It Depends on the Price of the Bonds Edition

Summary

Slate Money — “It Depends on the Price of the Bonds Edition”

June 23, 2018
Host: Felix Salmon
Co-hosts: Emily Peck, Anna Shymansky

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Overview

This episode offers an insightful roundup of the week’s most compelling business and finance stories, focusing on:

• The Koch brothers’ campaign against public transit in the U.S.
• The ongoing reality and impact of pregnancy discrimination at work.
• Rwanda’s economic growth, self-branding, and controversial trade/branding tactics.

The discussion is candid, analytical, and lively, blending policy deep-dives with personal anecdotes and trenchant observations.

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Segment 1: The Koch Brothers and Anti-Transit Politics

[00:34–11:47]

Key Points

• The Koch brothers have been funding campaigns to quash public transit initiatives across the U.S., with a particular focus on Nashville’s $5.4 billion transit package.
• Americans for Prosperity, the Kochs’ group, launched an effective anti-transit campaign by leveraging sophisticated voter data, focusing on cost (tax increase) and stoking fears around gentrification and crime.
• The Kochs’ financial interests align—public transit competes with their profits in gasoline, asphalt, and car parts.
• The anti-transit rhetoric is tailored to local anxieties, often exploiting racial and class divisions.

Notable Quotes

• “They make a lot of money when there are more people driving and there are more roads.”
  — Anna Shymansky [03:03]
• “Public transit goes against the liberties Americans hold dear, which we all think in this room we think that’s ridiculous. But ... a lot of Americans might actually believe that.”
  — Emily Peck [11:20]

Memorable Moments

• Felix questions how anti-transit stances gain such broad city support despite cities being “by their nature left wing, progressive, pro equality, pro transit.” [09:14]
• Emily discusses the manipulation of opposition rationale: “...in Nashville they argued that if they improved public transportation, it would lead to gentrification... [Meanwhile] in San Francisco... they argued that BART is responsible for increases in crime because young men do crime on the BART.” [05:55]
• The historical roots of such opposition, drawing parallels to Robert Moses’ racially motivated urban planning in New York. [08:44]

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Segment 2: Pregnancy Discrimination in the Workplace

[11:55–21:31]

Key Points

• The New York Times exposé revealed pervasive pregnancy discrimination, from Walmart to Wall Street—manifesting as both overt (denial of accommodations) and subtle (missed promotions) treatment.
• Employers often accommodate other types of disabilities more readily than pregnancy.
• Even in companies with progressive leave policies, unconscious bias among managers still leads to setbacks for pregnant workers.
• Laws such as the Pregnancy Discrimination Act are often insufficient or poorly enforced, and improvements may require both stronger national legislation and cultural change.
• Suggestions include not just better policy but proactive cultural messaging—e.g., visibly promoting pregnant women, and compulsory paternity leave to level the playing field.

Notable Quotes

• “The Times called, cleverly, the maternal wall. There’s widespread discrimination.”
  — Emily Peck [12:19]
• “Do we want to incentivize people having children or do we want to incentivize people driving drunk?”
  — Anna Shymansky [14:54]
• “It’s not just men discriminating against women. It turns out that they make these kind of idiotic assumptions about what mothers and pregnant women want...”
  — Felix Salmon [15:12]

Memorable Moments

• The legal precedent: “Men, male drivers at UPS who had DUIs... were given light duty. But she a pregnant woman... did not get the light duty. I just always found that one such a good example...”
  — Emily Peck [14:19]
• Discussion of “superhuman” examples: “...tends to be these like ultra powerful, ultra successful women who take off about like 10 seconds of maternity leave and then come back sort of more capable than ever... it kind of sends this message of you need to be this superhuman woman.”
  — Felix Salmon [16:32]
• The cultural challenge of making paternity leave truly compulsory and stigma-free in the American corporate context. [19:18–20:45]

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Segment 3: Rwanda — From Genocide to Economic Branding

[21:31–31:01]

Key Points

• Rwanda, led by President Paul Kagame, is both hailed for economic growth and criticized for autocracy and human rights crimes—making for a conflicted success story.
• Rwanda’s move to ban secondhand clothing imports (much of it Western donation castoffs) is analyzed—a policy intended to protect its nascent textile industry but with mixed ramifications as it may destroy existing jobs without guaranteeing new industry success.
• The country’s bold $39 million sponsorship of Arsenal Football Club (“Visit Rwanda” patch) is critiqued as part of a global rebranding effort.
• The conversation weighs the effectiveness of such branding, the value of tourism/investment, and the realpolitik of investment decision-making in countries with complex political legacies.

Notable Quotes

• “Did you know that when you throw your secondhand clothes into those... bins... they wind up in a big for-profit industry which winds up sending them to countries which thereby are basically prevented from growing their own apparel industry?”
  — Felix Salmon [23:41]
• “If you were considering an investment in Rwanda... to what extent does it matter that The President is a genocidal war criminal dictator?”
  — Felix Salmon [30:33]
• “Oh, God, I’m say the worst thing in the world, which is it depends on the price of the bonds.”
  — Anna Shymansky [31:01]

Memorable Moments

• “Countries potentially misspend money all the time. And also, who knows that this is misspent?”
  — Anna Shymansky [28:33]
• “Maybe it already has. I mean, we’re talking about this topic right now and I suspect part of the reason Felix suggested it was because Rwanda has become more interesting in the back of your head. Maybe, maybe because you saw it on that sleeve.”
  — Emily Peck [29:30]

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Numbers Round

[32:03–36:11]

• $39: The price of the “I Really Don’t Care, Do U?” jacket worn by Melania Trump to visit detained children—a moment of controversy and media speculation.
  — Emily Peck [32:04]
• 9: The number of years in the current U.S. economic boom—the second longest expansion in U.S. history.
  — Felix Salmon [33:49]
• $12.76: Last share price for GE before its ejection from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, symbolizing a shift away from traditional U.S. manufacturing behemoths.
  — Anna Shymansky [34:55]

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Tone & Style

The hosts are witty, irreverent, and knowledgeable, using humor and personal experience to illuminate complex topics. They are unafraid to voice strong opinions but support them with clear arguments and historical context.

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Suggested Timestamps for Key Segments

• Koch brothers and transit politics: [00:34–11:47]
• Pregnancy discrimination: [11:55–21:31]
• Rwanda’s economic story and branding: [21:31–31:01]
• Numbers round: [32:03–36:11]

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Conclusion

This episode skillfully weaves together threads about power, money, and narratives—whether in American city planning, U.S. workplaces, or Rwandan geopolitics—asking hard questions and foregrounding the realities beneath economic headlines.

Transcript

[A]

The following podcast contains explicit language. Hello, and welcome to the it depends on the price of the bonds edition of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon and I am joined, as ever, by Emily Peck of the Huffington Post.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

Hello. And Anna Shymansky.

[C]

Hello.

[A]

And we have, like, a weird and wonderful group of stories for you this week. We are going to be talking about secondhand clothes in Rwanda. Obviously this is a major story in the global economy, but it kind of is. And I kind of have been wanting to talk about Rwanda for a while, so this is our excuse to talk about Rwanda. We are going to talk about pregnant women in the workplace, which is. There's new news on that front. But first, I think. Emily, can you tell me about the Koch brothers and transit? What is the. Okay. Yes. Just there was this story I can tell you, which confused me, but you can explain it.

[B]

I think I can explain it. It ran in the New York Times this week. It was about the Koch bro and how they're funding efforts to basically squash public transportation projects across the country. The New York Times piece focused on Nashville, which had this like $5.4 billion package it was going to do on public transit. It was like some light rail, a little tunnel, a little bus, and everyone thought it was a sure thing, slam dunk kind of a project. But then the Koch brothers got involved.

[A]

So Nashville, it turns out, is a massive city. It's not some little music town. It's got like 3 or 4 million people and it's growing fast. And like any fast growing city, it needs to invest in transit because you can't just grow without transit. That's silly. For city. Oh.

[B]

But the Koch brothers and their group, Americans for Prosperity, very much do think you can grow without public transit. So they went around arguing that public transit was. Was basically bad. And this package was bad because it would increase sales tax in Nashville by 1 percentage point. Which side note, sales tax in Nashville is actually very high. It's like 9.5%, which I was kind of surprised by. But maybe you can explain to me why that is in a separate.

[A]

I feel like local taxes, it's always just a choice. Some jurisdictions like sales tax. Some jurisdictions have an income tax, some jurisdictions have a property tax. Some New York has all three. But you just like suddenly you dial down and some you dial up. I don't think you can look at one on their own.

[C]

Yeah. And one of the interesting things in this article was that they pointed out that it's not Just that the Koch brothers are coming in and kind of doing their normal shtick. They're actually using fairly sophisticated data to try to target voter voters and try to target cities where they think they can stir up certain divisions in order to squash these public transit programs. And I think it's. One other quick thing I think it's important to remember when you talk about the Koch brothers is that they make a lot of money when there are more people driving and there are more roads.

[A]

So explain that. What's their financial interest in quashing transit and. And encouraging roads and cars?

[C]

Well, being an energy primarily. Well, I believe Coke industries are responsible for, like, asphalt.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

And seatbelts.

[B]

Yes. And gasoline. And gasoline and tires and other auto parts.

[C]

So, yeah, most things in a car.

[B]

Things in a car.

[A]

And. And so what they did was they came out with what turns out to have been a very effective campaign against. Against public transit, and they won. And part of the thing which I found fascinating about this is that on the one hand, obviously, Nashville needs transit. All cities need transit. If you. You can't really have density without transit.

[B]

Public transit.

[A]

Yeah. And so. And so this is sad day in the history of Nashville. On the other hand, I kind of agree with them on light rail. Like, light rail is kind of a boondoggle. Everywhere you find it, it's always incredibly expensive, and it never seems to transport very many people. And you're like, why does everyone want light rail? It looks glamorous, but it doesn't actually achieve very much.

[C]

No, it's like de Blasio streetcar. It makes very little sense.

[B]

But the other piece of it was a bus. It was like a widening, a tunnel so that public. The buses didn't have to go in the clogged, congested highways. I thought, yeah, that sounds smart.

[C]

And I do think it depends on where you're located in terms of which type of transit makes sense. And when you're talking about public transit, I do think it's important that we recognize that all cities are different. They're. They're laid out in different ways. Their populations have different needs. They have different tax structures, different financing. So I do think, obviously, certain public transportation may make more sense in certain cities than in others. I tend to normally be a big supporter of public transit, especially someone who doesn't drive. But I do think it's understandable that all cities should have to consider whether this makes sense or not. But I think the key is a lot of the areas that the Kochs have been focusing on are areas where transit really would be necessary. I know one of the things in the article that jumped out to me was that in southeast Michigan, this is. I happen to be from southeast Michigan and I know that there is very little public transportation. And interestingly, when Amazon said that they weren't going to choose Detroit for their H2Q, they specifically, specifically pointed out the lack of public transportation in that area, specifically connecting Ann Arbor and Detroit.

[B]

I thought one other thing that was interesting in the piece was how craven the people talking about these issues are and how sinister. Like they mentioned this one fellow from the Cato Institute that is helping this effort and he is making basically opposing arguments about gentrification. And so in Nashville they argued that if they improved public transportation, it would lead to gentrification of the city. Right. And it would make things harder for minorities and lower income people who live there. They would get pushed out. Whatever. We know what gentrification is. I don't have to keep going on. And then in San Francisco, where I guess they were opposing public transportation also, they argued and they argued that the bart, the railway system there, is responsible for increases in crime because young men do crime on the bart. It was like the most racist argument I've seen and I just was interested in. Interesting to see how they sort of like played with that issue from location to location. It just shows like how hollow. I don't know, the beliefs seem to be a little bit craven. It's just about more money for auto parts.

[C]

And it's actually important because the racism and playing into racism is often a big part of campaigns around public transit. I especially know this again in the Michigan context, which is something I'm very familiar with, but it's something that comes in very often that you have. A lot of people who are opposed to public transit will go into predominantly white communities and play up this idea that if you increase public transit, they don't explicitly say it, they use those coded terms, but it's very clear what they're actually talking about.

[A]

Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs of South London and anyone who has spent much time in London knows that the tube, the London Underground, is a great way to get around North London, north of the river, and a kind of crappy way to get around. And then we were anywhere south of the river and no one really understands why, because London is pretty much 50 50. And it basically turns out that at least in my little neck of the woods, they're back in the Victorian days when they wanted to extend the Victoria line to Dulwich, where I grew up like it was exactly, it wasn't like white, brown, racist, but it was basically the same sort of class arguments were made that if we made it easier for poor, poor people to come here, then would be more poor people here. And they, they were going to extend the London Underground and they didn't. And so then I was, I wound up, you know, not being on the tube when I was growing up. And that was sad. But this is, but literally this goes back to, you know, it goes back 120 years, these kind of arguments. And it's kind of sad that we haven't really advanced.

[B]

It's very sad. It reminded me of the power broker, you know.

[C]

Yeah. Robert Moses.

[B]

And when Robert Moses was engineering the, the Southern State Parkway on Long island, famously in the power broker, he made the overhead, what you call them, the overhead elevated, basically. He made it so that buses couldn't go.

[A]

Oh, the bridges. Yeah, yeah, you have low bridges on the way to the beaches. So you can't have brown people on the beaches.

[B]

Yes, exactly. And the same thing, apparently he was modeling it on Westchester county, which has similar problems.

[A]

So I guess the question which I have is like on the one hand you can see how a couple of cartoon villains like the Koch brothers would fund these kind of things, but the question which I have is like, how do they find these fresh faced volunteers to go out and knock on doors who seem like quite young and like vaguely normal and how do they get, actually get a majority of the population of a city to agree with them? Because the one thing we learned certainly in the last presidential election was that every single municipality with more than about, I think 45,000 people in America voted for Clinton. Cities are by their nature left wing, progressive, pro equality, pro transit. How do you get a city to vote against these things?

[C]

Well, if you're, it depends on explicitly what you mean by a city and what you're thinking of as a city because some of these transit projects are in areas that are a bit more spread out. And I'm going to just keep talking about southeast Michigan apparently today, but the, one of the counties that was actually killed, the bill that the Kochs had been against in southeast Michigan was Macomb county, which is very well known as the county that essentially gave Michigan to Trump. So I guess when you're looking at some of these projects, I would be interested to see exactly where they're going and who exactly are the people who are voting.

[A]

Exactly. So it, it becomes a little bit like the, you know, like the Rob Ford syndrome. It's not the, the city center which votes against it. It's the exurbs in the, you know, the people who don't want, who are happy with their backyards.

[C]

Yeah. And if you also look at some of the language that was used when they asked people, they were like, the questions were like, they were so heavily worded in terms of making it sound like this was, you know, basically nothing but a taxpoon doggle. So you can understand that if you're talking to people, especially if you're talking to people who may not follow politics very closely and you say like, do you want to vote to increase your sales tax to be the highest in the nation? Most people are going to be like, no.

[B]

Yeah. And there is something about the rhetoric. Like there was one quote I wrote down from one of these guys that was public transit goes against the liberties Americans hold dear, which we all think in this room we think that's ridiculous. But if you think about it like that whole ethos of Americans getting on the highway in their cars and their, you know, gas guzzling cars and just taking it on the road, that's kind of true. Like, a lot Americans might actually believe that.

[A]

Bring on the millennials.

[C]

That's what I say.

[A]

Okay, Emily, we're coming back to you again.

[B]

Hi.

[A]

What's the latest news on what happens to women when they get pregnant?

[B]

Well, then they have babies nine months later, Felix. But no, the New York Times wrote again, a really great piece, really in depth piece on pregnancy discrimination, which doesn't get a lot of attention even now during the MeToo era when we talk about sexual discrimination. But basically from Walmart to Wall street, when women get pregnant and they have a job, they basically hit what the Times called, cleverly, the maternal wall. There's widespread discrimination. Sometimes it's blatant. Like these Walmart workers, they tell their boss, I'm pregnant, I can't lift this stuff anymore. And the boss is like, oh, it's too bad. Lift the stuff. You know, and some of the women in the piece had miscarriages. Or you might work at a company, I think Merck was named in the P where you get pregnant and there's great maternity leave and they're super happy to tell you all about their female friendly policies. But like, you come back to work and you just never get promoted. You watch everyone around you get promoted and you're like, that's weird.

[A]

Yeah. And your bosses are like, well, she doesn't want to get a promotion because she has kids.

[B]

She has kids at home. She's you know, really bogged down. And this is becoming an increasing problem. There's like a record number of pregnancy discrimination claims filed at the eeoc. That's the federal agency that handles civil rights charges and stuff like that. And I don't see it getting better. I hear these stories all the time. It's Walmart, it's Merck, it's. I wrote a piece a while ago about a cop in Alabama that was really, the Times mentioned, incredibly mistreated. Like she came back to work and her vest was like, it was too tight and she was still breastfeeding. And her, they like wouldn't help her find a new uniform. And that's like really important when you're like a beat cop and you're 12 hour shift and you have to like change into new uniforms. They couldn't do it for her. It's just crazy.

[C]

Well, and I think it's because I imagine if there had been a guy who had like gained a bunch of weight, they probably would have given him a new vest. Oh, for sure. This is something I found so disturbing in the Times article was that they showed that a lot of these companies were all in favor of giving accommodations to men when they had issues like.

[A]

They had a, or even like disabled women. It's like, it's specifically pregnancy is the only thing which you. Which doesn't get the same accommodations that virtually any other, you know.

[B]

Well, there's this famous, the, the supreme court case, Young vs UPS. It was about Peggy Young worked at UPS, she got pregnant, they wouldn't accommodate her. She, she needed like light duty work basically. And it came out in the, in the case that men, male drivers at UPS who had DUIs. Right. So they couldn't drive because they had driven drunk and their licenses were suspended, they were given light duty. But she a pregnant woman, which is arguably a good thing. Right. She did not get the light duty. I just, I always found that one such a good example of what you were saying.

[C]

Yeah. If you're thinking of things we want to incentivize in the economy, do we want to incentivize people having children or do we want to incentivize people driving drunk?

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

So I might have a question here, which is the kind of, you know, the solutions chapter bit of it. Because if you look at companies like Merck or the, you know, the ones with the good parental leave and the female friendly workplaces and everything, you have, you know, official policies from hr, which are all. Exactly, more or less what the official policies should Be and then you know, on the ground where you have the managers, both female and male managers by the way, like do this kind of discrimination. It's not just men discriminating against women. It turns out that they make these kind of idiotic assumptions about what mothers and pregnant women want or what they can do and that kind of thing. And so what kind of actions can a company take to prevent this from happening at their sort of manager by manager level?

[B]

That's a really good question because it's such a variety of things happening. There's a lot of unconscious bias I think, that goes on that leads women to not get promotions or not even get asked to travel for a business trip. I think you can message this by promoting like a pregnant lady once in a while. Like I've worked in places where you know a woman is pregnant and gets a big promotion and it sends like a really strong message. You don't have to say anything. It just everyone sees like, oh, this is possible. And you know, I think you just message it throughout the culture in little ways like that.

[A]

So I have a few examples in my head of pregnant women getting big promotions. Like for instance, Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, like a very nice promotion. Like for instance, who, yeah, she became the Prime Minister of New Zealand. That's a good big job. Marissa Mayer when she was at Yahoo, became CEO like as she was pregnant. Basically. Like my ex boss, Christie Freeland, who's now the foreign minister of Canada, got a big promotion at Thompson Roses when she was pregnant. But the, the thing which they have in common is they tend to be these like ultra powerful, ultra successful women who take off about like 10 seconds of maternity leave and then come back sort of more capable than ever. And everyone kind of looks at them in awe. And on the one hand it sets, it sends a message like yay, pregnant women can do these big jobs. But on the other's message it kind of sends this message of you need to be this superhuman woman.

[B]

I think that's a really good point. I think at the high end people are facing a lot of bias. So like the examples of the high powered women kind of maybe are helpful. But like for the women of Walmart, it doesn't matter. So you need really a lot better policies and laws. Like even the current anti the Pregnancy Discrimination act doesn't really say you have to give accommodations to pregnant women. It simply says you can't deny them the same kinds of accommodations you give to other workers. So it's not a very strong law. And A lot of companies actually don't have very good maternity leave or other policies. So I think you got. You kind of have to drill down company by company and like, fix stuff. And at the same time, at the policy level, you have to amp up.

[C]

Right. Because I think I very much agree with you that I think, I don't think it makes sense to lead this to a company by company level. I think you need national laws. So there's a level playing field where it is required that reasonable accommodations are made for pregnant women. But going back to the point you were making in terms of whether women who are high powered should immediately go back or shouldn't go back, I think it's really tough because I'm not saying.

[A]

They were wrong to go back.

[C]

No, I know. But it's complicated because on the one hand, it's true, you want to make it clear that women can take a reasonable amount of time off after they have a child, but then it's also complicated because if you're running a company that may not be as reasonable as for most people.

[A]

I think one thing which does need to happen, one thing which can happen at big companies is compulsory paternity leave. And like, when Mark Zuckerberg took, what was it, four months off when he had a kid, that sent an important message too.

[B]

Actually only took two out of four months available.

[C]

Oh, yeah. And I don't know, there's a part of me when it comes to the compulsory leave, it rubs me the wrong way a little bit. I understand that if you don't make a compulsory, just like, nobody's gonna take it. But then, I don't know, men get shamed.

[B]

If you don't make it compulsory, it's gonna be. Oh, they'll totally make it.

[C]

Shame. Yeah.

[B]

Like, I've spoken to men and especially like in finance and banks, like, no one takes the paternity leave, and if they do, everyone talks about you and you're just. You're ashamed for it. I mean, men have filed lawsuits because of the discrimination involved. So if you did do that, I think it would A, level the playing field and B, allow men who want to take paternity leave to. To actually take it, I guess.

[C]

Wow.

[A]

And just wants everyone to work all the time.

[C]

It's kind of true.

[B]

No, I.

[C]

No, no. Like, trying to come up with the best argument of why. I just think part of it, and I think this is a, it's like it's complicated in the United States because I do think, and I'm not saying this is a Good thing. But I'm saying the United States does have a different culture on work than many other countries. And so I don't know how well this policy would be accepted or how well it would actually. Whether it would actually even work, because you could tell people that it needed to be compulsory, then they'd. And then men would still work because they're. No, I'm sure you would just work and you'd send your boss emails and then you're the good worker. I just have a very hard time thinking that America's entire culture is just going to change overnight. I don't think that's going to happen.

[A]

Right. But we can definitely make efforts to move in that direction. And what we're talking about in a world of unconscious bias is how do you address those unconscious biases? How do you make it easier to remove the obstacles to pregnant women getting promoted? And I think, you know, better training, better rules, better HR is part of it. But you need. But things like compulsory paternity leave, even if they aren't perfectly successful in all respects, are also a good step in that direction. They do much more harm than good.

[C]

Right. I think before we have compulsory maternity leave, we should maybe just have maternity leave as well in the country.

[B]

Fair. Just fair.

[A]

All right, let's go to Rwanda, because Rwanda is an incredibly fascinating story to me. It's run by this essentially dictator called Paul Gagame. He keeps on winning elections so he can claim to be democratically elected, but he does have this habit of throwing his political opponents in jail and not really letting them out and completely cracking.

[C]

Down on press freedom.

[A]

There's no press freedom. And not to put too fine a point on it, he's a genocidal warlord.

[C]

There's that.

[A]

There's that he invaded the country during the Rwandan genocide and committed a large number of major war crimes. And he probably belongs in the Hague. And yet everyone seems to love him and the economy is booming and he. And. And he's like a big favorite in the Davos set and he pals around with Tony Blair. And the part of the reason why the populace of Rwanda keeps on voting for him is because, you know, they're getting richer. It's. There's no war going on anymore. He's managed to bring peace to the country. And like, as a president, in terms of his policies, I mean, throwing opponents in jail and, and not allowing a free press, not good policies. But in terms of the prosperity of the country, like it's act, it's actually an African success story in Some respects. And so it's, I'm just hugely conflicted and I, I don't like him at all. And I kind of hate the fact that it's a success story because it would be much easier to just hate Rwanda if it wasn't.

[C]

This is true. And bringing this into the story we're actually talking about today. So right now a lot of people are actually kind of cheering on Rwanda because they're standing up to the Trump administration because Rwanda has essentially wants to essentially institute a ban basically on the import, importing secondhand clothing, which is a huge industry in Rwanda.

[A]

And did you know that when you throw your secondhan clothes into those, you know, secondhand clothes bins that you find by the side of the road that those secondhand clothes wind up in a big for profit industry which winds up sending them to countries which thereby are basically prevented from growing their own apparel industry.

[C]

So I have slightly mixed feelings about this because on the one hand I, I like to see a country, especially an African country, standing up to the Trump administration. I do think it makes total sense that when you have a developing economy, you should be given more latitude to have more protectionist policies in order to grow nascent industries because that's what wealthy nations did to become wealthy. However, this particular ban, I wonder if it makes a lot of sense in the Rwandan context because you are actually have a large industry around the transportation organization, the alteration of these, this clothing and the sale of this clothing. And you, it's not just that you don't have much of a textile industry because of the secondhand clothing. It's also that you don't quite have the demand for the type of clothing that this textile industry would make because of the price point.

[B]

I was wondering about that too. I don't think of the, of textiles as something that's going to like rocket a country to economic prosperity. I mean clothes are very cheap and in the article made a similar point that, that you did basically by doing this, it puts an actual industry out of business while betting on an industry that may or may not work out anyway. You might wind up just like getting clothes from China or something.

[C]

That's exactly what's already happening, is that there aren't putting a ban on the import of cheap Chinese clothing. And what you actually they have, there are a number of articles where they have interviews with people in Rwanda who say they prefer the secondhand clothing because it's higher quality and there's more variety than the cheap goods are being imported. And so two things. One if this actually goes in, if this actually goes into practice, the, what most likely is going to happen is that you're going to have Chinese companies that will set up factories potentially in Rwanda for clothing, just for export, not for the Rwandan market. And then you're going to have smuggling of the clothing that the people actually want.

[A]

It is a messy story, but we do need to mention the Arsenal.

[B]

I was waiting for you to bring.

[A]

That up because obviously, like, this is the. Like while there's this big trade war going on, one minor trade skirmish, let's say, going on between Rwanda and, and the United States. And I'm sure it's the number one most important thing that Donald Trump is thinking about. Every day there's a broader attempt by countries to improve their standing and reputation and visibility in the world. And the, but one of the ways they do this is they have these flag carrier airlines like Emirates. So if you are the uae, you have Emirates Airlines and you subsidize it massively and you make it very glamorous. Everyone goes, oh, I love flying Emirates. It's a great airline. And, and everyone thinks more positively about your country. And then you advertise the airline on the shirts of Arsenal players. And everyone in the world watches Arsenal because it's the English Premier League and it's the most popular league in the world. And everyone sees this advertising and, and it's a very positive context for, for you and you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars and apparently this is worthwhile. And we're used to seeing this in the context of the Emirates and now we're seeing it in the context of Rwanda, where the Arsenal players don't now just have Emirates on the front of their shirts, on their left sleeves. They also have little things saying visit Rwanda. And this is Rwanda's attempt to basically boost its reputation in the world, hopefully to try and increase its tourism industry and get a bunch of people to fly there to see guerrillas. But mostly I think just so that people think of Rwanda as a tourist destination and not as a site of a massive genocide.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense to me because I was reading they don't maybe have, as a country have the capacity for much of an increase in tourism at the moment anyway. But anything they could do to rebrand from genocide place to guerrilla place seems positive. And it seemed to me they were getting really criticized for spending, it was like $39 million they're spending on, on football, soccer, whatever we called it, I don't know. And they're getting really criticized and that kind of seemed a little unfair to me, but agreed.

[C]

I mean, like countries potentially misspend money all the time. And also, who knows that this is misspent? I don't know. I mean, I have no idea what the data is to show whether this actually has a good effect or not. But it makes some sense.

[A]

Although it's hard to measure. Right. As Emily says, if you're trying to justify it on an ROI basis through increased tourism, I mean, that's a lot of increased tourism you need to Rwanda and you're probably not going to get it. The question is, does it also have positive branding effects for the country as a whole? And to what extent does having positive branding effects to the country as a whole actually help you?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I think having positive branding effects, again, can only be good, and especially in the Rwandan context because of what most people think of when they hear the Rwanda. But I do wonder if just having like a patch on somebody's shirt that says Visit Rwanda is really going to change anything.

[B]

I think maybe it already has. I mean, we're talking about this topic right now and I suspect part of the reason Felix suggested it was because Rwanda has become more interesting in the back of your head. Maybe, maybe because you saw it on that sleeve.

[A]

I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe.

[B]

But it changes the conversation a little bit. It gets people talking about the country in a way that's not terrible and that's gotta be helpful in some way in marketing, like making your country into a brand. Which is a weird thing to say. Like tourism is down to the United States because our brand is in the crapper right now, isn't it?

[A]

It is down. It's not down enormously, as anyone who visited, you know, Times Square recently can tell you. But it's. But then again, Times Square is a lot of.

[B]

I mean, it matters, the image matters. And you could do it doesn't hurt, I think, what they're doing also.

[C]

Sorry, one last thing. I think it's important when you're talking about the branding of a country, you're also not just talking about tourism, you're also talking about investment and development. And I think that that's also another big deal in terms of trying to change what people think of when they think of the country.

[A]

And so, and so here's my question for you, Anna. As a hard nosed Wall street type, if you were considering an investment in Rwanda, either a direct investment into industry or even just buying the bonds or something like that, to what extent does it matter that The President is a genocidal war criminal dictator.

[C]

Well. Oh, God, I'm say the worst thing in the world, which is it depends on the price of the bonds. No, it's. I mean, like, look, Daniel's cracking up in the booth. Look, I mean it. Anytime you're talking about, like, whether something is like a good or bad investment, it always depends on the price. And so if you're looking at an investment in a frontier market, you're definitely going to consider the political risk of the administration and.

[A]

But, but that's the going forward risk. I guess what I'm asking is like, looking backwards, does that matter? Like, the fact that he did things 20 years ago, does that matter?

[C]

No, I really don't think it does. I mean, I really think that honestly, the risk that people would care about a lot more is whether they thought he was going to, like, expropriate things.

[A]

So basically he's got away with.

[C]

Yeah, I imagine.

[A]

Let's have a numbers round. Who's got a number? Emily, do you have a number?

[B]

I have a number.

[A]

What's your number?

[B]

I really agonized about doing this as my number, but what the hell.

[A]

What the hell.

[B]

My number is $39. That is the price of the jacket Melania Trump wore when she was going to visit. She's a bunny. And the jacket, probably everyone knows, but on the back of the jacket it said, I really don't care, do you? And there's been, you know, a spirited debate about exactly what she doesn't care about. But the symbolism of wearing a jacket with that slogan to visit or any.

[A]

Jacket in Texas in the summer.

[B]

She took it off when she got there, apparently, but then she put it back on.

[C]

Well, planes are cold.

[B]

And also the fact, beyond the slogan that Melania Trump wore a $39 jacket is actually notable in and of itself.

[A]

Oh, she was just hanging out in zara in Washington D.C. in the bargain basement rack. No, I mean, this was clearly a very thought through, deliberate troll attempt. And one does wonder why Melania, of all people is like entering into this troll game. Because, like, you think she could manage to absent herself from it?

[B]

She's actually been trolling us with her outfits for a while now. If you'll remember, she wore a white pantsuit, I believe, to the State of the Union, which everyone was like, she. Is she making a point about Hillary Clinton? And you know, her white pantsuit, she wore that pussy bow, remember?

[A]

And do you remember the heels that she wore to Hurricane Harvey?

[B]

Yes, and of course, the stilettos to Hurricane Harvey. So, you know, I really think the.

[C]

Answer is she just doesn't care, like about anything.

[B]

Yeah, but she was just telling the truth back of that jacket.

[A]

Yeah, she's like, she wanted to tell us that she doesn't care. So she wore a jacket saying, I really don't care.

[B]

And we're all like, what does she mean Exactly.

[A]

My number is 9, which is the number of years now officially that the current economic boom has been going on. That's how long we've had since the last recession. That makes it the second longest economic expansion in American history.

[B]

When was the other one?

[A]

The other one was the Greenspan boom, which ended in 2001. And obviously that should make us feel much better, but it's very, very long in the tooth. We have. We are now officially in a nine year old expansion.

[C]

Yeah. Although I would question how much of that is an expansion in the financial markets and how much of that is really an expansion in the real economy. I understand if you want to look technically in terms of gdp, we're not looking. I understand that. But you have a lot of people in the market saying that the actual real economic recovery is not as old as what some of the data and what the markets would suggest.

[A]

Okay, so what's your number?

[C]

My number is $12.76. That is the last share price I shot for GE.

[A]

We remember ge.

[C]

Poor ge. Yeah. Fell out of the Dow this week.

[A]

Because it's share prices. This is like part of. We've talked about this on this show, like the ridiculousness of the Dow and how it's based on like nominal share prices.

[C]

Oh, it's incredibly stupid. I mean, actually it's interesting because GE was replaced with Walgreens, which has Not.

[A]

A very big company by Dow standards.

[C]

Oh, and if you're looking at like consumer staples and you're like, which company do I think of when I think of consumer staples? I'm pretty sure most people think of Amazon, but you can't possibly put Amazon in the Dow because their share price is like 1750.

[A]

And, and. Yeah, but, but I think most people. I think the loss of GE from the Dow didn't come as much of a surprise. It's kind of been bumping along unhappily for a while now. But I do think that most people thought that if and when it did get kicked out, it would probably be replaced by Facebook, and Facebook is a pretty obvious DAO component and it wasn't.

[C]

Yeah, I think that somewhat had to do with the sectors in terms of what they wanted to have the sector balanced, but. But agreed. It's silly.

[A]

So I think that's it. If you have any suggestions for, like, how on earth we managed to get people to stop talking about the dao, which is a completely pointless. It's not even an index. It's an average. Do send them in to slatemoneylate.com and we are gonna have a slate plus as well. And we're gonna talk about the CEO of Intel. And do listen next week as well, when we're gonna have finally, yes, the Germany edition, which we have been promising for a while. This is going to be a good one with Adam Tooze from Columbia. So many thanks to Dan Schrader for producing this one. That's it for us this week. And thank you for listening to Sleep Money. Sam.