Government Shutdown Ends — But the Damage Doesn’t

Summary

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Prof G Markets — "Government Shutdown Ends — But the Damage Doesn’t"

Date: November 13, 2025
Host: Ed Elson
Featured Guests: Ramit Sethi, Dylan Cardin, Robert Sockin

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Episode Overview

This episode of Prof G Markets dives into the end of the longest U.S. government shutdown in history, unpacking not only its direct and indirect economic damage but also systemic issues in housing and the athletic apparel sector. Host Ed Elson, with guests Ramit Sethi (personal finance expert), Dylan Cardin (equity analyst), and Robert Sockin (economist), provides pointed, often blunt analysis of recent market moves and policy news, all in the show’s signature “no mercy, no malice” tone.

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Key Topics & Discussions

1. Market Update & New 50-Year Mortgage Proposal

[02:07–11:19]

Market Recap

• Dow at a record ahead of shutdown vote
• S&P 500 flat, Nasdaq down
• 10-year Treasury yield fell
• Bitcoin trending towards $100,000
• Gold up

The Trump Administration's 50-Year Mortgage Proposal

Guest: Ramit Sethi (personal finance author & podcaster)

• Aim: Make monthly payments lower for new buyers.
• Critique: “It’s one of the worst policies I’ve heard in recent years.” (Ramit Sethi, 04:19)
• The "Grift": The plan saves ~$300/month but costs an extra ~$500,000 in interest for a typical $500,000 home.

  “...they're going to pay an extra half a million dollars in interest.”
  — Ramit Sethi, 05:01

• American Mortgage Math Illiteracy: Most buyers base decisions on monthly payment, not total cost.

  “The American consumer typically does not understand how mortgages work. That's why they are so profitable.”
  — Ramit Sethi, 05:14

The "Religion of Homeownership"

• Americans treat homeownership as dogma, relying on clichés like “You’re throwing money away on rent.”
• Fewer than 3% of buyers run true buy-vs-rent calculations.
• Most don’t grasp basic math of amortization or principal vs. interest.

Effects of a 50-Year Mortgage

• Likely further inflation of home prices.
• Most people “...will not understand why they cannot seem to afford their day-to-day.” (Ramit Sethi, 09:07)
• Neglect of other ownership costs.

Core Problem & Solution

• Problem: Not enough supply, due to NIMBYism.

  “Housing is virtually... illegal to build.”
  — Ramit Sethi, 10:07

• Solution: “There is only one solution and that is to build more housing.”
  — Ramit Sethi, 10:03
• Good news: Some progress in CA & NY; still a long way to go.

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2. Earnings Spotlight: On Running and Athletic Wear Market

[11:24–18:47]

Guest: Dylan Cardin, Senior Analyst at William Blair

• On Running (ON) Stock Surge:

  • Crushed expectations; stock up 20%
  • Full-year sales guidance raised to $3.7B
  • Net income nearly quadrupled YoY

• Market Context:

  • Athletic wear stocks struggling (Nike -15%, Adidas -30%, Hoka’s parent -60%)
  • ON outperforming despite trend headwinds

Trends in Athletic Footwear

• Pandemic winners (ON, Hoka, Saucony, Allbirds) now facing deceleration.

  “You get about six years of the trend. And from a stock perspective, you really want to only own the first three...”
  — Dylan Cardin, 13:51

• Previous Nike withdrawal from wholesale allowed new brands shelf space.
• Nike: Growth is limited by size; recent ‘return to channel’ is more about recapture than real acceleration.

What's Required to Be "The Next Nike"?

• Key: Reinvention, “stacking up” product hype cycles

  “Beware any narrative that is the next anything, in my view. But the real... fundamental... is just reinvention.”
  — Dylan Cardin, 16:05

• ON’s path: Extension into tennis, hiking, training, capitalizing on lifestyle shifts.

ON’s Premium Positioning

• ON targets a $150/shoe space (“premium, not luxury”).

  “I think the risk is that there’s not as much white space there... Just given that higher price point.”
  — Dylan Cardin, 18:16

• Skepticism around the actual size of this market segment.

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3. Deep Dive: Economic Impact of the Government Shutdown

[22:00–30:33]

Guest: Robert Sockin, Senior Global Economist at Citi

Historic Scope

• 43 days: Longest U.S. shutdown ever.

  "I think this is going to be remembered as a very challenging period politically and economically."
  — Robert Sockin, 23:05

Economic Effects

• Direct: Furloughed workers, paused SNAP benefits, halted procurements—most recoverable.
• Indirect: Private sector spillover in DC-area businesses, some losses likely permanent.

  “The private sector spillovers are much harder to measure in real time...”
  — Robert Sockin, 24:36

Data Blackout

• Key Reports Delayed or Missed: Jobs, inflation, GDP—leaving economists “flying blind.”

  “It's created a really challenging backdrop. And I think [it] is going to continue... over the next few months.”
  — Robert Sockin, 26:12

• Even upcoming data (Nov-Dec) will be low quality due to collection gaps.

Why This Shutdown is Uniquely Damaging

• Prior shutdown losses typically recouped.
• Length triggers “nonlinear” risk of growing private sector damages over time.

  “The longer a shutdown goes on, the higher risk that the economic effects become nonlinear and you get bigger effects later on.”
  — Robert Sockin, 28:15

Future Fear

• Expect shutdown frequency to rise due to political gridlock.

  “...that means shutdowns are more likely going forward.”
  — Robert Sockin, 29:34

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4. Host Commentary: “This is a Huge Deal”

[30:33–End]

Ed Elson’s Closing Reflection:

• Shutdown was unprecedented—a week longer than the previous record.

• 1.5 million direct federal employees affected; programs like SNAP (used by 40M Americans) interrupted.

• 6% of flights canceled due to lack of air traffic controllers.

• Loss of crucial federal data has made tracking the actual economic impacts nearly impossible.

• "We can try to put a number on it. The current estimates say that the cost to the economy were nearly $100 billion. But even that is probably an understatement because the other problem we have here is we're not getting any proper data."
  — Ed Elson, 31:45

• Argues that news coverage fails to capture the shutdown’s true harm because of headline fatigue.

• Raises call to not “normalize” this scale of government dysfunction.

  “The least we should expect is a government that is operational. And for 43 days, the longest period in history, this government couldn't even meet that standard.”
  — Ed Elson, 32:54

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Ramit Sethi on 50-Year Mortgages:
  “It’s one of the worst policies I’ve heard in recent years.” (04:19)

• Ramit Sethi on American mortgage illiteracy:
  “The American consumer typically does not understand how mortgages work. That’s why they are so profitable.” (05:14)

• Ramit Sethi on housing policy:
  “There is only one solution and that is to build more housing.” (10:03)

• Dylan Cardin on sneaker trends:
  “You get about six years of the trend. And from a stock perspective, you really want to only own the first three...” (13:51)

• Dylan Cardin on hype cycles:
  “Beware any narrative that is the next anything, in my view. But the real... fundamental... is just reinvention.” (16:05)

• Robert Sockin on economic recovery after the shutdown:
  “The private sector spillovers are much harder to measure in real time...” (24:36)

• Robert Sockin on the shutdown’s lasting risk:
  “The longer a shutdown goes on, the higher risk that the economic effects become nonlinear and you get bigger effects later on.” (28:15)

• Ed Elson (host) on significance:
  “It is all a distraction from what a disaster this really was... the least we should expect is a government that is operational.” (32:42–32:54)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–02:07 — Ad reads and show open
• 02:07–11:19 — 50-year mortgage policy & homeownership debate with Ramit Sethi
• 11:24–18:47 — On Running earnings, market cycles, and Nike context with Dylan Cardin
• 22:00–30:33 — Government shutdown analysis and economic impact with Robert Sockin
• 30:33–End — Ed Elson’s commentary on the true significance of the shutdown

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Key Takeaways

• The government shutdown, though ending, may inflict lasting economic wounds, especially outside direct federal activity—losses extend to data quality, local businesses, and future political stability.
• Housing policy “fixes” like the 50-year mortgage are largely seen by experts as predatory and miss the real solution: vastly increasing housing supply.
• Athletic wear sector trends are fickle; ON succeeds via reinvention, but skepticism remains about how much runway "premium" brands truly have.
• The episode urges listeners not to lose sight of the unprecedented dysfunction represented by the shutdown—even if “headline fatigue” makes it easy to look away.

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Transcript

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[Ramit Sethi]

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[Ramit Sethi]

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[Dylan Cardin]

If money is evil, then that building is hell.

[Ed Elson]

The show goes on. Welcome to Property Markets. I'm Ed elson. It is November 13th. Let's check in on yesterday's market vitals. The Dow hit another record ahead of the shutdown vote. In the House, The S&P 500 was flat and the Nasdaq declined. Meanwhile, the yield on 10 year treasuries fel Bitcoin dropped towards the key $100,000 range and finally gold climbed. Okay, what else is happening? The Trump administration has proposed a new idea to tackle home affordability, the 50 year mortgage loan. Right now, most first time home buyers take out a 30 year mortgage. According to administration officials, a 50 year mortgage would lower monthly payments, helping new buyers and enter the market. However, many housing experts say that the monthly savings on those payments would be small and homeowners would wind up paying actually a lot more in interest. So we wanted to break down the economics of this 50 year mortgage proposal. So we're speaking with Ramit Sethi, host of the Money for Couples podcast and bestselling author of I Will Teach youh to Be Rich. Ramit, thanks for joining us again on property markets.

[Ramit Sethi]

Thanks, Ed.

[Ed Elson]

We want to get your reactions to the 50 year mortgage. I know you have a lot of takes and a lot of opinions that are very polarizing on home ownership. I see this headline, Trump wants to have 50 year mortgages. Or at least that's being floated. I just, I got to get your take on this. What do you think?

[Ramit Sethi]

Well, what do you say to pathetic politicians who simply want to at any cost, keep the price of housing going up? What do you say to a government that essentially says to people, hey, if you can't afford a $450,000 Rolls Royce, how about we spread those payments out over 50 years? And how you reconcile that with a public that has the number one religion in this country being home ownership, who many people jump and say, wait, lower payments sounds good to me. We have a very bad policy here, very bad recipe for the average American consumer. It's one of the worst policies I've heard in recent years and that's really.

[Ed Elson]

Saying a lot break down. What the, what the, the grift kind of is here because you describe it, is lower payments, but spread out over a long time. Why exactly is that bad?

[Ramit Sethi]

The concept of interest is a word that many people generally understand, but they rarely understand the specifics. We know that we pay interest on a mortgage, okay? But the math is extremely counterintuitive. You take a typical $500,000 house at 6 or so percent for 30 years, okay, fine, that's one thing. You'll pay about $3,000 a month. If you have a 50 year mortgage for the same house, you're going to save about $300 a month. People go, wow, that sounds good. But what they don't pay attention to is the fact that they're going to pay an extra half a million dollars in interest.

[Ed Elson]

Right?

[Ramit Sethi]

The American consumer typically does not understand how mortgages work. That's why they are so profitable. For Wall Street. And this is yet another way to make more money off of consumers who do not understand basic.

[Ed Elson]

Why do you think they are proposing this? I've seen some rumors about why someone came to him and had a list of presidents. Yes.

[Ramit Sethi]

Yeah, that guy. I mean, that guy's under investigation for several different things. The guy's a nut. He's horribly conflicted. And then let's take the recipient who gets an index card and then goes, sounds like great national policy. Post it. In addition to that, we have A general historical U.S. government policy of propping up home ownership rates. And this is really important. The goal is not to simply increase the home ownership rate. That should never be the goal. Because if you just want to juice the numbers, you can. We've seen that happen before in the last recession. You can simply make mortgages available to less qualified people, all in the hopes of increasing that one number. But that is not really the goal. The goal should be to help Americans live their rich life, not to juice the numbers for an arbitrary percentage of homeownership to go up.

[Ed Elson]

Yeah, I love how you describe the religion of homeownership, the cult of homeownership. Could you just describe that for us? Maybe some people have have heard you. I know a lot of listeners are fans of you, but describe what is the religion of homeownership and why are you so against it?

[Ramit Sethi]

Homeownership is a religion in America because we use very little logic. Instead, we use trite, pithy little phrases like you're throwing money away on rent or you don't want to pay your landlord's mortgage. First of all, how come we never say we're throwing money away on rent when we go to eat out at sushi? We're paying our landlord's mortgage. We're throwing money away on the bill. No, we're not. We're paying for value and we are happy if someone else can cover their bill. Actually, we don't really care. Just give me the sushi and take my dishes. We also do not understand math. Very few people, in my estimation, less than 3% of American home buyers actually run a simple buy versus rent calculation. Almost nobody knows what an amortization calculator is. So as an example, if you went up to the average homeowner and you said, hey, was buying a house a great decision? They go, yeah, it's so great. They take the big number minus the small number and they think that's their profit. What they don't understand is that if you buy a house today, you will be paying more towards interest than principal for 19 years. These words are foreign to most of us because we do not understand the math. We simply believe the religion that tells us buy a house, then profit somehow. And that's as far as we go.

[Ed Elson]

Yeah, say this goes through, say we do have 50 year mortgages in America. What would that do to America? What would that do to the finances of Americans? And also what would it do to the housing market?

[Ramit Sethi]

Well, that's the question I'm actually really interested in. I mean, I've seen a lot of discussion about how the prices are simply go up and I'll be very interested to see what happens. I think in the last 10 years, a lot of economics has surprised many of us. For example, as interest rates went up, housing prices still continued going up. So I'm very interested in that. I can tell you on the individual level, since I speak to so many people on my podcast and my newsletter, that very few people actually understand phantom costs. Most Americans make major purchases simply by the monthly payment. So they literally go into a car dealer, car dealer named Chet goes, how much you want to pay this for this car per month? And that's how they make a $48,000 decision. Of course, what we know is that these financial companies are very sophisticated and they understand this weakness in human psychology and they exploit it. So what I would expect to see is that people, if they choose to take these 50 year mortgages, which will be positioned as purely advantageous, they will get this massive house 50 year mortgage and they will not understand why they cannot seem to afford their day to day. That's because they didn't factor in maintenance, they're building little equity and they never calculated any of these things upfront.

[Robert Sockin]

Yeah.

[Ed Elson]

What do you think is the solution? I mean, we have a housing crisis and this appears to be sort of the instinctive, oh, we'll just make mortgages more available and we'll extend the timeline. It sounds like you don't agree with that. I don't agree with that. What is the solution to what's happening in the housing market? How do we make housing more affordable?

[Ramit Sethi]

There's only one solution and that is to build more housing.

[Ed Elson]

Yeah.

[Ramit Sethi]

Housing is virtually in virtually every city in America. Housing is illegal to build. You cannot build more on your own property, which you own. You cannot build apartments, duplexes, triplexes, skyscrapers, row houses, none of it. In almost every city in America, we have a strong housing crisis, and that is purely because of NIMBYs. It's the people who bought their houses in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and then they pulled the ladder up behind them and no more building housing. Well, guess what? That's great for them. Their housing prices went way up, but it's not so good for younger people, people of color and everyone else. And so what has to happen is NIMBYs have to be defeated. There is no other way around it. There is no secret policy that will change this. We need vastly more supply. And the good news is it's starting to happen in California, in New York, and in other places as well. But it's going to take a long time and we need it now.

[Ed Elson]

Defeat the nimbys. I love it. Ramit Sethi is the host of the Money for couples podcast, which I highly recomm recommend you go check out, especially if you're in a couple. And finances are a topic of conversation as it is for everyone. Also the bestselling author of I will teach you to be rich. Ramit, always love having you on the podcast.

[Ramit Sethi]

My pleasure. Thanks, Ed.

[Ed Elson]

Shares in on running surged yesterday after the company crushed expectations on both the top and bottom lines. The Swiss sneaker maker raised the its full year guidance for the third consecutive quarter. It's now expecting 2025 sales of $3.7 billion, up 3% from its previous forecast. Net income nearly quadrupled year over year. The stock jumped as much as 20% on the news. This comes at kind of a challenging time for the athletic wear market. Year to date on is actually down 24%. Its competitors have fallen too. Nike is down 15%, Adidas is down 30%. And the parent company of Hoka, well, that Stock has dropped 60%. So what exactly did on get right this quarter? Will it be enough to turn the stock around here to help us break down these earnings, what they mean for investors, we're speaking with Dylan Cardin, senior analyst at William Blair. Dylan, thanks for joining us on property markets.

[Dylan Cardin]

Yeah, thanks for having me. Good to be here.

[Ed Elson]

So take us through the earnings. I mean up 20%. Clearly Wall Street's very happy about this. What are the headlines in these earnings?

[Dylan Cardin]

They're happy now. They weren't happy into it. So I think a lot of what you're seeing there was some chatter, some intracorded data that suggested trends really fell off a cliff. And there's an underlying anxiety for on that it's going to go the way of Hoka or Saucony or some of these other brands that have allowed a certain amount of oxygen that Nike gave them when they kind of Deemphasized the wholesale channel. Right. So you're seeing a lot of sort of trendy pandemic era brands start to crest over. And so those trends in combination with that broader anxiety, I think what you're really seeing today is just they live to fight another day. You're not seeing on kind of succumb to the same deceleration.

[Ed Elson]

Yeah. Tell us more about what's going on with Hoka and Saucony. I mean, I think these are the kinds of brands that most people know about now. I would say I know what Hoka is. My girlfriend wears them, my sister wears them. These are becoming more and more popular. But it's interesting that actually they're not doing very well right now. I mean, Hoka's parent company down around 60% year today. What's going on with these sort of lesser known but kind of known athletic wear brands?

[Dylan Cardin]

Yeah. So stocks and fundamentals. Right. I mean, two things can be true. They can be popular and they can be decelerating. I think if you look at most popular footwear silhouettes throughout history, Sperry, Topsiders, Toms, Stan Smiths, you get about six years of the trend. And from a stock perspective, you really want to only own the first three because the latter three are sort of coming down the other side of the mountain. And so the only way to really kind of pull out of that is reinvention, which we can get into. But really what you're seeing is when Nike DE emphasized wholesale 2019 through 2021, they allowed a lot of shelf space to go to these newer or sort of emergent running brands in particular. Right. So Hoka, Saucony, Brooks, you know, Asics really had a moment whereby Nike's folly was there to their benefit. Now you're three, four years into that. And so while the footwear, the brands themselves are still popular, the trend itself is starting to break a little bit.

[Ed Elson]

What does this mean for Nike then? And it sounds like a lot of this is downstream of Nike and their decision way back when to kind of get out of the wholesale game. Is Nike doing okay? I mean, where does Nike stand in all of this?

[Dylan Cardin]

Now, my view is that Nike never really had a problem. It just has. It's just at scale. Right. I mean, they are the largest athletic brand in the world. Right. And so when you think about sort of general scaling principles like Zip's law, Nike can only be so big and can only really grow with category or population growth. Right. So what you see with Nike is that it tends to kind of be steady state. And what's happening now is that, sure, it's getting some product mojo back, no question. Right. And it's sort of putting a greater sense of urgency into their business. But their North America wholesale business in any given quarter has been two and a half billion for the last decade. Right. There's no real growth there. It's just that they're kind of coming back into a channel with some newer product. And I think people are misinterpreting that as some sort of acceleration in the business. The reality is they're just sort of recapturing share that they already had, you know, a couple of years ago.

[Ed Elson]

You mentioned the sort of three years up and then three years down that we see a lot of with a lot of these lesser known or up and coming footwear brands. It almost sounds like, you know, these brands burst onto the scene. Everyone thinks this is the next Nike and then they're not the next Nike. What do you think about that question as it pertains to On? I think many of us do believe maybe this is the next Nike. Do you think that on could be the next Nike? What would it have to do to displace Nike as sort of the king?

[Dylan Cardin]

Yeah, yeah. Beware any narrative. That is the next anything in my view. But the real fundamental, I think structure to any longevity or any sustainability is just reinvention, right? So if you look at a Hoka versus an on. Hoka is effectively two silhouettes, right? I mean, 60% of their business are just two shoes. And if you look at again, some of those other footwear brands I've mentioned, allbirds would be in there, right? Tom, Stan Smith, right now, Samba, they're really undynamic products. They're really a standalone offering, right. If you look at Nike and you take all the same trend data, Nike's Air Force One and certain Jordans, they go through the same six year cycles. It's just that Nike stacks them up against each other. So it supports the underlying trend of the brand and popularity of the brand. It's a concept that's sort of better understood or best understood in artists. Right. No Beatles album was the same, Right. Each iteration was a reinvention with permission from the audience and so on. As opposed to a HOKA has permission from its customer to reinvent product. They got into tennis, right. They had the strong Roger Federer connection. They get into hiking as a national extension training because people are already using their shoes at the gym. There's natural lifestyle extensions to all of this, right. So they're really able to move the brand into different directions. That while they're, you know, the existing core on silhouette that you think of, that will crest over. It's not to say they're not subject to general corporate gravity, it's just that they'll have. They're seeding more growth behind it to sustain a longer term trajectory of growth.

[Ed Elson]

Yeah. Well, final question and then we'll let you go. Where does ON stand in terms of the almost luxury or at least premium to ultra premium market? I mean, the way I think of this brand is this is sort of the highest end of athletic wear. Is that the right characterization? Where does it fit in terms of premium?

[Robert Sockin]

Yeah.

[Dylan Cardin]

I mean, they're trying to go after this sort of perceived white space of premium, not luxury.

[Ed Elson]

Yeah.

[Dylan Cardin]

You know, 150ish per shoe. So certainly higher price point relative to what's out there. I mean, I think most of Nike's business to put a finer point on is done in like the $40 to $60 range.

[Ed Elson]

Right.

[Dylan Cardin]

So certainly there's some white space that they see there. You know, we'll see. Part of a lot of this is just a broader casualization of the world. Right. And so it would make sense that maybe as that's happening, you can move into segments of the market that otherwise wouldn't have been available to you because people are wearing premium product to sort of different occasions. I don't love the premium positioning, personally. I think the risk is that there's not as much white space there. Right. Just given that higher price point. So that would be something that I'm actually more cautious on with this one.

[Ed Elson]

Very interesting. Okay. Dylan Carden, senior analyst at William Blair. Really appreciate your time.

[Dylan Cardin]

Likewise. Thanks a lot.

[Ed Elson]

After the break, a look at the economic impact of the government shut down. If you're enjoying the show, give property markets a follow.

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[Ed Elson]

We're back with property Markets as we record this episode, the House of Representatives is voting on the bill to end the government shutdown, and it is likely to pass. Barring any late surprises. It should be on Trump's desk by the time you hear this. Trump has pledged to sign the bill swiftly, and once he does, things will return to normal. The deal extends funding for most federal agencies until January 30, guarantees that all federal workers will receive back pay, and reverses the layoffs of thousands of federal workers. So here to help us understand the economic impacts of this shutdown, we're speaking with Robert Sockin, senior global economist at Citi. Robert, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. We're recording this while they're voting. It appears that they are going to vote to end the shutdown when this episode goes out, likely the government will be open. Let's just start with your reflections on this shutdown, the longest in history. How do you think this will be remembered in the future?

[Robert Sockin]

Yeah, I think this is going to be remembered as a very challenging period politically and economically. As far as it goes by shutdowns, as you mentioned, it was the longest in history and we've had shutdowns in the past before. But when you look back at the data of those shutdowns, you don't see a big economic effect. Most of the activity tends to be made up once the government reopens. But I think in this case we saw a lot of additional disruptions. A wide range of flights being canceled, certain procurements from the government not being paid. And I think the risk of some deeper damage from this episode is more likely this time around than in prior shutdowns. So the base case is we're going to make up most of the activity, but there were a lot of stress points and it's going to really paint a poor picture for shutdowns in the future. If this is the state of play every time we get into a shutdown, that it could potentially be this divisive and this long.

[Ed Elson]

Yeah, we're seeing a lot of kind of frightening estimates of the costs. We saw one around $100 billion. What are the costs that we've seen from this shutdown? What are the damages to the economy and how are we able to measure those things?

[Robert Sockin]

Yeah, absolutely. And there's kind of, I would break up into sort of two categories. There's the direct effects of the shutdown, and that is largely government workers being furloughed, not working during those periods, not being paid, certain provisions from the government like we saw, with snap benefits not being paid. And that is sort of the direct effect. And much of that, as I mentioned, tends to be made up when the government's reopened. You don't get back the lost hours, the government employees didn't work. But as the back pay is filled in, you'll get those spending recovery and those procurements will restart. So those are sort of the direct effects. Most of that, as I said, will be made up. The indirect effects are a bit harder. If you look at, for example, the Washington, D.C. area, there are a lot of businesses there that just largely served government workers. And those businesses took a large hit in revenue that will not come back, most likely, at least a lot of it. Some of those businesses may be permanently impaired, it remains to be seen, but the, the private sector spillovers are much harder to measure in real time. We'll see as more data come out. The data that we have make it look like those spillovers have been pretty limited to date. But those are the sort of two sets of effects. The government shock, most of that being made up, private sector shock, hard to assess at this stage, but there's going to be some permanently lost output from this.

[Ed Elson]

What about some of the federal data? And we just learned we're not getting the jobs report for October. It seems that one of the other fallouts of this is just a lot of the data went dark. How big of a problem has that been, especially for you as an economist? I mean, your job is to know what the numbers are telling us.

[Robert Sockin]

Yeah, this has been another challenging element of this is you sort of have the economic story, how big are those effects? But then you've also had the data impairment. And for analysts like myself who are monitoring the economy, it's created a really challenging backdrop. And I think it's important to note is going to continue to create a challenging backdrop over the next few months. And so the majority of the best data that we have for the U.S. the things like the monthly jobs report, the monthly inflation reports that we receive, those are government produced reports. And those are the main things that we rely on to assess the health of the economy. We have a lot of other data that we look at, things like the purchasing manager indexes that come out, private sector reports like adp, those help paint a picture of the economy, but they are second best to a lot of these government resources. And now that the government is reopening, we are going to get that data restarting, but it's going to be probably lower quality than it normally is because we already found out, as you mentioned, probably not getting reports that would have been collected in October, at least immediately. And even the data that's going to come out from November, a lot of that collection is going to be impaired or shortened. And so I think we're going to be in a very challenging data picture through at least the end of the year. I think it'll all work itself out by the start of 2026. But that's been another angle of the shutdown. Very hard to assess the economy without the best data sources that we typically get.

[Ed Elson]

You mentioned that this shutdown is likely to be worse than others. I mean, it sounds like we've had previous shutdowns. It's been painful, but then you kind of recoup those losses later. But this one, it's more of a question why is that is it because it's so long and so it's going to be so much more difficult or what exactly makes this different from previous shutdowns we've seen?

[Robert Sockin]

Yeah, exactly. And you know, if you look at, at the sort of typical estimates of how much the shutdowns tend to drag on economic growth, you tend to lose something between 10 and 20 basis points per week on annualized GDP growth. As long as the shutdown is ongoing, I would be more at the upper end of that range. But that is based on a lot of analysis of those factors that I mentioned. Mostly that, that first bucket, the government elements of the shutdown. But that second element, the private sector spillovers, are much harder to assess. And if you have a very short shutdown, probably those are very limited. But I do think there's a strong argument that the longer a shutdown goes on, the higher risk that the economic effects become nonlinear and you get bigger effects later on. So that's the big question mark right now. And as I mentioned, the data sources that we do have outside the government sources, those don't paint a picture that things have deteriorated sharply over the last month and a half. But that is the big risk. Yes, that the longer it goes on, you're more in uncharted territory because of those spillover risks to the private sector.

[Ed Elson]

Do you think we'll see more shutdowns in the future? Is this going to be one of the impacts?

[Robert Sockin]

I think that is a very reasonable takeaway from what we've seen from this most recent shutdown, especially because if you look at the deal that's been struck, it funds the government through the end of the year. In theory, we could be back in the same camp in several weeks time. I don't think that's likely that we'll end up right back where we were, given that the painful elements we've seen in this episode. But I think the shutdown is a reflection of the challenging political backdrop we're in. Where the two sides are are very far apart on a lot of issues. And to me, when you have that type of backdrop, that means shutdowns are more likely going forward. So I don't think we're going to be back here in a few, in several weeks, even though there's a risk of that. But I do think the probability of more shutdowns going forward is higher now.

[Ed Elson]

All right. Robert Sockin, senior global economist at Citi. Robert, really appreciate your time. Thanks for joining us.

[Robert Sockin]

Thank you.

[Ed Elson]

Well, it's been a busy few weeks in the news Cycle. There's been a lot of talk about AI and the bubble concerns. We've had layoff concerns with AI. We've seen the rise of Mamdani. We've seen tariff drama. We've seen the China deal, the Epstein emails. A lot is happening. And if you were to just sort of go off of the headlines, I think you'd get the sense that this government shutdown that we've seen here is, yes, a big deal, but maybe not a huge deal. It's kind of important, but also just another news item. And that is the problem with the news cycle today, because actually, this shutdown is a huge deal. It is historic. And somehow everything else has distracted us away from its significance and also the impact it's had. And it's had a huge impact. Let's just go through the numbers. First off, the length. I mean, this shutdown lasted 43 days, the longest in the history of America by far. It was a full week longer than the previous record that was set in 2018, and two weeks longer than the one before that. And there have been very serious consequences. More than 700,000 federal employees went nearly 50 days without getting paid, without a paycheck. Another 700,000 were furloughed altogether. So that's almost one and a half million people who were directly affected by this. And that's just people who work for the government. You look at people outside of government who are directly affected, the number goes way up. It's tens of millions. 12% of Americans feed themselves through SNAP, the government's nutritional assistance program. So that's 40 million people who were likely struggling to feed themselves last month. By the way, 60% of those people are either elderly people or children. So these are the people that were affected by this. Then there's all the indirect consequences that we saw. The 6% of flights that were canceled because there just weren't enough air traffic controllers, all of the federal loan programs, the ones that finance small businesses and also finance mortgages, all of them went dark. All of the health data that tracks all of our most transmissible diseases, those got shut down, too. Multiple infrastructure projects, including ones that would help us close this energy gap we keep talking about with China, they were simply canceled. So most of us can't really see it. But the impacts of this event were actually enormous. And we can try to put a number on it. The current estimates say that the cost to the economy were nearly $100 billion. But even that is probably an understatement because the other problem we have here is we're not getting any proper data. We haven't seen the jobs report, we haven't seen the consumption data, we haven't seen the GDP data, we haven't seen any inflation data. Which, by the way, is why the White House is now publishing data from DoorDash, because they can't produce the data themselves. So quite frankly, we don't know the half of this. I mean, we know it was bad, but we don't know exactly how bad because we don't have the data to tell us. And that is why it is so important to just recognize the significance of this shutdown. Yes, lots of other stuff is happening, and yes, some of it is quite important, but for the most part, right now, the Zone is being flooded with shit. And it is all a distraction from what a disaster this really was. The least a nation should expect from its government, never mind the inefficiencies and the polarization, the corruption, never mind all that. The least we should expect is a government that is operational. And for 43 days, the longest period in history, this government couldn't even meet that standard. The world moves on. The economy continues to grind. The earth continues to turn. But let's be sure to remember this month of October for what it was, and that is it was one of the greatest government failures in history. And somehow the bar, which was already very low, that bar is now even lower. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our research team is Dan Shalon, Isabella Kinsel, Kristen o' Donoghue and Mia Silverio. And our technical director is Drew Burrows. Thanks for listening to Prof. G Markets from Prof. G Media. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. Tune in tomorrow for our conversation with Professor Aswath de Modorin.