President-elect Biden has been steadily building out his cabinet in recent weeks. Listen in as Steve Bleiberg and Kevin Hebner discuss key economic roles including Janet Yellen's appointment to Treasury Secretary and Katherine Tai as U.S. Trade Representative. We also explore anti-trust regulation and what impact a Biden administration might have on the Tech industry. Lastly, as the year comes to a close, Steve and Kevin share some books they recommend for some quality holiday season reading. (December 18, 2020)
President-elect Biden has been steadily building out his cabinet in recent weeks. Listen in as Steve Bleiberg and Kevin Hebner discuss key economic roles including Janet Yellen's appointment to Treasury Secretary and Katherine Tai as U.S. Trade Representative. We also explore anti-trust regulation and what impact a Biden administration might have on the Tech industry. Lastly, as the year comes to a close, Steve and Kevin share some books they recommend for some quality holiday season reading. (December 18, 2020)
Hello,
Speaker 2:And welcome to Actively Speaking. I'm your host, Steve b Weiberg. Join us each episode as we discuss current issues concerning capital markets and portfolio management from the perspective of an active manager.
Speaker 1:Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Actively Speaking. Uh, my guest today is Kevin Hevner, epic global strategist, who I think is joining us now for the third time. Welcome, Kevin.
Speaker 3:Oh, thanks, Steve.
Speaker 1:So it's, it's the end of the year and it's the end of a presidential administration. We've got, uh, a new administration coming in in January, and so we thought we'd talked today about some of the, the faces we're gonna be seeing in that new administration on the economic side and what that might mean for policy and, uh, how investors might react to that. So we're, we'll, we're gonna spend most of our time talking about that, but then at the end, given that it is year end, and this is probably our last episode of 2020, we thought we'd maybe talk a little bit about some book recommendations, since people are likely to have some free time over the holidays. So we'll get to that eventually. But, so Kevin, what do we know so far about the, the new Biden, the incoming Biden administration? Who are the, who are the main players gonna be on the economic side?
Speaker 3:Um, Steve, so before talking about the individual players, I, I think it's, it's important to think about what Biden set up as the priorities for his administration. And he is outlined four priorities, covid, racial equity, climate change, and then his fourth one is economic recovery. And, and with that, he's trying to explain what he means by that and what he's gonna be emphasizing. He's listed unemployment insurance benefits. There's a lot of discussion about extending those now aid for states and local governments. And certainly their dead situation is, well deficit situation is dire at this point. Fiscal stimulus, there's a lot of discussion in DC about this. Now the output gaps gonna get large, and then we think over the next six to eight weeks, the, um, pandemic actually gets, so one could imagine argument for that green infrastructure he's been emphasizing for quite a while in terms of trade. Onshoring remains a theme. There's also a theme of the Trump administration, but using tax incentives to bring production back home. And then in terms of trade and trade deals, certainly working with allies more than Trump did. But in China, I think we're gonna see more a change in tone than in substance on it. So when we think about what's important to Biden on these topics, I think it's, it's at this point, crucial to contrast that with the Trump administration. And, and he's really had three priorities, economic priorities. One is tax cuts, a second is deregulation, and the third is America first or America alone. But you can see that American voters really did have a pretty stark choice between a center right set of economic policies and a center left set of economic policies. And so that's quite important, despite all the rhetoric and the divisiveness, in some sense, we've had, at least in economic terms, a sort of a traditional choice between center left and center right policies.
Speaker 1:So far, the names that we've seen put forward for, for posts in the new administration are sometimes, uh, some are more familiar than others. So our treasury, we have Janet Yellen, which is a name we all, we all remember from her Germans Fed chairman. What, what's the difference between being fed chairman and treasury secretary?
Speaker 3:Yeah, certainly, certainly they're, they're very different rules. And, and when we're trying to say, well, how did Biden come up with, um, Janet Yellen for the most important economic role? Um, it, it seems overall, you know, he has a set of criteria he's looking at, not just on the, in terms of the economics team, but the teams. A lot of areas we're seeing people who have Ivy League education, and for better or worse, that's something we're seeing that wasn't so prominent under Trump. A lot of experience in government. Janet Yellen has about 25 years in government, so very extensive, not so much experience in, in business, which is something that Trump emphasized more. Biden seems to want relatively boring people. The, uh, president before Trump was known as no drama Obama, and maybe we're gonna have no drama Biden as well, but that's certainly very different than we've had over the last four years. And also consciously trying to have people who are clearly moderate have a track record of being moderate and not a lot of radical socialists we won't see in the cabinet, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Saunders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sort of high profile, more progressive people now, now with Yellen, she had a long time at the Fed. Initially she was head of the San Francisco Fed, and then she was vice chair for quite a while, and then she was chair, uh, Aiden. Before that, she was chair of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Clinton. So she's been involved in government for an awful long time. In terms of the differences between monetary policy and fiscal policy, the remit in treasury is very broad in terms of the Fed remit, its inflation, it's financial stability, uh, and there's a growth component, treasury. This encompasses many, many different roles on the fiscal side. You know, a lot of people are worried that Biden would point someone who's very much a fiscal dove. If, if anything, Yellen's record fiscally is quite conservative. Um, over the last year or two, she's given many speeches saying she's worried about the levels of corporate debt. And I think just about anyone would agree that they're getting worried some levels. She's also worried about the sustainability of social security, uh, and Medicare. Um, certainly given the size of the output gap in the pandemic, you can imagine her, her favoring, uh, expansionary fiscal policy. But to think that she's in, for example, an MMT cap, uh, I think really belies an understanding of what she's been saying for many, many years. I'm
Speaker 1:Just gonna interrupt you for a second. Just explain what MMT is to people who may not be familiar.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So monetary modern theories is the notion that you can have the fiscal authorities and monetary authorities working very closely together. And for any economy like the United States, which is control of its currency, the only limit on fiscal spending, fiscal deficits and the depth overall is inflation. And if we're an environment that is inherently disinflationary with relatively small risk of inflation rising, then there's an awful lot more room on the fiscal side. This is a view, uh, mmt that's been over the last year or two by some economists and some members of the government. But Yellen is certainly not in the MMT cap.
Speaker 1:So I guess we've got, uh, not excite Biden. That's the best I could come up with too much<laugh>, more drama. Drama.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that seems fair.
Speaker 1:Uh, okay, so, so she's, you know, sort of a known quantity. How about the, uh, just in the last couple days we've had the announcement of the, what I think you think it's the second most important economic position, which is the person in charge of trade.
Speaker 3:Yes. And, and certainly under Trump, I think that that was the case. So the current ut Robert, extremely experienced person, I think maybe the most capable person in the, the Trump administration. He had been Deputy S T r United States Trade Representative under Reagan. So he's been doing this a long time. He was in private practice for decades, um, bringing cases, for example, against Japan for steel manufacturers and so forth. Very knowledgeable, deal oriented person, but he is also quite ideologically driven. He did feel that countries were being unfair to the us. He was demine anti-China, and, and many, many of the, the things that he had done. So I, I would say, you know, a bit of an ideologue, whereas the, the nominee for t r, her name is Katherine Ty, very different sort of background time in government. She's currently chief trade lawyer for the house. Wayne means she had a key role in the negotiation of the United States, Mexico, Canada Trade agreement, uh, which is high profile. And then under President Obama, she was the chief person responsible for China and trade negotiations, and then enforcement of those negotiations. She knows China very well. She's loved there. She speaks Mandarin. Her parents are immigrants from Taiwan, but she's not an ideologue. She will push for tougher labor and environmental standards and trade deals, but she won't go in with the sort of baggage and ideological perspective that Robert Leiser had.
Speaker 1:So specifically, what do you think it means for tariffs?
Speaker 3:Well, Biden's said, so, you know, so far that he will keep the tariffs on for some time, but I think he wants to have his chief economic people that that will certainly include Catherine TA and Jenna Yellen, and some others come up with an approach that makes sense and, and where, whereas Trump was very much on America First America loan, I think Biden and his economics team will try to work with allies in Europe, Japan, uk, uh, and so on, and try to come up with a common front on how should we be thinking about China in, in a lot of respects, I think security will be part of that. Technology is a big part of that. And then trade and tariffs as well. So I think we'll keep the status quo for a while, but that certainly is something that I, I would expect to be changed under Biden administration.
Speaker 1:Okay. Uh, but before we move on, I just wanna go back for a second. I, we, we can't leave the topic of Janet Yellen without working in one of my favorite lines. So, which is, uh, your comment about her husband Yes. Which is
Speaker 3:<laugh>. So Janet Yell is married to, um, the only Nobel Prize winner who's a sec most famous economist in his household,
Speaker 1:<laugh>. I love that fact. Uh,
Speaker 3:<laugh>, it's really funny.
Speaker 1:Let's shift a little bit. Uh, so we've talked about the, the two most important people coming into the administration on the economic side. Let's talk about one particular area of economic policy, which I think is likely to, to change. And, and, and I believe you are working on a new white paper about this, which is tech regulation. You know, this has been a big topic for the last year. What do we do about these platforms of places like Facebook and, uh, Twitter and so forth that are, you know, are they plat, are they, do they bear responsibility for the content of what's on them, or are they simply providing the platform? And people on both sides get very exercised about this? And, you know, you've pointed out that in recent years there, uh, you know, antitrust seems to have kind of gone to sleep. There hasn't been a, I think, uh, a single acquisition that's been blocked in recent years, but, uh, I, I think you feel that that might be changing.
Speaker 3:So yes, so I think the case that was formed earlier this week by the FTC against Facebook, uh, it's a very important case. Twenty's been an extremely busy year, but I think this will be one of the five most important events for markets in 2020. The suit is much broader than the DOJs suit against Google, which is quite narrow and fo focused on exclusivity. Um, the DOJ and FTC are still looking at Amazon and Apple, but I, I think, at least for now, they're gonna have an awful lot on their plate, um, digesting these two suits. It's, it's important that tech is now a regulated sector. Um, and we eventually, I think, have its own regulator, and that's normal over the last hundred 50 years in the United States, when we've had a new technology, a new sector develop, the way, um, the platforms have, we do tend to get, uh, a regulator for that sector. The, the focus is primarily on two things. One is exclusionary deals, and, and that's the focus of the DOJ suit against Google. Exclusionary deals with respect to Android and Apple. And the second thing they're focusing on is acquisitions to stifle competition. As you're alluding to earlier, um, the big four tech companies have made over 500 acquisitions over the last two decades. And, uh, one of them has been blocked. And, and, and that's, that's, that's quite exceptional. Uh, one has to wonder about that. Now, in terms of where tech goes, given all this, whether it's a Republican administration or a Democratic administration, and in many, many ways Democrats and Republicans, there's bipartisan support on the need to do something about the tech sector, that it's grown too powerful. Typically, Democrats are more in favor of a more aggressive government presence than Republicans, but there's a lot of bipartisan support for action in this. But what we know from the historical track record with IBM at At&t, uh, I'm going back all the way to Standard Oil, is that the cases take an awful long time. The case against Microsoft in the late nineties took about eight years from start to finish. But even if they take a long time, and even if the government loses, in some sense, it wins. Um, certainly big tech companies are well aware now that they have to be very careful about exclusionary contracts. They have to be very careful about acquisitions. So whatever happens, in some sense, you could argue the government's already won. The second thing, which people don't necessarily realize is that antitrust measures are good for shareholders. You end up with management that's more focused, we get more innovation, and in, in some way obvious, they're less worried about antitrust measures in their business. So, for example, if Facebook was forced to divest Instagram or WhatsApp, you can imagine that the management of those companies would end up being very different as a consequence. So in historical, this has been very good for shareholders. It's also interesting. The third, I think, conclusion from history is that antitrust cases are good for innovation overall. Scott Galloway, who's a marketing professor at NYU's, NYU, uses expression that antitrust oxygenates the market space. And I think that it, at least the track workers, when you get antitrust, it stops anti-competitive behavior, and you end up with, in many cases, entirely new sectors developing, and obviously in areas that we really can't understand at this point. So I think the, the Facebook case, the Google Google case is important, but the Facebook case is one of those especially important cases, and certainly the most important case since, uh, the Microsoft case in 98,
Speaker 1:I, I mean, this is, um, I ask this only sort of half ingest, if if stocks end up doing better when the government comes in and breaks up, you would think that managements of these large companies would be clamoring to be investigated on antitrust grounds and to be broken up if, if ultimately it's gonna benefit their shareholders.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and and you can imagine that if Share holdings were broadly dispersed and the interest of management were made in the, you know, the, the medium longer term interest of shareholders, that might be the case. But in these companies, share Holdings are not broadly dispersed. And you can imagine at Facebook, there are a couple people who aren't going to be happy with a breakup of Facebook. It may be that a majority of shareholders, uh, will be quite happy, but you can imagine a small number of people not being happy at all with this.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's like if you take an equal weighted vote among shareholders as opposed to a share weighted vote, uh, you might get a different outcome if, if people were asked to vote, uh, on, on whether they thought this was a good idea. You mentioned something about, you brought up the, the fact that there are, you know, people on, it's sort of a bipartisan issue, people on both sides of the aisle, who, who believe that there should be for the regulation of tech. I, I found it kind of curious that this suit is being launched, I mean, literally weeks before the end of an administration where we're gonna be changing parties. Is that kind of irrelevant to this? Like, who, who decides to bring these suits within the ftc? Are they political appointees? Are they sort of lifetime, whatever, you know, sort of permanent staff? And, and is, is the change in administrations relevant at all to the timing of, of this suit?
Speaker 3:Clearly, we're gonna have a different head of the FTC in the next couple weeks. We're gonna have a different head of the d oj, uh, in the next couple weeks. Whether that will matter to how aggressively the cases will be carried out. I, I, I have no insight into that at all. The case against Facebook, for example, we know it was started last year and they've been doing a lot of work trying to do their homework, trying to build up the case. So my, my feeling is it's more of a coincidence this has happened when they felt they had all their eyes dotted and ts crossed, and, and also they were working with 46 State ags as well as DC and<laugh>. Um, so an awful lot of coordination, a lot of work to get to that point, but I don't have a lot of insight into the, the political timing of it and how the new head of the ftc, who we don't know yet, or the new head of the doj, uh, how they'll feel about these cases.
Speaker 1:Uh, well, it looks like we've got a lot to keep our eyes on, uh, starting January 20th, 2021 on the economic side. So let's, let's move on to our other topic for today. Uh, this is, as we mentioned, year end, and a lot of people are likely to be taking some time off around the time that they're listening to this podcast. So if you're looking for interesting books to read, we thought perhaps we could give you some recommendations. Kevin, why don't we start with, uh, a recommendation from you?
Speaker 3:Okay, thanks, Steve. My first recommendation, it's, it's, it's carrying on with the Facebook Instagram theme. It's called No Filter, the Inside Story of Instagram. Uh, it's written by Sarah Fryer and for the book, she recently won the 2020 Financial Times McKenzie Business book, uh, of the year. By today's standards, it's relatively short, three 50 pages. Uh, it's 11 hours on Audible, and it certainly is a book that you could listen to, uh, if you have a long driver or something ahead of you. Um, the book Chronicles the rise of Instagram and starts actually quite a few years before Instagram started. Uh, the company itself came into existence since over 10, 10 years ago. It's two co-founders, Kevin ses and Mike, uh, Kreger. They released the, the photo sharing app. And the big innovation with the app is one simple feature. It was their filters that make anything you capture like even better, uh, on the app. They instantly cultivated a community of photographers, artisans around the app, and it went mainstream much more quickly than, than they themselves expected. 18 months after, uh, the app was launched, it did, and at that time, 18 months after launch and only had 13 employees and had no revenue and had no idea how it was ever going to get any revenue, uh, it came to the tension of Mark Zuckerberg who then purchased it for a billion dollars in that time. It had so many headlines. This is crazy. Facebook's spending so much money on this company, it hardly has any employees, no money, who knows how it's ever gonna make any money. But that happened. The co-founders stayed on for quite a while hoping that they could use the resources of Facebook to grow it, but still keeping the aesthetic, the brand, and the cache of the app that worked for a while. But eventually there is lots of tension, lots of drama, lots of bigger life than life personalities, and they're all outlined in the book. Uh, it's a fantastic read that I think gives you some insight on how a tech startup goes from having half a dozen users to 2 billion within a few years.
Speaker 1:Sounds like a, uh, real life version of the TV show, silicone Valley<laugh>. Uh, so my first, uh, I'm gonna give a recommendation, which is, uh, actually not, not a recent book, it's a few years old, but it's, it's Ron Chernow's biography of Ulysses as Grant. Uh, he of course is the writer who also wrote biographies of George Washington and a and Alexander Hamilton, most famously since that one was turned into a huge smash Broadway musical. Don't know if they're gonna do the same thing with Grant, but it's, uh, I, I have, it's, it's also not a short book. It's, uh, it's about 950 pages or so before, before you get to the footnotes at the end. But it's, uh, he's such a good writer that it's, it really is, you know, a page turner. You, you find yourself reluctant to put it down, you know, to, to go to sleep, for example, and, and eager to, to jump back in the next day. And what I found really fascinating was, I mean, it's, it's such a sort of amazingly American story of this, this guy who, you know, was sort of a failure. I mean, well, he was in the Army. He went to West Point and, and spent about 10 years in the Army after graduating from West Point, mostly in the Midwest. He was in St. Louis for a few years, and then he was on the West Coast in Argon and Washington when, of course, in the 1840s and fifties. These were incredibly remote places with virtually nobody around. And, and he was married, but not, you know, he was away from his family, didn't see his second son for two years after he was born. And, and that was one of the reasons he had, uh, a drinking problem was, uh, because he was so isolated. Uh, and so he left the Army in 1854 and really was sort of a failure for the next seven years. Tried farming in Missouri. He tried, uh, he was in a real estate business, uh, with a partner in St. Louis. Uh, then, you know, famously he ended up working in his, his father's leather good story in Galena, Illinois, uh, in 1860, uh, underneath his two younger brothers, basically as a court. And yet what's remarkable is that throughout that period, he would come in contact with people who would, it, it's not a case of, uh, hindsight bias of them saying years later, oh, I always knew he was going to become a big success. There were actually numerous people who said at the time, when they encountered him at that stage of his life, when he was sort of beaten down and unsuccessful, that there were numerous people who met him, interacted with him, and said to people at the time, pointed out that this is an incredibly talented man who someday is going to rise, that, uh, the world is gonna hear more from him someday. Uh, really remarkable. Now, of course, as Daniel Kahneman would say, we don't know what the base rate is. Maybe these are people who said that about everybody they met at the time, and it was bound to happen to somebody. But, uh, I don't think so. You know, he had certain gifts that, that civilian life did not really make use of. It was not the way for him to shine. But that when it came to, you know, when the Civil War started and he went back into the Army, it became immediately clear that he had what was needed. He had the right talents and the right skillset, and that he rose very quickly. And of course, ultimately, you know, after his huge successes in the Western Theater of the war, uh, Vicksburg in particular, and then all through Chattanooga, he was, he was called east to head up, uh, the entire war effort. And it was really Grant who, uh, had the idea that, you know, previously in the first few years of the war in the East, you know, the, the Union generals had the attitude of, you know, capturing territory, that if you captured territory, you were somehow winning, even if the entire Confederate Army escaped to fight another day, and it was Grant, and, and they would, they would not follow up on a victory by chasing that army. And it was Grant to, you know, seeming it, it seems obvious to us in retrospect, but I think only because it turned out to be true. And because he won that, he was the one who sort of forcefully said, it's not about territory. It's about capturing and breaking up these armies, these confederate armies. Without them, the war is over. You know, if you just capture a city and they, but the army is still intact and just go lives to fight on another day, you've, you haven't accomplished much. That was number one. And number two is his, uh, he also forcefully pushed the idea of being in constant motion and in constant attack on multiple fronts as opposed to, you know, have one general do an attack, and the others would sit around doing nothing while that was going on, you know, uh, 50 or a hundred miles away. And Grant, you know, put everybody in motion simultaneously. He had Sherman, you know, in action in the South. He had, uh, Phil Sheridan in action in the Shenandoah Valley all designed to sort of tighten the vice on all fronts, cut off the, uh, you know, the rail lines that were supplying Lee's army and, and, you know, destroy all the infrastructure. And the, basically the, you know, the farms that were, that were feeding the southern armies he was doing, he was, he kept it all going. He kept everything in motion all the time, never led up. And that was ultimately what won the war. So that, that's, that's my first recommendation. Kevin, how about, uh, how about a second one from you?
Speaker 3:Okay, well, my, my second recommendation is nothing like that at all.<laugh>. Uh, it's called the, the Great Reversal, how America Gave Up on Free Markets. It's by an economics professor at nyu. His name's Thomas Phillip. It's shorter than your book. It's 300 pages. It's out on Audible, it's 10 hours. I definitely don't recommend it on Audible cause it's pretty wonky. It's not a light fast Beach read the, um, he does write very well, and he begins by asking, uh, a simple question, why are cell phone plans so much more expensive in the US than Europe, similar for airfares, internet services, and a host of other products? Wh why is that going on? Why, why are things so much more expensive here? And, um, his answer supported by lots of interesting data is that American markets have become less and less competitive over the last two or three decades. Sector after sector in the US economy is more concentrated now than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and is dominated by fewer and bigger players across the country. This process drives prices up while driving down investment productivity, wages resulting in more inequality and a and a host of concerns and con codes that this is partially due to technology and its winner takes all features. But a big chunk is due to lax enforcement of antitrust. And this, to, to one of the themes we're talking about earlier. Uh, and he thinks and recommends that the government needs to return to what it once did best, keeping the playing field level for competition and encouraging innovation. And I do think that's ultimately the meaning of the case this week, uh, filed by the FTC against Facebook and in October by the DOJ against Google. Uh, it's a great book. Uh, it does help us understand the world we're living in investing in, but please be forewarned, it's pretty economicy and, and not the lightest read<laugh>.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, to counter that, I will, I will finish up with a, a very light read, uh, but something I enjoy tremendously. Also a few years old, but I just got around to it. It's called Never a Dull Moment, it's by a British music writer named David Hepworth, and it's about the year 1971 in rock music, and the writer was 21 years old in 1971. So of course, he was a contemporary listening to that music as came out. And he acknowledges upfront that, uh, that most people always think that the music that was popular when they were, you know, 18 to 21 was, was great music. And, and years later, you know, they say, oh, that's, that's what music was really good. And so he's, he's saying, well, I'm gonna make that case that the music of 1971, it was really great and significant, and I know that I have this challenge to overcome, which is that people always say that about the music of their youth, but he tries to back the case by pointing out that many of the albums that were released or recorded and released that year, things like Sticky Fingers by The Rolling Stones, who's Next by the Who, David Bowie's first album, that these are still listened to today, not just by the people who listened to them back then, but in fact have been listened to by multiple subsequent degenerations. They have retained their popularity. But anyway, it's a fun book to read. He organizes it chronologically. He goes, the chapters instead of, you know, chapter one, chapter two, et cetera, it's January, February, March, et cetera. And for each month of the year, he focuses on several groups that were either releasing an album that month or that were something significant was happening to them. And even for somebody like myself, and I was, I'm a little bit younger than him, but I was aware of all this music at the time I was following it. So it was great fun in that regard. I do love the music from that year. And even so, even somebody like me who, who knows a lot about that time period, uh, I still learned an awful lot reading the book. And it was just, uh, that added to the fun that I was learning all sorts of stuff about these, these artists that I really liked. I think his sort of, one of his overarching points is that the whole model that we have in our minds these days of The Rockstar, that's when it was taking shape, was around that time that prior to that time, the way they lived, the way they were treated by the press was kind of different in that around 1971 is when there was a transition to them being treated the way they are treated now as, you know, this kind of royalty almost. I mean, you know, it had happened a bit with The Beatles prior to 1971, but, uh, after 1971, and, and that was also the years of, you know, had Zeppelin's fourth album with Stairway to Heaven. And so he just talks about the way these, uh, the musicians were treated by the, the press and by their fans, uh, starting around that time that the, that sort of was the beginning of the modern world that we still, uh, live in today of in terms of the way, uh, musicians interact with, with their, their fans and, and with the press. So a very fun read, a very, uh, not a difficult book to get through at all,<laugh>. So I guess we'll, we'll finish there. Uh, Kevin, thanks for joining me again. Oh, thanks very much, Steve. My pleasure. And to, uh, all our listeners, have a happy and healthy New year in 2021, and we will talk to you again soon.
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