May 2, 2025 • 30 mins
In the fifth (top secret) episode of Bloomberg Businessweek’s new podcast Everybody’s Business, hosts Max Chafkin and Stacey Vanek Smith look the first 104 days of the Trump administration--particularly the last 4. Businessweek editor Brad Stone joins to discuss Amazon's face-off with Trump, the GDP's downturn and the resignation of Mike Waltz.
Then David Papadopoulos joins from the sidelines of the Kentucky Derby, where he explains why betting on the races is softening and why retirement is often more lucrative for horses than running (and what a retirement it is!).
Finally, as the underrated story of the week, Stacey and Max discuss the rise of new media in the White House press corp, including one influencer who famously thought the moon had disappeared after she didn't see it for several days.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Everybody's business.
I'm Max Chafkin and.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Stacy Vanicksmith.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And Max I would say that we are in the
data doldrums this week. All of the policies and plans
the Trump administration has implemented in his first few months
in office are starting to show up in the data.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
It's not pretty, Stacy.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The big one is GDP Gross domestic Product. We learned
this week that the economy is shrinking. Obviously not a
good sign, and it seems like the culprit is the
tariffs will get into that.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
We also saw a bit of a SmackDown moment between
the Trump administration and Amazon. It was all about tariffs
and transparency.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Spoiler alert. Trump did win that one.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, and then we've got David Poppadopolis Eloni Coho horse
racing expert here to talk about the Run for the Roses,
which is coming up this week. He's going to explain
the economics of betting on horses and also the booming
business stacy of horses having sex.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah, apparently it's a very big business. Apparently it's the
world's greatest retirement.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You decide. Also we have.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Our underrated story of the week.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, this could be huge stacy and it's about the moon.
I don't want to worry you, but it might not
be there.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
If this story is true, it is by far the
biggest story of the week.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
The Trump administration hit a big milestone this week, one
hundred days President Trump has been in office, and I
have to say, Max, it has been pretty action packed
one hundred days.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Oh yeah, And in fact, even just this week, there
has been an almost overwhelming amount of news. I'm in
LA this week, and so I thought I would ask
some Angelino's what economic issues they are seeing, what they're
worried about from the news just right now from this week.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
If no one brings up Bill Belichick and his girlfriend,
they're lying.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
It's a lack of education.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
I think we saw with the tariff conversation people being
surprised that they're the ones that are going to have
to pay for it. And I think that's a big
loss to not understand, like how your community works.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I am worried. This is not an economy I like,
and des tariff just makes it the uncertainty.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
We don't like uncertainty. I think, no, what he does
I think the whole world worries me.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I don't think there's anything that doesn't worry me, honestly,
just to say, wow, how did we get here?
Speaker 6 (02:41):
I'll look on the block and I don't know if
that this is just LA, but I'm definitely seeing a
big drop in lunch crowds. You'd see Conan O'Brien out
there like once a week. We don't see him anymore. Conan,
Are you okay? Yeah, Conan, come on listening.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I think he definitely is.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thing is throwing me a little bit stacy, but just
a bundle of anxiety, which I understand because we've been
talking about one hundred days and there are all these retrospectives,
hundred days, hundred days, hundre days. We want to do
things a little bit differently this week, and instead of
focusing on the last hundred days, we thought we just
focused like on the last three days or four days,
(03:22):
you know, day one hundred, day one oh one, day
one oh two, day one oh three, because even that
little short amount of time has been crazy.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
It's been so.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Crazy, in fact, that we felt like we couldn't cover
the last few days alone, that we needed to bring
in some backup so we brought in the best backup.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Bradstone, editor of Business Week. He is here to help
us sort through this all.
Speaker 7 (03:45):
Hey, Brad Hi, I'm Max Hi Stacy.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So let's each of us take an issue. Brad, why
don't you start with what happened on day one hundred.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
I think if we're evaluating this week, the one thing
for me that sticks out is the president's attempt to
mold our perception of a reality that looks increasingly unfavorable
for his policies and for the economy. And let me
put it in perspective. So Amazon has created a site
called Amazon Hall, which is essentially a copy of these
(04:14):
Chinese companies Timu and Chian, and an attempt to basically
import individual products to the United States, you know, cheap,
cheap things like sandals or toys or t shirts, stresses
under this deminimous exception that's now going away to avoid
any import levies. What Amazon was threatened to do is
something that actually Timu has already done, which is to list,
(04:37):
as you would with sales tax, what the tariff price is.
And the White House called this a hostile political act
that Donald Trump picked up the phone and called Jeff Bezos,
presumably either on his yacht or in his mansion in Miami,
and Amazon quickly reversed course. And so in this case,
Trump's attempt to mold our perception of the economic impact
(04:59):
of his policy was sucessful.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Let's just get the perspective from the White House. Kevin Hassett,
Council of Economic Advisor's director, weighed in on Tuesday on
this whole Amazon issue.
Speaker 8 (05:10):
The bottom line is that if we charge a tariff
out a foreign country, then if they have itelastic supply
to US, then the supplier in that country is going
to bear the tariff, not the US consumer. And the
idea that Amazon is going to say that the tariff
is passing through to the consumer means that they don't
understand economics.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Can I just say he's not totally wrong.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
That's like a hard disagree. I think he is totally wrong,
and he knows he's wrong. He has a PhD in economics.
He knows he's wrong. This is not just like not true.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
But the point is if Amazon plays one hundred and
forty five percent tariff and charges ten dollars and then
adds a line item that's one hundred and forty five
percent of its ten dollars of fourteen fifty. That is
a political act, even though in addition to being like
an act of mathematics, the way these tariffs are going
to be absorbed is going to be across a bunch
of different constitution and not just end consumers, also workers,
(06:02):
also small businesses, Like everybody pays this tax.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yes, but the tariffs are being passed through to the
consumer and will continue to be. I mean, companies can't
and won't absorb all of the costs.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
There's just no way, right, and that cost will be
absorbed in a number of different places, right the wholesaler,
the manufacturer sells it to Amazon. They might eat some
of the costs. Amazon sets the retail price, it might
eat some of the costs. But how much of that
tariff is being passed on to the consumer. And it
was whatever poor executive or engineer, perhaps now unemployed, devised
(06:36):
this idea. It was not a political act. This was
i will say, an Amazonian act, very much in the
vein of early Amazon that they're going to tell you
if you bought a product and the price went down.
This was, you know, genetically a customer focused company that
wants to provide maximum transparency, and the fact that you know,
(06:56):
Jeff got this call and immediately reversed course on it,
I think as a really a bit of a sad
commentary on how Amazon has changed over the years.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, I mean, it just definitely seems like Bezos who
kind of projects this really powerful, he's shirtless, he's got
the cowboy head, and yet the company at least clearly
operating at a disadvantage. And of course not alone like
we've seen other large companies really struggle to try to
stay on the right side of this administration.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
And I think what we have seen is that Bezos
in particular has had a very clear sense of where
his larger interests lie. His interest with Blue Origin, Amazon's
interests in its antitrust case with the FTC, and they
have made a business decision since day one of this
administration to try to stay on the right side of
an impetuous president. And we saw that this week.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Okay, that was day one hundred, day one oh one, Stacy,
what happened on day one oh one?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Okay, So for me, the news of the week, bar Nunn,
has got to be Gross Domestic Product GDP. We got
those numbers out this week. It's basically considered to be
the measure of economic growth, kind of the sum total
of all the goods and services our economy produces. We
got the numbers for the first three months of the year,
the first quarter, and it was actually surprisingly not good.
(08:12):
Our economy shrank for the first three months of the
year for the first time in years. It did not
contract by a lot, just three tens of our percent.
But the economy has been growing pretty steadily over the
last few years. This is a really not great sign
that our economy is slowing down. Of course, if the
economy keeps on slowing down for another few months, we
are in recession territory.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
And the culprit here was.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
It was tariffs one hundred percent because imports get subtracted
from GDP, and imports were up thirty percent, mostly because
I think companies were importing a whole bunch of stuff
to try to get around tariffs, including of course Apple
very imported apparently six hundred tons of iPhones from India
(08:58):
trying to get around whatever tariffs were going to come down.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Now. Trump blamed this on Biden. He said this was
the Biden overhang. Is there anything to that or is
this just like naked politicking, attempting to like blame current
economic numbers on the previous president?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
You know, I think there is a point here, which
is that a lot of the best data that we
get has a lag right, Like a lot of these
hard numbers. Things don't show up right away in the economy,
including the tariffs. Like one of the things that I've
heard a lot of people saying is like, there's all
this tariff news, but I haven't really noticed it or
felt it yet. I personally haven't really noticed it or
(09:37):
felt it yet, but it's maybe coming.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I think there is some validity to that.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
But just because the thing throwing the numbers off is
this huge amount of imports. I don't think that's because
of Biden. I don't think that companies and people are
importing a whole bunch of stuff before Trump comes into office.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
This seems directly directly because of tariffs.
Speaker 5 (09:59):
To me, I think there is an argument, and we're
just gonna have to see in the next quarter that
you know, when this import sort of demand pull ahead wanes,
when you know the decline in federal spending because of
DOGE as reflected in these numbers, and you know, it
remains to be seen what sort of macro impact these
tariffs will have. I thought one of the most interesting
responses from a White House that really did struggle to
(10:22):
message around this decline of GDP was the President saying
that maybe kids should just have three dolls instead of thirty.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
You know, if somebody should, all the shelves are going
to be open.
Speaker 6 (10:33):
Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of
thirty dollars, you know, and maybe the two dolls will
cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
I mean, you never expected to hear that kind of
message from this president. I think, you know, maybe he
does have a point, but telling Americans to consume less
it was surprising coming from this White.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
House as someone whose house is like overflowing with kid crap.
Like I can tell you he definitely has a point,
a point, that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Like, it's actually, I think a very good point.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And I think American consumerism maybe has gone a little overboard.
But if we're buying two dollars instead of thirty, that's
really bad for the economy.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
That is a recession at least.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
You know, my Barbie dreamhouse is going unused and I
feel like.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Barbie Dreamhouse is gonna have to downsize.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I need to talk to my daughter. Day one o two, Stacy,
and it's still happening. So I feel like it's a
little bit unfair to say that day one oh one
was the big day, because already Day one o two,
Thursday morning, Mike Walls, one of Trump's national security advisors,
one of the central players in the Signal Group chat
affair Stacey and Brad. I hate to say this, but
(11:47):
he's falling on his sword, he's stepping down, he's leaving
the chat.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I mean, that is a big story. I don't think
it's like GDP big, but that's a big one.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
The day is early, Stacy, The day is yeah early.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
I mean, look, I think it's probably good news. It
shows that there's a measure of accountability in an administration
that so far has shown a lack of discipline and experience.
And this was absolutely egregious lapse in national security. And
you know, Trump tried to kind of play it off
at the beginning, and it's interesting that now it has
had repercussions.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Can I give you guys one other thing that's going
to happen. We've gotten through three days, you know, day
one oh three, that's Friday. I don't think this is
going to happen on Friday, but I suppose it's theoretically
possible Trump could be Pope. I hope I'd like to
be pope. That would be my number.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
One judge number one out of this does not sound
like something that's news.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
I don't think this counts.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
It would win the week.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I will give you that it is bigger than GDP
if Trump becomes the Pope.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I think it was said in jest.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
I'm not going to put this in the same category
him ruminating about a third term as president. I think
he was literally joking. But obviously, you know he does
like to be in the spotlight.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Well, Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina, noted, sort of
how do I put this? He has at times been
at pains to keep Trump happy. Did a tweet that
I think has to be comic, and if it is,
it's just amazing comedy. I was excited to hear that
President Trump is open to the idea of being the
next pope. This would truly be a dark horse candidate,
(13:29):
but I would ask the papal conclave and the Catholic
faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility watching
for White Smoke. I may need to rewatch conclave. This
may be a borderline spoiler. I mean, I know there
are there are always surprise possibilities for Pope, but this
would be something else, all right, Stacey, Saturday, which I
(13:51):
believe is going to be the one hundred and fourth
day of Trump's presidency, is also the one hundred and
fifty first running of the Kentucky Derby. You know, the
biggest horse race in the country. Are you as excited
as I am.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I'm not a big horse racing person, but it is
quite like the August event. I kind of like all
of the ceremony around it, the hats, the mint julibs,
the you know, Louisville, Kentucky kind of really rolls out
the red carpet.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
I've I don't know, I feel like there's something kind
of nice about it.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Well, what's great is that David Popadopolis, who of course
is the host of elon ankor our sister podcast, as
well as Bloomberg Market Sedator. He is like the biggest
gambler that I know, also the biggest Kentucky Derby enthusiast
and somebody who could kind of explain why this kind
of weird race still matters. David, thanks for joining.
Speaker 7 (14:41):
Us, Hey Max, Hey Stacy. It should be Derby every
year for Saturday and May. It should be your north
star everything.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
In life like all for our north star for the year.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
You're David for sure.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
I have to say it's amazing to me that my wife,
after all these years, she'll say to me, when is
the Derby? I said, same as the last year and
the year before that. It's the first Saturday in May.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
David, did you buy us a ticket?
Speaker 7 (15:08):
No, but I did bring daily racing forms if you'd
like to.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Is the Derby the best one? David? This is the
super Bowl of horses or like.
Speaker 7 (15:16):
It is absolutely, by orders of magnitude, the marquee event
in horse racing in the United States. Each year, the purse,
the amount of money that goes to the winning owners,
is not as great as in some other races. That
doesn't matter. It is how much is it? It is
been bumped up in recent years. It's now up to
(15:36):
five million dollars.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
You wrote a newsletter which I believe is published this
morning in Bloomberg's Business of sports newsletter, which everyone should
subscribe to. But you wrote a thing about how basically
this is a dying business. I mean, we are getting
all excited about a business that you said is quote
withering away.
Speaker 7 (15:54):
For me, this is a source of great pain and
it's a shame. As someone who fell in love with
the game at a young age, I got the bug
from my father, who was a degenerate gambler as well.
But yeah, it is slowly, but surely, despite all the
industry's efforts, it's slowly shrinking. And what's interesting, of course,
it continues to shrink, and gambling at the racetrack continues
(16:16):
to go down at a time when there's a gambling
boom among us, right, I mean, who among us here
does not have multiple gaming apps on their phone, and
yet that money less and less of that money each
ear goes.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
To the track.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
It's part of the problem that exactly though, that there
are so many other places to gamble now that there's
just a lot of competition for those those dollars.
Speaker 7 (16:37):
Well, I definitely think that's part of it. I mean,
if you think over the years, if you tracked the
arc of gambling, I mean racetrack gambling at the track.
You know, one hundred years ago it was the place
where Americans bet. Horse racing was the biggest sport in
the country. Right. The reason, you know, Seabiscuit became Sea Biscuit.
It was like he was an enormous deal. And there
(16:58):
was two reasons for At one, we were much more
of a rural people, and we were more a horse people,
people who appreciated up Absolutely, we were legitimately more connected
to the horse A and B. There just weren't all
that many other places to bet. And now Stacy, to
your point, there are increasingly more and more and more
and more places to gamble. It started with you know,
(17:21):
state lotteries and then this and then that, and now
I mean I've got you know, nephews of mine who
just they bet on, you know, all sorts of stuff,
willy nilly, you know, is the coin toss, you know,
the start of football game is going to be heads
or tails. They've bet on everything.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
No, it's lame. I feel like there's something lost here.
And as you talk about, it's this kind of vicious
cycle right where gambling revenues down that you mentioned, the
purses at the Kentucky Derby are up but as I
understand it from your piece, the purses overall are way down,
and then that takes money out of the business, and
then you have smaller fields and it's less exciting. Who
(17:56):
wants to bet if there's like only two horses compete and.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
Be as few as two, but it would be you
Typically you can get you know, five and six and
seven horse fields, and gamblers want to bet on races
where there are lots of horses, and so you can
get the possibility of box car payouts.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Right.
Speaker 7 (18:14):
There are certainly some tracks in the country where persons
that they hand out to the winning owners remain robust
and maybe even growing, But in a lot of tracks
they're down, and nationally they're down.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I want to just ask one thing. I want to
I think we can convince people to give give this
a chance, you know, don't bet on coin toss or whatever.
But before I do that, I feel like I have
to ask about the deaths at the horse tracks. I mean,
you know, we're talking about the sort of competition angle,
but but I mean, couldn't part of this be a
cultural thing, a feeling that we saw this spate of
(18:49):
fatalities at Santa Anito it's one of the big tracks.
You have allegations of doping and having actually seen this
at horse track in my life, like it's very upsetting.
Speaker 7 (18:59):
You've seen them dope the horses.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Horse yeah die and couldn't that be part of it.
It's like a version of some of the same dynamics
that people have talked about in say football or boxing
and so on. Just like people not wanting to participate
in a sport where animals are potentially suffering.
Speaker 7 (19:16):
I would say this, it certainly doesn't help, and I
would say it has, you know, driven some away. I
don't think it's honestly like a major factor, but it's
been an enormous black eye for them, and they've worked very,
very very hard to take measures to drive fatalities back
down and they've kind of got them a bit more
under control. But Max, there are absolutely people out there
(19:36):
who will say one fatality a year is too many.
But is that like a key driver for driving you know,
gambling volume down at the track. I think it's more
what Stacy was saying, it's just this increasing competition from
other forms of gambling.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
Well, also, like.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Think in horse racing, I know that when NFTs were
having their big moment there was z run.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Did you hear about this story?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Is like this multi million dollar virtual horse track and
it is still going.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh no, it's still virtual horses instead of the real one.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Oh yeah, that's the Yeah, you've been on virtual horses,
like thirty million dollar valuation.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
For this company, Like it's it's real. People love it.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I mean, I guess it's like randomly generated randomly, Stacy.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
You've got to throw air quotes around randomly randomly.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
But you can buy a horse.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
People lend their horses out to stud of course, in
within like NFT horses.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
I mean, it's it's growing.
Speaker 7 (20:34):
I would just say that Max. You've been to the truck, Stacey,
have you ever been to.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
A race truck?
Speaker 4 (20:37):
I've never seen a horse race. Actually, I've never seen
horse race.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
It is if you were to go to a Saratoga
race course or a keen one in Lexington, Kentucky, or
and you see the horses up close to Bersonil, it's
a spectacular, spectacular setting, much better than the fake race.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
All right, So we'll get to your picks in a second.
But there is money in this business still, and the money,
of course is in the breeding is in the horses,
the horse sex, the horse sex. Now, as I understand
the term of art here is cover. That is when
the horses.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
They do, and when the sire covers the.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Mayor exactly, and and that in thoroughbred horses they no
artificial inseminade. She's got to be all.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
Natural, natural cover on natural.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Really why though?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So it is stacy.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Wait, why does it have to be natural cover? That
can't be true.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
It's just small.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
That can't be true.
Speaker 7 (21:29):
It is, It is true, certainly is true. There are
even stacy teaser stallions whose lone job it is these
poor male horses. It's just to approach the mayor and
make sure she's receptive so that you don't send your
multimillion dollars stallion into the breeding.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Shed with an uninterested it's a very.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
Uninterested, ornery mayor who then proceeds to kick him in
the head and knock him out, and you're one hundred
million dollars.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
I was like, is the worry that the stallion's gonna
feel bad?
Speaker 7 (21:57):
But I don't think they're worried about his feelings. Natural cover.
So the jockey club, which is the group that oversees,
you know, the blue bloods, you know, the Carnegie and
the Melons and the Vanderbilt types and the Phippses, who
have overseen the industry for decades. They insist it be
(22:18):
this way. That way they can ensure that the breed,
the thoroughbred breed, the breeding of the Arabian stallion to
the British mayors generations ago, that the breed is kept pure.
And so there's someone there who will witness the act
to make sure that this stallion bred with this mayre.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
This feels very medieval.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Perhaps, yes, And what kind of money are we talking
about here?
Speaker 7 (22:43):
So, like, the one great example that I like to
put out there now is this stallion into mischief, who
is the you know, hot stallion out there in the
country right now now into mischief per natural cover stacy.
His owners are paid two hundred fifty thousand dollars. That's
his fee. He's essentially a very expensive Jigglo. What two
(23:06):
hundred and fifty thousand do you pay? Okay? So the
two hundred fIF what if.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
It doesn't result in a pregnancy.
Speaker 7 (23:13):
Two hundred Although the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
fee typically says stands and nurses. So the breeding session
has to lead to a pregnancy, Okay, a full term
pregnancy or a pregnancy that leads to the birth of
a foal. The foal has got a stand up and nurse.
Once it stands in nurses, the owner of the mayor
(23:35):
the female horse sends a two hundred fifty thousand dollars
check to the owner of the stallions. Now Stacey a
top stallion like Into Mischief, that two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars fee. Multiply it by about one hundred and
fifty times a year, about forty million dollars a year.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
That horse is flying all around the country.
Speaker 7 (23:54):
No, no, no, no, no. The mayor's come to him.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
The mayors come to him.
Speaker 7 (23:58):
You're you're the big you know you don't.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Go after the teaser horse has gone out there.
Speaker 7 (24:03):
And so the forty million dollars a year roughly that
Into Mischief would generate during his entire racing career on
the track is a blue blooded horse on the Raceharck,
he earned just under six hundred thousand dollars. So that'll
that'll tell you where the money is. Six hundred thousand
dollars earned at the track. He makes that in three
(24:23):
days in the check three very and he probably enjoys
it more.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Very though, does he? Anyway? Before we wrap, David, you know,
I feel like just listeners listening to this, like, you know,
horse racing, as you said, it's it's not the most
popular sport you've done for a long time and your
father's done for a long time. Like why do you
find it exciting? Like why do you find it interesting?
Give us the case for like why Stacey and I
(24:51):
need to take this racing for him and put down
a bet.
Speaker 7 (24:54):
Well, because I would say it's many things. It is
truly the beauty of the horse and the spectacle the
race and the adrenaline rush you get whether you've bet
two dollars on a race or one hundred dollars on
a race when the horses are going around the far
turn and come in the stretch, is just something that's
a great thrill to it. I would say it is
handicapping races, you know, unlike, hey, is it going to
(25:15):
be heads or tails in this coin toss? Which is
pretty goddamn random thing. It is an incredible puzzle that
you can spend hours and hours, you know, working at
or I mean you also could spend thirty seconds and
do it randomly. But it's a great challenge and it's
something that as a handicapper, which is what they call us,
you know, one who studies the racing form and bets
(25:37):
on races, you know, it's a never ending quest to
add tools to your tool chest and keep you know,
improving as a as a handicapper and as a gambler.
And so, I don't know. To me, it's the it's
the world's greatest game.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
All right. This is not gambling advice or investing advice,
but help make me and Stacey some money. Who are
we betting on? For the Who's who is David Poppatopolis?
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Where does he going long on?
Speaker 7 (25:58):
Yeah, there's one inch thing about gambling in the Kentucky
Derby long shots. If you bet on nothing but long
shots thirty to one, fifty to one, eighty to one,
your return over the years has tended to be really,
really good because the Derby's kind of a random race.
Twenty horses on the race track. That's a lot of horses.
As we talked earlier, the typical race could be five, six, seven,
eight horses. So you get traffic jams, you get collisions,
(26:21):
you get weird things. It's a distance. None of these
horses I've ever been before, so that's a huge question mark.
The crowd size, one hundred and fifty thousand people, horses
spook their skittish prey animals, So if you were to
sort of lean into long shots, that's not a terrible idea.
My pick around ten to one, twelve to one is
named Burnham Square, which means he'll probably come in last,
(26:43):
but that would be my pick. I will say that
the favorite, the big favorite in the race tomorrow, Stacy,
you'll be happy to hear, is named Journalism, which is
pretty cool, right.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I would not bet on journalism.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
We're now to the part of our show where we
talk about an underrated story of the week. David, I'm
very glad you stuck around for this one because it
is it's big.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
This is a big one, It's this is the ultimate
huge if true.
Speaker 7 (27:18):
Wouldn't miss it for the world.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Max, you found the story.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Stacy, I'm afraid to report that there are people who
believe and you're gonna want to sit down for this.
You two, David the moon, Yeah, it might be gone.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
No idea.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Stacy helped me so Max mentioned this story to me
earlier in the week, and I have to say it
is really one of the most intriguing stories I have
heard in a while.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
April twenty eighth, ninety ninth day of the Trump presidency.
For those keeping track, Trump's White House had a new
media briefing. So, you know, in addition to the press
who come and are brief by Caroline Levitt the Press Secretaria,
they had a sort of influencer briefing where a bunch
of kind of like TikTokers showed up to ask questions.
(28:06):
It was you know, I watched it. It was surreal.
It kind of had the feeling of like a Saturday
Night Live skit. Part of the reason was because you
had all these kind of weird characters. You had this
TikTok influencer link Lauren. Immediately the left wing started calling
him Maga Malfoy because he looks like Malfoy from Harry Potter.
(28:27):
And then my favorite, Cambriy Nelson of the America First
Policy Institute, her question I was a real softball. She asked,
what question should I ask? And Caroline Lovett was very happy,
hard hitting stuff. I mean, honestly, this is it is cool.
That they are they're bringing.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
How did they get to the noon mediais yes, yes,
you're bearing the lead.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Magis you're bearing the lead.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Cambriy Nelson, in addition to you know, tweeting about Maga stuff,
has tweeted a number of times about various I guess,
planetary conspiracy theories, one of which was the idea that
someone I don't know who had had essentially like stolen
the moon. She tweeted, has anyone seen the moon lately?
(29:09):
I've been looking for seven days, And then there was
kind of a back and forth.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
Was a cloudy outside, but that kicked off a.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Whole thing of people saying like, I can't see the
moon either.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Is the moon gone?
Speaker 1 (29:23):
To?
Speaker 7 (29:23):
What end? If you steal the moon?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Then I mean, what's the Honestly, I don't know. But
this went further is some of one of her fans,
you know, greed and then she wrote why is everyone
silent about this? They're quiet about the white Sun too,
which I learned is a second conspiracy theory. So there
are people who believe this is like in the flat earth.
Speaker 7 (29:43):
World, it's all happening in the White House.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
No, this is like it's the new press Corps.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
This is the new Press Corps. This is like their
version of Everybody's business or what. I'm so confusient, so
is anybody? Does anybody persuade it here? I mean the
moon could be Have we looked at the moon lately?
Is it there? I will?
Speaker 7 (30:01):
I have to admit that I have not seen it recently.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
This show is produced by Stacy Wong. Magnus Hendrickson is
our supervising producer, Amy keenar editor, and Brendan Francis Newnham
is our executive producer. Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts. If
you have a story that should be our business, email
us at Everybody's with an S at Bloomberg dot net.
That's everybody with an s at Bloomberg dot net. Thanks
(30:29):
for listening and we will see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This is Everybody's business.
I'm Max Chafkin and.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
I'm Stacy Vanicksmith.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
And Max I would say that we are in the
data doldrums this week. All of the policies and plans
the Trump administration has implemented in his first few months
in office are starting to show up in the data.
Speaker 4 (00:28):
It's not pretty, Stacy.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
The big one is GDP Gross domestic Product. We learned
this week that the economy is shrinking. Obviously not a
good sign, and it seems like the culprit is the
tariffs will get into that.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
We also saw a bit of a SmackDown moment between
the Trump administration and Amazon. It was all about tariffs
and transparency.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Spoiler alert. Trump did win that one.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, and then we've got David Poppadopolis Eloni Coho horse
racing expert here to talk about the Run for the Roses,
which is coming up this week. He's going to explain
the economics of betting on horses and also the booming
business stacy of horses having sex.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
Yeah, apparently it's a very big business. Apparently it's the
world's greatest retirement.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
You decide. Also we have.
Speaker 4 (01:25):
Our underrated story of the week.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, this could be huge stacy and it's about the moon.
I don't want to worry you, but it might not
be there.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
If this story is true, it is by far the
biggest story of the week.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
The Trump administration hit a big milestone this week, one
hundred days President Trump has been in office, and I
have to say, Max, it has been pretty action packed
one hundred days.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
Oh yeah, And in fact, even just this week, there
has been an almost overwhelming amount of news. I'm in
LA this week, and so I thought I would ask
some Angelino's what economic issues they are seeing, what they're
worried about from the news just right now from this week.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
If no one brings up Bill Belichick and his girlfriend,
they're lying.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
It's a lack of education.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
I think we saw with the tariff conversation people being
surprised that they're the ones that are going to have
to pay for it. And I think that's a big
loss to not understand, like how your community works.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
I am worried. This is not an economy I like,
and des tariff just makes it the uncertainty.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
We don't like uncertainty. I think, no, what he does
I think the whole world worries me.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
I don't think there's anything that doesn't worry me, honestly,
just to say, wow, how did we get here?
Speaker 6 (02:41):
I'll look on the block and I don't know if
that this is just LA, but I'm definitely seeing a
big drop in lunch crowds. You'd see Conan O'Brien out
there like once a week. We don't see him anymore. Conan,
Are you okay? Yeah, Conan, come on listening.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
I think he definitely is.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Thing is throwing me a little bit stacy, but just
a bundle of anxiety, which I understand because we've been
talking about one hundred days and there are all these retrospectives,
hundred days, hundred days, hundre days. We want to do
things a little bit differently this week, and instead of
focusing on the last hundred days, we thought we just
focused like on the last three days or four days,
(03:22):
you know, day one hundred, day one oh one, day
one oh two, day one oh three, because even that
little short amount of time has been crazy.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
It's been so.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Crazy, in fact, that we felt like we couldn't cover
the last few days alone, that we needed to bring
in some backup so we brought in the best backup.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
Bradstone, editor of Business Week. He is here to help
us sort through this all.
Speaker 7 (03:45):
Hey, Brad Hi, I'm Max Hi Stacy.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
So let's each of us take an issue. Brad, why
don't you start with what happened on day one hundred.
Speaker 5 (03:53):
I think if we're evaluating this week, the one thing
for me that sticks out is the president's attempt to
mold our perception of a reality that looks increasingly unfavorable
for his policies and for the economy. And let me
put it in perspective. So Amazon has created a site
called Amazon Hall, which is essentially a copy of these
(04:14):
Chinese companies Timu and Chian, and an attempt to basically
import individual products to the United States, you know, cheap,
cheap things like sandals or toys or t shirts, stresses
under this deminimous exception that's now going away to avoid
any import levies. What Amazon was threatened to do is
something that actually Timu has already done, which is to list,
(04:37):
as you would with sales tax, what the tariff price is.
And the White House called this a hostile political act
that Donald Trump picked up the phone and called Jeff Bezos,
presumably either on his yacht or in his mansion in Miami,
and Amazon quickly reversed course. And so in this case,
Trump's attempt to mold our perception of the economic impact
(04:59):
of his policy was sucessful.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Let's just get the perspective from the White House. Kevin Hassett,
Council of Economic Advisor's director, weighed in on Tuesday on
this whole Amazon issue.
Speaker 8 (05:10):
The bottom line is that if we charge a tariff
out a foreign country, then if they have itelastic supply
to US, then the supplier in that country is going
to bear the tariff, not the US consumer. And the
idea that Amazon is going to say that the tariff
is passing through to the consumer means that they don't
understand economics.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Can I just say he's not totally wrong.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
That's like a hard disagree. I think he is totally wrong,
and he knows he's wrong. He has a PhD in economics.
He knows he's wrong. This is not just like not true.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
But the point is if Amazon plays one hundred and
forty five percent tariff and charges ten dollars and then
adds a line item that's one hundred and forty five
percent of its ten dollars of fourteen fifty. That is
a political act, even though in addition to being like
an act of mathematics, the way these tariffs are going
to be absorbed is going to be across a bunch
of different constitution and not just end consumers, also workers,
(06:02):
also small businesses, Like everybody pays this tax.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Yes, but the tariffs are being passed through to the
consumer and will continue to be. I mean, companies can't
and won't absorb all of the costs.
Speaker 5 (06:15):
There's just no way, right, and that cost will be
absorbed in a number of different places, right the wholesaler,
the manufacturer sells it to Amazon. They might eat some
of the costs. Amazon sets the retail price, it might
eat some of the costs. But how much of that
tariff is being passed on to the consumer. And it
was whatever poor executive or engineer, perhaps now unemployed, devised
(06:36):
this idea. It was not a political act. This was
i will say, an Amazonian act, very much in the
vein of early Amazon that they're going to tell you
if you bought a product and the price went down.
This was, you know, genetically a customer focused company that
wants to provide maximum transparency, and the fact that you know,
(06:56):
Jeff got this call and immediately reversed course on it,
I think as a really a bit of a sad
commentary on how Amazon has changed over the years.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, I mean, it just definitely seems like Bezos who
kind of projects this really powerful, he's shirtless, he's got
the cowboy head, and yet the company at least clearly
operating at a disadvantage. And of course not alone like
we've seen other large companies really struggle to try to
stay on the right side of this administration.
Speaker 5 (07:23):
And I think what we have seen is that Bezos
in particular has had a very clear sense of where
his larger interests lie. His interest with Blue Origin, Amazon's
interests in its antitrust case with the FTC, and they
have made a business decision since day one of this
administration to try to stay on the right side of
an impetuous president. And we saw that this week.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Okay, that was day one hundred, day one oh one, Stacy,
what happened on day one oh one?
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Okay, So for me, the news of the week, bar Nunn,
has got to be Gross Domestic Product GDP. We got
those numbers out this week. It's basically considered to be
the measure of economic growth, kind of the sum total
of all the goods and services our economy produces. We
got the numbers for the first three months of the year,
the first quarter, and it was actually surprisingly not good.
(08:12):
Our economy shrank for the first three months of the
year for the first time in years. It did not
contract by a lot, just three tens of our percent.
But the economy has been growing pretty steadily over the
last few years. This is a really not great sign
that our economy is slowing down. Of course, if the
economy keeps on slowing down for another few months, we
are in recession territory.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
And the culprit here was.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
It was tariffs one hundred percent because imports get subtracted
from GDP, and imports were up thirty percent, mostly because
I think companies were importing a whole bunch of stuff
to try to get around tariffs, including of course Apple
very imported apparently six hundred tons of iPhones from India
(08:58):
trying to get around whatever tariffs were going to come down.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Now. Trump blamed this on Biden. He said this was
the Biden overhang. Is there anything to that or is
this just like naked politicking, attempting to like blame current
economic numbers on the previous president?
Speaker 3 (09:16):
You know, I think there is a point here, which
is that a lot of the best data that we
get has a lag right, Like a lot of these
hard numbers. Things don't show up right away in the economy,
including the tariffs. Like one of the things that I've
heard a lot of people saying is like, there's all
this tariff news, but I haven't really noticed it or
felt it yet. I personally haven't really noticed it or
(09:37):
felt it yet, but it's maybe coming.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
I think there is some validity to that.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
But just because the thing throwing the numbers off is
this huge amount of imports. I don't think that's because
of Biden. I don't think that companies and people are
importing a whole bunch of stuff before Trump comes into office.
Speaker 4 (09:57):
This seems directly directly because of tariffs.
Speaker 5 (09:59):
To me, I think there is an argument, and we're
just gonna have to see in the next quarter that
you know, when this import sort of demand pull ahead wanes,
when you know the decline in federal spending because of
DOGE as reflected in these numbers, and you know, it
remains to be seen what sort of macro impact these
tariffs will have. I thought one of the most interesting
responses from a White House that really did struggle to
(10:22):
message around this decline of GDP was the President saying
that maybe kids should just have three dolls instead of thirty.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
You know, if somebody should, all the shelves are going
to be open.
Speaker 6 (10:33):
Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of
thirty dollars, you know, and maybe the two dolls will
cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
I mean, you never expected to hear that kind of
message from this president. I think, you know, maybe he
does have a point, but telling Americans to consume less
it was surprising coming from this White.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
House as someone whose house is like overflowing with kid crap.
Like I can tell you he definitely has a point,
a point, that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Like, it's actually, I think a very good point.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
And I think American consumerism maybe has gone a little overboard.
But if we're buying two dollars instead of thirty, that's
really bad for the economy.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
That is a recession at least.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
You know, my Barbie dreamhouse is going unused and I
feel like.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Barbie Dreamhouse is gonna have to downsize.
Speaker 1 (11:24):
I need to talk to my daughter. Day one o two, Stacy,
and it's still happening. So I feel like it's a
little bit unfair to say that day one oh one
was the big day, because already Day one o two,
Thursday morning, Mike Walls, one of Trump's national security advisors,
one of the central players in the Signal Group chat
affair Stacey and Brad. I hate to say this, but
(11:47):
he's falling on his sword, he's stepping down, he's leaving
the chat.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
I mean, that is a big story. I don't think
it's like GDP big, but that's a big one.
Speaker 4 (11:57):
The day is early, Stacy, The day is yeah early.
Speaker 5 (12:01):
I mean, look, I think it's probably good news. It
shows that there's a measure of accountability in an administration
that so far has shown a lack of discipline and experience.
And this was absolutely egregious lapse in national security. And
you know, Trump tried to kind of play it off
at the beginning, and it's interesting that now it has
had repercussions.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Can I give you guys one other thing that's going
to happen. We've gotten through three days, you know, day
one oh three, that's Friday. I don't think this is
going to happen on Friday, but I suppose it's theoretically
possible Trump could be Pope. I hope I'd like to
be pope. That would be my number.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
One judge number one out of this does not sound
like something that's news.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
I don't think this counts.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
It would win the week.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
I will give you that it is bigger than GDP
if Trump becomes the Pope.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
I think it was said in jest.
Speaker 5 (12:58):
I'm not going to put this in the same category
him ruminating about a third term as president. I think
he was literally joking. But obviously, you know he does
like to be in the spotlight.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Well, Lindsey Graham, senator from South Carolina, noted, sort of
how do I put this? He has at times been
at pains to keep Trump happy. Did a tweet that
I think has to be comic, and if it is,
it's just amazing comedy. I was excited to hear that
President Trump is open to the idea of being the
next pope. This would truly be a dark horse candidate,
(13:29):
but I would ask the papal conclave and the Catholic
faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility watching
for White Smoke. I may need to rewatch conclave. This
may be a borderline spoiler. I mean, I know there
are there are always surprise possibilities for Pope, but this
would be something else, all right, Stacey, Saturday, which I
(13:51):
believe is going to be the one hundred and fourth
day of Trump's presidency, is also the one hundred and
fifty first running of the Kentucky Derby. You know, the
biggest horse race in the country. Are you as excited
as I am.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I'm not a big horse racing person, but it is
quite like the August event. I kind of like all
of the ceremony around it, the hats, the mint julibs,
the you know, Louisville, Kentucky kind of really rolls out
the red carpet.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
I've I don't know, I feel like there's something kind
of nice about it.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
Well, what's great is that David Popadopolis, who of course
is the host of elon ankor our sister podcast, as
well as Bloomberg Market Sedator. He is like the biggest
gambler that I know, also the biggest Kentucky Derby enthusiast
and somebody who could kind of explain why this kind
of weird race still matters. David, thanks for joining.
Speaker 7 (14:41):
Us, Hey Max, Hey Stacy. It should be Derby every
year for Saturday and May. It should be your north
star everything.
Speaker 4 (14:50):
In life like all for our north star for the year.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
You're David for sure.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
I have to say it's amazing to me that my wife,
after all these years, she'll say to me, when is
the Derby? I said, same as the last year and
the year before that. It's the first Saturday in May.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
David, did you buy us a ticket?
Speaker 7 (15:08):
No, but I did bring daily racing forms if you'd
like to.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Is the Derby the best one? David? This is the
super Bowl of horses or like.
Speaker 7 (15:16):
It is absolutely, by orders of magnitude, the marquee event
in horse racing in the United States. Each year, the purse,
the amount of money that goes to the winning owners,
is not as great as in some other races. That
doesn't matter. It is how much is it? It is
been bumped up in recent years. It's now up to
(15:36):
five million dollars.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
You wrote a newsletter which I believe is published this
morning in Bloomberg's Business of sports newsletter, which everyone should
subscribe to. But you wrote a thing about how basically
this is a dying business. I mean, we are getting
all excited about a business that you said is quote
withering away.
Speaker 7 (15:54):
For me, this is a source of great pain and
it's a shame. As someone who fell in love with
the game at a young age, I got the bug
from my father, who was a degenerate gambler as well.
But yeah, it is slowly, but surely, despite all the
industry's efforts, it's slowly shrinking. And what's interesting, of course,
it continues to shrink, and gambling at the racetrack continues
(16:16):
to go down at a time when there's a gambling
boom among us, right, I mean, who among us here
does not have multiple gaming apps on their phone, and
yet that money less and less of that money each
ear goes.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
To the track.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
It's part of the problem that exactly though, that there
are so many other places to gamble now that there's
just a lot of competition for those those dollars.
Speaker 7 (16:37):
Well, I definitely think that's part of it. I mean,
if you think over the years, if you tracked the
arc of gambling, I mean racetrack gambling at the track.
You know, one hundred years ago it was the place
where Americans bet. Horse racing was the biggest sport in
the country. Right. The reason, you know, Seabiscuit became Sea Biscuit.
It was like he was an enormous deal. And there
(16:58):
was two reasons for At one, we were much more
of a rural people, and we were more a horse people,
people who appreciated up Absolutely, we were legitimately more connected
to the horse A and B. There just weren't all
that many other places to bet. And now Stacy, to
your point, there are increasingly more and more and more
and more places to gamble. It started with you know,
(17:21):
state lotteries and then this and then that, and now
I mean I've got you know, nephews of mine who
just they bet on, you know, all sorts of stuff,
willy nilly, you know, is the coin toss, you know,
the start of football game is going to be heads
or tails. They've bet on everything.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
No, it's lame. I feel like there's something lost here.
And as you talk about, it's this kind of vicious
cycle right where gambling revenues down that you mentioned, the
purses at the Kentucky Derby are up but as I
understand it from your piece, the purses overall are way down,
and then that takes money out of the business, and
then you have smaller fields and it's less exciting. Who
(17:56):
wants to bet if there's like only two horses compete and.
Speaker 7 (18:00):
Be as few as two, but it would be you
Typically you can get you know, five and six and
seven horse fields, and gamblers want to bet on races
where there are lots of horses, and so you can
get the possibility of box car payouts.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Right.
Speaker 7 (18:14):
There are certainly some tracks in the country where persons
that they hand out to the winning owners remain robust
and maybe even growing, But in a lot of tracks
they're down, and nationally they're down.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I want to just ask one thing. I want to
I think we can convince people to give give this
a chance, you know, don't bet on coin toss or whatever.
But before I do that, I feel like I have
to ask about the deaths at the horse tracks. I mean,
you know, we're talking about the sort of competition angle,
but but I mean, couldn't part of this be a
cultural thing, a feeling that we saw this spate of
(18:49):
fatalities at Santa Anito it's one of the big tracks.
You have allegations of doping and having actually seen this
at horse track in my life, like it's very upsetting.
Speaker 7 (18:59):
You've seen them dope the horses.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
Horse yeah die and couldn't that be part of it.
It's like a version of some of the same dynamics
that people have talked about in say football or boxing
and so on. Just like people not wanting to participate
in a sport where animals are potentially suffering.
Speaker 7 (19:16):
I would say this, it certainly doesn't help, and I
would say it has, you know, driven some away. I
don't think it's honestly like a major factor, but it's
been an enormous black eye for them, and they've worked very,
very very hard to take measures to drive fatalities back
down and they've kind of got them a bit more
under control. But Max, there are absolutely people out there
(19:36):
who will say one fatality a year is too many.
But is that like a key driver for driving you know,
gambling volume down at the track. I think it's more
what Stacy was saying, it's just this increasing competition from
other forms of gambling.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
Well, also, like.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
Think in horse racing, I know that when NFTs were
having their big moment there was z run.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Did you hear about this story?
Speaker 3 (19:59):
Is like this multi million dollar virtual horse track and
it is still going.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh no, it's still virtual horses instead of the real one.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
Oh yeah, that's the Yeah, you've been on virtual horses,
like thirty million dollar valuation.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
For this company, Like it's it's real. People love it.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
I mean, I guess it's like randomly generated randomly, Stacy.
Speaker 7 (20:21):
You've got to throw air quotes around randomly randomly.
Speaker 4 (20:25):
But you can buy a horse.
Speaker 3 (20:26):
People lend their horses out to stud of course, in
within like NFT horses.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
I mean, it's it's growing.
Speaker 7 (20:34):
I would just say that Max. You've been to the truck, Stacey,
have you ever been to.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
A race truck?
Speaker 4 (20:37):
I've never seen a horse race. Actually, I've never seen
horse race.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
It is if you were to go to a Saratoga
race course or a keen one in Lexington, Kentucky, or
and you see the horses up close to Bersonil, it's
a spectacular, spectacular setting, much better than the fake race.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
All right, So we'll get to your picks in a second.
But there is money in this business still, and the money,
of course is in the breeding is in the horses,
the horse sex, the horse sex. Now, as I understand
the term of art here is cover. That is when
the horses.
Speaker 7 (21:10):
They do, and when the sire covers the.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Mayor exactly, and and that in thoroughbred horses they no
artificial inseminade. She's got to be all.
Speaker 7 (21:18):
Natural, natural cover on natural.
Speaker 4 (21:21):
Really why though?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
So it is stacy.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
Wait, why does it have to be natural cover? That
can't be true.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
It's just small.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
That can't be true.
Speaker 7 (21:29):
It is, It is true, certainly is true. There are
even stacy teaser stallions whose lone job it is these
poor male horses. It's just to approach the mayor and
make sure she's receptive so that you don't send your
multimillion dollars stallion into the breeding.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Shed with an uninterested it's a very.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
Uninterested, ornery mayor who then proceeds to kick him in
the head and knock him out, and you're one hundred
million dollars.
Speaker 4 (21:54):
I was like, is the worry that the stallion's gonna
feel bad?
Speaker 7 (21:57):
But I don't think they're worried about his feelings. Natural cover.
So the jockey club, which is the group that oversees,
you know, the blue bloods, you know, the Carnegie and
the Melons and the Vanderbilt types and the Phippses, who
have overseen the industry for decades. They insist it be
(22:18):
this way. That way they can ensure that the breed,
the thoroughbred breed, the breeding of the Arabian stallion to
the British mayors generations ago, that the breed is kept pure.
And so there's someone there who will witness the act
to make sure that this stallion bred with this mayre.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
This feels very medieval.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Perhaps, yes, And what kind of money are we talking
about here?
Speaker 7 (22:43):
So, like, the one great example that I like to
put out there now is this stallion into mischief, who
is the you know, hot stallion out there in the
country right now now into mischief per natural cover stacy.
His owners are paid two hundred fifty thousand dollars. That's
his fee. He's essentially a very expensive Jigglo. What two
(23:06):
hundred and fifty thousand do you pay? Okay? So the
two hundred fIF what if.
Speaker 4 (23:11):
It doesn't result in a pregnancy.
Speaker 7 (23:13):
Two hundred Although the two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
fee typically says stands and nurses. So the breeding session
has to lead to a pregnancy, Okay, a full term
pregnancy or a pregnancy that leads to the birth of
a foal. The foal has got a stand up and nurse.
Once it stands in nurses, the owner of the mayor
(23:35):
the female horse sends a two hundred fifty thousand dollars
check to the owner of the stallions. Now Stacey a
top stallion like Into Mischief, that two hundred and fifty
thousand dollars fee. Multiply it by about one hundred and
fifty times a year, about forty million dollars a year.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
That horse is flying all around the country.
Speaker 7 (23:54):
No, no, no, no, no. The mayor's come to him.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
The mayors come to him.
Speaker 7 (23:58):
You're you're the big you know you don't.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Go after the teaser horse has gone out there.
Speaker 7 (24:03):
And so the forty million dollars a year roughly that
Into Mischief would generate during his entire racing career on
the track is a blue blooded horse on the Raceharck,
he earned just under six hundred thousand dollars. So that'll
that'll tell you where the money is. Six hundred thousand
dollars earned at the track. He makes that in three
(24:23):
days in the check three very and he probably enjoys
it more.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Very though, does he? Anyway? Before we wrap, David, you know,
I feel like just listeners listening to this, like, you know,
horse racing, as you said, it's it's not the most
popular sport you've done for a long time and your
father's done for a long time. Like why do you
find it exciting? Like why do you find it interesting?
Give us the case for like why Stacey and I
(24:51):
need to take this racing for him and put down
a bet.
Speaker 7 (24:54):
Well, because I would say it's many things. It is
truly the beauty of the horse and the spectacle the
race and the adrenaline rush you get whether you've bet
two dollars on a race or one hundred dollars on
a race when the horses are going around the far
turn and come in the stretch, is just something that's
a great thrill to it. I would say it is
handicapping races, you know, unlike, hey, is it going to
(25:15):
be heads or tails in this coin toss? Which is
pretty goddamn random thing. It is an incredible puzzle that
you can spend hours and hours, you know, working at
or I mean you also could spend thirty seconds and
do it randomly. But it's a great challenge and it's
something that as a handicapper, which is what they call us,
you know, one who studies the racing form and bets
(25:37):
on races, you know, it's a never ending quest to
add tools to your tool chest and keep you know,
improving as a as a handicapper and as a gambler.
And so, I don't know. To me, it's the it's
the world's greatest game.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
All right. This is not gambling advice or investing advice,
but help make me and Stacey some money. Who are
we betting on? For the Who's who is David Poppatopolis?
Speaker 4 (25:57):
Where does he going long on?
Speaker 7 (25:58):
Yeah, there's one inch thing about gambling in the Kentucky
Derby long shots. If you bet on nothing but long
shots thirty to one, fifty to one, eighty to one,
your return over the years has tended to be really,
really good because the Derby's kind of a random race.
Twenty horses on the race track. That's a lot of horses.
As we talked earlier, the typical race could be five, six, seven,
eight horses. So you get traffic jams, you get collisions,
(26:21):
you get weird things. It's a distance. None of these
horses I've ever been before, so that's a huge question mark.
The crowd size, one hundred and fifty thousand people, horses
spook their skittish prey animals, So if you were to
sort of lean into long shots, that's not a terrible idea.
My pick around ten to one, twelve to one is
named Burnham Square, which means he'll probably come in last,
(26:43):
but that would be my pick. I will say that
the favorite, the big favorite in the race tomorrow, Stacy,
you'll be happy to hear, is named Journalism, which is
pretty cool, right.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
I would not bet on journalism.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
We're now to the part of our show where we
talk about an underrated story of the week. David, I'm
very glad you stuck around for this one because it
is it's big.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
This is a big one, It's this is the ultimate
huge if true.
Speaker 7 (27:18):
Wouldn't miss it for the world.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
Max, you found the story.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Stacy, I'm afraid to report that there are people who
believe and you're gonna want to sit down for this.
You two, David the moon, Yeah, it might be gone.
Speaker 7 (27:31):
No idea.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Stacy helped me so Max mentioned this story to me
earlier in the week, and I have to say it
is really one of the most intriguing stories I have
heard in a while.
Speaker 1 (27:45):
April twenty eighth, ninety ninth day of the Trump presidency.
For those keeping track, Trump's White House had a new
media briefing. So, you know, in addition to the press
who come and are brief by Caroline Levitt the Press Secretaria,
they had a sort of influencer briefing where a bunch
of kind of like TikTokers showed up to ask questions.
(28:06):
It was you know, I watched it. It was surreal.
It kind of had the feeling of like a Saturday
Night Live skit. Part of the reason was because you
had all these kind of weird characters. You had this
TikTok influencer link Lauren. Immediately the left wing started calling
him Maga Malfoy because he looks like Malfoy from Harry Potter.
(28:27):
And then my favorite, Cambriy Nelson of the America First
Policy Institute, her question I was a real softball. She asked,
what question should I ask? And Caroline Lovett was very happy,
hard hitting stuff. I mean, honestly, this is it is cool.
That they are they're bringing.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
How did they get to the noon mediais yes, yes,
you're bearing the lead.
Speaker 4 (28:47):
Magis you're bearing the lead.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Cambriy Nelson, in addition to you know, tweeting about Maga stuff,
has tweeted a number of times about various I guess,
planetary conspiracy theories, one of which was the idea that
someone I don't know who had had essentially like stolen
the moon. She tweeted, has anyone seen the moon lately?
(29:09):
I've been looking for seven days, And then there was
kind of a back and forth.
Speaker 7 (29:15):
Was a cloudy outside, but that kicked off a.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
Whole thing of people saying like, I can't see the
moon either.
Speaker 4 (29:21):
Is the moon gone?
Speaker 1 (29:23):
To?
Speaker 7 (29:23):
What end? If you steal the moon?
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Then I mean, what's the Honestly, I don't know. But
this went further is some of one of her fans,
you know, greed and then she wrote why is everyone
silent about this? They're quiet about the white Sun too,
which I learned is a second conspiracy theory. So there
are people who believe this is like in the flat earth.
Speaker 7 (29:43):
World, it's all happening in the White House.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
No, this is like it's the new press Corps.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
This is the new Press Corps. This is like their
version of Everybody's business or what. I'm so confusient, so
is anybody? Does anybody persuade it here? I mean the
moon could be Have we looked at the moon lately?
Is it there? I will?
Speaker 7 (30:01):
I have to admit that I have not seen it recently.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
This show is produced by Stacy Wong. Magnus Hendrickson is
our supervising producer, Amy keenar editor, and Brendan Francis Newnham
is our executive producer. Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts. If
you have a story that should be our business, email
us at Everybody's with an S at Bloomberg dot net.
That's everybody with an s at Bloomberg dot net. Thanks
(30:29):
for listening and we will see you next week.
Host
David Papadopoulos
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