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- [00:00]
A
Foreign hello and welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon from Bloomberg. I am on YouTube in the Bloomberg podcast studios. So 731 Lexington Avenue. It's a whole brave new world here. I am joined by Emily Peck of Axios.
- [00:35]
B
Hello. Hello. I'm here in my home studio from an undisclosed location.
- [00:39]
A
An undisclosed location, but not far from Wasp's Nest. We're going to talk about that. I am joined by Elizabeth Spires, who's coming from Pokemon Central.
- [00:50]
C
Yes, I'm in my son's Pokemon themed bedroom which if you go to YouTube you will see is bright orange because.
- [00:57]
A
Orange is the color of Pokemon, right?
- [00:59]
C
Charizard is orange and he is the most valuable Pokemon, apparently.
- [01:05]
A
We are going to talk about the lose heist. Of course, we have to and it's awesome. We even have a Slate plus segment about our favorite heist movies. We are going to talk about the government shutdown, which is another thing that is still going on and what it means for economic data and whether ADP is screwing the Fed by not sharing their data with the Fed. We are going to talk about how hard AI researchers are working and whether that's a bad thing. It's a good one this week, so I hope you enjoy it. It's all coming up on Slate Money.
- [01:49]
B
This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting well with the name your price tool from Progressive? You can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card there are no points to calculate or rewards to claim, just daily cash back on every purchase subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch terms and more@applecard.com.
- [02:31]
A
Okay, so obviously in a world of massive geopolitical trade tensions, where Donald Trump is breaking off trade negotiations with Canada, where there's a summit meeting with President Xi, where there's a war still going on in Ukraine which everyone's trying to fix, and where we are stuck in the middle of a government blackout and we don't even know what's happening in the economy because there's no data, the most important thing in the world is a necklace got stolen from the loo. Several necklaces, several pieces, but not the crown.
- [03:06]
B
This is the best and chicest news to break in Quite some time we can all admit we woke up. Or whenever it was on Sunday, you get a news alert. You're braced. Is it war? Is it new tariffs? What is it? It's a heist from the Louvre.
- [03:22]
A
It was a heist from the Louvre, but it's a lie. It's the most iconic crime, and it's the most iconic museum in the world. I mean, I think that's fair to say, right?
- [03:31]
B
Yes, absolutely. Most visited museum in the world.
- [03:34]
A
It's like 800,000 square feet of exhibition space, which is why, frankly, everyone's like, oh, no, the security camera was pointing in the wrong direction. But I do think that it's really hard if you have a museum that's 800,000 square feet that gets millions of views, visitors per year, that by its nature is open to the public. The thieves are robbing it during opening hours, you know, at 9:30 in the morning when it's already open. I think that, yeah, obviously you don't want this to happen and you want to take precautions to make sure it doesn't happen, but I don't think this is a major. I think that statistically speaking, this kind of thing is going to happen every so often. And this is one of those every so often.
- [04:16]
B
Yeah.
- [04:16]
C
I felt bad for the director who offered to resign and they didn't accept her resignation. But it does seem like there's not much they could have done to prevent it, really.
- [04:27]
A
I mean, Emily's like, well, let me stop you there.
- [04:30]
B
I don't disagree that in the grand scheme of. I mean, I did write down in my little list of talking points, this seems fine. Like, they could spare the jewels. Also, they're Frances. They belong to all of France, so why not the French thieves on mopeds? Why can't they have a spin with these jewels for some time? It's their country too, right? We all get a turn.
- [04:52]
C
Everyone should be able to borrow the crown jewels every now and then.
- [04:56]
A
Exactly.
- [04:56]
C
Yeah.
- [04:57]
A
Okay, so first question. Do we think that these were French, or do we think they were, like, Romanian?
- [05:03]
B
I like to think that they're French and, like, very dashing. I'm a little upset that they didn't break into the Louvre during, like, some kind of gala event and wear tuxedos or something a la.
- [05:14]
A
Exactly. Exactly. We want this to be a heist movie. This is why I really love the Ed Caesar New York Times magazine piece from 2013, which we're gonna throw in the show notes, where he's like, yeah, heists are not glamorous. Romantic things like Ocean's Eight. You know, they are much more just petty thieves with hammers breaking things.
- [05:37]
B
But this one, they had a truck with a mechanical ladder, right.
- [05:42]
A
Which by. Oh, by the way, did you see the German company that makes that mechanical ladder is like, if you want things done really quickly and efficiently, use our mechanical ladder.
- [05:52]
B
I mean, it's a good ad. It took them, what, seven minutes?
- [05:55]
C
And I love the little line underneath. It says something like, your Bakker Agile. Transports your treasures up to 400kg. Quiet as a whisper.
- [06:08]
B
And they were so fast. I mean, they set off the alarms. But the security in the Louvre couldn't reach them fast enough. Or maybe was trying to keep people safe rather than the jewels from the Empress, you know, who was married to Napoleon.
- [06:20]
A
They couldn't stop. I mean, the reason why we know this was a little bit Keystone cops and shambolic was that the prize jewel that they stole, Princess Eugenie's crown, they just kind of dropped on the way out. It got dinged a bit when they dropped it, but I don't think that even managed to leave the building. Right.
- [06:37]
B
And the. One of the stories was like quoting Anthony Roman, a private investigator with art crime experience, which. What does that mean? We don't know. Does he experience doing the crime or investigating the crime?
- [06:50]
A
I have lots of experience doing art crimes.
- [06:53]
B
Yeah, but he said if the thieves are going to drop a crown, they're not pros. I think they are pros because they were like, you got to move fast. If something drops, you just keep going. Like, if you stop to pick up the crown, you could get.
- [07:07]
A
One of my favorite bits of the discourse around this is shock horror. The jewels were not insured. It's like, guys, you cannot insure the entire Louvre. That's like, not possible. That's like conservatively $100 billion worth of art. Let me just do the math for you here. Because if you manage to get a super low insurance premium of like 0.5% a year, that would be $500 million a year in insurance premiums, which is, you know, these jewels were valued at $100 million. But like, even if you could find the $500 million, which you can't, then there's no insurance capacity. The entire insurance capacity in London for this kind of thing is like $4 billion total. You can't insure this. Which is why, you know, what the French government says and what all major state museums say is we self insurer. And honestly, if you look at the value of stuff that has been stolen, from the Louvre over the past 20 or 30 years. It works out to much less than any insurance premium would have been.
- [08:08]
B
Does it make more sense if you're going to do a jewelry heist? Is it smarter actually to steal jewels from the Louvre than like your run of the mill jewelry store, which probably has like, more elaborate security than the Louvre?
- [08:23]
A
Well, yes and no. It makes sense to steal jewels from the Louvre, but not for that reason. Louvre security is not quite as bad as people are making out. If it was as bad as people are making out, then we would see many more Louvre heists. But the reason why you want to steal an ancient piece of jewelry rather than a modern piece of jewelry is that all modern jewelry has little microscopic serial numbers, basically on all of the diamonds. So they will be registered as being stolen. And if any jeweler gets given one of those diamonds offered to like, would you like to buy my diamond, sir? They will see the serial number, they will look up the serial number, they'll be like, oh, this was stolen from such and such a shop. And then they'll turn you in and get the reward. So one of the great things about the Louvre jewels is that no one has laser etched them with serial numbers.
- [09:16]
C
But even then, wouldn't it make sense to steal from, say, a slightly more obscure museum than the Louvre? But also, in my mind, I'm a James Bond obsessive, so I imagine some scenario where people steal the crown jewels and then secretly sell them to some billionaire who wants to just put them in a room and stare at them and say, I own this for the rest of their lives. But you can't really. It's hard to sell these things, right?
- [09:43]
A
It's super, super hard to sell these things. Basically what you need to do, because the jewels are recognizable, what you need to do is find a crooked diamond cutter, take all of the jewels apart, and the jewels are the French national patrimony. And like, it's the minute you take the jewels apart and melt down the gold, you've destroyed probably three quarters of the value of the jewels right there. Right. Just by ripping it all apart. And then you need to take it to a diamond cutter and get them to recut the diamonds so they're not recognizably the same diamonds anymore. And then that diamond cutter is going to charge you a fortune because obviously they know where it's all from. And so the whole thing is just incredibly economically inefficient. They're destroying a massive amount of value. And no, there aren't a lot of like, evil mustache twirling billionaires out there who are like, I would happily pay you $10 million just to be able to parade around in an emerald necklace. Like, no. This reminds me, by the way, I have to say, little digression here. One of my favorite stories in the art world of all time was when Ileana Sonarband died, the great art dealer, she owned a Robert Rauschenberg work called Canyon, which is on display at the Museum of Modern Art. And when she died, the IRS wanted to levy an estate tax on the value of that piece. The problem is that that piece has a bald eagle on it. And under various bits of law, you're not allowed to sell anything with bald eagles.
- [11:11]
B
What?
- [11:12]
A
So, yeah, like, it's a federal crime. It's a felony to conduct any commerce in stuffed bald eagles. Or dead.
- [11:20]
B
Oh, it was an actual real bald eagle.
- [11:22]
A
Exactly.
- [11:23]
B
Carry on.
- [11:23]
A
And so, like, basically what the estate said was, the value of this painting is zero because it is a felony to sell it. We are not allowed to sell it. And what the IRS said was that you could sell it to an evil, moustached, swirling, you know, Chinese billionaire who would pay you for it, and we're going to charge you estate tax on the value that the evil billionaire would pay. And everyone was like, what? No, this is crazy. But yeah, no, those billionaires don't exist.
- [11:50]
C
There's another Second Day story that sort of reinforced the how, how much people romanticized art. There was an AP photo of four French policemen and then a random guy standing next to them who was wearing a three piece suit.
- [12:03]
A
Oh, my God. And John T. Fedora, the fedora guy, we love him.
- [12:08]
C
And he just looked like the platonic ideal of a French investigator detective, whatever, from the 1950s.
- [12:17]
A
He is literally, if you look up the word soigne in the dictionary, this guy comes up.
- [12:24]
B
So my question is then, like, what even is the value of these jewels? Because, I mean, all the reporting was they were worth $102 million, but they're not, because once you take them out of the context of the museum, just like you outline, Felix, like, they have to be broken up and that's not going to come out to $102 million. So it's almost like things in museums are worth a lot because they're in museums. And once you kind of take them out of museums, it's like the stuff in your grandma's house, you know, it's, it's sentimentally of value, sure, but like, no can do anything with it as.
- [12:59]
A
We have Discussed on this show, the value of diamonds has been plunging because, you know, lab grown diamonds are very good now. And so you can take out all the diamonds, take them to a corrupt diamond cutter, get them recut, sell them. Eh, you might be able to get seven figures for them if you're lucky. A lot of the discourse, I mean, it's not very long since we had an entire Slate Money segment on the price of gold. A lot of the discourse is about, well, maybe what they were really after was the gold that they are set in, rather. Rather than the jewels themselves and. Or other than the stones themselves, I should say. And yet again, like, this is beautifully, beautifully worked, high, ultra high craftsmanship. And they're gonna take all of that and just melt it down and be like, oh, yeah, we can sell this gold for $4,000 an ounce. It's depressing and sad. It is not, like, romantic and sexy.
- [13:51]
B
I did have a few other hot takes. One. Okay, there were, like, a list of examples in one of the stories. Like, these heists happen often. These museums aren't being kept up. They're not safe. They're not well staffed enough. And I was like, is the Louvre heist like a signal of the demise of liberal democracies and neoliberalism? I don't know. We're letting our precious, you know, souvenirs. They're just souvenirs, right. Be stolen and squirreled away and, like, leaving the front door open to our museums. Like, it's all falling apart. That was one of my hot takes.
- [14:28]
A
I'm gonna come back to that one and say, like, the golden era of heists was much more the 60s and 70s than it is right now. And I think that museums in general are much, much more secure than they were. And actually, liberal democracy has done quite a good job of protecting our cultural patrimony compared to 50 or 60 years ago.
- [14:48]
C
Maybe not the White House, but otherwise. Sure.
- [14:51]
B
Yes. Exactly on the heels of the White House just being knocked down half of it or something. I don't. I'm not paying attention to that because it's, like, too much to do.
- [14:58]
C
The swing is kind of put.
- [15:00]
B
Who cares?
- [15:01]
A
It was built by Teddy Roosevelt in 1902.
- [15:04]
B
Yeah.
- [15:04]
A
That's cultural patrimony.
- [15:06]
B
Yeah. So everything's falling apart and crumbling. That's the hot take.
- [15:09]
A
Okay, that's.
- [15:09]
B
That's the hot tip standing by. The other one is that museums are one of our few remaining tactile places. It's. As everything has moved online, we can still go to a museum and see Things in real life, in person, and that is important. That's my second hot take. It's a little more lo.
- [15:27]
A
Yeah, that's a lukewarm take, and I hope that you are correct about that. I would like to believe that you are correct about that. I do worry about the way in which museums are virtualizing themselves and insisting on putting video screens in places. And the rise. Well, I mean, I'm taking some solace in the fact that the sort of project art onto screens, museums the whole day, Lumiere or super blue or, you know, all like Refik Anadol and this kind of stuff seems to have had its moment and is in the past now more than in the future. People got very excited about it for a minute, like, four or five years ago, and it doesn't seem to have fulfilled the hopes that people had. And I do really hope that nowadays we are back. We are going back to a world where people would much rather go and see a Van Gogh painting in person than to go see the immersive Van Gogh show. So maybe you're right. I will sign on to your lukewarm take.
- [16:33]
B
Yay. Oh, and the third thing, not really a hot take, just a point to make, which is that stealing things can make them more valuable. Mona Lisa was stolen, and that was.
- [16:44]
A
How it became so famous, and that.
- [16:46]
B
Is how it became so famous. So in the long run, who knows how this actually works out? Very soon, there could be long lines to see these very jewels back at the Louvre.
- [16:56]
A
I think that's right. I mean, I have been to the Louvre, you know, a fair number of times over the years. And I have to admit that, historically, if I'd ever, like, made it over to the Apollo Gallery, I'd be like, oh, Jules. And just, like, wander on while looking for a painting somewhere. But probably the next time I go to the Louvre, I'll be like, oh, look, there's the crown they stole.
- [17:16]
B
Exactly. The crown they stole is gonna be huge. There's gonna be big for it, Elizabeth, don't you think? Yeah, they'll probably update the little card or whatever they put by the, you know, the displays, and they'll be like, this was dropped by chic thieves on mopeds making their escape.
- [17:32]
A
In my local art museum when I was growing up, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, there was this very little Rembrandt that was called the takeaway Rembrandt because it had been stolen, like, six times.
- [17:44]
B
Fun. Did you try and steal it? I could see you as an art thief.
- [17:47]
A
Yeah, totally. That's my avocation right there.
- [18:03]
B
Slate Money is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day, but what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's managing director for legislative and regulatory affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors and even the entire market. Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow schwab.com washingtonwise or wherever you listen.
- [18:58]
A
Slate Money is sponsored this week by Saks Fifth Avenue. Saks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to holiday your way. Whether it's finding the right gift or the right outfit, Saks is where you can find everything from the perfect Chloe bag for your hard to shop for sister to a Prada jacket for a fancy holiday dinner. If you visit saks.com, you'll be astonished at how easy it is to find new arrivals and gift inspiration from, I don't know, Dries Van Norton, wonderful Belgian designer, lots of floral prints. Just the kind of thing you need to lighten up and brighten up what the darker days that are coming. If you don't want Dries Van Noten, I can tell you Saks has holiday looks for everything. You can get Dolce Gabbana instead. I would recommend flowers. That's my top tip for this season as the nights get longer. But if you don't know where to start, Saks.com is customized to your personal style so you can save time shopping and spend more time just enjoying the holidays. Whether it's an office holiday party, a cozy night in or a vacation getaway, Saks has everything you need to holiday your way. So make shopping fun and easy this season and find gifts and inspiration to suit your holiday style at Saks Fifth Avenue. Let's move on and talk a little bit about this whole shutdown situation because we're what, three weeks into it now and no end in sight. And my first big question, I guess for you, Elizabeth, is have you noticed any difference? Have you noticed the fact that we don't have a government?
- [20:36]
C
I think me personally, no. But I'm not really affected by the stuff that would affect people. I'm not somebody who works for the government who's not getting a Paycheck right now. I'm not someone who's dealing with services that have been suspended, so I do think there are people who are feeling this. It's just not me personally or probably you.
- [20:55]
A
No. But what percentage of the US Population do you think is feeling this?
- [21:00]
C
I would say lower income people in particular are feeling it. However many.
- [21:04]
A
Why low income?
- [21:05]
C
Well, because a lot of the services that people are dependent on for funding at the local level are funded by federal agencies that are suspended right now.
- [21:13]
A
But if it's local, then, like, the local agencies aren't suspended. Right. And they can always just wait to get reimbursed by the feds for whenever the government.
- [21:21]
C
But that's the point. If you need to get a check next week, like, it's not going to happen, you know, this, this is disrupting services that people actually need.
- [21:29]
A
Wait, wait, if who needs, like if the local AGENC needs to get a check next week because the local agency, like they can just borrow it from the bank.
- [21:37]
B
No. So Social Security and disability, they're still carrying on. They haven't been shut down. So people are getting that money. But Head Start programs, which are preschool programs for poor kids, some of their funding has already been cut off because of the shutdown. And I think more is expected than on November 1st. If, if we're still shut down, which is kind of looking like we will be, that's when the money for SNAP runs out. And that's when, like, a lot of people will really be affected because they won't have money for food. But that hasn't happened yet.
- [22:07]
A
But just to be clear, because I'm a little bit, you know, I genuinely don't know. When you say that the money for Head Start programs has not been flowing, does that mean that the Head Start program's not happening or that the people paying for the Head Start programs just haven't been reimbursed by the government yet?
- [22:24]
B
For some Head Start programs, it's my understanding that they will have to shutter. They won't be able to go.
- [22:28]
A
But they haven't shuttered yet.
- [22:30]
B
I think a few have, according to the news reports I'm seeing, but not most of them have shuttered.
- [22:36]
A
Most of them have not. Right. So in terms of the real world impact of the shutdown, even the people who are consuming these Head Start programs, even if the money isn't blowing up until now, they have still been consuming it.
- [22:49]
B
And for federal workers, a lot of them, their most recent paycheck was just a little lower than the one before because it covered 70% was pre shutdown of the last paycheck they got. But the paychecks that are coming will be zero checks. There are no paychecks coming, in other words.
- [23:03]
A
That would be such a Trump move though, to send everyone a check saying like zero on it, zero. This is the fault of the Democrats. It's like blame Chuck Schumer for your zero check.
- [23:12]
B
The other big impact I think we are seeing now is the delays at airports and things as like the air traffic controllers stay home and things like that. That is happening. And you'll see more reports about that. I think as this rolls along because those air traffic controllers are required to come to work, they just aren't going to get paid. So they start to no show a little more in the last shutdown, the last Trump shutdown anyway in 2019. Conventional wisdom is because they stopped coming to work is why there was pressure to end that particular shutdown.
- [23:43]
A
Yay, I'm flying this weekend.
- [23:45]
C
Also we should mention because this does affect, well, our coverage on Slate money. The shutdown also means that the Fed isn't getting data that they need, right?
- [23:55]
A
So this is like from day one and we've mentioned this the first time that there was a Slate Money after the shutdown. The main thing that people are bellyaching about is the Fed isn't going to be able to have the data that it needs to be what they love to call data dependent. And so now what the hell are they going to do? And there was a fascinating story this week about how, well, you know, they don't get the BLS data, but they get the ADP data. ADP is a free private company and ADP shares their data with the Fed. ADP, if you get a paycheck, there is like a 20% chance if you work in the private sector and you get a paycheck, that that paycheck is processed by adp. ADP has incredibly granular information about millions of workers. And they shared that information with the Fed on a very granular basis. And the Fed was like, this is awesome. And then one of the Fed governors, Chris Waller, gave a speech saying this is awesome back in August. And then David Dayan found out for the American Prospect, for some reason that no one entirely understands, ADP was like, well, actually fuck you, no. And stopped sharing the data, you know, and this was just like a month or two or just, you know, a few weeks before the Fed started really needing it. And so far the ADP has not turned it back on.
- [25:12]
C
Well, there was some Speculation that part of the reason was, you know, providing Data is not ADP's core business. It's payroll servicing. And so they were a little bit worried, worried according to the speculators at least, that providing the Fed with data might imperil some of their client relationships. Presumably if the Fed made decisions based on it, that the clients didn't like.
- [25:32]
A
This just like this puzzles me, like if I'm a corporate client of adp, I would be so incredibly happy if that made monetary policy better. You know, that's just like gravy. I don't understand why I would be upset about that.
- [25:46]
C
They're worried about it making monetary policy worse. That that's the liability angle.
- [25:52]
A
So explain.
- [25:53]
C
So let's say the Fed does something. You run a big construction company or big developer and the Fed makes a decision that you don't like and you believe that ADP had some role in facilitating that decision. Fairly or not. That could be a point of tension between your company and adp. And I think that's what ADP is anticipating because that is their core business. It's not providing data to anybody.
- [26:17]
A
I remember when ADP revamped their jobs data a couple years ago. I wrote about it for Axios. I talked to Erik Brynjolfsson, friend of the POD at Stanford, who was very involved in putting this data together. He was talking about how like they were super proud about being able to open source this data. They were putting it up on Fred. Now the stuff that they release on a monthly basis and the stuff they put up on Fred, they are still releasing on a monthly basis. It is still public. The Fed has access to it. The stuff that they cut the Fed off from was like the super granular weekly data that was never public. But it was always a point of pride for ADP that this was something they could do. Obviously they weren't making a lot of money from it, but it really did give them a bunch of kudos and access and warm fuzzies.
- [27:09]
C
Don't you think the Fed decision making though is more politicized right now than it probably was five years ago?
- [27:17]
A
Yeah, of course, three years ago, perhaps like five years ago it was Trump won. And that was still very politicized.
- [27:23]
B
But it's more now. Maybe the deal is like that other ADP data that we all look at and use is public to everyone. But this ADP data had like a tinge of like, I don't know, secrecy in a way that maybe made it a little weirder. Like maybe they were worried this is full speculation. I didn't even read anyone speculating this. Maybe they were worried there would be demand, you know, from other people to see the data the Fed gets or something kind of thing like that, and they didn't want to share it. And maybe it was granular and private information about specific companies. We don't know. Do we know very much about the actual reports that the Fed got from adp? I do not think we do.
- [28:00]
A
I am coming out here using my highly influential bully pulpit as one of the three hosts of Slate money to humbly request the powers that be at ADP to turn this information pipe back on. Because the Fed needs your data. Do it, people. Because the BLS is mia.
- [28:21]
B
We need just the shutdown to end and the BLS to pump out its data again. We got a little taste of what that life was like. I mean, on Friday when we were taping, they released a CPI report, the only data report they put out all month. And it made the markets really happy. Gave journalists something to do. You did ask, has this shutdown affected people's lives? The journalists, the economic journalists, they have no data. They're just writing takes every day. It's hard for them.
- [28:50]
A
Okay, number one, why do we have CPI?
- [28:52]
B
We have CPI today, October 24th, Friday. Because the Social Security Administration needs to calculate the cost of living adjustment for Social Security recipients. And they base it on this month is like the last piece of the puzzle for them to come out. They just announced on Friday the raise will be 2.8%. So the white House said they were statutorily required to come up with the cola. They didn't want to be late with it. They don't want to upset the seniors. So that's why they called back the BLS employees just to do that report. They haven't compiled any new data in October on cpi. So I don't know how that's going to work. Once the shutdown ends, they're going to be like, all these agencies are going to be behind in their data reports. Like we're supposed to get GDP the end of next week. And even if the government reopens, I think it'll take them some time to, like, actually make that happen. So everything's gonna be a little delayed and a little dodgy. And the longer this goes on, like, the worse it's going to get. And we might just like, be missing some things, which I think is sad.
- [29:58]
A
Data points that we missed. And that would be sad, but no. Okay, so to answer your question about what journalists can do and specifically what Washington based financial journalists can do, which is a very, like, wonkish subsect. My answer is very clear, which is start really cultivating all of your sources in treasury to start pointing their fucking cameras at the East Wing. Because, like, all of the photographs we have of what's going on at the East Wing of the White House are all, like, you know, terrible angles and satellite photos and stuff, because the Treasury Building is in the way. And so what we need is all of the journalists to get their sources to be taking good photographs from the windows of treasury, which is the best view of being able to see what's going on.
- [30:48]
B
I guess I should follow what's going on with the East Wing and not just ignore it. Like I said earlier, all I know is it was knocked down.
- [30:54]
A
The East Wing is rip. The East Wing is gone. The colonnade that connected the White House to the East Wing, that's gone.
- [31:03]
C
And this is after Trump saying that he wasn't gonna touch it. But this is. You remember the. When Trump bought the Bonwit Teller Building and turned it into Trump Tower, he sort of did the same thing. He said that he was going to keep those beautiful Art Deco freezes and donate them to the Met, and then he instructed workers to just rip them off the building and throw them into the interior. And he's still angry that people are mad at him for that. But obviously it hasn't changed his behavior because he's doing basically the same thing here.
- [31:31]
B
What was in the East Wing?
- [31:33]
A
It was like a bunch of offices, and it was the main entrance that people would go into whenever they entered the White House. And so if you're a visitor to the White House, if you know, or anything like that, you would go in through the East Wing. And it was historically also where the first lady would have her offices. And I believe it would have been where the first gentleman had his offices if Carmela had won.
- [31:56]
B
So where's Melania's offices now? Does she not have offices in New York, Mar? A Lago?
- [32:00]
A
No, Melania famously just never used it. Like, all of the first Ladies in history have been very active users of the East Wing, except for Hillary, apparently, who is more of a West Wing person.
- [32:11]
B
Oh, right. That was a big thing. Like she was gonna be in the West Wing and like, oh, no.
- [32:16]
A
But Melania has no particular interest in that kind of thing. And so she just hangs out in Trump Tower in New York.
- [32:22]
B
And so the issue is he just did it kind of like, without asking anyone for permission.
- [32:26]
A
Exactly. It's always better to ask forgiveness than permission. Right? We know that because if he'd asked permission, they would have said no.
- [32:33]
B
They would have said no. It would have dragged on and on. There have been a thousand stories about his fight to demolish the East Wing.
- [32:39]
C
Well, he also just doesn't think that he has to do any of that because he doesn't think any normal laws apply to him. But the last big renovation of the White House was under Truman, and it was the West Wing, and it was because the West Wing was a fire hazard, because when they electrified it under Coolidge, they made all these mistakes. And so they had to renovate it in part. And Truman went to great lengths to preserve everything in there that was historical and also to just maintain the outside part of it. And Trump just went in there with the bulldozer and said, fuck all of this.
- [33:09]
B
So that's why people are mad.
- [33:11]
A
There are so many reasons why people are mad, Emma.
- [33:14]
B
They should be so mad. They should just be delighted because there was a Louvre heist and just ignore the rest.
- [33:20]
A
Well, okay, you know what? I think we should have a Slate plus segment on heist movies because I feel like this is the reason why you are so into the heist. I was looking on the Internet at Rotten Tomatoes. Top heist flick.
- [33:36]
B
Rotten Tomato, yes. It just made me so happy.
- [33:40]
A
And there are 88 of them. We will talk about that in slate plus. We don't have time for that now because we have to have a numbers round.
- [33:47]
B
No, we have to do a third topic.
- [33:49]
A
Oh, that's right. We have to have a third topic.
- [33:52]
B
Like, guys, guys, remember how this works.
- [33:56]
A
It's only been a decade. I can't. I can't be expected to keep up with where I am in the show. Slate money is sponsored this week by Monarch. If you're a little bit befuddled by your personal finances, Monarch is a great solution to your problem. You probably can't even name every single one of your financial accounts, let alone how much they're worth. And so if what you want is to be able to feel organized and confident in your finances, you can go with Monarch, which is an all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface on your laptop, on your phone. And right now, for sleep money listeners, Monarch is offering 50% off your first year with code slateonark.com Monarch just keeps track of everything and will let you know whenever anything kind of weird or unexpected expected happens. It's got these amazing push alerts. It'll be like, hey, do you realize you got paid something? And you're like, oh, that's awesome. It'll be like, do you realize you're spending a lot more than you normally do on like medical bills this month or something like that? And you'll be like, wait, what? So it will just give you the peace of mind that if something you ought to know about happens to your finances, it will tell you you don't need to constantly be checking all of your bank accounts to be able to notice that kind of thing. So if you've put off organizing your finances, let Monarch do all of the heavy lifting. You can link all your accounts in minutes. You can get clear data, visuals, smart categorization of your spending, real control over your money. So don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use code slate@monarch.com in your browser for half of your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Slate.
- [36:10]
B
This message is brought to you by Apple Card. You left your wallet in the car or was it at home? No need to panic. With your iPhone you can tap to pay using Apple Card with Apple Pay and earn unlimited daily cash back when you do. Apple Card is ready when you need it. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more@applecard.com I thought you were doing like a fun thing because you're like it's the numbers round. The number is 996 and then we would talk about it.
- [36:43]
A
Oh yeah. So a proto numbers round the numbers996. Wait, okay, Emily, what is996?
- [36:50]
B
Felix,996 is the practice of working from 9:00am to 9:00pm Six days a week. That is a 72 hour workweek. The term was popularized in China where people eventually got so overworked and so sick of it and perhaps some workers even died from overwork. I don't know the details there that a court in China even said like we need to cut this out now. US tech firms in Silicon Valley have adopted 996 as like the standard mode of work and are actually advertising 72 hour in person work weeks and more to their well paid employees.
- [37:28]
A
Yeah, but let's be very specific about this.
- [37:32]
B
Let's be specific.
- [37:33]
A
It is very specifically AI teams. It is just AI. No one else is like going out there saying we want you to work996. We need you in office six days a week. But there is this feeling in the AI world that things are moving incredibly fast, that there's a winner takes all kind of thing going on. That the entire science of AI can change between Thursday and Friday or between Saturday and Sunday. And there's been a bunch of reporting about this, which I like because they've talked to a bunch of different people. And there does seem to be this through line of people basically saying we are working incredibly hard and this is one of the reasons why we're getting these seven or even eight figure salaries. But we want to. And the super interesting thing, in contradistinction to the first year analysts at Morgan Stanley or the put upon salaryman in China, is that a lot of this really does seem to be just like this is what they want to do.
- [38:38]
C
I think that's true for a certain subset of AI researchers who feel like they are under time pressure to achieve certain milestones. But I will say that the hustle broke culture has always been part of Silicon Valley. And maybe it's coming back a little bit. I feel like it went down a little bit during the pandemic partly because people had to do remote work. But to me it reminds me of their first.com boom where the co founders of Yahoo would brag about sleeping under their desks, never going home.
- [39:08]
A
Yeah, exactly. It's like Elon saying it's going to be extremely hardcore. There's a bunch of venture capitalists who are putting together a grind index. Hard do you grind? And it's very Silicon Valley bro, in its own way. I am fascinated though at the way that it does seem to be confined to AI.
- [39:29]
C
I don't think it does though. I just don't see that anecdotally from it really pervasive in a lot of tech companies, AI or not, especially if they're valley based.
- [39:39]
A
Well, I mean the thing that we're talking about, just to be clear, is companies that are going out and when they're advertising for jobs, the first thing it says is this is a job that requires coming into the office six days a week. We want to be very open about that. And we are Silicon Valley grind hustlers or whatever the hell they want to call themselves. And some people want that and some people don't. And if you don't, that's fine, but we want someone who wants that. And I do think this is unhealthy, but I also do think this is on some level, you know, it's consenting adults, you know.
- [40:16]
C
So I have a tat take about this which is that when these companies sort of promote this culture and they know, you know, despite all claiming to be data driven, we know from research that over a certain number of hours you become less productive and things like sleep deprivation affect your cognitive performance. But they're promoting it anyway. And the people who really are harmed by this are disproportionately women, especially if they're at the age where you have children, because the women always end up in the caregiver roles and you just end up with a less diverse workplace as a result. Return to office mandates, I think are having the same effect and it's not.
- [40:54]
B
Good overall for, if you think about it, I agree that it does seem to be very AI driven. And there's a great piece in the journal about how the top paid AI researchers now are like, we have to keep grinding. We have to do 20 years of research in two weeks. We gotta beat this AI clock. Like, we gotta invent the AI, whatever. So this lack of diversity, which I agree with Elizabeth's hot take, you know, you get a certain kind of person who wants to work 100 hour weeks. Everyone, you know, everyone quoted I saw was very young, in their 20s. I think you're locking out, you know, women, whatever. Think about what you're doing. You're inventing or iterating on artificial intelligence, which allegedly is going to be the driver of our economy, economy for the next, I don't know, half a century, 10 years, five years, two weeks, whatever. And you're, you're relying on this very specific type of people to innovate on it, to come up with how it works, to invent it. You're sort of just, you're setting us all up for the same old. When it comes to new technologies, new solutions, like what they're going to be focused on like another decade of, you know, pizza delivery apps or whatever. Instead of other things. We might need more than a more diverse cast of researchers or scientists might come up with.
- [42:13]
A
Maybe. I mean, it might be true. It's entirely possible that it's true. One of the things that fascinates me is the way that probably the highest paid employee in the entire AI universe is this guy Alexander Wang, who got Aqua hired by Mark Zuckerberg at Meta and he is the person who's in charge of their AI subsidiary division, whatever, and he's throwing around eight, nine figure salaries to people to do incredible work. And obviously if you are able to get a hundred million dollar salary, you have a very specific set of skills. This is not like a fungible job where they'll be like, well, if you don't want to, we'll get someone else. And what Alexander Wang has also been doing was reported this week is going out and firing like 600 other AI people at Meta. And we do seem to be entering this world where the number of AI researchers is not really going up. That demand for a very small number of researchers is almost infinite, but demand for AI researchers in general is not. And the ones, there's a few humans who both want to be working incredibly hard, are working incredibly hard, and are being paid incredibly well. And this is just like this weird bubble in money and prestige and work for those few humans. And I wanted to talk about this a little bit because of exactly what Elizabeth was saying about like, like productivity falls off after you start working a certain number of hours per week. And I think that is broadly true for the workforce as a whole. But I also am 100% convinced that everyone in Silicon Valley is convinced that if you are this famous 100x engineer or even a 10x engineer, then you can suffer a 30% diminution in productivity and you're still a 70x engineer or a 7x engineer, and you're still so much better than anyone else.
- [44:27]
B
But what is the work we're talking about? I read this book and I interviewed Cal Newport on our show last year. I think slow productivity. And he has all these examples of, I think he points to, like, Sir Isaac Newton, Jane Austen, the guy who came up with the idea for csi, the CBS TV show that spawned a thousand spinoff TV shows. And like, true original ideas and innovations, yes, they take hard work and experience and knowledge, but it's like a slow build, you know? Like, you guys know, you're writers too. Like, you have an idea, sometimes it comes to you while you're just like, laying in bed before you fall asleep or like in the shower. Like, you need a little bit of time to like, mentally process things before you come up with something.
- [45:14]
A
For sure. Showers are so important for coming up with interest.
- [45:18]
B
It's not like time spent at a computer or like 9, 96 schedule grinding it out will get you to those ideas. Like, you need to take a step.
- [45:27]
A
Back sometimes taking time is a wonderful, wonderful thing. And I have to say, like, one of the things I'm super enjoying in the move from Axios to Bloomberg because I'm not really doing news anymore is I have the luxury of having a lot more time to be able to spend on my stories. And. And a story that I would have spent a day or two writing at Axios is a story that I will now spend two or three weeks writing at Bloomberg. Maybe I'll do other things at the same time, but just being able to have all of those showers in between and be able to just think, it's just like percolating in the back of my head. And I'll go around and I'll twiddle a couple of sentences here and there and at the end of the day it's a better article. It's not, not 10 times better, even if I spent 10 times more days writing it. But it's better and that's great.
- [46:17]
C
Well, also to go Back to your 10x engineer example though, if you are the 10x engineer, you are probably somebody who has a lot of decision making power and a lot of responsibility. And after 60 hours a week, your cognitive performance really drops off enough that in a lot of productivity studies it starts to go negative. And the thing is, if you're talking about these super talented but but also very powerful within the organization engineers, do you want them making major decisions about AI once their cognitive ability starts going into that negative territory?
- [46:52]
B
I don't want that.
- [46:53]
A
Yeah, no, this is definitely one of my big sort of theories. I think I had a podcast, I can't remember, but I think I had a podcast with Arianna Huffington once about this about the financial crisis. And if you read Too Big to fail, the Andrew Rossorkin sort of TikTok about the financial crisis of 2008 and what happened in around September 2008, the one through line is no one is getting enough sleep and people are working through the weekend and we need to do the bailout before Asia opens and all of this kind of stuff. And you get all of these stories about Tim Geithner's phoning up all of these bank CEOs and trying to orchestrate mergers on like a three minute time horizon. And no one is taking a minute to just take a breath. And I do think that a lot of very bad decisions were made over those months because people weren't getting enough sleep and people felt they just didn't have time, There was too much stuff happening too quickly and they just didn't have the luxury of sleep. But yeah, I do think that definitely hurts the world for sure.
- [48:01]
B
There's also something to unpack here about the discrepancy paradox of AI, which is supposed to put. I know you don't want to talk about this, Felix. I don't care. I'm bringing it up. AI, which is supposed to put us all out of work and increase Productivity pushing people to work 72 to 100 hour work weeks. If AI is supposed to get us to stop working, why is it making people work so much more? Is this just like a temporary phase before we all retire and are pushed out of our jobs? Or is this just the cold reality of innovation?
- [48:34]
A
There was that one woman who runs an AI company who was quoted basically saying, yeah, we should be working 24 7, but it should be our AI agents who are working 24 7, not us.
- [48:45]
B
And I spoke to one startup I think over the summer that had gone to a four day work week because they were using AI. And I spoke to their founder and he was like, yeah, it does things a lot faster. So we don't need to work five days a week. We can't keep up with the AI. We need time to understand what it's doing for us with coding or whatever. So we're actually working less now because AI is taking on a lot of our work.
- [49:08]
A
I think that's true. I think outside this little baby Silicon Valley bubble of people actually building the AI models, I don't think that AI is making people work more.
- [49:19]
B
I think it is, is. I think people are scared because there's been a thousand and million bajillion articles, some written by AI that says that AI is taking over and if you don't understand it, you're like going to lose your job or be obsolete or whatever. So I think it's freaking people out. At the same time, as Elizabeth said, we're out of this pandemic phase where employers for a minute they were like, maybe we should make workers happy and have lives. There was like a little time where that was a thing that's over. Now is the time to maybe we should scare the crap out of people and make them fear for their jobs consistently so that they work harder kind of a time. And you know, and you have the policy from the White House that sort of like reinforces that. So I think we're in this moment where we're being told we're obsolete. At the same time we're being told to work like our asses off and it makes no sense.
- [50:09]
A
I want to hear from the smartest people in the world, I. E. The Slate Money listeners, slatemoneylate.com Are you working harder because of AI? If you are, let us know and let us know why Is it, as Emily implies, out of fear, that you think that the way to outrun the AI is to just work harder and then the AI can't replace your job because you're so good at your job because you're working hard.
- [50:35]
B
Or are you going Felix's route and working less?
- [50:37]
A
Or are you going Felix going slower thinking Go slow Think slow people.
- [50:41]
C
Take more showers.
- [50:43]
A
Take more showers. It is how to improve your comparative advantage over the robots and smell good.
- [50:51]
B
Honestly, hygiene is important.
- [50:53]
A
When was the last time you met an AI that smelled good?
- [50:56]
B
That's a good point.
- [50:57]
A
Riddle me that. Foreign is sponsored this week by Vanguard if you are a financial advisor, you probably need to talk about bonds. Capturing value in fixed income is not always easy, but Vanguard bonds are institutional quality, which means top grade products across the board. Vanguard's lineup includes over 80 bond funds that are actively managed by a 200 person global team of sector specialists, analysts and traders. Their philosophy is that the best active strategies should be shared across the team so every client benefits from collective brain power. Vanguard's long standing establishment and scale allows them to invest across all kinds of sectors, maturities and geographies, which means they can spot and act on opportunities that others might miss. Vanguard takes a steady approach and focuses on reliability and consistency versus going all in on risky bets. It sets the standard for what dependable investing should look like. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself@vanguard.com audio that's vanguard.com all investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation distributor Slate Money is sponsored this week by upwork. Scaling your business requires the right expertise at the right time. With upwork, you can find specialized freelancers in marketing, development, design and more experts who are ready to help you take your business to the next level. With more than two decades of experience, upwork has a simple and ambitious goal to pioneer a better way of working. Companies at every stage turn to upwork to get things done and find more flexibility in the way they stuff key projects and initiatives. By accessing a global marketplace filled with top talent in it, web, dev, AI, design, admin, support, marketing and more. Posting a job on upwork is easy with no cost to join. You can register, browse freelancer profiles, get help drafting a job post, or even book a consultation. From there you connect with freelancers that get you and can easily hire them to take your business to the next level. Upwork makes the entire process easier, simpler and more affordable with industry low fees. Post a job today and hire tomorrow with Upwork, visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to post your job for free and connect with Top talent ready to help your business grow. All right, now we are actually going to have a numbers round. I'm going to start with 112, which is the number of percent that Beyond Meat stock rose in like two hours on, what was it, Wednesday morning. Only to then turn around and fall back and close down on the day that basically there was this sort of three hour period in the morning of the trading day where the stock opens, it more than doubles it then does a U turn and crashes back down and closes basically down 1% on the day. And if you just sort of slept through the morning, you would be like, nothing has changed. But meanwhile there's been all of this chaos and it just like, you know, meme stocks are still alive, people, and they're moving even faster than ever.
- [54:54]
B
And beyond meat, the stock is like, it's like a dollar or something or $2.
- [54:58]
A
It's like $3.
- [54:59]
B
It's not good. You would think they would be doing much better. Cause the price of beef is so high right now. You'd think like a beef substitute would be crushing. So my conclusion is that this company, the stuff might not be that good.
- [55:10]
A
I think the reason why the price of beef is so high, a large part of it. Well, there's lots of parts of it and we've talked about it on the show, but a large part of it is people like demand is going up. People just want to eat their burgers.
- [55:23]
B
Yeah, it's very expensive though. I mean, steak. Have you. You know what, we've talked about this.
- [55:27]
A
We've talked about this.
- [55:28]
B
Rolling along. Let's move on.
- [55:29]
A
Let's roll along. Emily, what's your number?
- [55:31]
B
I'm also doing a percent. 43. 43%. That is the drop in food allergy rates in children from 2017 to 2020 after new guidance was issued saying that you should introduce babies to peanut products. There's been this like big fall in peanut allergies among children.
- [55:51]
A
Oh, wow. That's awesome. I love good news numbers.
- [55:54]
B
Good news, guys. I was really excited about it. It's, it was out this week from the medical journal Pediatrics. And I guess when they first started changing the guidance back in 2015, you know, people were afraid cause the guidance used to be don't introduce this stuff to kids because it could be bad for them. Then you remember all the hand wringing about peanut allergies that used to go on like in the early aughts.
- [56:17]
A
Yeah.
- [56:17]
B
People were always freaking out about the peanut allergies. But now there's been this Progress. And it's heartening. And people listen to this guidance, and I think they'll listen to it even more. And there's, like, sanity out there. People listen to the research.
- [56:30]
A
Sometimes serve your baby's peanut butter because it's just a little bit. An amazing, amazingly rich form of nutrition. Like, the thing that you give malnourished kids in parts of the world where kids really suffer from malnourishment is peanut butter. Basically, it's the most incredibly magical thing in the world. It gives you all of the nutrients you need in a little small packet. Elizabeth, what's your number?
- [56:57]
C
My number is 250. And that's dollars. And for $250, you can get a designer wasp nest, or as the New York Times calls it, an alternative house plant to add to your interior decor so that you have some nature inside.
- [57:12]
B
Yes, I. A few years ago, we have massive wasps, wasp nests around where I live. Huge. Like, bigger than my head, dangling from trees. You see them everywhere when the leaves start falling. And one year, we had a really big one on my back porch. And I had to have someone come and, like, get rid of it. Cause it was terrifying. And he was like, do you want to keep it? A lot of people keep these things. What?
- [57:32]
A
And they pay $250 for them. I mean, I'm assuming that this is, like, Sohn's wasps.
- [57:38]
C
Yes. Yes. So apparently the wasps all leave after the first frost. So that's when people go out and gather them. I understand wanting some nature in your house.
- [57:47]
B
Yes.
- [57:47]
C
But just personally, as I was reading this, I feel like if I walked past a wasp nest in my house every day, it would just stress me out. Just subconsciously, my lizard brain would be like, this is bad.
- [57:58]
B
Yeah.
- [57:58]
A
It's like being exposed to peanut butter. You know, you get used to it, and then it's fine.
- [58:03]
B
I kind of get it, though, because whenever I see one, and they're everywhere where I live, no joke. You guys had one in the trunk of my car. They had, like, started making a nest, like, in the corner of the trunk. Me and my daughter were like, we're not. Not. Will you open it? I'm not opening it.
- [58:17]
A
Will you open it?
- [58:18]
B
But they're so fascinating.
- [58:19]
A
You're going for the sacrificial daughter thing. You're like, are you brave, kid? You open it.
- [58:24]
B
You're young.
- [58:25]
C
I dare you.
- [58:26]
B
One year, I got really obsessed with these pictures from, like, Georgia, where, like, wasp nests would take over. Like, an entire car. Like, an abandoned car would, like, be turned into a wasp. Don't. You've gotten me down a path where I cannot get off. So we just need to cut me off because I am so obsessed with the wasp nest. I don't understand it, really.
- [58:44]
A
Send us your photograph of your interior decor wasp nest sleepmoney@slate.com what a good number. It's a good number. 250 bucks. I mean, bargain really. And just think like if your kid needs to supplement their income, they can just go out in the woods near where Emily lives and grab a bunch of wasps nests and sell them for 250 bucks a pop.
- [59:08]
B
Yeah.
- [59:08]
A
Free money, people. It's just growing on trees. When was the last time that you actually saw money growing on trees? It really happens. That's it for us this week, unless you want to treat yourselves to our Slate plus segment on Ice Movies. Thanks to Jessamine Molly for producing. Thanks for keeping us all posted on your goings on on sleepmoneyatsleep.com thanks for watching us on YouTube now that we are now a proper YouTube channel on video. And we will be back next week with more Slate money. Hear that? The next chapter of Audi performance is here. That's the sound of every interior detail refined. And that, that's the sound of Quattro all wheel drive, the all new Audi Q5, the all new A5 and Q7. Each one a statement. Performance never goes out of style.