← GoodFellows: Conversations on Economics, History & Geopolitics
GoodFellows: Conversations on Economics, History & Geopolitics
Are We Doing This Again? Andrew Ross Sorkin on “1929” and the GoodFellows on 2025 | GoodFellows | Hoover Institution
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- [00:02]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Don't look now, but there's something funny.
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John Cochran
Going on over there at the bank. George, I've never really seen one, but that's got all the ear marks of being a run.
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Bill Whelan
It's Tuesday, December 16th. And welcome back to Goodfellows, a Hoover Institution broadcast examining matters of history and current events, economics and geopolitics. I'm Bill Whelan, I'm a Hoover Distinguished Policy Fellow, and I'll be your moderator today, moderating a conversation featuring three very wise men who here at Hoover Institution we call the Goodfellows. We're referring of course, to the historian Sir Neil Ferguson, the economist John Cochran, and former presidential national security advisor, Lieutenant General H.R. mcMaster. Neil, John and H.R. are all Hoover senior fellows. Gentlemen, good to see you. And welcome to the Last show of 2025 in our B block. We're going to look back on the year in review and get your choices for various categories like story of the year, individual of the year, and so forth. But for our opening segment, well, nothing says spreading holiday cheer like talking about an economic calamity of nearly a century ago. And that is the market crash of 1929 and the possibility of it happening again perhaps in the near future. Joining us to talk about this, it's a great honor to welcome to Goodfellows Andrew Ross Sorkin.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thank you for having me, guys.
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Bill Whelan
Mr. Sorkin is a business and financial columnist and the founder and editor of the New York Times Dealbook business and policy newsletter. He's also co host of CNBC Squawk Box and co creator of one of my favorite shows, the Showtime series Billions Team X. He's here to discuss his bestselling book, 1929 Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and how it shattered a nation. Mr. Sorkum, welcome to Goodfellows.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thank you so much for having me. I mean, I'm such huge fans of all yours, it's kind of crazy to be with you.
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Bill Whelan
Thank you. You should know that I have a screen behind the screen in which I'm talking to you. And on it is a piece of notepad paper which has written in giant letters Andrew Ross Sorkin. Because nothing is worse as a moderator than to get somebody's name wrong. God forbid I confuse you with the other guy named Sorkin who writes for.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
A living, but there's a more famous Sorkin and his name is Aaron. Nice guy, too, by the way.
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Bill Whelan
Let me ask you this question then, Andrew. If I were to include a movie in a time capsule about money in America in the first decade of the 20th century. Would it be Aaron Sorkin's the Social Network, a screenplay about the founding of Facebook? Or would it be two movies based on your fine work, the Big Short and Too Big to fail, about the 08 financial crisis?
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
I'm going to choose one other. There's a fabulous movie called Margin Call that actually touches on the financial crisis in its own way. It's a dramatic version of it, fictionalized, but I actually think that it. It does a remarkable job of sort of capturing that moment and the feeling of that moment in a very special way.
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Bill Whelan
Okay, good choice. All right, Mr. Sorkin, so you know the rules of Goodfellows. I want you to interact with John Neal and hr. I will now drop the puck and then turn it over to them. Let me ask you this question. I read your excellent book over the holidays. Perfect for airplane ride. Early in the book, you say the market crash in 1929 is. And the exact word you choose is a misunderstood financial disaster question. What is not understood about 1929? And are you concerned that this generation of investors doesn't understand current market conditions?
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
I think both, and I think they're interrelated to some degree. I think that the greatest misunderstanding just in the popular conception of what. What happened in 1929 is. I think a lot of people think there was a crash that happened on one day in October and that somehow magically, we had a Great Depression. And I think that that's a complete myth. And I think when you get under the covers of it, you realize that the crash was just the first of a series of dominoes, with the other series of dominoes being policy choices that ultimately led to the Great Depression. It wasn't preordained that that crash unto itself had to create a depression of the kind of. Of magnitude that we had back in 1932 and 1933 and beyond. So I would say that's sort of one misunderstanding as to the sort of misunderstanding of today. I think the interrelated part of this is that, you know, back in 1929 and arguably in 2008, every financial crisis is a function of leverage in the system. I think we saw that in both of those contexts. And I think there's now a question in terms of today and how the investor class thinks about it, of whether we have a full appreciation of what really creates a panic, how systemic a panic and crash can be, and what are the component parts of what's happening in our economy today that might have some similarities. That is not to suggest that we have to have anything like what happened in 1929. But I think we're getting closer to something that might feel a little panicky sooner or later.
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Sir Neil Ferguson
Andrew, one of the things I really loved about your book, which kind of takes too big to fail and applies it to the roaring twenties, is you capture that there's a sort of tech mania, there's a kind of tech boom to the 20s. It's RCA, which is one of the really hot stocks of that of that time. Something that I don't think gets enough attention in. In standard accounts of. Of the 1920s economy. And I started to see patterns that were recognizable that I hadn't quite expected to see, particularly in the kind of inter of Wall street and an increasingly retail focused financial sector drawing people into enter the equity market with stories about technological wonders to come. As you were writing it, were you thinking to yourself, hang on, this is actually more familiar, this is more 2020s than I was expecting when I set out to write the book.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Oh goodness, way more. I mean, I think you and I spoke about this project probably close to a decade ago when I first started thinking about it. I don't think that I went into it expecting to see these parallels, but the very phrase that was used in the 1920s about democratizing finance, which was sort of the watch. Watchword or watch phrase of the day, about trying to get ordinary investors into the, into the markets and creating all sorts of new financial instruments to do that. Set against the backdrop, as you said, of this sort of remarkable technological shift taking place, radio being, you know, probably the greatest example. It was sort of the Nvidia of its time and people were betting on the future. And that's so much of what I think is happening today. We have, you know, AI is that technological backdrop. And then layered on top of that right now is this idea that we're trying to democratize finance again in some ways we're taking some of the guardrails off that we had to create all sorts of new products to get more people in. And there's a sense of maybe also similarly, you know, there was a remarkable amount of inequality in the 20s, there's a remarkable amount of inequality today. And just this sort of psyche of how I think a lot of people felt back then and feel today that their opportunity out or their only opportunity out is to buy the lottery ticket, right? Is to, is to get in, is to engage themselves in all of this. And so I think, you know, when I think about some of the parallels, that's sort of the milieu Which I think they live in.
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John Cochran
Well, let me ask then my job as ex finance professor. I read the book over the weekend. It's beautifully written. I got to really hand it to you on that. And it seems to be mostly the story of the people involved, which is fun. I learned a lot of sort of institutional detail, but it's not. I hope your next book will dig in more to the mechanisms. Remarkably little cause and effect language or counterfactual language in there. Although I get a. You know the first thing you said, Leverage. We are right now slashing capital standards once again. Here we go. But okay, close parenthesis. And I wonder if you can dig in. I mean there is sort of a standard narrative. Coolidge didn't anything. Greed inflated the bubble. It popped. The recession came. Hoover did nothing. Roosevelt saved us. Financial regulation means this will never happen again. Now that's false. And the whole generation of scholarship said it's false. It's a whole bunch of new ideas on why do stocks. What are these repeated phenomenon of these stocks booms and busts. Why did the Great Depression happen? I noticed, you know, Milton Friedman doesn't show up in your bibliography or Ben Bernanke, which is fine. I just. I'm hoping the next book or today you can get a little more on cause and effect and just meet a couple specifics on the boom. So just optimism and people coming in. That's kind of empty. Speculation is natural. The markets are there for information about interesting new technologies to get in the prices. But there are features of the markets that mean speculative activity and huge volume which you document. Optimism doesn't create volume. Volume is churn. There's mechanisms in the market that cause a bias to upward prices, including the margin lending that you explained. Just amazing what was going on. The Fed was lending money to banks so that banks could then lend money to stock speculators. I really wasn't quite clear how open the discount window. So the credit and short sales are hard as you document it. You couldn't just sit there and say this is overpriced. So there's that bias towards up which. Which a lot of those features are not there anymore. So that's one reason for hope. But then the Great Depression, the standard narrative says oh, the crash is the first domino, but it wasn't the first domino. The other policy choices were really important. And there I think you sort of showed the tale. Of course, this isn't a book about the Great Depression, but I think it's worth emphasizing it wasn't the stock market crash.
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Bill Whelan
That caused the.
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John Cochran
The big New York City banks did not fail. How National City didn't fail is just beyond me, given it was the small banks throughout the country that failed. And there, you know, here the book is light on, because that's not what.
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Bill Whelan
Your book is about.
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John Cochran
But I think it's worth emphasizing this wasn't inevitable given the stock market crash. We could have had 1921 all over again. We could have had 2000 all over again. But the Fed failed in its job as lender of last resort. Banking regulations meant that small banks could not recapitalize, couldn't be bought out. The bank crashes clearly caused the economy to fail. And the stock market's pretty rational. Once all the banks have closed down for other reasons, it's perfectly rational for stock prices to keep on falling down. And then a whole bunch of scholarship kind of likes Coolidge these days. And Hoover and Roosevelt's energetic efforts seem to have really hurt things. So anyway, that was a long introduction, but I'm hungry for more of the cause and effect and what's the real narrative of the financial markets and the Great Depression.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
So let me just add to that a couple of things. One piece of this, because you mentioned technology that I actually think is important, doesn't get enough attention, is actually that one of the reasons I think we had a crash was actually a technology problem unto itself. The actual physical technology undermined confidence to a degree that I don't think is appreciated. And as a result, people just were selling stocks almost indiscriminately because they didn't know what the actual price was. You know, today we have our phones and we can look at, you know, by the millisecond, exactly what the stock price was back then. It was, you know, so very different. Even people who were standing on the floor of the exchange, looking up at the big board, were looking at numbers that were often three, four, five hours behind. I had never appreciated, actually, till I started working on this project. Every time you'd see those famous pictures of thousands of people standing in the street outside of the New York Stock Exchange, you know, on those. Those crash days in October of 1929, what they were doing there. The reason they had all gone down there, the reason they were standing there, was because they were trying to find out what was happening to their money, like, literally physically, because even if they were at a brokerage at 57th street, if you were three or four hours in the wrong direction on the floor of the exchange a couple blocks away, you were even worse. And so I Think that actually really did suck some of the oxygen out of the system. But I think you're 100% right that it wasn't the crash unto itself that created the Great Depression. In fact, the other sort of component part that I. I don't think I appreciated was by the end of the year of 1929, the stock market was only down 17%. And in fact, I think Hoover interestingly looked at the stock market as a barometer indicator of how he felt things were going. What I think was missed, though, in that thinking to some degree was the downdraft between September of 1929 and call it November 13th, which was the. The lowest day of the market was about 50%. And because everybody was so living on borrowed money at so on margin, oftentimes 10 to 1, they were caught in. The reason that people were selling their homes and mortgaging their houses was because. And they couldn't benefit when the stock came back because they. They already. They had already had to sell out. So I do think that sucked some of the confidence out of the system. But it doesn't answer the question how we got to the Great Depression. I think it's a confluence of raising taxes or wanting to raise taxes, implementing tariffs. I think what the Fed did in terms of sitting on its hands. We haven't talked about the debate over the gold standard. I mean, that is a huge component part to this. Had we been able to print money earlier, I don't think we would have been talking about necessarily the kind of bank failures that we did in 1932 that ultimately led to the unemployment picture being 25%. Yeah.
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John Cochran
Because 30% deflation is huge when you have to pay bad borrowed money. I just want. Here's how to not win the New York Times bestseller Write a book about financial plumbing. But there's a lesson in here, kind of beautifully written between lines. The plumbing matters. And when you're. Instead of buying a call option, if you think you have a free call option by being on margin. And then I'll sell on the way down. Sorry. Nobody understood that.
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Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
But Andrew.
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John Cochran
But had you say it.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Yes.
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John Cochran
That is an illusion, perpetual illusion. They didn't have good call options. And then you have to be ready to sell instantly. And if the market's closed or it's a tape is behind, you can't do that. So those plumbing issues matter a lot.
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Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Andrew. What I loved about is the description of the people and the sense of agency that people make decisions. Right. And that has an effect. And I'm kind of the Resident optimist here. But optimism was not really a virtue in this book. Man, I'm thinking of, like, Sunshine Stein, Charlie Mitchell, you know, and, and. And so I. What I'd like to ask you is, is who do you think is. Was more responsible at certain critical elements of the story and, and what they could have done differently? I'm thinking of, like, the opening scene in. In Steinbeck's the Grapes of Wrath, remember, when the. The guy's getting. His farm is getting repossessed and he comes out with his rifle. You know, the guy behind the bull, he wants to shoot somebody and he says, well, who do I shoot? Like, who? So I guess. I guess who should.
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Bill Whelan
Who should.
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Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Who should we shoot in retrospect for making decisions?
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
But see, there's two questions. The one is, you know, what could you do on the front end to prevent the crash unto itself? But then, as John said, if you don't believe that the crash is what ultimately led to the Great Depression, that unto itself is a. So I do believe it's a domino of a sort. I don't think it's the I, but. But I don't think it's even the most instrumental domino. I think it's the. The one that sucks. The. The confidence first, and that then leads to a whole series of almost irrational decisions. Sometimes I think to myself, what could have Hoover done? Or if Benjamin Strong was still alive in the spring of 1929, was there something they could have done to really tamp down the speculation? By the way, one of the reasons that the Fed did nothing was because they were scared. This goes to the sort of question about politics and even Fed independence. They were worried that if they raised interest rates too much, that they would actually tip the economy over. And not just that they'd get hauled in front of Congress, but that they'd, you know, the great experiment that was the Federal Reserve would just end. They had lived through being blamed in 1921, and I think didn't want to repeat that. So that was sort of. In terms of trying to understand that Hoover, you know, he's only in office starting March 4th. You know, the inauguration was different back then in terms of the timing. And so I don't know how much time he really had to sort of jump in front of the train, if you could have even done that.
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John Cochran
Wanting the government to notice bubbles happening and stop them ahead of time is pretty ambitious. I think the policy mistakes in the wake of the crash are more significant.
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Sir Neil Ferguson
One of the things I love about the book, Andrew, is Precisely the people. You'll notice that Professor Cochrane's objection to it is that it has people in it and not plumbing. But of course people make history. Plumbing, not so much. And you show really rather importantly, Congress mattered. And that's part of the pressure that's on policymakers, that there's a lot of congressional suspicion of the Fed. And I think one of the beauties of the book is that we get the full dramatis Persona. A lot of characters involved in American government. It's not just that the President sits there and either does well or does badly. Herbert Hoover, after whom our institution is named, gets a very bad press as if the President is king. But in fact you show that Congress is a very important player. You give appropriate billing in your drama to Carter Glass, the Senator, very interesting figure. You properly bring him out, who ends up being one of the co authors of the famous Glass Steagall Act. But I think it's the beauty of the book that we see all of these different characters in their different roles, including the Treasury Secretary, another potential villain of the piece, Andrew Mellon, all making these decisions that taken together make matters much worse. But you show why they take these decisions and how their complex pasts, their personalities ultimately influence the outcome. So that's, that's why I think it's such a terrific book, why it's selling so well. I've many books about the Great Depression, probably as many as John over the years. I can't think of many, including even some of the classic like Galbraiths that give us a sense of why the people did what they did. And you do that very well.
- [18:27]
John Cochran
And I just want to add there's a temptation as HR went, you know, who are the villains here? And you went after probably the most likely villains, the big rich bankers. In my reading, they all came off pretty sympathetic. I mean, yeah, they were, you know, doing shady stuff, but it was all.
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Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Basically this is what I like, this is what I like though, because it, I mean I like your attendance to human nature, right? You describe them in the book as flawed, self interested and complicated. And, and in, in, in the, in the portraits that you paint of these people, they're, they're not simplistic, right? You, you under, you understand that their family relationships, where they came from, their anxieties. I mean, you know, I mean, I mean there's everything from, you know, people who committed suicide, right, to those, to those, to those who were sort of almost disinterested in what was happening to other people because they were, they were, you Know, they made out okay. So I mean, I just think it was, it's great in terms of the portraits of the people and again, the sense of agency.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Right.
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Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
These are people who made decisions. And just quick, I'd like to ask you to comment on Hoover as well, because it's. Hoover struck me as, you know, kind of a taciturn guy, you know, but, but somebody who tried to do the right thing. And I'm thinking of like the, of the letter, the cable that he sends to, to Roosevelt and says, hey, you know, you've got, here's my suggestion to you, right? And it's delivered. It was a telegram and Roosevelt was on a train maybe, I think, or something. It was a great story. And then of course, partisan politics, man. I mean, Roosevelt doesn't do the right thing.
- [19:57]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So, I mean, doesn't do the right thing. That, that to me is a, A, a fascinating glimpse into Hoover. But I would argue, by the way, Hoover made a series of terrible mistakes along the way and then recognized those mistakes. And in that moment he had actually now lost the election to Roosevelt. And it was during that sort of interim period where he was handing over the reins before the inauguration where he realized we got to save these banks because that's when things started to get really, really terrible. By the way, one other surprise for me at least was actually when you look at the time, people who were polled thought the economy was getting better and actually probably would have voted for Hoover based on the economy. The reason Hoover lost was not because of the economy, but because he was a fan of prohibition, which was another sort of revelation to me. But in that four month period, he realized it was a problem and needed to save the banks, but also knew that the only way to save the banks was, was to get Roosevelt on board. Otherwise there wouldn't be enough continuity. Nobody would believe what the government was ultimately going to do. Of course Roosevelt has talked to the hand because he doesn't want to get blamed with this. And then it does.
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Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
It was interesting, he noted that it was, it was sort of the, the response that Hoover expected.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Right.
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Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
I think you said in the book you say, hey, before he even opened the response. He kind of knew what was in.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
There, knew the answer. But one other thing to the motivation piece of this, which I think is interesting and at least I went back to try to find somebody on the other end of it. Oftentimes I try to think to myself, put myself in their own, their shoes back then. Even when you see people making terrible decisions or even things you might think of are immoral or wrong, especially in retrospect today with the laws we have. Back then, there was no sec, there was no insider trading rules, there was no bank capital requirements, there was no nothing. There was no prospectuses for companies. And, and I say that only because I think in a, you know, I often think of the markets are a game of, of people trying to outwit the other side. And so whoever's buying a stock thinks they're smarter than the person selling a stock. And whoever's selling a stock in that moment oftentimes thinks they're smarter than the person who's buying it from them. Right. That's just what it is. And so when you see them doing things that today we would think of as manipulation, I think a lot of them justified in their head as just another way of outwitting the other side. And I went looking for people, I wanted to find some example of some person who didn't participate in these things because they somehow thought it was immoral. And I couldn't find them. And I only say that because I think it goes to this, the conceit or concept of just what was going on in that day and age and how people thought about these rules of engagement.
- [22:45]
Bill Whelan
Andrew, I'd like to shift now and talk about a few things happening in the 2000 and twenties as opposed to the 1920s. Let's begin with Scott Besant who recently you interviewed at the, at your summit. That was quite a summit, by the way, between him and Halle Berry and Gavin Newsom. Well done. Can you explain the difference between a Treasury Secretary's role in the 2000s versus the 1920s, Besant versus Andrew Mellon. And then secondly, I want your opinion on what kind of how good of a job the Trump administration does on selling the economy.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Oh goodness, that's such a great question. You know, I'm not sure actually Scott Beston's job is, I'm very curious what everyone here thinks. I don't think his job is actually that different than the role that Andrew, Andrew Mellon played. I mean, he's, I think in this case Beston has a much better relationship, it seems like with President Trump than Mellon ever had with President Hoover. President Hoover sort of kept Melon around because he thought he needed somebody like that to.
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Bill Whelan
But he's very much out front pushing back against you and the economy. And then he's, John will probably tell us this, he's probably picking the next Fed chair. So strikes me he's much more hands.
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
On than Melon was Yes, but I think that's in part because Trump is, you know, delegated some of these responsibilities, but not really because in the end, the decision will be made by the president in a way that, where I felt like Hoover was maybe hands on. John, you're, you're, you're making.
- [24:04]
John Cochran
I'm going to disagree. So I think Besson's job is to make sense of whatever Trump wants and to sell the administration policy. We have a very active administration policy these days, unlike the previous one. Mellon really shown during Coolidge's time that he worked with Coolidge to cut the federal budget dramatically, to cut the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 20%, bigger even than Reagan's cut, and to oversee a tremendous economic boom that.
- [24:31]
Bill Whelan
No.
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John Cochran
Did not sow the seeds, inevitably, of the recession that followed. So his job was tax policy behind the scenes, not to get on TV and explain why we're having tariffs today.
- [24:42]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So you think today he's become much more of just a spokesman for the White House or maybe every cabinet member has become that in this day and era?
- [24:50]
John Cochran
Well, there's.
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Bill Whelan
It.
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John Cochran
There's much more. Get on TV and, you know, what are we doing today? Policy, policy, policy. I kind of, I think you were kind of mean on poor old Coolidge. I kind of look back fondly on being quiet and softly fixing the government.
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Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Yeah. His wife made up for his, you know, for his personality. She was quite a bubbly personality and a big socialite.
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John Cochran
You know, there's a great quote from your book. I have three that I'm going to want to read, but one. One thing was certain. Calvin Coolidge's style of governance, taciturn, aloof and minimal, was about to be retired. And the US Would get a chance to see what a president imbued with optimism, ideas and energy could accomplish at a time when the rest of the nation seemed to be overflowing with them. I wonder if the. If all this energy and ideas and so forth has turned out so well.
- [25:36]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And well, that might have been a mistake. I'm not suggesting it wasn't. And by I, it was interesting. Prior to Hoover winning the election and even being inaugurated, there was a view on Wall street that he might turn out to be a terrible president. And then for whatever reason, in the. In literally the weeks before his inauguration, the market started to move much higher and people started to get. There was a. In the same way there was a Trump bump, there was a Hoover bump.
- [26:01]
John Cochran
Well, it should have ended. I mean, you know, could ease. There's a counterfactual history where the Great Depression was another 1921, and, and all the banks didn't fail and Smoot Hawley didn't come in and the National Reconstruction act didn't destroy the economy and we didn't have deflation under the gold standard. And we went back.
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Sir Neil Ferguson
But that's a counterfactual about the Fed, John, because remember, you brought up Milton Friedman. The reason you brought Milton up was that his monetary history of the United States, co authored with Anna Schwartz, tells the story of the Great Depression primarily as a series of monetary policy disasters. And I often used to say to people in the period of 2008, 2009, if you want to understand Ben Bernanke, just assume that he's doing the exact opposite of what the Fed did during the Great Depression. Andrew, you had a ringside seat for that crisis. The Fed is the key institution both in 1929-32, when it gets it all wrong, and then in 2008 to, I guess, 2010, 11, when I think one has to say it does a lot better. What's your view of the future of the Fed? It's a hot topic all across the country these days, or at least it is in New York and Washington. Do you see a danger ahead for a Fed that might be losing its independence?
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Andrew Ross Sorkin
Well, I think, look, I think one of the lessons is that the independence of the Fed does matter. And I think that was actually, I don't, you know, Hoover was not telling the Fed what to do back in 29. But it's clear that the right answer, at least thus far in terms of the crises we've had, is to do things like Ben Bernanke did in 2008, and arguably, by the way, what even Powell did during the pandemic to some degree, which is when you have a crisis, you need to throw money at the problem, as politically unpalatable as that may very well be. The question to me is that playbook has worked thus far. And that was the lesson of 1929, which is we didn't throw money at the problem. What I don't know is if there is some red line that we are going to cross in the future. Back then, 1929, there was a budget surplus in America. We weren't talking about debt the way we talk about debt today. And I just don't know when the bondholders of the world raise their hand and say, excuse me, this doesn't work for us. We're very happy to loan you money in the future, but you're going to have to do it at a much higher interest rate, in which case you create a really vicious and painful cycle, potentially for the whole country. And so, I don't know, it'd be very interesting to see if that moment ever comes. I've thought that moment would come a long time ago and it hasn't. So what do I know?
- [28:43]
John Cochran
Well, I want to ask you what you know, this segues into financial regulation. We look at the Fed and we're just up and down. There's the overnight interest rate. That's boring. The financial regulation is the interesting part. Yes. We are still stuck in bailout like crazy and then pass hundreds of thousands of regulations that don't work and then we bail out like crazy again. And exactly what you said. In the next crisis, Uncle Sam wants to throw another couple trillion dollars around. Who knows if we actually have it without printing money and it turning into inflation. So I'm curious. You know, you watched the first crisis, you watched the Dodd Frank act, which of course made sure that we would never have any failures again. And you know, you watch Silicon Valley bank. That shows that they have no idea what they're doing. And there's the second quote I want to read. As the major inevitability of reform sank in, Aldrich and the Rockefellers showed them the necessity of jockeying for whatever regulatory advantage they could get, this is how the game would be played. There's a certain rotten crony capitalism going on in our financial regulatory system. So where do you see the state of that whole affair?
- [29:48]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Well, two things. One is I had a view before I started writing this book that somehow the good old days didn't have lobbying and didn't have cronyism and that somehow, you know, our laws were passed by people of, of great, you know, virtue. Virtue. And then here I. And by the way, I, I had this impression that Carter Glass had created Glass Steagall, and it's done for the right reasons and all these other things. And then you realize that the bill, half the bill, was written by a banker who was trying to screw over another banker. I mean, the whole thing was shocking to me. So, you know, in terms of the laws, you know, we're always as you know, fighting. It feels like we're fighting the last war. Maybe some of the laws that were put in place post 2008, I do think, you know, hopefully help the system. Some of them invariably went too far. I think the next question which we don't know about yet is, is, you know, what happens in the private credit industry. I mean, one of the, one of the things that happened post 2008 because of Dodd Frank and all the other rules that were put in place is the entire loaning loan business has just moved from the banking system, which is regulated, to the private credit system. And now we don't have disclosure or transparency over there. And, you know, I think even if you talk to folks at the Federal Reserve, they don't have a dashboard to know where all of the, the leverage lies. So that, to me, is the next concern. And I imagine at some point we'll have a problem, and I imagine at that point we'll have more legislation that will have solved some problem and create a new one.
- [31:22]
Bill Whelan
Andrew, I'd like to get your thoughts on something that's probably occupied a lot of your time on Squawk Box, and that's the bidding war for Warner Brothers. What does it say about the times in which we live? I watched the story. I'm kind of reminded of barbarians at the gate in the LBO regarding RJR Nabisco. Now, granted, that was after the 87 crash, I began. But what is unique about this Warner Brothers situation?
- [31:41]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Oh, to me, what's most unique about the Warner Brothers situation here is an asset that, for the most part, the public investor class was not happy about. It's sort of a trophy asset given it's, you know, how close it is to the center of culture in some way. You have one family in the Ellisons that obviously want to buy it, and then you have Netflix on the other end. To me, the most interesting feature is the Washington piece of this.
- [32:12]
Bill Whelan
Yes.
- [32:12]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You know, it's really the first time, I think at least maybe the quiet part is being said aloud. I think in the past, there have been times where you've had bankers or CEOs, maybe quietly say certain things to the White House or the administration, typically through, you know, other channels. HR McMaster by speak to this but not. But this time you have both CEOs literally going to the White House itself, sitting in the Oval Office, effectively lobbying the president on their behalf.
- [32:41]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
It wasn't Durant sneaking in at night like that story you tell, which I love that. That's a great story, but let me.
- [32:48]
John Cochran
Pile in on this one. I think we're seeing the final utter emptiness of the entire antitrust regime to start under the idea of, oh, monopolies are bad and we need to have regulators to stop monopolies. And, and it is now completely falling apart. It's just, you know, crony capitalism run to Washington and it's entirely political. I wish we could throw the whole business out totally rotten to the core.
- [33:11]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
So what would you do? What's the solution?
- [33:14]
John Cochran
The solution is competition. There is no durable monopoly other than that offered by the federal government.
- [33:21]
Sir Neil Ferguson
I think it's wonderful to hear American professors of finance talk about there being insufficient competition in. In American finance. When the United States is the most decentralized banking system of any developed country, it has the most competitive financial institutions of any peer country.
- [33:41]
John Cochran
Neil, this is about competition in Hollywood. So does the federal government need to intervene to make sure that monopolies don't take over Hollywood and raise prices on us? Come on, that's ridiculous.
- [33:52]
Sir Neil Ferguson
But isn't the broader issue the one that you raised a minute ago about financial regulation? Because I think what we learned in 2008, 9, was that perversely it was the most highly regulated institutions, banks, that turned out to be the problem. And my analysis at that time was that much of the regulation was the disease of which it purported to be the cure. Unregulated entities like hedge funds were supposed to be the problem. And it turned out to be that the banks that were the problem. When you go back to 1920s America, go back 100 years, it's a different issue because that is, at least on paper, a very unregulated financial system. That you can't blame what happens after 1929 on the regulators or perverse incentives in regulation. Something else went on there which is harder in some ways harder to explain. And can I just put in a good word, John, if you can, let me. Yes, from an academic book that is coming out next year by our former colleague Tyler Goodspeed, Recession. And what Goodspeed does, it's going to be a fantastic hit next year is to show that to explain a shock as big as the Great Depression, you need many, many different causes here. I think he agrees with your point, Andrew, that it's just one of the dominoes that come cascading down on the US Economy. And the dominoes include all sorts of things that you wouldn't think of like plagues of locusts devastating large parts of American agriculture. Turns out that locusts probably were more responsible for bank failures than anything that anybody did in Washington. And so I think we've got to understand financial crises as being more than can be explained. They're caused by more than just bad regulation or bad monetary policy. You actually need a whole bunch of different shocks to tip something as big as the US economy into a 30% deflation of the sort that we saw in the early 1930s. I find this a very refreshing approach to the problem that we began by. By discussing. I mean, locusts are not in Andrew's book. Why should they be? Because Andrew's book is about the people on Wall street and their part in the drama. But Goodspeed's book shows that there's a whole lot of other things going on, particularly in American agriculture, which. Which today would seem completely unimportant. But then we're a really big part of the economy.
- [36:28]
John Cochran
Well, let me just disagree that what failed in the 1930s were the banks. The banks were quite regulated. In fact, it's exactly their regulations against branch banking, against interstate banking, against banks. You know, that. That caused all the small banks.
- [36:40]
Sir Neil Ferguson
But the point of those regulations, John, was to keep. Was to avoid centralization and to avoid.
- [36:47]
John Cochran
Okay, but they had an unintended. You know, you can't say it was completely deregulated. There's regulations, and they. They caused all the banks to fail. Second thing, I do think the book sort of painted all the regulation as inevitable. Well, we had to have the sec. We had to have deposit insurance. We had to have regulation. Regulation. There was, in fact, a big debate, and I want to put my finger in the air for the Chicago plan. There was an alternative to where we went. Guarantee all deposits, try to regulate assets, which has failed over and over again, which was narrow deposit taking, equity finance, banking. We could have gone there, and perhaps we will someday.
- [37:18]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Well, look, by the way, Hoover, as you saw, Hoover and Roosevelt were actually both against the idea of the fdic. The whole idea of insuring deposits was something that I think most people in the political class and the investor class actually didn't want, in part because of.
- [37:34]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
The.
- [37:36]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Moral hazard issues and other things.
- [37:39]
John Cochran
The flip side was they got the central problem that if you have insured deposits, then depositors don't care if the bank's any good. And the bank has free money to go invest in whatever it wants. And we count on regulators.
- [37:49]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Even Carter Glass agrees with you.
- [37:51]
John Cochran
Yeah, they all understood the problem.
- [37:54]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Beautifully written.
- [37:55]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
The public didn't.
- [37:57]
Bill Whelan
That was the.
- [37:57]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And that was the problem.
- [37:59]
John Cochran
Well, when you said it earlier, when a run breaks out, you got to stop it with a flood of money. That's the only way to stop the run and then try to bottle up the moral hazard.
- [38:08]
Bill Whelan
Andrew, we have but a couple minutes left, so final question for you. It's the same political lineup in 2026 as 1929. A Republican Congress, Republican president. Should the market go drastically south in 2026, what do you think Washington does differently?
- [38:23]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Well, look, I think if the market goes drastically south, you'll see the Dems win the House. I don't think the Dems, even if the market goes drastically south, I'm not sure they win the Senate. I think then you'll be in a form of gridlock, which the truth is the market will like the gridlock. The market would be very happy to have a little bit of gridlock in Washington, don't you think?
- [38:44]
Sir Neil Ferguson
I'm not so sure, Andrew, because it might lead to yet another impeachment and a general sense that the administration's a lame duck. I mean, the market likes the administration, if truth be told, on a whole bunch of levels that we haven't touched on in this conversation. Deregulation, more of which is supposed to be coming, I'm not sure. I think if the House is lost, then I think the administration's over. And what market won't like that?
- [39:11]
Bill Whelan
Andrew, our time, unfortunately, is up. I want to congratulate you again on the book. It's 1929 Inside the Greatest Crash of Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation. If you're watching this or listening to this, you still have time to get it to put under somebody's tree for Christmas. Question for you, Andrew, before you bounce, I hope there is a video treatment of this great book. Netflix just showed that you can do a series Death by Lightning. There's an appetite out there for history. So hopefully the video treatment. Question for you, sir. I don't know if you'll end up writing that video treatment or maybe being an executive producer, but I'm looking at three people who might want to be in that show.
- [39:44]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
We will find you some cameo spots or maybe, I don't know. What do you think is John, who do you want to be?
- [39:52]
John Cochran
Well, I do like Calvin Coolidge, but I think I'm very ill suited for the role.
- [39:57]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
I don't know. H.R. mcMaster, what do you think?
- [40:00]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Hey, I'm the optimist. I guess I'm Mitchell, right? If I'm the optimist, right?
- [40:03]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You could be Mitchell. Totally. I think that. Neil, are you.
- [40:07]
Sir Neil Ferguson
I'd like to be one of the guys standing in the street going, hey, what happens to my money? That would be the perfect role for me.
- [40:14]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Bill, what do you say? You're not Carter Glass, are you?
- [40:17]
Bill Whelan
I'll just be in the pit screaming like everybody else. Okay, Andrew, thanks again for joining us today and congratulations again on excellent book.
- [40:25]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Thanks, guys. I'll see you. Enjoy the rest of the show you guys, you guys need to take on. I mean you guys are better than the all in guys. So go for it. I'll see you.
- [40:36]
Bill Whelan
Okay, gentlemen, on with the B block of the show. B as in Bye Bye 25, going to ask you a series of questions and I want your thoughts beginning with this. What was the biggest, most important event of the year?
- [40:46]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Neil I'm going to say Trump's hundred days because I can't think of another presidency since Franklin Roosevelt. Talking of the 1930s that opened so explosively with so many executive orders and actions, it was astonishing. And that I, I'm going to say is the, is the big event of the year. Transformative, disruptive, call it what you like it, it drove the year.
- [41:16]
Bill Whelan
General McMaster.
- [41:17]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Yeah, I would say it was Israel's counteroffensive. And so that's just not one event. But it's the counteroffensive against Hezbollah which had a ripple effect into Syria and then the very successful 12 day campaign against Iran which the US joined at the end. So I think that has fundamentally shifted the dynamics in the Middle East.
- [41:35]
John Cochran
John Conquid well, since I can't have the hundred days, but that's okay, I always have something in my back pocket. I'll take the end of the hundred days. Liberation Day. My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day. Waiting for a long time. When Trump turned to tariffs, which I regard as sort of the beginning of the end. It'll be our successors will have this as the counterfactual history. Sort of like, you know, we all love to play this game. What if Hitler had not bombed London? Instead of wiping out the raf, Trump turned to tariffs. Why? This is the idea of one man, of course produced by an administration that had learned that loyalty mattered over than honesty. But here's where the self inflicted wound starts and I think the beginning of what will be regarded as the end of the Trump era.
- [42:22]
Bill Whelan
Okay, my choice. June 22nd, Operation Midnight Hammer. The destruction of Iranian nuclear facilities. All right, question two, the underreported or ignored story of the year.
- [42:30]
John Cochran
John I'll choose the quiet revolution in the regulatory agencies. Education, energy, Sec, Small business. A lot is going on under the screen. I wish I knew more about it and I wish the media would report about it.
- [42:45]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Neil I still can't get over the fact that 38% of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability. The Hoover Institution sits at the centre of the the Stanford campus. Who knew that we were an island in a sea of disability. I don't think most of us have really got our heads around what's going on with Gen Z. It's bizarre and will take future historians a lot of hard work to sort out, but that seems to me an amazing fact and not by any means unusual. If you look at universities across the.
- [43:22]
John Cochran
Country, Neil, let me forecast miraculous recovery starting graduation day and when job applications go in.
- [43:31]
Bill Whelan
HR the underreported story of the year.
- [43:33]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Hey, the astonishing degree to which this axis of aggressors and authoritarians are working together. You know, we keep trying to separate, you know, what's happening in Ukraine from the competition with China. Hey, China's underwriting the whole war effort. You know, you have, you have, you have Iran providing the technology for, for Russia's drones and North Korean slave laborers assembling those drones. And then if you come to our hemisphere, you have Maduro, you know, propped up by Russian intelligence and security forces along with the Cubans, underwritten to a large extent by China and its technologically enabled Orwellian police state. And Iran also involved, and Hezbollah involved with fundraising activity associated with the drug trade. So I just think the connections between these adversaries are really important to expose and for people to understand.
- [44:23]
Bill Whelan
My choice is Jimmy Lai, the Hong Kong pro democracy activist who the other day was convicted by a Hong Kong court on charges of sedition and collusion with foreign countries. It's ignored. Which raises a question, gentlemen, what if anything, can the United States do?
- [44:35]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Hey, we, we can do a lot.
- [44:37]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You know, we can do a lot.
- [44:38]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
I think, you know, actually, I think what's also underreported is the degree to which these, the, the saxes of aggressors is weak at this moment. You know, and, and, and I think China in its race to surpass us has created real frailties in their economy. You know, Russia is a basket case economically, although Putin is. His ruse is to try to appear to appear strong. Israel exposed a profound weakness of Iran, which is, I think, on the brink of collapse. They're about to run out of water in Tehran. So, hey, I, I think we can do a lot. I think we should be, you know, as I said many times on this, on the show, Americans, not Americans. And, and, and when, and when you, when you treat somebody like Jimmy Lai the way he's been treated, somebody who's spoken here at Hoover, I think there's a lot that we can do to impose costs on, I think a Chinese Communist party that is in a position of relative weakness at the moment and.
- [45:35]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Certainly don't ignore them. This is as I've said multiple times, Cold War ii. And there are dissidents aplenty in all the authoritarian regimes HR has been talking about. And we do them a disservice if we don't speak out and, and honor them as proponents of freedom in unfree societies.
- [45:56]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
And there are the, the Nobel laureate who was just beaten, drug out by her hair and re imprisoned in Iran comes to mind as well.
- [46:05]
John Cochran
Yeah, there's thousands of Jimmy lies and, and not just the ones who are in the news with good international connections, but all of them. We just, we, let's start by caring and talking about it.
- [46:16]
Bill Whelan
Well put, John. We don't have any actual hardware to give away, but gentlemen, your choices for the Goodfellows Person of the Year award. Sunil, you want to go first?
- [46:25]
Sir Neil Ferguson
You know, I think you have to give it to, to Scott Besson because John mentioned Liberation Day. I think Liberation Day, the reciprocal tariffs day, came close to causing a major economic accident. And I think Scott Besant played a key role in postponing the tariffs and creating breathing space for the US and the global economy. He's emerged as I think the key figure in the administration, almost Prime Minister in a British sense. And for somebody whose background was Wall street and hedge funds, he's turned out to be an extraordinarily adept political player in the, in the swamp that is is Washington. So I'm going to give it to Scott.
- [47:15]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
It's predictable, maybe based on the theme that we've been talking about, but Maria Karina Machado and obviously recognized for her profound courage in remaining in Venezuela in hiding as the principal opposition figure who won the election against Maduro earlier this year and then made that harrowing sort of journey through the Caribbean and rough seas to receive her Nobel Prize. She'd be the one that I, that I would give the honor to, John.
- [47:48]
John Cochran
Well, I think these are people who deserve recognition. The most important person in the year was of course Trump himself. Neil's 100 days, the 100 day whirlwind was really amazing. What happened, this slew of executive orders and Trump personifying the vibe shift. This is real. We live in really interesting times. The center left elite that had kind of stagnated into a big blob is just imploded. It's a global vibe shift. I don't know where it's going or what happens next, but he personified that. So, you know, to credit where credit is due, he's still taking up all the air in the room.
- [48:30]
Bill Whelan
My choice is Andre Bargel. Who is he, you ask? He is a Polish mountaineer who on September 22nd became the first person to descend from Mount Ephras summit back to base camp on skis and without using supplemental oxygen and all, an 11,000 foot drop over rugged snow and ice. Neil, I know for you it sounds like a slow day in Montana.
- [48:48]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Well, in Montana you need snow to do that kind of thing. Currently there ain't any. And it's a source of considerable disgruntlement in the Ferguson household, which seems to.
- [48:59]
Bill Whelan
Be a theme here. Because, John, we were talking before the show about what's going on up in Truckee, up in the Sierras. No snow.
- [49:04]
John Cochran
Yeah, I had a lovely weekend hiking in 60 degree weather with no snow evident and rain in the forecast.
- [49:11]
Bill Whelan
Right. But then again, who cares about snow? HR because there's always paddleboarding.
- [49:15]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Absolutely.
- [49:18]
Bill Whelan
All right, HR let's stick with you. What is the best thing you read or watched this year?
- [49:22]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Oh, gosh. Well, you know, I mean, so, so many great. I mean, I plugged it so many times, viewers are going to get tired of it. But, but the, the first two volumes of the trilogy on the Revolution by Rick Atkinson. It's fantastic. You know, it's really well done. And then just to stick with that theme, I did enjoy the Ken Burns documentary on the revolution. I think he did a very good job at hitting the critical themes of the revolution, the experience and bringing home the degree to which really, this was a very near run thing, our independence, obviously. And it took a lot of courage and a lot of perseverance. And so I think these works, Atkinson's books, he was interviewed quite extensively in the Ken Burns series as well. Right. I think ought to inspire us, you know, to, to. To appreciate, you know, the freedoms that we enjoy in this country, to recognize our republic was and always has been a work in progress. Right. And, and, and I think, you know, get us in the right mood to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding.
- [50:23]
Bill Whelan
John.
- [50:25]
John Cochran
I'm not much of a popular culture guy and I. What if.
- [50:29]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
No, that's.
- [50:30]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
That can't be true.
- [50:31]
Bill Whelan
Man 29.
- [50:33]
John Cochran
What I've seen this year, you know, everything I've seen this year has been an outbreak of bad writing. It's really a puzzle to me as an economist that they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on movies and they can't seem to have a decent script. And so let's mention in memory of poor Rob Reiner, who I was really sad to hear of what happened to movies where the central dangerous plot element was Rodents of Unusual Size.
- [50:58]
Bill Whelan
Firstly, what about the rous Rodents of unusual size?
- [51:02]
John Cochran
I don't think they exist. Bring back movies like that.
- [51:09]
Bill Whelan
John, do you have a favorite runner film?
- [51:12]
John Cochran
Ah, well, Princess Bride, obviously.
- [51:14]
Bill Whelan
Okay.
- [51:15]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Sir Neil, two Scottish items for your cultural delectation. A novel. Alexander Staret's Drayton and Mackenzie. One of those rare forays into fiction of the business world. It's the story of a company formed by an odd couple who go to Oxford together, then to McKinsey and then they end up finding an energy company. And it's one of the most brilliant portrayals of a business partnership that I've ever read. And that's the best novel that I read this year. The best thing I watched this year was Scotland qualifying for the World cup by knocking out Denmark.
- [52:02]
Bill Whelan
In the most.
- [52:03]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Extraordinary football and I use the term advisedly football game that I think Scotland fans have ever witnessed. With all the best goals that Scotland have ever scored in one astonishing game. Nothing else came close.
- [52:17]
Bill Whelan
My choice. We mentioned it with with Andrew Ross Sorkin. It's Netflix Death by Lightning which details the shooting and malpractice that led to the death of James Garf, 1881. If you're not a vidiant, you can read the book Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard on which this story is based. Neil, let's stick with you. One thing you learned in 2025.
- [52:36]
Sir Neil Ferguson
I learned not to take a long haul flight every week because you will get hypertension.
- [52:44]
Bill Whelan
That's what I learned.
- [52:48]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
I learned not to along the same lines, not to just leave home for like three and a half weeks in one suitcase. I felt like I was back in, in a like in a past middle age version of Ranger school, living out of my rucksack. But so, so like Neil, maybe a New Year's revolution resolution for both of us will be travel a bit less, you know, and, and maybe maximize the grandkid time more.
- [53:14]
John Cochran
Oh man. Well, I had a more current events goodfellows rather than personal thing. You know, just reading the news was astonishing. We learned that the whole aid business early on that the way our government works, we don't actually do anything more. We just hand out billions of dollars to politicized nonprofits and don't. And that's where it goes. The shutdown I thought was very revealing. 40, you know, that is.
- [53:41]
Bill Whelan
Oh.
- [53:41]
John Cochran
40 million Americans are on food stamps. They'll go hungry.
- [53:43]
Bill Whelan
What?
- [53:44]
John Cochran
40 million Americans are on food stamps and then we have to extend the Obamacare subsidies. Wait, wait. You took over this market and now it costs like 25 grand to get health insurance. And so, of course, nobody can afford that. And taxpayers have to pay for everything.
- [53:59]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Budget.
- [53:59]
John Cochran
What happened here? So there was lots of. I learned lots of. In the chaos, we learned lots of how actually things are really stuck in Washington.
- [54:08]
Bill Whelan
What I learned in 2025 is I have to get more sleep, which means I'm seriously considering deleting YouTube from my series of apps. And I'm also starting to think that that app may have to be reclassified as a Dr. Rug.
- [54:18]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
As long as you're not scrolling through TikTok videos. Bill, you're. You're okay, man. You're all right.
- [54:24]
Bill Whelan
All right, gentlemen, one big prediction for 2026 HR. You want to kick it off?
- [54:29]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Hey, so my. My prediction is that we're going to see real frailties again on this kind of same theme within authoritarian regimes. I do think that, you know, they appear strong from the outside, but I think they're quite brittle. And I'm. I'm hoping that in the 250th anniversary, that will restore some confidence, confidence in our common identity as Americans. That's my prediction. And, and confidence in our. In our future as a nation and as a free people.
- [54:54]
Bill Whelan
John?
- [54:57]
John Cochran
Well, looming over us is when the next great financial crisis happens, but you never know when that's going to come. So I won't forecast it for next year. I'll forecast. You wanted to forecast. I think the Democrats will take over the House in the midterms and parties over. And I think we will start to see the interesting question, what is the left's new cause? They've gone from inequality to the climate crisis to gender, race, pacifism. What are they going to do next? Affordability doesn't sound like their forte, though. That's where they're going. They'll have to figure out something, and we'll see what it is.
- [55:34]
Bill Whelan
My big prediction for 2026. Condoleezza Rice's beloved Denver Broncos are going to the super bowl, and we have it on video that Sir Neil Ferguson has promised that he will go with her.
- [55:43]
Sir Neil Ferguson
I think I'll have to reciprocate by taking our director to see Scotland beat Brazil in the World Cup. Actually, my One prediction for 2026 is I'm going to really stick my neck out here. I don't think Scotland will beat Brazil.
- [55:58]
Bill Whelan
In the World Cup.
- [56:00]
John Cochran
I have to add one because I've forgotten. It's very important because Beth reminds me just to annoy Bill Travis and Taylor will get pregnant. That doesn't Bill Said, no. No Taylor Swift forecasts.
- [56:13]
Bill Whelan
No Taylor Swift forecast. All right. Finally, gentlemen, your New Year's resolution.
- [56:16]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
HR New Year's resolution is really, really just maximize time with. With grandkids who are just a joy, you know, and we're especially looking forward to the holidays with them. But, yeah, that's it, John.
- [56:28]
John Cochran
Prepare better and do a better job on Goodfellows.
- [56:31]
Bill Whelan
So, Neil.
- [56:33]
Sir Neil Ferguson
Well, I use this programmed to announce the arrival of my first grandchild just the other day. But my New Year's resolution is to take a new dog for a walk every day. That's the big reveal. But please, viewers, do not tell Campbell. It's supposed to be a Christmas surprise.
- [56:54]
Bill Whelan
All right, Mine. My resolution is to get in better shape. That's an obvious one. But I plan to spend the holidays reading some work by a Hoover colleague, Bill Damon, who has written a lot about what it means to lead a more purposeful life. So that will my holiday break. And that's it for 2025. Oh, wait, wait. We have a visitor. It's Hoover visiting fellow Kris Kringle. Mr. Kringle, thank you for dropping by.
- [57:15]
John Cochran
Ho, ho, ho.
- [57:16]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
I heard that everyone's been very nice this year. Goodfellows Neil is. Sir. Neil's been very, very nice, although he's been a bit tardy to a few of our recording sessions here. And John. John is not the grumpy. He is, as we've said, I've heard people say many times, he is the huggy economist. And I think, Bill, you need something extra special in your stocking for the great job that you've done on Goodfellas throughout the whole season. But do you know who gets. I think the best presence of all are the Goodfellows audience, who are just fantastic. I just love the questions that they send in to you. Goodfellows. Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas to all.
- [57:57]
Bill Whelan
Okay, the good news, Santa, because we're doing this virtually, Neil and John don't get to sit on your lap. That's a break for you. John, do you have a Christmas wish?
- [58:07]
John Cochran
Just more happiness and productivity to all of us.
- [58:12]
Sir Neil Ferguson
And Sir Neil, you know, I just, you know, wish HR Were here to give Santa his wish for a new tank, but maybe I can just pass it on on his behalf. Sansa, are fellow good fellow. He just misses his tank so bad and the paddle board is just not doing it for him. So could you. Could you just shove an Abrams in the stocking for him? He'd so appreciate that. Merry Christmas.
- [58:41]
Bill Whelan
New one with the.
- [58:42]
John Cochran
The new one with the hybrid motor. I'm sure he'd like that one.
- [58:46]
Sir Neil Ferguson
The EV tank.
- [58:49]
Bill Whelan
All right, Santa. My wish, given the events of the past weekend, just peace on earth and goodwill toward men. We just. We need a more restful, less stressful 2026.
- [59:00]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Absolutely. Let's all hope and pray for that.
- [59:03]
John Cochran
Amen.
- [59:04]
Bill Whelan
Well, I don't know what happened to General McMaster. I guess he is starting the holiday season early. So I will conclude our 2025 by thanking you all for your patronage, your Goodfellas. We couldn't do this show without you. And wishing you all the best in 2026 on behalf of the Goodfellow, Sir Neil Ferguson, Lieutenant General H.R. mcMaster, and John Cochran, by the way, and looking very California Christmasy, I might add. By the way, we wish you all the best this season. We look forward to seeing you again in 2026. Mr. Kringle. Safe travels over the holidays, gentlemen. The same to you. And we'll see you again in January. Take care.
- [59:33]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Oh, ho, ho.
- [59:34]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Happy Hanukkah. Merry Christmas to everybody.
- [59:38]
John Cochran
This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas, advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to.
- [59:47]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Hear more of our podcasts or view.
- [59:49]
John Cochran
Our video content, please visit hoover.org.
- [59:57]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
You see, most. Most blokes, you're going to be playing at 10. You're on 10 here.
- [60:00]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
All the way up, all the way.
- [60:01]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Up, all the way up.
- [60:02]
John Cochran
You're on 10 on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
- [60:06]
Bill Whelan
I don't know.
- [60:07]
John Cochran
Nowhere.
- [60:07]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Exactly. What we do is, if we need.
- [60:09]
Sir Neil Ferguson
That extra push over the cliff, you.
- [60:12]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Know what we do?
- [60:13]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Put it up to 11.
- [60:14]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
Exactly.
- [60:14]
John Cochran
One lap.
- [60:15]
Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster
Why don't you just make 10 louder.
- [60:17]
John Cochran
And make 10 be the top number.
- [60:19]
Andrew Ross Sorkin
And make that a little louder. These go to 11.