Single Best Idea with Tom Keene: Bob Hormats & Meredith Whitney
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. The single best idea, to be quick here, is we have huge news flowing, including the war of Israel and Iran. Robert Hormats with us today. Ambassador Hormats with his public service in the State Department under Hillary Clinton. Robert Hormats on the diplomacy issue.

of Iran, the history of Iran back to the Shah. And the distinction he made was they really don't want to take advice from the West. At the moment, the Iranian people are, but they do not want foreigners to be the ones to do it. There's a history in Iran of foreigners intervening with respect, say, to Mossadegh. They still remember that the United States was involved in the overthrow of Mossadegh and bringing back

the new Shah, or the old Shah now. And they do not like the idea of foreign intervention. So they're very proud people. As you pointed out, they're an old 3,000-plus-year-old empire. And regime change...

We have no template here, Ambassador. We have no template. We have no ability to change the regime. And the Iranians would resist that if Israel did it or the United States did it. They don't want foreigners to intervene. If they do it themselves, it's a very different matter. If we do it, it's a very different matter and a negative one. Robert Hormats there before Lisa Abramowitz and Danny Berger's conversation with The Sun.

of the former Shah. Joining us today in studio, wonderful to see Meredith Whitney. She's back out and far more visible than in recent years. The Meredith Whitney in the images that debate the back and forth is grounded in must-read research reports. She did an absolute tour de force in

on the retirement health crisis of older Americans. Meredith Whitney on the boomers. Well, as you and many other shows have written, they talk about the boomers being so wealthy. And that's just not true in terms of there's a segment of the boomers that's incredibly wealthy, but only one in 10...

boomers, seniors, can afford assisted living. Thank you. And they're taking on debt at a more rapid rate than any other age cohort. So seniors own 25% of total consumer debt outstanding. That's...

That's counterintuitive because you think as you get older, you get more conservative, you have less debt. So 25 percent compares to 12 percent in 2000. So if the economy was so great, why would seniors be taking on debt? One thing that seniors have is they're sitting on a tremendous amount of equity and they're starting to tap into that. So seniors have

at least 14 trillion of tappable equity that they can access that could make them be able to stay in their homes longer, age in place, maybe get private home care, home health care. And they're doing it. So 44% of home equity outstanding is held by seniors. Meredith Whitney offered brilliant written research. Great chart.

on mortgage holdings of America, where we're literally back to the 80s and how conservative we are in paying off our housing debt. Just a superb effort there. She had some single best idea stocks as her rocket mortgage came up a couple times. But to be honest, I don't know if that's a buy.

a hold or a sell. We're on YouTube. I can't say enough about the building of Bloomberg Podcast. It's way out front of anything I thought would ever happen. This podcast on Apple, on Spotify, and at YouTube Podcasts, this is Single Best Idea.

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