You see a wave of populism in the world. There is something wrong. This maybe because of technology.
Remember, for 5,000 years people probably rode those horses. They probably felt that horses were a permanent part of civilization. Everybody has had this moment.
It was phenomenal to see what was going on there. I came away from there so energized about India, and I was pretty sure that [Narenda] Modi was going to win an election that wasn't easy to see.
We pick on retail, I think, because each individual has experience with retail. It is easy to talk about.
The reason you're put in the CEO chair is because a company is facing these issues and you've been designated the person best to organize around them. I think that people are pretty energized around trying to figure this out.
The only thing I find executives down about is the regulatory environment.
I asked one retailer, I said, "Let me ask you, are you going to raise prices next year?" They looked at me and said, "Not only are we not going to raise prices, we're going to have to lower prices, increase the quality of the goods, and turn the inventory quicker."
Everybody is looking at their base business and saying, "What else is it? Sure, we do this, but while we're doing that, what else do we know about our customer, and what does that enable us to do?" That comes from the access to information and the ability to analyze it with a speed they never had. I think everybody is thinking that way.
I find it is happening in different ways to every industry in the world, and positioning yourself for that, and trying to get ahead of that, is a big conversation right now.
John Cryan and I worked together at UBS, and I think John is one smart, hardworking individual, and I wouldn't bet against John. I wish him well.
In most industries, technological change is happening at a rapid rate.
Whatever it is, in a 1% GDP world, I think people feel like there are other things they have to do other than just organic growth.
Do people have confidence? I think the real confidence you need is the confidence in your outlook, and I think people are pretty confident it is a low-growth world.
I don't want to pick on Deutsche Bank, but I think the world of the regulated financial conglomerate, it is a strange thing. There is nothing in common between writing checks and running branch offices, issuing credit cards - those are good businesses, but they really have zero in common with M&A advice. They're a different customer.
I worked at Drexel Burnham and DLJ, and then I worked at a financial conglomerate that had 60,000 people - there was a difference. But we went to the schools and said it's the same. The experience I had in 1992 is exactly what you're going to get in 2002.
We're a small part of this ecosystem. When we go to a school and talk about investment banking, they are these monster financial conglomerates, and so we end up in the same pot. That is still an issue for us.
It is hard to compare over generations. I think a lot of the top talent is choosing other fields. We look pretty hard - we put a lot of time and effort into finding talent.
One of the great parts about my job is I travel the world. I was in India right before the [Narenda] Modi election, and I don't think he was the frontrunner until the end.
Not everybody has experience in drilling for oil in the Permian Basin, but the same thing is happening in every industry everywhere in some manner.
You see a wave of populism in the world. There is something wrong. This maybe because of technology. The ability of people to reach their own news sources now, and create different views, is really unbelievable. There is a desire for change. There is a millennial generation that doesn't like what they're seeing, but doesn't quite know what the solution is.
That is the brilliant thing about the millennials. They're not obsessing about, "Hey, there is not going to be a job for me" - they're trying to take advantage of how good a life they can have without having to create so much nominal income.
[Millennials ] are sharing cars. They're sharing apartments. I'm not sure my generation quite knows how to take advantage of it.
There was a time when people thought that if you piled a bunch of mortgages together, the top of the pile was AAA. There are a lot of things that become consensus.
There are only two people running [Donald trump and Hillary Clinton] - you have to pick one of two people, and it's not like I said Mickey Mouse was going to win. This is why, like you said about Brexit, inside of London I don't think they saw what was going on.
You ever go out to a restaurant now? You can get quality food - you can go out and get the best food that was available 20 years ago. They'll put it on a plate, you'll sit in a plastic chair because nobody values the chair, the white tablecloth, the maître d', but they'll put on your plate some great food for what used to be available at Applebee's prices. There are some really nice things going on, some external values being delivered to people.
