The Villains Edition

Summary

Slate Money: The Villains Edition (May 28, 2016)

Episode Overview

In this “Villains Edition” of Slate Money, Felix Salmon, Cathy O'Neil, and Jordan Weissmann dive into some of the week's most controversial stories in business and finance. The trio tackles billionaire Peter Thiel’s secret funding of lawsuits against Gawker, the shifting role and philosophy of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the troubling issues tied to using algorithms for predicting recidivism in the justice system.

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1. Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, and the Weaponization of Lawsuits

Segment Start: [02:24]

Key Points

• Peter Thiel’s “villainy”:

  • Thiel was revealed as the funder behind Hulk Hogan's privacy lawsuit against Gawker, as well as other lawsuits.
  • The origin: Gawker threatened to out Thiel as gay in 2006, and Thiel reportedly swore revenge, ultimately launching a decade-long campaign to destroy Gawker Media.
  • Gawker published a heavily edited Hulk Hogan sex tape; Hogan sued for invasion of privacy and won a $140 million verdict.

• Litigation finance, but darker:

  • Thiel’s role went beyond traditional litigation finance—he funded multiple unrelated lawsuits with the clear aim to bankrupt Gawker.
  • Felix: “What I for one have not seen before is billionaires…funding multiple lawsuits which are unrelated to the original tort against that media organization.” [06:38]

• Legal and ethical implications:

  • Panelists debate the ethics versus legality of Thiel’s actions.
  • Jordan: “What Peter Thiel has done is completely ethical by legal standards....” [09:09]
  • Felix: “There are two things which worry me in terms of legal ethics, okay? One of them is the fact that he did the whole thing in secret...And then the other question ... is the question of the lawyer dropping the insurable count against Gawker that was not in his client's best interest.” [09:37]

• The precedent and threat to media:

  • Felix warns this creates a dangerous template: “He has created a blueprint which allows any billionaire to go against any news organization using the same strategy.” [10:26]
  • Cathy: “...it’s still a bad...it’s bad news for the media organizations which are poor.” [15:45]

• Possible solutions:

  • Jordan suggests strengthening federal anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) laws to deter abusive lawsuits by the wealthy. [13:58]
  • Cathy and Felix remain skeptical, arguing that deep pockets still tilt the system against cash-strapped media outlets.

Notable Quotes

• Cathy O’Neil: “Thank you, that’s exactly what worries me about this. And I don’t give a shit what lawyers think is ethical.” [10:49]
• Felix Salmon: “The strategy does not rely on the specifics of the Hogan case. The strategy is, I’m going to go out there with a team of lawyers and fund as many lawsuits as it takes...until you just go bust defending lawsuits.” [11:56]

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2. The IMF’s About-Face on Neoliberalism

Segment Start: [18:10]

Key Points

• IMF’s evolving stance:
  • Recap of the IMF’s traditional role as a lender to troubled countries, with strict neoliberal “reform” conditions: deregulation, free trade, privatization, fiscal austerity. [18:28]
  • IMF’s recent report, “Liberalism Oversold?”, acknowledges the negative consequences of some of these reforms and the downsides of unrestrained capital mobility.
  • Cathy highlights the IMF's shift in negotiations with Greece, now pushing for debt reduction over harsh austerity. [20:28]
• What changed, and why:
  • The Asian financial crisis (1997-98) and the Latin American crisis (early 2000s) exposed the dangers of free capital inflows and outflows, causing the IMF to rethink its positions.
  • Felix notes: “After those two crises, I think the orthodoxy of capital account liberalization more or less went out the window.” [25:03]
• Types of capital:
  • IMF now distinguishes between “good” foreign direct investment (FDI) versus speculative capital flows, which are more volatile and destabilizing. [26:29]
  • Felix: “FDI is where you go in and you fund companies directly or you build factories ... Capital inflows are just fund managers buying stocks and bonds.” [27:13]
• Is this enough?
  • Cathy and Felix discuss whether these policy shifts are too little, too late for deeply indebted places like Greece or Puerto Rico.

Notable Quotes

• Jordan Weissmann: “...the IMF has sort of started backing off from all this....Now they’ve suddenly published this report.... ‘Yes, yes, we oversold neoliberalism.’” [19:23]
• Felix Salmon: “The reason why you impose austerity is...because you have no choice because you can’t raise taxes anymore and you can’t borrow money.” [29:04]

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3. Algorithms and Bias in Predicting Recidivism

Segment Start: [32:36]

Key Points

• The ProPublica investigation:
  • Journalists Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson examined the proprietary "COMPAS" algorithm used in Florida courts to predict if a defendant is likely to re-offend.
  • Their analysis found COMPAS was twice as likely to label black defendants as high risk (when they did not re-offend) and twice as likely to label white defendants low risk (when they did re-offend).
  • Cathy: “You’d never expect anything like this to be perfectly accurate. It’s statistical. ... But you do want the errors to be consistent across races. And you don’t.” [35:03]
• Does math trump human bias?
  • Jordan raises whether even flawed algorithms are better than biased human judges, though admits, “our current justice system is already super racist.” [36:17]
• Iterating and auditing the tools:
  • Felix is baffled that the algorithm wasn’t subjected to ongoing audit and improvement: “It seems that what ProPublica has done is what the model makers should have been doing in real time all along.” [37:05]
  • Cathy calls for ongoing, transparent audits as standard judicial practice: “Why is the justice system itself not taking this on as something they need to audit on a continual basis?” [37:36]
• Transparency and privatization:
  • The panel is disturbed that a proprietary, black-box algorithm is being used in the public justice system.
  • Felix: “Is there any Good reason why this algorithm shouldn’t be public?” [42:03]
  • Cathy: “There’s no good reason...there is absolutely no reason for it not to be public. If it were public, then people ... could audit it more directly.” [42:11]

Notable Quotes

• Cathy O’Neil: “These models aren’t that inaccurate...their reasons … are mostly because they pick up sort of uneven policing practices. ... We sometimes confuse accuracy with justice.” [40:18]
• Jordan Weissmann: “It is that this was a proprietary algorithm ... being used in the ... public criminal justice system. ... It was essentially a black box.” [41:08]

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4. Numbers Round and Memorable Anecdotes

Segment Start: [45:34]

Notable Numbers

• Cathy O’Neil – “1.4 billion [yen]”: Amount stolen from Japanese ATMs in 3 hours by a coordinated heist (about $12.7 million). [45:34]
• Felix Salmon – “13,317,980”: Broadway tickets sold last year, an all-time high. [45:57]
• Jordan Weissmann – “19,657”: Student borrowers petitioning the US Department of Education to cancel loans due to fraud. [47:30]

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5. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Cathy O’Neil (re: Peter Thiel): “What I worry about is ... what percentage of Peter Thiel’s fortune was actually used? Almost none.” [11:00]
• Felix Salmon (on Thiel’s strategy): “The specifics of the Hogan case are especially beside the point. The strategy does not rely on the specifics...” [11:56]
• Cathy O’Neil (on recidivism algorithms): “Why is the immediate reaction of a judge to say, ‘okay, you’re going to be in jail longer because you’re a higher risk’ instead of ... help you find a job after you leave?” [37:36]
• Jordan Weissmann (on algorithmic transparency): “The lack of transparency ... when people’s freedom is at stake is just a little bit appalling.” [41:34]

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6. Episode Takeaways

• Money can buy legal outcomes: Peter Thiel’s campaign against Gawker reveals how billionaires can threaten press freedom by financing waves of lawsuits, raising serious concerns about fairness and access to justice.
• Powerful institutions can change... slowly: The IMF’s public criticism of its old playbook highlights that even the most orthodox guardians of global finance can admit fault—eventually.
• Algorithms aren’t neutral: Predictive tools in the criminal justice system can encode and amplify societal bias, especially if they remain closed to public scrutiny and improvement.

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For listeners who missed it: This episode is a sharp—and often funny—examination of what “villainy” looks like across tech, finance, and the law, leavened by the hosts’ skepticism, expertise, and quotable banter.

Transcript

[Host (Ad Reader)]

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[Jordan Weissmann]

The following podcast contains explicit language.

[Felix Salmon]

Hello and welcome to the Villains edition of Slate Money. This is going to be full of villainy. It's going to be a good one this week. The business and finance news of this week has been dominated by all manner of fantastic stuff. So we're going to be talking about the evil billionaire Peter Thiel. We're going to be talking about the evil International Monetary Fund. Even the name sounds evil. And we are going to be talking about people who've actually gone to prison for being villainous and whether they are going to. What's the word? Reoffend.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Recidivists.

[Felix Salmon]

Reoffend.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Okay.

[Felix Salmon]

Whether they're gonna re offend and go back to prison again and again. Yeah. We are gonna be delving deep into the darker side of humanity with Cathy O', Neill, the [e-mail].

[Cathy O'Neil]

Hi, everyone.

[Felix Salmon]

Hello, Kathy. And with Jordan Wiseman, the Moneybox columnist at Slate.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Hello there.

[Felix Salmon]

And I feel like it's. I'm just going to jump right in because this is my favorite topic. I'm going to talk about the evil billionaire Peter Thiel.

[Cathy O'Neil]

I love how evil this guy is.

[Felix Salmon]

So the evil billionaire Peter Thiel outed himself this week. It's unclear whether he outed himself or whether he was first outed against his will by Forbes and then just decided to go public. In any event, he is the secret evil force behind not only the Hulk Hogan vs. Gorka lawsuit, but various other lawsuits as well, also against Gorka. He has been working, literally for years. Back in 2006, Nick Denton the proprietor of Gorka started sniffing around for a story talking about how Peter is gay. And Peter told his PayPal co founder Max Levchin, who then told Nick Denton that if Nick were to publish such a story, then all manner of destruction would rain down upon Gorka and Nick and Gorka media. And now 10 years later, Peter Deal's cunning plan to destroy Gorkhamedia has become public and it is truly evil.

[Jordan Weissmann]

We should probably just give a little background for our non media addict listeners about what the Hulk Hogan lawsuit is, which is, if you haven't seen the news about this, basically Gawker published a sex tape featuring Hulk Hogan having sex with the wife of his friend Bubba the love Sponge.

[Felix Salmon]

Six seconds of sex. It wasn't like the whole thing. No, this was, it was a very edited down tape.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah. This wasn't a whole summer, was it?

[Cathy O'Neil]

More like 1x rated. Was it actually X rated?

[Jordan Weissmann]

It's kind of grainy and I mean. Yeah, I guess. Yeah.

[Felix Salmon]

I have to admit I didn't actually watch.

[Cathy O'Neil]

I didn't either.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Anyway, but they published this. Hulk got mad and he brought a invasion of privacy suit essentially in Florida, which resulted through all sorts of luck, including a judge who was incredibly sympathetic and a jury that was incredibly sympathetic, a $140 million verdict against Gawker.

[Felix Salmon]

Well, let's also explain that this suit was thrown out of various different courts various times before eventually he found a sympathetic judge who would take it in state court. And the cost of going to all of these different courts was enormous. And all the while, you know, while he was jurisdiction shopping like this, Hulk Hogan was refusing substantial settlement offers from Gorkha. None of this made a lot of sense because Hulk Hogan is not actually particularly well off. Off. He was being offered seven figure sums by Gorka and he was saying, no, I'm going to continue to spend millions of dollars on lawsuits instead. People didn't understand that. And people also didn't understand why when he finally did get to Florida state court, he dropped the one charge which would have allowed Gorkha's insurance company to pay him, which also didn't make sense. But now it all makes sense because.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Because somebody else was bankrolling him because.

[Felix Salmon]

The entire thing was being paid for by Peter Thiel, who had actually a whole team of lawyers to go out and scour Gorkha.com find anything litigation worthy, approach these their lawyers and say, listen, we will pay for you to just fight and fight and fight, just so long as you can get behind our aim, which is to Destroy Gorkha rather than just to get you the most money.

[Cathy O'Neil]

So we've talked a little bit on this podcast about other people bankrolling lawsuits.

[Felix Salmon]

Litigation finance.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Litigation finance. And we talked about it with respect to like the, I think the transvaginal mesh surgery, you know, unnecessary surgery that didn't really do any good but made lawyers a lot of money. And we basically decided it's scummy. And it seems to be even scummier now.

[Jordan Weissmann]

I think you guys decided it was scummy. I'm sort of on the fence. And this actually isn't even that. This is not even litigation finance in that sense. This is something that's completely, I mean, sort of been around forever.

[Felix Salmon]

If you think, well, I have never seen this before. I have seen variation. Yeah, no, I haven't seen this before. And to be clear, when I talk about this, litigation finance is where I find a lawsuit and I, you know, help to fund the lawsuit in order to get a share of the proceeds on the back end. And, you know, it might be a little bit scummy. I'm not necessarily always opposed to it. And billionaires suing media organizations is something we have seen a million times because you write something rude about the billionaire and then they get upset and then they sue you. What I for one have not seen before is billionaires getting upset at media organizations and then funding multiple lawsuits which are unrelated to the original tort against that media organization.

[Jordan Weissmann]

So I'm blanking on his name right now, but the billionaire who went after Mother Jones a while back, they ran their long.

[Felix Salmon]

That's right, he threatened to do this.

[Jordan Weissmann]

So he's at least put the idea out there. And my guess is someone has to have done this before. I'm always skeptical when someone says this is the first. I just, I imagine they probably stayed quiet about it. But.

[Felix Salmon]

But I think this is certainly the first time that someone's come out and said, this is one of the most philanthropic things I've ever done.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah. So I think we have to separate.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Yeah, let's talk about that. Like, what is this guy the most thin skinned person in the world? Like, what's going on with him? He's. He wasn't damaged by the original, like at all.

[Felix Salmon]

Like, it is not exactly damag to accuse someone or to tell the world that someone is gay. In fact, it did him no harm at all.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Yeah. So why is he so hurt? Why does he consider himself a victim? And like, can we talk about libertarianism and victimhood, like, a little bit?

[Felix Salmon]

And why Is it that all of Silicon Valley seems to be team Peter Thiel here rather than team like people should be able to say true things on the Internet?

[Jordan Weissmann]

I think, I mean, I think you're right about the thin skinnedness. I think that there is a sense that Gawker, I mean, on their part, I love Gawker. The other day I actually tweeted when they published, they published that story about Donald Trump's hair. My tweet, which was actually figuring out what kind of a hairpiece it probably was. My tweet was thank God for Gawker. So I'm just on the table here.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Thank God for Gawker.

[Jordan Weissmann]

I mean, look, we have to think.

[Cathy O'Neil]

About the system that, whereby like public figures get to be ridiculed by places like Gawker and whether we're better off or not with that system in place. And I say by far we are.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yes, I personally agree with that. I think other people have a much dimmer view of the press. And you have to remember we are basically, I mean, you, Cathy, are essentially a member of the press. I mean, a lot of America thinks we're scum. And billionaires in Silicon Valley have an especially dim view when they start poking around their personal lives. So I understand the antipathy to some degree. I think that what's interesting to me here is that what Peter Thiel has done is completely ethical by legal standards. He has not done anything.

[Felix Salmon]

Wait, wait, wait. It's totally legal.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Legal. Legal ethics as well.

[Felix Salmon]

No, I'm not sure about the legal ethics.

[Jordan Weissmann]

No, no.

[Felix Salmon]

There are two things which worry me in terms of legal ethics, okay? One of them is the fact that he did the whole thing in secret. That's allowed that? Well, I didn't say it wasn't legal. I said it's ethically dubious.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Okay? Legal ethics means something specific.

[Felix Salmon]

And then the other question of the legal ethics, which is actually more important, is the question of the lawyer who brought the case dropping the insurable count against Gorka that was not in his client's best interest.

[Jordan Weissmann]

No, that's not true. So I've talked to legal ethicists about this, specifically people who study this for a living. And if Hogan said, let's do that, the lawyer is allowed to do that and Hogan is allowed to. And if Hogan makes that decision specifically because he wants to keep his backer happy, that is permissible in court.

[Felix Salmon]

Lawyers do serve a useful function, but they can be weaponized. And what Peter Thiel has done here is he has weaponized a bunch of lawyers to bankrupt A media organization. And that is worrying. And he has created a blueprint which allows any billionaire to go against any news organization using the same strategy.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Thank you. That's exactly what worries me about this. And I don't give a shit what lawyers think is ethical. What I worry about is the fact that how much. What percentage of Peter Thiel's fortune was actually used?

[Felix Salmon]

Almost none. He almost spent $10 million to do this.

[Jordan Weissmann]

I am not as worried about this blueprint getting used over and over again because Brian Feldman, I think at New York magazine actually made this point. But it sort of struck me as well just that the Hogan case is really, really specific. It's not even your typical. It's not your typical nuisance lawsuit or nuisance libel or defamation suit. It's an invasion of privacy suit over a. Over a sex tape. It's not something that comes up often. It's the kind of thing that even in states with anti slap laws, right. Some states like California have something. It's called anti strategic litigation against public participation. It's meant to keep people like billionaires from just suing the press into oblivion. This kind of suit probably wouldn't even be prevented by that. It's such a specific instance where you can bring what looks like maybe possibly a nuisance case and for it to blow up like this most of the time. I don't think it would work out like that.

[Felix Salmon]

But that's not the point. The Hogan case is behind the point is beside the point. The specifics of the Hogan case are especially beside the point. The strategy does not rely on the specifics of the Hogan case. The strategy is I'm going to go out there with a team of lawyers and fund as many lawsuits as it takes in as many jurisdictions as it takes until you just go bust defending lawsuits.

[Jordan Weissmann]

And it's hard to find that many lawsuits that a will be, even if they're who you're going to get a willing plaintiff who's willing to subject themselves to this without paying them. And by the way, you can't actually. The thing about Hogan here is he theoretically he's allowed to have his legal fees paid. But if Thiel is actually paying Hogan himself to be the plaintiff, that complicates things and could undo the whole case. It could become very legal depending or very problematic in a civil case. Not necessarily a crime. But you know, I don't think it's that easily replicable. And if you are worried about it, I mean, I think you should talk about possible. I think you should talk about Possible remedies. There are. There is. You know, I haven't seen a lot of discussion about the legislation we could. People could support to deal with this. And it exists. There are things that we could do if we want to discuss. I'm happy to, but I haven't. I've seen a lot of outrage and a lot, not a lot of constructive talk about what the goal should be to avoid suits like this.

[Felix Salmon]

No, and I don't think the goal should be to avoid suits like this. As I say, like, I believe in the courts. I believe if they serve a useful purpose, and I believe that if this Hulk Hogan case is allowed to wend its way through the various appeals, that ultimately it will be overturned or the damages will be substantially reduced and justice will be done. I don't want to avoid cases like this. What I want to avoid is a strategy from Peter Thiel which can go on for decades or more, where he's like, I'm going to sit and watch you publish over a million articles, and statistically speaking, there's going to be litigable stuff in there, and I'm just going to litigate absolutely every single one that I can. And that's going to go on forever until you are bust. Eventually he will find one.

[Jordan Weissmann]

So I think there actually is a. There is a potential policy way to deal with that to head off the possibility of a guy like Peter Thiel doing that. And that's. There's something called a federal slap law, right? There are these state levels anti slap laws where you can basically, when someone gives a. Brings a nuisance lawsuit against you because you said something mean about them in a public place or in a newspaper, you can bring a slap motion. And saying, this is just meant to keep me from speaking. The whole case gets.

[Cathy O'Neil]

But if it's secret, how do you know? Wait.

[Jordan Weissmann]

And what's more, you bring it against the complaint. I'm saying in general, the Hogan case is an isolated incident. Most of the time it's not going to be a sex tape invasion of privacy. It's more likely to be something like libel or defamation. If he wants to. Which his other cases appear to be. If he wants to continue a strategy like this, it's going to be more libel or defamation. So what you can do is you have these slap laws. What they do is they say, we're going to go through, see if this is a nuisance case. And if it is, the judge can rule ahead of time and make it a very short proceeding. Plus, on top of that, some states have Something called an anti slap have a slap back law. So if someone brings one of these nuisance suits against you, you can bring a follow up suit getting extra damages from them so their nuisance suit actually becomes profitable for the target. So if you have those two things on a federal level which people have talked about, then actually this, this sort of strategy where you just bring an endless number of lawsuits to breathe, bleed them dry on legal fees will eventually fail. So if you want to talk about, you know, maybe lobbying for that, that's interesting to me talking about the outrage of Peter Thiel and you know, whether or not he's a bad guy, that's less interesting to me.

[Felix Salmon]

Well, I think it's outrageous and he's a bad guy and I am not. I think he's probably smart enough to only fund non nuisance suits rather than nuisance suits. And so that doesn't, you know, that doesn't. Federal anti slapp law wouldn't prevent.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Well if they're not.

[Cathy O'Neil]

It also doesn't convince me, it doesn't convince me even with what you just said about slap suits and stuff that it's not at the end of the day an arms race about money with respect to the legal system. That's what I worry about the most. Even if you lose a SLAPP suit or whatever, if it's a drop in the bucket cuz you're so, so rich, it's still a bad, it's bad news for the media organizations which are poor.

[Felix Salmon]

At which point we are going to move on to the International Monetary Fund.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Let's do it.

[Felix Salmon]

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[Cathy O'Neil]

It's great for Thin skin.

[Felix Salmon]

It doesn't matter if you have $2 billion, you still can't get better than Boland Branch. So you can feel what it's like to be a billionaire, which is not. Well, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if I really want to know what it's like to be Peter Thiel. But if you want to know what he sleeps like, you go to BollandBranch.com B, O L L and Branch.com. and if you use the promo code money, then you get 20% off everything. The sheets, towels, blankets, duvet covers, whatever you want, free shipping, all returnable for free. But you won't. Just make sure you wash them a couple of times, because the more you wash them, the softer they get, the more wonderful they get. Boland Ranch, you will love it. You will know what it's like to be a billionaire, at least when you're sleeping. So, yeah, Jordan. Yes, we all. Well, no, the likes of Kathy o' Neill hate to love to hate on the imf.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yes.

[Felix Salmon]

So do they have good reason to hate.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Wait a second, I should speak for myself.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Do you hate on the imf?

[Cathy O'Neil]

Well, not this recent report. No, I hate on the old IMF.

[Jordan Weissmann]

I was going to say I feel like the IMF's.

[Cathy O'Neil]

The IMF is changing.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah. Has changed a lot. And we've seen that. Okay, we should probably back up and talk about. Yeah.

[Cathy O'Neil]

What is the imf?

[Jordan Weissmann]

What is the imf? It basically acts as the lender of last resort for struggling countries. Right. You know, back in the 80s and 90s when a country was facing some financial hard straits, they're getting cut off from debt markets, whatever. The IMF would come in with some sort of loan to help smooth things over. However, that loan would come with conditions, typically where they would say you have to get your economy in order. But their idea of getting their economy in order to. Was implementing a bunch of what we like to call neoliberal reforms. What's neoliberal? That word gets tossed around kind of lightly these days, especially by the left. But it typically meant a lot of deregulation in your economy. It meant an embrace of free trade and an embrace of what we call free capital, letting money kind of flow in and out of your borders. It meant selling off public assets, utilities, things like that, and kind of privatizing the country. And if you did all that, you were supposed to grow like gangbusters.

[Felix Salmon]

And it also meant a relatively tight fiscal policy.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yes. Yeah.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Bringing down your debt.

[Jordan Weissmann]

High interest rates, low debt. Those Things. All the things that we typically associate now with conservative economics, let's put it pretty bluntly, and it didn't always work out so hot. And some countries started experiencing things like financial crises because they were suddenly embracing things like free capital. And in recent years, the IMF has sort of started backing off from all this. We've seen it a lot after the financial crisis, especially actually with Greece. Yeah. Where they've been the ones sort of telling Europe, please, for the love of God, you need to do debt reductions or none of this is ever going to work. So basically, and now, sorry, and then I'm going to let you guys go, but now they've suddenly published this report, which a lot of people saw on Twitter and kind of went, ha. Like, wtf? Which said it was titled Liberalism oversold question mark. And then the subhead was basically, yes, yes, we oversold neoliberalism. And it talks about two specific aspects of it, but this was just kind of. This remark, kind of finally doing a 180 on the part of the IMF.

[Cathy O'Neil]

And I've been tweeting about the IMF for, like, three weeks now because they've been in really heavy, heavy debates with Germany over what's gonna happen with Greece. Because we've talked about this before about. Greece is very behind with its debt paybacks and it's very underwater. And sort of the old IMF would be telling it, hey, telling Greece, hey, you have to have more austerity. You have to be stricter. You have to, like, raise taxes more. The new IMF is saying this is unsustainable debt, and we cannot make Greece agree to these terms.

[Felix Salmon]

Well, I mean, it's interesting. Even the old IMF was not quite as averse to debt defaults as people think, because remember that the IMF is a lender. The IMF basically always gets repaid. The IMF is first on the repayment list. Senior, maybe super senior, I don't know. Wait, no, that's a AAA thing. There's a technical term which it's too early in the morning for me to remember what it is.

[Jordan Weissmann]

The big dog.

[Cathy O'Neil]

You guys realize we get up at 2 in the morning to record these things. So Saturday you have your podcast.

[Felix Salmon]

It's true.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Absolutely.

[Felix Salmon]

So the imf, IMF is a lender. And what the IMF wants just is what any other lender wants is to be repaid in full. And if it's lending to a country which is already heavily indebted, it knows that its chances of getting repaid go down the More debt there is. So the IMF in principle is normally quite happy for countries to restructure their debts and reduce their debt burden because that makes it easier for them to pay back the imf.

[Jordan Weissmann]

At the same time, they're also, they've taken this stance against austerity, which is interesting, because again, that was part of the old neoliberal agenda, was that you cut your deficits, you kept your debt in check as much as possible. And with Greece, they've said, you might want to go easy on this, it might not work out so well.

[Cathy O'Neil]

And they generalized that in the report, basically. In the report, they said, when you impose austerity, you have a. A lag. But then once you have that, a few months later or maybe a year later, you have a problem with growth. Like, your growth slows down because austerity hurts.

[Jordan Weissmann]

So the part of the other thing in the report that they focused on was this idea of free capital. And I think this super interesting. Yeah. This is the part that, frankly, your typical Bernie Sanders fan doesn't think much about this when they throw around the word neoliberalism. But I think, and Felix, tell me if you agree or disagree, in a lot of ways, this is the thing about that, about the neoliberal program that may have gone most awry, that I think at this point is most obviously had down a big, big downside just in the volatility of the financial world and kind of sovereign debts and sovereign finances and the way money can just kind of get yanked out of a country quickly, at least. And it seems like the 97 financial crisis is maybe the biggest example of that in some ways. But the 97 Asian financial crisis.

[Felix Salmon]

Yeah.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Is maybe the biggest example of that. But I mean, do you think that that might be the part that. I mean, do you agree that that's part that's been the biggest failure, or do you think it has been a failure? I mean, I'm curious to hear.

[Felix Salmon]

So. So, yeah, capital account liberal. Capital account liberalization was indeed a large part of the IMF's standard agenda for developing countries up until the late 90s. In the late 90s, it became increasingly obvious that there were huge dangers associated.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Can we just dumb this down? What you're talking about?

[Felix Salmon]

So what we are talking about basically, is allowing anyone anywhere in the world to invest as much money as they want in your country.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Exactly.

[Felix Salmon]

It's like opening up your country to foreign capital, which in principle sounds awesome. Right. Like, if you open up your country to foreign capital, then all of this money pours in and it gets invested and profit.

[Jordan Weissmann]

And the flip side was. No, also, the flip side is letting them take the money out.

[Felix Salmon]

Exactly. And no one's going to just freely pour their money in unless they can freely take their money out. So this is what capital account liberalization means, is that you should have very, very few, if any, barriers to money coming in and out of your country. And what we saw in 1997, 98 during the Asian Financial crisis was that there were big problems with this in that people would pour money in and then suddenly it would stop. You would get used to this constant inflow of dollars, and then suddenly the constant inflow of dollars would become a massive outflow of dollars. And that huge reversal would be massively damaging to your economy. And would, of course, a financial crisis, a banking crisis, and all manner of other ills. And the first country to really realize this was Malaysia, which put in capital controls in 1998 to stop people taking their money out. And the IM. You can't do that. That goes against orthodoxy, but it worked really quite well for Malaysia. And then you had the Latin American financial crisis of 2001-2002, Argentina, Brazil, and you had the Inter American Development bank really start coming out with a pretty compelling set of papers about what they called sudden stops, where you have a bunch of money going into a country and then it stops suddenly. It doesn't even need to be. Just the stopping of the inflows is enough to really cause chaos in a country. So after those two crises, I think the orthodoxy of capital account liberalization more or less went out the window. Now we are now, in 2006, we were a long way past 2016. Rather, we're like 14 years after the Argentine crisis or the Brazilian crisis. And I think that the fact that people are surprised the IMF is skeptical about free capital accounts, it's like, really, I feel like it's been skeptical for the past 15 years.

[Cathy O'Neil]

So one of the things I found interesting is that the IMF actually differentiated between two different kinds of money coming into a country. And they made it sound really very, very different. I'm not sure we can actually do this in real life, but they differentiated between sort of investment. And I think you should think of like Apple investing in China and giving a lot jobs.

[Felix Salmon]

And everyone points to that foreign direct investment, which is generally considered to be a good thing, because what it does is it brings technology into countries and.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Jobs and skills, et cetera. It really builds the country's economic system versus and they differentiate versus speculative Sort of investment just for portfolio. I want part of my portfolio to be in emerging markets and that's exactly the kind of bad money.

[Felix Salmon]

And it's actually not so hard to distinguish there because FDI is where you go in and you fund companies directly or you build factories or something like that. Capital inflows are just fund managers buying stocks and bonds.

[Cathy O'Neil]

So it seems like a country could impose capital controls on the latter.

[Felix Salmon]

Yes, and that's normally what they do. There's normally look at say. Well, I mean, I'm trying to think of a good example but yeah, it's quite common for countries to make it. It a little bit hard to buy stocks and bonds compared to. Well, if you want to throw money into our banking system, that's great.

[Jordan Weissmann]

I mean, I think also. Again, tell me what you think. But I feel like the example of China has to have been illustrative here too. Right. Just they are not a country that's.

[Felix Salmon]

Fully liberalized their capital account or even the fdi. They've actually made it hard not only to invest in stocks and bonds, but also to invest in companies because they don't need foreign money. They are printing money. They have a surplus of capital which they're spending on treasury bonds because they don't know what to do with it. Any sector which needs investment, there's more than enough money sloshing around China to do that domestically. So they don't really need foreign money at all.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Okay, but let's think about Puerto Rico or Greece. They do need money. Is this IMF report going to change anything for those countries or that territory?

[Felix Salmon]

Puerto Rico could probably do with some capital controls, but as a member of the United States of America, it's not allowed to impose capital control.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Right, but at the very least, the point about austerity not actually helping an economy.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah, I mean I think that's. But that's kind of established rift now between, you know, I mean everyone's kind of aware of this debate and I.

[Felix Salmon]

Feel like even the Austerians have more or less given up mostly on the idea that it's good for the economy to slash your government finances. They're just in most cases, like Greece, the reason why you impose austerity is because you have to, you have no choice because you can't raise taxes anymore and you can't borrow money. So you have to balance your budget somehow because there's no one willing to lend you that extra money. It's austerity by necessity rather than by choice. The point in this IMF article Is that the really big countries like the US And Germany and the UK Every so often get this austerity bug. And that just doesn't make any sense because that's by choice. Why would you by choice do this kind of thing?

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah, the markets aren't going to cut the United States out of selling treasury bonds.

[Felix Salmon]

They are not. Okay, we are going to move on to recidivism. Kathy. And this is. This is. I can't wait to hear Kathy talk about this because she has literally just written an entire book about this and it's gonna. So we genuinely have the expert in the room. But I do first need to talk about ZipRecruiter, which is the way you hire people. So if you want people to write awesome articles about neoliberalism and debunking sacred cows of Milton Friedman, then. And what you do is you can go along to a million different job sites and say, I want to hire a sacred cow debunker. And then the sacred cow debunkers are somewhere else and you never find them. And it's hard for you to. Hard for that market to clear. But guess what? We have a way of making this market clear.

[Cathy O'Neil]

I do not know where this is going.

[Felix Salmon]

Instead of going to all of these millions of job sites and trying to do it yourself, you go to ziprecruiter.com.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Oh my God, amazing.

[Felix Salmon]

And you put up one. You just go to one little thing and you say, hey, I need a sacred County Bunker. And ZipRecruiter will take care of everything. They have keyword search, millions of people who they can reach, millions of resumes on file. They have hundreds of thousands of businesses using their services. They are the experts at finding exactly the people that you want to hire. And they, unlike you, can find that sacred cow debunker easily. They can match you up. The market will clear. You will be happy because you have found your sacred cow debunker. The sacred cow debunker will be happy because you're offering them a massive pay rise and all is well in the world. So ZipRecruiter.com is like, it's making markets much more efficient. It's making labor markets much more efficient. It's a great thing for the economy, and it's a great thing for any business because hiring is a pain, as anyone who's ever tried it knows. And ZipRecruiter makes it much easier to screen candidates, rate them, and hire the right person fast. Over 800,000 businesses have used it. That's a Lot of businesses. So what's more, you can put an ad up for free. You can try it out for free if you go to ziprecruiter.com money. So what's not to love? You get to hire someone for free, basically, which is unheard of. Ziprecruiter.com money. Check it out. Hire the person you want to hire. Kathy, tell me about ProPublica, Julia Angwin, all of this kind of stuff.

[Cathy O'Neil]

I'm a huge fan of Julie Angwen and Jeff Larson, who wrote this report earlier this week on recidivism risk. What is that? That is an algorithm. And they specifically studied one of the. There's like a whole family of algorithms, but they studied this one called Compass, which was being used in Florida, which rates someone who's being sentenced or paroled or, or up for bail. They rate them on a scale like 1 to 10, 10 being the highest risk of recidivism, which means the highest risk of coming back to jail once they leave, and one being the lowest risk, like they're probably not going to come back to jail once they leave. Now, 97% of people who go to jail come back, leave. I should say leave at some point. So it makes sense to sort of want to know how likely is this person to come back or not. And there's a lot of issues with this algorithm. The scoring model. I'll call it the scoring model.

[Felix Salmon]

Would you call this a weapon of math destruction? I would.

[Cathy O'Neil]

I absolutely would. And yes, you're right. I did write an entire book on various algorithms that I think are destructive. The reason I think this one in particular is destructive is because it sort of creates a negative and destructive feedback loop. I'll say a little bit about it. But the thing that's really great about what they've done is they used basically public records by using FOIA requests. Basically, they just looked at what actually happened to the defendants that were scored and then went to jail and then left and did they come back or not? And they found that some of them came back and they divided into like, basically white people and black people. They found that, you know, some, some people came back. Some of those people who came back were actually scored high risk, some of them were scored low risk. And in general, they found that the black, blacks were twice as likely to be erroneously labeled high risk. So they were labeled high risk, but they didn't actually show up again in jail versus white people. And the white ones were much more likely, twice as likely to be erroneously labeled low risk. So they were Labeled low risk. They weren't supposed to show back up in jail, but they did show up in jail. So basically, you know, you'd never expect anything like this to be perfectly accurate. It's statistical. Right. You're not going to get exactly. You're not going to be able to. If any algorithm isn't going to be able to pick out exactly those people that are coming back to jail. But you do want the errors to be consistent across races. And you don't, you don't find that. They didn't find that.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah. I mean, this story was pretty dispiriting in the way most about criminal justice are. And this one has, you know, a lot of the judges in these cases seem to look at this algorithm and trust in it and let it influence their decisions about sentencing, even though the inventors of it initially said that that wasn't really their intention when they first designed the thing, it came out of sort of prison management and evolved into a different sort of beast. What I found myself wondering, and I don't. I mean, it seems like from this pro public report, this algorithm has problems. I'm not trying to defend this one in particular. It seems like there's this racial. It's creating, and maybe it's creating a racial gap in sentencing or quite possibly. What I wonder is how do you figure out whether the algorithm, for all its flaws, is worse than regular old human judgment and judicial judgment in a situation like this, is it possible to design an algorithm and figure out if it's. Even if it's wrong some of the time, if that margin of error is still better than the margin of error that you get just from having a judge sit there and put his finger to the air about whether this guy is a threat to society in the future.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Yeah. And so there's. That's a really good question. The fact is, our current justice system is already super racist.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah.

[Cathy O'Neil]

And so any attempt to make it less racist is worth thinking about. And the answer is, I don't know. And the answer is this is one of the very, very first. And this is one of the. The most sad thing about this. These are being used in more than half the states for things like sentencing, paroling and bail. And very few researchers have gone, at least on the record, talking about whether they're fair or not. So the very first point you have to make is we should be asking this question. Right. If we care about fairness and justice, we absolutely should be tracking this.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah. About the testing part, what struck me about this system is it Seems like something it should be able to. You should be able to test it just using old public records or you.

[Felix Salmon]

Should be able to iterate it. This is the thing which I don't understand is that no model is exact. No model is perfect. Everyone knows this. Models are always by definition, approximations. And so any decent model maker is going to continually use real world feedback mechanisms to iterate and to improve the model. And it seems that what ProPublica has done is what the model makers should have been doing in real time all along.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Thank you for saying that. Yes. I mean, one of the things I'm agitating for in my book, because this is one of my examples, is like, why is the justice system itself not taking this on as something they need to audit on a continual basis and build that feedback? I mean, the very first question I would ask, by the way, is why exactly when we have a higher risk of recidivism, do we sentence people for longer? Why does the immediate reaction of a judge to say, okay, you're going to be in jail longer because you're a higher risk for coming back? Another possible reaction would be, okay, we're going to figure out why you're coming back and maybe help you find a job after you leave. So, I mean, there's so many questions to be asked here right now. It's in its infancy. Like they just started using these models and they're considered a magic bullet for the reasons you said, Jordan, which is that they're mathematical and pseudoscientific and we're just not questioning them yet.

[Felix Salmon]

And I should. I mean, it reminds me of one of the first social impact bonds which was underwritten by Goldman Sachs or the Goldman Sachs foundation and the Bloomberg Philanthropies. And again, there's this kind of blind faith in big data and the way that you can use this to help create positive social outcomes. And basically the idea was there was some magic bullet you could do with inmates at Rikers island. And if you just poured this magic sauce on the inmates, that would massively reduce the recidivism rate. And so what happened was that Goldman Sachs and the Bloomberg philanthropies backstopped this social impact bond by Goldman Sachs, which basically raised the money to pay for the magic sauce which they would pour all over the inmates. And then if it worked, then the bond would pay interest back to the people who bought it. And presumably the New York City justice system would then keep on buying that magic source because it worked really well. And if it didn't work, then the bondholders would lose a certain amount of money, and Bloomberg philanthropies would lose quite a lot of money. And it's a very interesting model. But what's fascinating was that this was an attempt to try and prove social impact bonds and show how effective they can be in bringing wonderful magic source into the criminal justice system. And what actually happened was that it didn't work. And the Bloomberg philanthropies lost a lot of money. And the magic source wasn't magic at all, because these big data things and these magic sources and these magic bullets are never quite as clean and wonderful as people think they are.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Well, another thing that Bear is mentioning is that these models aren't that inaccurate. And I talk about this at length in my book, but the reasons they're not inaccurate are mostly because they pick up sort of uneven policing practices. So they ask you questions. One of the questions in the Compass model and in most of the models are things like, do you live in a high crime neighborhood? Well, guess what? If you live in a high crime neighborhood, police are more likely to be sniffing at you all the time, and you're more likely to end up back in jail for whatever reason, possibly because you're smoking pot, you know, possibly a nuisance crime. So another issue that comes along is that we sometimes confuse accuracy with justice. Accuracy can be built in because of already uneven racist practices, and that doesn't mean we're getting justice.

[Jordan Weissmann]

One thing, this is a little bit separate, but that struck me about this story was that ProPublica had to do this digging at all, that it is that this was a proprietary algorithm.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Yes.

[Jordan Weissmann]

And that it's a proprietary algorithm being used in the, you know, public criminal justice system. It's a black. Until ProPublica dug into it, it was essentially a black box.

[Cathy O'Neil]

It is still a black box.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah.

[Cathy O'Neil]

I mean, it's audited, but it's still a black box.

[Jordan Weissmann]

And that is, I mean, the lack of transparency. And this is, I guess, the whole issue with privatizing justice in general, but the lack of transparency here when people's freedom is at stake is just a little bit appalling. And I think it just raises this question of, you know, of how. I mean, should there be. I mean, this is one of those cases where do you really want to introduce profit motive into an aspect of the justice system? And if you are, how do you balance that with the need for transparency? I don't know if you can balance. Balance it.

[Felix Salmon]

Well, I, I have a simple question for Kathy, like, is there any Good reason why this algorithm shouldn't be public.

[Cathy O'Neil]

There's no good reason.

[Felix Salmon]

Would it be? Is. Is there some way that it could be gamed somehow if it was public?

[Cathy O'Neil]

Well, probably, you know, probably a fancy lawyer. You know, which rich, rich, rich defendants might get fancier lawyers and they would have more access to the questions if they were. In other words, if it was public, it's not even clear that some of the poor, poorer defendants would even know that because it's an information asymmetry. But in a larger sense, there is absolutely no reason for it not to be public. If it were public, then people like Julia Angwin and others could audit it more directly. One of the reasons these things are never public is because of profit. And they also, they actually gain money, they gain sort of reputation by claiming they're doing some kind of sophisticated mathematics under the COVID And I mean, it's complete bullshit.

[Felix Salmon]

Okay, we are going to finish up with the numbers round. I do need to first talk about Tracker, which is one of those natty gadgets which just makes your life better in kind of obvious but unanticipated ways. It's a little device. You can attach it to your keychain, you can put one in your wallet, you can put it in your bag, and you can attach it to your computer. It's a little baby, little disc. It weighs nothing. And then you can find out where those things are when you have lost them. I mean, basically I've attached one of these things to everything except for my glasses, because that would look a bit weird. But once this thing is attached to your keychain, say you can just pick up your phone and ask your phone like, where are my keys? And it will essentially tell you, there's this. What I want is for everyone who listens to Slate Money and everyone in the world to get a tracker device. Because this is the really clever thing, is that if my keys are near Jordan's phone and Jordan has the app installed on his phone, then my keys will talk to Jordan's phone and then Jordan's phone will talk to my phone and my phone will tell me where my keys are, even if they're not within sort of range of my phone. But it's also just a little thing where you can press a button and make your keys beep so that you can hear what you're talking.

[Cathy O'Neil]

It's really smart.

[Felix Salmon]

Anyway, the way you get this, if you want 30% discount on your tracker is to go to thetracker.com and enter the promo code money. So get a few of these things and you get 30% off all of them. TheTracker.com promo code money. Don't lose your things. Or rather don't worry about losing your things, because even if you do lose your things, you can find them again.

[Cathy O'Neil]

If you have your phone.

[Felix Salmon]

Right? It's hard to use your phone to find your phone. They haven't solved that problem. Actually, you know what? They have solved that problem.

[Cathy O'Neil]

What's that?

[Felix Salmon]

No, no, no. This is actually. This is kind of the most genius bit of all. Okay, get this. The little disc has a button on it you can press. If you press the button on the disc, it makes your phone make a noise.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Amazing.

[Felix Salmon]

So if you've lost your phone, but you haven't lost your keys, you can use your keys to find your phone.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Wow.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Wow, that's amazing.

[Felix Salmon]

Yeah. And even if the phone is on vibration, so you could put one of.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Those trackers, like tape it to the wall in fact, and track your phone that way.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah.

[Cathy O'Neil]

I'm so in.

[Felix Salmon]

Okay, numbers round.

[Cathy O'Neil]

Okay, I got 1.4 billion. That's the number of yen that were stolen from cash machines in Japan where 100 people worked together for three hours on some kind of bank holiday using forged credit cards. And all went to different ATMs in Japan and took out money. 1.4 billion yen, which is about $12.7 million. It was amazing.

[Jordan Weissmann]

Heist.

[Felix Salmon]

Three hours. Three hours work, that's like $4 million an hour. Even lawyers don't make that much money. I have a happy number. 13,317,980. Wow, that's. I like this number because it's an exact number. And that is the number of Broadway tickets that were sold last year. Wow, that's a lot of tickets. It's an all time high.

[Jordan Weissmann]

And Hamilton. All Hamilton.

[Felix Salmon]

No, it's not.

[Cathy O'Neil]

This is more Hamilton.

[Felix Salmon]

Hamilton was only playing for part of that year. And what's more, Hamilton is in a relatively modestly sized theater. So the big ones are the Book of Mormon and Wicked and those kinds of things. And ticket prices are still over $100 each on average. The number of tickets being sold is going up. Broadway is really healthy right now, and I'm happy about that.

[Jordan Weissmann]

I am too, as the son of a costume designer, I'm happy about that.

[Felix Salmon]

The only thing which looks a bit weird is plays. Virtually all of that, the overwhelming majority of that was musicals. And straight plays seem to be possibly on a decline. And the ones which do well at the box office, complete disasters like that horrible David merriment thing with Al Pacino and the really good straight players. I guess, like, it makes sense to me in a way because who wants to spend $200 to see a straight play when you can see one off Broadway for 50 anyway?

[Jordan Weissmann]

Yeah, my, my number is also pretty exact. It's 19,657. That's the number of student borrowers who are petitioning the Department of Education to cancel their loans currently on the because they were apparently lied to by their school about employment prospects.

[Cathy O'Neil]

So Corinthian or.

[Jordan Weissmann]

It's just I haven't seen general, I haven't seen the specific Corinthian. Obviously there were some cancellations that went along with that, but this probably isn't going to be the end of it. But it's just a, you know, this is the current numbers, the current crop. Clearly people are learning about this and I expect you're going to see more of it and the government's going to.

[Felix Salmon]

Have to figure out what if I'm one of those 19,000 people and I come up to Jordan and say, hey, Jordan, what's the chance this is going to work? What would you tell me?

[Jordan Weissmann]

I don't know. I think, I don't. I mean, it depends, you know, are there. I think if your school is brought up on some sort of, in some sort of federal lawsuit, a lot better than if it's not. If it's just a general kind of crappy for profit school that with dodgy statistics a little less of a chance. But I am curious to see how this plays out.

[Felix Salmon]

Okay, so that is it for us this week. I hope that we have entertained you with our tales villainy. Thank you for listening to Slate Money. Do subscribe to the show. You find us in the itunes store or anywhere that you find podcasts. Leave us a review. Write to us. The email address is slatemoneylate.com Many thanks to Audrey Quinn for producing and to the executive producers Steve Lichti and Andy Bowers and all of the panoply of Panoply podcasts which can be [e-mail] panoply so we'll talk to you next week on Slate Money. Sam.