$GE podcast mentions
Hear more from Bloomberg senior strategist Neil Kampling on the Bloomberg Daybreak US Edition podcast. Anthropic's point man in Washington held a virtual call yesterday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Emile Michael, the chief technology officer at the Pentagon. Michael told CNBC this morning that AI firms aren't investing enough in safety and should do independent auditing. Politico reports about 100 House Democrats Democrats signed a letter asking Speaker Mike Johnson to keep Congress in session so they can pass an AI bill. This morning, House Republican leaders canceled the last votes of the week, allowing lawmakers to return to their districts starting tonight ahead of midterm elections. Another U.S. oil deal may be on the way in Venezuela. A source tells Bloomberg billionaire shale pioneer Harold Hamm's Continental Resources is set to announce an investment agreement at the G20 Energy Ministers Summit in Houston. The Trump administration is pushing American companies to revive Venezuela's oil sector. Chevron and GE Vernova announced deals of their own earlier this month.
Nathan Hager · Bloomberg News Now · Microsoft AI Head's Warning, Harold Hamm's Venezuela Deal, More · 2026-09-16Checking Chevron shares right now, they are down more than 2.5%. GE Vernova is on the rise though, it is up nearly 5%. In the Middle East, a U.S.-contracted ship was reportedly struck in an Iranian drone and missile attack earlier this week near the Strait of Hormuz. That's according to a Fox News report that says U.S. personnel were on board and there were minor injuries. This morning, Iran-backed Houthi militants claimed an attack on a Saudi Aramco facility in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu. While Well, back in Washington, the House has voted for a third time for President Trump to end the war as rising diesel prices threaten to hit key battleground states. Bloomberg's Bill Faries has more from Washington.
Nathan Hager · Bloomberg News Now · Microsoft AI Head's Warning, Harold Hamm's Venezuela Deal, More · 2026-09-16there was the company almost completely died in 2006, 2007 going into the 2008 crisis. Yeah. But not for the reason you think. You would think like, oh, home improvement company is probably falling apart because the macro is changing and actually housing's at the root of it. Yeah, they had brought in leadership, a new CEO in 2000 who was just— the first few years were good, but then just absolutely the wrong person for the job. And the, the culture got kind of messed up. The whole value proposition to customers became like less and less clear. And they really tried to focus— it was, it was a GE guy that came in, really tried to focus on Six Sigma. We're going to be as efficient as possible. We're going to have as few employees on the floor as we can. We're not going to hire expensive specialized employees. We're going to try to get more general retail staff. And it really watered down the whole value proposition. And actually, Frank Blake, who became CEO in January 2007, is credited with saving the company. If you ask Ken Langone, he said Frank absolutely saved the company.
Ben Gilbert · TBPN · The "Pacing AI" Debate | Nico Wittenborn, Scott Keogh, Mitchell Green, David Rosenthal & Ben Gilbert, Faraj Aalaei · 2026-09-14Well, David, Sarah, and Carl, the slowdown and how that could manifest for chips, that is really front and center this morning. And the note that's getting a lot of attention is the one from Morgan Stanley. Analysts there believe that slowing Frontier AI Labs actually won't lead to semiconductor orders declining. They're pointing to the quote from Anthropic CEO Dario Amadei, who says pacing AI does not mean halting model training yet. The market still thinks it will with NVIDIA, the entire semi sector trading down today, off by 20% from their recent high. The larger concern is that a slowdown will lead to a delay in data center. The timeline there, higher inventory of GPUs ultimately increasing the cost of the buildout. Now that's actually playing out with the Neo Clouds. Reminder that Oracle just reported earnings and when asked about the pipeline, executives there did not see any impact. GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik will need to address similar concerns when he speaks at the industrial conference on Wednesday from Morgan Stanley. That company, along with Caterpillar, Vertiv, Eaton, all of these that are tied to the AI CapEx boom, you can see are trading down at this hour. We spoke to two bankers who are expecting more debt sales in the coming 6 to 8 weeks from the hyperscalers. Case in point, Amazon just raised another $6 billion in debt last week, testing the European market, which Google did as well a couple of months ago. The expectation, guys, is that the rush to secure more debt is motivated in part by politics. Yes, but also the speed at which Treasury yields have risen. Now, you guys talked a lot about some of the names that are up today, the potential beneficiaries of an AI slowdown. Worth noting, software, the IGV up about 3% right now. Salesforce ahead of the Dreamforce conference kicking off. And Palantir. Remember, this is a company that saw a 150 50% increase in its commercial business. It works with companies to build their own AI-native solutions. If their Frontier Labs are slowing down, this is seen as one of the bright spots, one of the beneficiaries.
Sima Modi · Squawk on the Street · 10AM Hour: AI Leaders Call for Slowdown, President’s Trump’s Response, CEO of the AI Chip Firm Challenging Nvidia 9/14/26 · 2026-09-14The market's getting it from both sides, which is to say, you know, higher rates, higher oil. That has normally meant the market attempts to take shelter in big tech, especially the AI trade, and vice versa. When you've actually had a little bit of relief on oil and rates, you've had the broader tape been able to kind of absorb things. Here you see AIPO is the AI power and infrastructure ETF. It's basically the industrials that are levered to the AI trade and it's been pretty rough. It's going to open down a lot. This is like Vertiv, Eaton, GE Vernova, got it. All of those stocks constantly talk about— CAT is probably in there as well and not in one of the top. But I just think it's key because that to me has been, first of all, an expensive group, but the one that is most dependent on the out-years build out, right? 3, 4, 5 years from now because they're sold out today for whatever they make. So I do think that's where you're going to see some of the sensitivity. All those stocks are indicated much lower. I don't know if we should— you guys have been talking about it. You can't draw a super broad drawn, you know, certain conclusions about what this is going to mean. But whatever conviction level and enthusiasm you had on Friday for the durability and the force of the AI hardware buildout, it's got to be a little bit lower today. I don't think slowing down is a bad thing. In fact, I would have expected the bond market to get a little relief on this idea. They won't have to raise as much. Problem is oil's up $3 and that's not allowing the bond market to relax. Mike, stick around. Let's get the opening bell this morning at the big board on Wall Street today.
Mike Santoli · Squawk on the Street · 9AM HOUR: AI Leaders Call For Slowdown, Chips Slide, OpenAI's Altman Rules Out 2026 IPO 9/14/26 · 2026-09-14I would argue MIT and Stanford are the greatest consumer brands in the world, but in terms of what people would qualify as a true consumer brand, it is, in my view, unprecedented. What Apple has done, and people get it wrong, they say it's a tech product, it's not, it's a luxury product. And that is iOS identifies you or signals that you're one of the billion most worthwhile or worthy mates in the world. If you're carrying an Android phone, it means things haven't panned out for you and that your DNA should probably, that branch should probably end. You should probably not be allowed to reproduce. IPhone says, I'm creative. I'm so good at what I do. I make enough money to spend 3 months of the average Turkish household salary on iOS. You can basically get an Android phone for free. This product is wildly overpriced, but the brand itself, iOS, sends such a strong signal. Yeah, I think they're gonna sell a lot of these things for pure signaling. I think a lot of people are gonna be excited to be at dinner and fold out their new Apple phone and have everyone go, ooh, you're creative, you're an innovator, and you have clearly have $2,000 in disposable income to drop on a foldable phone. But going to turn us his legacy, this is a company that has an incredible bench. I am sure he's a talented guy. I'd be shocked if he didn't acquit himself well. The likelihood, if you look back in history at the most valuable companies at that moment, they very rarely go more than 1 or 2 decades. General Electric was the most valuable company. Walmart was the most valuable company. Saudi Aramco for a while was the most valuable. It is very rare that you stay at the top of the heap for very long.
Scott Galloway · Prof G Markets · The Rate Hikes Are Coming · 2026-09-14Yeah, totally, and based in Plano, Texas. EDS has this long history. They ultimately get acquired by Hewlett-Packard and become HP Enterprise Services, so yeah, bent to exactly what you're talking about— data centers, mainframes, etc., etc. So fast forward on Ken, he'd end up sitting on the boards of the New York Stock Exchange, General Electric, many other great American companies. And famously, Ken has this total loyalty to every customer and every entrepreneur that he works with. He never sells a share of almost every company he's ever been involved in. We're going to talk about the almost in just a minute. So, all right, back here, we're in the mid-1970s after the EDS IPO. Ken has just taken public a Philadelphia-based hardware chain, you know, one of these other regional players, a company called Panelrama. And like everyone else, they've fallen on hard times. So Ken goes down to Philadelphia to see the CEO and Ken's like, all right, well, who can we look at in the industry that's actually good? Like, what is best? Look like in this industry?
David Rosenthal · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14Yup. So the company burns about 6 months on the Jamie process. At the end of it, they've still got nobody, and the board is starting to get a little frustrated here. Now, it just so happened that Ken, in addition to now being the lead director of the Home Depot board, was also on the board of General Electric, and At the time, GE was going through its own very public succession drama of who was going to succeed Jack Welch, the most storied CEO in America at the time. Yeah. History has kind of forgotten this now because GE frankly has fallen apart, but like literally got broken into 3 pieces.
David Rosenthal · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14Oh, but yeah, these days, like, these drops that happen at big tech companies dwarfs everything in comparison. But at the time, that was the story, is post-Jack Welch, GE just completely destroying shareholder value.
Ben Gilbert · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14Yep. But here we are in 1998, 1999, 2000. I mean, Fortune magazine crowned Jack Welch the manager of the century in its millennium issue at the end of 1999. That's how vaunted GE was. Yep. And it was all driven by a culture of operational excellence as embodied in GE's famous Six Sigma approach to defect-free output.
David Rosenthal · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14And if you're going to go cherry-pick the best corporate leadership that you could possibly get, the GE bench is probably the place to go hunting. You couldn't get Jamie Dimon. We don't have it here. Let's start at the top. GE is the consensus best place to look in America for management, which is crazy looking at the three choices to succeed Jack Welch and how disastrous it was for all three of them and the three places they went.
Ben Gilbert · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14Yes. So in November of 2000, Jack Welch announces that Jeffrey Immelt will be his successor to take over as GE's next CEO. And Ben, as you were alluding to, the other two candidates for the GE job were James McNerney, who quickly leaves to become the CEO of 3M.
David Rosenthal · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14Yeah, we all know how that turned out. And then the other candidate, Bob Nardelli, who Ken Langone, again, being on the GE board here, knows well and loves, loves Bob. So immediately after the succession news comes out at GE, Ken calls up Nardelli and pulls out the same line that he used on Bernie 20 years earlier. You've just been hit in the ass with a golden horseshoe.
David Rosenthal · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14Yes. What we are going to do together now that you didn't get the GE CEO job, I'm going to bring you into Home Depot. So the board immediately pivots and offers Nardelli the president and CEO job and says, you'll come in, you'll be here for a little while. Arthur's going to retire. You will be his appointed successor. And so to incentivize Nardelli to take this job. They say, we'll make you whole on your GE stock options. We're going to give you a $150 million equity package to come join Home Depot. Bob says, okay, great. I clearly can't stay here at GE. I'm in. And then at the last minute, after they've already agreed on a deal for Nardelli to come in and be president and COO under Arthur, Nardelli calls the recruiter and has the recruiter tell the Home Depot board that he's changed his mind. He's only going to come on board if he becomes CEO right away. He's not going to wait. This leads to an awkward, shall we say, Home Depot board meeting where the board presents this new development to Arthur. He says, okay, I'm okay with it. Bob can have the CEO job. But deep down, he's not really okay with it. And part of it, I think, was Arthur not being ready to let go. The other part of it, I think, was a genuine spidey sense that, hey, what is this last-minute bait and switch from Nardelli? Is this a red flag here?
David Rosenthal · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14So Nardelli comes in as the new Home Depot CEO. And to the outside world, This looks like a huge win. I mean, they got essentially the most eligible corporate bachelor in America, one of the two runners-up to the GE job. And as you're imagining, that's probably not a great dynamic you want to enter into for a new relationship, be it romantic or in a boardroom.
David Rosenthal · Acquired · Home Depot · 2026-09-14