Pivot - Trump’s tax returns, Amazon’s home drone, and NYSE President Stacey Cunningham on upcoming IPOs

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Kara and Scott talk about the President Trump's tax returns. They also discuss Amazon's dystopic new home surveillance drone. Then Friend of Pivot, Stacey Cunningham, president of the New York Stock Exchange joins the show to discuss the IPO landscape. In wins and fails Kara talks about Supreme Court justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Kara Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. So I can deduct my haircuts? Yeah. I can deduct my haircuts. Totally. Totally. Because the only reason I don't have long, beautiful blonde locks of hair is I didn't realize it was a tax deduction. All right. We're going to talk about that in a minute. But first, let's talk about a couple of things. One is...

True story. I had a ponytail in graduate school. Okay. True story. Good to know. Good to know. First of all, you're not, of things. True story, I had a ponytail in graduate school. Okay. True story. Good to know. Good to know. First of all, you're not, of course, asking about my Elon Musk interview, but it went rather well. He said a lot of crazy things. Was he on Sway?

Did he come into the gay club? Yes, he did. Yes, he came into the gay club, and we danced all night. It was great. He was really nice. How'd it go? A lot of stuff. He was talking about the election.

He hasn't decided. He wants to wait for the debates. He hasn't decided. Indeed, he has not. Because there's just not enough information to know anything about the election. He hasn't decided. He wants to wait for the debates. He hasn't decided. Indeed, he has not. Because he just, there's just not enough information to know anything about these two. I don't know. He wants to wait for the debates. He wants to see if Biden is all there.

I think the quote was, he wants to see how Biden does. Yeah, it makes sense to evaluate someone in that setting. Did he say anything about, I'm curious, what is, did, I told, you always ask me, this is your dirty secret, what should I ask these guys? And I said, ask them about Virgin Galactic. Did he talk about that? He did not. He sort of was like, they're fine. He was glad they were doing it, but I think he feels like he's in the cappered sea.

And then we talked about Neuralink, which I thought was the most interesting part. Really? Say more. Well, he was talking about like a story that he had read, an essay about meat flaps, that we are flapping our meat flaps, essentially. And that it was an essay about, you know, another being coming here and saying, I can't believe they're made of meat, essentially. That we need a faster way to communicate using AI. And our meat flaps are too slow.

Our lips are too slow. And our meat tubes, which is our throat, is too slow. And so, you know, if you remember that movie, the computer got bored with Joaquin Phoenix's slowness. And so he says we need to be faster. So he wants to put in an upgradable chip into our brain so that we can keep up. And because we're made of meat, because we're a meat species, a meat species. I'm wondering if the real objective is for us to slow down, but it's an interesting thought.

No, he wants us to speed up with his chips, and they would be upgradable, like you'd get an iPhone 1, an iPhone 2, that kind of thing. So that we'll not only never be in the moment, we'll never be in the microsecond, and we'll just keep cycling and then freak out. We cannot move fast enough with 10 fingers, our meaty fingers. Anyway, secondly, the judge ruled on TikTok ban from the App Store. Again,

this thing is just a morass. I don't know what else to say about it. Scott, I don't know. What do you think? Well, we just continue to cement our notion that with this Joey Bag of Donuts economy, like, oh, we're banning you. Oh, wait, that's illegal. Just kidding. Okay. Who threw my fundraiser? You get to be the tech. It just isn't a way to run an economy. You know, the world has felt so many emotions toward us since World War II. Envy, anger, resentment, you know, envy. And now the primary sentiment is pity.

Pity. And we just continue to evoke. I pity the fool. We're the fool. Yeah. And this notion that we're supposed to take seriously what our leadership says about banning something, and then they wait for the Chinese to blink, they don't blink. And then, what do you know? They say, well, you should have never said that because it's illegal. And there's these- Well, it's a badly crafted, it's not even policies, just some executive

fiat that Stephen Miller is writing somewhere. It's ridiculous. Like, we have to get incompetent people out so we can actually make something called this quaint thing called policy that we used to make. And decisions. Yeah. And this is not the way to do policy. And again, this will drag on, as we said, until after the election, and then we'll see, because it's November 12th. So, I don't think it's going to be top of mind to the Biden administration to obsess about TikTok at this moment, but they should obsess about Chinese hegemony in the Internet. That's my feeling. I'm using the word hegemony a lot. You're hegemonic. Hegemonic. Speaking of your hair again, big story time, undeniable big story time.

Yeah, yeah. The New York Times has acquired President Trump's tax returns. Not all of them, not everything, but quite a lot. After years of speculation, the Times finally acquired Trump's tax returns, showing that he paid a total of $750 in taxes in 2016 and in 2017. And in the 10 of the previous 15 years, Trump paid no taxes, reported losing more money than he made. He was using these loss carry forwards, I think that's what they're called, in an accounting term. He's also in a decade long battle with the IRS about a payment

they gave him back, which I don't believe they gave him money back. As he said, they're idiots for doing it, and I agree. But they're in a battle to get it to claw it back. He also seems to owe hundreds of millions of dollars. The Times said $420, others are saying a billion dollars to who God knows who.

This is a guy who's just, you know, as my grandmother might say, Rob Peter to pay Paul. What do you think? What do you think? And do you think it'll have an impact? So I think there's deeper takeaways here. And that is, if you think about, as I get older, what I realize is, as a younger man, and I think a lot of people do this, it's easy to conflate luck with talent. And if you look at the cohorts that have produced the most millionaires and billionaires in America, it's people from real estate and entrepreneurship.

And you might think, well, does real estate and entrepreneurship attract a smarter, harder-working breed of person? And I don't think that's it at all, although we'd like to think that about ourselves. What it is is that the game is tilted for those two industries. If you look at the tax policy around real estate, there is no other asset class. If I bought $100 of Apple stock and it keeps going up, I can't depreciate it 3% a year. You can do that in real estate. Real estate generally over a long- It is crazy.

Too bad if you, I agree. I think it's not- It appreciates, but for tax purposes, we can depreciate it. Right. We can, if I sell that Apple stock at a gain, I trigger a taxable event. But with exchanges and real estate, I can sell a $500 million property. And as long as I roll it into another like-kind property, it continues to grow tax-free. So we have decided that people who go into real estate and people who own real estate are a

favored cohort. And then with entrepreneurship, we've absolutely done the same thing. And I've taken advantage of this 1202, where if you're a shareholder in a company for longer than five years and has less than $50 million in assets, you get the first 10 million tax-free. And that makes absolutely no sense. None of this does. That's supposed to encourage starting companies. I don't know anyone who started a company knowing what the tax rates are. But we have sort of rigged and tilted the game.

The other thing that's obvious here is he's engaged in massive tax avoidance. And once you start making- Possible fraud. There's a lot of flimflammery going on here. Well, that's a key distinction. Is massive tax avoidance. And once you start making- Possible fraud. There's a lot of flim flammery going on here. Well, that's a key distinction. Is it tax avoidance? Tax avoidance, anyone who makes over $100,000 a year engages in. And that is there's this entire industry, kind of the rich industrial complex of tax avoidance professionals.

They come up with ideas and encourage you to be aggressive around your taxes. That's tax avoidance. Apple does it. Right. Any wealth, almost any wealthy person does it. Jeff Bezos does it. Yep. Yep.

Okay. So that's bad. But that, again, you don't need to reform the individuals or you don't even need to reform the IRS. You need to reform government who can simplify the tax code. It's just striking, Kara. You could go 0% federal income tax up to $50,000, call it 20%, $50,000 to $500,000 or a million, and then go 30% or 40% for anything above a million, and you'd get approximately the same tax revenue. And instead, we make it so Byzantine and so complicated such that the more complex it

is, complexity is a tax on the poor because they can't afford the time or the professionals to navigate that complexity. So, massive simplification around tax reform is desperately needed. Well, here's the thing. You're right. Tax avoidance people do, and that's what you would say Jeff Bezos is doing. But this feels full of flimflammery, like the Ivanka money that you were joking about the haircuts, which may actually be a fair deduction for him because it is his brand. The moving around of money, saying he sold something to take a loss and then getting shares back, there seems to be like 900 instances of possible fraud here, like tax fraud. And I think there's so many of them. You know, Wesley Snipes went to jail on like one thing and he said like one tiny thing.

And so there seems to be at least a dozen examples of possible fraud and really drives me crazy is, and I do think this will have an impact on the voters. This 750 was a very smart way for the times to, to push it out. Like he paid no taxes, you didn't. And it, and it may be because of fraud, not because of, because of tax avoidance. And, and it was interesting, Rick Santorum went on one of the shows. They should take him off permanently off of all these shows because he's such a ridiculous, thoughtless person. I don't think that's true. I like Santorum. I don't like him. I don't think it's politics. But he went with the, oh, so what if he avoided taxes? How in the world

can someone talk? Who pays for the military? Who pays for the, this is not a selling point is it's great to get out of taxes because, uh, you know, who pays for the higher people who pays for the, like, stop it, stop it. You fool. I'm sorry. And so that to me is a really losing argument. I do think people do resonate as he, if they push in this, he didn't pay taxes and you did, that's one. And he thinks you're a loser for paying taxes. And secondly, where's the fraud here? And that's more after Post this whole thing. It gives really insight into the influence that others have on him. And then secondly, Post this thing, he's in legal trouble here from a tax point of view.

And that's how Al Capone went down. That's how a lot of people go down. You're bringing up the key distinction, and that is there's tax avoidance. You try and write off your haircuts or flights that were personal, not professional. And the IRS tags you, says, no, you're full of shit. We're going to fine you penalties plus back taxes. That's tax avoidance. We have a system for rectifying that. Unfortunately, the algebra of disincentive isn't strong enough such that people have become too motivated to be too aggressive around their taxes once they get above a certain income level.

But what you're talking about is tax evasion. And that is saying, claiming to one party, this is how much money I've made, this is how much this asset is worth, such that I can borrow against that asset, and then turning around to the government and giving an entirely different set of numbers. That's fraud. The other thing that I think is more frightening is when you look at Donald Trump, there's a decent chance, if he is not reelected, that he could go broke. There is a decent chance. He owes Deutsche Bank $400 million.

Who's the largest investor in Deutsche Bank? The Chinese. If you look at who has financed, we still can't figure out who's financed all these ridiculously bad business deals. He's arguably, if money is a decent metric for your business acumen, this individual has the worst business acumen of any individual in the last 30 years. So that puts us, that is a national security risk.

The first thing you do when you're interviewing. That's really the game. When you're interviewing to be a spy, they're like, okay, who do you owe money to? Who are you fucking? Who do you care about? And then they reverse engineer those links back to actors who might not have our best interest. And they say, where do they have leverage?

And the reality is his obligations, his financial situation, his contacts, his constant business dealings post the presidency all point to one thing. His contacts, his constant business dealings post the presidency all point to one thing. If the guy isn't a Russian asset, overtly, too many bad actors have leverage on this guy. Yeah, there's a lot of people. It's not just the Russians. It's like, you know, everybody. Everybody seems to— All these licensing and royalty deals from these banana republics. But not just oligarchs.

It's like a lot of people. It's like, how did that happen? A lot of people. And what's really interesting to me, there's two things. I was fascinated. He made a lot of money from The Apprentice. That's what he was trying to avoid, the money. He made like $500 million, real money that he earned through The Apprentice.

And that was impressive. But then he tried to shield it. That's where he made money. And then he put money into all sorts of crazy schemes. It was fascinating how much money he did do well on on something that was built on fakeness. So his image of the apprentice was built on his business acumen, which sucked, but then he used it to leverage it into other things.

And then he tried to stop paying money. He should have just paid taxes on his apprentice money, which he didn't want to do. Well, he has, but he just paid taxes overseas. He just doesn't pay taxes domestically. In any case, that's where the money was made. That's where he really did, like, $500 million. That's a pretty good nut. Well, he's Kim Kardashian, but not nearly

as good-looking or talented. Well, I suspect she's not doing a lot of these things. She better not be, at least. And then the second part that was really interesting to me was not just the deductions, because those are just like, oh, you're kidding me, right? We can argue those all day long. I think the Ivanka one looks funny. There's a couple that look funny, like the kids in the beautiful house that was owned by Eugene Meyer that they said wasn't a home but was a home and was misclassifying things.

That stuff the IRS always gets you on, like always gets people on. But I think it was the idea of how many people are into this guy for money. I think you're right, 100%. The loans. And that he needed to run for president in order to increase his marketability. That's what he was doing. That's what he was trying to do. And then he won by accident, essentially.

He was doing it for other reasons. And then he won. And so he decided, oh, I'm going to move my little grifty circus over here to try to take advantage of it. But what would you do to stay in office, including incredible criminality? Exactly. He's got to stay in office now. He's got to. If you lose, it might mean that you're broken going to prison. So what would you do? And his children. And that's really what the story is, is that, and even if he stays in office, they're going to get him. They're going to get the kids. You know, these, this, the dam has broken on, on where it's going. And, you know, if I was the, you know, think about the New York Southern District, there was a lot of people who

were ex-prosecutors and they were like, this fraud, this fraud, this fraud, mail fraud, this fraud. They were like, this is good. This is good stuff that's right here. And so I think that's really where it is. His children are now under, will he throw his children over the wall kind of thing, so to speak, speaking of walls. Yeah, I don't think it's Bernie Madoff. Supposedly the deal with Bernie Madoff was he tried to orchestrate a kind of a drama at the end to make sure that the government said, okay, the kids were not involved. I don't think Trump would do that. I think Trump would absolutely send Tiffany to prison before he would go.

I think he would. That's a terrible thing to say, but I believe it. I think he would too. And so that's what's, I think they're gonna be in, they can try, here's the thing. By the way, there's no evidence that Tiffany's involved here. I don't wanna say that.

They can try to keep an office. The only thing that'll work is if he wins and he can manage to pull off a dictatorship. Now he's been pretty incompetent at writing, even though he's done innumerable damage and done all kinds of dictator-y things. He's not very good at being a dictator. So can he pull off, become a complete dictator

before the law comes for him and taxes? I don't think he can do it. Let's go on a quick break and come back to talk about Amazon's new home surveillance drone and the friend of Pivot, Stacey Cunningham, the president of the New York Stock Exchange. Fox Creative. This is advertiser content from Zelle. When you picture an online scammer, what do you see?

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I just paid a lot of taxes. I gotta tell you, I just paid a lot of taxes. Yeah, I spend way too much. There's too many people. I spend way too much time on taxes. We need tax reform. And you know what? It's a source of stress. Right, it is. Speaking of stress, Amazon introduced their newest home gadget, the Ring drone that hovers around your house looking out for disturbances. Amazon announced the product at their Echo event last week, and the internet exploded with privacy concerns and questions, obviously. Unlike conventional security cameras, it roves around the home autonomously in the air and can be looked in on by Ring employees.

But Amazon Devices SVP David Lemp told The Verge, I'd be more worried about a camera on your phone than I would be about a drone. Now, oddly enough, Elon brought this up, and he didn't know about it. And he was like, it's so amazing that if if the government did this everyone would be up in arms and jeff bazis is running around saying i'm just gonna put a drone in your house like he's what do you think of this i think it's all i see i i empathize with it because i actually have drones running i actually have this technology in my house you what i have i have drones that roam around my house. They're called Gangster and Zoe. And when there's danger in any room or not, they go in and check it out.

Are these pets? And when there's... These are pets. They will alert the neighbors and the whole neighborhood at 4 a.m. when there's no danger by barking. And not only that, there's zero... So you have dumb drones. There's zero emissions drones because Gangster eats Zoe's shit.

So there's absolutely no emissions. But then, anyways, the notion I thought when it first came out, I thought, when it first came out, I don't know about you, but I thought they meant a drone that kind of circulated the circumference or flew around the circumference of your house outside. Yeah, that's all right. I'm all right with that. Maybe if you have a compound or something or you want to make sure that your kid doesn't go in the pool or- Where the shooters are. Where the dogs, whatever.

Is there a strange car there? Okay, I get that. But roaming around your house- I know, I know. It's just- But you know something? I think they're very smart. I don't think they have any intention.

I think this is the equivalent of the microwave with propellers. Remember the Amazon microwave? I know, but why do it? I remember. Because we're talking about it. Yes, I know. But why do we want to talk about this? Like, I get the drones delivering things. At first, everyone's like, they're going to fall out of the sky with your packages and going to kill people. Like, that I was like, okay, that sounds a little dangerous, but okay, I can see it. I can see that. Okay, sure, whatever. Walmart is droning rapid tests within a mile.

Granted, it's only within a mile of their Las Vegas Walmart, and it's a total press release. Fine. Let them try that out. Try not to kill people. If they kill people, they should be sued out of existence. That's fine. Let me, this is just. What do you think of this? What's going on here?

I want to be in the, I don't know. I'm like, I want to be in the meeting where they said, okay, we're going to release this. Like, who was in that meeting? What was said? They better took notes from that, because I just want to be in that meeting where they're like, yeah, this is what we're going to do. And someone didn't go, what? Huh? So I'm in my den on my Roche-Pavot Mahjong couch smoking a spleef and a drone comes rolling in?

A drone comes rolling in with a camera? Oh, that's going to make me relaxed. I'm going to buy you one for Christmas. I'm going to follow you around. That's going to be relaxing. I mean, the whole thing is just, I don't have any cameras in my house. My son has unplugged them all. We have a nest in this house that we bought. It was here.

But he unplugged everything. Do you understand, what's the use case here? When does it pay off? When you're not home. But then they get a sense of your home. So I don't like that either. Like if someone can hack into it, they can see the inside of your home and case it. So I don't like that either. And this way, instead of like a static camera, they can see the inside of your home, like, and case it. So, I don't like that either.

And this way, instead of, like, a static camera, they can really case it. Let's go over here. Let's look over here. It's like a creepy person, like, hovering around you. So, just really hovering. I just don't get it at all. What does this tell us about Amazon's product ambitions? Yeah, but what Amazon has is Amazon has such cheap capital that they can try crazy shit.

So, for example, Amazon has filed patents for a floating warehouse. So, an airhouse that floats in the sky. Sure. He loves to float things in the sky, Jeff Bezos. That's his thing. class. That is, what's the word, impossible. But not only, but there are journalists trolling the U.S. Patent Office to see what interesting patents Amazon always files, and they write a story on it. And then they actually filed a patent for a defense mechanism against projectiles to attack the floating warehouse. These are both patents filed by Amazon. And my sense is when you have

this kind of cheap capital and you have a bunch of young people that like to play with toys and do interesting things, they're willing to try stuff. Also, the only thing I took from this is they see Ring and the home as being a big strategic initiative. And if you think about it globally, if you think on a macro sense, the commercial real estate business is a multi-trillion dollar business in the United States. We're going to spend between 10 conservatively and 40% less time in the office, which means you're going to have somewhere between a half a trillion and $2 trillion in stakeholder value transition or morph from commercial real estate to the home, which means we're going to be spending, think about all the money spent on security in office buildings, right? So it makes sense that Ring should be a strategic initiative for

them. This would work for office buildings. I'm fine with that. They already have, like, this would work for office buildings. Fine. At night, sure. You know what I mean? Not during the day, but at night, sure. And you know you're being tracked, whether it's your email, ding, ding, ding, whatever it is. Right. That makes sense. I just want to be in that meeting, Scott. Do you? I'd literally like to be there and say, what the fuck, scream what the fuck, like, throughout the entire meeting until they stopped.

That's what I would like to do. So let me ask you a final question, and then we're going to get to our friend of Pivot. Yeah. You expect them to stay in this device area, right? Would you put this in your home? What would you put in your home besides your badly behaved pets? I'm actually getting a rapid test today and I'm all for home stuff. And we have people in and out of our home all day. So, I'm not a privacy person. People get freaked out about privacy. But I think Ring is really interesting technology. What I'm more about is not, I'm not as worried about the companies.

I'm worried about good government that appoints thoughtful judges who regulate these things. Yeah. And so, for me, I think it's really interesting when companies do interesting things. I think this is interesting. I'm going to get one, try it, and just try and understand what is the payoff here. I'm not having them in my home. But the thing that bothers me, again, it's not that Amazon needs reforming. It's the DOJ, our judges, our privacy regulation. We need to resource the regulatory body so we can make good decisions around what's legit and what isn't and where the data goes. I just don't want them in my home. I

just, I don't know. They're looking at my things. They know enough about me. I thought it was a joke. I thought it was the onion when I first read about that. I did too I don't know. They look at my things. They know enough about me. I thought it was a joke. I buy a lot of things. I thought it was the onion when I first read about that. I did too. It was weird. I thought it was a joke. You know what?

Here's what we're going to do. Yeah? We're going to get this thing and it's going to be in your home and you and I will try it because I'm not putting it in my home. There's no way. Yeah,

I don't know. But I still don't understand the payoff. It's like a Roomba, but evil. Yeah. Right? Is the Roomba now dangerous?

Should I be worried about it? I don't have a Roomba, but if one had one. The Roomba. The Roomba. It really Should I be worried about it? I don't have a Roomba, but if one had one. The Roomba. The Roomba. It really is. You know what? We know what I need.

I need a Neuralink in my head so I can beat the drone in my house. Does that make sense? No, I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think we want stuff in our brains. Would you put, I would completely. You'd put something in your brain? Absolutely. Huh.

Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if there is, I mean, it would make sense, right? We have stents that go in brains sometimes to train liquid. We have pacemakers. It makes a lot of sense that we're probably at some point going to have stuff go in our brain to help with. I think the next application will be epilepsy or seizures. Yes, that's what he was talking about. He was talking about seizures, people that can't walk, brain injuries. That's where he's aimed at.

Obviously, it's going to move on to people so that I can do instant jujitsu, like without learning it. Oh, by the way, by the way, it was going to be my win. Speaking of instant jujitsu, have you been watching Cobra Kai? I'm going to. We're going to get to it. Let's get to it. It's wonderful. But first, we're going to move on to a friend of Pivot.

Okay. Let's get to it. Let's get to it. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. But first, we're going to move on to a friend of Pivot. Okay. We have Stacey Cunningham, the president of the New York Stock Exchange, here to talk about the IPO landscape. Welcome, Stacey. Thanks. Thank you both for having me. All right. I'm letting Scott lead this one because he's Mr. Stock.

Oh, yeah. That's right. Stacey, nice to see you. Thanks for being here. because he's Mr. Stock. Oh, yeah, that's right. Stacey, nice to see you. Thanks for being here. So NYSE, big brand. And I remember learning that the biggest difference was that it was an auction market versus a NASDAQ as a dealer market. Not that I know what that means, but give me the pitch. I'm on the board of a company that is about to file its S-1. Give me the pitch for NYSE versus NASDAQ as a listing public company. The biggest difference is we trade stocks differently. So every company that's listed on the New York Stock Exchange has somebody who's accountable and responsible for overseeing trading. So they have a market maker. And that's a real differentiator. What it leads to is better market quality, which means cost savings for investors and cost savings for the company

anytime they're trading their own stock. You see that especially during periods of volatility. What we layered on top of that is we bring you into our network and our community. We have 75% of the S&P 500 listed here. We can use our brand and visibility to amplify your message and get your message out there. And then we have a whole set of tools to help make you a better public company because, as you know, Scott, it's not so easy to be a public company. Well, let's talk about that. A lot of companies have decided that it's not only not easy, it's not attractive. And the number of public companies has declined dramatically. Why do you think fewer companies, why are there fewer public companies? What do you think the primary

culprit is? So, I think that's a great question and it's an important question. There's another question that I want to touch on after that. It's not just so much why, but what does it mean? So what's the downside to that? So one, companies have access to money in the private markets now in ways they didn't historically. So when you think about the reasons a company would choose to go public, it traditionally, it was primarily driven by a need to raise money. And then secondary or tertiary reasons were having the visibility of a public listing to attract new customers or investors, also to have the liquidity for early investors and employees, or currency to engage in M&A. Because there's so much capital in private markets,

you're seeing more companies waiting longer to go public. And the drivers to going public now are not about raising money and more about those other reasons, especially in a lot of the tech companies that are looking to, they've been paying their employees in stock or options for several years. Their employees want to buy a house. They need to go public to be able to actually have that liquidity. So that's been a big driver. One thing that I think is important that we talk a little bit less about is, so what? What are the downsides of companies being public, not being public as quickly? And really, there are three things, and the first one is most concerning to

me. It contributes to the wealth divide, when the fastest growth years for a company are only available to a few. And I think it's really tragic. The U.S. markets, the capital markets, our system, our capitalism has really been built on a dreamer, an entrepreneur can come start a company and grow, and that's okay. But it's a story of shared success. If it's no longer a story of shared success, I really do think it changes the fabric of our nation. Second, there's a lack of discipline and governance in the private markets that doesn't really get introduced by the public markets. And so if companies grow much bigger, their bad habits grow alongside them. And then third, there's just evaluations in the private markets aren't based on a lot of buyers and sellers coming together.

It's based on the opinions of a few individuals. So fantasy is what you're talking about. At times, could be fantasy. You know, there's a few people with not as much information as you would get in the public market. So those reasons, you know, the fact that those things are downsides, I think we really should recognize as an issue for our country. Because I do think that that's a trend we need to swing. 2020 is helping reverse that. Speaking of trends, all these direct listings, it's not a new thing. But, you know, you have the Palantir direct listing, Airbnb, it looks like it's a direct listing. Talk a little bit about how that's changed. And then of course there are SPACs, which I'd love you to get into, but talk a little bit about the direct listing. What are you

expecting from these direct listings? These will be big public offerings. Yeah, they're not, and they're not offerings yet because they're not selling shares, but public listings, right? And these aren't unrelated topics. If a company is staying private a lot longer and now they're a very large public companies, they can start to ask themselves, if I'm not going public to raise money, do I have to do an IPO, right? If an IPO is all about raising capital, why should I do an IPO if that's not why I'm going public? That's precisely what they're asking, yeah. Yes, exactly. And Barry McCarthy, the CFO of Spotify, was the first one to ask that question to really say, I want to be a public company. I want the liquidity and the currency and the visibility.

But I just want to the market to determine my valuation and not have it be artificially constrained. By investment bankers and their friends. Yeah, their allocations go to a handful of people. And then there are lockups. full of people. And then there are lockups. And so you really don't get to a mature state for a company for several, several months before you start to see with uninhibited, what are buyers and sellers? How do they value this company? And with a direct listing, you got to that point much more quickly. Both Spotify and Slack, interesting fact, were two, at the time of their listings, the top five largest opening trades in the history of U.S. markets as a direct listing because all buyers and sellers could come together at the same time.

And they weren't the top five largest companies, but there was a real interest in finding that price discovery at that process. So yes, Palantir has said they're going that route. We actually have two direct listings scheduled this week. What would the next step, the next innovation we're layering on top of that is what if you do want to raise money? So the direct listing decoupled capital raising from being public. What if you want to do that at the same time? So we filed with the SEC to introduce capital raise. It's a real change, right? Yeah, it's a real change. Explain that for your tech company, why you would do that. So you can conduct a primary offering as a direct listing on the

stock exchange. How does that change? If you want the market, what it changes is it's not an allocation that's going out to a handful of people. You're letting the market determine your value. And why would – is this because of a request or you see where the puck is going? They don't want to – they consider it like a prostate exam. A lot of them use that term with me because they're all men. You're still filing audited financials. You say that like it's a bad thing, Kara. Sorry.

Sorry. Go ahead. I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. Iited financials. Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead. I wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. I'll be honest. Anyway. You're still filing audited financials. I've got to have hobbies.

It's cost of capital, right? Yeah. And you look at that first day pop. Yeah. And a lot of companies see the first day pop and think, well, great. It's 100%. That's a great IPO. Well, not if you're the one that sold it the night before.

Yeah. So they want the market to help eliminate some of that first day pop. Talking a little bit about governance, isn't a manifestation for a lack of governance or to get the governance light and meanwhile have the retail investors, have the branding event, have the currency, isn't the thing that has filled that void SPACs? Because it strikes me that SPACs are just an attempt to reduce governance, reduce scrutiny, just add water IPO. And traditionally, SPACs have underperformed the market. This year, they've overperformed. Aren't SPACs a canary in the coal mine? Isn't this story going to end poorly? The SPACs of yesteryear are very different

from the SPACs that we're seeing today. And again, companies are still filing audited financials and going through that process. If you're going to be a public company, you have to be comfortable with transparency. There's just no way to avoid that. Rightfully so, right? That's what makes our market so great. When you look at how companies are evolving, they're asking themselves the questions, what's right for me? And I don't think that direct listings or SPACs are going to replace the IPO, but companies are going to choose the way, the path to public that fits their needs. A SPAC gives you more control because you're negotiating with one counterparty and figuring out what the value is of your company and agreeing to those terms.

A direct listing reduces your cost of capital. And an IPO gives you the process and the experience of sort of the tried and true process. And many of the companies like the idea of being able to have some control over who their shareholder base looks like when they first list. And when you look at the market, it feels like there's a lot of canaries in the coal mine right now, whether it's multiples on earnings,

whether it's companies rushing to the public markets. This feels like, I think we've had the biggest market for the greatest amount of money raised through IPOs in September in history. Right, yes. Does aid, I realize it's difficult for you to make market commentary, but I'm going to ask you to make market commentary. This feels like a top or feels frothy. And how does that impact a business like the NYSE? How do you insulate yourself against a potential serious correction that

makes people lose faith in the markets? When you go into your boardroom, do you say, you know, serious, serious correction that makes people lose faith in the markets? Do you, when you go into your boardroom, do you say, all right, how do we put in place some guardrails or some, you know, looking at what could be a pretty ugly scenario here if some of this froth or some of these bubbles begin to pop? And related to that before, why is the stock market tend to perform well during the COVID-19 situation? So all great questions. And I will say from a business standpoint, we've been around for 228 years. We've seen all sorts of market conditions and all sorts of market events. And that's- So we old is your- I'm just saying that market conditions are not, they don't have that level of direct impact on

our business, right? Trading becomes busier and we're a diversified business. And so there are different aspects of our business that pick up during all conditions. Importantly, you talk about the level of companies coming public. And I do think that this pandemic has showed the value of the capital markets. So we talked a lot about the fact that companies are staying private. When the going got tough, a lot of the companies in the private markets had to raise money at much higher costs than companies in the public markets. We saw businesses that were negatively impacted by the pandemic, like the airlines or hospitality industry or restaurant industries, be able to raise money very quickly and very efficiently back in March and April. Over $120 billion has been raised to date on the NYSE through IPOs and follow-on offerings.

So many of those companies that had been private are looking to take advantage of the fact that they should get public because they're not quite sure when the next downturn might be or how long it might last. I think it was a little bit of a wake-up call, and we're seeing the pendulum swing the other way. With respect to resiliency in the markets, certainly that's something that we focus on to make sure that investor confidence remains high. And it is great to see the level of retail engagement that is in the market because I do think it's important to share that success. But at the same time, we want to make sure they're educated because it's not a good thing. You just asked the Robin Hood question, which Scott and I talk about a lot. Is it being unduly frothy because of that? Well, we need to make sure that retail investors understand the risks, right? This has been a bull market for so long, with the exception of a very rapid downturn in recovery in one year. The markets don't always recover that quickly. So we do need to make sure that there's an educational experience

going on so retail investors aren't the ones that end up holding the bag because they weren't able to recover quite as quickly as professionals. Is there a worry about the difference between, we talk a lot about there being the stock market economy, which Donald Trump points at all the time, versus the main street economy, which you can just look on the streets, stores closing. You know, in my street, there's a dozen stores have closed, jobs, everything else. How do you square that circle? How do you put that into perspective for people who don't have stock, don't have stock portfolios? You know, I think we look at the indexes and we see them as a proxy for the market or sometimes falsely for the economy. And they're really based and heavily skewed by a handful of large

tech companies that have performed well. So if you're trying to get a pulse on the overall economy, looking at the broad-based indexes really isn't the best way to do that. And then some of those small businesses aren't reflected in the stock market at all. Or people. Exactly, exactly. And so I do think it's important that when we put our energy to how do we recover, we are focused on the small and mid-sized businesses that aren't necessarily reflected in a market that's forward-looking. And the market tends to be optimistic that maybe not in six months, but in a year, we can start to support businesses again in a more normal, you know, there's a view that things could return quickly if we start to see improvements in fighting COVID-19.

Stacey, I thought your initial comment was so relevant to our society, and that is that when Google went public after a few years has shot up, I don't know, 20... A billion. A lot, all right? And now it feels as if companies are staying private so long that the majority of that value accretion is sequestered to mostly white, mostly already wealthy people, that this is a trend that really, really, unfortunately, accelerates income inequality and some of the most frightening. There's a reason that Black and Latino families, households have $20,000 in net worth, white families $150,000, and the dynamic you described is only going to make it worse. And then I look at the NYSE and I see, okay, this is a global brand. You're probably one

of the hundred most recognized brands in the world. You're not one of the hundred biggest businesses. Isn't there an opportunity for the NYSE to get in the business of secondary sales with private markets and try and democratize some of the opportunities to invest in private companies? Because they're popping up everywhere and they don't have the credibility, they don't have the brand, they don't have the technology that the NYSE could bring to it. It's a fantastic question, Scott, and it's one we talk about a lot. It's an obvious area of growth for the NYSE. My concern is if we don't need the protections in place in the public markets for investors, why open up the private markets in a way that doesn't provide equal access?

And we believe in democratization of access and providing more opportunity for investors. Salesforce, I'll give you a stat, is up 5,600% from when it went public in 2014. That growth happened in the public markets for anyone else to participate in. If we focus our energy on providing more access into the private markets, we're not really opening it up

for everybody else to participate in. And so really addressing some of the risks and concerns around the public markets is a way to get that access available to people more broadly and to the demographics that you're describing who are left out at times right now. And I think that is concerning. We look at the evolution of the markets and things like SPACs and direct listings, SPACs in particular, are a way to get companies public sooner and get out to the market sooner. And that's why we actually didn't list SPACs in 2017. We adjusted our listing standards and evolved for what we're seeing happen in the market, much like we would tech companies. Many people don't

realize that the New York Stock Exchange didn't used to allow companies to list that weren't profitable. Right. Like, just process that and think about that. So you're over and under on SPACs? Scott and I are starting a SPAC. You're going to start a SPAC? Why not?

You're in good company. Everyone else is. You're in good company. There's a lot of that. You're honest over and under. We're buying Quibi. I don't know if you've heard. Yes.

We're buying Quibi. Yeah. We're not. I think there's an opportunity to continue to evolve the SPAC mechanism to bring more companies public. I don't think they will continue to look exactly like they look today. Okay. I think we're going to see an evolution in what the fee structure looks like and how – I think across all of these ways to going public, you're going to start to see a bit of a blend. And, you know, certainly tech companies are adopting some of these mechanisms now.

And we're, you know, we've been welcoming all these companies to the New York Stock Exchange for the past 15 years and having a lot of conversations around how do we continue to evolve our markets. And frankly, tech was one of them. I mean, we didn't used to list tech companies and now 70% of tech proceeds are raised NYSE since 2014. Stacey, they want what they want. You give them what they want because they deserve more. That's how you should do it. Well, no, I think it's how do we start to solve problems, right? How's the world evolving? Let's recognize it. Let's disrupt things and innovate. Last question for me, and then we have to go in a second, is China. All right. There's the Shanghai market, the increased tensions with China,

impact on the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ? What do you think that is? I would go broader than New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ. If you think back in time, Amsterdam was the financial capital of the world, and then London was the financial capital of the world, and now New York is. We can't take that position for granted, and we need to recognize the fact that our markets are so strong because we balance investor protection and investor access. If we start driving companies elsewhere, we might lose that position of gravitational pull. So we need to solve the problems around investor protections, but I don't think we should be too complacent about the fact that we're always going to be the financial capital of the world.

All right, Scott. I don't know, Stacey. You're the CEO of Dayton Hudson. You need to launch Target, and it's in the private markets. All the action now and all the money, all the value, all the fling and the bling, all the splash and the cash has happened in the private markets. We need you, Stacey. Come to the private markets. Come to the light, Stacey. Have you seen 2020? They're making my case for me. All right. Got it. Oh, Stacey. All right. Stacey, have you paid your taxes? I'll sell a no-chip. I'll sell a no-chip from the NYSE. Oh, she just got you, Scott. Let me just tell you. Wait, wait. I'm sorry. I got to interrupt. Does the NYSE, the movie set for CNBC, does that shit ever open again? Yeah. It is open. It's been open since Memorial Day.

Oh, really? Yeah, we were only open for a few weeks. It feels a little COVID-y. Yeah, I'm not sure I'm going back to Johnson. I didn't like when I said that. I think I said that here. Yeah, you did say that, Kara. I did. I will tell you, you can come in and watch as they clean this place down every single night. But we have roughly 350 people that come in here every single day since Memorial Day and no COVID outbreak.

I did not know that. I did not know that. It's the safest place I come. I'll come there before I get in an airplane, but I don't know. There was a really interesting study that an academic did when the floor closed because they saw that the trading quality was not as good when the people

weren't involved in the process. And there were some academics that ran studies. So we're committed to the floor. Yes, it's a useful marketing tool, but it also means stocks trade better. Do you have good masks that you could give me? Maybe I'll come. Yes, we have one with like a- They have it all. They have it all. All right. If you have good masks, maybe I'll come back. But

certainly before I go to Scott's house, that's for sure. There we go. Anyway. I've got a drone. I've got a drone flying around. I know you do, Scott. It's the safest place I come. I'll give you that. Well, actually, New York, to your point, Stacey, New York is supposedly the safest big city in the world right now.

Yeah. I mean, seriously, we've been open since Memorial Day. Everybody wears their masks. Everybody social distances. And we've had no problems. So I think it's a good testament to how you can come back to work safely. Thank you, Stacey. I'm coming to New York this weekend, so maybe I'll stop by. Come visit.

No, I'm getting married, Stacey. I'm not going to come visit you. I want to get married on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Jim Cramer will marry you. Yeah, it ain't happening. I'll get divorced a minute later. Let me just tell you. I want to get married on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Jim Cramer will marry you. Yeah, it ain't happening. I'll get divorced a minute later. Let me just tell you. That's how that'll work. Anyway. Thank you. All right. Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it. You're very sassy. I'd like to get you through it in our face. I appreciate it. Thanks. Bye.

All right. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Hold the phone. You're getting married this weekend? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This weekend? Yeah, yeah. In New York. A secret wedding. Well, all I got to say is, you know why... You're not invited

and neither is anybody else, just my family. Just your family? Because we have to get married because of the adoption and stuff like that. Well, you know the only difference between a gay and a straight wedding,

right? What? The parents are crying at both just for different reasons. Come on! All right. That's good gay-straight wedding humor. We can discuss it.

It's a COVID wedding. I want to see what luckies wear into the wedding. Oh, God. It's a COVID wedding. I want to see what Lucky is wearing to the wedding. Oh, God. It's a COVID wedding is what it is. But we're going to have a big one that you're both going to get invited to next year. A big one. A big-ass wedding.

A real one. Nice. But we can't. Anyway. All right, Scott, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails. Support for this show comes from Constant Contact. You know what's not easy? Marketing.

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Invest 30 minutes in an episode today. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Published by Capital Client Group, Inc. All right, Scott wins and fails. I know you just asked about my wedding. Yes, I'm having a COVID wedding is what I'm having. And it's a small one with just the family. We don't want anyone to die.

It is outside. It is a tiny group of people. And then I will have a big one next year where everybody can exchange air with each other without masks once we get the vaccine. Thank you.

And you'll be invited. You know, you'll be doing the serving at the big wedding. I'm in. You'll be doing the bartending and things like that. I'm in. You know, I love to dance and I'm a great dancer. You know who thinks I'm a great dancer'll be doing the bartending and things like that. I'm in. You know, I love to dance

and I'm a great dancer. You know who thinks I'm a great dancer? I don't think you're a great dancer. Vodka! Vodka thinks I have amazing rhythm. You've used that joke before. It never gets old.

It gets old. It gets super friggin' old. I can't believe you're getting married. That's good for you. What are you telling me you can't believe? What do you mean? That's nice. I'm a marrying kind of lady.

That's nice. I'm a sady-sady married lady. That's what I say to me. Anyway, yes, yes. We shop for rings, et cetera. Where are you registered? Can I make lesbian jokes? No.

Okay. No, you can't. You're not registered at Subaru of Ronkon Koma or German Shepherd Rescue? You know what? You know what? Keep going. Keep one more. You get one more.

One more lesbian wedding goes. Those were pretty good. I had a Subaru many years ago. I do not have one anymore. That's a shocker. I don't have one anymore. That's a shocker. I don't have any car. That's a shocker. No, I had it pre...

No, I had it when I was a lesbian. That Mary is throwing out stereotypes. All right. Vox Media HR on speed dial. Yes, exactly. Listen to me. It's fine. It's fine.

You know, I couldn't marry you, so I had to get married to someone else. That's how I feel. Well, I never know. At my age, I'm thinking about it. No, you're not. Never is going to happen. Listen to me.

Wins and fails. Failure would be Mrs. Scott Galloway as Kara Swisher. I love your wife, by the way. She's amazing. She's a long-suffering person. Oh, her. She's long-suffering. Okay, here's the deal.

I'm going to do— There's not a fail around Amy Coney Barrett nomination. I think the Democrats have to tread very carefully with this particular nominee. to tread very carefully with this particular nominee. It's really fascinating to watch all the people who are fans of hers who do not agree with her. That is fascinating. She's obviously brilliant. I think a lot of people say that. I do think they need to focus in. They will fail if they focus on her. They need to focus on healthcare, LGBT stuff, whether healthcare is going to be overturned and abortion. That's where you focus not on the person, on the topics. Thank you.

Even more specifically, they've got to stay away from her faith. And that is, you know, they have. Yeah, it's but that's that's a bear trap to any link. Well, the right is trying to say that Democrats are going there, but they aren't. They're just making this fake thing on it. So I do think there's a lot there with you talking about health care and taking away your health care, taking away your right to an abortion that has been in for a long, long time. So I think that's where you go. You don't talk about her because she's clearly someone who is well-liked at Notre Dame and someone who seems to be walking the talk of her faith.

And, you know, she's a tough, she's a, I don't like them calling her ACB though. I think let's just have RBG and letting her keep that. And we can make up a new nickname for this justice if you like, but we'll see. It's going through no matter how you slice it. Yeah, and if you think about real strategy here, I think to even focus on her, see the Republicans are just so much smarter than us.

The Republicans never got into a debate about Merrick Garland. They didn't talk about him. What they said is they went straight to, we should not be appointing a lifetime appointment when we're 33 days away. And I think the only thing you can do right now is to support Mark Kelly.

He could be potentially seated and have an impact on this. And I also think the other thing you could do is, is it Jamie Harrison who's running against? Jamie Harrison running against Lindsey Graham. Oh, that would be sweet. Is to go online and donate or express your support on social media right away for Mark Kelly and Jamie Harrison. Jamie specifically because I think we need to send a lot of,

you know, you do need at some point, need to send a message to senators such as Lindsey Graham that integrity does mean something. I know, what a suck up he's become. He was always a suck up though. Honestly, I've always thought of him as a suck up, but he just sucked up to a person we liked better

than this person he's sucking up to. But it's won or lost in the Senate. And that is if we can show enough, if we can show enough reason for another Republican senator to say, all right, I'm not doing this, then that's your only chance. But if you argue, I think, on her merits, I don't, you know, my understanding is she's a legal scholar. We've done worse if you're just talking about legal scholarship. Yeah. So it's going to be interesting. It'll be interesting. I was thinking there's a lot here, and I think this tax thing might sort of send that. It's so interesting.

Like, we just go from one thing to the next. All right. Your win or fail very quickly. My win is Cobra Kai. I think it's wonderful. I love it. From Supreme Court to Cobra Kai, which is a Karate Kid reference for people who don't know. Yeah, and it's one of those intergenerational media

that's so hard to find. You know, The Umbrella Academy is another one. Lost in Space is another one. But things you can enjoy with your kids, it's usually, you know, you're watching the Emoji film and want to put a gun in your mouth or you're watching Game of Thrones and they can't watch it with you.

But this is both. And it just takes... Wait, do they come back good? Does Cobra Kai is bad? Cobra Kai is wonderful. What are you talking about? It come back good? Does Cobra Kai is bad? Cobra Kai is wonderful. What are you talking about? It's wonderful. Cobra Kai is the bad studio.

Not the show, but the group of people at Cobra Kai. Don't spoil it for me. I'm only on season two. All right. But it has a resonance for me because I was raised by a single mother in Tarzana. And I recognize all the streets. And it's also, it's unexpected. It's not.

It talks a lot about, you know, perceptions aren't always what they seem. It talks about a kid who kind of comes off the tracks as an adult. And it's really nice. It's really well done and fun. And my kids love it. Good. I'm going to watch it. The original movie, Cobra Kai was the bad.

Daniel was the good one. But he's kind of the protagonist in this. It's complicated. They're complex. All right's complicated. They're complex. All right. Okay, they're complex. I mean, they always were. It's just good to see Ralph Macchio working.

First off, he and Tom Cruise, whenever they are injecting lamb cells, I mean, the guy looks 19 and he's 58. I've always liked him. Yeah, he's very likable. He seems like a nice man. I've always liked those. Those movies were just very important to me growing up.

Pat Morita. Yep, that was a great movie. It was really lovely and it was just- Elizabeth Chu's shoe leaving las vegas one of the great there were lots of fascinating people that's yeah she was the girlfriend i think if you're in the cool car that you drove anyway okay that's a good one do you have a fail i don't have a fail today all right okay all right do you have any predictions about tuesday's trump biden debate we don't usually do them but other than you and I are going to have indigestion. I mean, I go to this club called the Ocean Club.

Cannot fuck up. Where it's like the average membership is, I don't know how old they are, dead. And I saw one guy run over another guy with his walker and they started getting into it. And I'm like, I said to the people, I'm like, that's the debate. That's what we're coming to.

That's the debate. The Tuesday night, here it is. All right, what would you do if you were Biden? He cannot screw to. That's the debate. The Tuesday night, here it is. All right. What would you do if you were Biden? He cannot screw up. This is like literally. I would just stick to a series of talking points. I wouldn't even.

Cannot fact check Trump. I almost wouldn't even just acknowledge him. I would almost pretend as if he wasn't there. Oh, interesting. And just do a series of talking points about integrity, about the middle class. Nice guy. I'm the nice old guy, not the crazy old lunatic who doesn't pay his taxes. I would almost like just pretend he's not there. Oh.

Because I got to be honest, I'm nervous about the whole thing. Nervous. The whole thing. It is. I don't know if I can watch it. Anyway, we'll see. I agree. I think he should not fact check him in real time because that will be the entire debate.

I think he should not fact check him in real time because that will be the entire debate. I think he should just say his piece. Healthcare, healthcare, healthcare, your rights. This guy's crazy. That's, you know, and he doesn't pay his taxes. I'd throw that in there. I'd throw a few, do anything. Like, right? He might start to throw the podium around. He might try to hug Biden. What if he tries to hug Biden? Like, who knows what he'll do at this point? Like, right? He'll try to touch him for sure. And then Biden has got to like have to run. I mean, the whole thing could be super awkward if he tries stuff like that. You remember how he creeped around behind Hillary Clinton?

And Hillary's biggest regret when I interviewed her was I should have turned around and said, you creepy fuck, get away from me. Right. Which she didn't. And he could do that. He could try to physically touch him. That'll be a problem. And he's got to figure that one out in his head.

Anyway, we'll see how it goes. Who knows? Who knows with Trump? He certainly spends a lot of time public, so he's used to it. The thing is, he's not preparing, so he feels like he's Rocky from one of those movies where Rocky didn't prepare and made fun of everything. And then he got shit kicked at him. I think Biden's preparing. So it could be that, too.

He's too arrogant. He doesn't think he needs to prepare for Biden. I think he does. Anyway, don't forget, if you have a question about tech, hacking, or the election, please email us at pivot at voxmedia.com to be featured on the show. And, Scott, read us out. Today's show was produced by Rebecca Sinanis. Fernando Finete engineered this episode and Erica Anderson is Pivot's executive producer.

If you like what you heard, please download or subscribe or check us out wherever you listen to podcasts. Please recommend us to a friend. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

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