Bloomberg Blog

Bloomberg Washington Summit: Appraising the Economy Election

At a time when there is more rhetoric than reality in Washington, it's nice to hear some straight talk and some real debate. We got both at the Bloomberg Washington Summit where we discussed economic issues that will dominate this election year.

The day's highlight for me? An intense but civilized exchange over regulation of the financial sector featuring Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ), Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin and former SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt. Let's just say they agreed to disagree on the merits of Dodd-Frank and the risks facing the financial system today.

Here are some other highlights that left us all with something to think about:

-  Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who once famously warned of "irrational exuberance," told our Tom Keene stocks are cheap right now and the housing market is "moving nowhere."

-  Secretary of Housing Shaun Donovan said winter was a turning point for the housing market.

-  Richmond Fed President Jeffrey Lacker defended his dissents at the last three Fed meetings. He's worried about inflation and thinks the economy will be strong enough to justify raising interest rates next year, not in late 2014 as the Fed has signaled.

-  Former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber, an economic adviser to Mitt Romney said he thinks the President did substantial damage to their ability to solve the country's fiscal problems by basically turning his back on his own commission. He also said the Bowles-Simpson plan could still be a starting point for a long-term deal.

-  The President's top economist Alan Krueger told us he sees signs of healing in the private sector economy, and challenged the suggestion that the President didn't embrace his own deficit commission. He did tell Bloomberg's Al Hunt that he never lost to Larry Summers in tennis as a student at Harvard.

The "combustible cocktail" of fiscal issues (as Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-MD likes to call it) must be addressed by the end of the year. Will we come up with a "balanced" solution? Without one, Van Hollen warned that the country will be in a "world of hurt."

Peter Cook is Chief Washington Correspondent for Bloomberg Television

Bloomberg Businessweek Captures National Magazine Award

Bloomberg Businessweek has won the 2012 National Magazine Award for General Excellence in the general-interest category, edging out The New Yorker, New York, GQ and Vice.

The National Magazine Awards are the premiere awards for magazine journalism sponsored by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

This is the first National Magazine Award we have won since Businessweek was  acquired by Bloomberg in 2009 and relaunched under the direction of editor Josh Tyrangiel. The last National Magazine Award General Excellence win for Businessweek was in 1996.

Bloomberg Businessweek is thriving and continuing to surprise under Editor Josh Tryangiel, and his talented staff.  And readers and advertisers have taken notice.

International circulation has doubled and individually paid circulation has grown 13 percent between 2009 and 2011. We now have over 100,000 subscribers to the Bloomberg Businessweek+ app, launched in April 2011 and which just days ago won a Webby Award in the News (Tablet & All Other Devices) category.  Advertising also continues to grow, with the magazine posting a 23 percent increase in advertising pages since its acquisition by Bloomberg.

Congratulations to all!
 
 

 Norman Pearlstine is chairman of Bloomberg Businessweek.

Bloomberg Anywhere Available on Android

 

Our drive to support customer needs in a changing world keeps us innovating here at Bloomberg. And, we know many of you have wanted access to your Bloomberg Professional® service from Android devices. We heard you, and we delivered.

Now you can access the world class data, news and analytics from yet another device with your Bloomberg Anywhere subscription. (You also have access from iPhone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Blackberry.)

This native app integrates the core functionality you're used to in order to stay connected to the markets (and, the format can be customized to best suit your needs):

- Breaking news and research from the best sources

- Real-time market data from all of the world's exchanges

- Intraday and historical price charts with a wide variety of technical study capabilities

- Bloomberg Message and Instant Bloomberg messaging

For those of you who aren't Bloomberg Anywhere subscribers, click here to check it out. Or, for more information on all of Bloomberg's mobile offerings, click here.

 

John Waanders, Global Product Manager for Bloomberg Anywhere Mobile

 

Step Inside Warren Buffett’s World With Bloomberg TV

Join Bloomberg TV at 9 p.m. ET/PT on May 3, for a special 60-minute "Game Changers" episode featuring a variety of people deeply connected to Warren Buffet's world.

We spoke with Berkshire Hathaway early investor Chuck Peterson; Buffalo News publisher Stan Lipsey; Buffett's daughter Susie Buffett; John Gutfreund and Deryck Maughan, formerly of Salomon Brothers and Buffett biographers Alice Schroeder and Roger Lowenstein, among others.

For years, Buffett has been a respected investor, philanthropist and pundit. And, tonight, viewers will have exclusive access into how he became a legend.



The show premieres ahead of this weekend’s Berkshire Hathaway Annual meeting, expected to draw over 40,000 people.  You can watch it on Bloomberg TV, via livestream on Bloomberg.com or on the Bloomberg TV+ app for iPad, or listen to it on Bloomberg Radio.


Nina Weinstein is executive producer of “Game Changers.”

Bloomberg Businessweek+ App Nabs a Webby

Bloomberg is celebrating its first Webby Award in the academy’s News (Tablet & All Other Devices) category.

It's a real honor to win.  Thanks to all of our supporters out there. Bloomberg’s mobile team put countless hours into making the Businessweek+ App what it is, and will continuously work to give our users the best possible experience.

The Webby Awards, presented by the International Academy Digital Arts and Sciences, has become one of the premiere digital-based awards in the industry. 

As Webby tradition dictates, we'll be making our five-word acceptance speech at the gala on May 21st.

Have any ideas for us?

Dhanusha Sivajee runs marketing for Bloomberg Mobile.

Bloomberg Billionaires Index Doubles

Mark Zuckerberg can add another accomplishment to his financial resume -- the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.  

The 27-year-old Facebook founder was one of 20 people we added to the list last week as we doubled the number of billionaires we track to rank daily the net-worth figures, of now, the world's 40 richest people.

Each net worth figure is updated every business day at 5:30 p.m. in New York. The expanded list was published along with the release of the new billionaires profile pages on the Bloomberg Professional service.

Since the beginning of the year, the 40 billionaires have gained a combined $88.2 billion. The combined wealth of the index is $1.1 trillion.  

Zuckerberg, joins George Soros, Michele Ferrero, Karl Albrecht, Prince Alwaleed, Lee Shau Kee, Alisher Usmanov, Lakshmi Mittal, Larry Page, and Cheng Yu-Teng.

Also newly appointed to the list are Georgina Rinehart, Sergey Brin, Alberto Bailleres Gonzalez,  Iris Fontbana, Jeffrey Bezos, Rinat Akhmetov, Vladimir LIsin, Azim Premji and Jorge Paulo Lemann.

 

Matthew Miller is Editor, Bloomberg Billionaires.

Bloomberg Nominated for Two Webby Awards

 

Two of Bloomberg's mobile products have been nominated for a Webby Award. The first is the Bloomberg Businessweek+ App in the News (Tablet & All Other Devices) category, and the second is the Bloomberg TV+ App in the Best Use of Mobile Video category.

As a Webby Award nominee, we are also eligible to win a Webby People's Voice Award, which is voted online by the global Web community. (If you happen to use and like either of these apps, you can vote here and here. Polls are open from now until April 26.)

We’d like to thank our users for helping us earn this nomination. As always, keep the feedback coming. We value your input as we strive to keep our mobile products best-in-class.

 

 

Dhanusha Sivajee runs marketing for Bloomberg Mobile

Bloomberg Celebrates Earth Day with Ghost Net(works) Exhibit

 

This is a photo of an incredible art installation located in the most highly-trafficked area in the Bloomberg L.P. building in New York.

For Earth Day, we’re celebrating our oceans and waterways. New York-based artist, architect and urban designer J. Manuel Mansylla (aka manman) is helping raise awareness of plastic pollution in our oceans through art with his installation Ghost Net(works).  And, for one week, we are lucky enough to enjoy it and use it as inspiration to make our planet more sustainable.

 Fishing boats often lose or abandon fishing nets that normally stretch for miles in the open sea. As these “ghost nets” drift unattended, they sweep up anything that floats in their way, including bottles, construction debris, driftwood, but mostly plastics. Plus, ghost nets are nearly invisible in dim light, so they easily entangle marine species small and large.

Ghost Net(works) recreates the underwater encounter with a ghost net from the perspective of marine life. All of the debris in the 731 Lex installation was collected from beaches around the world. It's meant for people to consider the impacts of pollution in our oceans as they stand underneath it.

Manuel furthers his efforts on combating plastic pollution through the non-profits Plastic Pollution Coalition and Trash Patch.

 

Lee Ballin, Project Manager for Bloomberg Sustainability

The Business of Sports

Toward the end of the last baseball season and into the winter, the concept of “Moneyball” went through a renaissance with casual fans. The success of the film "Moneyball" starring Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt suddenly re-awakened pop culture that stats and sports could peacefully co-exist, and even produce some amazing results.

The business of analytics has been alive and well at Bloomberg for years, especially in our sports organization. We help professional teams and players evaluate performance, and we help sports fans manage their fantasy teams. The days of slide rules, ledger sheets, and DVD’s are gone. People now want and expect to have information at their fingertips at any point in time, using any device. "Moneyball 3.0," as I like to call it, is the wave of the future.

So as the 2012 MLB season dawns and we begin to gear up for other sports, one has to think about the concept of "Moneyball" and how that translates in football, basketball, car racing, soccer, etc.  I believe statistical analysis will always have a hand in sports regardless if you're a player or a fan. We are elated to be a leader in it, and look forward to making the advances in analytics easier and more interesting for all involved.

Stay tuned...

Bill Squadron is head of Bloomberg Sports

Bloomberg NEXT

For the first time in 30 years, Bloomberg has revealed a major evolution of its core product, the Bloomberg Professional® service, also known as the Bloomberg Terminal. (For those who don't have a subscription to the Bloomberg Professional service, it is the world-wide, leading network for critical business and financial data, news and analytics.)

The design overhaul is called "Bloomberg NEXT".

While our objective was simple, the team effort to build it certainly was not. The Bloomberg User Experience team, Product Managers, and Research & Development (a team of more than 3,000 technologists) worked intensely during 2011 to reach our goal: To make it easier for our customers to find information on the system and navigate the markets more efficiently.

For more details, you can check out the official press release.

Bloomberg NEXT was developed with extensive input from clients globally who use the Bloomberg Professional service every day. In Bloomberg's Usability Lab, located in Bloomberg's New York headquarters, a select group of clients volunteered to be observed interacting with some of the most critical functionality of Bloomberg NEXT. The lab, equipped with screen recording, multiple cameras, and eye tracking software, helped UX designers test new features in a controlled environment. Here's a picture of our state of the art lab:

This certainly isn't the end of the line for us. Bloomberg NEXT is just the latest chapter in the ever-evolving Bloomberg experience. We are always thinking of ways to improve the product. We will keep focusing on our customers' needs to ensure that they receive the best user experience we can offer.


Here's what some of our clients are saying about Bloomberg NEXT:

 

Bloomberg User Experience Team