# talking with Paul Krugman about the Trump economy and zombie Republican policies

An episode of [Paul Krugman Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1877144831), 4 Dec 2025, 38 min.

Audio: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/180735530/da6ba5226fa546f1908b4b6303464654.mp3

Get full access to Paul Krugman at paulkrugman.substack.com/subscribe

## Transcript

[0:00] SPEAKER_01: We are now live.
[0:01] SPEAKER_01: Paul Krugman,
[0:02] Nobel Prize winning economist and longtime commentator in the
[0:07] New York Times and
[0:08] SPEAKER_01: now on Substack.
[0:09] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for joining me.
[0:10] SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks for having me on.
[0:12] SPEAKER_01: Let me first congratulate you on the one year into your Substack life,
[0:18] SPEAKER_01: which has been tremendously successful.
[0:21] SPEAKER_01: Are you enjoying it?
[0:23] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[0:23] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[0:24] SPEAKER_00: I wasn't really planning to work as hard as I've ended up,
[0:28] SPEAKER_00: as my wife and I have ended up working.
[0:30] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[0:30] SPEAKER_00: this was supposed to be keeping my hand in a little bit,
[0:33] SPEAKER_00: and it's turned into a very full-time job.
[0:35] SPEAKER_00: But that's because the response has been so great.
[0:38] SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, it's, and God knows there's no shortage of material.
[0:44] SPEAKER_01: Would you have done it if Trump had not been elected?
[0:49] Yeah,
[0:50] I probably would have done it,
[0:52] but it might have been much lower key.
[0:54] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[0:56] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[0:56] SPEAKER_00: I did a lot of blogging back,
[1:02] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[1:02] SPEAKER_00: during the aftermath of the global financial crisis and all of that.
[1:05] So there's stuff,
[1:06] and I have,
[1:07] you know,
[1:09] but it probably wouldn't be so intense.
[1:13] I would actually love for this era of history to be over so I
[1:17] could talk more about
[1:19] SPEAKER_00: interesting things as opposed to imminent threat of autocracy.
[1:24] SPEAKER_00: Right.
[1:25] SPEAKER_01: I have to start with a confession.
[1:27] SPEAKER_01: When you started writing your column for the New York Times,
[1:30] SPEAKER_01: I have always thought of myself as kind of a moderate person,
[1:35] SPEAKER_01: centrist person.
[1:35] SPEAKER_01: And I used to think that you were pretty far out there.
[1:38] But as the years have gone on,
[1:41] it has seemed to me more and more evident that
[1:44] SPEAKER_01: that on most things, you've been more right than most other people.
[1:49] SPEAKER_01: And,
[1:50] SPEAKER_01: you know,
[1:50] SPEAKER_01: I wonder,
[1:52] sometimes I think about the kind of intellectual collapse of
[1:56] the Republican Party
[1:58] as a reason for why people on the left look more normal and
[2:04] reasonable than what
[2:07] SPEAKER_01: some people once might have thought.
[2:09] SPEAKER_01: But have you had many people have that reaction to you?
[2:12] SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
[2:12] SPEAKER_02: I mean,
[2:12] SPEAKER_00: it's important,
[2:13] SPEAKER_00: I think,
[2:14] for people to understand that I am not what we would once have
[2:17] called a leftist,
[2:18] SPEAKER_00: right?
[2:19] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I like markets.
[2:22] SPEAKER_00: I don't have a moral objection to capitalism.
[2:27] SPEAKER_00: It was, I'm willing to compromise, you know, I would hope—
[2:33] SPEAKER_00: I would prefer a single-payer health care system,
[2:35] SPEAKER_00: but if Obamacare is what we can get,
[2:37] SPEAKER_00: then I'll go for it.
[2:39] SPEAKER_00: So a lot of it, really, what people really mean by this is,
[2:44] How upset,
[2:45] how worried were you about the direction that the Republican
[2:48] Party was taking?
[2:49] And it was obvious to me,
[2:51] even in 2000,
[2:52] that we were seeing a movement into a very dark place.
[2:59] SPEAKER_00: And that has turned out to be right.
[3:01] SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of people who are now, you know, look, I mean...
[3:06] SPEAKER_00: A lot of people,
[3:07] SPEAKER_00: the neocons,
[3:07] SPEAKER_00: people who were very instrumental in the war in Iraq,
[3:10] SPEAKER_00: really stuck out my neck in opposing that.
[3:13] SPEAKER_00: But they've also turned out to be for,
[3:16] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[3:18] SPEAKER_00: at least they believed in this stuff and they've become very,
[3:20] SPEAKER_00: very serious anti-Trumpers.
[3:22] SPEAKER_00: So it's really more a question of what your ideal society looks like.
[3:28] SPEAKER_00: Now, we can talk about that later.
[3:30] SPEAKER_00: First, let's save democracy.
[3:32] SPEAKER_01: Right.
[3:33] SPEAKER_01: Well, let me start with your assessment of the economy.
[3:38] It seems to me clearly somewhat worse than it was a year ago,
[3:44] but how much worse?
[3:46] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it is...
[3:48] SPEAKER_00: You know, to use the technical term, it's kind of weird.
[3:50] SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is history.
[3:53] SPEAKER_00: You wish that history would just do one thing at a time.
[3:56] And instead,
[3:56] what we've gotten is,
[3:57] on the one hand,
[3:58] a total radical change in U.S.
[4:01] SPEAKER_00: trade policy,
[4:02] SPEAKER_00: tariffs to levels we haven't seen in 90 years,
[4:06] SPEAKER_00: which would be one thing and is definitely a problem.
[4:08] SPEAKER_00: And the other hand, we have this monstrous boom.
[4:11] SPEAKER_00: in artificial intelligence and in spending on data centers,
[4:15] SPEAKER_00: which is kind of,
[4:16] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[4:16] SPEAKER_00: so pulling in,
[4:18] SPEAKER_00: and one thing pulling the economy up,
[4:20] SPEAKER_00: one thing pulling it down.
[4:22] SPEAKER_00: And the combination of those things has led to an economy which,
[4:25] SPEAKER_00: if you look at the top-line numbers,
[4:28] SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look that bad.
[4:29] SPEAKER_00: Inflation is a little bit elevated.
[4:31] Unemployment is a little bit elevated,
[4:33] but nothing that would have you saying,
[4:35] oh,
[4:36] crisis.
[4:37] SPEAKER_00: But then if you start to look underneath, it feels pretty bad.
[4:42] SPEAKER_00: It's these frozen labor markets.
[4:45] SPEAKER_00: No mass layoffs whatsoever.
[4:48] SPEAKER_00: at least not in the data yet, but very little hiring.
[4:52] SPEAKER_00: And so if you got your job, you're probably okay.
[4:55] SPEAKER_00: But if you don't,
[4:56] SPEAKER_00: for whatever reason,
[4:57] SPEAKER_00: you're young or you got laid off for some reason,
[5:00] SPEAKER_00: it's really,
[5:01] SPEAKER_00: really hard to find a new job.
[5:02] SPEAKER_00: So that's probably the thing that is worst.
[5:05] SPEAKER_00: And then prices are,
[5:06] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[5:07] inflation was on a steady sort of downward trend and now it's
[5:12] picked up again.
[5:13] SPEAKER_00: And that's all tariffs.
[5:16] SPEAKER_00: So this is...
[5:18] And there's a lot of feeling that we're waiting for another
[5:22] shoe to drop.
[5:26] Those of us who remember the 90s have got a really bad feeling
[5:31] about this whole AI thing.
[5:36] SPEAKER_01: A couple of months ago,
[5:37] SPEAKER_01: Mark Zandi,
[5:38] SPEAKER_01: the Moody's economist,
[5:39] SPEAKER_01: told me that we were standing on the edge of recession.
[5:44] SPEAKER_01: Was that true a couple of months ago?
[5:46] SPEAKER_01: Is it true now?
[5:49] SPEAKER_02: You know, that's a really hard
[5:54] SPEAKER_00: maybe.
[5:54] SPEAKER_00: I mean, we would be in recession.
[5:57] I think we can fairly confidently say that we would be in
[6:00] recession if it wasn't
[6:01] SPEAKER_00: for the AI boom.
[6:02] SPEAKER_00: If we weren't building all these data centers, the U.S.
[6:05] SPEAKER_00: economy would be in recession right now.
[6:07] It wouldn't necessarily be a severe recession,
[6:09] but it would be a recession.
[6:12] SPEAKER_00: So we're kind of on the edge, but this is enormous.
[6:17] SPEAKER_00: I mean, we really are talking about, it appears that this boom
[6:22] The current tech boom is bigger than the dot-com telecom boom
[6:26] of the late 90s,
[6:26] SPEAKER_00: bigger as a share of the economy.
[6:29] SPEAKER_00: So that keeps us, you know, head above water for the time being.
[6:32] SPEAKER_00: But all it takes is, in a way, Wile E. Coyote.
[6:36] SPEAKER_00: We talk,
[6:36] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[6:37] SPEAKER_00: Wile E.
[6:37] SPEAKER_00: Coyote moment where laws of cartoon physics,
[6:39] SPEAKER_00: when you look down and realize there's nothing supporting you,
[6:42] SPEAKER_00: that's when you fall.
[6:44] SPEAKER_00: And a Wile E. Coyote moment on Twitter.
[6:47] SPEAKER_00: the tech sector,
[6:48] SPEAKER_00: where it is really,
[6:50] really hard to come up with any way that these companies can
[6:54] make back the money
[6:55] SPEAKER_00: they're spending.
[6:57] SPEAKER_00: That will push us into recession.
[6:59] SPEAKER_01: Given the fact that some of the tariffs have come down,
[7:03] there doesn't seem to be as much day-to-day or week-to-week or
[7:07] month-to-month
[7:08] SPEAKER_01: fluctuation in them,
[7:09] and that there have been huge loopholes in the tariffs that
[7:13] take the effective
[7:14] SPEAKER_01: tariff rate lower than it is nominally.
[7:17] Does that tell you that the threat of what tariffs could do to
[7:22] the economy has now
[7:23] SPEAKER_01: been kind of settled down and contained?
[7:26] SPEAKER_01: A little bit.
[7:27] SPEAKER_01: I mean, we had...
[7:31] SPEAKER_00: First of all, there was a lot of hyping.
[7:33] I think I'm on record as saying that people were over-hyping
[7:36] what tariffs would do.
[7:37] SPEAKER_00: It was more the uncertainty than anything else.
[7:41] SPEAKER_00: Economists believe in free trade,
[7:44] SPEAKER_00: and so we tend to hype the dangers of protectionism,
[7:48] SPEAKER_00: which are real,
[7:48] SPEAKER_00: but not that big.
[7:50] And look,
[7:53] we're trying to really peer through the fog here,
[7:56] but given the actual effect of
[8:00] given that there have been a lot of ways that people are able
[8:03] to avoid paying these tariffs.
[8:05] SPEAKER_00: So instead of a 15-point rise in tariff rates,
[8:08] SPEAKER_00: we probably have something more like a 10-point rise or less,
[8:11] SPEAKER_00: which you would expect to raise prices in the end by maybe 1%.
[8:18] And the best estimates I've seen say that what we've actually
[8:20] seen is around
[8:21] SPEAKER_00: two-thirds of that so far.
[8:23] SPEAKER_00: So most of the impact I'm probably already through.
[8:28] SPEAKER_00: And,
[8:29] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[8:29] SPEAKER_00: so the tariff,
[8:30] SPEAKER_00: and if tariffs stabilize,
[8:32] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[8:33] SPEAKER_00: at current levels,
[8:34] SPEAKER_00: then,
[8:35] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[8:35] SPEAKER_00: we will be a little bit poorer as a result,
[8:37] SPEAKER_00: and life will be a little bit worse,
[8:38] SPEAKER_00: but it won't be catastrophic.
[8:41] SPEAKER_00: Um,
[8:41] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[8:41] SPEAKER_00: we had high tariffs in the 1920s and also a booming economy,
[8:45] SPEAKER_00: so that,
[8:46] SPEAKER_00: um,
[8:46] SPEAKER_00: you don't want to overstate what that does.
[8:49] SPEAKER_01: Um,
[8:50] I want to ask you about a different threat from the Trump
[8:53] administration and how
[8:55] SPEAKER_01: you quantify it if you can.
[8:57] SPEAKER_01: I remember a few years ago,
[9:00] SPEAKER_01: Alan Greenspan said,
[9:01] SPEAKER_01: free market economies depend on the rule of law.
[9:04] SPEAKER_01: Trump has been taking a sledgehammer to the rule of law.
[9:09] SPEAKER_01: Is that something that has an immediate impact, a long-term impact?
[9:14] SPEAKER_01: How do you assess it?
[9:15] SPEAKER_00: Oh, definitely.
[9:18] SPEAKER_00: It's termites, not a hurricane, right?
[9:21] SPEAKER_00: It slowly undermines...
[9:23] SPEAKER_00: our economic prospects.
[9:25] SPEAKER_00: People are not...
[9:29] SPEAKER_00: We're still getting a fair bit of investment in the United States,
[9:33] SPEAKER_00: quite a lot,
[9:33] SPEAKER_00: but there's going to be some caution.
[9:35] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[9:36] if you don't know whether ICE is suddenly going to descend on
[9:40] your Korean factory
[9:41] SPEAKER_00: and arrest the visiting executives...
[9:45] SPEAKER_00: And people,
[9:48] SPEAKER_00: America,
[9:49] we built our world leadership a lot on having the best and
[9:53] brightest from all
[9:53] SPEAKER_00: around the world come to America.
[9:56] SPEAKER_00: Now we're in a world where not only is that a dubious proposition,
[9:59] SPEAKER_00: but I know European,
[10:01] actually people go back and forth between Europe and the United
[10:05] States quite a lot,
[10:06] SPEAKER_00: and they travel with burner phones.
[10:09] SPEAKER_00: They don't want the mobile phone that has the,
[10:12] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[10:12] SPEAKER_00: the texts they send to their friends back in Belgium where ICE can seize,
[10:18] SPEAKER_00: where CBP can seize it.
[10:19] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, that has got to erode America's global position.
[10:25] I would think it would also be corrosive,
[10:28] the loss of trust in a couple of ways.
[10:33] One,
[10:33] by other countries in their relations,
[10:36] in their economic relations with us.
[10:38] The other is by domestic and international businesses losing
[10:45] trust in American
[10:47] SPEAKER_01: government assessments,
[10:48] SPEAKER_01: in American government data.
[10:49] SPEAKER_01: We saw the BLS head fired after a bad jobs report.
[10:54] SPEAKER_01: How do you assess that impact?
[10:58] SPEAKER_00: What's happening right now is mostly that we're just losing data.
[11:01] SPEAKER_00: We're getting less and less data.
[11:03] SPEAKER_00: Now, to actually fake the numbers,
[11:06] SPEAKER_00: is harder.
[11:08] SPEAKER_00: I think probably harder than Trump people realize.
[11:10] To actually cook the books at the BLS would be a really big
[11:15] effort to involve
[11:16] SPEAKER_00: hundreds of people,
[11:17] SPEAKER_00: and we would know about it.
[11:19] SPEAKER_00: So when we get new BLS numbers, you will be confident in them?
[11:23] SPEAKER_00: I will for the time being.
[11:24] SPEAKER_00: First hint that they really are cooking.
[11:29] SPEAKER_00: I will talk about it, as will lots of other people.
[11:33] SPEAKER_00: But so far, it's more that stuff has disappeared.
[11:37] SPEAKER_00: So if we want to think about...
[11:42] nutritional food adequacy in America,
[11:46] well,
[11:47] we're no longer producing those reports.
[11:51] SPEAKER_00: If we have another pandemic,
[11:54] I will not at all trust the numbers coming out from the CDC
[11:58] about the effect.
[12:02] SPEAKER_00: So far, it takes a while.
[12:05] SPEAKER_00: It takes much more, especially just because the U.S.
[12:07] SPEAKER_00: statistical agencies are so good.
[12:10] They have such a really terrific track record and such a good
[12:15] system that mucking
[12:17] SPEAKER_00: with it is hard and will be dead obvious if they try to do it.
[12:23] Let me ask you about some of the people running economic policy
[12:27] for Donald Trump.
[12:29] SPEAKER_01: You wrote today about Kevin Hassett,
[12:32] SPEAKER_01: who has made a series of just crazy claims about prices coming down,
[12:40] SPEAKER_01: about...
[12:43] SPEAKER_01: Joe Biden being responsible for every, uh, ailment, uh, in the economy.
[12:49] SPEAKER_01: Um, he said early this year, we're not doing a trade war.
[12:52] We're doing a war on fentanyl and that's why we're putting
[12:55] tariffs on Canada,
[12:56] things like that.
[12:57] SPEAKER_01: Um,
[12:58] SPEAKER_01: when we had stress in the regional banking system,
[13:00] SPEAKER_01: uh,
[13:01] SPEAKER_01: a couple of months ago,
[13:02] SPEAKER_01: uh,
[13:03] SPEAKER_01: he said,
[13:03] SPEAKER_01: yeah,
[13:03] SPEAKER_01: that's because Joe Biden was asleep on banking regulation.
[13:07] SPEAKER_01: Um,
[13:08] SPEAKER_01: How do you assess what he's doing and why he's doing it?
[13:11] SPEAKER_01: Is he, I mean, he's in some sense a peer of yours.
[13:15] SPEAKER_01: Is he a competent economist who is pretending or something else?
[13:20] SPEAKER_00: Well, he was never a very competent economist.
[13:22] SPEAKER_00: And I hate that.
[13:23] SPEAKER_00: That sounds snooty, right?
[13:25] SPEAKER_00: But,
[13:25] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[13:25] SPEAKER_00: nobody would ever have said even before,
[13:28] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[13:29] recent years that he was a top flight talent in the field or an
[13:34] influential
[13:35] SPEAKER_00: researcher.
[13:36] Um,
[13:36] but,
[13:37] um,
[13:38] he,
[13:39] and I think he's basically sold his soul for politics a long,
[13:43] long time ago.
[13:44] SPEAKER_00: You can go back to,
[13:45] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[13:46] SPEAKER_00: um,
[13:47] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[13:47] SPEAKER_00: this goes way all the way back to,
[13:50] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[13:50] SPEAKER_00: to the Bush administration,
[13:52] SPEAKER_00: um,
[13:52] SPEAKER_00: that he's,
[13:53] SPEAKER_00: uh,
[13:55] SPEAKER_00: been pretty bad.
[13:56] SPEAKER_00: And that's certainly, uh, Trump, Trump term one.
[13:59] SPEAKER_00: Um, so look, um, I mean, I did say in today's substat that he's, uh,
[14:05] SPEAKER_00: He's a DEI hire, an ideological DEI hire.
[14:08] SPEAKER_00: He's somebody, you know, he's not the worst.
[14:11] SPEAKER_00: I have to say,
[14:12] SPEAKER_00: among the people whose names have been floated for Fetch here,
[14:16] SPEAKER_00: in some ways,
[14:18] SPEAKER_00: he's not the worst of that batch,
[14:21] and not nearly as bad as some of the other people that Trump
[14:23] has surrounded himself
[14:24] SPEAKER_00: with.
[14:24] SPEAKER_00: But he would not,
[14:26] there's no way that he would be in this position if he weren't
[14:29] just reliably,
[14:31] SPEAKER_00: a reliable sycophant,
[14:32] SPEAKER_00: basically.
[14:32] SPEAKER_00: And
[14:34] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[14:35] SPEAKER_00: By the way, it's a tragedy.
[14:37] Economics as a profession has a fair number of reasonably
[14:40] conservative,
[14:42] competent people.
[14:44] SPEAKER_00: By the nature of it,
[14:45] SPEAKER_00: there are a fair number of people who basically favor smaller government,
[14:49] SPEAKER_00: worry about the incentive effects of taxes,
[14:52] SPEAKER_00: and so on,
[14:52] SPEAKER_00: who are also actually good economists.
[14:55] SPEAKER_00: And many of them, I think,
[14:59] SPEAKER_00: even a few years ago,
[15:00] imagined themselves having some role in setting economic policy
[15:03] in a Republican
[15:04] SPEAKER_00: administration.
[15:05] SPEAKER_00: But they're not wanted.
[15:06] Their competence itself is disqualifying because they might
[15:10] take a stand on principle.
[15:12] SPEAKER_00: We can't have that.
[15:14] SPEAKER_01: If Kevin indeed becomes Fed Chair,
[15:16] SPEAKER_01: as most people now expect,
[15:19] SPEAKER_01: it's been reported that Scott Besson,
[15:21] SPEAKER_01: in addition to being Treasury Secretary,
[15:23] will take his job at the same time as head of the National
[15:27] Economic Council.
[15:29] SPEAKER_01: Besson is also somebody...
[15:33] SPEAKER_01: who,
[15:33] SPEAKER_01: though when he was hired,
[15:35] SPEAKER_01: people thought he was going to be a tempering force,
[15:38] SPEAKER_01: an adult in the room,
[15:40] SPEAKER_01: has been saying all sorts of stuff about the Fed.
[15:43] He blamed cattle prices on immigrants bringing diseased cows
[15:47] into the United States.
[15:50] SPEAKER_01: What do you think he's all about?
[15:51] SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I have to wonder why.
[15:54] SPEAKER_00: I mean, he doesn't need this.
[15:57] SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's rich beyond our wildest dreams.
[16:02] SPEAKER_00: So I don't know.
[16:03] But Trump does have this way of sucking people into his
[16:07] alternative reality.
[16:09] And I don't know what...
[16:10] But it is...
[16:11] I had good,
[16:14] you know,
[16:15] liberal Wall Street types.
[16:17] SPEAKER_00: They do exist.
[16:18] SPEAKER_00: And who were...
[16:21] SPEAKER_00: Very happy with Besson's appointment,
[16:24] SPEAKER_00: because they said they knew him,
[16:25] SPEAKER_00: good guy,
[16:26] SPEAKER_00: sensible,
[16:26] SPEAKER_00: he would be a restraint,
[16:30] SPEAKER_00: and what exactly went on,
[16:35] SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
[16:35] SPEAKER_00: But it is kind of shocking.
[16:38] SPEAKER_01: Let me ask you one technical thing related to Besson.
[16:41] There had been a lot of talk about what the United States
[16:45] government did for the
[16:47] SPEAKER_01: president of Argentina when he was in political difficulty.
[16:50] SPEAKER_01: And a news anchor recently questioned Besson and asked about the bailout.
[16:57] SPEAKER_01: And
[16:58] SPEAKER_01: Besant's response was, why do you say bailout?
[17:01] SPEAKER_01: Do you even know what a currency swap is?
[17:04] SPEAKER_01: And then he said, he talked about how we've made money on this deal.
[17:09] How do you assess what they actually did and whether it's the
[17:12] kind of thing that
[17:13] SPEAKER_01: might have posed risk,
[17:14] SPEAKER_01: but in fact did not?
[17:16] SPEAKER_01: Or do we not even know yet?
[17:18] SPEAKER_00: Oh, we don't know yet.
[17:19] The United States has ended up,
[17:21] you know,
[17:21] basically swapping dollars for pesos.
[17:25] SPEAKER_00: And the peso hasn't collapsed yet.
[17:27] SPEAKER_00: So,
[17:28] SPEAKER_00: so far,
[17:29] SPEAKER_00: it hasn't,
[17:29] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[17:30] SPEAKER_00: so far,
[17:31] SPEAKER_00: we haven't lost money,
[17:32] SPEAKER_00: but we certainly put a lot of taxpayers' money at risk.
[17:35] SPEAKER_00: And I would say a lot of risk.
[17:38] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[17:40] SPEAKER_00: the malaise strategy in Argentina,
[17:44] SPEAKER_00: which is the exchange rate-based inflation stabilization,
[17:48] SPEAKER_00: is a strategy that has
[17:51] SPEAKER_00: failed, often disastrously, again and again in many countries.
[17:56] SPEAKER_00: And it's failed in Argentina itself multiple times.
[17:59] SPEAKER_00: So I can't think that putting U.S.
[18:02] SPEAKER_00: taxpayers' money on the line in defense of that strategy is a good bet,
[18:08] SPEAKER_00: even if it has bought Malaysian funds.
[18:12] SPEAKER_01: I wrote a piece today about a repeated pattern of
[18:17] Republicans offering doomsaying predictions about everything
[18:22] from Social Security
[18:24] SPEAKER_01: when it was being proposed,
[18:25] SPEAKER_01: Medicare,
[18:27] SPEAKER_01: the Affordable Care Act,
[18:28] SPEAKER_01: Dodd-Frank,
[18:28] SPEAKER_01: it was going to be disastrous in many ways,
[18:30] SPEAKER_01: job killing,
[18:31] SPEAKER_01: all that sort of stuff.
[18:33] SPEAKER_01: While at the same time,
[18:34] SPEAKER_01: every time they cut taxes,
[18:36] SPEAKER_01: they say,
[18:36] SPEAKER_01: well,
[18:37] this is going to help everybody and this is not going to
[18:40] increase the deficit
[18:41] SPEAKER_01: because we're going to supercharge economic growth.
[18:44] SPEAKER_01: In one of your pieces recently,
[18:46] you noted a comment by Jared Bernstein where he said the
[18:50] Republican Party seems to
[18:51] SPEAKER_01: have lost the ability to think about policy.
[18:56] SPEAKER_01: How did that happen?
[18:58] SPEAKER_00: Oh, look, it's a long-standing thing, by the way.
[19:00] SPEAKER_00: This is not... This goes all the way back.
[19:03] SPEAKER_00: I mean, in some ways, a lot of this was happening even decades ago.
[19:08] SPEAKER_00: But what's happened is that you have...
[19:11] SPEAKER_00: Well, look, compare think tanks.
[19:13] SPEAKER_00: So,
[19:14] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[19:15] SPEAKER_00: Jared used to be at Economic Policy Institute,
[19:19] SPEAKER_00: which is,
[19:20] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[19:20] SPEAKER_00: it's clearly left-leaning.
[19:23] SPEAKER_00: That's where they are.
[19:24] SPEAKER_00: But they do scrupulously honest research versus Heritage Foundation.
[19:32] SPEAKER_00: which is at this point entirely corrupted.
[19:35] SPEAKER_00: It was never very good, but it's what's demanded.
[19:38] SPEAKER_00: I mean, again, there are all of these... Who's doing the demanding?
[19:44] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[19:45] SPEAKER_00: it's the donors are demanding it,
[19:46] SPEAKER_00: and now increasingly it's the Trump administration that's demanding it.
[19:49] SPEAKER_00: But the kind of plutocratic money that finances this whole enterprise is,
[19:58] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[19:59] SPEAKER_00: they don't want.
[20:01] They don't want actual answers They want propaganda And so
[20:05] there A lot of
[20:09] SPEAKER_00: Washington has this kind of think tank universe,
[20:12] which provides a reserve army of experts for when your party
[20:16] comes into office.
[20:18] And the Democratic think tank universe is a lot of good,
[20:22] reasonable people.
[20:23] SPEAKER_00: They obviously have political genius,
[20:27] SPEAKER_00: and that presumably has some effect in coloring analysis,
[20:31] SPEAKER_00: no matter how hard you try.
[20:32] SPEAKER_00: But there are people who actually know their stuff.
[20:35] SPEAKER_00: Such people on the right
[20:37] SPEAKER_00: They exist, but they're not wanted.
[20:41] So you end up with,
[20:42] I mean,
[20:43] HACET is actually way better than,
[20:45] you know,
[20:47] Larry Kudlow.
[20:48] SPEAKER_01: Well, Kevin came out of the American Enterprise Institute.
[20:51] SPEAKER_01: Do you still have confidence in the work that's done there?
[20:53] SPEAKER_00: AEI is very mixed.
[20:55] SPEAKER_00: There are still decent people at AEI.
[20:57] SPEAKER_00: It's not like Heritage.
[20:58] SPEAKER_00: It's not completely corrupt.
[20:59] SPEAKER_00: But it's not entirely good either.
[21:02] SPEAKER_00: And...
[21:05] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[21:05] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[21:07] SPEAKER_00: you see that the people who were not bad,
[21:11] SPEAKER_00: who were at some of these conservative think tanks,
[21:14] SPEAKER_00: have actually been bailing out.
[21:15] SPEAKER_00: They've been leaving.
[21:17] SPEAKER_00: So the result is there's no apparatus.
[21:22] SPEAKER_00: I end up sounding like a functionary.
[21:23] SPEAKER_00: But, you know, policy.
[21:26] SPEAKER_00: Running America is complicated.
[21:27] SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of intense detail.
[21:30] Try to talk about any substantive issue and you quickly find
[21:34] yourself in an
[21:35] SPEAKER_00: alphabet soup of agency names and laws and so on.
[21:38] SPEAKER_00: And, of course, you know, this is technical stuff.
[21:42] And people who actually know their way through this and how
[21:46] things work and what
[21:48] SPEAKER_00: the evidence shows,
[21:51] SPEAKER_00: have been pretty much drummed out of the entire Republican Party.
[21:54] SPEAKER_00: So, I mean, I've been thinking a lot right now.
[21:58] SPEAKER_00: We're having the imminent health insurance catastrophe.
[22:01] So how did the Republicans stumble into this where millions of
[22:05] people are about to
[22:06] SPEAKER_00: see their health care costs just skyrocket?
[22:09] SPEAKER_00: And my main thought is I don't think anyone was telling them.
[22:13] SPEAKER_00: I don't think there was anyone in the Trump administration,
[22:16] I don't think there was anyone on the congressional staff
[22:19] alerting Republican
[22:21] SPEAKER_00: leaders that,
[22:22] SPEAKER_00: hey,
[22:22] you've got 24 million people who are about to find that they
[22:25] can't afford health
[22:26] SPEAKER_00: insurance.
[22:28] SPEAKER_00: They just sort of woke up about six weeks before catastrophe,
[22:31] SPEAKER_00: and now they can't get their act together.
[22:35] Speaking of people who have some degree of competence and are
[22:39] on the conservative
[22:40] SPEAKER_01: side,
[22:42] SPEAKER_01: when Ben Bernanke wrote a memoir after his service as Fed chair,
[22:46] he said that he had left the Republican Party because it had
[22:52] been taken over by
[22:53] SPEAKER_01: know-nothingism.
[22:57] SPEAKER_01: Do you see it getting taken back by know-somethingism?
[23:02] SPEAKER_01: I see no hint at that.
[23:04] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[23:04] SPEAKER_00: it's just,
[23:04] SPEAKER_00: there's just nothing,
[23:05] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[23:07] SPEAKER_00: who's,
[23:07] SPEAKER_00: certainly not Trump,
[23:08] SPEAKER_00: certainly not the people around Trump,
[23:11] SPEAKER_00: and even on the congressional leadership.
[23:14] SPEAKER_00: You know, I, I mean, it's hard to say, to think that
[23:20] SPEAKER_00: Well,
[23:20] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[23:20] you feel I almost feel nostalgic for the days when Mitch
[23:24] McConnell was running the
[23:25] congressional Republican wing because McConnell is not stupid
[23:30] and not ignorant.
[23:32] I kind of evil,
[23:33] but not,
[23:33] you know,
[23:34] but now or the George W.
[23:37] Bush administration.
[23:38] SPEAKER_00: Well, that gets a lot of competent people in there.
[23:40] SPEAKER_01: Well, that gets to a question, which is.
[23:45] SPEAKER_01: At the moment.
[23:46] SPEAKER_01: I.
[23:48] SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump's polls are way down.
[23:50] And I think the level of panic you've seen in many quarters
[23:55] about the Trump
[23:56] SPEAKER_01: administration,
[23:57] SPEAKER_01: it's not gone,
[23:58] SPEAKER_01: but it's diminished.
[23:59] SPEAKER_01: People feel like the air is coming out of the balloon a little bit.
[24:04] SPEAKER_01: So I guess the question would be,
[24:05] SPEAKER_01: to the extent that we can look beyond this administration,
[24:13] SPEAKER_01: how much can be repaired for
[24:16] of what Trump has done and of the leadership of agencies by
[24:21] people who are,
[24:22] SPEAKER_01: in fact,
[24:23] SPEAKER_01: sycophants and not competent actors?
[24:27] SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, let's say we get through to January 2029.
[24:33] SPEAKER_00: We've actually had reasonably fair elections.
[24:37] SPEAKER_00: We have a
[24:38] SPEAKER_00: A Democratic president and a Democratic Congress.
[24:41] SPEAKER_01: And you've had a resilient economy.
[24:43] SPEAKER_01: You have to say we still have a resilient economy.
[24:46] SPEAKER_00: Yes.
[24:47] SPEAKER_00: But, okay.
[24:48] SPEAKER_00: So you can replace the agency heads.
[24:52] SPEAKER_00: We can quickly assemble the secretary level, the cabinet level positions.
[24:59] SPEAKER_00: We can get good people.
[25:00] SPEAKER_00: And you can get good people three or four layers down very quickly.
[25:05] SPEAKER_00: You have,
[25:06] SPEAKER_00: but there's two million federal employees,
[25:10] SPEAKER_00: which who are very,
[25:12] SPEAKER_00: on the whole,
[25:13] SPEAKER_00: we have much better people working for the government than we deserve,
[25:16] given how they're not that well paid relative to the private
[25:19] sector and so on.
[25:20] SPEAKER_00: A lot of people are leaving.
[25:23] SPEAKER_00: they will not come back.
[25:25] SPEAKER_00: Their institutional knowledge will be lost.
[25:28] So just reconstructing an effectively functioning government is
[25:31] actually going to
[25:31] SPEAKER_00: be a multi-year project.
[25:33] SPEAKER_00: And then there's the whole issue of credibility.
[25:36] SPEAKER_00: At home,
[25:37] SPEAKER_00: abroad,
[25:39] SPEAKER_00: one of the problems,
[25:40] SPEAKER_00: getting somebody to be a career civil servant,
[25:42] when you know how career civil servants have been treated
[25:45] internationally,
[25:50] SPEAKER_00: who,
[25:50] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[25:51] SPEAKER_00: one of the things we don't talk about enough on tariffs,
[25:55] SPEAKER_00: but as part of it,
[25:55] SPEAKER_00: everything that we,
[25:57] that Trump has done on tariffs is a violation of international
[25:59] agreements.
[26:00] SPEAKER_00: And that's how we make, we did, that's how we did tariff policy.
[26:03] It was always,
[26:06] it's always under the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934.
[26:09] SPEAKER_00: We make deals with other countries,
[26:11] SPEAKER_00: the White House negotiates them,
[26:12] SPEAKER_00: then presents it to Congress for a vote.
[26:15] SPEAKER_00: So every
[26:18] SPEAKER_00: The whole structure of U.S.
[26:20] SPEAKER_00: trade policy was built around solemn agreements with other countries,
[26:25] SPEAKER_00: which not only did Trump rip up,
[26:28] SPEAKER_00: he didn't even try to explain why he was ripping them up.
[26:32] SPEAKER_01: Donald Trump does not do solemn.
[26:34] SPEAKER_00: So, well, yeah.
[26:36] SPEAKER_00: But the point is then, nobody...
[26:40] You're worried about what are the ways in which rule of law
[26:43] erosion can matter.
[26:44] One of the things I talk about sometimes,
[26:46] people ask about what about debt?
[26:49] SPEAKER_00: What about debt and deficits?
[26:51] SPEAKER_00: I've always been saying don't be alarmed.
[26:54] SPEAKER_00: And the reason I've been saying that is that serious countries...
[27:01] SPEAKER_00: particularly serious countries that borrow in their own currency,
[27:05] SPEAKER_00: markets cut them a lot of slack.
[27:07] SPEAKER_00: Britain had debt that was 250% of GDP at the end of World War II.
[27:11] There was no crisis because people said Britain is a serious
[27:14] country that can
[27:17] manage its own affairs and will do what is necessary to deal
[27:22] with its debt.
[27:25] SPEAKER_00: Are we still a serious country?
[27:28] Are you going to make a bet that the United States is that this
[27:31] America with this
[27:33] SPEAKER_00: political fragmentation is going to do what it takes?
[27:36] SPEAKER_00: So,
[27:37] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[27:38] SPEAKER_00: at a certain point,
[27:39] SPEAKER_00: you have to wonder whether people start to treat us as being Venezuela or
[27:45] SPEAKER_00: Argentina.
[27:46] SPEAKER_01: Well, speaking of how serious we are as a country—
[27:51] SPEAKER_01: I want to take some questions from viewers.
[27:54] SPEAKER_01: And Anthony Robbins asked the question,
[27:57] SPEAKER_01: what happens if,
[27:59] SPEAKER_01: let's say,
[27:59] Kevin Hassett takes over the Federal Reserve and forces through
[28:03] a big cut in
[28:05] SPEAKER_01: interest rates beyond what,
[28:06] SPEAKER_01: say,
[28:08] SPEAKER_01: reasonable analysis from J-PAL or others would indicate?
[28:12] SPEAKER_01: What's the consequence of that?
[28:13] SPEAKER_01: Okay.
[28:13] Now,
[28:13] the first thing to say is that interest rate decisions are made
[28:17] by a committee.
[28:18] SPEAKER_00: The chairman doesn't have dictatorial power on that.
[28:21] And one of the best reasons not to freak out about Hassett is
[28:28] that he probably
[28:29] SPEAKER_00: won't be able to bring the committee with him,
[28:30] SPEAKER_00: at least for a while.
[28:33] SPEAKER_00: But look,
[28:34] SPEAKER_00: the current role model,
[28:36] SPEAKER_00: if you like,
[28:36] SPEAKER_00: is Turkey,
[28:37] SPEAKER_00: where President Erdogan is an autocrat,
[28:40] SPEAKER_00: has something of a Trumpian mode,
[28:43] SPEAKER_00: who,
[28:45] SPEAKER_00: when they started to have inflation problems,
[28:47] SPEAKER_00: he...
[28:48] found advisors who told them that actually the way to fight
[28:50] inflation is to cut
[28:51] SPEAKER_00: interest rates,
[28:52] SPEAKER_00: not increase them.
[28:53] And he listened to them and insisted on that and completely
[28:56] politicized their
[28:57] SPEAKER_00: central bank,
[28:58] SPEAKER_00: their equivalent to the Fed,
[28:59] SPEAKER_00: and didn't back off that view until inflation hit 80%.
[29:03] SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, things can spiral really quite quickly.
[29:10] Jeffrey Gilbert has a question that touches on something that's
[29:13] interested me.
[29:14] He talks about how corporate America has been willing to
[29:18] swallow tariff malfeasance.
[29:22] I have long wondered why business leaders did not recognize
[29:28] that Democrats in the
[29:32] SPEAKER_01: current era have tried to be more responsible about economic policy than
[29:37] SPEAKER_01: Republicans have.
[29:39] SPEAKER_01: Democratic administrations have produced lower deficits.
[29:43] SPEAKER_01: They produce higher job growth than Republicans.
[29:48] SPEAKER_01: And the lure of tax cuts has been so powerful.
[29:55] SPEAKER_01: Do you see any sign that corporate America is...
[30:00] SPEAKER_01: going to wake up to that reality?
[30:03] SPEAKER_01: You know,
[30:03] SPEAKER_01: there's a kind of cycle of autocracy,
[30:07] SPEAKER_00: oligarchy and autocracy,
[30:08] where oligarchs back some right-wing would-be strongman because
[30:16] they think that he
[30:17] SPEAKER_00: will cut their taxes and reinforce their privileges,
[30:20] SPEAKER_00: which at least initially they do get.
[30:25] SPEAKER_00: And then one day they wake up and discover that
[30:30] SPEAKER_00: they're working for him, not the other way around.
[30:32] That you sort of transition from greed to fear almost with no
[30:39] interregnum.
[30:40] SPEAKER_00: And that's sort of been happening at an accelerated pace right now.
[30:44] SPEAKER_00: A lot of U.S.
[30:45] SPEAKER_00: business is just afraid to speak up.
[30:48] They privately think that policy is terrible,
[30:52] but they're afraid to speak up.
[30:55] SPEAKER_00: They were not thinking very much about
[31:01] SPEAKER_00: They don't read enough history.
[31:03] SPEAKER_00: They didn't realize this was going to happen.
[31:07] SPEAKER_00: And for some of them,
[31:08] SPEAKER_00: still,
[31:09] SPEAKER_00: personally,
[31:10] is Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk personally richer right now
[31:17] than they would be
[31:18] SPEAKER_00: under a Democratic president?
[31:19] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[31:21] SPEAKER_00: Now, one of these days, again, let's...
[31:25] SPEAKER_00: The most extreme stuff now is actually quite reasonable.
[31:27] You know,
[31:28] one of these days,
[31:28] some of these guys may find themselves falling out of high
[31:30] windows.
[31:31] SPEAKER_00: But for now,
[31:34] SPEAKER_00: they're still,
[31:36] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[31:36] the interests of their businesses and their personal interests
[31:39] are not identical.
[31:40] SPEAKER_00: And in many cases, they are personally well here.
[31:43] SPEAKER_01: Well,
[31:43] SPEAKER_01: Francis notes something related to that point,
[31:47] SPEAKER_01: which is Costco suing the administration over tariffs is
[31:52] SPEAKER_01: That stands out.
[31:54] SPEAKER_01: How do you interpret that and do you expect more of that?
[31:57] SPEAKER_00: That's an interesting question.
[31:58] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[31:59] what's interesting there is that I'm not sure whether Costco is
[32:05] trying to influence
[32:06] SPEAKER_00: policy or,
[32:07] SPEAKER_00: you know,
[32:08] SPEAKER_00: I hope so.
[32:09] SPEAKER_00: But to some extent, they may just see a profit opportunity.
[32:14] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[32:16] SPEAKER_00: if two lower courts have ruled that the IEPA,
[32:23] the trade law that the administration has pretty much obviously
[32:27] illegally invoked
[32:28] SPEAKER_00: to impose most of its tariffs,
[32:30] SPEAKER_00: that this was illegal.
[32:32] SPEAKER_00: And if that...
[32:34] SPEAKER_00: If it's ruled illegal, it's very hard to see.
[32:36] SPEAKER_00: I don't know what they may try,
[32:38] but it's very hard to see how the administration can avoid
[32:41] refunding tariffs
[32:42] SPEAKER_00: already paid under an illegal application of the law.
[32:45] Can't they find a different legal authority or purported legal
[32:51] authority for imposing them?
[32:52] SPEAKER_00: They can find other ways to impose the tariffs,
[32:54] SPEAKER_00: but that doesn't mean that the original tariffs were legal.
[32:57] SPEAKER_00: So if you do a jargon,
[32:59] SPEAKER_00: you can do Section 232,
[33:01] SPEAKER_00: national security,
[33:04] SPEAKER_00: on almost anything,
[33:06] SPEAKER_00: unless people call you on it as being ridiculous.
[33:10] SPEAKER_00: So Section 232,
[33:11] SPEAKER_00: terrorists on bathroom vanities,
[33:13] SPEAKER_00: which Trump has imposed,
[33:14] SPEAKER_00: which is kind of bizarre.
[33:16] SPEAKER_00: But that's another court case.
[33:17] But even if you get to reimpose the terrorists under a
[33:21] different authority,
[33:22] SPEAKER_00: the original terrorists were still illegal.
[33:24] SPEAKER_00: So,
[33:26] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[33:26] SPEAKER_00: Pete,
[33:26] we do know there are Wall Street firms that have been buying up
[33:31] the rights to any
[33:32] SPEAKER_00: potential tariff refunds.
[33:34] And so Costco may just be doing this on its own instead of
[33:38] relying on Cantor
[33:42] SPEAKER_00: Fitzgerald,
[33:42] SPEAKER_00: which is Howard Letnick's old company,
[33:44] SPEAKER_00: now his son's company,
[33:45] SPEAKER_00: basically,
[33:47] is betting big on the tariffs being ruled illegal and they've
[33:52] been buying enough
[33:52] SPEAKER_00: tariff refund rights.
[33:54] So I don't know whether Costco is acting in the public interest
[33:58] or just plain sees
[34:00] SPEAKER_00: an opportunity to get itself a financial windfall.
[34:02] SPEAKER_00: I'll take it either way.
[34:03] Let me close with a question from Ariel Gonzalez,
[34:07] which I noted the other day.
[34:10] Senator Ted Cruz said that Donald Trump had done more for
[34:13] children than any parent
[34:15] SPEAKER_01: in American history.
[34:16] SPEAKER_01: And I think he was than any president in American history.
[34:19] SPEAKER_01: I think he was referring to the Trump accounts.
[34:22] SPEAKER_01: What do you make of those?
[34:24] SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, you know, what are they coming?
[34:28] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, there is this odd thing that that.
[34:33] SPEAKER_00: Trump is taking tariffs,
[34:34] SPEAKER_00: which are raising a lot less revenue,
[34:36] SPEAKER_00: actually,
[34:36] than expected because people have been so good at finding ways
[34:39] around them.
[34:40] SPEAKER_00: And which in any case,
[34:42] you are raising about 10 percent as much as the income tax and
[34:46] are closing only a
[34:47] SPEAKER_00: small fraction of the budget deficit.
[34:49] SPEAKER_00: And then saying now we have money to go and do a lot of handouts.
[34:52] SPEAKER_00: It's so this is crazy.
[34:55] And you think the same lack of action will follow these claims
[35:00] of a $2,000 tariff
[35:02] SPEAKER_01: rebate or a $2,000 health savings account check or whatever?
[35:06] SPEAKER_00: Wow.
[35:07] SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
[35:08] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[35:08] we're going to take the same pot of money and pretend that it's
[35:14] several times as
[35:14] SPEAKER_00: big as it is and then give it out
[35:17] SPEAKER_00: many times over in different kinds of awards.
[35:21] SPEAKER_00: They may do it, but it's wildly irresponsible.
[35:23] And if a Democrat did it,
[35:25] there'd be shrieks of fiscally irresponsible socialism.
[35:31] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[35:34] SPEAKER_01: let me, I lied.
[35:36] SPEAKER_01: I had one other question, which I wanted to ask, which is William Pigman.
[35:41] SPEAKER_01: We've talked about the importance of AI in the current economy.
[35:46] SPEAKER_01: He asked, can we better control or manage AI through the tax system?
[35:53] SPEAKER_01: Is there some way the tax policy can take AI in a responsible direction?
[35:59] SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that
[36:01] SPEAKER_00: I haven't really seen a tax-related thing.
[36:03] SPEAKER_00: I mean,
[36:05] SPEAKER_00: mostly,
[36:05] a lot of this boom would not be happening if we were—or would
[36:10] be much more prudent
[36:12] if we required that these companies pay the full true cost of
[36:17] the electricity that
[36:18] SPEAKER_00: they're burning.
[36:19] SPEAKER_00: You know, that just by itself is just a lot of it.
[36:23] SPEAKER_00: And then, yeah, I mean—
[36:26] SPEAKER_00: And there's also—I can go on and on about AI.
[36:31] SPEAKER_00: And in fact,
[36:32] SPEAKER_00: you can listen to my conversation on Saturday with Paul Kudrosky,
[36:38] SPEAKER_00: where we go on and on about it.
[36:40] SPEAKER_00: But the—
[36:44] One thing that strikes me is a lot of this AI boom is not even
[36:48] exactly corporate.
[36:49] SPEAKER_00: It really is a handful of individuals who decide to bet big on it.
[36:54] SPEAKER_00: And there's a feeling that this is partly just monstrous egos.
[37:00] SPEAKER_00: And monstrous egos have always been with us.
[37:04] But if those monstrous egos had a little bit less money because
[37:07] we had adequately
[37:08] SPEAKER_00: progressive taxation,
[37:10] SPEAKER_00: maybe this wouldn't be going so crazy.
[37:13] SPEAKER_01: Amen.
[37:14] SPEAKER_01: Paul Kregman, thanks so much for spending time with us.
[37:17] SPEAKER_01: You've been very generous and fascinating discussion.
[37:20] SPEAKER_01: Thanks for having me on.
[37:21] SPEAKER_02: I hope people enjoyed it.
[37:23] SPEAKER_02: All right.
[37:23] SPEAKER_02: Bye-bye.

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