might not just do something crazy at one point, you know, that's, that's a big chance you're taking. But you know What? She sold 51% of that company at a very high valuation. So good for her.
- [21:07]
C
And they're doing. Cody was not doing very well. And now, I mean they should rename themselves Cody with a K, right? And I think their stock went up after they announced the deal.
- [21:16]
D
Well, that's also not because you are actually seeing a less of, this is less fun, but you are seeing a lot more M and A in this kind of beauty and cosmetics and you're seeing a lot of these kind of larger brands in legacy brands that are purchasing these kind, these upstarts, right? Because it's cheaper. Well, it's not really cheap, but it's sometimes easier to just buy those brands as opposed to trying to generate that type of thing internally.
- [21:36]
C
Well, that's where the sales are now. And makeup, like the big drugstore brands are basically in decline. People just, you know, they want to buy, like the cool Instagram makeup, and so that's where these big companies are going to go to do deals.
- [21:48]
D
But it does suggest that even though right now that that might seem to make sense, you know, it will be interesting to see, like, what happens in 10 years. Right.
- [21:56]
C
Or in one year.
- [21:57]
D
That's a good point.
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A
Kylie Jenner more or less invented the entire category of makeup that is sold over Instagram. No one really did it before her Glossier. Glossier was there, but. So the question is, because she has such a huge following on Instagram, she managed to become much richer than any of her sisters. She kind of touched some kind of a nerve. Her sister Kendall is the highest paid model in the world, is making like $18 million a year. And that's nothing compared to what Kylie is making, something makeup. It's amazing the power of her reach. But how long can it last?
- [22:34]
B
Almost entirely ground up, which was so bizarre, that moment sort of two, three years ago when people started talking about Kylie and they were not talking about Minogue and as. As old. So just a bit.
- [22:46]
A
Kylie will always be Minogue.
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B
Always be Minogue. And I'm just glad that trademark dispute went the right way. But my teens started talking about Kylie in a way that was clearly unmanogue related and were exercising my economic power in order to buy something I'd never heard of.
- [23:03]
A
Your economic power has gone to buy lip kits?
- [23:06]
B
Yeah, quite. In order to buy something that I'd never heard of, related to a family brand that I was frankly dismissive of, and suddenly I'm, you know, funding it. So, yes, Instagram was completely the way to do it. And it went through the hearts and minds of teens and the pocketbooks of their parents.
- [23:20]
A
And do you think Kylie cosmetics is worth $1.2 billion again?
- [23:25]
B
All those things like Jo Malone and Miller Harris Lynn Harris's perfume company. They start out as these incredibly artisanal, bespoke brands and then get bought by Estee Lauder or whoever and usually. And usually then fall out terribly with a person. I think Eve Lohen was one of the original beauty people who got burned badly by being bought out by a big firm and sort of went off to do her own thing. Interestingly, the founders are never really heard of again because their name is a brand and they can't exist aside from it. So I would be, you know, Kylie, I think have to accept that her 30s are going to be very quiet.
- [24:02]
A
I think Kylie did this right. I think that we have seen, as you say, like we've seen names like Helmut Lang and Jill Sander get bought up and those names then cannot be controlled by the people who are born with those names. And it's a bit weird that you can't use your own name anymore. But that's not what happened here. Kylie only sold 50% and she still runs the company and Cosi does not have control.
- [24:27]
B
Oh, widdit is like a two year earnout, isn't it? It's a two year earn out.
- [24:31]
C
She sold 51%.
- [24:32]
B
I don't know.
- [24:33]
D
Yeah, no, but I. It will be interesting though because unlike some of these other like names we're thinking of, I mean this brand, I mean like, because it was designed with these like literal images of herself that she's putting out constantly. She is so tied to this brand in a way that I do think is actually different than what we've seen in the past. Just because social media has changed that.
- [24:51]
A
And you just wonder if it's a label anymore. It's an actual person.
- [24:55]
D
Right.
- [24:56]
C
That's what we're seeing with Taylor Swift too. She was able to go out on social media, talk directly to her fans and like use that as leverage in a licensing dispute. Essentially. Like now celebrities have this immense, immense leverage on their own, this economic power.
- [25:09]
D
A small number of them do.
- [25:11]
C
A small number of, of, of women.
- [25:13]
A
One of them does.
- [25:14]
B
Will Kylie be trying to free her lipstick in a year's time?
- [25:19]
A
Okay, let's talk about TikTok. Because the only thing which is more popular than KYLIE Jenner is TikTok. TikTok has been downloaded by 80 million Americans and I have what, 700 million people around the world, Something like that. It is the most addictive app in the history of apps. I have fallen down TikTok holes and suddenly realized that I've managed to spend like two hours looking at TikToks when these things are only lasting in 15 seconds. And I don't know how that is possible. And it is crack cocaine and it is all done by some, I want to say it's all done by some Chinese algorithm. But now all of the TikTok people are saying, no, no, this isn't ByteDance Chinese artificial intelligence algorithms at all. This is all non Chinese based in the United States. The Chinese Owners don't have any control or influence whatsoever because there's this big controversy over TikTok being Chinese owned and whether we should be worried about that. Janine, should we be worried about that?
- [26:18]
B
Well, I will say this. I worry about tech platforms at the point where they arrive in London with very expensive PRs and invite you to a dinner. And ByteDance and the TikTok for founder and their very expensive newly hired European PRs arrived in London about four months ago and, and invited a bunch of opinion formers to a, to a nice dinner where they explained to us that they had regulators in every market, that there were 75 moderators in the UK in Covent Garden and another, however many hundred in America and Germany and France and, and everybody should stop worrying about the content that was being fed to their teens because everything was being sort of seamlessly merged into the local markets and held to local standards. And then I overheard somebody else saying, how do you check the age of your users and the content? And everybody started talking about facial recognition of teens. And I thought, oh yeah, that's not sinister at all. Totally happy about that.
- [27:16]
C
I think it's like it's supposed to be 13 and over for TikTok. My son is 11. Literally, he, everyone has TikTok in his, his, in his class, all the other 11 year olds. There's no, the age thing is, I mean, that's a lie or.
- [27:30]
D
Yeah, yeah. And this story does seem to be kind of bringing together these, these fears of tech platforms in general and then these fears of kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier of Chinese ownership and this kind of, these different standards. And I know like Mark Zuckerberg was saying that Tick Tock was censoring the Hong Kong protests. I don't know if that's true or not. And it's kind of odd to have Mark Zuckerberg being the person out here saying this. But, but, but I do think TikTok, it's this interesting company that we're, you know, we're, I imagine we're going to see a lot of fights over it moving forward because it does just seem in this kind of center of all these different conversations, they seem to really.
- [28:06]
C
I think Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives are out there speaking up against TikTok because it's owned by the Chinese. It's like a great distraction from Facebook. Doesn't have to be like the big bad social media company anymore. Now they can, they can say, oh, the Chinese social media company, that's the.
- [28:22]
D
Really bad Especially because, except for TikTok, it's great.
- [28:25]
A
I mean, it's so. It's what everyone likes to call the only good social network. You go on it and you see things that make you happy. There's. I mean, people are talking a little bit about political information and misinformation because that happens on every social network. But I genuinely feel that that kind of thing happens much less on TikTok than almost any other.
- [28:47]
B
That's because they're censoring it. Felix, do you think, Janine, do you.
- [28:52]
A
Think that the Chinese owners of TikTok are actively interfering in how it's run?
- [28:59]
B
I think. Well, I mean, it's. That it's not interfering if you're running your platform according to your rules and your guidelines. That's. That's just having a business. They, I think they would be very, very happy to think all of the content on this network is teens doing very funny dancing and memes and things that are harmless and joyful. And that's not how media, peer to peer teen media works, because that's not how teenagers work. They are passionate and rebellious and they go on strike from school and, and want to, you know, change the world. So there will be a clash. And the cultural Chinese way of dealing with content that you don't think is appropriate is to excise it. And I don't doubt for a second that that is happening.
- [29:49]
D
Yeah. And I also think there's this issue because, you know, even though right now I think a lot of the, you know, the kind of servers with this data are actually in the US I believe. But I also think that moving forward, I think next year the Chinese security laws are going to be expanding towards US companies, or I guess the US Parts of Chinese companies in a much stricter way. And then it's going to be a lot harder for these companies to get around Chinese requirements about giving the government access to data. And I think that's going to make the argument of TikTok a lot harder.
- [30:18]
A
Well, one of the ways that TikTok became big was that it bought this app called Musical Ly, which was quite big in the United States, and it rebranded it as TikTok. But because it was an acquisition, it technically falls under the purview of cfius, which is the regulator in the United States, which makes sure that Chinese companies don't do acquisitions which are bad for national security. And famously, CFIUS forced a Chinese company to sell Grindr after having bought it because they thought that was a security risk. And it is entirely possible And I would go so far as to say probable that CFIUS will go along to ByteDance and say, you have to sell TikTok. And I'm not sure that ByteDance is going to be too upset about this because TikTok is worth, what, like $70 billion now or something? They bought Musical Liv, a chump change. They're going to make a huge amount of money on it. Their big money making app in China are going to remain big money making apps in China and they just get to, you know, be the victims here and walk away with $70 billion.
- [31:21]
B
I mean, it doesn't sound terrible, does it? And they're not. And they're not going to have to carry on hiring moderators in Covent Garden, which is no tech company's idea of fun. That's not what they want.
- [31:31]
D
So like Carlyle Group and Taylor Swift, they will also end up just okay.
- [31:36]
C
Everything'S going to be victimless.
- [31:38]
B
Podcast.
- [31:40]
A
There are no victims except for the, you know, Hong Kongers in Polytechnic University. Let's have a numbers round. Why not? Janine, you get to go first because you're the guest.
- [31:52]
B
Oh my. This is very unfair on Emily, but my number of the week is $700, which is the amount per week that the Park Slope Food Co Op spends on plastic bags. There is a brilliant, brilliant 80,000 word piece in the New Yorker about Brooklyn's Park Slope Food Co Op, which is a perverse, fascinating institution. I urge you to read it. I could read it for the rest of my life. I mean, it will take you a significant chunk of your life to read it, but every word is golden.
- [32:22]
A
And the idea is that if they replace those plastic bags, and remember, these aren't plastic bags where you carry your groceries home in. These are just a little thin plastic bag which you put your grapes in.
- [32:31]
B
For weighing your cum parts.
- [32:32]
A
And ugly flutes for weighing your cum parts.
- [32:34]
D
Exactly.
- [32:35]
A
If they replace those plastic bags with biodegradable bags, then that would cost $17,000 a week or something like that.
- [32:44]
B
I mean, for a start, we'd need to discuss it over a two hour, 45 minute monthly council meeting. And I would need you to think about the rights of the people that made the plastic bags. I'd just like you to think about that before you make that kind of decision and consider the impact on those in the global South.
- [33:00]
A
And can we. And can we talk about hummus?
- [33:03]
B
Oh, do you remember the hummus wars?
- [33:05]
A
The Hummus wars. The hummus wars were classic. Emily. Were you part of the hummus wars, Evan?
- [33:10]
C
I was just sitting back and just enjoying the content. That's, that's my relationship with the Park Slope Food Co Op is just purely a spectator, I'm afraid.
- [33:19]
B
I lived in Park Slope during the Hummus wars. We used to get leafleted in the streets.
- [33:24]
A
Emily, do you have a number which may or may not be Park Slope Food Co Op related?
- [33:30]
C
Well, I won't do this. My Park Slope Food Co Op number, my backup number is three. And it has nothing to do with food. That is the number of months in Democratic candidate Amy Klobuchar paid family leave plan versus six months, which is the number of months off you get in Kamala Harris's paid family leave plan. And I'm talking about this because we had here in the US we had the Democratic debates, presidential debates on Wednesday night. And it was the first time this year, at least that any candidate was asked about paid family leave, which is a big and important issue. And it was just really striking. And I'm excited about it because there were these two female candidates talking about their proposals. There were four women asking them questions in the debate on Wednesday. And it was just, I think, a very significant moment in sort of for progress, in a sense.
- [34:18]
D
Agreed.
- [34:19]
A
My number is $26 billion, which is the amount of money that Charles Schwab is reportedly wanting to pay for TD Ameritrade. These are two online brokerages which have both recently slashed their commissions to zero. And judging by the $26 billion purchase price of TD Ameritrade, this doesn't seem to have hurt either of their values much, if at all.
- [34:48]
D
I think that's not overly surprising because I feel like in, in this kind of new zero commission world, you're going to need scale. Right. And so I think you're probably, I would imagine this is going to be the first of a lot of these kind of consolidation in the industry.
- [35:01]
A
Anna, you get to have the last number.
- [35:04]
D
I will. So mine is $0.77. So that would be the price on the Ecuadorian 2028 bond. So they hit a record low this.
- [35:15]
A
Week, but they're still higher than the 70 cents on the We Work 2020.
- [35:20]
D
That is a very fair point. No, I just. So basically. And it was a pretty significant fall in the price of the bonds after this reform bill didn't go through. And I guess I just think it's interesting partly because I think Ecuador is interesting, but also because part of the reason that people were really opposed to this tax reform was because it was seen as being connected with the imf. IMF and it just seems like increasingly in Latin America, even though countries often still need to go to the imf, the very act of going to them then completely eliminates the political capital of that politician and makes it impossible for them to push through the reforms mandated by the imf, which seems like a problem.
- [36:00]
C
The IMF needs to reboot.
- [36:01]
A
Out with it. If you had to choose an Ecuador bond or a WeWork bond, which one would you choose?
- [36:07]
D
Oh, Ecuador. 100%.
- [36:10]
B
Like, definitely Ecuador.
- [36:12]
A
Definitely Ecuador. No, no one is long. We work.
- [36:15]
D
No one's long.
- [36:15]
A
Slate Money. Okay, I think that's it for us this week. Amazing transatlantic edition of Slate Money. Many thanks to not only just me and Molly, but also Kevin Bobby here in the UK for helping put this whole show together. And especially many thanks to Janine Gibson for wrapping up warm in the cabin number five in Oxfordshire to record this. Many thanks to you guys for listening. Our email, as ever, is slatemoneylate.com and we will talk to you next week on Slate Money.