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- [00:00]
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- [00:42]
Jessica Riedel
You know what's wild?
- [00:43]
Charlie Sykes
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- [01:11]
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- [01:52]
Charlie Sykes
Welcome back to to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes, and we need to talk about economics today because there's just so much going on. So we're joined again by our good friend Jessica Riedel, who is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the last remaining fiscal conservative in America. So thanks for coming back, Jessica.
- [02:12]
Jessica Riedel
Glad to be back. Thank you.
- [02:14]
Charlie Sykes
Do you sometimes feel like you're like one of these Japanese soldiers still fighting World War II in, like, 1970? Do they find you on an island every once in a while and go, wow, do you know the war's over?
- [02:24]
Jessica Riedel
It's really kind of distressing because when I was beating up Joe Biden for big deficits, big regulations, tariffs, all these conservative commentators and networks loved me. Then Trump does even bigger deficits, even bigger regulations, and even bigger tariffs. And suddenly I'm being asked, what happened to you? Why are you such a sellout? Why are you such a rhino? You know, I feel like, you know, when Reagan said the Democratic Party, I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left me. I'm, I'm, I'm just applying the same free market principles across Republicans and Democrats. But suddenly I'm the villain.
- [03:09]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so it's interesting you should mention that because I put something in my newsletter the other day and frankly, nobody picked up on it. I got no reaction to it whatsoever. And I thought it was an important point. And maybe it's because some of our progressive listeners aren't famil with some of these famous quotes. And I use that famous quote falsely attributed to Thomas Jefferson, that a government big enough to give you everything is also big enough to take everything away from you. This was. And again, there's some version of this. Gerald Ford used it actually in his inaugural speech. Fundamental tenet of what conservatives used to say that they believed in. It's like why you should be afraid of and suspicious of big government. This is why, you know, there was always this, you know, we are in favor of small government, not for these nefarious reasons, but because in the back of our minds we had that fear that the all powerful government could be dangerous to us. And I wonder how many folks now on the left are going, hey, you know what, maybe there was a point because I juxtapose that with that quote from the Washington Post, which I'm sure you saw how economists are saying, you know, that despite all of, you know, Trump's promises to free the marketplace and free businesses, right now the center of the world economy is decided by the Leviathan state, by DC Economic policy. And that's the reversal you're talking about.
- [04:33]
Jessica Riedel
Isn't really is. And you know, again, it's, you know, when you say the government big enough to give you everything, is a government big enough to take it away. Look at all the power that has been ceded to the White House. The White House, the executive branch essentially now completely controls foreign, foreign policy. They completely control trade. Doge has essentially pushed spending cuts over to the White House. Senator Roger Marshall from Kansas a couple days ago suggested the Senate abandoning its role to confirm executive nominees and just having the president have carte blanche for permanent recess appointments. First off, it's weird to see Congress voluntarily trying to remove its own power, but also, as you say, a Republican president that is given near dictatorial powers to control policy, override judges, ignore executive nominations. A Democrat's going to have the same power in four years. But you know, the thing in Washington, and I know you see this is whenever a party wins a big election, they think they're never going to lose again. They're, they never can think that far ahead. They think they have a permanent majority and we have nothing to worry about because the Democrats would never do the Same thing to us. It's so naive. And I've been in Washington long enough to see it go back and forth and wonder why neither side ever learns.
- [06:02]
Charlie Sykes
You know, that's a really good point, because maybe they should be given like a little calendar and say, okay, you know, remember back, you know, in 1992 when, you know, the Democrats were sweeping to power? Do you remember back in 1980 when Republicans thought they had a permanent majority? This goes back and forth, and yet there is that failure of imagination. Okay, so let's get into the number.
- [06:23]
Jessica Riedel
One example is when Schumer did the nuclear option on judges outside of the Supreme Court thinking they'd never lose the majority. Republicans got the Senate and then expanded the nuclear option to the Supreme Court.
- [06:38]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, maybe we should come back to this because there's good. The new gerrymandering wars are starting to begin. And this, again, is part of the pattern. That. And I remember having this argument over and over and over again. You know, be careful what you wish for on the filibuster. Be careful what you wish for on the nuclear option. You know, you may come to regret it when the other side. And yet there is that greediness, that sense of, no, we have the power right now. We have to do absolutely everything. Okay, so could you explain something to me like, I'm five years old, okay, There's a lot of things is going on in the economy that I do not understand. Okay, let's start with this. Drug prices. You know, someone of my age, very, very concerned about drug prices. Right? We're all concerned about drug prices. Did I catch President Trump saying that they had cut drug prices by 1500%? 1500%. Jessica, do the math for me on this, because I'm, I was vague on this.
- [07:30]
Jessica Riedel
Not only did President Trump say he cut drug prices by 1500%, he reiterated that he was not misspeaking. He said, not 50, that I cut drug prices by literally 1500%. Now, the mathematical geniuses at the White House who said the Bureau of Labor Statistics is off on its math, might need to look in the mirror a little bit, because if you cut drug prices 100% percent, they fall to zero. If you cut them 1500%, it means you're paying everybody else huge sums of money to take drugs or to take the prescription drugs. Clearly, math is not a strong suit in this White House, nor is this basic accuracy.
- [08:18]
Charlie Sykes
Okay? But math isn't going to be a big thing for anybody. Right? Because let's talk about the jobs numbers, the bls everybody Knows the story. Mediocre job numbers come down, there were some revisions that, that certainly raised a lot of red flags. Trump freaks, just freaks, freaks out, fires the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Jessica, your take on all of that, the war on statistical reality.
- [08:46]
Jessica Riedel
This is a much bigger deal than I think a lot of people realize. This goes to the basic authoritarian thirst to control information and control data. And we're to the point now you cannot trust any government data coming out of the Trump White House for the next four years because how can you trust an agency where the administrator knows they'll get fired if they post bad news? This is a control on information. You know, a couple other things on this. You know, first off, Trump says the job numbers are fake. Then he goes on CNBC to cheer the same jobs report when they mention the declining number of foreign born workers. So clearly the numbers in the report he likes are true, the numbers he doesn't like are fake. I would also add for the people who say, well, there really is a big scandal with bls, first off, there has been no investigation, There has been no reports. There has been no explanation of how they would have rigged the numbers. There has been no recommendation of how to do it better. Moreover, Doge actually slashed the BLS staff and the administration disbanded the advisory group reviewing the BLS methodology. So if anything, BLS does a very good job with a very accurate track record that I'm happy to go into with the government, essentially sabotaging them from the Trump White House.
- [10:27]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, I'm going to nerd out just a little bit on the BLS because there are some issues. Now, again, Trump's argument is that it was politically rigged, that it was intentionally falsified. There's no evidence of that whatsoever. However, BLS is struggling. As you just pointed out, they are understaffed. There has been a. They rely on survey data and the response rate on the surveys has dropped significantly since COVID Right. Businesses. So, you know, rather than beefing up the statistical, I mean, the staffing, what you're saying is, is that Trump has actually gutted it. So there are issues, there are ways to make the statistics better, but that doesn't seem to be the way we're going.
- [11:12]
Jessica Riedel
Right. The way the BLS does the jobs report is they give a survey that unfortunately has a very low response rate. And the preliminary jobs report is based on only the surveys that have come in. But over the next month or two, they will get more surveys to come in and that's when they update the job numbers. If you don't want BLS to update their numbers, then you really just have to say we're going to wait three or four months for them to put out the report when they've received all the surveys they're going to receive. But we want the preliminary report to know how the economy is doing now. And yes, they do the best they can with these surveys, but they actually have been hamstrung by the White House again. The White House has cut the staff. They've, they've gone after the advisory board that's trying to improve it. But overall, if you want to take a look at the BLS's record, they still, in a country of 160 million workers with 260 million adults, the first survey is usually correct within 0.1 million. And then they, you know, when someone hears, oh, BLS went from gaining 150,000 jobs down to 50,000, that's a big difference. No, they went from saying there's 161.3 million employed to 161.2 million employed. That's actually a pretty good first approximation.
- [12:46]
Charlie Sykes
Well, back to your point though, that this is not about the details of how the BLS does its job. This is really the authoritarian playbook of the Trump regime wanting to control all the data. And we've seen this before. We've seen this. People have compared this to Stalin when they would fire people during the five Year plan or Argentina or another banana republic. And there are real world consequences of that. So what does it actually mean? That we cannot believe the data going forward. And I agree with you. So the markets, I would assume, will have their own independent checks. But there's a long term price for a country whose government is not credible. Argentina being an example of that.
- [13:31]
Jessica Riedel
Yeah, we've seen this in other countries. When you have bad data, the White House thinks it just means you give a rosier picture to the voters. The voters won't know how bad the economy is because they're gonna really good headlines. Well, first off, voters experience the economy no matter what you spin. We saw this with Joe Biden claiming that inflation wasn't a problem. When we saw it every time we drove past, every time we got gas and every time we bought groceries. But also for policymakers, for the, you know, for Federal Reserve, for Congress, for regulators, for those in business who don't have their own in house economic team and they have to look at the jobs data to figure out where to move their investments in the economy, they're all going to be operating on data that they don't know is correct. And that's when policy mistakes get made. That's when businesses misallocate their investments because no one really knows what's happening in the economy. And as we saw in Argentina and other places in South America, Central America, when this happens, over time, the economy becomes more dysfunctional and we all lose.
- [14:47]
Charlie Sykes
Well, let's talk about tariffs for a moment. Shortly before you and I began recording, Trump slapped a 50% tariff on India because it continues to buy oil from Russia. I guess I'm a little unclear whether that's a tariff or a sanction. It sounds like it's sort of in a different category here, because the reality is that India has been financing Russia's war against Ukraine by buying lots of oil. Feel free to disagree with me at any time, so I'm going to set that one aside. You had an interesting post, though. Trump is out there touting the amount of revenue that's coming in from the tariffs. I'm not sure the last time that I've seen a Republican president bragging about, you know, all the money they get from a tax increase. But, you know, talk to me a little bit about your reaction to Trump standing next to, you know, these, these charts showing that, look, we're bringing in 60, 90 billion dollars a month in tariff revenue.
- [15:42]
Jessica Riedel
Yeah. I mean, first, it's interesting to see a Republican president bragging about how much he's raised taxes on the American people. And, of course, you know, they say foreigners are paying it. Anybody who knows basic economics knows it's a tax on Americans. So it's odd to see the president bragging about raising taxes. But ultimately, I had an article on this in the Washington Post last week. It's not really bringing in the extra $20 billion a month that we're seeing. You know, the headline number says tariff revenue is growing 20 billion a month.
- [16:15]
Charlie Sykes
Right.
- [16:16]
Jessica Riedel
That goes to 240 billion over a year, or 2.4 trillion over 10 years. However, what's happening is there are factors in the economy that are offsetting that revenue. The first is the economy has significantly slowed in the first half of this year relative to last year and relative to projections as a result of the tariffs. As the economy slows, you have less income to tax, and as a result, income tax revenues, corporate tax revenues, and payroll tax revenues have been below projection because the economy is growing more slowly. So if you just look at tariff revenues, you're not looking at the weakness elsewhere in the economy that's reducing revenues. I would also add for Those who think this is going to be a long term boon to the federal budget. Part of the reason tariff revenue is up is because businesses accelerated a lot of their purchases before the bigger tariffs are coming. So you're going to have less imports over time. Second, the whole point of a trade war is over time to build domestic alternatives for consumers to purchase, which means over time, you should have fewer imports and less tariff revenues. And third, we saw during the first Trump administration that most tariff revenue ends up getting spent bailing out the industries harmed by a trade war, such as agriculture. So between the weakening economy, timing shifts, ultimately imports declining over time and the bailouts of domestic industries, all this big deficit reduction the Trump administration is bragging about is not going to materialize except for very small amounts.
- [18:14]
Charlie Sykes
But what people will see will be the impact on the grocery stores, their lived experience. You know, and this is, this is something that, again, politicians, I think sometimes, and even talking heads, I think occasionally misunderstanding that you cannot tell consumers to ignore the evidence of their own eyes in their own pocketbook. You cannot tell them, no, it's not true that prices are up or that you're just simply imagining inflation. And you are going to start to see that at some point. Now it's been delayed, hasn't it? I mean, a lot of the projections, though, about the inflationary effects of tariffs have not come true. So where are we at on that timeline?
- [18:55]
Jessica Riedel
So last month we had prices rise at an annualized rate of 3.6%, which is the highest rate we've had under President Trump. It has risen. But 3.6% is still not, not as bad as compared to, say, what we had under President Biden. The reason it's been muted so far is, first off, a lot of companies have been drawing down inventories that they loaded up on before the tariffs. But eventually those inventories are going to be wiped out. They're going to have to start making more purchases of imports. Second, a lot of companies like GM have been trying to eat the tariffs as much as they can, but it essentially destroyed their earnings report last quarter and they can't do that for much longer. So what you see is businesses trying to hold out as long as they can. But we are seeing prices rise in things like home construction, steel, certain foods like, you know, tomatoes, chocolate. Those, those are rising. You know, the funny thing about chocolate is that's one of the ones. There was a very good article by Eric Bame and Reason this week about how when the White House says, well, if you just grow everything here, you won't need to pay the tariffs. But we can't grow, we can't produce chocolate, we can't grow the cocoa beans in America. But ultimately, I think the higher prices are going to start becoming more visible over time as businesses again have to re import and can't always eat the costs.
- [20:36]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. And again, let's go back to the tariffs, the on and off tariffs, the uncertainty of the tariffs. I mean, at the, at the micro level, I'm seeing all kinds of reports about businesses just complaining about the incredible complexity of the rules, that it's very, I mean that in itself. And again, here's part of the irony that conservatives and Republicans have railed against regulation and the, you know, the complexity of government rules. And apparently, though, trying to manage the tariff regime is an absolute complete nightmare even for experts. Are you seeing that too?
- [21:12]
Jessica Riedel
Yes. And I mean, I feel bad for businesses, especially smaller businesses. I think big businesses, corporations are paying a big cost to comply with these tariffs, but they have legal and compliance departments that can help them do it. They also have more access to Washington with their lobbyists that sometimes they can carve out exceptions. But if you're a smaller local business in the heartland, you don't have lawyers, you don't have a big compliance department, and you certainly don't have access to the office of the US Trade Rep to help you. So they're buried in compliance costs. The mom and pop shops are really getting hit harder. So you not only have the cost of the tariff, you have the cost of compliance. And by the way, this also has a big effect on business investment. President Trump says we want companies to build factories in America.
- [22:05]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [22:06]
Jessica Riedel
What company is going to undertake a 50 year project to build and operate a factory based on tariff policies that are changing by the week? Businesses need certainty and predictability even if the policy is harmful, they at least need certainty and predictability in order to make long term investments. And what we're seeing right now is chaos. It's impossible to comply with these policies and it's impossible to know what the tariff policy is going to be six months from now. The result is we're paralyzing business investment.
- [22:43]
Charlie Sykes
Now, I was just thinking about the businesses that move their production of certain technologies from China to India and now wake up to find that India has been hit with a 50% tariff. So talk to me about our competition with China because, you know, if you talk to the average Trump voter or listen to a lot of the rhetoric from Republicans, it's always been, you know, that China is our Number one competitor, you know, that China's been stealing our jobs, China's been stealing our intellectual property. And yet most just. Well, give me your sense of where we are in the trade negotiations vis a vis China, because there seems to be no, again, caught in the incredible fog of Trump's whims.
- [23:26]
Jessica Riedel
Yeah, I think, I mean, China is really, I think ultimately what the trade war is about, you know, which is why it's weird that we're spending all of this effort putting tariffs on Canada, Mexico, the euro, who had almost no tariffs or even lower tariffs than we had. Really the only area where I think you can at least make a case for tougher trade rules in terms of intellectual property is on China. China has been stealing our intellectual property. China has been doing a lot of things in that area that I think violate basic international trade law. There hasn't been a lot of, of real progress with China. There have been half hearted announcements, but we don't get the specifics of what's going on with China. At least we're not still at tariffs of what, 125% on China.
- [24:18]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
- [24:18]
Jessica Riedel
Because ultimately we still import so much from China. And a lot of Americans who say, you know, I want a trade wall with China, perhaps don't realize how much items, especially things like apparel, clothes, we import from China and what that would do to prices in America. So I think there is a case for going after China on things like intellectual property, but ultimately slapping 100% tariffs on Chinese imports is cutting off your nose. To spite your face, you're raising our price. Additionally, I would add that the trade policies we are doing is really making China more of an epicenter of world trade than the United States.
- [25:05]
Charlie Sykes
That's where I was going to, that's.
- [25:08]
Jessica Riedel
Not going to hurt China. China may actually welcome less trade to the United States if the result is they get bigger access to markets around the rest of the world because they're seen as a more reliable trading partner than the United States.
- [25:23]
Charlie Sykes
And at this point, in terms of if you have make a long term bet, whose long term stability looks, well, more stable, China or the United States? I even hate to say that I didn't wanna actually finish that sentence. Okay, so let's talk about interest rates and the Fed. The other big economic story of the last couple of weeks has been Donald Trump's continues attacks on Jerome Powell. And after the jobs numbers keep saying the Powell is too late. First of all, I mean, the reality check, he's going to get to replace Jerome Powell next spring. Right. I Mean, so sooner or later.
- [25:59]
Jessica Riedel
Yeah, yeah. Powell's term is up in May as Chairman of the Fed, he'll still be one of 12 members of the Federal Open Market Committee, but the President will get to appoint his new chairman in May.
- [26:13]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, so what would it mean, first of all, to the market? What would the markets think if Donald Trump did fire Jerome Powell?
- [26:21]
Jessica Riedel
I mean, look, central bank independence is the cornerstone of effective and credible monetary policy. The Fed makes the difficult decision so that politicians don't have to. And ultimately, that's what keeps down interest rates, inflation, and keeps economic growth up. Is that stability? If the President fires Jerome Powell with the goal of getting in someone who can lower interest rates, ironically, this will raise long term interest rates. And that's because if the President politicizes the Fed, the Fed loses all credibility on inflation. People will anticipate a more dovish Fed with higher inflation, and the financial markets will then price that inflation into their interest rate assumptions. They will demand higher interest rates to compensate for anticipated inflation. The result is everything but the shortest term interest rates actually grows over time because the Fed has lost its credibility on inflation. So not only is it really dangerous to have the White House meddling in Federal Reserve policy, it won't even serve the purpose President Trump wants, because you're just going to raise inflation. And it's really amazing to see a party that spent three years running against Joe Biden's inflation complain that the Federal Reserve is too concerned with inflation and that we should be willing to accept more.
- [27:50]
Charlie Sykes
Well, and it is interesting, and I always am hesitant to cite poll numbers, but I was looking at the latest University of Massachusetts poll, which confirms that Donald Trump is deeply underwater on the economy and on inflation. I mean, this is the one issue that he used if he had to say what was the one issue that was most effective for him? There's a lot of them, but I would certainly put inflation. And the voters are noticing, of course, you understand that with the bls. The bls, you know, with the, with the new. With the new regime, there will be no inflation, there will be no joblessness. Right. The economy will create 5 million a month and inflation will be zero. And that's their story. And they will be sticking to it.
- [28:32]
Jessica Riedel
Yeah, I mean, I think right now the economic growth during the first half of the year has been well below projection. Inflation is rising and is above projection. And even though neither of them are crises right now, keep in mind that when President Biden signed the American rescue plan in early 2021, it took 16 months for inflation to gradually rise to 9.1%. It didn't happen overnight. Inflation is a slow burn in an economy that grows over a period of time.
- [29:07]
Charlie Sykes
Interesting.
- [29:07]
Jessica Riedel
And the decisions being made now may not have most of their effect seen until, say, shortly before the election next year. It can take a year to a year and a half. So if President Trump is already slipping a little bit on the economy, I think that that does not bode well for them a year, year and a half from now, when a lot of these policy decisions have fully made it through the economy.
- [29:32]
Charlie Sykes
You know, connecting the dots, a couple of points you've made, though. It sounds like a lot of that might come to fruition right in the middle of the midterm election campaign, right in the middle of 2026 or early 2026. Okay, so here's an issue that you and I might actually disagree on and has nothing to do with economics. I want to talk about the gerrymandering wars. What's going on right now, because it's actually the most consequential political story in the country right now. You have, you know, the attempt to rig the Texas, the Texas congressional map. You have the Texas Democrats fleeing the state fleeing to Illinois. You have the president musing about possibly using the FBI against them. You have California and New York saying, okay, if you gerrymander you Texas, we're going to gerrymander our states as well. I mean, this is. This feels like we're in this spiral of escalation. And as if gerrymandering had not initiate our political process enough already, it is about to get way worse.
- [30:37]
Jessica Riedel
Yeah, the war, the political war just keeps expanding to new fronts as background. We used to redraw the districts every 10 years after the census. And now we're seeing these precedents where parties that control an entire state government are saying, why wait until the end of 10 years? Let's redraw them again. And, of course, you get escalation. If Texas is going to redraw its map to create more Republican districts, of course California can redraw to create more Democratic districts. The logical conclusion of all of these wars is that any state with a unified governor and legislature at some point could just start redrawing its district before every House race every two years and creating increasingly absurd district boundaries, you know, with the help of supercomputers that are built to maximize how you. How well you perform in your districts. I don't think this serves democracy well. I think you knew this was coming because the idea that there is going to be institutional restraints on gaining as much power as you can almost seems passe today. I don't think it serves democracy well to have states that are 52% of one party getting 80 or 90% of the congressional seats. I don't think it serves well to have districts that are shaped disastrously or to have households who are in a different district every couple of years because some supercomputer changed it. I don't like where this is going.
- [32:18]
Charlie Sykes
Well, but it is going there. In fact, that supercomputer at some point is going to be able to have the line go through that house where, you know, the wife is in one.
- [32:26]
Jessica Riedel
District and the husband is in the.
- [32:28]
Charlie Sykes
Other district because I will know absolutely everything. Well, look, I agree with you again, I agree with you because we're already kind of there. I think about 90% of the congressional districts aren't competitive anymore. So we have a very tiny slice. And of course this is anti Democratic. And so where I came down on it today and I'm probably going to get filleted about this because you know what social media is like in terms of the Democratic response, which is this cycle of this. Would this be the non virtuous cycle? It's an economic phrase, but the where everything gets worse and worse and worse and worse. That it's, that it is deeply hypocritical and profoundly necessary because if you're the Democrats right now, are they going, is this the mountain they're going to die on? Because they are going to die on this mountain. So you know, if you understand that, I guess if Democrats do honestly think that Donald Trump and Republicans pose an existential threat and that they are stealing the election and knowing all the consequences and all of the other principles that will be destroyed if Donald Trump, you know, has no check on him at all, then at some point there are these morally ambiguous choices that we have to make in times of total war. And so I agree with you that we are headed to a tremendously ugly place. So I think that, you know, morally and ethically we need to acknowledge how dangerous this is while also saying, shit, we may have no alternative. We may.
- [34:06]
Jessica Riedel
Absolutely, absolutely. I think, you know, ultimately we need a, some sort of national uniform solution that takes that, that only redraws district after a new census and takes some of the extreme partisan politics out of it. But in the meantime, it is not reasonable to ask one party to unilaterally disarm and let the other party essentially get carte blanche in an undemocratic way. You have to, you have to, you have to get together and have both parties decide to work on this in a unified way. If, if Republicans say we're going to, we're going to rig our states and Democrats say, well, we don't believe in that, I think that would be very naive to unilaterally disarm. You know, I'm against, I'm against war, but I still believe you need to have a defense department because if they're going to have a military, you need to have a military.
- [35:05]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah. And unfortunately, I think we're going to have this story play out again and again, these kinds of cycles that, that to the extent that one party destroys certain Democratic norms, then the other party is going to say, well, okay, if those are the new rules, then we're going to do this as well. And where does it end? My concern is, and I agree with you there is the voice of reason is we need to have a national standard. It would have been great if the Supreme Court would have said, you know, these ridiculous, you know, hyper partisan gerrymanders violate the Constitution. They haven't done that. Because my fear is that when we get to that end point where essentially every congressional seat in America has been rigged by the, by a political party, then the hoping that, that Congress then will pass legislation that will give up their power or endanger their power seems extremely naive. So this is something that, okay, you can support doing it, but don't tell me that there's not a dilemma here. Oh, absolutely. And I think this encapsulates our time. Jessica Riedel, thank you so much for your time and for coming back on the podcast. We always appreciate your insight.
- [36:20]
Jessica Riedel
Always a fun conversation. Thanks Charlie.
- [36:23]
Charlie Sykes
And thank you all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. You know why we do this, why we continue to do this? Because now more than ever, it is a important to remind ourselves that we are not the crazy ones.
- [36:35]
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- [37:32]
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- [37:52]
Charlie Sykes
Beth, you're in charge of ordering the tacos for the meeting today.
- [37:55]
Ad Narrator
Yeah, I'm not gonna order the tacos.
- [37:57]
Charlie Sykes
Uh, what?
- [37:58]
Ad Narrator
I'm going to Easy cater the tacos with EasyCater. You can order from a huge variety of restaurants, track expenses and save time.
- [38:06]
Charlie Sykes
Nice.
- [38:07]
Ad Narrator
Oh, by the way, you're emailing the meeting notes, right?
- [38:10]
Charlie Sykes
No, I'm going to easy mail them. Where's my music?
- [38:14]
Ad Narrator
Sorry, Ben, there's no EasyCater for that.
- [38:17]
Charlie Sykes
EZCator. The easy way to order food for work.
- [38:20]
Jessica Riedel
Order now@easycator.com Meet Olivia.
- [38:23]
Ad Narrator
Hey, what's up?
- [38:24]
Jessica Riedel
Olivia dreams big.
- [38:26]
Ad Narrator
I want to go back to school and get a pet and buy a house and save for retirement and travel the world.
- [38:31]
Jessica Riedel
That's quite the list.
- [38:33]
Ad Narrator
Thank you.
- [38:33]
Jessica Riedel
Numerica Credit Union is the perfect partner to help turn Olivia's dreams into reality.
- [38:38]
Ad Narrator
Really?
- [38:38]
Jessica Riedel
Yep. We're all about helping our members create a life that feels like theirs. And we have the tools, expertise, and guidance to make it happen.
- [38:46]
Ad Narrator
I'm in.
- [38:47]
Let's get started.
- [38:48]
Jessica Riedel
Numerica Credit Union money where it matters. Federally insured by NCUA.
- [38:52]
Ad Narrator
Did you know 39% of teen drivers admit to texting while driving? Even scarier, those who text are more likely to speed and run red lights. Shockingly, 94% know it's dangerous, but do it anyway. As a parent, you can't always be in the car, but you can stay connected to their safety. With Greenlight Infinity's driving reports. Monitor their driving habits, see if they're using their phone, speeding and more. These reports provide real data for meaningful conversations about safety. Plus, with weekly updates, you can track their progress over time, help keep your teen safe. Sign up for Greenlight infinity@Greenlight.com podcast.