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- [00:01]
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- [00:29]
Boyd (Shopify Business Owner)
Boyd in Florida I started Ornod in 2013 and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non technical people. We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify so start your free trial on shopify.com My
- [01:00]
Shannon Maldonado (Shopify Business Owner)
name is Shannon Maldonado. I'm the founder of Yaoi, a gift shop from the lens of artists and handmade objects. I chose Shopify because when I was testing other platforms, it was definitely one of the most user friendly. It was important to me to think about where we would be in the future. All of the tools for reading your sales, like planning inventory, they're just right there on your dashboard. For anyone starting a small business, the biggest thing I can tell you is it doesn't have to be perfect. Shopify can help you build upon it. Start your free trial on Shopify.com is
- [01:29]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
Donald Trump's new top appointee getting ready to betray him? Kevin Warsh, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, has indicated what's referred to as a hawkish slant. But that shouldn't surprise you because that's been Kevin Wash. His background is he defined himself as being someone not just with a hawkish slant, but as a hawk, somebody who tries to kind of control the the joint responsibilities of the Fed by not being afraid to raise interest rates. Which is fascinating because the guy that Donald Trump attacked, Jerome Powell, was known as being someone who lowered interest rates or more of an inclination to lower interest rates to drive economic growth. In Jerome Powell, who Trump appointed, by the way, during his first term, who Trump incessantly attacked. And so Donald Trump may try to, you know, act like inflation is down and things are going amazing and everything is great, you know. But I want you all to pay attention to some of these board meetings at the Fed that are taking place What Kevin Warsh is saying in his speeches regarding, he goes, there's, I'm not going to allow inflation to, you know, I'm going to make sure inflation hits that kind of 2% and I'm going to do what I need to do in order to do that. Also, you know, Kevin Warsh on Friday announced a board to kind of look at the work of the Federal Reserve. And if you look at the board that he put together, you know, I'm not out here saying, you know, it's like the greatest thing, but he did not bring on voices that were purely like MAGA voices. And so if you're paying attention to some of these signs that are going on behind the scenes, I mean, you are, I think looking to see, I mean more likely than not raising interest rates. And it'll be fascinating, you know, to bring to down inflation, although I think we'll have to see with these employment readouts what's going on there. Because you know, one of the other issues is you may need to reduce interest rates when you have employment, you know, losing all of these jobs. Let me show you what Donald Trump said when he was in the NATO summit in Turkey where he said inflation is way down. Everything is great. Prices are coming down. We're doing amazing, which we all know is not true here. Play this clip.
- [03:50]
Commercial Announcer
Announced on your social a couple days
- [03:52]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
ago that Walmart was cutting the price per 15%. How big of a deal is that for American customers this summer?
- [03:59]
Donald Trump (Former President, quoted)
So Walmart has agreed to cut their prices very substantially because things are going down. We're getting it down. We inherited very high prices. We inherited the highest prices in the history of our country or 48 years to be exact. But I don't believe that. I think it's in history. So under Biden they had tremendous inflation. Under the Democrats we had tremendous inflation record setting inflation. And now inflation is way, everything is great. We have the prices are coming down. But we inherited. You know, they talk about different, they use different words to describe it. They had very high prices, the prices
- [04:36]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
are coming down, which of course we know is utterly false. Everything about what he said when Biden left, inflation was about 3% year over year. Right now it's at like 4.3, 4.5% year over year and rising. The Walmart thing is basically made up. He pulled that same scheme for Thanksgiving and said they reduced the prices of Thanksgiving at 25%. That's like his go to move is just trying to take advantage of like potential discounts being offered that really aren't that and then claim that that's somehow reducing inflation. Let me show you what Trump previously said about Kevin Warsh, the chairman of the Federal Reserve at the time that Donald Trump picked him as the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, where he said he certainly wants to cut rates. Here, play this clip.
- [05:20]
Commercial Announcer
Did Kevin Marsh commit to you that
- [05:22]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
he will push to cut interest rates
- [05:24]
Commercial Announcer
if he is confirmed?
- [05:25]
Donald Trump (Former President, quoted)
No, but we talk about it and I've been following him and I don't want to ask him that question. I think it's inappropriate. Probably. It probably would be allowed, but I want to keep it nice and pure. But he certainly wants to cut rates. I've been watching him for a long time.
- [05:39]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
Well, if you've been watching him for a long time, a long time, you know, that's not necessarily the case. I mean, he wash. Seemed to say what he needed to say to get the job and kind of came up with a thesis. Well, based on AI. I now feel we may need to reduce the interest rates in order to spur growth. That's not actually where he was historically. It was quite the opposite historically. And then, of course, when war was getting confirmed, he was at his appointment hearing. He said all of the things that he needed to say to, you know, make sure that he wasn't on Donald Trump's bad side. I mean, just, just watch the squirminess over here. Here, play this clip.
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Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Spokesperson)
If you were to assign, if Professor Walsh were to assign a letter grade to the American economy today for the average working family, what grade would you assign?
- [06:25]
Boyd (Shopify Business Owner)
Senator, it was good to meet with you in your office. In modern academic institutions, they give everybody A's, so it's not a fair comparison, especially at elite universities. I know everyone gets perfect rates.
- [06:42]
Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Spokesperson)
Well, what grade would you give the economy?
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Boyd (Shopify Business Owner)
Well, if I gave a student anything other than an A, the dean would summon me to his office because I would have hurt his self image.
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Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Spokesperson)
Well, well, the, the Americans that I talk to, particularly in the state of Georgia, who haven't had the benefit of attending some of these elite institutions
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Boyd (Shopify Business Owner)
are
- [07:07]
Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Spokesperson)
trying to make their lives work.
- [07:08]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
Yeah, Mic drop right there.
- [07:10]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
Elite university.
- [07:11]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
I mean, could you seem more out of touch to what the American people are saying? And here was when Donald Trump was told about a month back that the Fed held the interest rates at where they were and that they may even raise the interest rates. Watch what Trump says.
- [07:23]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
Let's play it.
- [07:23]
Donald Trump (Former President, quoted)
Because honestly, it's unbelievable. Say it.
- [07:30]
Boyd (Shopify Business Owner)
They held rates today.
- [07:32]
Donald Trump (Former President, quoted)
It's all right, whatever.
- [07:33]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
And it looks like they might even
- [07:35]
Boyd (Shopify Business Owner)
Raise them later this year. It's not clear. Do you have any questions?
- [07:37]
Donald Trump (Former President, quoted)
It could happen. I mean, I. It's hard to believe. It just keeps a country down, you know, so it's so unusual. But we have a very good guy over there now, so I'm guided by what he wants. Was this his first time? Yeah. I don't know. I saw a statement. It just came out.
- [07:59]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
I want to bring in Justin Wolfers leads, Platypus Economics. Make sure you all subscribe to Platypus Economics on YouTube. Justin, you saw all of that as an economist, you must be cringing right there. Talk to us about, you know, where we are right now and what you think is going to happen.
- [08:18]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
Yeah, it just hurts in my bones. And so it's. I just want to explain to the audience literally what's happening inside my head right now, which is I just watched a lying liar, lie, lie a lot. And so the first thing that I want to do, because I was raised that lying is wrong, is respond to those lies and set them straight. But then, know what that would do is, Ben, you and I would be over here talking about that, not talking about the important reality, which is what's going on in the American economy. So I think the issue here really is what's going on at the Fed. And we've had now one meeting with the new guy, Kevin Walsh. Let me give folks at home a little bit of context. Walsh was on the Fed once before, between 2006 and 2011, which incidentally means he was there during the financial crisis. During that period, inflation was persistently too low. In fact, the Fed was sometimes worried that prices would start falling, which would cause what we call deflation. And the Fed worries about that. And unemployment was really, really high through 2009, 2010, 2011. So the responsible thing to do at a moment like that would be to cut interest rates. And that's what the Fed did. But throughout that period, Kevin Wal kicking and screaming every day, he'd wake up and he'd think he could see inflation somewhere, even when it wasn't there. There's a word economists have, for this year, used it. We call someone like that an inflation hawk. And if they're totally crazy, we call them an inflation nutter. But so what we learned from that period is that Kevin Walsh is an inflation hawk. We also know that the President desperately wants low interest rates, no matter what, and he's often talked about why, and it's because he wants to reduce the burden of the national debt. That's the opposite. An inflation hawk. And so there's this weird thing like, why would President Trump end up appointing a hawk? Traditionally, hawks were in the Republican camp, but that's not Donald Trump's view of monetary policy. So then the question came up, is it maybe that Wash has done sort of a deal with the devil? He said, I'll take the job and do whatever it is you want, Mr. President. There's no shortage of people in Washington who've made that deal. And if you watched his confirmation hearing, it was one of the most craven, disgusting things ever seen, in which Wash joked his way through very serious issues and cared more about not hurting the President's feelings than about either telling the truth or thinking hard about the American economy. And so coming out of that hearing, the real question that many of us had is, do we have sock puppet Kevin, the guy who's struck a deal with the President in order to get the job, or do we have hawkish Kevin, the guy who's the opposite of what the President wants? He just had his first Fed meeting, and it became very clear in that meeting, what we got was hawkish Kevin, the guy who wants to eradicate inflation no matter what the cost, the guy who's quite comfortable with raising interest rates. So exactly the opposite of what the President wants. How quickly he rolls that out and whether that judgment remains correct, I think are very much open questions. But it does look like the President got rid of one guy, Jay Powell, who was doing the sort of stuff that President Trump likes, just not enough of it. And he may have gone and gotten a guy who, you know, does the exact opposite. Let me add one more thing. I have been impressed in the first days of what Warsh is doing. He's announced all these working groups. The people involved in those working groups are very, very serious people, very serious economists. Walsh may not have been the guy that I would have chosen. I tend to care a lot about unemployment. He tends to care a lot about inflation. But I'm impressed that this is a guy who at least has the qual qualifications and a degree of seriousness that you don't get out of a Fox News host. And so we're a funny world we're in right now, but we have someone who's in the vicinity of qualified, in the vicinity of serious. And honestly, that's the best we could hope for right now.
- [12:09]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
What do we make of the dual mandate of the Fed, as it's called, when we're now dealing with rising inflation and we're also dealing with rising unemployment or Decreasing jobs. And it ways astonishes me, you know, as someone who's not steeped in economics, when I see a bad jobs report print, and then the market's like, oh yeah, you know, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, that seems to be a bad thing that jobs are being lost. Why are you. And then it's always explained to me, oh, well, that then means that there's a potential that the interest rates won't be raised as much or you may need to lower interest rates to deal with the job. And to me, I also wonder if that thinking though, where you have AI and you have other. I guess the idea is if you lowered interest rates, that may encourage businesses to hire. I mean, you could correct me if I'm, I mean, as one of the thoughts and spur jobs. But also to me, I also think, but now businesses with AI are still firing all of these people, so I'm not even sure that brings back the jobs. And so let me first ask you one, just about the dual mandate. But two, the very idea. And we're getting philosophical here, but I think people want these conversations in 2026. Is the dual mandate even the right way to think about things with AI and with jobs being replaced by these AI tools?
- [13:46]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
I love that question. And the truth is, you and I could spend two and a half hours talking about this. So let me try and give the brief answer and you and I can talk about it any other day of the week. I promise you, mate. Okay, so first of all, what is the dual mandate? Look, Congress tells the Fed what to do. Congress said to the Fed, you've got two jobs. One is to keep employment as high as you can, or alternatively, keep unemployment as low as you can. And the other is to keep inflation low and stable. That's Congress tells the Fed that. The Fed doesn't get to decide it. What happened? The way most of us are used to thinking about the world, most people is they're used to thinking about the world in terms of what economists call demand shocks, which is when we have a recession, employment goes down and inflation goes down. Well, the easy way to fix that is if you cut interest rates. That'll cause employment to go up and inflation to go up. And if the economy overheats, that causes employment to go up too much and inflation to go up too much. And the easy way to deal with that is you raise interest rates, which pushes both of them back down. So most of the time this dual mandate pushes you in the same direction no matter what. But I want you to realize most many casual watches, the economy are used to thinking about the world solely through that lens. That lens is what we call demand shocks.
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Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
Right?
- [15:01]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
A recession is when people don't want to buy much stuff, and a boom is when too many people want to buy too much stuff. It's all happening on the demand side. What's happening right now, though, is what we call a supply shock. What's the supply shock? The supply shock is tariffs, which have raised the cost of doing business. It's the war in Iran, which have raised energy prices and once again raised the cost of doing business. Before that, there was a supply shock coming out of the Ukraine war as well. And the thing about a supply shock is it gives you two bad things at the same time. Demand shocks give you one bad thing at a time. Supply shock, the one we're in right now, it slows the economy so you get lower employment and it raises inflation, which is what we're in the middle of right now. That creates a dilemma for the Fed. The dilemma is, well, do I go over here and try and raise interest rates to knock off the high inflation, or do I come over here and try and cut interest rates to boost employment? That's a hard problem. The textbook. Now I'm going to get next level here. I told you, I'm very excited by this. The textbook says if you just wait a while, all the effects of Iran and tariffs, they'll lead to higher prices, but they won't lead to prices continuing to rise. Remember, inflation is the rate of change of prices. And so that says if you just wait it out, the inflation problem will go away. So inflation here is, to use a word, transitory. So that means the Fed maybe shouldn't raise rates to go after inflation. One more wrinkle, and this is the wrinkle that really worries the Fed. They say, yeah, I accept that textbook. But here's the problem. The Fed really wants not only to have 2% inflation, it wants everyone to believe that inflation will be low and stable in the future. And the problem is that inflation has been above 2% now for five years. So maybe we really ought to be over there worrying about inflation once again. Okay? That's the dual mandate. You asked me one other philosophical question which is profoundly important, which is what should we tell the Fed to do? And I think that Congress, in all its wisdom, gave the Fed a very smart thing. It says, care about employment because it is definitely affected by what you do. And it says care about inflation because that's also affected by what you do this really matters right now? Because one of the first things Kevin Walsh did upon becoming Fed chair is the Fed's first press release essentially said, I'm really going to lean hard on the inflation part. So Walsh has more or less said to Congress, look, I know you said dual mandate, but I'm really an inflation hawk, and I'm going to spend all my time talking about and thinking about inflation. So this question of what it is we should have the Fed doing, it's very much a live question right now.
- [17:38]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
Do you think Trump know? I mean, does he know that? I mean, does he know that his guy, I mean, as you said, this guy, see this guy back when there was deflation, essentially would see a small puddle and see a tsunami. Now there's a tsunami. And so what, what, you know, you must think, what is he seeing now? When all of the fears that he had where people are like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, you're, you're, you're wrong. Now it's here. And so what do you, what do you see happens next?
- [18:08]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
So the last two months have led rather until you want economist's opinion, look, I'm happy to tell you mine, but I always think it's better to talk about what the market believes because that talks, that represents the average of a lot of, A lot of economists, some of whom might be, are, let's be clear, are smarter than me. They just have worse accents. Before Iran and before wash, everyone was expecting the Fed to cut rates through 2026. We went into Iran and that created that supply shock. And we appointed wash. And now markets are expecting interest rates. No more interest rate cuts. And it's quite likely the next movement in interest rates is up, and it's even possible that'll occur before the midterms. So a very sharp change in how rates are working. And I do want to come back to remember the President came to power saying, I will reduce the cost of living on day one. Well, higher rates already. The expectation that interest rates are going to be higher in the future, that's already being priced in by markets, which is to say that anyone who's out there trying to negotiate a new mortgage right now, you're going to get a much worse deal than you would have three, four, five months ago. And that's precisely because of the President's actions. So it's just another way in which the President is sort of said, I'm for affordability, and quietly done the opposite.
- [19:26]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
I want everybody to subscribe to Platypus Economics on YouTube to learn more. Also, Justin and I have a big announcement coming up on Monday about maybe something we're doing together. You'll have to stay tuned for that.
- [19:37]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
I don't know what it is. I know I'm excited. Crikey, Ben, what could it be?
- [19:44]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
You know, I think people may be seeing a little bit more of us together and these types of breakdowns and really getting the information from you, though, because this is is probably the most critical issue. This is what's affecting people's pocketbooks. These are the kitchen table issues that we need to be talking about and the trends. So thanks, Justin. Everybody. Subscribe to Platypus Economics on YouTube.
- [20:06]
Justin Wolfers (Economist)
Search it.
- [20:07]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
Hit subscribe here and let's get to 7 million subscribers here. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our substack@midasplus.com you'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski ad free episodes of our podcast and more exclusive content only available@midasplus.com
- [20:25]
Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Spokesperson)
hey, it's Ryan
- [20:26]
Ben (Podcast Host/Commentator)
Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. Now I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch upfront
- [20:47]
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