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- [00:09]
A
Hello.
- [00:12]
B
Welcome to the Naked Swimmers edition of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. Here as well is Anna Shymansky. Hello. And in the seat normally filled by Emily Peck, we have the one and only Charles Duhigg.
- [00:31]
C
I must pale comparison to Emily.
- [00:33]
B
Well, you are a bit paler than.
- [00:34]
C
It'S true, but I'll try my best.
- [00:36]
B
So, Charles, last time you were on this show, you had written an amazing thing about Elon Musk.
- [00:41]
C
Yeah.
- [00:41]
B
And you were just recording something mysterious in the studio next door, and we were talking about Elon Musk, and we were like, charles Duhigg is literally in the studio next door. We need to drag him in there to talk. In here to talk about Elon Musk. And the one thing that we didn't know is what the hell were you doing in the studio next door?
- [01:01]
C
And now it's come out.
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B
Now the show is in the world.
- [01:03]
C
Now you.
- [01:03]
B
And now we know that Charles Duhigg is now a Slate podcaster.
- [01:07]
C
I'm a Slate podcaster. So we're making a show called How To. And the idea behind it is the tagline is, what if Dear Abby was an investigative journalist? So every week, someone calls up with a problem. They want to learn how to. They want to learn how to be funnier. A pastor called us and says, I want to be funnier from the pulpit. And so we find an expert, this guy Gary Goldman, who's a comedian, to. To give him advice or. Someone wants to learn how to rob a bank. That was actually me. I want to learn how to rob a bank. So I went and I hung out with a bank robber all day, and then I robbed a bank.
- [01:39]
B
You robbed a bank?
- [01:40]
C
Well, I kind of tried.
- [01:46]
B
My feeling about robbing banks is that it's incredibly easy to rob a bank. The difficult thing is not getting caught.
- [01:52]
C
That's exactly right. You hit the nail on the head, and it turns out that robbing a bank, it's less sexy than I thought it was.
- [02:00]
B
And, like, the amounts people steal when they rob banks. I've seen the stats on this. Like, you walk in, you're like, give me all your money. Pan them, note over. And they're like, sure, here's my money. And you get like, what, three or $400? And you walk out, and it's just like. And then you're like, wow, I got three, $400. That was two minutes work.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And then you go to jail.
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A
Exactly.
- [02:20]
C
For seven years. It's not the best Long term investment strategy. But on the other hand, it's kind of cool to learn how to do it.
- [02:27]
B
So. Okay, I'm totally gonna learn how to rob a bank. So can I call into how to and say like once I've robbed a bank, how do I not get caught?
- [02:38]
C
You could try. I'm not sure. Actually that's a good point. Is that if anyone actually listening has a problem, if they send us their problem@howtoate.com we will read it and hopefully have you on the show. Because we want people to send us the things that they wanna learn how to do.
- [02:52]
B
But if I come on the show, will you disguise my voice so that absolutely it's not obvious that I just robbed a bank? Cause could. That could be problematic right there. Anyway, we are not going to talk about robbing banks in this show. We are going to talk about banks in other contexts because we're going to talk about how they, the big banks in America spent, I think, $1 billion putting together this thing called RTP, which you haven't heard of and which has basically gone nowhere. And we're going to talk about that and how the Fed has said, all right, enough already, we're just going to do it for you. That is coming up. We are going to talk about Elizabeth Warren's agriculture plan. But first we are obviously going to talk about trade wars, currency manipulation and all manner of Chinese brouhaha all coming up on Slate Money. I thought, I have to say, I thought that the trade war was. We had reached a new plateau, as it were. When Was it?
- [03:51]
A
At 7?
- [03:52]
B
When Trump. Yeah, at about 7. When Trump announced that he was going to put a 10% tariff on the other $300 billion of Chinese imports that haven't yet been tariffed, I was like, oh, he's escalated up to seven and he'll leave it at seven for a minute. But he didn't leave it at seven. He waited about like what, three days and then he escalated. Where would you put it now?
- [04:16]
A
7.02?
- [04:17]
B
No, I think it's more than that. I think it's. I mean, the.
- [04:19]
A
So you realize I'm making a Juan joke here. That's why I was going with that.
- [04:25]
B
Okay, all right, so it was no joke. It was six, nine, seven. It's going towards eight. No, so, okay, so there is a Chinese guarantee which is worth seven. But yeah, what happened was Trump decided that his tariffs weren't enough. And so he got very annoyed at the way that the markets work. And what happens when you put tariffs on Chinese goods is that people spend less money on Chinese goods, which means they are moving less money into China, converting their money into yuan to buy Chinese goods, so there's less demand for the Chinese Yuan. And at the same time, when you announce that you're starting a trade war, the world kind of freaks out a bit and does this thing called flight to quality. And they want safe assets. And the safest asset in the world is the US dollar. So people stop buying the Chinese Yuan, they start buying the US dollar. And what that does very naturally is it causes the exchange rate of the Chinese Yuan to the US Dollar to decline. And so the Chinese Yuan gets weaker. And that's exactly what happened. And it was entirely predictable. And everyone knew that that was what was going to happen if Trump did this. And so it happened. And so Trump looked at it and he was entirely unsurprised and did nothing. Wait, no. Trump looked at it and said, oh my God, you are artificially devaluing your currency. And therefore I am going to declare you a currency manipulator. Which.
- [06:01]
A
Well, it's particularly interesting because it's basically. He's labeling them a currency manipulator for manipulating their currency less. That's really what's happening.
- [06:09]
B
Yeah. If you looked at the actual minutian statement, it was wonderful. He's like, you used to be manipulating your currency and now you've stopped. And now you've stopped and therefore now you're a manipulator.
- [06:20]
C
And this is the important part, I like context here. Right. Is that for years, the Chinese actually did manipulate their currency.
- [06:26]
B
Up until about 2014 or so.
- [06:27]
C
Exactly. Until about the last two years of the Obama administration, they would artificially keep their currency yuan, very weak against the US dollar. And then they stopped. And as a result, now that the, that it's further weakening. They, they, they. Because they no longer manipulate the currency, we're seeing this, this effect occur, right?
- [06:47]
A
Yeah. And it's important to remember that there's really no such thing as a fully controlled or a fully free floating currency, but the one has been moving much, much, much, much more towards a kind of what we call like a managed float. So just to kind of. I know sometimes people will be like, but wait, if they're allowing it to weaken, doesn't that mean that they were manipulating it before and that's were manipulating.
- [07:10]
B
It somewhere and they are manipulating it a little bit less. But ultimately it is up to the Chinese government where the currency trades and they are now allowing it to trade. Let's just Say closer to where the market wants it to trade if it was left to its own devices and market manipulation. The idea of currency manipulation is that you move it away from where the currency would normally trade if it was left to its own devices. And when they were manipulating the currency, as you say, and Charles, in Obama administration, administration, and making it artificially weak, that is what they were doing. And I'm kind of obsessed by this idea that basically what we are seeing here is a bunch of idiot politicians who just haven't woken up to the fact that things have changed in the past five years and that you have people like Chuck Schumer, who is no great fan of Donald Trump, coming out and saying, donald Trump, you need to label them a currency manipulator. And you're like, why? Because they're making that currency artificially weak. And you're like, no, they're not. And he's like, no, they are. Because I haven't looked at the newspaper since 2012.
- [08:13]
A
And this is. Yeah, and this is actually significant because I think sometimes people ask like, okay, well, why is Donald Trump continuing to push forward with this trade war? Like, why is he doing it? Well, part of the reason he's doing it is because in both the right and the left, there is a lot of anti Chinese sentiment. So actually, a lot of these policies are not as unpopular as they may be for those of us who perhaps understand these things maybe a little bit more.
- [08:36]
B
Donald Trump certainly believes that China bashing is good on a sort of political, electoral level.
- [08:41]
C
Absolutely. And it does seem to be paying off. Right. You don't see a lot of people coming forward and saying, look, you're being too anti Chinese.
- [08:47]
B
And if you look at the Democratic debates, all of the candidates get asked, would you reverse or repeal the Trump tariffs on China? And they tend to hem and haw and basically not answer the question.
- [08:58]
C
Again, because there's no, there's no natural constituency that's pro China in the United States. Right. Well, there is, I guess now that I'm saying everyone buys or sells anything.
- [09:09]
B
And there's also like a very large company in Cupertino, you know, that's exactly right. But those people don't get votes.
- [09:15]
C
And soybean farmers and a number of people. Well, there's a lot of.
- [09:18]
B
We're going to come to the farmers.
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A
Yeah. And that's actually.
- [09:20]
B
Yeah.
- [09:20]
A
And we'll, we'll get to those more. But just like a little preview, it's actually interesting because I think people thought that part of the reason, like, that the, the Chinese were seeming to kind of target American agricultural products. Partly it's, that's because a lot of what we export, but also because people thought, well, they're actually doing this because they want to hurt Trump in the elections. But I think that they're not quite thinking that through because if you actually hear a lot of the kind of, if you look at the polls, hear people speak with a lot of these farmers, this is kind Trump country. And there is a tremendous amount of anti Chinese sentiment. So the more the Chinese do that, the more popular it actually can make. Trump's policies related to this.
- [09:54]
B
It's, I think, yeah. The electoral consequences of Chinese agricultural policies notwithstanding, the fact is that the designation of China as a currency manipulator is one of the weirdest things absolutely. In politics because it took years and years. I remember Tim Geithner being asked, like every week when he was Obama's treasury secretary, are you going to label China currency manipulator? And everyone would hang on his every word, like, will he, won't he? Does he, you know, curl his lip a little bit before saying no? Like, everyone was obsessed with this and no one knew why, because it has literally zero effect on anything. The only thing it does is it stops OPEC from being able to lend money to China. The last time that OPEC lent money to China was 1998. You know, it's like, yeah, it starts.
- [10:47]
A
Like a year long consultation process, then the end of that isn't really significant.
- [10:51]
B
So this is the crazy thing. America starts talking to the IMF for a year saying, can you, we need, we're very worried about this currency thing. Can we maybe do something about the currency thing? And if nothing happens after a year, then they can impose, get this, between 3 and $20 million of penalties.
- [11:14]
A
No.
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It'S literally like Austin Powers, like that is like $1 million. But there is actually a genuinely massive and important consequence to this, which is that it really annoys the Chinese and makes any trade deal much, much harder to come to.
- [11:36]
C
And it, the Chinese in very hard to understand ways. And this is, I think one of the biggest, bigger issues around this, right, is that oftentimes when a particular administration makes a statement, they say, we're labeling so and so a manipulator. We're doing X or Y or Z. They usually give a speech explaining exactly why. Because the truth of matter is like watching a fight, a trade war is like watching your parents fight, right? You might think that they're fighting over, you know, the dog. When it turns out what they're fighting over is an affair. And unless you know the context, it's very, very hard to understand the signaling that's going. And so I think that's why when Geithner was asked this question, everyone would look to him, because we knew that if he says yes, it's an opportunity to signal something about the Obama administration's stance on trade towards China.
- [12:21]
B
This is like an artificial bid in bridge.
- [12:24]
C
That's right.
- [12:24]
B
It's like you're saying one thing, but you're meaning something.
- [12:27]
C
That's exactly right. The problem with Trump is we have no idea what he's actually saying or meaning or anything, because they don't give any guidance.
- [12:36]
A
Right.
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C
And if they did give guidance, there's a huge amount of skepticism about whether Trump actually is saying what the rest of the government thinks and means. And so we've seen this weird thing.
- [12:45]
B
Where whether there is even a thing that the government thinks and means.
- [12:50]
C
Right. Does he understand whatever.
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B
Whatever the government thinks and means can change on a dime, according to what segment Trump watched on Fox News that morning?
- [12:59]
C
That's exactly right. And there's legitimate questions about whether he understands trade, whether he understands trade policy, whether they question. Well, I actually give more credence.
- [13:09]
B
He genuinely believes that China is paying these tariffs. He honestly believes that, yeah.
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A
Although, to be fair, like, actually a lot of Chinese companies are, like, it is affecting a lot of Chinese companies.
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B
Oh, it's harming China. But the people paying the tariffs are American importers. And Trump genuinely does not understand that.
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C
I don't know what he understands or what he doesn't. And that's part of the problem is that financial policy from the White House or from any government is usually a signaling device as much as it is actually a stick. Right.
- [13:38]
B
And this is exactly right. And this is why, you know, treasury secretaries have always been very careful about what they say, say, and if they ever say anything about the dollar, except for a strong dollar, is in the national interest, and everyone freaks out. Because it's all about very subtle signaling. Absolutely. And the one thing that Trump can't do and no one in the Trump administration can do is subtle anything.
- [13:57]
A
And that's a lot of. Actually, what I think we've seen this week and why the market reacted as it did is because this is all about signaling. It's the fact that the reason that the market reacted to the. You know, the one going above seven is not because seven is some magical number, it's because what it signified. It signified that perhaps the Chinese were actually going to use their currency as a tool in this war. Like what, what does it signify that Trump is just making all these pronouncements? Well, what it signifies is that this probably isn't going to be a short term thing. This very likely could continue to escalate and actually go beyond 2020, so.
- [14:29]
B
And go beyond 2020 the year. And then also, the really big thing, which everyone is kind of freaked out about now, at least I'm kind of freaked out about, and I'm assuming that everyone else is, because I kind of extrapolate from me, is that given how things are getting worse and there's no obvious mechanism for them to get better, there seems to be this weird inevitability that 10% tariffs are going to become 25% tariffs, because that's what Trump has announced, that absent a trade deal with China, he's going to put 25% tariffs on everything. And if he puts 25% tariffs on all Chinese imports, which he has said he is going to do absent a deal, then basically that's the end of global trade right there. That is a serious shock.
- [15:17]
C
It's a huge shock. And it's interesting because the thing about signaling is it's bimodal, right? When signaling is ambiguous and things aren't tense enough, the ambiguity is actually very healthy. People say, well, I think he means X, but we should hedge our bets, but don't count on it. And then as soon as things get very, very tense, the signaling becomes over important. People begin overinvesting in trying to understand what the signal means. And what's happening, I think right now in the global economy is that everyone is waiting on the eggshell, on the brink of the precipice to say, like, when does this growth finally end? Like, when does the crash come? When does all hell break loose? And so every single time there's a signal, you see this huge reaction in the market because there's a bunch of people saying this is the longest period of uninterrupted growth in over a century.
- [16:05]
B
And also, most importantly, when will Trump step away from the brink? Will he ever step away from the brink? Because it's becoming increasingly obvious that global central banks cannot rescue the economy on their own. That if Trump decides to drive the American economy off a cliff at exactly the same time that Boris Johnson is driving the British economy off a cliff, there's nothing central behind.
- [16:29]
C
We're all going.
- [16:30]
A
Exactly. And you're talking about, you know, having like a global manufacturing recession. The fact that we're Starting to see this in some US numbers, not consumer sentiment, but in a lot of other things. I think this is the other reason you're seeing more of a reaction. Up until now, it's been this kind of the market worrying its way up. Right. Like it gets worried, things happen, but then it's still kind of keys. But I don't know, now you're, you are actually starting to see this in hard data. And that's why I think the market is also going to react more to these things.
- [16:54]
C
Yeah, I mean, look, for two years now, it's been terrifying. Right? But it's been terrifying exactly as you said, worrying its way up. It's been terrifying. But every day we wake up and it's a little bit better than yesterday. So it's okay.
- [17:08]
B
Well, I mean, the world isn't better than yesterday, but the market is higher.
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C
The market is higher.
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B
And this is the thing which, you know, in the world of CNBC or Fox Business, so long as the market is higher, everything else doesn't matter. Right.
- [17:22]
C
And I'm setting aside race relations in America and politics and the anxieties of being an American right now, now, but when it comes to economic growth, things have been going okay in the U.S. yeah, in the U.S. and as long as you're part of the upper middle class or upper class, then it's been going well if you're part of the middle class or under the middle class. And things have not been going well.
- [17:43]
A
Actually recently, purchasing power in a lot of the states that are predominantly Trump country have actually increased at a faster rate than in other areas.
- [17:49]
C
That's true. And unemployment is at an all time low.
- [17:52]
B
And just in, in the last couple of months, there's been this massive refinancing boom and housing affordability. Houses are way more affordable now than they have been in the last year.
- [18:04]
C
See, this is the weird part about what's going on is that, is that if you talk to anyone listening to this podcast or all of our friends, they all hate the, they hate what's going on in the White House, they hate politics right now. And most of the time, when everyone, when the country's so divided, when things are so bad, when things are so chaotic and you also see economic distress and we're not seeing that right now. And that's the weird part of this equation. And trade is a huge part of this. Could Trump possibly afford to do what he is doing if the economy was on its heels?
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B
No.
- [18:33]
C
Declaring China as a currency manipulator when they're literally not manipulating the currency would be potentially disastrous. But the rising tide of the last eight, nine years has covered so much naked swimmer, so many naked swimmers, that, that as a result, there's all this give slack in the system. And the real worry is at some point the tide goes out, we don't realize it, and everyone keeps swimming the same way and we kill ourselves.
- [19:02]
B
This is a Charles Duhigg metaphor.
- [19:04]
C
It's a tortured metaphor.
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B
I'm going to be worrying for like weeks. I'm gonna start rewinding this episode and trying to work out what on earth is this swimming metaphor was all about.
- [19:19]
A
It's a Warren Buffett thing, right? But it's a nice take on the Warren Buffett.
- [19:23]
B
I like it. Okay, so when Trump announced his tariffs, the 10% tariffs last week, what he said was the Chinese promised that they would buy a whole bunch of American agricultural produce, and then they didn't buy a whole bunch of American agricultural produce. And I am very cross that they didn't do what they said they were going to do. And so I'm going to implement these tariffs. Whether the Chinese ever promised this is extremely unclear. How they are supposed to have made this promise is extremely unclear. Whether they, you know, what they promised and whether they fulfilled their promise, no one really understands, but that was certainly the stated reason for implementing the tariffs. Then after Trump declares China to be a currency manipulator, China's like, oh, you want us to stop buying American agricultural produce? We'll stop buying American agricultural products. And they actually just like, watch this. And then they're like, okay, okay, bastard. We're just going to buy all of our soybeans from Brazil, you know, and so now they really are doing a concerted boycott basically of American farmers, which is make and American farmers, you know, we were just talking about how the economy has been broadly healthy for quite a long time. It has not been broadly healthy if you're an American farmer for quite a long time. And, and, and so, and what has happened historically, or at least over the past couple of years since Trump has been president, is every time that anything mean happens to anything bad happens for an American farmer, Trump writes a check and says, listen, can I just make it better with some money? And the farmers say, no, not really, because this isn't about my annual income so much as it's about my relationships with these Chinese buyers, which it took me decades to put together. And now I have a long standing customer who's going to buy tons and tons of produce for decades to come. And you can't just write me a single check and say, I'm sorry. All those relationships have now been broken. Trump is facing a real problem in farmland now. I mean, Anna's point is well taken, that it's not like these farmers are necessarily going to stop voting for him. But he has supporters there. They are angry about this. They are losing their livelihood. They are making less money than they would otherwise have done, you know, in the event of normal trade relations with China. And so there's a little bit of a crisis going on. And who has a plan for this?
- [21:45]
C
Who has a plan?
- [21:46]
B
Who has a plan?
- [21:47]
A
Elizabeth Warren.
- [21:48]
C
Elizabeth Warren has a plan to the rescue.
- [21:51]
B
She has a plan for farmers. And I have to say, I kind of like her plan.
- [21:56]
A
So it's spectacularly bad. At least half of it is.
- [22:01]
C
Before we diagnose a plan, we should point out that the reason we're even talking about this, we never talk about, like, the plight of the American dentist. Right. Or the plight of the American vet. And the reason why is because dentists.
- [22:11]
B
And veterinarians are doing okay.
- [22:13]
A
So are farmers, for all we know.
- [22:15]
C
We've. We're not. We're not out polling them. There's no plan. No, Elizabeth Warren doesn't have a plan for American dentists. And the reason why is because American farmers, beyond holding a special place in the identity of this nation, also have a disproportionate voting power because of the Electoral College.
- [22:28]
B
Right.
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A
Lots of lobbyists.
- [22:29]
C
They tend, they tend to live in states that have less population. They. And those states have a disproportionate impact on the Electoral college and electoral politics. And so it is worth noting that the reason we're talking about this is not because the American farmer is so important to our economy as much as it is so important to who gets elected president.
- [22:46]
B
Yes, it's important in terms of the Electoral College, and it's also very important in terms of the early primary states.
- [22:52]
C
Absolutely, absolutely.
- [22:54]
A
And every country has a odd relationship with its farmers. I mean, this is not especially American thing, but Elizabeth Warren's plan is certainly not the first of this kind. And I would say there are two parts of her plan. Plan we can say, okay, there's one part of her plan that I agree with, and I think I agree with, both from an ethical perspective and also empirically it has been shown to work, which is that if you take a lot of money and invest it in R and D related to agriculture, you tend to get a good result. That is, in fact, exactly what happened in the like, 50s through 70s. That's part of the reason we saw this enormous, like, growth in the productivity of the American farming sector. It was the way we were trying to win the Cold War. So I think the idea of, of plowing a lot of money into this area, especially in order to try to like, improve soil health, fight climate change, decarbonize, that makes a tremendous amount of sense.
- [23:45]
B
And this is all like, basically a sub plan of the Green New Deal, which Elizabeth Warren was very early to sign on to. She was like, if we're going to decarbonize the economy, then agriculture is going to be a very key part of that. And so what she's doing in this agriculture plan to a large degree is sort of fleshing out that part of the Green New Deal.
- [24:05]
C
And there's some tensions in there. We should get back to those. But I think Anna's coming up on the second part of the poll.
- [24:09]
A
Okay, then there's the second part, which is, which is basically just another version of price controls. And it's something we have seen over and over. So many administrations have tried to do this type of thing. It is always a disaster. And yet every time it's like, well, no, no, this time is different. So let me explain. What she is trying to do is basically say, okay, well, we've seen that a lot of US Farm subsidies have caused tremendous amounts of overproduction. Essentially, all the subsidies go to extremely wealthy farmers. But you know what? No, this time our subsidies are going to be different. They're going to be different because you know what we're going to do? Okay, so we're going to give farmers a loan, and then what's going to happen is that this loan is going to cover their costs. And then they can either sell their goods, repay us from that money that they earned, or they can just give us the goods and we'll buy them at cost. And then if the price goes up or the price goes down, we'll just release the grain or we'll hold back the grain, and then everything will be great. Okay. There are many, many problems with this, but the biggest this is. I have very strong feelings about this. The biggest two problems with this. One are when you say, okay, well, we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, cover your costs. Okay, then what are you doing? Well, what you're doing is you're encouraging fertilizer companies, seed companies, all of these, to significantly increase their costs because now they have a guaranteed buyer in the government. We've also seen this happen in the United States. We've also seen this happen in other countries. Or when you do this type of thing, oh, we're going to cover your costs. It tends to encourage people to use way too much fertilizer because then they can actually, like, increase yield. So this is.
- [25:36]
B
And fertilizer, just to, you know, in terms of the Green New Deal, is.
- [25:39]
C
Not a great thing.
- [25:39]
A
Carbon, Exactly.
- [25:41]
B
You know, the Haber Bosch process, which we all, you know, know and love, is basically the way you grow crops is you burn carbon and extract nitrogen from the air and put the nitrogen into the soil. And so, like, in that sense, agriculture is a very ungreen industry.
- [25:59]
C
And it's important to note that the way that Elizabeth Warren categorize this. Right, and you're exactly right. This plan has never worked, ever. They did it during the, they did it during the Great Depression, they did it during World War II. And like, as a crisis measure, it has occasionally helped prop up an industry, but it's never been a way. And farming is not in crisis right now. The way that Elizabeth Warren poses it is she says, look, I want to help small farmers because they've all been overtaken by the large industrial farming complex.
- [26:25]
A
And this is where I also just like, I wanted to tear my hair out because in this plan states as though this is something that's happened recently. If you know anything about agricultural history, you know that the significant decline in the number of US farmers happened between 1950 and 1970, and it's pretty much been plateauing since then. The idea that the reason that, you know, yes, we have a lot of small farmers and they're not always super productive, but that doesn't mean that they're doing poorly. Actually, if you look at their median incomes, they're higher than pretty much than the average median American worker. So, number one, like, that's just not a real thing. Also, if you're talking about some of the issues that have affected farmers, it's not been just because, oh, you have big companies, companies. It's been because you've had changes in what China is buying even before Trump in terms of commodities that China is buying. On top of that, you've also just had the growth in the global competition in agriculture. So that's another thing that it's not because, oh, the big, bad, evil agriculture. And so to me, her entire argument is based on a flawed premise.
- [27:21]
B
Okay, well, let me just. I know, but just to. I think we've got enough of a rant to be getting on with.
- [27:28]
A
It's going to still continue it's going to continue. I have not even finished finished yet.
- [27:30]
B
No, but the, the part of Warren's plan where she basically says, look, I mean, I mean, on one level it makes sense. Most agriculture in America is done by big agricultural companies and therefore just, you know, mutatis mutandis, big agricultural companies are going to get most of the agricultural subsidies. On some level there is a intuition that I think most voters probably share that farm subsidies should be going to smaller farmers and not the big companies. And if you can take that pool of money and somehow find a way of redistributing it away from Monsanto and Archer Daniels Midland and to the farmer with the middle class income, that would be an improvement. Why?
- [28:20]
A
Because to me it's. What is your problem? Is your problem that that we don't like big things and we like small things? Or is your problem that we want to figure out how to make our agricultural system efficient, far more green?
- [28:32]
B
No, clearly, clearly it's not about efficiency because there are economies of scale. And so if you want efficiency, you just get rid of all the small farms and just have Monsanto take over the whole thing. It's about fairness in that.
- [28:45]
A
But why.
- [28:48]
B
Let me answer that question. Let me answer that question. I understand what you're saying. What I'm saying is that there's something intuitively unfair about massive agricultural subsidies going to people, you know, big corporations that really don't need the money and they're highly profitable anyway.
- [29:06]
A
Of course.
- [29:07]
B
So then what you do is you sort of say, well, let's get rid of those subsidies. And if I was like, yeah, great, like less subsidies, good thing, smaller government. But that never seems to work. And what my feeling is about the Warren plan is it's an attempt to basically just do a little bit of redistribution of wealth within the agricultural industry, not with a great plan for improving the efficiency of agriculture, not with a great plan for making America, you know, a bigger exporter, but to fight income inequality, but to basically just say, listen, if we are going to spend all of this money on the agricultural industry, can we at least give it to individuals rather than to massive corporations?
- [29:46]
A
Here's an idea though, like, sorry, like number one, I just like to point out again that the median farmer is, is not doing spectacularly poorly.
- [29:54]
B
They're doing spectacularly worse than Monsanto.
- [29:57]
A
Right? So I. But, but that's not the point.
- [29:59]
B
That is the point.
- [30:00]
A
No, it's not. Because, because my point is like, well then maybe they shouldn't be farming. Like maybe there's a More productive use of their skills. Like, I think we shouldn't have farm subsidies for essentially anyone.
- [30:09]
B
If we want, we can, we can have that. And I don't think anyone's disagreeing with you on that. That. I don't think that is the. I don't think anyone is saying, like, farm subsidies are awesome and they should go to small farmers. I think that what we're saying, or at least what I'm saying is if you have farm subsidies, it is better they go to small farmers than they go to small farmers.
- [30:29]
C
So let me introduce one thing which is setting aside the question of justice in farming, which is interesting but oftentimes does not guide public policy, there is actually a policy goal here which is food security, right? One of the reasons we have, in fact, the original reason we have subsidies to farmers is because we believe that there should be a certain amount of domestic food production so that if our capacity to buy from overseas is cut off, like during a war, we have the ability to feed our nation.
- [30:57]
A
So I disagree with this because, like.
- [30:59]
C
But historically, historically, I mean, that's been a reason.
- [31:03]
A
It's true.
- [31:03]
B
So that is true. So let's.
- [31:05]
C
So the question then becomes, if we're using that as our standard, right, we want to make sure that America has enough food production in order to provide for us in the most green way possible, where we're not at, where we're not adding carbon to the needlessly. Then the question therefore becomes, how do we have a set of policies? Now it turns out small farmers actually are part of food security. Because if you have monocultures, if you have mono farms, if you only have a handful of producers, they have monopoly power. It tends to be, in a security scenario, very, very difficult. You don't need a ton of small farmers, but you do need some diversity in farmers.
- [31:37]
B
And you don't want a whole bunch of, as you say, you don't want monoculture. You don't want every single farmer in Americ doing that, like, Ricardian thing of producing the crop that generates the most profits. What you want is a bunch of different farmers producing a bunch of different food that people can eat.
- [31:52]
C
And by the way, there's some things that we're really good at. Artichokes, for instance, right? Like the United States is great at producing artichokes in California. And we don't. It's not subsidy dependent, but there are some subsidies that go to it for very, very good reasons for wealth redistribution, which is something that, Felix, you were saying you like, I guess the argument I'm making is the only reason we're talking about this instead of dentists is because it is a political question. So to the issue of whether we ought to be doing this from an economic perspective or whether we ought to be doing this from a justice perspective, the economic question is actually kind of off the table. And the justice question entirely depends on your ideological bent. And so as a result, we have a system to basically say one industry that gets a lot more attention than it should get, because it really doesn't matter to most Americans livelihood whether we have a strong or a weak farming industry. We're going to actually test whether we care about farmers or not when we go to the polls. And last time, apparently we cared about farmers enough to elect Trump. But historically we don't care about them. And my guess is this election will be one of the last where this is actually a huge issue.
- [32:52]
A
If you look at every, almost every industrialized nation, there is this very, I mean, I think a lot of it is this kind of atavistic, like, belief that, like, our country needs to support small farmers despite the fact that there's very little evidence that that's important for any real reason. So I, I don't think that this is necessarily just going to go away. But the one thing I just want to say this is that, like, I think it makes sense. If you think of, like, we want to make sure that people who are farming or for people just as people who are dentists, people who are yoga instructors, people who are anything, are not falling below a certain level, you know, like that, that's fine. And you can think of, okay, like, we want to do some wealth redistribution, that's fine. But my problem with these subsidies is my problem. If you look at what happened with Carter and the dairy subsidies, if you look at what happened with FDR and a lot of the grain, if you look at what happened with Johnson, like egg prices, it's the most inefficient way to, to redistribute wealth. So instead of having more money to actually improve people's lives, you waste all this money and you end up paying for things and then having to destroy them and pay people not to do them. That's my point. It's an inefficient way. And I actually think it ends up leaving everybody worse off.
- [33:58]
C
By the way, where are the yoga subsidies? Subsidies for yoga instructors, as you mentioned. I think that's a great point.
- [34:04]
A
Agreed.
- [34:04]
C
That, like, that income inequality is something we want to fight and that this is a particularly ineffective or inefficient tool for doing so. Wait, but I know a lot of yoga instructors who, they have trouble making income.
- [34:17]
A
They probably have a lower median income than the average farmer. That's all I say.
- [34:20]
C
I would like to see some yoga instructor subsidies. I'm just putting it out there.
- [34:24]
B
I'll ask Elizabeth Warren next time I talk to her. Do you have a plan for yoga instructors? Okay, I'm going to geek out now a little bit because this is my favorite subject. Payments. Long term listeners of Slate Money are probably familiar with the fact that I'm weirdly obsessed with payments. We are going to have a show in a couple weeks with Raghu Rajan of the former governor of the bank of India who introduced an instant payments scheme in India. And now anyone in India can pay anyone else in India instantly. And it's amazing. And it's not just India which has instant payments. Like dozens of countries have instant payments. China has instant payments. Uk, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, you name it.
- [35:14]
C
It's almost like this technology is relatively easy to set up.
- [35:17]
B
And the US believe it or not, actually has instant payments. It has this thing called RTP which no one has ever heard of. It is, has existed for about two years. It doesn't cover most banks, but it covers most bank accounts because it covers the bigger banks. The problem is that none of the banks actually use it. And it's like the volumes on this thing are basically zero. So the Fed has now basically said, okay banks, you had your chance, you rolled out this RTP thing. It was just dead in the water. No one's using it. We are going to come out and do our own version of this. It's going to be called Fed now and Fed Now Fed Now. And it's going to come out in quote 2023 or 2024 because like somewhere around there, apparently it takes a while.
- [36:10]
C
Not right now, but in Fed 2020.
- [36:12]
B
Fed soon in, in a few years time. Now I kind of think that this is as it should be, that the deep rails of how money moves around the country naturally get set by the central bank. If you look at the other 25 countries that have instant payments, every single one of them, their instant payment systems was basically implemented by the central bank. And there's. Except for China, but China notwithstanding, all the rest of them did it with the central bank. And central banks have an obvious reason to do this because it prevents. If you look at the way it works in China, there are two entirely separate systems. There's Alipay and there's WeChat and they don't talk to each other and you can't send money from an Alipay account to a WeChat account or the. Or the other way around and it's a mess. Whereas if you just have a single system for everyone called BED now, anyone with a bank account can send money to anyone else with a bank account immediately 24, 7 within seconds. And you don't need to download a separate app and you don't need to, you know, all sign up for the same system because everyone is automatically on because it's all Fed now. That's the theory. Now, I suspect that Anna's going to tell me it's not going to work that way in practice, and then for once I might actually agree with her.
- [37:32]
A
Yeah, I mean, I have mixed feelings about this because I actually kind of agree with you in the sense that it does seem like this particular thing having a tremendous amount of competition. I can see some of the benefits of that. But it also seems like payments is.
- [37:45]
B
Not something where you want competition. No.
- [37:47]
C
You want infrastructure.
- [37:48]
A
Yeah. You want a pretty, pretty, you know, standard.
- [37:51]
B
Having multiple payment systems has never been an advantage in any economy, really. Like having one payment system is. It's a natural monopoly. It's something where you actually want a monopoly. And in a future episode, by the way, I'm going to talk about this book called Darkness by Design by Walter Matley, which is all about how stock markets should be a monopoly as well, which is a really fascinating argument.
- [38:13]
C
I would actually argue that what we're seeing right now, now is encouragement of competition. Because one of the interesting things is I might not be pro small farmer, but I'm definitely pro small bank. Right. And you mentioned this interesting thing, which is the system, the RTP that exists right now, it's only actually used and controlled by a small handful of banks, but it's the majority of accounts in the nation that are eligible for it. And the reason why is because we have seen, as everyone knows, this huge, huge consolidation in the banking industry.
- [38:42]
A
Well, no, because we have too many banks. I mean, I actually would argue that part of what the problem is actually that America's banking system is far too fractured. We have way too many banks. And so that's a separate hang on.
- [38:51]
B
Either way, let's be clear about it. If I am banking with JP Morgan or Bank of America or Citibank or Wells Fargo, my bank is signed up to rtp.
- [39:00]
C
Right?
- [39:01]
B
But do I as a depositor have access to rtp? No.
- [39:04]
C
No, no.
- [39:05]
B
So, like There's a difference between the. Theoretically I have access to, because my bank does.
- [39:11]
C
But one of the things that Fed now is going to do is it's going to make it possible for credit unions, for instance, to offer instant payment services to their clients. And as a result, in theory, theoretically.
- [39:21]
B
Credit unions can sign up for RTP as well.
- [39:23]
C
Theoretically. But the barriers to entry are so high.
- [39:26]
A
Well, no, it's not really that. No, it's because they were waiting because the whole point was a lot of these smaller banks, part of the reason they didn't join in was because, because they, because the Fed had been saying since 2013 that they were looking into doing this. They didn't want the big banks to be controlling this, they want the Fed to be. So they were just like, we're not going to join onto this thing, we're going to wait for the Fed to come in, which is kind of what's happened.
- [39:43]
C
But there was also a big technological. So you're exactly right, but there was also a technological barrier and hopefully with Fed now coming out, we're actually going to see the barriers go down.
- [39:51]
B
Maybe. You see, this is, this is the real problem. The real problem is that it's not the banks, it's not the credit unions, it's these semi visible payments processors who have names like Fis and Jack Henry.
- [40:05]
C
And like they are the real target.
- [40:07]
B
It's these guys who have these massive lumbering legacy systems and they look at something like RTP and they're like, yeah, yeah. And they don't do anything. And they're going to look at Fed now and their reaction is going to be, and the question is, how do you force them to do something? Because ultimately, or how do you put.
- [40:28]
C
Them out of business?
- [40:29]
B
The credit unions are not going to be able, able to do this on their own. I know I used to sit on the board of a credit union for many years and there is absolutely no way. Did we have a cto? No. Did we have anyone who could basically work Excel? Not really. Like the idea that we could suddenly work out instant payments is literally inconceivable. But it would seem to be our.
- [40:50]
C
I disagree, I disagree because I actually was talking to a bunch of credit unions recently and, and your experience aside, some of them know how to use a couple. And actually one of the things that is going to come out of this is a system of protocols that makes it much easier to participate in instant payments. First of all, I think we should applaud the Fed for, for doing something right. Like it's very easy when a government agency comes out with some new proposal to say like, oh God, you should have done that 10 years ago or oh my God, it's gonna take you two or three years at the same time.
- [41:17]
B
The best time to do instant payments was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
- [41:20]
C
Exactly. And I think that like we should say, like, look, the Fed is trying to, to push this ball forward. I actually think that what's happening right now is a very slow and somewhat subversive assault on payday lenders, on anyone who exploits the lack of banking services for the poor. That anytime we're seeing this democratization and ease of technology, what we're really seeing is we're seeing an attempt to create more competition to serve markets that traditionally large banks haven't served because they're not profitable enough. And I'm hoping that credit unions step into that breach.
- [41:55]
B
And also, I mean this is a great opportunity for me to talk about the other news of the week, which is that people are now signing up for Apple Card. It is a thing that exists in the wild. It's being rolled out. It'll be pretty ubiquitous pretty soon you can just open up your wallet on your iPhone and it'll say apply for the card and you click the button apply. And literally within like a minute you have a credit card which is issued by Goldman Sachs on your phone and you can use it to pay for stuff in. I think it's like 70% of merchants now have contactless payments. And for the merchants who don't have contactless payments, they will send you a beautiful titanium card in the mail and you can use that. So that is a form of payment. It's not, you know, there's lots of interchange fees and we can wonk out about that. So it's not a real like par payment like we're talking about. But that fascinatingly, even though it's a very high end glossy credit card is being issued to people with subprime credit. Like, you know, Goldman Sachs is issuing these guys to people with like 620 credit scores. And that form of credit is much, much vastly superior to anything that any payday lender can offer.
- [43:06]
C
Absolutely.
- [43:07]
A
It's true. Although it's cheaper. Yeah, yeah, no, and I agree. And if it, and if it works out, that's great. I mean, I always just get a little nervous when the economy is ultimately doing fairly well and you tend to start lowering credit standards for things. And, and granted, I'm not saying that we can't potentially use Technology to make, make credit more available without dramatically increasing risk. But I just get a little nervous because this very frequently happens and then when the economy declines you figure out like oh actually now we shouldn't have issued all those things. People can't pay it back.
- [43:36]
B
I'm okay with that because it's who loses money in that event, it's Goldman Sachs.
- [43:41]
A
Well, I mean, no, but it's also the individuals who like to debt that.
- [43:44]
C
They as long as a jerk ends up getting hurt. It's totally, totally. But I will actually say I don't think the Apple card is that big a deal. I mean Capital One has been giving away cards to low, low to low credit score individuals for years. Right now I, I can't, I have a hard time believing that like there's really that many genuinely low income folks with iPhones.
- [44:04]
A
Exactly. Like to me the Apple card is primarily for like Apple fanboys. Like I, to me, I don't entirely get, I get, I mean I understand certainly why Goldman wants to get like into that Apple ecosystem. That makes a lot of sense to me. I understand Apple's trying to increase services, blah blah blah. I get that. I'm just not sure exactly what this card does that's so amazing that makes it that different from anything else.
- [44:26]
B
So it's, I mean it's, your fingers.
- [44:28]
C
Sing when you pick it up.
- [44:30]
B
It's not revolutionary, it's evolutionary. But there's a couple of things about it which are super interesting. One is the fact that it's designed to almost entirely be used on your phone rather than being a physical card that's much more secure. There's a new dynamic, basically CVV code gets issued every single time. So like people can't steal your number easily and that kind of thing. So there are security improvements associated with it. It is also in terms of the transparency of the fees and the interest, kind of the best credit card out there. It's all the other credit card companies make it super easy. They push you to make the minimum payment because that maximizes their profit. This one is actually pushing you to increase the amount of payments that you make. It's using a bunch of behavioral economics to actually try and minimize the amount of interest that you pay rather than maximize it. And that's super interesting because I just like that on a sort of conceptual level.
- [45:26]
C
And it's important to note it is a big tech giant moving into finance.
- [45:30]
A
Right.
- [45:31]
C
With the exception of the Facebook currency, we haven't seen any of the big five say hey, by the way, we're now a financial services company.
- [45:39]
B
Well, it's Goldman Sachs, which is the financial services company. And Gold and Apple, if you own ask them, will say, we don't have any of this information. Like, this is super interesting when you open up your Apple Wallet app and you get to look at all of your transactions and categorize them in different ways and see whether you're staying on budget. And there's these budgeting tools and all of that kind of stuff inside the wallet. All of that information is on your phone locally, is stored on your phone locally. It's stored on the Goldman Sachs service because they know, because they're lending you the money. Apple does not have that information.
- [46:10]
C
That's interesting.
- [46:10]
A
Although I do think that you're right that I to me, this, if you're looking at why it is important what you're saying, Felix, about being evolutionary, I think this is part of it. Same with Libra. It's about these US Companies kind of trying to do what Tencent and Alibaba and Alipay are doing in China. Like, it's this idea of trying to say, like, we want to get into this. We want to start to like, get out the middleman. We're not there yet. And we know we're not gonna be able to just jump there yet in the US ecosystem. But this does seem like one more step down that pat.
- [46:41]
B
And the thing which I don't like about the Apple card is the way that its cash back works is it gives you 2% cash back immediately, but not cash into your bank account and not a refund on the purchase. Instead, it gives you cash into an Apple Cash account, which is a different separate account on your Apple watch.
- [47:04]
C
And I can only use that to pay for Apple things. Or I can use it you can.
- [47:07]
B
Use to pay for.
- [47:08]
C
I can go to town on itunes.
- [47:09]
B
You can use use it to pay for anything that you can pay for contactless payment. Or you can move the money from there into your bank account, but it doesn't happen instantly. But Apple Cash is another one of those things like Venmo or Square Cash or PayPal or you name it, which is like one of these little walled garden bucket things where you have to keep a certain amount of money in there, otherwise you can't use it. And I just on principle don't like those. I think that everyone should just have a bank account where they keep their money rather than having to keep their money partly on this stored value card, partly in this app, partly on that, you know, their, you know, Prepaid Metro card or whatever.
- [47:51]
C
That bothers me a little bit less than. But I will say this. I do think that there is. This is an evolution in the, again, a bifurcation that we're seeing in American and world culture between people who actually touch money and people who. Who don't. And that is kind of interesting, the fact that Apple is at the tip of the spear on this. And Apple is a luxury brand. Right. It's not a populous brand. It's interesting. If you live in New York and you've gone through any of the tunnels recently, you know that you can't use money anymore to pay the toll, right. It's all EasyPass or they send and.
- [48:22]
B
You need to put money onto your E Z pass before you can go through the toll.
- [48:26]
C
And there was a really interesting series of studies that were done by economists looking at what happens when you move from handling money to automatic tolls. And the answer is that you see much more frequent and larger increases in the toll. Right. So that governments basically don't get the pushback from the people when they raise tolls on bridges and tunnels. And so they begin raising them more and they raise them in weird increments. Right. I went through the Battery Tunnel last night. I think my toll was like $6.21, which of course would never be. If I had to hand over some cash, they would never make it. Something.
- [48:56]
B
The New York City subway station is. The subway system is moving to color contactless payments, which is incredibly convenient. You just type your phone, you get into the subway. But right now, you know, the. The fare has been stuck at 275 for a long time. It's going to be super easy for them to move it up to 279 and 306.
- [49:12]
C
That's exactly right.
- [49:14]
A
They also do it such a way so that, like, if you use certain amounts, you always leave extra money on it because then they can collect that.
- [49:20]
B
Well, no, but that goes with contactless. Because with contactless, it just comes straight out of your credit card or your bank account. You don't have a separate card for.
- [49:28]
C
But the interesting thing about this is that as we move into this economy where some people touch money and other people don't, there is going to be a disproportionate impact from the behavioral economics that results, which will tend to fall on the poor more than the richer.
- [49:40]
A
The poor, and the older. I mean. Yeah.
- [49:43]
B
My favorite example of this is the Forever Stamp. Back when stamps had a denomination on them, you knew exactly how much a stamp cost. Because every time you used a stamp stamp, it would say on it how much it cost. And now that they just say forever, people don't actually know how much stamps cost anymore.
- [50:00]
A
Yeah.
- [50:00]
C
Do you still use stamps? How old are you? Only joking. I bought some stamps yesterday.
- [50:11]
B
How much did they cost?
- [50:13]
C
I got international ones. They were $4 a piece.
- [50:15]
B
Wow.
- [50:15]
C
Yeah, it's expensive. I had to get four of them just to send something to the uk.
- [50:20]
B
That's another thing.
- [50:21]
C
That's what the guy told me, at least.
- [50:23]
B
On which note, Charles, I'm going to do my number.
- [50:27]
C
Okay?
- [50:28]
B
My number is 0.2%, which is the amount that the UK economy shrank in the second quarter of this year. The UK economy is not growing, it is shrinking. Or at least it was in the second three months of this year. And we haven't even had Brexit yet.
- [50:46]
C
Wow.
- [50:47]
A
So that's worrying uncertainty, man.
- [50:50]
C
What happens to Boris Johnson's hairline every single time the UK economy shrinks?
- [50:55]
B
It just gets a little bit shaggy.
- [50:57]
A
Yeah, exactly. It'll just be a full sheepdog at some point.
- [51:02]
B
Anna, what's your number?
- [51:03]
A
So I'm kind of changing my number so I'm trying to remember exactly what it is. It's either 120 or 140.
- [51:08]
B
It's somewhere around there.
- [51:09]
A
It's one of those. You know what I'm gonna go with? This is the number of. Of football fields of cheese that were stored underground in Kansas because of ridiculous dairy policies that the United States had in through Jimmy Carter.
- [51:25]
B
I love the idea of underground football fields made of cheese. This is so cool. I've never really been a sports fan, but now that I know that you can play sport on an underground football field, what kind of cheese is it? Can I play football on, like, Gorgon Solo?
- [51:43]
A
So. No, the size. The size of like 120 football fields filled with what actually was what became known as government cheese because they had so much cheese and they didn't know what to do with it. So then they started to give it away. And then it became this thing that people have, which was government cheese.
- [51:56]
B
I've always. I've always had a problem with Astroturf. I feel like if we just replaced it with cheese, cheddar would be kind.
- [52:02]
C
Of springy, I think.
- [52:03]
A
So. Little slippery. Little slippery.
- [52:06]
B
I'm into what you think have, like the cleats, you cleats would.
- [52:10]
A
Just thinking of the logistics here that.
- [52:12]
B
Like, Now I am 100 and. And not only are these football fields made of cheese, but they're also underground.
- [52:19]
A
Yeah.
- [52:19]
B
So you get natural. You get natural. Like you don't need to air condition because it's all in the like beautiful caves and their cheese is being aged naturally. I'm, I'm all in favor of this.
- [52:31]
C
Wait, are you Anna, are you pro government cheese or anti government cheese?
- [52:34]
A
Well, well the fact that they spent this ridiculous amount of money like trying to prop up dairy prices by buying all stupid cheese like that was very dumb. Giving it away to poor people is fine. Although giving money to poor people and just saying if you want to buy cheese, fine. If you want to buy something else, fine would probably have been a better solution to this. But yes.
- [52:51]
B
Okay, so your number is.
- [52:52]
C
My number is 13. So I, I'm going to invite, it's a prognostication. I'm going to invite our audience to run it, run an experiment. So I have this theory. So it's August, right?
- [53:01]
B
It is August.
- [53:02]
C
It's the month when nobody pays attention to what's going on. Reporters go on, on vacation. I think that the President's number of tweets are going to dip in August. And I think the reason why. So my prognostication is no more than 13 tweets every two weeks. And I think the reason why.
- [53:20]
B
Oh, I'll take the over. I mean, 13 tweets every two days, I might, you know, wasn't his tweet.
- [53:26]
A
Like four tweets, whereas one tweet yesterday.
- [53:29]
C
Okay, maybe 13 tweets a week. Let's make it 13.
- [53:31]
B
13 tweets A. I work for Axios and we cover the President very closely and we have a little slack robot that automatically drops his tweets into a slack channel every time he tweets. I can guarantee you there hasn't been two weeks of his presidency where he's come close to a year. Thirteen.
- [53:52]
C
Here's what I'm thinking. So let's say 13 a week. Because I think that with less coverage of them because everyone's on vacation, people are reading the paper papers less. I think that actually the President responds to the attention of the tweet and that if we decrease the attention, he will tweet less. I'm gonna put it out there. I think it's an experiment we can conduct this month. I actually think that like when people say like oh the President's terrible, blah, blah, blah, I think we're part of the problem. It's cuz we keep on reading his tweets. And so now we have a natural experiment.
- [54:21]
B
You're saying for the Month of August.
- [54:23]
C
For the month of August, no more than 13 tweets a week. I'm putting my money down.
- [54:27]
B
How much do you want to bet? Because I will. I will totally take.
- [54:30]
C
I haven't. I haven't actually counted government cheese. I haven't been counting how many tweets he's done on an average. Like, I don't know what the moving average is.
- [54:38]
B
Just name your stakes. Charles Duhigg and I will take the over.
- [54:41]
C
Steak dinner.
- [54:42]
B
Steak dinner.
- [54:43]
C
Steak dinner.
- [54:43]
B
All right, if he goes.
- [54:44]
C
If he goes one week with 13 or less tweets.
- [54:47]
B
Wait, we're not averaging.
- [54:48]
C
No, no, we got. All I'm looking for is a seven day period, so.
- [54:53]
B
Okay, you're gonna have to do the counting because I.
- [54:56]
C
You got it.
- [54:56]
B
You do the counting. If he manages to go 7 days with fewer than 13 tweets, I will buy you a steak dinner. If he doesn't, you need to buy me a steak dinner.
- [55:04]
C
Done.
- [55:04]
B
Done.
- [55:05]
C
I'm in. Okay, Anna, you want in on this?
- [55:07]
A
I don't eat steak.
- [55:08]
C
But.
- [55:11]
B
Sadly, Anna does not eat steak. Wow. Okay. Not only did we manage to have a whole podcast with Charles Duhigg, but we also managed to get a wager out of it. This is awesome. And I mean, I'm. I already know which steakhouse I'm going to make you take me. Yeah, yeah. So nom. Yeah, I feel some bear nays in my future. It's going to be. It's. Yeah, it's going to be good.
- [55:35]
C
I like the excitement.
- [55:36]
B
Charles, you know what I'm going to do?
- [55:38]
C
What's that?
- [55:39]
B
I'm going to drop one of your podcasts into the slate Money feed.
- [55:43]
C
I love it. So do I have to buy extra, extra, extra?
- [55:48]
B
Yeah, for that one I want like cream spinach.
- [55:51]
C
Okay, you got it.
- [55:52]
B
What? Which one am I gonna drop in that one? I leave up to you.
- [55:55]
C
Oh, you know what? Which one we can drop in is how to fire someone.
- [55:58]
B
Yes, let's do that one.
- [55:59]
C
So this week we're doing how to fire a bad employee. And it's this guy who lives in Montana, a farming state, not a farmer. He runs a graphic design firm. And he has this employee that he's been trying to fire for like over a year, and he cannot bring himself to do it. So we get Bob Sutton, this professor at Stanford Business School, to tell him. Him, look, here's actually the. The like five things you do in order to fire someone, not only in the kindest way for them, but in the kindest way for yourself.
- [56:26]
B
I Like that.
- [56:27]
C
Cuz firing is horrible.
- [56:28]
A
It's horrible.
- [56:29]
B
You wound up talking to Bob Sutton rather than, like, George Clooney. Because George Clooney would have been great.
- [56:36]
C
How George Clooney on Firing.
- [56:38]
B
Wait, didn't you remember that movie up in the Air?
- [56:42]
A
I got. I see.
- [56:42]
C
Oh, yes, that's.
- [56:44]
A
He was really bad at firing people.
- [56:46]
B
He was just flying around firing people.
- [56:48]
C
I mean, we can find something else to talk to George Clooney. And George, if you're listening, we'll have you on the show anytime. But in the meantime.
- [56:55]
B
In the meantime, Bob Sutton, the name.
- [56:59]
C
Of the show is how to. And basically what we do is each week someone calls in with a problem, and we use kind of the tools of investigative journalism to solve their problem. So.
- [57:06]
B
And this time we're gonna. And so basically we are going to get to the end of this thing and some poor guy in Madison, Wisconsin. Wait, where is it?
- [57:15]
C
He's in Montana.
- [57:17]
B
Some guy in Montana is going to be fired. But we're all going to feel like we've all learned something anyway.
- [57:22]
C
Well, you got to listen to the.
- [57:22]
B
Episode to find out. Also, very importantly, Charles, you have your podcast, how to. I have my podcast, which is Slate Money, but it's also Slate Money Succession. I have a special Monday morning recap show for the next 10 weeks. This is happening, people. This is what I have been looking forward to for literally a year now is we get to watch every single episode of Succession on Sunday nights. And then on Monday morning, we bring, like, the coolest, most awesome people in the world on to talk about it.
- [58:04]
C
I'm definitely gonna watch. I'm gonna listen to that. I'm gonna watch Succession, and then I'm.
- [58:07]
B
Gonna listen to myself. So tomorrow night to watch Succession, season two, episode one, and then on Monday morning, Edmund Lee is going to be right here on Slate Money talking about, like, all of the real world parallels. And we are going to wonk out about the media world. Like, you have no idea. And you are a journalist, therefore I know you are watching it.
- [58:27]
C
I am absolutely watching it. And I am tuning in to listen. I cannot wait. I actually thought that. I thought the premiere was last Sunday and I got all excited. It's not.
- [58:36]
B
And it's not.
- [58:36]
C
It's this Sunday, it's tomorrow, which means.
- [58:38]
B
Monday is the premiere of Slate Money Succession.
- [58:43]
C
I love it.
- [58:43]
B
Isn't it gonna be awesome?
- [58:44]
C
I'm tuning in.
- [58:45]
B
Charles, thank you so much for coming on Slate Money. Thanks for having me to listen to that episode. Many thanks to not only June Thomas but like all manner of fabulous slate people for producing this week and we. Phil Serkis, wasn't he in like the Hobbit? I don't know. Thank you, Phil Circus, for producing and. And we will talk to you next week on Sleep Money.